Shall We Dance? Read Online Free

cried for me, begged for me. And now she’s gone. My own child…”
    Amelia’s soft heart was touched. Her Royal Highness could be crude, could be cantankerous, could be ridiculously generous one moment and horribly selfish the next; dangerously free with her affections and her words. Mercurial. But, at the bottom of it, at the heart of it, the woman hadn’t had the best of lives, and Amelia loved her dearly.
    And, loving her dearly, she said the first thing that sprang to her tongue, “We can leave again, ma’am. The world awaits, all of it eager to please you.”
    The queen, her coal-black hair fresh from another visit with the dye pots, nodded fiercely, the childish curls bouncing around her rouged cheeks. “Yes, yes. We could go. Pergami would fly to me, I know it, if I were to abandon this damn, damp island. Byron left, you know. Ungrateful England all but tossed him out.” She blinked back tears. “He was such a pretty boy, even with that twisted foot. I could have had him, you know, if I’d but crooked a finger in his direction. Chose Spencer Perceval instead. He was helpful, but not pretty. Sir Sydney Smith? Ah, he was almost pretty, and reportedly hung like a—”
    â€œYes, ma’am,” Amelia said placidly.
    â€œBut you know, Amelia, I only really committed adultery the once—three or six times, in truth. But that was with the husband of Maria Fitzherbert.”
    Amelia couldn’t help but smile at Her Majesty’s reference to the king’s morganatic bride. The queen’s outrageous statements, as well as her rather erratic behavior, had lost the power to embarrass her years ago. Still, she had to steer the woman back on point, even as she’d stupidly let it slip that she wished to put England behind them once and for all. “So, dear ma’am, shall I give the order? We can set sail by week’s end. Paris. Rome. Anywhere your heart desires.”
    The queen snorted. “I doubt we could make Dover on what’s left of my allowance. That hangs in the balance, you know. The king—I spit on calling him thusly—holds the purse strings now. That’s another part of this Pains-and-Penalties business. My pain, the penalties he’d order. I have to win, Amelia, or else he’ll control every aspect, every penny in my purse, every bite that goes into my mouth. He’d like nothing more than for me to live in penury.”
    â€œThen we stay,” Amelia said, continuing to guide her queen back toward the correct, the only, path, without letting the woman see the leash. Amelia had been against their return, but also knew they had no choicebut to stay and fight now that they were here. But it had to be the queen’s decision, at the end of it.
    The queen’s sigh ended in a curse that had a lot to do with hungry mice finding a home in her estranged husband’s bowels. “Yes, we stay. We stay and we fight. Oh, Amelia.” She moaned piteously, holding out her hands so that Amelia left her seat and took those hands in her own. “I do it for you, my dearest girl. Not for me, for I am old, and ravaged, and have no future save pain until death. For you, for my dear William, for all of you. And for England! England needs me! England loves me!”
    With the queen’s many rings painfully biting into her skin, Amelia smiled and dropped into a deep curtsy. “And England thanks you, my queen.”
    â€œYes, yes, of course, there’s all that drivel, too,” the queen said curtly, releasing Amelia’s abused fingers as the pendulum of her mood swung once more. “Look at that mess. For God’s sake, girl, get someone in here to clean it. Am I to live in filth as well as penury?”
    â€œYes, ma’am,” Amelia said, hiding a smile as she gave the bell rope a tug, then returned to gather up the official notice of the Pains and Penalties that had made for an exceedingly