Royal

by Danielle Steel

  “When are you thinking of leaving?” one of the two maids asked her.

  “Soon,” Lucy said. She had her savings to tide her over, and she was going to look for a job where they would allow her to bring a child, perhaps as a nanny, or a nursery maid, or a housemaid on a large estate. She knew the kind of work that would be required of her, and she planned to say she was a war widow with a child when she applied for jobs. There would be plenty of them on the market now, widowed women with children, and no one was going to ask her for a marriage certificate or Anne Louise’s birth certificate. She could always say her papers had been lost in the bombing.

  “I’ll give you a character if you like,” the housekeeper offered, and Lucy was delighted. It was all she needed to get a good job. With that in hand, she could take her pick of whatever was available. She had read in The Lady magazine about an agency in London that helped men and women find domestic jobs, and planned to go there.

  That night, after everyone went to bed, Lucy went upstairs to the large guest room Charlotte had occupied in the last weeks of her life, before Anne Louise was born. Her things had been moved down from the attic room next to Lucy’s to the large guest bedroom, and Lucy knew that all her papers would be there. She wanted to take them with her, not to show to anyone, but in case she ever needed them. She had never known much about Charlotte’s history. She had always been vague about it whenever Lucy asked her, and Lucy had always sensed that there was a secret there somewhere, just as there was surrounding Anne Louise’s birth. A mystery of some kind.

  When she got to the room, she had an eerie feeling, knowing that it was where Charlotte had died over a year before, the night of Annie’s birth. The room hadn’t been used since. The shades and curtains were drawn. She sat down at the desk, opened the drawers, and was relieved to find they weren’t locked. This was easier than she had thought it would be. The drawers were all full, and there was a large brown leather box on her desk. It had a crown embossed on it in gold. Before she examined its contents, Lucy went through each of the desk drawers. Two of them were filled with stacks of letters tied with thin blue ribbons. She removed the ribbons, and opened the letters, and saw the crown on the stationery. They were all signed “Mama,” the initials engraved at the top of the page were “AR,” and handwritten in the upper right-hand corner, under the date, in a neat elegant hand were the words “Buckingham Palace.” A few said “Sandringham,” some “Windsor,” and several others said “Balmoral.” Lucy frowned as she read the locations and wondered if it was a code of some kind. And then she read several of the letters, and suddenly her heart gave a jolt. “AR” could mean Anne Regina, Queen Anne, the crown was the crown of the Royal House of Windsor, and they had been written from all of the palaces that the current royal family used most often. But that wasn’t possible. How could it be? Charlotte had said that her father was a civil servant, and her mother was a secretary. Had she been lying? Or was her mother a secretary to the queen? It seemed unlikely she’d use so much of the queen’s stationery for letters to her daughter, unless she was the queen.

  She began to read the letters more carefully and nowhere did Charlotte’s mother, the woman who had signed herself “Mama” in the letters to Charlotte, nowhere did she mention Henry, or the fact that Charlotte was expecting a baby. She obviously didn’t know. Charlotte had clearly kept the baby a secret from her mother, presumably because Anne Louise was illegitimate and she didn’t want to tell her mother of her disgrace. But the countess knew about the baby and had kept the secret for her.

  Lucy vaguely remembered then hearing that the youngest royal princess had been sent to the country to escape the bombing in London. Maybe she had come here. But Charlotte’s last name was “White,” not “Windsor.” There was no doubt in Lucy’s mind that the letters signed “Mama” were from the queen, written from Buckingham Palace, and all the palaces where they lived. The envelopes showed that they were addressed to the countess, but the letters were to Charlotte.

  She read the letters right to the last ones, and several from her sisters. She looked for mentions of a baby coming, and there were none. Lucy tied the letters up again, then found the packet of letters that Henry had written her shortly before he died, telling her how much he loved her, and mentioning the baby that was about to be born and how pleased he was. It made Lucy’s heart ache to read them, remembering how she had hoped that one day he would love her. But now she had Annie, and he was gone. There were several photographs of him in the desk, and one of him with Charlotte that his mother must have taken, in a small heart-shaped silver frame.

  After Lucy finished reading the letters, she carefully opened the leather box with the crown embossed in gold on it. There was a key in the lock, but the box was open, and Lucy was astounded by what she found. Their marriage certificate, for the marriage by special license that they had kept secret as well. So Anne Louise wasn’t illegitimate after all, which came as a shock to Lucy. Everyone assumed she was. The queen apparently didn’t know about her, but Henry and Charlotte had gotten married before he left, not long before. Glorianna Hemmings had signed it as a witness, so she knew, and so had the earl, but they had waited to tell the queen, and must not have gotten around to it by the time Charlotte died, hours after the baby’s birth, because the queen’s letters never mentioned the marriage or the child. Perhaps they’d been waiting until Henry returned from the war to face the royal family with the news of a marriage and a baby conceived out of wedlock at seventeen. For whatever reason, the queen appeared to be entirely unaware of Anne Louise’s existence, or Charlotte’s hasty marriage, after she was pregnant, and before he left. So they had legitimized the child, but kept her a secret. And most shocking of all, Charlotte had been a royal princess. The king and queen’s youngest child. Lucy was sure of it now. Things had obviously taken an unexpected turn when she came to Yorkshire and she and Henry fell in love. She had kept that a secret from her family as well. He was never mentioned in a single one of the queen’s letters, until after his death when she said how sorry she felt for his mother, but she appeared to have no idea that Charlotte was mourning him as well.

  Her travel papers were in the leather box, in the name of “Charlotte White.” There was nothing in the box to identify her as “Charlotte Windsor,” or as a royal princess, except the letters from the queen signed “Mama,” sent from Buckingham Palace and their other homes. There were letters in the letter box too, from Charlotte’s mother and both her sisters and a few signed “Papa.” The box was too full to contain all the letters. The rest were in the desk drawers. And when she took all the papers out to read them, she saw that there were initials inside the box at the bottom. They weren’t Charlotte’s initials, they began with “A,” presumably the queen’s. Charlotte had kept a multitude of secrets until her sudden death, and in the end, had taken them to her grave. The countess had known the whole story, but hadn’t told the queen either, since she didn’t seem to know. Perhaps she was afraid of the king’s and queen’s reactions to their seventeen-year-old daughter getting pregnant by the Hemmingses’ son, and married in secret without her parents’ permission, to prevent her child from being born illegitimate. Some of the mysteries remained unsolved and would be forever, but Lucy could guess. Charlotte was almost surely the youngest princess who had been sent away from London to escape the bombs, and the same one who had died, supposedly of “pneumonia,” on the same day that Charlotte White had died in Yorkshire, shortly after childbirth at seventeen. It wasn’t a coincidence. Lucy was certain now that she was the same girl.

  There was also a copy of Anne Louise’s birth certificate, with her father’s last name, and the death certificate of Charlotte White, apparently put there by the countess, with “pneumonia” listed as the cause of death, not hemorrhaging after childbirth. It was all there. And when she peered into the box for a last look, she saw a narrow gold chain bracelet with a heart dangling from it and put it on her wrist.
She felt like a thief taking it, but she’d never had anything as pretty and couldn’t resist. She would give it to Annie one day. She remembered Charlotte wearing it and had noticed it when she arrived.

  As Lucy sat back in the chair at Charlotte’s desk, contemplating the piles of papers in front of her, she realized that she had everything she needed to blackmail the Royal House of Windsor, if she wished to do so. It was a powerful feeling that she knew about a secret marriage, a baby conceived out of wedlock by their seventeen-year-old daughter, and the child that had resulted from it, and she knew the real cause of Charlotte’s death, and she was sure that the royal family were aware of none of those things. Lucy knew everything they didn’t. How much would they pay for the information, and to keep her quiet, and not create a scandal involving their dead daughter? But she had gotten married, and the baby had been born legitimate.

  But she didn’t want money, she wanted Annie, the baby that she loved, and they didn’t know existed. They would never miss her, and if Lucy gave her up now, she knew it would break her heart. Remaining silent now would mean depriving Annie of life as a royal princess, but whatever she did now, Annie’s mother was still dead. She could give her up to a life of palaces and royal blood, but Lucy firmly believed she could give her a mother’s love as none of the royals would. And if things had been different and Henry had loved her, Annie would have been their child, not Charlotte’s. This was a way of keeping Henry close to her forever, but more important, she could lavish love on his child. Annie would never know that she was the granddaughter of a king and queen, and if she took Annie’s birth certificate with her, no one would ever know. They would never know that there was a child, when they came to get Charlotte’s belongings and remains, and Annie would never know of the life she had missed. Only the earl and countess and Henry and Charlotte had known the truth of who Annie was, by birth, and now Lucy had discovered the secret. She stared at the birth certificate long and hard, and her hands shook as she decided what to do. She knew she had no choice. All she wanted in the world was within her reach. She could let the servants at Ainsleigh continue to believe that Annie was an orphaned love child with no relatives except the very remote cousin who had inherited the estate and wouldn’t want her either.

  The royal family knew nothing about Annie’s existence, and never would. There was no one left alive to tell them, and no one in the world knew that the baby’s mother had been a royal princess, third in line for the throne. If Lucy took Annie with her, no one would ever suspect that she wasn’t Lucy’s child. The king and queen would never come looking for a baby they didn’t know anything about, the servants at Ainsleigh didn’t know of her royal connections or who her mother really was, and there was no one to stop Lucy now. Whatever she could have gotten for selling Charlotte’s secrets to them, the baby she loved as her own was worth far more to her.

  With sudden determination, she decided to keep the letters and documents, the marriage certificate and Annie’s birth certificate, and carefully put them all in the royal leather box. She took one of the blue ribbons off the letters from the queen to her daughter, locked the box with the key, slipped the key on the ribbon, and put it around her neck, where no one would take it from her.

  In the box, she had everything she needed to guarantee that Annie would be hers forever. All trace of her bloodline had been removed, thanks to Charlotte keeping all her secrets to herself. Everyone who had known the whole story was now dead. The only remaining evidence was the infant herself, and Lucy intended to bring her up as her own, her very own royal princess. Her Royal Highness Anne Louise Windsor. Lucy would always know that the little girl she loved was royal. Her very own princess, whom even the king and queen knew nothing about. Their youngest child was dead, but her baby daughter was Lucy’s now, to love forever, and no one would ever take her away. Lucy couldn’t bear the idea of another loss if she gave the baby up. For her sake, and Annie’s, Lucy was certain she was doing the right thing, and told herself she was. A mother’s love was more important than riches and royal lineage. She would love Annie to her dying day as they never could. To Lucy, it justified everything. She realized that she could have destroyed the contents of the box, but the papers seemed too important to do that. She wanted to keep them in the box.

  With an iron will, and no hesitation, she picked up the locked leather box, containing all the letters and papers. The desk was empty. Lucy carefully turned off the lights in what had been Charlotte’s final bedroom, and all her secrets belonged to Lucy now, along with her child. There was an element of revenge, since Charlotte had stolen Henry from her. But she forgave her for that now. She had Henry’s daughter, which meant more to her than Annie being a princess. Annie was Henry’s final legacy to her. The child that should have been theirs. Annie was her baby now, and always would be. No one could take Annie from her. Once back in her room, she put the locked leather box in her suitcase, and touched the key around her neck. She had Charlotte’s gold bracelet with the heart on her wrist. Annie was asleep in the crib in Lucy’s room, where she had slept for months now, and from that moment on, Annie, the little princess no one knew about and never would, was hers.

  Chapter 5

  Two days after Lucy had packed all of Charlotte’s papers into the leather box and slid it into her suitcase, she announced that she was leaving. She said she was ready to go back to London. She bought a gold-plated wedding band in a jewelry store in York, slipped it on her finger in her new role as war widow, and the next day, she packed up Annie’s things, said goodbye to the staff at Ainsleigh Hall, with a character from the housekeeper, and took Annie with her on the train to London. Her heart was pounding when she left, afraid someone would try to stop her. But no one did. The remaining maids, housekeeper, and hall boys all thought it was a good thing that Lucy was taking Charlotte’s baby with her. Without Lucy, where else would she go? Most likely to an orphanage. They hugged Lucy and Annie, and wished her luck. She promised to let the housekeeper know when she found a job. But no one would be writing to her in the meantime. The only people she knew were the staff at Ainsleigh Hall. All of her school friends had died in the bombing of London, and she’d had few friends anyway, working at her father’s cobbler shop every day.

  The toddler was fascinated by the people on the train, and Lucy sat watching the countryside slide by, remembering when she had come to Yorkshire four years before, at fifteen, and now she was returning to London to make her way and find a job, with a baby of her own. The war had been good to her, after four years at Ainsleigh Hall, and the kindness of the Hemmingses. She had all of Charlotte’s papers in her suitcase, and life as a war widow would open new doors for her. There were plenty of girls pretending to be war widows, who had never married, and had babies by the men they met during the war. But none, she was sure, were absconding with a royal princess, pretending it was their own. She had won the prize with little Annie, and no one would ever know that she hadn’t given birth to Annie herself. She had everything she’d ever dreamed of. Now all she needed was a job, and a home.

  She checked in to a small hotel in the ravaged East End. The streets were still littered with rubble and debris, and everything was dusty as she walked around holding Annie. She went back to see the building where she had lived with her parents, and there was no sign that anything had ever been there. It was a sad, empty feeling, as though further proof that they were gone. The apartment building had vanished the night it had been bombed and the explosion had killed her parents. She clung to Annie for comfort as she walked around the neighborhood for a while, and then went back to her hotel. The memories were too powerful and the sense of loss in their wake. It made her even more grateful that she had Annie now. None of the neighbors had survived the bombing and her father’s shop was gone.

  The next day she went to the agency she’d read about in The Lady, to look for a job. She explained that she would have to take her daughter with her. Before the war, no one
would have hired her with a child, now there were many girls like her who had no other choice, and employers would have to make allowances for it. The widows with children had no one to leave them with, and had to bring them along. Employers desperate for help in their city and country homes had to find a way to accommodate them, and many were willing to be creative and give it a try. The woman who ran the agency suggested three jobs to her. One employer wasn’t willing to hire anyone with a child, the other two expected her to find someone to care for her baby by day, but were willing to let the child sleep at their home at night. One was in the city, in Kensington, and the other was at a country estate in Kent, which sounded more similar to the life she had led at Ainsleigh Hall, on a grander scale, and seemed more interesting to her.

  The woman at the agency called the potential employer, and arranged for an interview for Lucy the next day. The position was as a housemaid, at what the agency claimed was a magnificent estate. Ainsleigh had been more of a manor house, and nothing had been formal there with so little help during the war. The estate in Kent was much more elaborate, with a separate house for the servants, and cottages for the married ones, if both spouses worked for them. The woman at the agency said that they’d been hiring people in droves for the past month, to re-staff their home after the war. They wanted footmen, both a senior and under butler, a fleet of maids. They had excellent stables with experienced grooms and a stable master, and had just hired three chauffeurs and a chef.

  Lucy was excited when she took the train to Kent from Victoria Station for the interview the next day. She had paid a maid at her hotel to babysit for Annie, but had made it clear to the agency and employer that she had a little girl. She had mentioned that her husband had been killed at the Battle of Anzio, and she had lost her own family in the London bombings as well. The war had taken a heavy toll on many young women like her, and her story was entirely believable, although much of it wasn’t accurate. She hadn’t been married, she wasn’t a widow, and Annie wasn’t her child. She almost believed her own story now, and it had the ring of truth.