Heirs and Graces (A Royal Spyness Mystery) Read Online Free Page B

me rather rapidly into the room and nearly butting HM in the stomach. I would be all too capable of turning around and knocking a priceless Ming vase flying.
    Still, I put on a brave face as I was escorted up the grand staircase to the piano nobile, where the royal family actually lived and entertained. Along those never-ending, richly carpeted hallways with marble statues frowning down at me from their niches. Then a light tap on a door, the footman stepping inside and saying, “Lady Georgiana, Your Majesty.”
    I stepped past him, carefully avoiding his foot, pushing the door into an unseen table or tripping over a rug. I stopped in surprise and thought I was seeing double. Two middle-aged ladies with identical, waved, gray hair, upright carriage and lilac tea dresses were sitting on the brocade sofa beside the fireplace. My first thought was that I should have worn a tea dress and the cashmere cardigan was inappropriate, but then one of the ladies held out her hand to me.
    “Georgiana, my dear. How lovely to see you. Come and meet my dear friend.”
    I saw their faces then and realized that the other lady had a more prodigious bosom than the queen, but wore that same imperious look on her face as Her Majesty. The next thought that passed through my mind was that I would hate to be her maid.
    “You may tell Mary that she can serve tea now,” the queen said to the waiting footman, then she smiled up at me as I took her outstretched hand and tried to curtsy at the same time I kissed her cheek—a maneuver I had never quite managed to accomplish without bumping my nose.
    “Edwina, I don’t know whether you have met our cousin Georgiana?”
    “I don’t believe so, ma’am,” the formidable lady said, picking up her lorgnette to examine me more carefully, “but of course I was acquainted with her dear grandmama.”
    I realized she meant Queen Victoria’s daughter, not the grandma who bought her fish and chips on a Friday night from the corner chip shop.
    “I’m afraid I never had the chance to meet her,” I said, not sure whether she was to be addressed as “ma’am” as well. “She died before I was born.”
    “Such a pity. A great loss.”
    “Georgiana, this is one of my oldest friends, Edwina, Duchess of Eynsford.”
    “Dowager duchess these days, ma’am, now that dear Charles is no longer alive.”
    “Do take a seat, my dear,” the queen said, indicating a low gilt chair beside their sofa. “Tea will be arriving any minute.”
    I sat cautiously. To one side of the chair was a small lacquer table on top of which were several jade statues. The dowager duchess had folded away her lorgnette. “Oh yes, I can see she’d be perfect,” she said to the queen.
    It looked as if my fears were coming true. I was to be shipped to be a young companion of some sort to a dowager duchess.
    There was a tap at the door and a tea trolley was wheeled in, laden with every kind of delectable tiny sandwich and cake imaginable.
    “I hope you have come with a good appetite,” the queen said. “It looks as though my chef has surpassed himself.”
    I almost smiled at the irony of this. I had been to tea with the queen often enough to know that protocol demands that one only eat what Her Majesty eats. And Her Majesty eats very little. I had suffered the agonies of watching those éclairs, Victoria sponges and petit fours sitting untouched while we chewed on pieces of plain, brown bread. Still, food was among the least of my worries today. Another, more alarming thought had entered my mind: Did this dowager duchess perchance have a son who needed a suitable wife? Was that why I was deemed instantly suitable?
    The maid poured cups of tea and placed them on a low table in front of the ladies. When she handed me my cup, however, I realized there was no space to rest it on the small table beside me. I would have to balance it on my lap somehow. Oh, golly.
    “Help yourselves, my dears,” the queen said and took a piece of malt