A Flaw in the Blood (9 page)

Fitzgerald snorted.

“It was an art he perfected, Patrick—a sort of inward flight. How do you think the man endured twenty years in this country else? A foreigner—and from that Germany which so many English despise—a person compelled by social reform and the advancement of science, rather than his own gain. He was inexplicable to most of those he met.”

“But not to you,” he countered. “That was a bond between you, wasn't it—being out of step with your peculiar worlds? You have your own form of inner flight, love.”

“Perhaps. I may say that the Prince was never truly at ease with women.”

“No?” Too much hope in his voice.

“Females made him acutely uncomfortable. He had a horror of impropriety; and he seemed to consider it a woman's disease. I suspect he regarded me as he did his daughters—intelligent, and safe.”

Fitzgerald flushed; he'd caught the echo of regret in her voice. She'd have preferred to be dangerous.

“Patrick—if I thought the correspondence between us should be publicly exposed—and by some mischance
diminish
the Prince's reputation in the eyes of the world—I should . . . I should . . .” Her fists were clenched again, and a storm of futile anger swept over her face.

“It may not be the Prince those thieves thought to strike at, love,” he said wearily. “
You
may be the one they intend to harm.”

She frowned. “What can you mean?”

“Revenge.”

She was very still for a moment. “Von Stühlen. You believe he paid for the ransacking of my house? He
does
hate me. I humiliated him too publicly.”

“You'd have done better to slap him, that morning at Ascot.”

“But to laugh was irresistible.” She began to pace before the fire, her lips working. “My God, Patrick—if von Stühlen should presume to attack Albert publicly—one of the Consort's oldest friends—and at
such
a time—”

He noticed that she cared nothing, in that instant, for her own reputation.

“What else did Albert write, in his bit letters?”

There was a pause; in the silence he caught the soft thud of coals dropping from the grate, and the discreet clink of cutlery from the dining room.

“What was written, was written in confidence—”

“Aye! And now the letters have been stolen, the whole world may soon read them!”

She met his eyes frankly. “He consulted me about his son. Prince Leopold.”

Fitzgerald was about to speak when the front bell rang through the rooms. Both of them froze.

“News of Septimus?”

There was a murmur of conversation from the front passage; then Gibbon appeared at the parlour door.

“A letter for miss,” he said. “Sent round from Russell Square. I've told the man to wait.”

She tore open the flap and read the brief message.

Fitzgerald watched her colour drain.

“Georgie?”

She looked up. “It's that girl in St. Giles.
Lizzie.
She died an hour ago.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I'
VE DECIDED THE FUNERAL SHALL
be on the twenty-third of December,” Bertie said diffidently, “so as to salvage something of Christmas. Mama does not attend—she goes to Osborne in four days.”

“And I shall have to go with her.” Alice kept her head bent over her needlework, aware of a creeping sense of oppression. “
Christmas!
I have not the heart for it. Mama will shut herself in her rooms, and stare at the sea. There is nothing so wretched as Osborne in winter. You'll return to Cambridge, of course?”

“On Christmas Eve. The funeral party shall be entirely gentlemen. The service here in the Chapel Royal. No public parades, no scenes about the cortege to remind one of Wellington—”

“No. Mama would not have it. She abhors such display.”

“Mama hasn't said a word about the arrangements,” Bertie mused. “She left everything to me—though she refuses to speak directly, or remain in any room I enter. It's almost more than one can bear, her stony looks. Her contempt for one.”

Alice measured her brother obliquely, her needle moving in and out of the square of canvas. His gaze was fixed on the coal fire that warmed her private apartments, and one elegant boot rested on the fender. At age twenty—indulged, protected, heir to the greatest Kingdom on earth—Bertie should be the picture of ease. But Alice felt his agitation like a powerful draught sweeping through the room. His pallor was dreadful. Deep shadows welled at his eyes. He hadn't slept since well before Papa's death last night.

“If Eliza treats you thus,” she said, using their private name for Mama, “you owe her nothing now. To be
free,
Bertie!”

“I shall never be free.” He fidgeted with his watch chain. “Never again. I thought, when I was in Curragh—and on my tour of North America—but all that is at an end. We cannot expect her to long survive our father. I must prepare for a higher duty.”

“Mama always defies expectation. Indeed, I believe she
prefers
to dash all one's hopes.”

“Hopes! I did not mean to say I
wished
her in the grave—”

“Of course not. To wish such a thing would be fatal. She would endure another forty years.”

“I think Eliza is terrified of death,” Bertie said unexpectedly, “with a fear that is quite pagan. The Lord Chamberlain took a mask of Papa this morning and Mama refuses to look at it. Of course, she can't bear to have it destroyed—that would do violence to Papa, or perhaps to his memory. So I suppose she'll end by shelving it in a storeroom somewhere, for future Windsorites to discover amidst the rest of the cast-off lumber. Rather pathetic, really.”

“Eliza confused the mask for the man.”

“What do you mean?” His slightly protuberant eyes—so like Mama's—studied her acutely.

“She deals with the surface of things. As though the world went no deeper than her mirror. Papa has been ill for months, Bertie. She would not see it.”

“Months! Surely not! Clark told me he suffered from a low fever—a severe chill, taken when he . . . when
we
walked out together in Cambridge a few weeks ago.”

“And Jenner calls it typhoid. But typhoid is contagious and nobody else in Windsor has contracted it. I nursed Papa myself for much of the past fortnight—and I am perfectly well.”

“Perhaps you're stronger than we guessed. Or he was weaker than I knew.”

Alice raised her head from her needlework and regarded her brother. “You didn't kill him, Bertie.”

He started, as though she'd read his mind. “Of course not. How absurd! I've a few years to go yet, Alice, before I regard myself as God.”

“They blame you for Papa's death—Dr. Clark, that unspeakable Jenner, Eliza. I'm well aware how they've made you suffer. It's nonsense. Papa did not die because you lost your way for hours in the rain, that day in Cambridge. And he did not die because you took an actress to bed and broke his heart.”

The boot was pulled abruptly from the brass fender. “I didn't know you were aware of . . . Miss Clifden.”

“I had the story from Vicky. In strictest confidence, of course. Apparently rumours reached the Berlin newspapers. She says you'll never get a German princess to marry you, now.”

“Thank God for that.” Bertie smiled faintly. “Papa assured me it was only a matter of time before I was notorious throughout Europe. The visions he painted! My bastard children. My appearance in court, to answer the charge of paternity. The sensation in the press. The shame and infamy I would visit upon Mama. He could not speak enough about it, though I begged him to desist—though I assured him I had broken entirely with the lady . . .”

“Is Miss Clifden a lady, Bertie?”

“Not in the least,” he retorted, “but she was very good fun all the same, and a delightful change from tedious old Bruce and my tutors.”

General Bruce served rather ineffectually as Bertie's governor at Cambridge; but the Prince of Wales, deplored by both his parents for laziness, stupidity, frivolity, and a host of other crimes, had long since learned to outmaneuver his watchdogs.

“Say what you like, Alice—my indiscretion cut up the old man's peace quite dreadfully. I've never seen him in such a taking as he was that day in Cambridge.” Bertie inserted a finger in his cravat, loosening the choking folds. “Papa actually said that no good could be expected of me, given the
bad blood
that ran through my veins. Conceive of it! The insult to himself—not to mention Mama!”

“Bad blood?” Alice half-rose from her chair, the needle pricking her thigh. “He said that?
Bad blood?
”

“My death—no, my public
hanging
—would have been preferable to such a disgrace! You'd think nobody'd ever taken a tumble with a girl before! Why—”

“Bertie,” Alice interrupted, “what exactly did Papa say to you?
Your
blood is
mine,
after all!”

Bertie blinked at her. “It was while we were lost in the rain, and I put it down to exhaustion. He didn't make a great deal of sense, actually. He muttered to himself, like a sick man raving.
Your bad blood to usurp the sacred throne of England.
I suspect he regarded poor Nelly as a kind of contamination.”

“Raving,” Alice repeated. “Yes, that's how he seemed—wandering in his reason. Shall I tell you what he said to
me,
Bertie, at the end?”

Her brother sank onto the arm of her chair and regarded her steadily.

“He murmured quite low in my ear.
You cannot marry Louis, Liebchen. You cannot deceive him so. The flaw in your blood—
”

“You?” Bertie repeated. “But that's absurd. You've never enjoyed the mildest
flirtation,
Alice, much less a tumble.”

“I know.” She stared down at her hands. “His words have haunted me, Bertie. To know that he went to his death believing me
unworthy
. . .”

“Never.” Her brother uttered the word with the force of a curse. “You misunderstood him, that's all.”

“I didn't! I know what he said.”

“You misunderstood him.” The Prince of Wales rose abruptly, and strode to the door. “There's enough guilt in this poisonous place to drive us all mad, Alice. Don't invent more for yourself. Let Papa go. Marry Louis. For God's sake—
be happy.
I'd like to think that one of us is.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

S
HE IS AN ABORTIONIST,” VON
Stühlen said as he stood at his ease before the Red Room fire this evening.

I consented to receive him despite a general prohibition on visitors at Windsor. Dismissed my ladies and servants, so that we might be entirely frank. Such an intimate acquaintance of Albert's, a schoolfellow from Bonn and the dear days that are gone, could hardly be denied, regardless of how much I craved privacy in my grief. To see von Stühlen again is to recall a thousand painful moments to mind—his tall form beside my darling's as they carried in the evergreens, at Christmastime; his clear voice joined with Albert's in the singing of the German
Lieder,
of an evening at Balmoral or Osborne; his patient handling of Lenchen—my daughter Helena—as she schooled her first mount over a series of jumps. He is a beautiful figure of a man, of course—but beyond his personal charm, displays a steadiness of purpose, a degree of self-command, that must always win approbation. Albert regarded von Stühlen as almost another brother—so closely were they allied in temperament; and if I was a
little excluded
by the depth of their friendship, I do not regard it. I have an idea of the abyss of grief the unfortunate man must now suffer.

But he had introduced a subject I understood not at all.

“
Who
is an abortionist?” I asked him. “And what lapse of decency urged you to
mention
so unspeakable a horror? We have borne nine children, Count!”

I pressed a square of linen to my lips; von Stühlen bowed.

“I must beg Your Majesty's forgiveness. Necessity urged the disclosure; I speak of Miss Georgiana Armistead—the young woman who styles herself a doctor.”

His words
must
lash my heart, though I cannot pretend to surprise—the basest of evils must be commonplace to Miss Armistead, who has so divorced herself from woman's nature. But I would not betray the degree of my interest to von Stühlen.

“And of what possible concern is Miss Armistead to us, Count?”

He affected an air of easy amusement. “I had thought that quite obvious, Your Majesty. Miss Armistead was with Fitzgerald last night on the Heath.”

I lifted my shoulders a little in disdain, and made as if to turn the subject. “We hope that you signed Albert's Visitors Book when you entered the Castle.”

He looked all his confusion. “I am afraid—that is, I did not presume . . .”

“But you
must
!” I cried. “We have said that
everything
is to be kept as usual—all his dear personal effects, his clothes and brushes, his hot water for shaving. The linens are to be changed every day, and his chamber pot scrubbed. The Blue Room—where that Angelic Being breathed his last—is not to be a
Sterbezimmer,
a death chamber; but a sacred place, with pictures, and his bust, and perhaps a display of china . . . We might work there, from time to time, and feel his dear presence.”

“No doubt that is as he would wish.” The Count looked a little troubled, as though by invoking my Beloved I had recalled his mind to sorrow. He inclined his head. “But I was speaking of Georgiana Armistead.”

“Were you, indeed?” I adjusted a Dresden figure on the mantel; a dying stag, beautifully fashioned. Have I mentioned that Albert was an accomplished sportsman? He formed the habit, in his Coburg youth, of attending
grandes battues,
in which an extraordinary quantity of game are driven by beaters into an enclosure and there slaughtered at will by the gentlemen. It is a nauseating sight, and one I endured on few occasions, but I learned its essential lesson: Animals destined from birth to serve as prey for their masters are easily led, and led most often to their doom.

“She could be arrested on the strength of the word alone,” von Stühlen persisted. “But the unfortunate girl Miss Armistead quacked this morning has died of her injuries, and that deepens the magnitude of the crime—to one of murder.”

“
Double
murder,” I corrected. “You are forgetting the innocent babe that woman cut from its mother.”

“Of course.”

I caressed the stag. So smooth, the porcelain, it might have been my darling's thigh. “We do not know what you are thinking of, Count,” I said fretfully. “You used the word
arrest.
However great the enormities committed by this . . . creature . . . we cannot allow her to be subjected to the scrutiny of the courts. Much less the Metropolitan Police. Such eventualities would be
most
undesirable. She is, by all accounts, not unintelligent—and we cannot rely upon her
discretion.
No—it is in every regard
unthinkable
that she should be pursued by so public a force as the Law.”

“She might indeed talk—and Your Majesty is afraid of what she might say. . . .”

There was a quality in his voice that surprised me—a quality I could not like.

“One of my people searched Miss Armistead's lodgings this morning,” he persisted.

“They had better have been in church,” I returned tartly, “to pray for the repose of Prince Albert's soul.”

“They found a surprising quantity of papers in her study.”

“A
lady
does not possess a study.”

“—Letters of business, and correspondence with men of science. Apparently she even presumed to share her views with
Royalty
.”

A vise closed around my heart. That firm, sloping hand I had consigned to the flames—the false propriety of her address—the hideous things she had disclosed to my Beloved, and the irreparable damage she had done to his Reason . . . “Impossible! You forget yourself, Count.”

My darling's oldest friend drew a folded sheet of paper from his coat, and commenced to recite.

“My esteemed Miss Armistead: Pray allow me to assure you how greatly I enjoyed our conversations regarding housing for the poor, and how deeply I value your approval of my own poor contributions to that realm . . .”

“Give me that paper at once!” I cried.

He eyed me satirically, the letter firmly in his grasp. Can I ever have committed the mistake of believing him handsome? Of believing him a paragon of our age?

“I am in possession of a number of such
billets-doux,
” he murmured gently. “A correspondence spanning years—on all manner of subjects. Most of them insufferably dull. I shall not trifle with Your Majesty's patience by reading them: water quality, epidemic illness, the management of charitable relief . . . but I am hopeful of discovering more
intimate
views. Only one doubt assails me, and I must put it frankly to Your Majesty. How is the public likely to regard our dear departed Albert, if his . . .
interest
in a lady not his wife . . . were to be generally known . . . ?”

“You can say this,” I faltered, “knowing how that Angelic Being
loved
you?”

The dying stag trembled under my hand, and fell to the floor. Quite smashed. The jagged fragments glittered like knives in the firelight. All the knives were drawn out, on every side and by every hand; I kicked them away with my boot.

“My loyalty to Albert was of a different order from yours,” he told me quietly, his visage dreadfully white; “I will not speak of it here. The problem of the letters is otherwise. Let us call it Albert's legacy to his old friend . . . he certainly bequeathed me nothing else . . .”

“I wonder you
dare
to speak his name.”

“Your Majesty ought to thank Providence that these letters came to
me,
” he cut in, suddenly harsh. “Had they been left to unreliable hands—Miss Armistead's, or Fitzgerald's—every sort of scandal might be expected. The question remains, however:
What is to be done with them?
”

“A true friend would have burned them long since.” I said it with contempt. “That you have failed to do so—that you prefer to tease and bait us—suggests that you are our
enemy,
Count.”

“My devotion was to Albert,” he retorted. “But unlike him, I did not abandon my birthright to grovel at the foot of a foreign power. Poor Albert expired, worn out by his
service;
I owe Your Majesty
nothing
.”

His peculiar emphasis did not escape me. I had long suspected the jeering ridicule of Albert's German coterie—I knew the coarse nature of their remarks.

I strode in a rustle of bombazine to the Red Room door. The blackguard called after me.

“I take it, then, that I may sell these letters to the
Morning Post
?”

I was tempted to tell him, as Wellington once urged a slighted mistress, to
Publish and be damned
—but the potential harm to the Kingdom stopped the words in my mouth. “Stay— You know that I may better the papers' price.”

He inclined his head.

He
nodded,
when any other man would have been on his knees before his widowed and sorrowing Queen.

“I shall offer them to the highest bidder for publication, solely as a last resort—and only then if I am convinced that Your Majesty has no regard for Albert's memory.”

I pressed my back to the door and stared at him. “Very well. And how must I demonstrate my regard, Count?”

“You might reward
mine.
” He smiled. “An English peerage. An estate and a sinecure, with an adequate income—let us say, of ten thousand pounds per annum?”

My throat constricted with rage and grief. “So little!”

“I have never been an unreasonable man.”

I laughed—and felt immediately overcome by a remorse so profound it almost undid me. That I should
laugh,
when that dear form lay, cold and unresponsive, in the Blue Room; that the sound of mirth, however bitter, should resound within these walls! Even
I
am capable, it seems, of the rankest betrayal . . .

My fingers remained frozen on the door handle. If only my darling were present to advise me! That this man he had loved like a brother should blackmail me in my grief—

Von Stühlen waited, as patient as Death.