A Flaw in the Blood (7 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

Y
OU THINK VON STÜHLEN IS
behind these attacks,” Georgiana said. “That's why you inquired about him.”

They had retraced their steps through the tenement building without a further glimpse of the murderous pack. A swift walk up St. Giles to the hackney stand in Covent Garden, both of them unsteady from relief and fatigue. The early dusk of December fell swiftly, and the temperature had dropped as the afternoon waned. Georgiana shivered uncontrollably in her soaked gown, and Fitzgerald thought it imperative to get her home as soon as he could. Her gloves were torn and her hair sliding out of the bandage; they had not stopped to inquire of Button Nance where her bonnet had gone. She looked, in short, uncharacteristically slatternly. Fitzgerald looked as careless as always—but he'd lost his topper.

The sole cabbie lingering at the stand was more interested in the sight of their money, however, than the state of their clothes. Fitzgerald did not respond to Georgiana's remark until the lap robe was tucked over her knees and the reins snapped over the horse's back.

Bells still rang throughout London for Albert's passing, a dull monotony after all these hours; lengths of black crepe had appeared on door knockers and window fronts. Shops in Henrietta Street, Fitzgerald noticed, already sported black mourning shutters—which were closed, like the premises. There would be a considerable loss of custom in the weeks running up to Christmas, except among the linendraper firms—everyone, even the children of the lowliest clerk, would go into blacks for at least a month.

“I asked about von Stühlen because I hated the way he looked at you,” he told Georgiana.

“Like a wolf with a cornered sheep?”

“You saw it, too?”

“Well, he
has
earned a dreadful reputation.”

“—For shearing sheep?”

“No. For raping the unwilling.”

There it was again—Georgie's appalling worldliness. “How do you think he lost his eye?” she continued.

“In a duel—or so it's said. Was that over a woman?”

“A fifteen-year-old girl of excellent birth—kidnapped, raped, and returned like a piece of soiled goods to her family several weeks later, when von Stühlen tired of her. The child's brother tried to kill the Count—but in the event, only added to his air of dash, by giving him the eye patch.”

“How do you know all this?”

She shrugged. “I may still claim a good part of the acquaintance I formed at school, you know—and am everywhere received. Do you really think ladies talk only of fashion?”

“I'll warrant the word
rape
never crosses the lips of your select friends.”

“No. They use gentler terms—a kind of code for men of that stamp. They call von Stühlen dangerous, or the very worst of rakes, or
unreliable.
By which they mean he hasn't a feather to fly with, is a gazetted fortune hunter, and has any number of women in keeping.” Georgiana's eyes were trained on the horse's head as it trotted toward Russell Square. “He even offered to keep me, if it comes to that.”

“He
what
?”

“—Was so obliging as to suggest I should be his mistress. In the enclosure at Ascot, last June. He gave me his card on the strength of it.” Her smile was twisted. “Women such as myself, he assured me, were excessively diverting because of our intelligence; we added a certain spice to
amour;
but we could never hope to receive an offer of marriage in the general way. I believe he considered his notice an exceptionally great honour.”

“I'd like to whip him the length of Pall Mall,” Fitzgerald said through his teeth.

“I'm afraid I did something much worse. I
laughed
at him. And tossed his card back in his face. He was furious—publicly humiliated. If I'd been a man, I daresay he'd have demanded satisfaction.”

“How could he think you'd listen to such a dishonourable proposal?”

“He first made my acquaintance in the company of the Prince—and no doubt assumed I was Albert's mistress. Although the Consort was the least likely of men to have a lady in keeping, I daresay any number of gentlemen have made a similar error. How else to account for my intimacy with the Prince?” She worried the torn leather of one glove, her face averted. “But tell me, Patrick—why should von Stühlen be concerned with these attacks? That pack of ruffians may be bent upon killing Septimus Taylor for reasons wholly unrelated to us. Perhaps they merely followed you because you'd discovered their handiwork.”

“Sep was at the Inner Temple, nowhere near Hampstead last night,” Fitzgerald said flatly. “Somebody cleared away that palisade on the Heath—and your dangerous Count was on the scene within hours of the wreck. That much we know. I go further, Georgie—I say von Stühlen saw murder done in the wee hours of the morning, then ordered the destruction of all evidence.”

“Why?”

“What other business could bring him to Hampstead? He came direct from Windsor!”

“He admitted as much,” she retorted impatiently. “But you've nothing to tie him to the attack at the Inner Temple, much less that pack of hounds in St. Giles.”

“Sweet Jesus, woman—would you
defend
such a man? This madness began last night, with my summons to Windsor. I was probably called there
in order
to be killed on my return.”

“But
why,
Patrick? Why is it necessary to silence you? What do these people fear?”

“I don't know,” he admitted bleakly as the hackney pulled to a halt before Georgiana's door. “But I won't risk dying before I find out. I leave London tonight—and you're to come with me, Georgie lass.”

Her smile wavered. “Another
carte blanche
?”

It was the polite term for von Stühlen's type of sexual arrangement. Fitzgerald's heart stuttered, and a wave of heat surged through his body. Before he could speak, however, she pressed her fingers against his lips.

“I should be so fortunate. No, Patrick—I won't come with you. I have poor Lizzie to think of, and others—”

But her words died in her mouth. Fitzgerald looked toward the doorway. Georgie's housekeeper was racing to meet them, a stricken expression on her face.

Georgiana's rooms were like the woman herself, Fitzgerald thought—elegantly spare; intelligently arranged. Not for Georgie the excess of velvet hangings or the wave of bric-a-brac crowding every surface, the plant stands overflowing with ferns; Georgie's walls were cream, picked out with gold, the simplest of hangings at the tall windows. Light poured into the rooms even in the darkest months of winter. To sit there with Georgie was to stem the turbulent beat of his days, the wild disorder of his thoughts and passions. Georgie was the voice of reason. The air of decision. The order of science. Caught in a form as breathtaking as Venus.

Now, however, the house was a scene of devastation.

The Aubusson carpet was rucked up over the floorboards; a gilt picture frame lay smashed in the fireplace, its canvas torn; a piece of the marble mantel had been broken off and tossed at yet another picture, which hung askew and ravaged above the settee. Chair upholstery was slit down the middle and feathers strewn everywhere.

“I just stepped round to St. George's, Hanover Square, to pray for the repose of the dear Consort's soul,” the housekeeper said as Georgie stopped dead in the middle of her drawing room, her medical bag slipping to chaos on the floor, “and you always give the staff their afternoon out, of a Sunday. So the place was empty, do you see? And when I returned—just
look
at it! We've had thieves, miss, and what I can't make out is what they thought to come for! All the silver's in the pantry, and your jewels never touched in the boudoir . . . but my word, your
desk
!”

“My desk?” Georgiana repeated faintly—and then swept through the drawing room to the library beyond. “Oh, Patrick!”

Papers scattered everywhere, as they had been in Fitzgerald's chambers.

He took one step forward into the room and stopped short. He had never seen Georgie cry before—not even when John Snow died.

“My darling,” he said, and went to her.

“It's just that it's so cruel,” she muttered against his shoulder. “These aren't my things, Patrick—they're Uncle John's. All his case notes. Documents he kept for
decades
—statistics of populations, meticulous research. It will take me days to reorder them all. And for what?”

He held her away from him, studied the swimming eyes.

“You'll have to find out,” he said. “Now, not later—because whatever you may think, Georgie, you're leaving London with me tonight. I
will not
allow you to remain in this house.”

“But—”

“Those men came
here
. They tracked you to St. Giles. They wanted something
you
had. They didn't come because of Sep or even because of me—they came because von Stühlen glimpsed you in Hampstead at dawn. Do you understand?
You're in danger, love.
Now start picking up these papers and tell me what the men found. They didn't want your candlesticks—they wanted something in this room, in your desk. What was it?”

“My letters.” Her voice was colourless. “All my private correspondence is gone.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I
 
KNOW EXACTLY WHAT AGE I
was, when I learned that Mama was a whore.

Well-bred and exceedingly high in the instep, to be sure—demanding the respect and consideration of the Polite World, as must be only natural in one of
Royal blood
—but a whore regardless.

It was in the midst of one of our incessant Progresses, when Mama and Sir John Conroy—her Master of Household, the Demon Incarnate—put the Heiress Presumptive on display, among the great houses of England.

I was eleven. My uncle, George IV, had died at last and I was exceedingly angry at being forbidden to attend Uncle William's coronation—Mama ascribing this calculated rudeness on our part to her
delicacy of feeling.
As Uncle William claimed ten bastards by the lovely Dolly Jordan, he could not be deemed fit company for the Heiress Presumptive—although he
was
King of England.

And so I snubbed the new monarch, whose throne I must eventually fill, and was carried off to Holymount, in the Malvern Hills—by way of Blenheim, and Kenilworth, and Warwick Castle. The year was 1830, and the weather close and hot.

We had halted perhaps an hour short of Blenheim, so that the horses might be baited and the entire party refreshed. I stood in the private parlour of the inn and stared through the half-open casement, the panes clouded with summer dust. The footman was lording it over the humble ostlers in the stable yard, bragging of his intimacy with the Great; I watched him hawk and spit, and drag his sleeve across the back of his mouth.

And then a ripple of laughter floated through the open window.
My mother's laugh.
It was of a timbre I knew well—low and suggestive—followed by John Conroy's lilting Irish brogue. My cheeks flushed without warning and I felt an angry heat burn behind my eyes, an impotent fury clenching my fists.
How could they?
Mama had insisted on lying down for a while before nuncheon; she had complained of the heat, she had threatened to swoon. And Conroy had found her there, in the bedroom upstairs. His hand, as I had seen it once before in a chance moment at Kensington, sliding beneath the hem of her thin summer gown and rising along her leg, bare in her sandals at this season, his sensuous lips curling with lust—

Mama's laughter rippled again.

Dear Lehzen hurried to the casement and pulled it closed.

I suppose I ought to have been more understanding. My mother had, after all, buried two husbands—both older than she, both more powerful, both men she was ordered to marry and for whom she cared not a jot. She had borne children as demanded, without the slightest reward of affection or income. My father's death when I was yet a babe at the breast had deprived her of the rank she was owed—something on the order of:
Princess Dowager of Wales,
or,
Queen Mother,
when once I took the throne—titles she made up, in her idle hours, along with lists of stipends, honours for herself and Conroy, peerages and imaginary posts—

It was Lehzen who instructed and supported me, Lehzen who revealed to me, quite young, what Fate intended I should be. My cherished governess placed my genealogy as if by chance before me, during our long schoolroom hours; and it was only then, examining the family tree, that I comprehended my nearness to the throne. I burst into tears, overwhelmed by the horror of it. That was the moment I suddenly understood exactly
why
Sir John Conroy ruled my weak and silly mother—why his charmed caresses formed a noose round my neck. He meant to
own
the next Queen of England.

He nearly succeeded. It is in the nature of men to strive for supremacy. All my life I have fought men for power, for the right to claim what is by birthright
mine.
But on the occasion I would mention, I was but sixteen, and ill with fever, and quite deserted by my friends; and Conroy thought to seize his opportunity.

A squalid bed in a Ramsgate inn, the Demon towering over me in my fever, a pen in one hand and a riding crop in the other. . . .
You will sign, Princess. You will sign this document your mother and I have drawn up, or you will not see a doctor again this side of the grave.

Mama whipped my thighs herself with the crop that day; she bound my wrists and plunged my head into water until I despaired I would drown.

Silly girl. Do you not understand what you owe your mother? What you owe the nation? So many sacrifices as Sir John has made for you . . .

Later I learned that John Conroy believed himself descended from some bastard Royal, that he regarded it as his Destiny to rule England. His madness was animated by the grandest of private delusions.

That endless day, I refused to sign his scrawl—I sweated, I vomited, I cried out for Lehzen when the pain in my throat grew unendurable—and still they would not relent.

No doctors,
my mother hissed.
No doctors until you sign.

It was weeks before the bruises on my thighs faded. Months before I could tolerate the sight of my mother. From that day forward, I never looked Mama directly in the eye; I spoke always with the royal
we.
And two years later, when I ascended the throne of England, Sir John Conroy was banished utterly from my world.

*    *    *

The Irish are born gamblers. When forthright dealing fails them, they resort to guile and subterfuge; violence and charm are their left and right hands. That day in Ramsgate the Demon Incarnate threw his cup of dice and lost; but I have not been able to abide his race from that day to this.