“Well,” Georgie said mildly, “in a manner of speaking, he is. Gunther's twenty-six years old, and up-to-date on all the newest theories. He's not an old woman, like Jenner and the rest of them at Windsor. He'll do Leo good.”
Twenty-six. Exactly Georgie's age. Had she enjoyed talking to Gunther, Fitzgerald wondered—someone equally conversant with science? As opposed to the middle-aged Irishman who understood nothing?
“How long have you known Rokeby?” he demanded. Another fellow with taking manners and an easy competence; his eyes had followed Georgiana throughout the evening, and he had studiously avoided Fitzgerald whenever possible.
“Some years. His brother will be a duke.” She shrugged. “One met him everywhere before he joined the diplomatic service. A pleasant enough fellow—and not at all dissipated, which is a relief among his kind. Gunther tells me he has behaved most intelligently toward young Leopold.”
“How so?”
“—By leaving him in the Bowaters' charge, of course. There was some concern that the loss of Sir Edward would throw all their plans into disarray, but I gather the entire household is to remain at Château Leader through February, as originally planned.”
“Does Gunther know his trade?”
“He did admit that he observed several similar sufferers during his studies at the medical college in Bonn.”
“And? Is he likely to save the child?”
Her footsteps slowed. “I hardly know. He talked a good deal of theory. That illnesses are more or less common because certain populations remain isolated—that is to say, they have limited contact with the broader world, and circulate their disorders among themselves, through social intercourse and even intermarriage. In some cases, Gunther says, such populations are less susceptible to disease—they appear to grow accustomed to it, and resist it better than those who are not. In other cases, parochial societies encourage disorders to flourish. Entire towns in the Bavarian Alps, he tells me, will manifest certain maladies that cannot be found elsewhere. As though they could be passed among generations, much as the Duke of Wellington's children got his nose—or your Theo got Lady Maude's hair.”
“But he might not have done,” Fitzgerald countered. “He might have got mine.”
“Exactly. Not everyone inherits every aspect of their parents, Patrick. Otherwise, we should all look and act exactly the same—whereas in nature, variety is infinite.” She studied him measuringly. “To mention Theo, again—appearances can be deceiving. He looks like Lady Maude to an extraordinary degree. But his inner nature—his intellect, proclivities, even his emotions—may owe just as much to you. It is often the case that conflicts arise between father and son when they are too much alike.”
Fitzgerald was speechless. He felt raw, exposed—all his vulnerabilities tossed at his feet. She had seen, then, how strained was his bond to Theo; had seen as well how much the boy mattered. How he yearned for an expression of love from his son.
“I confess that I find Gunther's theories quite intriguing,” she continued serenely.
“Lord, they seem dead obvious.” Her knowledge of him was too shaming. “Families resemble each other. And so?”
“—If the appearance of a nose, or a pair of eyes, or a facility for writing poetry can be inherited,” Georgie said patiently, “then, too, can be a weakness for disease. This is a point of some debate, Patrick. Uncle John was adamant that disease is created by squalour, and infects the water or air, as with cholera and typhoid. In Prince Leopold's case, however, one cannot point to a source of infection. His malady has been present from birth.”
“Inherited? From the Queen? Or the Consort?”
Georgie's eyes were suddenly alight; he had hit on the point of the whole conversation at last. “Prince Leopold's malady is exclusively found in males, Gunther says—at least, in Germany.”
“So it came from Albert?”
She shook her head. “A man with the disease never has a son with the same disorder.”
“So it isn't inherited?” Fitzgerald asked, bewildered.
“Please, Patrick—allow me to explain. A man who bleeds will have a healthy son. Males cannot pass it to males. But a bleeder's daughter will quite often have a boy with the bleeding malady.”
“The illness skips a generation?”
“And is apparently passed through the mother.”
“Victoria.” Fitzgerald kneaded his temples, trying to comprehend what this might mean. “You're saying the Queen caused the flaw in the boy's blood?”
“As much as anyone can, when the thing is so entirely in God's hands.”
“But she's had three other sons! And none of them—”
“None of them got the Duke's nose. That's the way of it, with families.”
His footsteps slowed as they neared the hotel. Something she'd said, just now—something she'd said a week ago, in London . . . “Georgiana, have you thought of what you're saying? About the heritability of Leo's disease?”
She looked at him searchingly. “What is it, Patrick?”
“The poor lad got his flaw from his mother. Well and good. But where did she get it?”
“Who knows?”
He shook his head. “That won't fadge, love. I've never heard a whisper of a British Royal with this kind of malady. We'd have known. You know how people talk—how the gossip sheets speculate. The wild rumours on every front. Princess Sophia's bastard. Prinny's marriage to Maria Fitzherbert. Cumberland's lust for boys. Something as ripe as unchecked bleeding could never have been suppressed.”
Georgiana frowned. “There's something in what you say. The Hanoverians have always been known for a lurking madness—old King George, for example. But not this frailty in the tissues. The Duke of Kent certainly wasn't troubled by it, at all events. But his wife—Victoria's mother?”
“What did Prince Albert think? He'd have known. The Duchess of Kent was his aunt.”
“I have no idea what he thought,” she said quietly. “I only know what he said. They're often different things.”
Fitzgerald waved one hand dismissively.
“He had never encountered Leopold's disorder before,” she conceded. “Among his own people, I mean. That's what he said. That's why he asked for Uncle John's notes.”
“And burned them.”
“Yes. Patrick—”
“If Victoria's mother didn't carry it, and her father didn't carry it, then the disease must have come from somewhere else.”
“But it's not an illness you just . . . catch,” Georgiana protested.
“No. You have to inherit it.”
“You're saying—”
“—That perhaps Victoria's father wasn't really her father.”
Georgiana drew a rapid breath.
Fitzgerald grasped her shoulders with both hands. “Is that it? Is that why she's hunting us? —Because she thinks you know what she's tried to hide from the rest of the world—what has forced her to send her son into exile—that the Queen of England has no right to be queen at all?”
“It can't be,” Georgie said. She twisted out of Fitzgerald's grasp and began to walk hurriedly into the hotel. “It's too fantastic, Patrick!”
“Does Gunther know what he's told you? —What possible danger he's in?”
“Obviously not.”
“But your Albert hired him!”
“At the recommendation of a certain Baron Stockmar, a Coburg doctor who has been the Consort's advisor for years. He's quite old now, Gunther says, but has all the family secrets in his keeping—”
She stopped short, her expression changing.