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Chapters (54)
  1. Cover
  2. The Summer Queen
  3. Dedication Page
  4. Family Tree of King George III
  5. Family Tree of Queen Victoria
  6. PART ONE
  7. Chapter One
  8. Chapter Two
  9. Chapter Three
  10. Chapter Four
  11. Chapter Five
  12. Chapter Six
  13. Chapter Seven
  14. Chapter Eight
  15. Chapter Nine
  16. Chapter Ten
  17. Chapter Eleven
  18. Chapter Twelve
  19. Chapter Thirteen
  20. PART TWO
  21. Chapter Fourteen
  22. Chapter Fifteen
  23. Chapter Sixteen
  24. Chapter Seventeen
  25. Chapter Eighteen
  26. Chapter Nineteen
  27. Chapter Twenty
  28. Chapter Twenty-One
  29. Chapter Twenty-Two
  30. Chapter Twenty-Three
  31. Chapter Twenty-Four
  32. PART THREE
  33. Chapter Twenty-Five
  34. Chapter Twenty-Six
  35. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  36. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  37. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  38. Chapter Thirty
  39. Chapter Thirty-One
  40. Chapter Thirty-Two
  41. PART FOUR
  42. Chapter Thirty-Three
  43. Chapter Thirty-Four
  44. Chapter Thirty-Five
  45. Chapter Thirty-Six
  46. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  47. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  48. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  49. Chapter Forty
  50. Chapter Forty-One
  51. Acknowledgements
  52. Select Bibliography
  53. The Summer Queen
  54. By Margaret Pemberton

As the carriages carrying their trunks and bags rattled off down the drive, followed by the carriage carrying five members of their household staff who were to travel with them, May stepped reluctantly into the carriage. As the horses moved off, she looked over her shoulder only once and then, with tears burning the backs of her eyes, she dug her nails deep into her palms, refusing to let any fall. Whatever lay ahead, she would make the best of it – for making the best of things was what she always did – but that she would be doing so in a land far from her beloved England was a knife-wound to her heart so deep that she could hardly bear it.

Chapter Five

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APRIL 1884, NEW PALACE, DARMSTADT

The little medieval town of Darmstadt in the Grand Duchy of Hesse and by Rhine was in a fever of excitement over the imminent wedding of the Grand Duke’s eldest daughter, Princess Victoria, to her father’s first cousin, the handsome Prince Louis of Battenberg.

Royal wedding guests were arriving in an endless stream at the town’s toy-like railway station and the town’s brass band welcomed them ceaselessly with whatever English, Danish, Prussian or Russian anthem was appropriate. Crowds of spectators thronged the streets, waving flags and cheering lustily as horse-drawn landaus carried the guests away from the station and through streets of steeply roofed houses, in the direction of the ancient market square that fronted the palace. Sometimes landaus converged with each other and there would be squeals of recognition from the occupants. Horses would be hastily reined to a halt while, in the middle of a cobbled street, a Danish party of royals fell into the arms of Russian relations, or a Prussian party of royals fell into the arms of the latest batch of arriving English cousins. What Queen Victoria referred to as the ‘Royal Mob’ was out in full force, and the citizens of Darmstadt were loving every minute of it.

The only person not doing so was Alicky, who still felt the same dislike of crowded family get-togethers that she had felt five years ago at Osborne; and this particular get-together didn’t have the compensating factor of having either May or Willy as part of it.

‘The Tecks are still acclimatizing themselves to being exiles and are probably not yet ready to face the family en masse,’ Sergei, one of Nicky’s uncles, said when Alicky told him how disappointed she was that May wouldn’t be at the wedding. ‘And that Willy’s parents are here is reason enough for Willy and Dona not to be.’