Leopard in Exile Read Online Free PDF Page B

her
    dress, stretched and pulled by the archaic hoops, was a quizzical sight.
    "We shall make good time, I think, until we enter the City," Wessex observed. "Fortunately, Buckland
    was good enough to induce Mrs. Beaton to pack us a hamper, or else we might well perish of hunger
    before the wedding breakfast."
    Sarah's eyes flashed in the dimness of the coach's interior as she inspected the chronometer set into the
    wall of the coach. "Eight-fifteen," she sighed.
    Though a notorious early riser—as Wessex, given his preference, was not—the Duchess disliked both
    confinement and enforced idleness. The prospect of five hours spent sitting in a coach as it inched its way
    along the street was not one she delighted in. "I suppose we couldn't just have walked?" she said
    wistfully.
    "Indeed we could not," her husband said repressively, though his mouth quirked. "Persons so notoriously
    high in the instep as the Duke and Duchess of Wessex could not be seen cavorting about the public street
    in the guise of an infantry regiment."
    "No doubt you are correct, my lord," his dutiful spouse replied. "Rupert, who was that who called upon
    you this morning? I saw a horse standing in the street."
    The percipient question brought Wessex's thoughts abruptly back to his distasteful duties. At the wedding
    breakfast this afternoon, he must be sure to speak to the representatives of the Colonies—particularly
    Catholic Marylandshire, chartered in 1635 and a hotbed not only of the Old Religion, but of those who
    still wished to see a Catholic monarch upon the throne of England. The only good thing about the
    accession of Napoleon was that the Catholic Jacobites who had favored Charles' brother James over his
    son Monmouth could no longer scheme to make common cause with France, now only nominally a
    Catholic nation. As for Virginia, Dutch New York, and Quaker Pennsylvania—
    "Rupert, you are not attending." Sarah's voice held an edge, perceptible even over the sound of the
    wheels.
    "I am indeed. I am merely hoping not to be called upon to answer the question," the Duke responded.
    "Oh." Sarah's voice went flat with realization. "It is one of those acquaintances, then."
    Once more Wessex did not answer. Sarah regarded him unhappily. Though she accepted his work, she
    hated being shut out of it.
    "It is merely a matter of idle political gossip," Wessex said lightly, trying to cheer her mood. "I would be a
    poor husband were I to tax your patience with talk of matters as far from your interests as New Albion's
    factionalism."
    "Far! New Albion is America ! Rupert, I was born there!" Sarah said indignantly.
    "But not in this America," Wessex reminded her. Not for the first time, he tried to imagine Sarah's
    world—English colonies unthinkably divorced from English rule to become an independent nation without
    a king, an ally of Tyrant France. The England she described was even more alien—a land ruled by
    upstart German princes, whose slothful rale and cruel taxation had driven her colonies into revolt.
    As always, the attempt to envision something so unthinkably alien defeated him. The Stuarts were the true
    kings of England. They had ruled wisely and justly since Great Elizabeth had passed the crown to the first
    James, through the Great Marriage and their pacts with the Oldest People.
    "It cannot be so very different," Sarah said sulkily. She had known very little of her own world's England
    before her journey here, and so she had seen very little difference between one England and another.
    "Perhaps not," Wessex agreed. "It is certainly little different from Europe—for in your world as in mine,
    France and England war, and who can say which shall be the master?"
    Westminster Abbey was filled with the massed nobility of England, her colonies, and her allies, as the
    work of more than five years of diplomatism came at last to its conclusion—the marriage that would
    secure a Protestant princess for England and a Danish ally for the Grande