There was a silence, and then he looked up, his jaw tight with anger. “No. Tell me you didn’t.”
“Father, it’s only fair! How can we ask something of our people that we don’t do ourselves?”
“Because we are Bourbons! Our lives are already dedicated to their service! Do we need to pay half our fortune back to them as well?”
“Most other monarchs have been paying taxes for years,” Louise reminded him. Kings had traditionally been exempt from their nations’ tax laws, but many royal families, including the Washingtons, had revoked that right in the last century.
“Most other monarchs are weak. As are you,” King Louis said stiffly. “Stop pandering to public opinion and stand up for yourself for once.”
Beatrice felt like she’d stumbled into a twisted alternate reality. Was this really how the king was going to greet his daughter, now that he’d returned to health?
She couldn’t stay silent any longer. “Your Majesty, with all due respect, the Princess Louise has done a fantastic job managing the country during your illness. France owes her a debt of gratitude.”
King Louis looked up as if noticing Beatrice for the first time. “Who are you?”
“I’m Beatrice, Your Majesty. The Queen of America.”
The king stared at her for a moment, then burst out laughing. “Queen of America! That’s a good one.” He was still chuckling as he glanced back at Louise. “I like this friend of yours, Marie-Anne. She may not be much to look at, but she’s funny enough.”
At his last words, all the air seemed to drain from the room. Beatrice didn’t even have the emotional strength to be offended by how laughable he’d found the notion of an American queen. She was staring at Louise, whose face had gone pale.
The king had just called Louise by her mother’s name.
“Father, it’s me, Louise. Your daughter,” she said quietly.
Beatrice bit her lip in pained understanding. They were losing him. The king’s brief moment of lucidity—and cruelty, she thought—was slipping away. He glanced down at the newspaper, frowned at it as if puzzled by the shape of the letters, then set it aside and looked back at Louise.
“You’re not dressed for riding.”
“Riding?” she asked weakly.
“Yes, we promised Antoine that we’d go out, didn’t we? You know how he is when we keep him waiting.” The king glanced out the window at the sun-drenched afternoon. “Oh no, it looks like it might rain.”
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
Louise’s expression was filled with such yearning and disappointment that Beatrice had to look away. “You’re right,” Louise agreed, her voice wavering a little. “It does look like rain. I’ll tell Antoine that we’ll play baccarat instead.”
The king’s eyes drifted back to Beatrice, and he frowned. “Your ladies-in-waiting need to learn more respect. This one hasn’t curtsied to me since the moment she entered the room.”
It was true, Beatrice hadn’t curtsied, and she marveled that Louis, through the evident murkiness in his mind, had noticed and clamped on to that fact. “You don’t have to,” Louise whispered, but Beatrice was so heartbroken for her friend that she didn’t even protest.
She nodded and swept a brief curtsy. “My apologies, Your Majesty,” she told him in French. The king nodded, mollified.
When they headed back into the hall, Louise whirled on the nurse. “You told me he’d gotten better! I came all the way from America, only to find that he’s the same as ever!”
“He was better! I’m sorry, Your Royal Highness. I really thought he’d recovered this time. He’d been himself for a whole day. That was the longest it’s lasted in years!”
“I know.” Louise ran a hand over her features. “You’re doing your best, of course. I just thought…I hoped…”
Beatrice was excruciatingly familiar with that hope. It was the same hope she felt most mornings, when she woke up and, for a fleeting instant, forgot that her father was gone. Then reality would crash back around her, and she would remember that she’d lost him—that the weight of the crown was now hers alone.
In some ways it must be harder for Louise, to get her father back for brief snatches of time, then lose him over and over again.
At least King George had been unwaveringly supportive and loving. He’d never belittled Beatrice; his criticisms, when they came, were measured and fair. He had always been Beatrice’s father first, and her king second.
If that brief glimpse of King Louis was indicative of his true nature, then he clearly thought of his daughter as his successor, his employee. Small wonder that Louise stormed through life with such a commanding, glittering persona, hiding her feelings behind detachment, surrounding herself with friends, yet always keeping a piece of herself back from them. She was terrified to reveal any vulnerabilities, for fear that her father would pounce on them.
Beneath all the bravado, Louise was still just a girl who longed for her father’s approval.
“I’m so sorry,” Beatrice said quietly.
Louise walked a few dazed paces into another room, a vast living room that was just as grand and imposing as the rest of this grand, imposing palace. She sank onto a love seat, her head falling into her hands, her dress crumpling around her like wilted flower petals.
“I’m the one who should be sorry. I asked you to come all this way, and my father isn’t even better.”
“Don’t apologize.” Beatrice rushed over and took the seat next to the princess.
“But I am sorry, because it’s awful. It’s all so awful!” Louise exclaimed, and began to cry.
There was nothing pretty or princess-like about her tears: her chest heaved with ragged, ugly sobs. Beatrice made small shh noises and rubbed Louise’s back in soothing circles, the way she’d comforted Samantha when they lost their own father.
Beatrice’s eyes stung, and she felt tears running down her cheeks, too. She was crying for Louise and the French king, for herself, and for her dad, who should still have been there, hosting the conference he’d looked forward to.
Look at us, a small, sad part of her thought. Two of the supposedly most powerful women in the world, crying as forlornly as lost children.
“It’s okay,” she kept saying in low soothing tones. “I’m here. It’s okay.”
Louise had to get all her tears out now, because she could certainly never cry like this in public. The moment they returned to Orange, she would have to arm herself in her usual smiles and lipstick, and face the world as confidently as always. They both would.