Adela was here. Caroline had dragged Lucia to Adela's suite and they were now sitting in her room and talking as she got dressed. This would be their first dinner in the palace, and Lucia was looking forward to seeing the Queen again.
She had seen the woman briefly when they had first arrived but not since then. She had grown up with the woman treating her like a favourite niece and she had adored her. She felt a little guilty that she had not considered her when she had been away and refused to come back home, or maybe she had been hiding from her.
The last time she had interacted with the queen, the older woman had proposed that she marry Prince Michael when she turned eighteen. She had just been sixteen and that was the first time she had gotten a glimpse of how desperate the woman was to marry off her oldest son. That desperation had scared her.
