A Kiss for the King Read online

  Author’s Note

  Nice and Savoy became part of the French Empire on April 2nd, 1860, a few weeks after this story finishes.

  There was a plebiscite but, to the English, it was an act of unjustifiable aggression.

  In England the invasion panic did not end suddenly, it gradually faded away. By mid-1861 Britain had increased her ironclads from four to fifteen, and with the new Armstrong reflect guns her Statesmen felt the worst was over.

  But relations between Victorian England and Imperial France never fully recovered from the panic years.

  In 1870 the French Second Empire suffered an ignominious collapse with the Emperor’s defeat by the Prussians at the battle of Sedan.

  Although for the sake of the story I have described H.M.S. Warrior – Britain’s first ironclad – as being in use in 1860, the actual launching took place a year later.

  Chapter One 1860

  “I love you, Anastasia!”

  “I am sorry, Christopher.”

  “I want to talk to you. Where can we go where we can talk?”

  “Nowhere here in the Castle, as you well know.”

  “There is something I have to tell you.”

  “Then it will have to wait.”

  Her Royal Highness Princess Anastasia glanced at her partner mischievously as she spoke, but there was a grim look on Viscount Lyncombe’s face as he swung her round the red drawing room in Windsor Castle to a Viennese waltz.

  The flickering light from hundreds of candles glinted on the dancing couples and sparkled on the decorations worn by the gentlemen.

  The ladies in their crinolines looked like lovely swans and moved with a grace that was almost indescribable. Nevertheless, there had been a slight frown on the Queen’s face when, earlier, she had watched her guests dancing the more spirited Mazurka and a German dance called the Gross Vater.

  “I have to talk to you, Anastasia,” Viscount Lyncombe said insistently. “It concerns you – and you must hear me.”

  “If you are going to propose to me again, Christopher,” Princess Anastasia replied, “there is really no use in my listening. You know it is impossible for us to marry each other.”

  “Why should it be?” the Viscount asked surlily.

  “Because I am Royal – although much good it does me!”

  “What does that signify?” he asked. “After all, my father’s title is one of the oldest in Great Britain. We were Earls at the time of Agincourt, while your – ”

  He paused, as if he realised that what he had been about to say would have appeared rude.

  “All right, say it!” Princess Anastasia urged.

  “ – your country has been swallowed up by Prussia.”

  “Papa may have been a Hohlenstein,” Princess Anastasia said, “but Mama is a cousin of the Queen, and you know as well as I do that Her Majesty would never allow any of us to marry a man not of Royal blood.”

  “We can run away,” the Viscount suggested.

  He spoke so urgently that the Princess looked at him in surprise.

  She had known Christopher Lyncombe ever since she had been a child, because the Countess of Coombe and her mother were close friends.

  He was six years older than she was and had teased her, when she was hardly old enough to walk, until she cried. He had pulled her hair and in later years had forced her to ‘fag’ for him whenever Princess Beatrice, the Grand Duchess of Hohlenstein had stayed with the Earl and Countess of Coombe at their country seat.

  It was only now, when Anastasia was nearly eighteen that the Viscount, who had led a very gay and dashing life in London, had fallen in love with her.

  He himself had been somewhat surprised at the tumultuous emotion she aroused in him, and to Anastasia it was something she had never expected to happen, even in her wildest dreams.

  “Are you serious?” she enquired now.

  As she spoke she glanced around to be quite certain that no one could hear their conversation.

  Fortunately, the Christmas Party at Windsor Castle had been a very large one, and when the Queen had decided to give a ball on the last day of their visit, only a small number of people from outside had been invited to join what was essentially a family occasion.

  “Of course I am serious,” the Viscount asserted angrily.

  “I love you, Anastasia, and I cannot live without you!”

  “It is hard for me to believe that you do in fact love me,” Anastasia replied. “I have not forgotten how unkind you were to me two years ago, when I was bitten by mosquitoes and you persisted in calling me ‘Your Royal Spottiness’!”

  “You did not look then as you do now,” he answered, his eyes on her small, heart-shaped face which was turned up to his.

  Then almost angrily he added,

  “You are lovely! You know that, of course! And you are too lovely for me to lose you, Anastasia.”

  “Why are you talking like this,” Anastasia asked, “here, at this moment?”

  The Viscount paused for a moment as if he was considering his words, and then he said,

  “My father was at the Privy Council this morning. They decided your future!”

  “Decided my future?” Anastasia echoed in amazement.

  “That is why you have to come away with me. We will go anywhere you like in the world where no one can stop us marrying each other, and where we can be together.”

  “Where could we go?” Anastasia asked curiously.

  “Anywhere you wish,” the Viscount replied. “I have plenty of money, and we would be so happy that nothing else would matter.”

  “The Queen would prevent it – I am sure she would! Anyway, I am not certain I would be happy, ostracised by everyone I have ever known and having to live in some obscure place abroad.”

  “That is exactly what you are going to have to do!” the Viscount said.

  Again Anastasia looked up at him, her blue eyes very wide.

  “What have they – decided I have to – do?” she asked, barely above a whisper.

  “Marry Maximilian of Maurona!”

  “The King?”

  “Yes, the King. You will be a Queen, Anastasia, and married to a man you have never seen. Married to a man who, from all I hear, is not at all the right sort of husband for you.”

  “How do you know – this?” Anastasia asked.

  “My father said it was the Queen’s suggestion and the British Ambassador has been recalled from Maurona to receive instructions. The alliance has already been proposed to the King.”

  “He may refuse to – marry me,” Anastasia said, almost as if she spoke to herself.

  “He will have no choice in the matter, any more than you have,” the Viscount retorted. “Maurona is too small a country to defy Great Britain, and although the King would not mind being annexed by the French, the Mauronians themselves would dislike it very much.”

  “Why should the King not mind?” Anastasia asked curiously.

  “Because, if you want the truth,” the Viscount replied, “His Majesty is infatuated with everything French, especially their women. When he is not in Paris enjoying himself with all the beauties of the Second Empire, he is having what amounts to a scandalous association with the French Ambassador’s wife.”

  The Viscount spoke spitefully, and then he added in a somewhat shamefaced manner,

  “I should not be telling you this, but I want you to realise how impossible it is for you to marry such a man.”

  “Have you ever met him?” Anastasia enquired.

  The Viscount did not reply for a moment as he steered her carefully and in silence past the Queen, who was dancing sedately with one of the Prince Consort’s Coburg cousins.

  When they were out of earshot, the Viscount replied
,

  “Yes, I have met him twice. He is pleasant enough, as a man’s man, but he is certainly not the right husband for you, Anastasia.”

  “Have I no – say in the – matter?” Anastasia asked in a rather small voice.

  “You know full well you will not even be consulted,” Viscount Lyncombe answered. “You will just be told that you are to be married, and let me tell you also that you will not even have time to think about it. It is a question of urgency.”

  “Why? Explain to me why!” Anastasia begged.

  “Because, and here I am giving away secrets,” the Viscount replied, “there is a rumour in the Foreign Office that the Emperor, having arranged an Armistice with Austria, and being out for new conquests, is contemplating annexing both Nice and Savoy.”

  “But surely he cannot do that?” Anastasia asked.

  “Why should he not?” Viscount Lyncombe replied. “After all, if the French can consider invading us, a small principality on the Continent is child’s play compared with the conquest of Britain.”

  “I have never believed there was any real danger of that,” Anastasia said.

  At the same time she did not speak very convincingly.

  The tension in England two years before made the Government approve the formation of a Volunteer Rifle Corps as an auxiliary to the Regular Army and Militia. The response had been overwhelming – 134,000 men had enrolled within a few weeks. The Volunteers eagerly left their less exciting jobs to drill twenty-four days a year for their Queen and country in front of their admiring wives and sweethearts.

  Village greens and city parks were filled with the fanfare of bugles and skirmishes to teach the art of war. Patriotism and the desire to be ready for a French invasion was not only to be found in London.

  After a grand parade, 10,000 Lancashire Volunteers had enjoyed the hospitality of Lord Derby and it was reported that they consumed 11,340 meat pies and 59 hogsheads of beer.

  Anastasia knew that while such activities had delighted the cartoonists, there was a real fear amongst many of the Statesmen and Politicians who called on her mother.

  Sir Charles Napier, who commanded the Baltic Fleet during the Crimean War, had declared in her presence,

  “France is a greater danger than it has ever been since I was a boy, when the first Napoleon threatened the country with an enormous fleet and a million men at arms.”

  The Queen and the Prince Consort, returning from a Naval Review at Cherbourg in August of 1858, had told the Grand Duchess how perturbed they were by the immense warlike preparations of the French Navy.

  When the first ironclad, La Gloire was launched in France late last year, the Queen had exclaimed in horror,

  “Something must be done, and done quickly!”

  “The diplomatic reports tell us that the Emperor Louis Napoleon is most acquisitive,” Lord Palmerston had said to the Grand Duchess only last week when he had dined at Windsor Castle.

  Anastasia wondered now if he had an ulterior motive in proclaiming to her mother his fear and anxiety about the French.

  She did not need the Viscount, or anyone else, to tell her that the decision to marry King Maximilian to a relative of the English Queen was entirely a political manoeuvre.

  Maurona was a small kingdom situated on the Gulf of Lions in the Mediterranean, with one frontier bordering on France, the other on Spain.

  It had been an independent country for a great many years but, like Nice and Savoy, its larger and more important neighbours always overshadowed it.

  “You understand why we must act quickly,” Viscount Lyncombe said, breaking in on her thoughts. “You have to come away with me, Anastasia. If you say that you will do so, I will arrange everything. When will you go home?”

  “Mama and I leave here tomorrow.”

  “Very well, I will take you away on Thursday.”

  “No – no, Christopher, do not talk like that!” Anastasia cried. “I cannot possibly decide anything so momentous while we are dancing, and besides, how can I be certain that what you are saying is true?”

  “You will learn about it soon enough,” the Viscount replied grimly. “You know as well as I do, Anastasia, that my father never speaks lightly without being sure of his facts.”

  That was true, Anastasia thought. As Lord-in-waiting to the Queen, and very much persona grata at Court, the Earl of Coombe never spoke in haste, and in consequence seldom said anything that was worth hearing.

  If he had said that the Privy Council had decided to send her as a bride to King Maximilian of Maurona, she need not question that that was what would happen.

  And yet it was hard to credit that her whole future had been decided so easily.

  Although many people found Christmas at Windsor Castle a tedious and rather boring affair, Anastasia had always enjoyed it enormously.

  In contrast with the very dull, very restricted life she spent with her mother in a ‘Grace and Favour’ house at Hampton Court Palace, the party at Windsor seemed both gay and exciting.

  Certainly the bleak, cold, rather frightening Castle looked its best when decorated for the festivities.

  The chandeliers were taken down in the Queen’s private sitting room and big Christmas trees hung with candles and toffees took their place. The dining tables were piled high with food, and on the sideboard there was an enormous baron of beef.

  In the Oak Room there was another Christmas tree, surrounded by presents for all the members of the household, and on each was a card written by the Queen herself.

  This year the lake had frozen over and every day the party had gone to the ice to skate or to be pushed in an ice-sleigh, comfortably tucked in with a fur rug.

  In the evening there were entertainments, a play performed by the Royal children, or an Opera given in the Waterloo Gallery where the acoustics were not very good. But to Anastasia, who very seldom was allowed to go to the theatre, it was a tremendous treat.

  The performers and the orchestra had been brought down to Windsor by special train, but they were unfortunately taken back again immediately afterwards, leaving her no chance to talk to them and learn a little about their lives. Everyone’s life, she had often thought to herself, was more exciting – and certainly less monotonous – than hers.

  It was a joy to talk to new acquaintances whom she met at the Castle, and she laughed merrily at the Prince Consort who, when he was in a good humour, made puns and invented riddles.

  Besides this, Anastasia found that, when he talked seriously on Naval matters and scientific subjects, she could always learn something that she wished to know.

  Because the rest of the year had been so quiet and indeed so dull, she found everything at Windsor Castle amusing, even playing ‘spillikins’ with the younger children or the new ‘round’ game, main jaune, over which they would grow quite noisy, until the Queen called them to order.

  What she had enjoyed more than anything else tonight was the reels or Scottish jigs, which she had danced with both spirit and grace, even though she was certain her mother would take her to task for it tomorrow.

  “You must behave in a more circumspect manner,” the Princess Beatrice would continually say to her daughter. But Anastasia could not help feeling that when she was old there would be time to behave in a circumspect manner, while for the moment she wished to enjoy herself.

  “Well, have you made up your mind?” Viscount Lyncombe asked.

  “You know quite well I have not,” Anastasia replied. “I cannot just run off like that without giving it proper consideration.”

  “If I had any sense I would compel you to come with me,” the Viscount said. “What was that fellow in the poem called who snatched up a girl, threw her across his saddle and galloped away with her?”

  “You mean Young Lochinvar,” Anastasia told him.

  “He may have had an extremely stupid name, but he had the right idea.”

  “I am not being carried away on your saddle – which I am sure would be very uncomfortable,” A
nastasia said positively, “and without any gowns or any of the things I need to make myself look attractive.”

  “You look lovely whatever you wear,” the Viscount said.

  Now there was a deep note in his voice and a look in his eyes that made Anastasia feel a little shy.

  At the same time it was fun to think she could so emotionally move the boy who had always teased her until at one period in her life he had made her hate him for it.

  The ball was coming to an end, and as the couples that had been dancing stood facing each other, the Viscount said,

  “What time are you leaving tomorrow?”

  “Early in the morning, I think,” Anastasia replied. “The Queen will have had enough of us by then.”

  “I will call on you tomorrow evening. I will bring a message from my mother, or it should not be too hard to think of some other excuse.”

  “Find out everything you can,” Anastasia said. “I wonder if anyone has spoken to Mama about it?”

  She was to learn almost as soon as they left the Castle the next morning that the Grand Duchess was, in fact, fully cognisant of what was being planned.

  “I want to talk to you, Anastasia,” she said, almost as soon as the Royal carriage that was to carry them to Hampton Court Palace had passed through the gates of the Castle and was proceeding down the hill towards the river.

  “What about?” Anastasia asked, with a wide-eyed look of innocence.

  “Your marriage.”

  “My marriage, Mama?”

  “The Queen would have spoken to you about it herself,” the Grand Duchess went on, “but she decided it would be best for me to talk to you first and explain how very fortunate you are.”

  Anastasia said nothing. She had learnt from long experience that it was a mistake to interrupt her mother once she had something she wished to express.

  “As you have been well educated, Anastasia,” the Grand Duchess continued, “there is no need for me to explain to you the political difficulties which face this country from French aggression and the terrible threat of invasion from those who we once thought were our friends.”

  “I do realise that, Mama,” Anastasia said meekly.

  “The balance of power in Europe is therefore of extreme importance and the French must not be allowed to acquire any more territory than they own at the moment.”