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When I first saw Leopold he was seated beside a chess set where he usually spent his time ignoring the world swirling around him. For some inexplicable reason he had looked up from the game and was staring at me. Fourth son of the Queen, whose mother liked to keep him close, he often sat playing chess in a corner of the throne room with his friend Henry of Bolingbrook, Hank to his friends. I didn't know that then, of course. At the moment I crossed the threshold of the throne room on my mother's steady arm with my three obligatory ostrich plumes in my hair and my long train spread out behind me, I simply saw a remarkably handsome young man with light green penetrating eyes looking up at me. I felt such a jolt of attraction that I could not catch my breath. A bright flame lit in the pit of my stomach and I nearly tripped on my way to be presented to Her Magesty.
It seemed almost surreal. I thought I might simply faint and have done with the ordeal. There I was, presenting myself at Court under the blazing gaze of the most remarkable man I had ever seen, a man who was so out of my reach as to be standing on the sun while I languished on the dark side of the moon. I recognized him, of course. Portraits of the royal family were not unknown even in the far reaches of the countryside where I had spent my youth. But portraits did not convey the living man. I was so blinded by him that I could see no one else in the room. In all our years together it would always be thus. There was no one for me but Leo. Thank God for Hank who stood like an invisible star beside his glowing sun and who himself had fallen in love with me in that instant. Who could ever have told me that I would be in love with and loved by two such remarkable and different men? Who could have told me that I would bear the Prince a bastard child under the very nose of the Queen?
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