Ainsley looked up at him, her eyes a mystery. “I think I do understand you, Cameron.”

Cameron heard more in the sentence than the bare words, but he couldn’t decide what. He kissed her, dissolving in her warmth, and then he let her go.

Angelo went with her. Cameron insisted. Cameron said that he trusted Ainsley but not whatever fools she might meet on her journey. A maid and a footman weren’t enough to guard her. Angelo, he knew, wouldn’t let a damn thing happen to her. So Angelo went, without argument.

Once they reached Windsor, Angelo left to join his family on their canal boat that wandered up and down the nearby Kennet and Avon Canal. Ainsley loaded Angelo with packages of food and clothing, toys for his nieces and nephews, and sent him off.

She found Windsor cold, damp, and sorrowful.

My dearest Cameron,

The queen is quite distraught and most days cannot walk on her own. She has expressed relief that I am here and relies on me most strongly.

I am happy I came, because the others of the household, while sad that the queen is grieving, did not have much love for Mr. Brown. They grow impatient with Her Majesty’s eulogizing and her talk of mausoleums and monuments to him. Their line of thinking is that Mr. Brown was only a servant, and one who got above himself at that. He deserves a proper burial, yes, but nothing more.

But they forget what a true friend Mr. Brown was to the queen after her husband’s death, when her heart broke, and she hid herself away from the world. It was Mr. Brown that got her to do her duty as queen again and gave her the will to continue. He should at least be remembered for that.

I doubt, despite vicious gossip, and despite those letters over which Mrs. Chase was delighted to blackmail her, that the queen and Mr. Brown were ever lovers. A couple can be quite intimate without sharing bodies—though you will likely not believe that, my Cam.

But it can be true. What I feel for you is highly intense, whether you are standing next to me or living a hundred miles away. I do not have to be touching you at all to experience what I feel.

The queen and I go out seldom, and I look longingly across the fields from my high window, wishing I were at Waterbury with you. Here lambs wander across green fields and crocuses sprout the colors of spring. I imagine that Waterbury must look much the same, all misty and soft.

Unhappily I do not see much of spring because I sit most of the time behind thickly draped windows with nothing to do but read to Her Majesty, or embroider, or perhaps play on the piano. At least I have time to work on the pillows I’m doing for our parlor, in very bright and cheerful colors. I enjoy picturing what they will look like in our house.

I will write as often as I can, but truth be told, I don’t have many moments to myself. The queen is in a very bad way and needs everyone who can be at her side.

But whenever I undo my buttons to ready myself for bed, I think of you. I imagine your fingers unfastening my gown, opening me like a Christmas parcel for your pleasure. I tingle even now as I think of it, and so I will close before I quite combust and burn the paper.

Please greet our household for me, and your trainers, and the lads at the stables, and the horses, and McNab. I so miss you all!

With my deepest love, my dearest husband,

Your,

Ainsley

“Now, my dear, I will speak to you about your unfortunate marriage to the Mackenzies.”

The queen must be feeling better, Ainsley thought, if she’s bringing up the topic of my elopement.

Ainsley kept her gaze on her embroidery, blue violets on a cream background. She was redoing the parlor at Waterbury in shades of blue and yellow, brightening it from Cameron’s decorating scheme of “whatever happened to be in the house when I bought it.”

She makes it sound as though I married the whole lot of them. Although, maybe I did.

“Their father was a brute,” Victoria said decidedly. “I knew the duke, and he was awful. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, you know. Marriage to a Mackenzie is no marriage for a genteel young lady, especially one as well brought up as you were.”

Isabella and Beth were genteel young ladies too, Ainsley reflected. The queen, however, made no mention of them.

“Lord Cameron and I are managing to rub along quite well,” Ainsley said. “You’ll see us at Ascot, of course, but I imagine he’ll win the Thousand Guineas Stakes at Newmarket with his new filly. You ought to wager on her. Chance’s Daughter is a brilliant runner.”

The queen gave her a severe look. “Don’t change the subject. You eloped. You disgraced yourself. For once, I am glad your poor dear mother is not alive. You’d have broken her heart.”

While Ainsley hadn’t known her mother, she refused to believe that Jeanette McBride would have minded seeing her only daughter marry happily, if a bit unconventionally.

“What’s done is done,” Ainsley said. “Water under the bridge. I must make the best of it.” She winced as the clichés fell from her lips, but all clichés held a grain of truth.

“I heard of your goings-on on the Continent,” the queen went on. “Cabarets and the casino at all hours of the night. Your brother and sister-in-law hid their faces in shame.”

Ainsley rather doubted that. Patrick, for all his emphasis on hard, honest work, could understand a bit of pleasure for pleasure’s sake now and again. Plus, Patrick was far more open-minded than his rather dour countenance suggested. As she’d told Cameron, Patrick and Rona definitely did not have separate bedrooms.

“And it’s not quite true that what’s done is done,” Victoria said. “The marriage can be put aside. I’m certain that Lord Cameron tricked you into believing you married him legally. He knew you wouldn’t let him seduce you until you had a ring on your finger.”