“That shouldn't be difficult. He's rather well known.”
“But we've got no German, lass. We'll be marked as foreigners,” Fitzgerald muttered. “That could be dangerous, if von Stühlen is on our heels.”
“I'll use my French,” she said brusquely. “It got us this far.”
There had been no hint of pursuit, during the long hours of relentless travel; and it was just possible, Fitzgerald thought, that they had escaped—that von Stühlen was still in Paris, watching the Channel ports in the belief that they would double back to England.
But the suspense—the constant watchful apprehension—was taking its toll on them both. Fitzgerald's deepest desire was to turn and face his enemy: make von Stühlen scream his crimes aloud, as he died in pain for Theo's sake. He continued east only by an act of will. The part of his mind still unconsumed by rage recognised that the answers lay in Coburg. If Georgie was ever to be allowed to live her life in peace, the answers must be found.
For his own part, he cared nothing for the future. He could not think past the moment when he confronted von Stühlen in the flesh, and tore his life from his frame.
They stumbled on an inn several streets off the main square. Servants were expected to sleep on the floor of their masters' rooms; hiring a separate one would excite comment. Georgie had accepted this prosaically; Fitzgerald gave her the bed, and took the pallet on the floor. That first afternoon in Coburg she threw herself on the mattress and slept in her clothes like a dead thing.
Fitzgerald studied her inert form, then closed the door gently and made for the taproom. Unlike Georgie, he spoke no French. He thought, however, he could find someone who knew where Stockmar lived.
But would the Baron consent to see them?
Chapter Forty-Two
Wolfgang, Graf von Stühlen, was only a day behind Patrick Fitzgerald, and gaining on him every hour.
He knew the roads and towns of the Rhineland and Thuringia, the border lands of Bavaria, as well as he knew his father's estates. He rode hard, on horseback, avoiding the delays of railways and weather; his baggage and his valet followed more slowly behind.
It was a hunch that drove him toward Coburg: a seed in the gut that Gibbon planted unwittingly in the courtyard of a French gendarmerie. It grew during an interlude at the Château Leader in Cannes and would flower, von Stühlen felt certain, in a day or two at most.
He had not tried to wring information from young Leopold—who clearly had helped Fitzgerald escape; the loss of the donkeys was common knowledge in the Bowater ménage. Nor had he approached the girl Louisa, who seemed frightened of him. He assumed he had his eye patch to thank for this—and Lady Bowater, who clearly knew his reputation and treated him with chill civility. Gunther, however, was different. Gunther was German.
Von Stühlen talked to the young medical man of his training in Bonn—recounting his own student days with Prince Albert—and then of the boy in Gunther's charge. He had never really paid attention to Leopold before; Windsor's nursery set held little interest for him.
“This woman doctor,” he mused, as though he knew nothing of Georgiana Armistead. “She was acquainted with Prince Leopold?”
“She had examined him—at the Consort's request.”
“So she claims.”
“Leopold volunteered the fact. I find nothing singular in Prince Albert's confidence; despite her sex, Dr. Armistead is highly regarded in British scientific circles.”
“A pity, then, that she should throw herself away on such a disreputable fellow as Fitzgerald.”
“Ye-es,” Gunther agreed doubtfully. “I must assume we have an imperfect understanding of the facts. I cannot believe a lady of Miss Armistead's—I should say Dr. Armistead's—intelligence and character should be capable of duplicity.”
They spoke in German, of course, as they walked against the force of the mistral, on the château's terrace: two men shoulder to shoulder, von Stühlen nursing a cigar.
“I see you were susceptible to her charms, my unfortunate Theodore,” he said with amusement. He had decided to treat Gunther like a younger brother. “My condolences. But you are not the first to be flummoxed by a pretty face.”
“It wasn't like that,” the doctor protested. “We talked of theory, always. The heritability of disease.”
And as they walked in the weak December sun, waves booming off the Esterelles, Gunther told von Stühlen exactly why Georgie's mind was so stimulating.
By the time von Stühlen made his farewells, the name Stockmar had reached Gunther's lips. The Count was intimately acquainted with Albert's old friend.
Three hours later, he was on the road to Coburg.
Christian, Baron Stockmar lived with his wife in the Weber-Gasse, not far from Fitzgerald's hotel.
It was the baroness who led them to her husband's study. In all the years he had spent in England, he had always traveled without her; and she seemed resigned to this secondary role of messenger, of a life spent in subordination to the demands of the Saxe-Coburgs, barely meeting the baron's eye as she opened the double mahogany doors. She left them to face the dragon: an elderly man with sparse white hair, his neat clothes entirely black.
His hands shook as he took off his spectacles, and he braced them against his knees when he bowed to Georgiana. For this one important call she had abandoned her servant's clothes and donned a bombazine dress and sober bonnet Fitzgerald had purchased for her, second-hand, from a Coburg mourning warehouse.
“I had formed no intention of receiving visitors, and had you been anyone else, I should not have been at home.”
“You have our gratitude, sir,” Georgie said.
“You may thank your late guardian, Dr. Armistead. Oh, yes—I was acquainted with John Snow. We met in London, during the summer of the Great Exhibition. He was a rising man, then—but already marked by genius. A tragedy, to die as he did!”
Georgiana's lips parted; for an instant, she seemed at a loss for words. “We might say the same of the Consort.”
Stockmar smiled thinly. “I have lived too long, when I must bury a man who might have been my son. There are those in Coburg who feel compelled to offer condolences to me—to Stockmar!—who is nothing but an old man with one foot in his own grave. But you will hardly be so stupid. Albert spoke of you, some once or twice; and as he rarely spoke of anyone other than himself, in his letters to me, I comprehend what an impression you must have made. Your intelligence.” He cocked his head and studied her keenly. “Yes—your intelligence. It is a supreme mark of respect, that he should have admired it.”
“I knew how to value his good opinion, sir.”
“Of course you did. You are not a fool, like most women. And this gentleman with you—he is your guardian also?”
“At Dr. Snow's request.”
“At your age, Dr. Armistead, I should not think you required any. Fitzgerald.” Stockmar wrapped his spectacles over his ears—which protruded rather like a monkey's from his bony skull—and consulted a folded bit of notepaper. “You sent me this note from the hotel. Fitzgerald. As I recall, it was a barrister of that name who defended the Queen's would-be assassin, some twenty years ago. Are you the same?”
“I am, sir,” Fitzgerald said, astonished.
Stockmar frowned at him. “In Coburg, you should never have been allowed to present your case. But that is by the by. Why have you come all this way to talk to me?”
“Because the Prince Consort is dead,” Georgiana said. “And because we cannot believe it was typhoid that killed him.”
They had agreed, that morning at the hotel, that no word of the Queen's pursuit would pass their lips. It was essential that Stockmar know nothing of their true position; his being Albert's confidant did not necessarily make him theirs.