“I do not. I . . .”
But Charlotte was back to the window. What on earth was she looking for? Agatha stepped beside and peered out. There was nothing there. Just gardens and . . . more gardens. The Queen was literally watching cabbage grow.
Agatha took a breath. “The ball,” she said succinctly. “I wanted to ask if you would encourage the other ladies-in-waiting to attend.”
“Did you not invite them?”
“I did.”
“Then what is the issue?”
Agatha reminded herself that Charlotte was young. In a strange place. A strange country. Surely she had to be forgiven for being so unfathomably dense. “Your Majesty,” Agatha said, very patiently, “they will not come if—”
“There he is!” Charlotte exclaimed.
Agatha almost groaned.
Charlotte’s entire face scrunched as she scooted to the left for a better view of—
Agatha peered across her.
—the King, apparently.
Now Charlotte was shaking her head. “Is he actually . . . ? I believe he is actually gardening.”
“Your Majesty?” Agatha said.
“It’s George,” Charlotte said in utter bewilderment. “He is gardening. With his own hands. Why would he do that? There are people.” She turned to Agatha. “We have people.”
“Your Majesty,” Agatha practically ground out, “about the ball . . .”
“I thought perhaps it was a ruse, but every day he marches into that garden. It is so curious.”
For the love of—
Agatha snapped.
“Your Majesty,” she said sharply, positioning herself squarely between Charlotte and the window. “Please.”
“What are you doing?”
“Princess Augusta has asked me to cancel my ball.”
Charlotte gave her an impatient look. “I do not understand how this relates to me. If Princess Augusta has already asked—”
“You are the Queen,” Agatha cut in. “And I understand that this feels beneath you. But if you were not the Queen—”
“But I am,” Charlotte said quite simply.
Agatha fought the urge to strangle her. “But if you were not, your life here would be very different. Do you not understand? You are the first of your kind. You have opened doors. And made us the first of our kind.”
Charlotte grew still.
“You have changed things for us,” Agatha said quite explicitly. “We are new. Do you not see us? What you are meant to do for us? I tell you to consummate your marriage. I tell you to become with child. I tell you to endure. For a reason.”
Agatha dared a quick glance at Brimsley to see if he would interrupt. She was treading on very thin ice. But the Queen’s man did nothing, and Agatha grew ever bolder.
“You are so preoccupied with whether a man likes you. You are not some simpering girl. You are our Queen. Your focus should be your country. Your people. Our side. Why do you not understand that you hold our fates in your hands? Please, you must look beyond this room.” She motioned out the window at the King, who was hoeing, of all things. “You must look beyond this garden.”
Charlotte said nothing.
Agatha did the only thing there was left to do. She curtsied. “Your palace walls are too high, Your Majesty.”
Charlotte
Buckingham House
The Orangery
Later that day
Charlotte was not accustomed to being scolded. As a child, yes, she supposed her mother had criticized when she was not behaving in a ladylike manner, but that had never really bothered her. When Princess Elisabeth Albertine scolded her youngest daughter, her youngest daughter generally made a game of it.
How many ways was Mutti wrong? How could Charlotte outwit her? The document insisting upon her right to swim in the lake had been only the beginning. Charlotte was smarter than her mother. She was smarter than everyone in her family except maybe Adolphus, and even he could only hope to call it a tie.
But Agatha Danbury was also intelligent. Very. When she’d taken Charlotte to task in the library, it had stung. Because Agatha was right. Charlotte had been selfish. She hadn’t been paying attention to the people around her.
She had every excuse. She’d been in London, what—two months? No one could expect her to change the world in two months.
Except she was Queen.
Like it or not, she was not the same as other people. And apparently, people did expect her to change the world in a month.
She sighed and made her way to the edge of the orangery. It was raining, and the water hit the glass walls with satisfying pats. The sound was even and regular, like a well-trained percussor in an orchestra.
She missed music. She’d had young Mozart out to perform, but other than that—
Charlotte looked at her hand. She’d picked an orange without realizing it. She turned and looked at Brimsley, five paces away as always.
“I have picked my own orange,” she said.
His face remained impassive. “You have, Your Majesty.”
Charlotte looked around. “Where are the men who serve the orangery?”
“They are not needed, Your Majesty.”
“You dismissed them?”
“You pick your own oranges now, Your Majesty,” Brimsley explained.
“You did not tell me they would be dismissed.”
“You would not have a discussion, Your Majesty.”
No one had told her . . .
If she’d known . . .
Brimsley should have tried harder to tell her.
Or maybe she should have listened.
She stared at the orange in her hand. “You have it,” she said to Brimsley. She’d lost her appetite.
Charlotte was still feeling contemplative and unsettled later that night. It was an even day, and she was in George’s room, in bed. She was still thinking about that orange, and the two men who had lost their positions because she had not bothered to ask questions.
She remembered another conversation she’d had with Brimsley, when he’d mentioned the doctor in the cellar.
It was time she started asking questions.
She sat up, tugging the sheets to cover her nudity, and looked at George. “Are you not well?”
He blinked, clearly startled by her question. “Was that not up to your standards? Because I felt that was quite—”
“No,” she said, cutting him off. “You saw a doctor the other day. In the cellar.”
She watched him closely, but his face betrayed nothing.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” he said. But his tone was too careful.
“It was Coronation Day,” she said.
“And you were in the cellar?”
“Brimsley was. He saw you.”
“Ah.”
She waited for him to say more. When he did not, she suppressed an exasperated sigh and said, “That is all you’re going to say? Ah?”
He picked at the sheets with his fingers. “I do not like being spied upon by your servant.”
“He wasn’t spying on you. He was down there for— Well, I don’t know why he was down there. He just was. And he saw you. With a doctor. But not the Royal Physician. He said it was someone else.”
George frowned. Charlotte could not tell if he was trying to remember the occasion or decide what to say.
“You say it was Coronation Day?” he finally replied. “That was why. The Crown must be examined on Coronation Day.”
“In the cellar?”
He shrugged.
“You would think they would want to examine the Queen as well,” she said. “It is all anyone cares about. Me making a baby. You would think there would be doctors all over me.”