CHAPTER FOUR
May
MAY HELD HER brEATH AS she walked down the staircase, her hands tightening over the wooden railing. Maybe this time she could escape unnoticed—
“Mary Adelaide? Is that you?”
No such luck.
She drew in a steadying breath, then descended the last few steps.
May had never liked White Lodge, which had been designed as a hunting retreat years ago, its low-ceilinged rooms painted in muted colors.
There was a stale, defeated air to the place, as befitted the Tecks’ diminished status, but the living room was worst of all.
When they’d returned to England after their years abroad and were granted use of White Lodge, the Tecks had stuffed it with old furniture from Kensington Palace—furniture that was drastically out of scale, making it look like the house had swallowed another house twice its size.
Fringed ottomans sprang up from the floor like mushrooms, rugs overlapped each other in chaotic disorder, and oversized curtains dragged along the floor.
Her father, Francis of Teck, sat in one of the wingback chairs, staring listlessly into the empty fireplace.
He did this a lot lately: just sat there, as immobile as the footmen who stood around Buckingham Palace.
Except that they were young and dashing, while Francis was a shadow of his former self.
“Hello, Father,” May said politely.
Francis had leaned forward at the sound of her footsteps, but when he saw that it was May, he sagged, as if he’d been craving the prospect of shouting at her mother. Now he was left with nothing but May, who never gave him the satisfaction of fighting back.
Sometimes, when he smiled, May caught a glimpse of the man he’d been before bitterness and abandoned dreams wore away at him.
She remembered that version of Francis from her childhood, back when he used to make up silly games—like the one where they would each describe a made-up monster, and the other person attempted to sketch that monster while blindfolded.
They used to dissolve into fits of laughter comparing their atrocious drawings.
Francis so rarely laughed anymore. Now he was almost always the other version of himself: apathetic, callous, cruel.
“What did you think of last night?” he asked, then answered his own question. “It was a little crowded for my taste, but I suppose when you’re the Prince of Wales, you have to invite everyone to your daughter’s wedding.” The bitterness in his tone was caustic.
“There certainly were a lot of people.” May had long ago stopped contradicting her father. At least to his face.
Francis grunted in agreement, then looked sidelong at his daughter. “You didn’t dance very much.”
“I danced with Prince Eddy,” May hurried to say.
“No good barking up that tree!” Her father laughed as if he’d said something uproariously funny. “He’s as good as engaged to that Hesse girl. You know, the pretty one.”
“Yes,” May replied, because that was the safest word around her father.
An enormous beribboned form appeared in the doorway, and May’s heart sank.
She could just about manage her father when it was the two of them alone, because she knew how to placate him, to stay quiet and walk on eggshells.
But her mother was too angry to behave. She deliberately provoked Francis, stomped on the eggshells.
“Well, look who the cat dragged in.” Mary Adelaide’s words were directed at her husband, who lifted one hand in a careless wave.
“Sorry to have been gone all night. I was otherwise occupied.”
He may have spoken the word sorry, but there was no hint of apology in his tone. His words were sharpened like a weapon.
Mary Adelaide snorted. “I don’t especially care who you spend your nights with, Francis. God only knows why I married you.”
“You married me because no one else would have you,” he spat.
“Please. I could have married a nice duke, and instead you came courting, poor as a church mouse, hat in hand.”
“ ‘A nice duke’?” her father repeated incredulously. “Not even the baronets wanted you. I should have known to back off when I saw the other princes running the opposite direction, the way they’ve all done to May—”
That would have stung, except that May had long since grown numb to her father’s cruelty. Of all the things he loved to criticize his wife about, May’s failure to find a husband was one of his favorites.
She backed away, already forgotten by both parents.
May was sheltered, but she wasn’t completely ignorant of other people’s suffering.
She had visited the poorhouse with other girls from church, had seen the women with bruises or broken limbs.
Things could be worse, she’d told herself after that visit.
At least her father never harmed her physically.
The bruises that Francis inflicted were invisible, emotional.
He belittled May and her mother, laughed at their hopes, mocked things that mattered to them; and his mood swings were lightning quick.
He’d always been erratic, but the cruelty had escalated after May’s brother, Dolly, enrolled at the military academy at Sandhurst last year, leaving the two women with Francis alone.
Once, when May was a child, her father had bought her a shiny red balloon at a county fair. May remembered walking home with it tied to her wrist, heart swelling with pride.
The moment they got home, Francis slashed it with his knife.
May had started sobbing. She couldn’t help it: the tattered remnants of her balloon drifting down through the air had such an awful finality to them.
“You see, May?” her father had asked, with that eerie, manic gleam in his eye. “Life can be unfair sometimes. You need to learn this at a young age. You care about things, and then you lose them, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
May had valiantly tried to swallow back her sobs, which stung the inside of her throat. That was the last time she’d ever let her father see her cry.
She hurried toward the front of the house, a shattering sound echoing behind her. Francis must have thrown a vase, or perhaps even one of the crystal candlesticks. It really was stupid. Money was the main cause of his resentment, yet he was careless with the little they had left.
This was why May had to get married. The alternative was living under her father’s roof forever, letting him inflict petty cruelties on her because it made him feel powerful.
Sometimes she wished that England had stayed Catholic, because then, at least, she could have gone to a convent. May would have made quite a good abbess; she sensed that she had a knack for managing things, if only someone would let her.
The Tecks no longer employed a butler: their housekeeper, Mrs. Bricka, answered the bell if it rang, but like all their staff, she was overworked.
Their gardener, Charles, had been forced to start driving the carriage when they let their coachman go, and their cook had long since begun washing bedsheets.
May lifted a hand as she stepped into the sunlight, thinking she would just stroll around the yard for a moment—avoid the chaos inside—but then she saw Charles kneeling by a bed of gardenias. An idea rapidly formed in her head.
“Charles, could you bring the carriage around, please?”
He cast her a dubious stare. They both knew that there were few places a young lady could venture unchaperoned.
“Where are you headed, miss?”
Not for the first time, May wished she had a close friend, someone she could trust. Of course, she could never have actually told this mythical friend about the sordid details of her life.
That kind of thing simply wasn’t talked about.
But it would have been nice to have someone she could visit at times like this, when White Lodge felt claustrophobic.
When the pressure and panic roiling in May’s chest threatened to boil over.
For some reason she thought of Alix of Hesse, and what she’d said at the wedding last night: that they should all come have tea sometime. Alix probably didn’t expect May to actually come over, but no matter. The invitation had been issued.
She tipped up her chin as she looked at Charles. “I’m going to Buckingham Palace.”
MAY BEGAN TO DOUBT HER decision the instant her carriage rolled through the palace’s iron gates.
A footman sprang forward to help her step down. She couldn’t help noticing how pristine his white gloves were: even crisper than hers, and this was her nicest pair.
“I’m here to see the Princess Alix,” she informed the footman, handing him her card.
His gaze flitted from the card to her dress, a three-year-old one that had been darned twice in an attempt to make it over for this year’s fashions. Thankfully, skirts were getting narrower rather than wider.
After an awkward beat, the footman relented and opened the palace doors. “Please wait here, Your Serene Highness.” He managed to pronounce Your Serene Highness with a touch of skepticism, sniffing as she followed him inside.
May tried not to dwell on how unfair it was that Alix and Ernie stayed at the palace when they were in London, yet May hardly ever set foot here.
Alix was obviously Queen Victoria’s favorite, because she was beautiful and because her mother had died.
May might as well have been motherless too, given how little Mary Adelaide had ever done to help her—if anything, she had hurt May’s chances on the marriage market.
Yet Queen Victoria had never taken the slightest interest in May.
When the footman returned a few minutes later, his attitude was noticeably warmer. She supposed she had Alix to thank for that.
“This way, miss,” he said, gesturing May up the stairs and into a sitting room with delicate hand-painted wallpaper.
Alix was inside, perched on an upholstered couch with a book in her lap. A Thomas Hardy novel, May noted dismissively. She never bothered with fiction; there was plenty to worry about in the real world without wasting time on made-up people.