I woke naturally, slipping out of a warm, deep sleep and into consciousness as easily as stepping out of one room and into another. I couldn't feel any of my bruises, and when I stretched I could do so without anything aching.
That was, until, I knocked last night's whiskey glass off the armrest and onto the floor with a heavy thunk.
'Good morning,' Willoughby stuck his head around the door and grinned at me, sitting up quickly with bleary eyes.
'Oh God,' I ran my fingers through my hair and tried to pile it up into some semblance of respectability. 'I didn't mean to fall asleep.'
'It's quite alright, you looked like you needed it,' he handed me a glass of water.
'What time is it?' I took a long drink and washed it around my mouth.
'Ten o'clock.'
'Ten o'clock?!' I shot to my feet. Willoughby laughed and caught me by my arms, stopping me from firing out of the door. I shot him an incredulous look, 'I need to go!'
'I know. And I've already got the horses ready. But you are not going to do much good on nothing but last night's whiskey.' He nodded to a tray that had been brought in, with a still-steaming plate of toast and roast ham.
My stomach rumbled.
'I need to go, Willoughby.'
'You need to eat,' he shot me a crooked smile. 'Kate.'
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. I could have just gone up in flames in that moment and not felt a thing.
He picked up the plate and held it under my nose, and even I couldn't resist.
'Fine, but then we go.' Gulping down the rest of the water, I made myself a sandwich with the bread and ham and saluted him with it.
His eyes were warm and he waited until I'd taken a large bite and swallowed it down. 'Now we can go.'
The day had the feel of damp laundry, with the promise of rain sometime soon. Willoughby and I rode over the river and towards Greenwich and Montagu House. We made good time, both of us fresh and eager to be off.
'You don't have to accompany me home,' I called over my shoulder as we skirted along the river.
Willoughby smiled as he trotted a few paces behind me, 'We just had a near-death experience at the hands of a criminal mastermind – I'm not leaving you on your own.'
I turned my attention back to the road, cheeks flaring.
Montagu House rose in the distance and I began to dream of a proper bath and a change of clothes. It looked to be a miserable day, perhaps we'd spend it curled up in the library, playing cards and reading. I'd neglected my smallsword, I thought regretfully. I'd made time to polish and oil it.
As we turned into the courtyard of Montagu House a young footman ran towards me. He was red-faced and panting, his collar unbuttoned.
'Miss Wentworth!' he cried, waving a note at me. Frowning, I dismounted and took the note, disconcerted at his obvious stress.
'Everything alright?' Willoughby got off his horse and came to read over my shoulder.
The note was brief, in the inpatient and spikey script of Lady Bruce.
Princess summoned to a hunt with the King. Richmond Park. Unusual and alarming.
Come quickly.
'With the King?' I handed it to Willoughby, who ran his eye over it again. 'I didn't think the King the hunting type.'
'He's not, Ma'am,' the footman fretted at his lip. 'Hasn't been allowed to go for years, not since he accidentally shot the Earl of Salisbury in the leg. Apparently, His Majesty through the Earl was a stag.'
'So why now?' Alarmed, I took the letter back and ran over it again. 'She doesn't sound happy about it.'
'Who'd go hunting now?' Willoughby stared at the sky, 'it's going to rain soon – why has the King been allowed to put himself at risk of a fall?'
'Who gives the King permission to ride out when he's indisposed?' I asked the footman.
The man looked between me and Willoughby, creases forming and re-forming between his eyebrows.
'Quick, man!' I snapped, my hands starting to shake.
'The Prince Regent has to sign off on it, Ma'am,' he wiped his palms on his breeches.
Willoughby met my eye with a dread that I knew well.
'Beresford,' we said simultaneously.
The footman leapt out of the way as we swung ourselves back up onto our horses and pulled them round towards the gate. Willoughby craned his head back, 'send a note to the Prime Minister! Tell him what's happened and to him to meet us there!'
The footman scarpered back to the house, and Willoughby and I rode out of the gates and to the West, praying we'd make it there on time.
Before now, Richmond Park had been one of my favourite things about London. It seemed a gift to be able to ride thirty minutes from the city and find oneself in a virtual wilderness, with streams to ford and hills to gallop across and trees to explore. The woodland stretched for blissful distance in all directions, full of herds of deer and even the occasional wild pig.
Now, however, I was cursing at how bloody large it was. I would never know what possessed the landscaper to create a park so large and hilly that you couldn't get a clear view the whole way around. And considering the Princess would supposedly be meeting the King there, Willoughby and I had no idea which of the many entrances they would have arrived at.
'Anything?' I called to Willoughby, who was stood up in his saddle, scanning over to the North side of the park.
He pressed his lips together and glanced at me.
'Shit,' I pulled my horse around and we started galloping in the opposite direction, making large, curved sweeps across the park. Every so often we stopped, training our ears to the sky to listen for gunshots, voices, thundering hooves. Anything to let us know where the hunt was currently.
We were going to be too late.
Willoughby must have seen the look of dread in my face - he overtook me and hailed a groundskeeper who paused at the side of the path, a trio of pheasants clucking indignantly in a cage in his hands.
'The King's hunt,' Willoughby asked, 'where is it?'
The man stared at us, flicking between the well-dressed man looking alarmed, and the wild-haired woman in men's clothing who looked positively dangerous.
'Where is it?!' I yelled at him.
'I dunno! They was back over East-way last I saw,' the man nodded toward the horizon. 'Herd was by the lake.'
By the lake.
I set off at a furious speed, jabbing my heels into my horse's flank. Willoughby thundered a few paces behind me.
Beresford was going to kill her. He was going to shoot her in broad daylight and blame it on the King and his delusions. He was going to take the very centre point of the English monarchy and twist it back on itself to its own destruction.
Shots rang out over the crest of a hill. 'There!' Willoughby yelled at me.
We pulled to the right, angling our mounts up a gentle incline until we crested the hill and could have our first clear look at the East side of Richmond Park. The wind whipped at my hair, sending it tangling into my eyes. I swiped it away angrily.
The hunt had congregated just further down the hill on the other side we had come up, a crowd of horses and people dressed in ludicrously bright colours considering they were supposed to be stalking animals. I spotted the burgundy and gold of the King's liverymen, and the bright orange riding coat of Caroline.
They were far too exposed.
'They're too exposed,' Willoughby muttered to himself, and we charged down the hill towards them, leaping over scrubs of bracken and fallen logs. My heart was racing. All I wanted was to get Caroline home and safe, even if she talked my ear off for the rest of my life.
'Ho there! Stop!' One of the King's guards barrelled towards us on a stout horse, and we pulled to an abrupt stop. The man was tall and broad, the perfect royal guard, with a stern expression and a beautifully gloved hand resting on an equally beautifully polished pistol in his belt. He looked us over, clearly coming to the conclusion that we looked like lunatics, and gripped the pistol tighter. 'This is a private hunting party, you need to leave.'
'We're with the party,' I said breathlessly, casting intent looks over his shoulder for Caroline. 'I'm with the Princess.'
The man stayed silent, and when I looked back at him he was staring at me, with pursed lips and a raised eyebrow.
'I do! I'm one of her ladies.'
Again the eyebrow twitched. I couldn't really blame the man, I supposed. I was wearing scruffy men's clothes with smudges of plaster dust and Willoughby's blood on my breeches. My hair had fallen loose again. I did not look like one of the Princess' ladies.
'Madam, I'm ordering you to leave.'
'Sir, that will be quite unnecessary,' Willoughby pushed his horse a few steps forward. 'My companion here and I work for the Prime Minister, and have had urgent warning of a possible threat to the life of the Princess today.'
The guard's hand twitched on the pistol but he said nothing.
'Oh for God's sake.' I stood up in my saddle and yelled over his head, 'Your Highness! Caroline!'
Both Willoughby and the guard looked at me with open horror at my addressing the future Queen by her first name in public, and in the presence of the King. The guard made a move to grab at my horse's reins.
But I was nothing if not effective. The hunting party had turned at my shout, and instantly Lady Bruce was riding towards us, resplendent in a dark green sating riding jacket and enormous bonnet. When she reached us her eyes were full of relief and fire.
'Let them through,' she ordered. 'They're with us.'
'By my lady – '
'Did I stammer? Did I mumble?' she snapped back at him.
'No Ma'am, forgive me. I merely – '
'I didn't ask, Captain.' She turned her horse back to the party and we trotted over to where everyone milled around, eyeing us like we, or specifically I, was a wild animal in a zoo that had just dragged a puppy into my cage and eaten it. Lady Bruce kept her chin raised, eyes fierce, but when the rest of the King's guards stepped in front of her horse, she just rested her hand gently on my arm and stared them down.
They let us through.
'Katherine!' Caroline was still sat on her horse, a plump, dappled thing that looked almost as coiffed as her. 'Are you here to join us?'
I swung myself off my horse and curtseyed as gracefully as I could in day-old breeches, 'Your Highness, I need to take you home. I believe there's another attempt on your life planned.'
She rolled her eyes, 'oh for goodness sake, has Lady Bruce been whispering in your ear?' She reached out and squeezed Lady Bruce's hand. 'I appreciate your concern my love, but it's alright.'
'Please, Your Highness,' Willoughby said from behind me. 'I agree with Miss Wentworth, it's not safe here.'
'Not safe?' A loud, booming voice sounded from behind us and both Willoughby and I spun around and came face to face with the Mad King of England.
He was both exactly how I imagined him to be, and a total surprise. A wizened man, in his mid-70's, with wispy white hair poking out from under his crisply powdered wid. A strong nose stood out from the middle of a slightly pudgy face, soft around the jawline and under his eyes, with red spider veins dotting across his cheekbones. I could see the Prince Regent in him, and also an echo of Princess Augusta. They both had something about their eyes that told of an age seeing everything around them from a bizarrely isolated position.
I hurried another curtsey, with Willoughby bowing low.
'Up, up,' his voice was so much deeper than I thought it would be, a strong tone that gave no room for resistance. But when I rose I could see his hand shaking and, when he looked to Caroline for an explanation I noticed he was never quite still.
'Your Majesty, we should leave at once, you're not safe,' Lady Bruce said.
'What's that?'
'It's true, Your Majesty,' I jumped in. 'We have reason to believe there is an assassin waiting somewhere in the park, with the express intention of harming the Princess.'
'Nonsense,' he sniffed deeply and looked away. 'No one would dare.'
'They would if they were being paid,' I grimaced as the rest of the party gaped at my impudence. 'Forgive my rudeness, Your Majesty, I would never speak so out of turn was I not severely worried for your own safety, and that of the Princess. You're too exposed out here, we need to leave now.'
'Be silent, girl!' One of the guards stepped forward, grasping his pistol, 'you dare to speak to your king like this!'
Willoughby pushed in front of me and got right in the guard's face, 'threaten her again and she'll show you exactly how much she dares.'
I blinked. The guard blinked. Lady Bruce and Caroline blinked. I could have sworn the groundskeeper we passed fifteen minutes ago on the other side of the Park blinked too.
'Right,' another guard patted my assailant on the shoulder, 'let's all calm down now. Talk this out like gentlemen – and, er, gentlewomen.'
Lady Bruce rolled her eyes, 'with respect Your Majesty. I believe Miss Wentworth is telling the truth. You know of the attempts against the Princess' life. Miss Wentworth has been working as a personal bodyguard for months now, and I would trust only her with the Princess.'
Gracious. As tense as I was, this was becoming a rather flattering conversation.
The King wrinkled his nose, then cleared his face, then scratched at the back of his neck. 'Seems dammed silly, to be perfectly frank. I've not heard a thing, we're having a nice time. And we've got twenty guards –'
'Perhaps we should return home,' Caroline started to reason, shooting a wary glance at Lady Bruce. 'Besides, it's about to rain, and it would be a shame to end such a lovely morning with a chill.'
'Dashed odd, as well,' the King mumbled. 'A lady bodyguard? Not quite the English way.'
As Lady Bruce and Caroline continued to reason with the King, I felt a shiver run down the back of my neck. I whipped around in an instant. Behind us was just a long stretch of open grassland, with the occasional fallen tree or scrub of gorse. The tall trees in the near distance rose up to the grey sky, thick with dark boughs and silent of birdsong. They looked like something out of a Gothic painting.
And something was watching us.
Training my eye, I scanned over every branch of the trees, every shadow at the base of the trunks.
Where would I go? My hand glided to my pistol without me consciously trying. If the roles were reversed, where would I go to get the best shot?
'Sire, I beg of you.' Willoughby had got involved. 'My name is James Willoughby, I work for the Prime Minister, and he also believes you're not quite safe here.'
That twinge on my skin. Squinting, I stopped even trying to look alert to the conversation and stared hard into the trees. Halfway up one of the closest trees, there was a dark shadow, but it looked more like a section of growth that was denser than the rest.
'Caroline,' I murmured. 'Get on the horse.'
I don't know if it was the order, or my use of her first name again, or the terrifyingly low and steady tone of my voice.
But she looked at me for only a moment before getting on the damn horse.
And that was when the shot came.