A Flaw in the Blood Read online

  Why did he hate Victoria so deeply? —Because she had given Albert everything in the world, when his heart whispered it might as easily have been him? That it still might be Wolfgang, Graf von Stühlen, who inherited this English earth? Provided he steeled himself. Refused to let her sap his strength, as she had sapped Albert's—

  Jasper Horan, his face pinched with cold, tapped on the fly's window. Von Stühlen opened it a crack.

  “Oi, guv'nor—summat's coming along the road, bound for the house.”

  They had scattered five men in the sheep meadow as lookouts, against just such an eventuality; one of them must have raised his arm in warning.

  Von Stühlen felt for his pistol; it lodged snugly against his ribs, hidden by his cloak. He thrust open the fly's door and walked at a leisurely pace into the middle of the road, leveling his gun on the approaching horse, his gauntleted right hand raised.

  And if it were Fitzgerald? Georgiana Armistead with him?

  He could carry them both back to London, and the Metropolitan Police. But the Queen would dislike that; it would place her enemies immediately beyond her control. Charges, imprisonment, a trial—all of these would attract the attention of the newspapers, and give Fitzgerald a platform for protesting his innocence. Exactly what Victoria dreaded.

  Sick excitement filled von Stühlen's throat, and his fingers gripped the pistol more tightly. He would force Fitzgerald and his woman into the fly and later, in private, he would extort from them everything they knew about Victoria. He would learn, at last, why she feared and hated them so. And then—and then, he would destroy them. . . .

  No horseman, but a boy leading a rangy hunter at a walk. He stopped dead when he saw the dark figure with the gun raised.

  Von Stühlen's eyes roamed over the tense, whipcord body; no Fitzgerald. No Georgiana Armistead. It was she he had principally hoped to meet with in the dark; she he wanted to watch, as he killed her lover.

  He swallowed his disappointment, mind raging, and walked toward the boy.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Stolen, I reckon,” Gibbon said tersely. “That boat will never have simply floated away. I made sure the rope was knotted good and tight.”

  “Here,” Fitzgerald said. “Support Miss Georgie.” He walked forward a few paces through the pitch black, craning over the tussocks of marsh along the creek bed. In the darkness he struck his shin against a mooring stake—and stifling a curse, felt along its length. Part of the Dauntless's painter dangled from the iron ring.

  “Somebody's cut it loose.”

  “Von Stühlen?” Georgie faltered.

  The hair prickled on the back of Fitzgerald's neck.

  He could just faintly catch the sound of plashing oars, familiar since childhood. It came from farther down the channel.

  “We might strike out for Brambledown,” Gibbon was saying. “There's a few sheep farmers there'd take us in, mebbe.”

  Fitzgerald began to run toward the sound of the boat, tripping and stumbling wildly over the uneven ground. The pale glow of a shuttered lantern shone out some distance ahead, and he had an idea of the thieves, waiting for the cover of darkness, unwilling to fire the steamer's engine out of fear of the noise—

  A hand grabbed for his ankle, and he went down hard.

  The man was upon him in seconds, all his weight on Fitzgerald's back, forcing his face into the black muck of the marsh.

  Gasping, he reached backwards and clawed at the unseen killer, struggling to raise his nose from the bog. No good. The weight shifted and rolled but would not be shed. Fitzgerald's brain screamed with panic and he knew the impulse to suck the marsh deep into his lungs, desperate as he was for air. Something struck the crown of his head, but glancingly—a blow meant for another. And then the weight was gone and he could raise his face from the stinking muck.

  Gibbon, cursing gutturally as he rolled in the salt hay, his hands at their attacker's neck.

  Fitzgerald thrust himself to his feet, his senses singing, and staggered toward the two men. He began to kick the one that was not Gibbon, hard, in the small of the back. And then he remembered the pistol he'd taken from Shurland's gun room.

  With shaking hands he pulled it from his coat. If he fired it, von Stühlen would know where they were. If he fired it, he might hit Gibbon.

  He lifted the butt of the gun and brought it down hard on the killer's head.

  The man went limp.

  “You look like your mother,” von Stühlen observed, as he stopped short in front of Theo. “I knew her once, you see. Long ago. When she still went about in Society.”

  “That doesn't give you the right to hold me up like a common highwayman,” Theo said. “May I have the honour of your name, sir?”

  “Wolfgang, Graf von Stühlen.” He thrust the pistol into his belt. “And yours?”

  “Theo Fitzgerald-Hastings.”

  “Ah. An improvisation, I suspect.”

  The boy ducked his head. “I'm Monteith's heir. My uncle.”

  “So. You will be an earl one day, and I am a count. We may speak as one gentleman to another.” Von Stühlen held out his arm in a gesture of invitation. “May I accompany you to the house? There is a matter I must urgently discuss with your parent. Mr. Fitzgerald.”

  Theo tugged on Clive's rein, and trod warily forward. “No one's at home, I'm afraid. They've all gone but me.”

  “Impossible,” von Stühlen said easily. “I've been watching the road.”

  The boy stopped short.

  “Forgive me. Such measures are sometimes necessary, when one is in service to the Queen.”

  “The Queen?” Theo stared at him. “What has the Queen to do with Shurland Hall?”

  “I'm afraid that is your father's question to answer,” von Stühlen said gently. He began to walk again toward the house. Jasper Horan fell in with the pair of them, a few feet behind his master, and others—emerging from the trees—gathered inexorably. Three men, then five . . .

  “What do you want with him?” Theo demanded roughly.

  “We are looking for Mr. Fitzgerald . . . it pains me to say it . . . on a matter of possible treason . . .”

  “Rubbish!”

  Von Stühlen inclined his head. “Taken together with the unfortunate murder of his partner in chambers—and your father's sudden flight from London—there are any number of questions to be answered. But only one that I must put to you: Where is your father now? At precisely this moment?”

  Theo studied von Stühlen's face, the tension in his frame gradually easing; and then, he told him.

  “Georgie!” Fitzgerald muttered in a half-whisper. “Georgie!”

  She was sitting on the rock where Gibbon had left her, near the Dauntless's old mooring. Beside her stood a man hunched with age, a lantern raised in his right hand. Both of them turned to look at Fitzgerald and Gibbon as they emerged from the marsh.

  “This is Mr. Deane,” Georgie said. “He says he's your neighbour. He has a boat, Patrick.”

  It was a fisherman's dory, the oars shipped in their locks—the boat Fitzgerald had heard, before tumbling in the dark.

  Fitzgerald reached for his purse. “Could you take us around to Sheerness, Mr. Deane?”

  “He left this morning for France?” von Stühlen said as they halted in Shurland's courtyard.

  “Yes. He wished to take his mistress there, for the Christmas season,” Theo said indifferently. “Not particularly kind in him, to break his journey under Mother's roof—but Father has always had a curious notion of propriety. All my people have, to be frank.”

  “I see.” Von Stühlen scanned the Hall's weathered façade. “How exactly did your father quit the island?”

  “On his steamer. The Dauntless. He moors it at the head of the creek, a mile or two south of the Hall.”

  “I know. Your blacksmith—Applefield? Applewood?—told me as much. Which is why my men cut the boat adrift this evening.”

  Clive's head jibbed suddenly; Theo's grip had tightene
d on the lead. “Then I must be mistaken. I was out riding when Father left. Perhaps he took passage from Sheerness after all. It would be the safer choice, for a winter crossing.”

  “I don't think so,” von Stühlen mused. “I think, rather, that you are lying.” He drew the pistol from his belt and leveled it at Theo in one swift movement, the muzzle hovering between the boy's eyes.

  Theo stepped backwards, dropping Clive's lead. All around them, a casual circle of men, intent and watching. For an instant von Stühlen was swept backwards, to Bonn—another circle of watchers, in academic gowns this time, Albert attempting to quell the violence as a pair of peasants cowered in their midst—but he thrust the image firmly away. Mercy had triumphed that time; but mercy had no purpose here.

  “Tell me the truth.”

  “I have!” Theo cried hotly.

  “No.” He cocked the gun. “You've lied repeatedly. Where is your father?”

  The boy's eyes were trained on the pistol's mouth. Clive nuzzled his hair, the great nostrils blowing gently on Theo's scalp, and unconsciously he reached up to steady him.

  “I shall count to three,” von Stühlen suggested wearily. “One. Two—”

  “He went down to the Dauntless an hour or so ago,” Theo said quietly. “Did you really leave the mooring unguarded?”

  “No. I didn't. Horan!” Von Stühlen turned, his gun hand relaxing. “A party to the creek—and quickly!”

  Theo lunged for the dangling pistol, his fingers clawing at von Stühlen's wrist. The element of surprise helped him, briefly, before the older man reacted and the others closed in. But von Stühlen was strong, and experienced, and unafraid—as he turned the gun on the boy and his plunging horse.

  Chapter Thirty

  The very day that she was dismissed from the service of the Queen—a position she held because of her uncle, who before his retirement had been one of the Duchess of Kent's people, and had known Victoria from a child—Violet Ramsey fulfilled the errand with which HRH Princess Alice had charged her.

  She walked into Windsor and placed in the general post a plain white envelope addressed to the offices of the London Times. It was upon her return that the Master of Household informed her she was dismissed; she was not to see or speak to Princess Alice again, but to gather her few belongings and three days' wages before quitting the Castle for good. Violet might have protested, but she assumed her transgression—the posting of the Princess's letter—had somehow been witnessed or betrayed.

  On Wednesday, the eighteenth of December, the following notice appeared in the Times, in the midst of the column headed Personal:

  PRIVATE COMMUNICATION TO DR. ARMISTEAD.

  VITAL INFORMATION REGARDING A FORMER

  PATIENT. REPLY IN PERSON, THE KING'S ARMS,

  PORTSMOUTH, NOON 19 DECEMBER.

  Georgiana Armistead, for whom it might have been intended, never saw it.

  “You will write to me,” Alice urged, “when it's all over—and tell me how it was done?”

  “Of course.” Bertie lifted his hand, let it fall again. “It seems strange—all of us so scattered, when Papa—”

  Her brother stood awkwardly in his dark mourning clothes beside the carriage that was to take them to Osborne. The Queen had managed to quit Windsor quite early that Thursday morning: It was plain that she was desperate to be free of the place as soon as possible. She had not even looked at Bertie as she entered the carriage; a shudder had served as goodbye.

  Alice ran a delicate hand the length of his sleeve—Bertie was always impeccably turned out—and then, impulsively, stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “I know you will do as you ought. Think of me—I shall be thinking of you—on the twenty-third.”

  “Good luck with Eliza.”

  “Yes.” She glanced at their mother measuringly. Under the absurd peak of her widow's cap, her countenance looked oddly childlike, vulnerable.

  It was, Alice thought, the perfect mask.

  They reached Portsmouth at half-past eleven.

  It was the custom for the gunnery staff at the Naval Academy to salute the Queen with a volley of cannon, before she embarked upon the Isle of Wight ferry; but today the guns were silent, out of respect for grief.

  Alice knew she would have at most an hour at the King's Arms. Mama would take refreshment in her private rooms; and she had only to plead a bout of sickness to be left alone.

  “Of course you are indisposed,” Mama said coldly, when Alice wavered unsteadily in the doorway. “You could expect nothing less, from having crammed yourself into the nursery carriage. Five of you, and Beatrice most unwell! I do not know what you were thinking of. I was forced to attend to the Duchess of Atholl's expressions of sympathy for a full two hours—and she is exceedingly tedious, as I need not remind you. I have no patience with you at all, Alice.”

  Mrs. Thurston, who had guarded the infancy of most of the Queen's children, was calling trenchantly for warm milk and beef broth; Helena and Louise, far from retiring to rest as their mother would have wished, appeared to be bowling in the passageway; various maids and footmen were tramping through the upper floor of the inn as though it were a public footpath; and Lady Caroline Barrington, the Lady Superintendent of the Nursery, could faintly be heard adjuring the younger girls to pray partake of refreshment before embarking on the ferry, as the sea air would otherwise make them most unwell.

  Alice unlatched her door and peered into the passage. It was empty save for Madame Hocédé, the French governess, who disappeared into the private parlour as Alice watched. She closed the chamber door behind her and descended the main stairs, searching for the taproom. It was possible that Papa's unknown doctor might be waiting there—and she was desperate to speak to him, to hear him soothe the terror that had gripped her since Papa's death, to know that her life was not destined to be tragic, after all.

  But the inn was closed to all but the Royal party. Though she wandered the main floor until the carriages were brought round, and she was forced to submit and enter one—no one appeared to answer Alice's prayer.

  Part Two

  The Continent

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The donkeys were named Jacques and Catherine—pronounced in the French fashion, ka-TREEN. They were picking their way with complete certainty among the stone pines and the arbutus scrub, toward the mouth of the waterfall, and the sun was hot on Louisa Bowater's neck.

  She shaded her eyes with one hand and looked back down the precipitous trail. She had never seen such a landscape before, had never felt such an exultant rise of spirits at the unexpected glimpse of the sea; had never ridden a donkey, if it came to that, before this sudden descent into the south of France. She was nineteen years old, surrounded by strangers, and in deepest mourning. But here, on the dusty path cut through the olive groves, she could almost believe in the possibility of happiness.

  Leo had never ridden a donkey, either. He had barely been allowed to mount a pony at home—and that, only in Scotland, where he was hedged about with burly attendants. He injured himself so easily that if the donkey stumbled and tossed him onto the rocks—or if he slipped out of the saddle through sheer inattention—he might actually die. A careless bump in a railway carriage on the way to Avignon had rendered his arm useless for weeks. But he seemed unaware of the ridiculous risks he ran today. He trusted Gunther. And Gunther had told Leo, in his positive German way, that he would never be well unless he exercised.

  Louisa had no intention of contradicting the doctor—of burdening Leo with exclamations or sanctimonious warnings. They had long since moved beyond the stilted conversation of hired companion and dutiful child, to something more like the easy relationship of a brother and sister. Indeed, at nineteen, Louisa might have been Alice or Vicky—Leo treated her much as she guessed he had once treated them, before engagements and marriage and sudden exile had changed everything.

  He was holding the reins loosely in his right hand, and with his left, whacking at passing rocks with a bit of stick. He s
ang a tuneless little song as the donkey—he insisted on riding Catherine, always—lurched upwards. It was Christmas Eve, and they had come in search of a proper tree. Gunther carried the axe.

  It was the first fine day since Sunday, when the mistral had howled in off the sea, past the Îles de Lérins and the Esterelles jutting whitely into the foam, slamming doors and whirling dust into every corridor. That night, Louisa could hear voices crying in the old house's eaves. Lost souls, beseeching and desperate; she had not dared to ask Leo whether he heard them, as he lay in his narrow iron cot in the high-ceilinged room. She simply ordered fires to be lit in the bedchamber hearths, for a bit of comfort. This was, after all, her first experience of death and its hauntings.

  They had come to Château Leader, the grand pile of limestone fronting the Toulon road in the heart of Cannes, more than a month ago. Louisa had recorded the trip almost hourly in her journal: the landing at Boulogne, and the burly French peasant women who strapped baggage to their backs; the few days in Paris, as guests of the British Embassy; and then the slow, erratic descent to Avignon and Fréjus. The weather had grown steadily warmer and drier, the familiar vegetation of the north replaced by resinous stone pines and olive groves, arbutus and juniper. There were lizards on the rocks, and carts full of wine casks filling the narrow roads through the hills. Louisa's papa, Sir Edward Bowater, had been reminded more than once of his years with Wellington in the Peninsula, fifty years back; and he'd told the most exciting tales of war, Leopold hanging on his words in the tedium of the carriage, so that the boy and the elderly soldier had grown quite comfortable with each other—Leo going so far as to call Sir Edward Grandfather. He could not remember his own.