“The title doesn’t mean anything if they keep torturing us like this. People can bow and scrape to the garbageman but he’s still picking up trash. You were a king once. You deserve more and better than this awful place.”

The Duke walked to the brass bar cart and poured a finger of whiskey into a cut crystal glass.

“I told you, not before seven o’clock.” Wallis knocked the glass out of his hand and he stared mournfully at the wasted whiskey soaking into the green carpet. “You’re the Governor-General, not the town drunk. Act like it, show Buckingham Palace what you’re made of, how good you are at commanding; make them take notice of you and your talents so we aren’t stuck here forever.”

“Yes, darling.” The Duke knelt down to mop up the mess with one of the linen napkins.

“We have servants to do that. Mr. Hale!”

The butler entered as the Duke rose. “I spilled my whiskey. Please see to the mess.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I think I’ll see what Phillips is up to; we need to work on that bill about the thing.” The Duke hurried off to find his equerry and escape Wallis’s fury.

Amelia wasn’t so lucky.

“I’ll give Sir Walter a piece of my mind about His Majesty’s orders.” Wallis snapped at Amelia to follow her and the two of them went upstairs to her room. “They treat me like I’m Mata Hari, reading my letters and filling the house with spies. The Americans don’t treat us this way, even the local rag can be better than that. Look at their glowing story about my work with the clinic.” Wallis snatched a copy of the Nassau Daily Tribune off her desk and shoved it at Amelia. It was folded to show the story about Wallis securing canned milk, medicine, and other essentials for the poor mothers of the Out Islands. “They appreciate what I do.”

Which wouldn’t have happened if Amelia hadn’t urged her to do more than sit around and complain about living here, but she didn’t say so.

“Include that article in the letter to Sir Walter. I want him to see we’re more than someone to irritate but people of real significance. Britain needs us for the war effort.”

Wallis’s sudden interest in impressing the Duke’s homeland surprised Amelia. Maybe something had changed or, in typical Wallis fashion, she was hedging her bets. “Do you think Britain will survive?”

“Of course not. Their undefeatable image is all smoke and mirrors, with nothing propping it up. It won’t be long before the whole deck of cards collapse, and I say good riddance. Someday they’ll regret the way they’ve treated me. I’ll see to it.”

A knock ended Wallis’s tirade and Amelia’s chance to ask her about the remark. Wallis, in a stunning transformation, settled herself enough to calmly open the bedroom door, giving no inkling that she’d been in near hysterics over His Majesty’s Government only seconds before.

“This arrived by special courier for you, ma’am. I was told it’s important.” Mr. Hale held out a letter on a silver salver.

Wallis took it, her eyebrows rising in surprise. “That’ll be all, Amelia. I have business to take care of.”

“Is it anything I can help you with?” The Duke was the only one who ever received courier messages, not Wallis.

Wallis shook her head. “Prepare the list of medicines and supplies we need for the clinic from New York. I’d like to get it off before Buck House decides I can’t send anything to civilization for any reason.”

Amelia left as Wallis settled in a wicker chaise to read the letter. Whatever the letter was, Amelia sensed it had nothing to do with her charities. Robert had told her to trust her instincts. The end of communication between Wallis and New York had caused someone to risk sending her a note without doing much to conceal it. If Amelia weren’t sailing on the Southern Cross tonight with the Windsors, she’d try and sneak into Wallis’s room while she was gone and get a look at it. However, being aboard the Southern Cross might reveal more than anything hidden in the shadows of Government House.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“This is a lovely ship. Tell me, what’s that?” Amelia asked one of the Southern Cross sailors coiling rope on the stern deck just beyond where the guests were enjoying cocktails. She pointed to the large antenna on the top of the ship. She knew exactly what it was, a shortwave antenna, but she feigned innocence the same way the sailor pretended not to speak English.

She wandered to the railing along the other side.

Barin approached with a tray of hors d’oeuvres. She and a few women in black dresses with crisp white aprons served food and drinks to the guests and were the only non-Swedish crew members on board. “Don’t let them fool you. They speak English. They’re eavesdropping. There’s no other reason for them to be fiddling with the rope this close to the dinner party.”

“I suspected as much. But so are we, so I suppose turnabout is fair play. Heard anything good yet?”

“No, but if I have to listen to either of the Windsors complain one more time about her title or dry cleaning, I might swim back to Hog Island just to get away from it.”

“I don’t blame you.” Amelia noticed one of the sailors eyeing them. “You’d better get back to work.”

“You too.” She winked then took the tray of food to the guests, who smoked and drank or danced to the music.

Amelia leaned against the railing, enjoying the peace of the ocean. The wake crashing against the side of the boat mingled with the stringed quartet; Wallis’s, the Duke’s, and the other guests’ conversations; and the gentle hum of the yacht’s engine. In the distance, she could just make out the green starboard lights of a cargo vessel traveling through the islands on the way to America or Britain. She could see them from her room sometimes at night, and once in a while one moored at Prince George Dock to take on supplies. The dark water spread out around them, the moonless night allowing the stars to shine overhead. Amelia stared up at them, trying to spot a constellation, when another light caught her attention. A blue aura glowed around the top of the antenna, turning on and off at short intervals.

They’re sending a message.

She’d been taught to watch for the blue light at Bournemouth, a rare phenomenon that, under the right conditions, could alert her to secret transmissions. She didn’t know if this transmission was secret but someone was defiantly radioing something somewhere. She peered out into the darkness at the cargo ship, wondering if the Southern Cross had radioed it out of a seagoing courtesy she wasn’t familiar with. She tried to see if a similar blue light illuminated the top of the other ship’s antenna when, all of a sudden, the vessel erupted in a ball of flame. Pieces of the hull shot into the sky with an explosion that echoed over the water and silenced the musicians and the guests.

Everyone hurried to the railing, surrounding Amelia with gasps of horror.

“What is it?” Wallis said from beside her, the fear that had paralyzed her during the Paris air raid making her voice quaver. The woman could bluster about her title and standing but the minute she encountered a real threat, she crumpled like a paper bag.

“I’d say the poor bastards were torpedoed,” the Duke said. “U-boat, most likely.”

“Torpedoes?” Wallis nearly hyperventilated at the possibility that they could be the next vessel to go up in flames from the unseen U-boat. The danger hung in the air with the thick smoke and the cries from the sailors flailing in the water.

“We have to help the survivors,” Amelia said. “We can’t leave them to drown.”

“We have to go back to port before we’re attacked.” Wallis looked ready to walk on water to get there.

“We’re perfectly safe,” Mr. Wenner-Gren assured her. “They wouldn’t dare attack us.”

He exchanged a look with Wallis that immediately settled the panic in her blue eyes and made the hair on the back of Amelia’s neck rise. Of course they were safe; he’d probably told the Germans they were in the area, along with the coordinates of the cargo ship.

Amelia looked at the antenna. There was no blue glow coming from it.

“We should help them,” the Duke said.

“At once, Your Royal Highness.” Mr. Wenner-Gren picked up the ship’s phone and gave directions in Swedish to whoever was on the other end of the line.

The engines whirred into life and the wind whipped the guests as the yacht sped up to carry them to the quickly disappearing ship. The flames were doused as the ship stood, stern up out of the water, and slowly slipped beneath the waves, casting the flailing survivors into darkness. As they steamed toward them, the Southern Cross’s crew prepared the lifeboats.

“We should get blankets and coffee ready for the survivors,” Amelia suggested to Wallis. “Imagine what the newspapers will say when they find out you’re involved in saving their lives.”

“They’ll be positively ecstatic.” The plotting tone in her voice was sickening. “Ladies, we have to prepare food and accommodations for those poor souls. Amelia, get some blankets.”

“I’ll show you where they are,” Barin offered. “Follow me.”

Barin led Amelia inside, past the dining room, the smoking room, and down the stairs to the lower deck with the staterooms. She then led her to a linen closet, checking to make sure no one was around before she spoke. “This isn’t the first time we’ve picked up survivors from a torpedo attack. Last year, before the Windsors arrived, we rescued three hundred people from the SS Athenia.”

“How fortunate the Southern Cross was so close.” They both knew it wasn’t a coincidence.

“That was quite an evening you had,” Eugenie said, reading the newspaper article about the hundred sailors they’d rescued from the SS Malta. The New York Times article praised Wallis, writing as if she’d rowed the lifeboats back and forth between the yacht and the survivors for the four hours it had taken to get them all on board.