“Margaret drinks.”
“All our Scots are prone to . . . their ways. It is a part of their natural simplicity.”
“She no more understands how to dress a lady of fashion than would a cow.”
“That is as well—for you cannot be thinking of fashion in the depths of your loss.”
The dressmaker's hands faltered in their industrious fitting; I must suppose the creature, with unflagging impertinence, overlis-tened to my intimate conversation with my daughter—and heard my gentle words as a rebuke to her profession. I quitted the room immediately—for I have a horror of encroaching ways on the part of any of my dependents.
Alice found me out, however, an hour later, as I drank tea in the seclusion of the Blue Room—which I have strewn with bouquets of fresh flowers, sent daily from the London florists. I like to sit here, and shall sit here a great deal in future. I shall read what Palmerston gives me, and perhaps His Spirit shall guide whether I sign Palmerston's papers or no.
“Mama,” Alice said, “is that Papa's cast you are holding?”
The cast of Albert's arm, that we had made when the children's were cast, a few years ago. I rest it in my lap from time to time, the fingers clutched in mine.
“It feels so very like,” I said. “Particularly when the warmth of my body has softened the plaster.”
She turned her face aside, but not before I caught the expression of repugnance. Alice has never been a careful child; she is not like Helena, who presents a dreaming visage to the world and allows no hint of what she truly feels to be read by its multitudes. Alice betrays everything.
“You know, Alice, I am not sure that you truly love your Louis,” I observed. “But then—what can a girl of eighteen understand of love? An infatuation, merely. A flight of impetuous fancy.”
“Mama, why did you order Violet dismissed from my service?”
“I believe the girl was in my service, Alice—not yours.”
She gestured impatiently. “Even so. You sent her away without a character, but a week before Christmas. Was that just? Was that kind?”
I placed the cast of my Beloved's arm carefully on the desk that stands in the Blue Room; it shall weight down Palmerston's papers, when he brings them. “Violet was impertinent.”
“Impertinent! Because she reported my silk flowers to be missing—the same flowers you later burned in the garden? Mama, I must and will know why those flowers disturbed you so!”
“Because of where they were found. Naturally.”
“In Papa's study?”
“In a vase of water.”
“But how is that to the purpose—what can that have had to do with Violet?”
“It is possible . . . that she colluded with him. That she gave him the flowers. And told you they were missing only when you should have perceived it for yourself—when the review of your wardrobe was made, in preparation for mourning.”
Alice looked her bewilderment.
And now, I thought, she will tell everyone that I have gone mad.
I withdrew the one letter I had saved from burning, in the midnight destruction of my Beloved's correspondence—the letter from Baron Stockmar, written over a year ago—and offered it to Alice.
“Read it,” I commanded. “You will know better what I am about, once you have understood the words.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The need to run hammered in Fitzgerald's brain. Georgiana moved only slowly across the mile of bog and meadow between the Hall and the Dauntless. Fever made her stumble and her breath tore through her ragged throat. Already, the dusk had fallen.
Between them, Fitzgerald and Gibbon tried to support her; but there was baggage to carry—their clothes, and Georgie's satchel of instruments. The grip of Fitzgerald's hand on her arm was so tight it must have hurt her; but she said nothing, her jaw set, as their boots squelched through the stinking marshland.
“You might consider, Mr. Fitz, an improvement to your mooring when next you're at Shurland,” Gibbon suggested. “A gravel path, mebbe, straight down from the house. Or moor the steamer at Sheerness, however inconvenient.”
Fitzgerald said nothing. They had come to the head of the brackish creek where they'd anchored the Dauntless. His eyes searched ahead, straining against the gathering dark; strained again.
“I reckon we're dead nigh,” Gibbon said uncertainly.
Fitzgerald stopped in his tracks and released Georgie's arm. She sagged against him.
“Patrick—what is it?”
The Dauntless was gone.
Theo had done as he'd agreed, and escorted Coultrip's trap as far as Brambledown, a mile and a half west of the Hall; but as the cavalcade entered the small sheepherders' village, Clive pulled up dead lame.
“You'll have to go on alone, Coultrip,” he said as he slid out of the saddle and lifted his hunter's foreleg. “I'll follow tomorrow. Clive's done in.”
“Your father won't like it,” the old man said bluntly.
Theo raised his head. “My father's on his way to France. What has he to do with anything?”
“Theo, darling,” murmured Lady Maude, “Patrick did his best. I was bloody to him, always. Poor lamb.”
“Go on,” Theo persisted, ignoring her. “Put up at the Britannia. I'll call for Mother tomorrow.”
“It's no druthers to me what you do, lad,” Coultrip replied, snapping the reins over his nag, “so long's you lock up t'Hall tight.”
Theo stood for a moment, watching them go. Then he turned and began to lead Clive back along the road they'd come.
He did not believe his father's warnings. He was alone, and free, for the first time in days. He would build a good fire and spend the night reading a book. His heart felt lighter than he could ever remember.
Von Stühlen had pulled up his hired fly in the sole clump of trees Eastchurch boasted. The wind off the sea, two miles distant, was bitterly cold and the driver thinking of his horses, the way muscle and bone stiffened dangerously in such weather when the animals weren't moving.
They had been waiting for over an hour on the approach to Shurland Hall, the fly screened by the coppice's branches, blankets tossed over the horses' backs. After half a day on the island, von Stühlen knew a good deal about the isolated and poorly-secured house. He knew Fitzgerald was inside, and Georgiana Armistead with him. That an invalid and her companion were the only other occupants. The servants, an elderly couple.
He set aside the volume he'd been reading—Tennyson's Idylls of the King—and consulted his pocket watch. Nearly six o'clock. He would have preferred midnight, the household sleeping, and the cover of darkness complete; but he could not keep his men hunched in the cold any longer.
Idylls of the King. Albert had recounted once a visit he'd made to Tennyson's home at Freshwater, not far from Osborne—how he'd surprised the poet laureate in the midst of unpacking at the new house, Albert standing awkwardly by a window to gaze out at an indifferent view, praising everything in his correct German way as Mrs. Tennyson disposed of her china . . . Victoria did not deign to visit Freshwater, but summoned Tennyson to Windsor instead, and made him spout his poetry as though she were Elizabeth, and Tennyson Shakespeare. Such scenes reflected poorly on each, von Stühlen reflected.
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—