He had demanded the investiture of the second Baron Castletown into the order of St. Patrick, when the jewels would have been worn, be cancelled. Refusing to step out upon the deck where Dubliners could see him was only the latest outburst.
Adele had tried to ignore the small voice in her mind which suggested the King’s unpredictable mood resembled the tantrums her son had once showered upon her. It felt disloyal to compare the King’s behavior to that of a two-year-old.
Her thinning empathy for the King’s upset had pushed her out into the bracing sea air in search of a more positive perspective. After forty minutes of gazing at the city they approached, with her cheeks numb and her nose frozen, Adele still could not rid herself of the bleak, unsettled feeling which sat upon her shoulders and stirred her belly.
“Oh, do stop hedging!” she railed at herself, only to have her words whipped away by the wind. Even here, deep inside the port, the wind still whistled. “Say it, Adelaide Becket. You’re afraid.”
“Is it all of Dublin you address, Lady Adelaide, or simply the gulls?” The man’s voice came from behind her. The wind had hidden the sounds of his approach, but Adele knew the voice and her heart sank a little lower.
She turned and gave Pureton a polite smile, the best she could manage with her uncooperative cheeks. “Why, it must be the gulls I speak to,” she told him brightly. “For addressing an entire city is the province of the King.”
“A prerogative of which he will not partake, today.” Sir Godfrey Dale, Baron Pureton, Assistant Private Secretary to the Crown, leaned upon the varnished wood of the railing with a deep sigh. He was a tall, spare man in his late sixties. His hair was thick, but completely white. His full beard and moustache were just as snowy, and outlined a sharp chin and thin cheeks above hawk-like cheekbones and a long, elegant nose. His eyes were pale blue, and sharp with intelligence. The high forehead added to the elongated length of him.
“The King will remain aboard until tomorrow, then?” Adele guessed. The first official duty of the King’s was to attend the Exhibition on the morrow, now that this afternoon’s investiture had been cancelled.
“You were proclaiming to the gulls about fear, I believe?”
He was changing the subject. Pureton was immovably loyal to the King, to the point of utter blindness when it was necessary. Adele supposed that was an ideal trait for an Assistant Private Secretary.
But now that left her to answer a question she had no wish to respond to. “Oh, a new city, new faces…I am too much a homebody, Sir Godfrey.”
He glanced at her. “You did not seem to mind the novelties of Berlin,” he pointed out.
Adele clutched the railing with both hands as the entire ship shuddered as it kissed the wharf. Dock workers shouted to each other as ropes were tossed and secured about bolls.
Most of the entourage surrounding the King presumed Adele was among them to purportedly serve Queen Alexandra, while actually serving the King’s private…appetites. There were very few people who knew her true role, but Pureton was one of them. She could answer truthfully if she wished.
Yet she hesitated. The reasons for her fear all seemed…weak. Feminine.
William Melville had slipped into her house mere hours before she was due to depart for King’s Cross Station to join the royal party upon the train which would take them to Holyhead overnight. He had picked up a piece of shortbread from the plate beside the teapot and broken the news to her that he would not be among those numbers.
“Not even as one of the crew?” Adele asked, alarmed. Melville was adept at posing as laborers, navvies and workers to linger unremarked and eavesdrop upon conversations presumed to be private, or to follow someone of interest. She had been attempting to learn from his example for over a year.
“I must travel to York tomorrow,” Melville told her. “There is something else I must attend to.”
“But…but that will mean I am on my own.” She sank upon the arm of the sofa, careless of the impropriety of such a casual pose. “When is Daniel due back?”
Daniel Bannister, Baron Leighton, was a beau of sorts, when he was not working for Melville, which was a rare occurrence, these days. He was currently in France, eavesdropping upon yet more conversations.
“Tuesday,” Melville replied. “You will be fine on your own, Lady Adele.”
She gripped her hands together. “But you have always been nearby…even at a distance,” she pointed out. “You or Daniel. You even turned up in Germany—don’t think I didn’t see you.”
“You did, hmm?” He looked both pleased and disturbed. “What gave me away?”
“You took a biscuit from a platter on the King’s buffet table.”
Melville looked down at the shortbread in his hand, put it back upon her plate and brushed his hands of crumbs. “The fact is, we’re spread too thin,” he said, with a candid air. “If I had another dozen men, I would spare one to accompany you, but there it is. You’ll just have to rub along without us. We all have our duties.”
She clenched her hands even more tightly. “But what if something goes wrong?” she whispered.
“Then you must cope, Lady Adele. I will not have the King travel without one of us nearby to run interference should the Germans try something while he is away from England.”
She had not schooled her expression to complete neutrality, for his tone was milder as he added, “You have a perfectly good head upon your shoulders, and you have learned a great deal since you came to work for me. Keep your head and don’t act without thought. Besides, it is only Dublin.”
“Where Nationalists
