A Flaw in the Blood Page 9

  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

  “She 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.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “I must go to St. Giles,” Georgiana said frantically. “Where is my wrap?”

  “But you haven't eaten!” Fitzgerald protested. “There's nothing more you can do for Lizzie—she's gone, Georgiana. She's gone.”

  “I might examine her.” She moved swiftly to
the hall. “Certify the death. It's the least I can do—having failed to save her life.”

  The bitterness in the words chastened him. “You mustn't blame yourself, lass. She was exceedingly ill.”

  Georgie stopped short, her bag in her hands. “Who else am I to blame? Do you seriously imagine that Uncle John ever lost a patient?”

  “O'course he did!”

  “Not within my knowledge! And I have so few patients as it is—” She swallowed convulsively. “Only the desperate are willing to trust a woman doctor. And when I fail, I am judged far more severely than a man should be.”

  “You judge yourself too harsh, surely?”

  “Patrick—that girl was fourteen! She had her whole life before her.”

  “And what a life it was! She was on the brink of death when you went to her—and not because of anything you did.”

  “How dare you?” she flashed. “How dare you presume to suggest that Lizzie, being only a girl of the streets, is better off dead? Oh, God, when I see the mess men make of the world! —Pray make my excuses to Gibbon, Patrick.”

  “Wait,” he ordered, as she grasped the doorknob. “I'll fetch a cab.”

  He hastened into the scullery.

  “Gibbon, Miss Armistead has been called out to a patient. The hour grows late, and I must ask you to ready the Dauntless.”

  “The Dauntless,” the valet repeated. “Where bound, on such a miserable night?”

  “Sheppey. We'll meet you at Paul's Wharf no later than half ten. Bring a carpetbag with everything I'll need for Shurland, there's a good lad.”

  “You're never taking that lady to Shurland Hall, Mr. Fitz!” Gibbon burst out, shocked.

  “I must. It's the very last place anyone will look. Eat the dinner yourself, like a good chap.”

  “I wish I'd never followed you onto that roof,” Georgiana muttered as he settled her in the hansom a quarter-hour later. “If I'd spent more time with Lizzie— If I'd made certain the sutures were properly set—”