Free The Wild Princess by Mary Hart Perry

was piled with letters she’d planned to read as they drove. Her stationery box with pens and ink and sealing wax lay at her feet, although Louise couldn’t imagine trying to write while the carriage bumped over country roads. Victoria folded her hands on top of her correspondence, to keep the letters from sliding off her knees. Louise wished her mother had been willing to transport them all on Fairy, the royal yacht. Traveling up the coast by water to Scotland was the much pleasanter way to go, faster too.
    Victoria had closed her eyes to nap, or else as a ploy to cut off conversation with her newlywed daughter. Louise didn’t care at the moment. They had spoken but a few words since the ceremony; no real opportunity for intimate conversation between mother and daughter having presented itself, with servants, staff, and relations always hovering around the queen. Louise longed to ask her mother if she’d knowingly arranged her marriage to a man who was incapable of pleasing her in bed or giving her children. It was unthinkably mean.
    But then, hadn’t her mother already proven herself capable of unforgivable deeds?
    They had never seen eye to eye. Her mother had once complained to Vicky in a letter, which Louise had snuck a peak at, that her fourth daughter was “ difficile .” The one thing they’d ever shared, when Louise was a girl, was a love of drawing. Their mutual devotion to art was the reason the queen finally gave in to Louise’s pleas to be allowed to attend art school, even though this put her daughter in touch with commoners, a dreaded situation assiduously avoided by her family.
    Unfortunately—Louise had to admit—her mother’s fears proved warranted. Although that one year in Kensington had been the most exciting, enlightening, and challenging of her young life, disaster ensued. Painful images flashed across her mind, even now, in the rumbling coach, so many years later. She brought a gloved fist to her mouth and pressed hard, holding back a sob of grief . . . and guilt.
    With effort Louise pushed those memories out of her mind and fixed on the budding trees and early blossoming, white-petaled snowdrops speckling the grass alongside the road. And the pain slowly faded. In a few days they’d settle in at dear Balmoral, the castle built on an ancient site by her father. It sat close to where her husband had been born into the powerful Campbell clan, and where his family still lived. As always, the castle would offer shelter from the politics and intrigue of London.
    Occasionally she caught a glimpse of her mother’s agent, Stephen Byrne, riding up and down the line of carriages, his black-brown duster flapping in the wind, that strange American plainsman’s hat with the high crown and wide brim tugged low over his brow, his piercing gaze flicking toward buildings, trees, people they passed. Watching for God-only-knew-what threat.
    She had to give the man credit. He, and Brown, had acted swiftly and efficiently to get them on their way north. It was no small task, herding their entourage into the waiting carriages. She’d expected outraged arguments from courtiers. But something unpredictable and dangerous shadowed Byrne’s dark eyes, discouraging argument from even the highest ranking in her mother’s court.
    She looked along the seat and over her sister’s sleeping head at Lorne. His gaze was fixed on a distant point outside the far window. His blond hair feathered in the chill spring breeze. They hadn’t said more than two words to each other this day. Or the one before it. In the presence of her mother, he’d kissed her on the cheek and wished her a cheerful good morning at family breakfast. But since then he’d touched her no more than was necessary to put on a show of affection and, later, to hand her up into the carriage.
    She felt more alone than ever, shut inside this rattling ebony box with her nonhusband and