CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE #2
“He was the one person who had been there for everything,” I said.
“Not quite.”
He pointed to the names of the witnesses on the marriage certificate.
“Baron Maximilian von Stauffenbach and Nan Williams, spinster.
Your erstwhile aunt Lucy.
No doubt she confided everything to her sister, whom you knew as Nell Harbottle.
When Nell and the baron died, those were the last links with this marriage, your birth.”
“Except me.”
“Except you.”
He replaced the papers carefully and tucked the book into his coat.
“You realize what this means, Veronica.”
“Do not say it,” I warned.
“The Prince of Wales’ marriage to Princess Alexandra is bigamous.
Their children, all of them, are therefore illegitimate.
You are the only legitimate child of the Prince of Wales.”
I took the book from him and passed a finger down the line of issue to the Prince and Princess of Wales.
Albert Victor, born just two years after my own birth.
George.
Louise.
Victoria.
Maud.
And a poor little mite called Alexander who had died within a day of being born.
Five living children, all styled princes and princesses—my half brothers and sisters, and every last one of them illegitimate because their parents had been married ten days before my mother’s death.
“It is not possible,” I protested fiercely.
“It cannot be.”
“We have the documents.
We have
you,” he pointed out.
“But my parents’ marriage cannot possibly be legal.”
“There might be difficulties with the heir to the throne marrying without his sovereign’s consent,” he conceded.
I leaped upon the point.
“And if that is the case, then all of this goes away.”
“No, it does not,” he said patiently.
“Even if your parents’ marriage could be set aside and you were found to be illegitimate, this is still a scandal that could tarnish the monarchy irreparably.
The Prince of Wales has always managed to escape condemnation for his affairs, but this is too much, Veronica.
His other liaisons have all been nine days’ wonders because his fixers managed to sweep them under the carpet.
But they cannot sweep aside a marriage certificate and a grown daughter.
Whether the marriage was legal or not, the prince married Princess Alexandra whilst believing himself married to your mother.
He committed bigamy—knowingly.”
He paused to let me absorb the information.
I gave him a nod and he went on, still patient as he led me through the mire we had found ourselves in.
“The Princess of Wales is the daughter of the Danish king, remember.
How do you think her father will feel when her honor is thrown in the gutter?
If Denmark supports her—and it most assuredly will—the Germans and Austrians will be right there to oppose them.
They have been spoiling for a fight with Denmark since that ridiculous tussle over the Danish succession.
And do you really think the Austrian and German empires will take sides without the Russians wading into the conflict?
If they get involved, that will draw in the Ottoman Empire.
Then Greece and Sweden will come.
This one fact—your legitimacy—is the first domino in a series of events that could topple thrones, Veronica.
There are people who would give a great deal to keep that from happening.”
“Or take a great deal,” I said, thinking of the baron, dead in his own home by some miscreant’s hand.
My uncle’s?
My father’s?
I thought of the elegant Prince of Wales and pushed that thought aside.
I could not believe the bon vivant of the British royal family would stoop so low as to order a man’s murder in cold blood.
“But how are we to discover the truth?
We cannot simply present these documents to a solicitor and ask.”
“That is exactly what we are going to do,” he said, his face set in grim determination.
He tore the entry on the Prince of Wales from the
Brief History and stuffed it into his pocket before rising and taking me by the hand.
“Where are we going?”
“Chancery Lane.
We are going to Lincoln’s Inn.”
As much of a blow as the morning’s revelations had been, they did not prevent me from arguing against the plan.
“Stoker, we cannot simply appear in Lincoln’s Inn to speak to a barrister without an appointment.”
“We can speak with this one.”
“You know a barrister?
Why in the name of heaven have we been doing this on our own without professional guidance, then?”
“Because I swore to myself I would never speak to him again on this earth.”
“And yet you believe he will help us in a matter as grave as this one?”
“He will.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“He is my brother.”
· · ·
We arrived at length at Inns of Court and the professional quarters of Sir Rupert Templeton-Vane.
Stoker strode in past the protesting clerks and entered his brother’s private office without knocking.
The gentleman behind the desk must have been surprised, but he recovered swiftly, and as he rose to his full height, I detected a resemblance.
There was something alike in the graceful bones of their faces, but Sir Rupert was a muted copy.
Where Stoker was a portrait in oils, his brother was a watercolor, with auburn hair and hazel eyes to Stoker’s black locks and dark blue eyes.
Sir Rupert’s complexion was warmer, lacking the Celtic pallor of Stoker’s skin, but their expressions were similar, and I thought as I looked at Sir Rupert there was a cool ruthlessness about his mouth that might make him an implacable enemy if one was foolish enough to earn his enmity.
“Revelstoke,” he said, greeting his brother calmly.
“But I believe you prefer Stoker, do you not?”
“I see you have been knighted,” Stoker returned.
“That must have made his lordship proud.”
Sir Rupert gave him a thin smile.
“Well, I know only the direst of circumstances would prompt you to call upon me, and therefore I must assume that you require my help.
Given our last parting, I can further assume you would only do so if the matter were one of life and death.”
“Your last parting?”
I asked Stoker.
“I broke his nose,” he explained with characteristic brevity.
Sir Rupert touched that appendage lightly.
“It never healed quite as it was.
I saw the best doctors in Harley Street, but there is still a very slight bump.
Can you see it?”
he asked me, turning his face in profile.
“It lends character to an already handsome face,” I told him truthfully.
“How very kind of you.
Stoker, are you going to present your companion so I can greet her properly?
Or have you come to inform me that I am a brother-in-law again?
In which case I can assure you she is a distinct improvement upon the last.”
I could feel Stoker fairly vibrating with rage at his brother’s cool detachment.
The fellow was playing with him, no doubt taking great pleasure in poking the lion, but I was in no mood for such childish sibling tricks.
“Sir Rupert, I am Veronica Speedwell, and I am not your brother’s wife.
In fact, I am not entirely certain of who I am.”
The elegant brows rose again.
“Miss Speedwell, you intrigue me.
Tell me more.”
I looked pointedly at the chairs in front of his desk and his color heightened.
“Forgive me.
I have been monstrously discourteous.
Please, make yourself comfortable, Miss Speedwell, and I will ring for tea.
Stoker, sit down.
I never did like your trick of looming over me.”
We did as he instructed and in a very few minutes a clerk appeared with a tray of excellent French porcelain and elegant little confections.
“I have a weakness for the pastry chef’s art,” he admitted to me as he passed a plate of the tiny cakes.
I held up a hand.
“Thank you, but no.”
“For Christ’s sake, Rip, we did not come here for a tea party.
We need help.”
Sir Rupert’s nostrils flared delicately.
“I never liked that name, and you know it.
And there is no reason to dispense with civilities just because you find yourself in a spot of bother.”
“A spot of bother—do you hear the man?”
Stoker demanded of me, thrusting his hands into his hair.
“Well, to be fair, we haven’t explained ourselves yet,” I pointed out.
I held a hand out for the papers.
Stoker surrendered them, and I let them rest on the edge of the desk for a moment, just out of Sir Rupert’s reach.
“First, I need your word, as a gentleman, a Christian, a professional—whatever you care to swear upon, whatever you hold dear.
I need your word that what we show you today will never leave the confines of this office.
You will never speak of it, never write of it, never send a message by smoke signal or semaphore flag or any other means to any person of what we are about to tell you.”
Sir Rupert’s lightly arch manner dropped away and he leaned forward in his chair.
“My dear Miss Speedwell,” he said, in a perfectly earnest voice, “my brother and I may have a relationship that is slightly less cordial than that of Cain and Abel, but I give you my word that I have never betrayed a confidence entrusted to me, and I shall not begin with yours.
I swear to this upon everything I hold sacred, and the one thing that Stoker does—our mother’s grave.”
I looked to Stoker and his expression was unfathomable.
“Show him,” he said, his voice suddenly rough.
“Sir Rupert, I will preface this by explaining that I am an orphan, or so I believed.”
I sketched briefly for him my upbringing by the Harbottle sisters and the discovery that I was the daughter of the actress Lily Ashbourne.
I related the few facts we knew regarding her lover’s marriage and her subsequent death.
I paused then, not entirely certain of how to proceed.
“But Stoker and I have also come into possession of documents which reveal my father’s identity.”
Without another word I handed them over.
He skimmed them quickly with a practiced and professional gaze, one hand cradling his cup of tea.
When he came to the marriage certificate, he dropped the cup with an almighty crash and jumped to his feet.
“Do you have any idea what this means?”
he demanded.
He turned swiftly to Stoker.
“I knew you hated me, but I thought even you would balk at attempting to destroy my career.”
Stoker held up a hand.
“Quiet or the clerks will hear you.”
“Quiet!
You expect me to be quiet when you have just unleashed seven devils upon me?”
“Sir Rupert,” I said softly.
“Please, calm yourself.
No one ever need know that you advised us.
I will promise that to you, and Stoker will as well.
Stoker?”
I nudged.
He waited, longer than I would have liked, but eventually he gave a curt nod.
“I promise.”
Somewhat mollified, Sir Rupert picked up the papers.
“I cannot believe this,” he breathed, looking at them as if they were holy relics.
“The Prince of Wales, married to an actress and father of a child.
A
legitimate child.”
“Yes,” I said, attempting to draw him back to the present.
“You have struck directly at the heart of the matter.
That is the question for which we require an answer.
Am I legitimate?”
He considered, furrowing his brow for a long moment.
Then he rose and went to his books, selecting a weighty volume bound in dark calf.
He applied himself to this book, and seven others, reading with his brows knit firmly together as we drank our tea and finished off the cakes.
Finally, he sat back and made his pronouncement.
“I do not know,” he admitted.
Stoker glowered.
“Dammit, Rupert, the one time I come to you—”
His brother held up a hand.
“I am not attempting to be obstructionist, I assure you.
The trouble is that there are complicated precedents.”
He turned to me.
“In the first place, the Royal Marriages Act of 1772 outlaws any marriage of a member of the royal family to which the sovereign has not given specific consent.
Since Her Majesty most certainly did not consent to this marriage, it is null and void.
Furthermore, the priest who conducted it and Miss Ashbourne both committed serious crimes in attempting it.”
I felt suddenly buoyant, light as air, almost dizzy with relief.
“It is finished, then.”
Sir Rupert held up a hand.
“Not quite so fast, Miss Speedwell.
I am afraid there is an additional complication.
The Act of Settlement in 1701 prohibits any person in the line of succession from marrying a Roman Catholic.”
“Yet another reason why my parents’ marriage was invalid.
Surely that is good news,” I pointed out.
“So one might think.
But Miss Ashbourne was Roman Catholic and married in the Catholic Church by a priest of good standing.
Her marriage would not have been recognized by the Church of England or the law of the land, but it
would have been valid in the eyes of the Catholic Church.”
“But surely that does not matter,” I protested.
“Oh, but I am afraid it very much does,” he countered.
“When King George IV was Prince Regent, he married Maria Fitzherbert, a Roman Catholic, in her church’s rites.
The pope himself declared the marriage valid.”
“But that was decades ago and it created no trouble.”
“Yes, because Mrs. Fitzherbert did not press the issue, nor did she present the prince with a child.
There was no rival claimant for the throne and no succession crisis ensued.
This,” he said with a jab of his finger to my papers, “is a cat of a very different color.”
I gave a short, mirthless laugh.
“You do not know me, Sir Rupert, but I beg you will believe I have no interest in pressing a claim to the English throne.”
“It is not about what you would press, Miss Speedwell,” he said gently.
“It is about what you would represent.
In the eyes of any Catholic, you would be their rightful heiress.
The Prince of Wales has married bigamously in their interpretation.
His children by Princess Alexandra are, canonically, bastards and unable to succeed.
That leaves you as the only legitimate child of the heir to the throne in the hearts of every Catholic subject in Her Majesty’s empire.
It is enough to start a revolution—in one place in particular,” he said meaningfully.
“Ireland,” Stoker supplied.
“And her mother was Irish.
Christ and his apostles,” he swore.
“The separatists could not have asked for a prettier gift—a legitimately born Catholic alternative to the British royal family—and with Irish blood in her veins no less.”
Sir Rupert looked at me intently.
“Miss Speedwell, whether you like it or not, these documents prove that you are, in fact, the most dangerous person in the British Empire.”