 Later that month, a stylish carriage drew up before Philo's house in the Place Dauphine. The coachman descended and rang the bell.
Adrienne, planning meals in the kitchen with the cook, hurried down the back stairway from the second floor and made her way through the small stable and coach room to the front hallway.
The coachman's breath was frosting when she finally opened the door. Upset that she had taken so long, he barked: "Do you think it is summer? Tell Madame Beth to come here at once!"
Taken aback by his rudeness, Adrienne stood firmly in place. "I shall call no one until you explain your business here."
This brought no end to his temper. "Here, woman, you do as you're told. My mistress will freeze in this weather! Fetch Madame Beth immediately!"
A woman's voice called angrily from the carriage. "Gaston! Apologize! Do you think I cannot hear you? Madame Adrienne, forgive him, please. We have been traveling a night and a day by yacht and trains and this carriage to reach here with all possible speed. We are frightfully tired."
Adrienne strained to see the speaker, but a lowered shade hid the person from view. The housekeeper did not recognize the voice.
"Do I know you, Madame?" Adrienne asked loudly. "How is it that you are familiar with my name?"
Hardly chastened, Gaston stamped his foot. "My mistress is the Countess of Pierrefonds. Hurry! She will freeze!"
Adrienne threw up her hands. "Well, then, why don't you bring Madame la Comtesse inside? It is very warm in the house."
Gloved fingers pulled back the white shade, and a sad, but lovely, face peered at Adrienne from under a lifted veil. The housekeeper gasped and swung immediately into a curtsy. "Your Imperial Majesty! Mon Dieu , I did not know it was you! Forgive me! Please, please do come inside."
"I simply cannot," Eugénie replied. "I am traveling incognito in this heavy veil. No one must know I am in France. I beg you, bring my Beth to me quickly!"
Adrienne nodded and hurried upstairs.
A few moments later, Beth was embracing her royal mentor in the carriage.
"My Napoleon's own dear Queen of Scots, oh, I have embarked on the most dreadful mission! You must come with me to Vienna. I beg you! You must come."
Beth fell back in the seat. "But my little daughter, my husband, my exhibition at the Fair....."
"Nothing else matters now," Eugénie insisted. "We must go to the Empress Elizabeth. A private railway car has been sent to Paris for us. We must make haste!"
"I don't understand," Beth said. "What...."
"The world does not know yet. The Empress sent me a wire in code. I am racing against time. It may be only a matter of hours until...Oh, Beth!"
Eugénie buried her face in her hands and sobbed. Her shoulders heaved. Her body shook. Beth threw her arms about her and ran her fingers gently over her hair. "There, there, Majesty, tell me what has happened. What is it that only we can do?"
Eugénie lifted her tear-stained face. "Only we can understand what she is going through! It is the scandal of the century! Rudy, Crown Prince Rudolph, Elizabeth's son...they've found him in his hunting lodge at Mayerling. He...he killed himself...but not just that. He...he murdered his...mistress...as well."
Beth fell back again.
"Murder? And suicide! My God, he will roast in Hell forever!" she cried.
Eugénie's face drained of its little remaining color. Her fingers pressed Beth's lips. "Never say that again! Do you understand now why only we two can be of help? We have ourselves roasted in the fires of Hell on this very Earth! Do you remember our suffering together in those first terrible days at Camden Place? We must help her! Hurry! Go inside and collect your things. I dare not risk exposing myself until we scurry into the railway car at the station."
Returning to the house, Beth explained the situation quickly to Adrienne and Annie, who were charged with relaying the information to Philo and Bart. Both were advised to be discreet.
She hugged Annie tightly.
"Into your hands, Annie, do I commend my child," Beth declared. "Consider Romelle your daughter. I shall return as swiftly as I can."
In Vienna, they found the Empress Elizabeth inconsolable, but the presence of Eugénie and Beth was a tonic she realized she could never have done without.
The awful news had become public before their arrival. Such a story had proved impossible to contain.
"Now I have an inkling of what you went through," she told them. "I did not really think such a thing could ever happen to me. He was so alive just days ago, my Rudy, and now he is gone. What am I to do? How do I keep my sanity?"
Eugénie spoke up. "I have made for myself a place beyond time. Its existence begins when I lay my head upon a pillow at night and ends when I fall asleep. It may have no more substance than a gossamer web, but it seems very real.
"My son meets me there. He is not as I remember him in life. He has grown older, more mature. After all, it has been ten years! He gives the impression that he knows everything that I know, but that he has seen things I have never seen.
"When I awake in the morning, he is gone, of course. I arise with the prayer that he has simply wakened earlier than I to some other reality, and has left to start a new day in that world as I must begin another day in this one.
"Perhaps you will call my invisible abode a palace of wishful thinking, but it is a great comfort all the same."
Elizabeth remained very still.
Then, Beth began to speak. "I have found my consolation in the living world. I have married. I have allowed my husband to love me. I have borne his child. I love him as deeply as he loves me. I know our love is true because he does not possess me, as I do not possess him. I fear, though, that destiny has only lent me to him for awhile, and that, in time, I shall be taken away. I think often of the Prince Imperial. I still wear the coin of Mary Queen of Scots that I gave him, which...was given back to me."
She opened the top buttons of her blouse and withdrew a gold chain she wore around her throat.
"It is as you say, Madame Eugénie," Beth continued. "We must deal with two realities, not one, as others do. On this chain I wear the coin representing the reality in which my prince now dwells, wherever that may be. Beside it, I wear this simple whistle, carved by my beloved husband's own dear hands when he was five years old. It summoned his saviors on two occasions and, on a third, even Benjamin Disraeli responded to its call! My daughter loves to play with it. She sometimes uses it to summon our dog."
She smiled as if to herself. "Who knows when it might settle someone's fate again?"
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