Chapter Two.

Melbourne had not slept, he had not eaten, he dressed quickly and set off for the Palace once he received the Queen's summons. He barely had time to process his own thoughts on the debacle of the previous night's proceedings. Such a mess for the Tories, and the Whigs for once came out on top! Melbourne chuckled to himself and felt a profound sense of relief that at the very least, he would not go down in history as the worst Prime Minister the country ever had. No, that was eternally reserved for Sir Robert Peel.

It did not take long for word to spread around London that Melbourne was Prime Minister once more, he saw the curious stares of the public who trod their well-worn paths to work, as he cantered towards the Palace. He wondered what they thought of his return, and whether they fully comprehended the magnitude of the situation in which he found himself once more.

The Queen had been widowed for less than a year, the political climate was wrought with uncertainties, and the former Prime Minister had been discovered to be conspiring with the second in line to the British throne, to assassinate the Queen.

Lord Melbourne sighed deeply and projected his usual air of nonchalance as he cantered past the usual members of the Ton out in their carriages in the Park. He had to protect her, and he would surrender his life to do so. That much he knew as Buckingham Palace appeared in the distance and he recalled an intoxicatingly excited young girl of only eighteen sitting alongside him and marvelling at the number of windows her future home possessed.

Gripping the reigns tighter, he hoped, above all else that she was not so inexorably altered from that young girl Queen who haunted his dreams.