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Twenty-One

After I received Harriet’s letter telling me the dreadful news, I fast sent word for her to meet me in London.

“Bambridge’s release from Coldbath Fields Prison is the talk of the palace,” Harriet told me after she stepped out of her

carriage in Bethnal Green. “I checked myself. He’s gone.”

I didn’t imagine he’d be there forever, but I’d hoped he’d do some hard labor on the prison’s infamous penal treadmill, pumping

water and grinding corn, before being shipped to Tasmania by a furious Queen Victoria. How annoying.

Still, that wasn’t why I asked Harriet to meet me here.

How deeply had Dalton looked into the circumstances of Bambridge’s fall from grace before deciding to bail him out? The question

left a corrosive knot in my stomach. I thought of Wilkes and worried for his mistress Andrea.

I’d soon realize my worries weren’t unfounded.

A gruff, heavyset landlord pushed me out of one of the low lodging houses on Old Nichol Street. I tripped and fell back, colliding

with the stone street.

“Sally!” Harriet crouched down next to me, grabbing my arm. “Are you okay?”

“Oi!” The landlord cut her off. “Andrea Bradley moved out. She ain’t here.” As pain needled its way up my back, the landlord wiped the spittle off his mouth and snarled.

“Moved out?” Harriet narrowed her eyes. “I’ve been here to see her myself. Recently. How can she move out so fast?”

Now how, but why. That was the question. The landlord, however, wasn’t interested.

“How should I know? Now get out of my sight. Your kind isn’t welcome around here.”

With one last venomous glare at me, he slammed the rotting wooden door in our faces.

Here in Bethnal Green, coster lads raced across rooftops. A flyer slipped from the hands of a street vendor and blew with

the wind straight into my face. A column of advertisements for some common maladies, news of some theater performances—and,

oh, look, the Anti-Slavery Society had taken out an ad for their event on August 1, the one the Queen had rejected.

The flyer must have mistaken me for an ashpit, where all the other trash went to be disposed of. I scrunched it my hands and

threw it upon the ground and stomped on it.

Some in the crowded streets underneath the clothing lines snickered at the sight of me pulling myself to my feet and dusting

off my dark blue dress. Others were too caught up in today’s talk to notice me.

“I heard the Queen’s into some filthy stuff,” one man said on the other side of the street. He and few of his friends gathered

around an upturned fish barrel to play the gambling game Three-Up. They threw three halfpennies into the air and waited for

which would come up heads and which would come up tails. I wasn’t sure precisely how the game is played. Only that when the

coins rattled upon the barrel’s surface, two of the men jeered and pumped their fists in the air.

“I heard she took a photograph with her dead husband the day they buried him,” one man said, gathering up the coins.

“The prince probably got the old girl into all that spirit bollocks. That’s what happens when you marry a German man. Should

have married a good English bloke.”

A carriage cut him off from my line of sight, and then, from the opposite end of the street, a man carrying a wheelbarrow

of fruits did.

“Looks like word of the Queen’s hobbies is spreading even out here,” said Harriet. The horses slowed to a stop in front of

us. “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“Not with Andrea suddenly missing.”

I strode across the cobbled street. The gambling men stared up at me, their mouths agape as if I were some kind of rare animal

in a zoo.

“You going to perform for us, sweetie?” one said, rubbing some coins between his fingers.

I didn’t have time for this. “Andrea Bradley,” I demanded. “Where is she?”

As the men bristled in anger at my haughtiness, Harriet grabbed my arm and pulled me back. “What my servant meant to say was,

we’re looking for a young lady named Andrea Bradley.”

I scoffed in disbelief. “Servant?”

But Harriet nudged me in the side. Her ladylike grin seemed to placate the men for now. “Might you know where we can find

her?”

“Andrea’s been gone a couple of days,” said one. “Haven’t seen her around. It’s like she and that great big belly of hers

disappeared.”

Harriet thanked the men and pulled me away, down the cobbled street. I let her hail a carriage as I stewed in my thoughts.

Nothing about this felt like the victory it should have. Bambridge released from jail. Now Andrea Bradley was suddenly missing.

These were precision strikes.

As Harriet climbed into the empty carriage, I let out a yell, frightening a nearby potato seller who cowered in his stall. “ How did this happen?”

“Sally! Calm down, for goodness’ sake!”

Hearing Harriet of all people admonish me was a strong blow. As I climbed into the carriage, I gripped my blouse, right over

my frantic heart, and inhaled. Still, the chaos of my thoughts raged on.

“I don’t know how Dalton paid Bambridge’s bail,” said Harriet as the carriage driver took us out of Bethnal Green. “It was

set so high. Besides, who would want to be seen helping someone who’d just been so thoroughly and publicly humiliated?”

Someone with nothing to lose. Sass didn’t much care about his reputation in high society. He only seemed interested in slithering

his way into Bertie’s life. And why wouldn’t he? Doing so gave him access to me.

“He did mention his mother left him an inheritance when he died,” I said, folding my arms. “He is an unknown element in society.

A cipher with funds to spend on whatever he wishes. That makes him dangerous.”

Of course he was. Whatever was in the letter he showed Lord Ponsonby in Windsor Castle could harm the Queen somehow. That

meant that he had access to information about her that not even I knew about. How did he gain this access? What other resources

did he have that I didn’t know about? I needed to find out all I could.

“Andrea suddenly disappearing doesn’t feel like a coincidence,” I said. Curiosities didn’t just occur by accident. Someone

was very carefully pulling the rug out from under me. I was not going to lose this game.

“Harriet.” I turned to her and paused, looking her from the top of her brown head to the tips of her black boots. “You enjoyed

calling me a servant back there, didn’t you?”

Gasping in terror, Harriet clutched her white blouse and shook her head furiously. “What? N-No, I would never!”

Wouldn’t she, though? Wouldn’t any of them? Clucking my tongue, I put up a hand to silence her. “First things first: look into where Dalton Sass lives and document anyone he might be associating with. I want to know every establishment he frequents. Every brothel, every bar, every lavatory he urinates in .”

Harriet’s eyebrows flew up into her hairline. Rubbing her neck, she let out a little cough. “Well... if it’s information

you want, you might just have a chance to find it yourself straight from the horse’s mouth. And trust me, horses will be involved.”

Harriet slipped a letter out of her pocket. “I was actually instructed by Bertie this morning to give this to you.”

I took the letter from her, turning it around as if it were the first time I’d ever seen paper.

I raised an eyebrow. “An invitation?”

“He’s hosting a stag hunt tomorrow.”

Indeed, the letter was addressed to me, this time, written by Bertie himself. I could tell by the terrible penmanship:

Royal Estate, Surrey, England

July 24 at eight in the morning

Consider this a stronger apology.

Either he had gotten over his mother’s public disgrace rather quickly or he had something else in mind. I crumpled the letter

in my hand. “You’re right, Harriet. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sass was invited too. If that’s the case, I’ll need a way to

separate him from Bertie somehow and get my answers.”

Or would I have to use his connection to Bertie to finesse the information out of him? Either way, I needed to know more about

him. Information gathering was key to crushing your enemies, but it was like this Dalton Sass had appeared from thin air,

created by the heavens for the sole purpose of driving me mad. I wouldn’t let him get in my way.

As I plotted, Harriet tugged at the loose string peeling off the carriage’s cushion beneath her. Her shy stuttering tried and failed to drag me out of my thoughts.

“S-Sally,” she started, and stopped, biting her bottom lip. But I was only half listening. I’d need to find an appropriate

hunting dress by tomorrow. I wondered if Harriet could get me something from the palace. I’m sure nobody would miss it.

“Sally!”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “What?”

“Is there something between you and Bertie?”

I gaped at her. Between Bambridge, Bertie, and Sass, I’d never felt so fatigued in my life, and now what was this nonsense?

“Something?” I repeated. “Meaning?”

Harriet’s long brown braid tumbled over her shoulder as she whipped her head around to face the window. She didn’t want to

look at me.

“He was adamant I give the invitation to you. He really wants you to come to the hunt. He was following you around at the

gala as well the other day.”

I sighed, squeezing my neck muscles, wishing with every ounce of my being that I had the time to get a massage before going

off to war against Sass tomorrow. I needed my limbs loosened. Though it’d been days, my body still buzzed with frustration

from the way Rui and I left things off in Bambridge’s secret studio—with Rui suddenly stopping his delicious assault on my

flesh, leaving me alone in the room, heaving on the floor, furious. Just to tease me.

“Harriet,” I explained with the sternness of a schoolteacher, “the Prince of Wales is a child. He thinks of no one but himself. Born with a false sense of superiority from his ‘high’ status but knowing that status is entirely unearned has given him an insatiable foundation of inferiority that requires him to seek validation from every source he can find.”

“And you’re one of those sources?”

I sighed. “I suppose I am. One of the unfortunate side effects of being ‘part’ of the royal family.”

Harriet didn’t look convinced. Even as I closed my eyes and breathed to calm my nerves, I could feel her gaze on me.

“He doesn’t seem to like Captain Davies very much.”

“He doesn’t much appreciate any man smarter than him. Which, unfortunately, is quite a sizable number of people.”

“Are you sure he doesn’t—”

“Harriet.” I placed my hand on her shoulder firmly, without slamming it down, though I wanted to. It was enough to make the

girl go silent.

I wasn’t a fool. I knew that Bertie’s behavior had always been obnoxious around me, even more so now that my marriage was

announced. Perhaps he was upset that one of his favorite toys was being taken from him. Who knew? Right now I had too much

on my mind to care one whit.

“I’ll need a hunting dress for tomorrow.” I smoothened out my hair. “Harriet, make sure you find a way there too. You’ll be

my guest.”

“Really?” Harriet said. “You want me there with you? Are you sure?”

“It may seem counterintuitive, but you can actually learn a lot about a man when he’s busy killing things. But then I might

be too busy killing things myself. A second set of eyes and ears will be important.”

“Sally...” she started, and for the thousandth time trailed off. “You and I... we are friends, aren’t we?”

I took her hand in both of mine. “We are, Harriet. Know that if you ever feel uncomfortable with any of this, you can let me know. I won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to. Just say the word. You can tell me anything, you know. I’d never use it against you.”

Not unless I had to.

“I can tell you anything....” Her skin reddened. With a slight blush, she nodded while the gentle rumbling of the carriage

against the stony road carried us off into silence.