She considered an instant. “I didn't notice. Not that afternoon—there was too much to be viewed and decided. And I am never entirely at my ease, you know, in such a company of gentlemen—all of them distinguished in some field or another, and drawn to the Consort because of his power. Only he accorded me the kindness of listening to my observations—and because he did so, Bazalgette was forced to attend. I wonder how many of them believed me to be Albert's paramour?” she added on a note of bitterness.
“And were you?”
He had not been able to stop himself; he needed to know the answer too badly.
She turned and stared at him. “I should strike you for such a question, Patrick.”
“You should strike me for any number of reasons, Georgie—but not my frankness. Look you, there's never been a breath of scandal about Albert and the ladies, but you'll admit it's dodgy business to be adding a girl like yourself to a company of engineers! I never met the man. I want to know how deeply he went with you. How much pain his death has caused.”
She drew a shaky breath. “One need not have . . . intimate relations with a gentleman . . . to mourn his loss.”
“No.” Fitzgerald rubbed his hand over his eyes. Why hate a dead man so much? It was he, Fitzgerald, who was dining with her, after all. But Georgie's voice, whenever she spoke of Albert, was taut with respect. And something else. Was it yearning?
“So he looked well,” Fitzgerald said with effort. “And yet, a few weeks later—”
“I did not say he looked well,” she broke in quickly. “Indeed, I do not think he has been in health for some months. That particular afternoon I should describe him as preoccupied. He listened to Bazalgette—he asked all the appropriate questions—but there was no Albert in his eyes.”
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.”