BooksBarbecue
Back The Summer Queen
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

‘True, but the walls could be bare and, other than Papa and me, no one would notice. Although I think Eddy would,’ she added. ‘I think if someone took the time to introduce Eddy to art, he would be very interested in it.’

‘Eddy?’ Thaddeus was regretting his decision not to have ordered a whiskey. ‘Eddy, as in His Royal Highness Prince Albert Victor?’

May nodded, and he was interested to see a faint rise of colour in her cheeks. He took a long sip of his lemonade. Their conversation had crossed boundaries that had never been discussed before. In revealing her desire to remain in Florence permanently, May had been treating him not just as a family friend, but as an intimate personal friend who could be trusted with a confidence. As such, there was something he wanted to ask her.

‘I would like it,’ he said, as they rose to their feet to leave, ‘if you dropped the name your mama has christened me with, and which everyone uses now, and began calling me Thaddeus.’

‘Thank you, Thaddeus.’ The faint colour in her cheeks deepened. ‘I would like that very much.’

She slipped her hand into the crook of his arm and together, looking like a very handsome couple, they stepped out of the shade of the awning and into the brilliant sunshine of the piazza.

Chapter Eleven

image

MAY 1886, MARLBOROUGH HOUSE

‘Come on, Maudie. Don’t be a spoilsport,’ Frank Teck pleaded.

In the privacy of a neglected summerhouse, he had succeeded in fighting his way beyond the innumerable pearl buttons on the bodice of her dress, had defeated a silk chemise, an underbodice, a corset protector and was now at the last bastion: her corset.

The milky-pale half-moons of her breasts rose tantalizingly above stiff whaleboning and he urgently wanted to free them. He wanted to cup them in his hands. He wanted to see if her nipples were a rosy-red or a pale pink and, whatever colour they were, he wanted to kiss them. He wanted to kiss them so much he could hardly breathe.

Maudie had no intention of letting him do any such thing. Over the last few months she had discovered that the only way she could be sure of Frank’s company was if she allowed him certain liberties – liberties that, if anyone else knew about them, would result in disastrous consequences for both of them. It wasn’t as if she had even embarked on her debutante year yet, and Frank was several months younger than she was.

‘Please.’ He was breathing heavily, feeling as if he was going to burst. ‘If you won’t let me lift them out, lift them out yourself, Maudie. It would mean such a lot to me. Really it would.’