Royal(23)

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.