Midnight Rain:

Chapter 1: The Princess Arrives to Mayfair:

Meanwhile, in France.

Screams were heard from the isolated bedroom. The maids and servants winced as they listened. It was awful. The sound of the poor girl's screams rattled the windows. It felt ear-piercing.

After what felt like hours, the screams stopped.

"Your Highness?" Jane, the princess's lady's maid, spoke quietly as she walked into the dark room. She saw the princess lying on the bed, over the sheets, and her soft sniffles filled the room. "Your mother has written back." She said, cautiously approaching the bed.

"I don't feel like reading it, Janie... Would you care to do so?" The princess asked softly, keeping still as she only adjusted her robe to cover the darkening bruises on her upper thigh that were barely hidden by her nightgown.

"She wants to know when you shall return home... You have been gone for nearly three years." Jane said, scanning the letter from Her Majesty, the Queen.

The princess, Evelina, did not say anything. She sighed, rolling onto her back as she looked up at the ceiling. 

"My lady--" Jane went to ask when Evelina suddenly sat up.

"Write back... I shall-- I shall return to marry... If I do not have any episodes between now and then. That is when I shall return to London. No sooner." Evelina said, tears running down her cheeks as Jane sighed, nodding when she moved to the small desk in the room to write down what Evelina requested.

Italy, that same day.

"All in, gentlemen." The Earl of Chester smirked, laying down his winning hand as the men at the table groaned in frustration.

"You seem to have quite a lucky hand, Hanover." One of the older gentlemen scoffed, picking up his glass of whiskey.

"Or there must be some foul play..." Another gentleman scoffed at his third loss.

"Perhaps you are just terrible at cards, Lord Parkins," James smirked when the servant standing by the table began to shuffle and collect the cards. James smirked, collecting his earnings, before a servant walked over to him with his maternal aunt, Lady Florence Tremblay. "Ah... What a surprise, my dear aunt." James said with a smile as he was ready to win another game of cards.

"Not a lovely one... James." Florence sighed, walking over as she extended a letter in front of James's face.

"What is this?" James asked, taking the letter as he cracked open the seal.

"A letter. From your father." Lady Florence said as James looked up at her in disbelief.

His father had not written to him in years. What was the sudden change?

One year later.

The Royal Palace, London.

"Brimsley... Why are my children not here?" Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (the Queen Consort of Great Britain and Ireland) scoffed as she walked down the halls of the Kew Palace with her servant, Brimsley, walking behind her with her ladies-in-waiting.