by Lucy Worsley
He paused, as if expecting contradiction, but I could think of no more beautiful prince than Ferdinand.
‘Well, Prince Ferdinand is her cousin,’ I said defensively. ‘It would make a fine match. Keeping it in the family.’
‘God!’ he snorted. ‘I see that this fine prince has neglected to inform his cousin or her household that he is engaged. Engaged to be married! Already! To the Queen of Portugal. Not dancing like a man with an engagement, is he?’
‘I don’t believe you!’ I said shortly. But the floor seemed to sink away beneath my feet, and I swayed again and reached for the arm of the bench. I felt a tremendous emptying out of all the happiness I had felt only half an hour earlier, almost as if I were a jug and someone had poured all the water out of me at once.
‘Well, my priggish little miss!’ He cackled again, and I wondered how much of the fruit punch he had consumed. ‘I told you once before what a scoundrel your father is, do you remember? And have you had the chance to find it out for yourself by now?’
Suddenly it clicked. There was something memorably piggish about those pink eyes, the fair skin of those strong hands, the power of his tall but stocky body. George Cumberland was older now, a real young man, but still the same unpleasant person.
‘Sir!’ I stood up abruptly and awkwardly, gaining my balance with difficulty. ‘Thank you for the dance, but I must now return to my governess.’
I strolled away with what I hoped was nonchalant ease. But inside I was trembling violently. I almost groped my way across the dance floor, apologising to the couples whose path I impeded. Sinking down next to Lehzen, I whispered the dreadful news.
‘George of Cumberland is here!’
She turned to me, her face a picture of worry and disgust.
‘And he says that Prince Ferdinand shouldn’t be dancing with the princess like that, for he is engaged to another lady.’
Lehzen took my hand and squeezed it. She could tell by the droop of my shoulders that I was angry and deflated. ‘Let us not take the word of that liar,’ she said consolingly. ‘We must investigate more carefully. And don’t be disappointed. There will be other balls, my dear. This is only your first one!’
‘I know. I am not disappointed for myself,’ I replied. ‘But will there ever again be a ball as perfect for Victoria?’
Watching her happy face as she flew around the floor, still in Ferdinand’s arms, I think that we both doubted it.
Chapter 27
The Morning After
The next morning I was first to appear in the drawing room of the princess’s grand new apartment. For some considerable time, I sat there alone at the desk in the corner, writing notes of thanks for the duchess to sign to the tradesmen who had brought the fruit and the ices and the decorations. The ladies had long since abdicated such responsibilities to me, and I almost enjoyed the labour as I could indulge my passion for being neat and orderly. But some of the bills had already arrived in the morning’s post and seemed to me to be very steep. Again, I wondered where my father had found the duchess all this money.
From time to time I lifted my head from the paper and shook myself in my seat, as if to shrug off the effects of the late night and my disturbing thoughts. I had gone to bed reasonably early, sated with the ball, but I knew that my father, and presumably the princess and duchess, had been up into the small hours.
I was just finishing the address on the final envelope when I heard the confident clack of a man’s boots on the boarded floor from the direction of the door. The sound made my heart lurch unpleasantly, but only for a second. I told myself that I had every right to be here in the palace drawing room, and that the duchess would be well pleased with the work I had completed.
As I pushed the sheets and envelopes together into a neat stack, I looked up to see the younger prince standing before me. Prince August. He shared his brother’s long face and nose, but on him the effect was mournful rather than deliciously tragic. He gave an extremely low continental bow, straightened himself up, then sighed breathily.
‘I trust, mademoiselle,’ he said, ‘that you slept well?’ Sinking down into a nearby sofa, he sighed again. ‘I fear I cannot say the same for myself.’ He raised the back of his wrist to his forehead. I wondered if this was an invitation to me to gush with sympathy or to rush for coffee and seltzer water. But I felt in no mood to pander to anyone else’s sensitivities.
‘I did, thank you, sir,’ I said, bowing a little from the waist without rising. I shuffled my envelopes and made a show of putting my pen back in the inkstand, before spinning my seat around and raising my eyes to meet his. Under my cool gaze, an element of self-consciousness stiffened his sprawling body, and he raised himself up into a more proper, seated position.
Emboldened, I went on. ‘But I fear that Her Royal Highness, my mistress the princess, may have had her peace of mind disturbed.’ I let out a sigh of my own and knitted my brow in genuine perplexity. ‘I do not believe that she is acquainted with the true … erm, with the truth of your brother’s circumstances.’
At this he flinched, and he had the grace to look deeply uncomfortable. I noticed a rosy flush appearing on his throat as he rubbed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, then smoothed back the black, un-British waves of his longish hair.
He seemed at a loss to know how to proceed.
‘I believe,’ he said eventually, ‘that the matter of my brother’s … engagement to the Queen of Portugal is quite well known.’
‘Not by me, sir,’ I said, refusing to be cowed and continuing to gouge him with my eyes, ‘until I heard of it from a mere acquaintance at the ball last night. And not, I believe, by my mistress, unless your brother told her in the early hours. And may I suggest that he was not acting quite as an engaged gentleman should?’
Prince August slumped in his sofa once more, threw back his head and laughed. ‘Well, my prim little English miss!’ he said much more warmly. ‘I must admit that you are right! You are quite formidable! I surrender.’
Now he smiled, and still shaking his head, he leaned forward with his hands upon his knees.
‘Between you and me,’ he said, glancing over his shoulder towards the door, ‘my brother never knows when to stop. He cannot see a girl without wanting to make her fall in love with him. And, to be completely honest, he rather dreads his coming marriage and wants to avoid thinking about it. It was arranged by our Uncle Leopold, you know.’
I sat back and raised the tips of my fingers into a tent. How miserable it must be to be a prince or princess and to have to marry the choice of one’s uncle! I returned my gaze to Prince August, wondering what bride might be in store for him, and whether he might like her when the time came.
Perhaps he too was thinking about his own fate. As he sat there, cogitating, I noticed the roses in his cheeks, the gloss in his hair. Yes, this prince, too, was handsome when you got to know him. ‘You cannot imagine,’ he said eventually, ‘how many and heavy are the cares which must be borne by those in a high station in life.’
I wasn’t going to let him get away with that.
‘With great splendour comes great responsibility, though, does it not?’ I said steadily. ‘I should be most obliged if your brother could see his way to mentioning his engagement to my mistress.’
He coloured again and looked down at his hands.
‘Of course,’ I went on, ‘I do not mean to suggest that the princess has any kind of feelings for your brother beyond those of a respectful relative. A lady never commits herself to a gentleman; it is for him to fall in love with her. But I feel that the situation could be cleared up to everyone’s advantage if his engagement were generally known.’
It was a long speech, perhaps longer than I had ever made to anyone outside my immediate circle, but I kept my voice and gaze steady. Only when I had finished did I have to clasp my hands together to keep them from trembling. I would never have spoken so boldly but for the thought that Victoria, my friend, had been deceived, even maliciou
sly tricked, by this man’s brother.
He looked down at the floor, thought for a moment, then slowly stood and bowed once more. ‘Miss V. Conroy,’ he said slowly, ‘you speak good sense. I shall see what can be done.’
With a fancy little click of his heels, he turned and was gone.
Trembling, I returned to my desk. But then I felt a breath of air on the back of my neck, and looking up, the door to Victoria’s sitting room, off the drawing room, caught my eye. It had been ajar, but now it had swung wide open. There stood a waiflike figure, wan, her hair round her shoulders, a shawl over her nightdress. Victoria stood looking at me, her face an awful picture of woe. She turned, speechlessly, and disappeared back into the shadows.
I heard the thin wail rising from the bedchamber beyond the sitting room. I could picture Victoria burying her face in the mattress to try to stifle the sound, and it broke my heart.
Now Lehzen appeared in the open doorway. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we heard everything from the sitting room. And once you had started to speak, there was nothing we could do to expose our presence. Lieber Gott! What a mess. He has flirted with her dreadfully.’
She must have seen the distress in my face, for she came forward into the drawing room and laid her hand over mine as it lay on the writing desk. Quickly and quietly she spoke into my ear. ‘You did well, my dear,’ she said. ‘You certainly won that duel of words with Prince August. If only her mother or your father had taken the same trouble to find out the truth and to protect the princess. You have been her true friend this last day.’
She stopped and raised her head. Yes, the sobs were growing louder, becoming almost screams.
‘Curse that perfidious prince!’ Lehzen said and turned to go, once more, to comfort the weeping princess.
I sighed. It was only a ball, only a setback. Why did she always have to over-react? Once more that dark fear for Victoria’s reason came over me. Her mother had such influence on her character, and there were so few of us to counterbalance that love of drama and self-pity.
Chapter 28
Two More Princes
Victoria presented a pitiful sight over the next few weeks. The princes had cut short their visit, departing the day following the ball, but the business with Prince Ferdinand seemed to have put her back into her convalescent state. One day I found her shepherdess dress on the floor of her bedchamber, kicked out of sight under a bureau. ‘Look, it’s all creased!’ I said. ‘Shall I send it to be cleaned?’
Victoria gave it a look of distaste. ‘Do what you like with it,’ she said, turning away as if she could not bear the sight of it. ‘Just take it away.’
I also overheard my father and the duchess arguing.
‘She needs to learn that life will bring little setbacks,’ he snapped.
‘But she is so pure, so good! Ach, if only she had a father to protect her, to find out before he came here if the young man’s intentions were honourable.’
‘Well, your fine brother Leopold should have seen to that, I would have thought. It’s his nephew that we are talking about!’
‘But Leopold is not here!’ she wailed. ‘Oh, how defenceless Victoria and I are in this strange country, with no near relations to hand.’
Then the sound of their voices grew still, and I thought it requisite to cough loudly to remind them of my presence in the long gallery. ‘Yes, Adams, I know that the post must go,’ I said briskly. ‘Can you wait one moment while I finish this last letter?’
More and more often I was replying now to letters from Victoria’s future subjects sending her their best wishes and hopes that she would soon be queen. Victoria could never settle to such work and let the correspondence build up into great, guilt-making piles of paper, but I actively enjoyed it. I loved reading people’s stories, hearing about their families, understanding their problems. I put great care – probably too much care – into my replies, and signed them on behalf of Her Royal Highness the Princess Victoria with as much pride as if it had been my own name.
Her uncle, King William, seemed to disappoint on every level: he was neither energetic nor splendid nor kind. In response to this, most of the letters that came for Victoria at Kensington Palace were simply loyal and loving. Some were crazed and bizarre, written by people who might be ill, but occasionally a more serious missive would pull me up sharp. In particular, I dwelt for a long time over a well-worded warning that the monarchy was a tarnished institution and that civil war in our own country would ensue unless the virginal Victoria, a fresh start, came to the throne and soon. She was, this writer claimed, the monarchy’s last hope.
So the weeks went on. The German princes had travelled to Portugal for Ferdinand to do his duty by the bride selected for him by Uncle Leopold, and our lives returned to their normal quiet pattern.
But Uncle Leopold was clearly still working away behind the scenes, and soon we learned that more German cousins were expected at Kensington Palace.
When we gathered one afternoon at the head of the new stone staircase once again to greet a second pair of German cousins, it was like an echo in a minor key of our happy reception of the Princes of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Koháry. This new pair of German princes were the sons of yet another of the duchess’s brothers. This was the Prince Albert of whom Uncle Leopold had spoken, and his brother Ernest. I rather wished Albert had not come, for it brought back to mind the unwelcome question of Victoria’s marriage.
‘Leopold!’ My father hissed the name to me out of the corner of his mouth as we stood and waited. ‘He does not know what he is doing. He sends these German princelings to marry our princess, but believe me, that will never happen.’ He seemed to take heart from his own words and puffed out his chest a little. ‘You can count on a Conroy for that,’ he concluded.
I kept my own counsel, uneasily wishing that he would keep down his voice in case the princess ahead of us might hear.
Adams filled his lungs and spoke in his most sonorous voice as the two young men proceeded up the stairs towards us. ‘Princes Ernest and Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha!’
I watched Victoria closely. She had kicked up a great fuss about being made to receive the two new princes today, but her mother had insisted that she be present and correct. Much against the duchess’s wishes, she was wearing her black tartan velvet dress.
I knew why she had chosen it. ‘If I have to go,’ she’d grumped, ‘I’m wearing my Sir Walter dress.’ The dark velvet with its tartan pattern belonged to the windswept, rebellious romance of the Scottish Highlands and our beloved novels of Sir Walter Scott. She always put it on when she was in a stormy mood.
I feared that she was picturing herself as the tragic, jilted fiancée of Prince Ferdinand, forced apart from her lover by the cares of state.
So intent was I upon Victoria, observing her casual, almost dismissive greetings to the visitors, that I failed to pay them much notice for myself. It came as something of a surprise therefore to find the younger prince, Albert, bowing low to me, then taking my hand with real warmth. A pair of blue eyes beneath wavy chestnut hair brushed back from his brow met my own and held them. His mouth quivered slightly, as if with amusement at the ridiculous situation in which we found ourselves. After all, we were drawn up in a formal reception line as if at a grand ball, and there were only the handful of us present.
He smiled so infectiously that I could not restrain myself from smiling back.
As he and his elder brother moved on into the saloon, the pair seemed lively and interested, asking the duchess and my father all sorts of questions about what lay within.
‘And is this picture by the master Rembrandt?’ Albert asked.
The duchess tinkled. ‘As if I should know such things!’ she simpered, pleased. ‘You must be a knowledgeable young gentleman.’
‘Ah, but anyone might see that the room has been furnished with great taste and elegance,’ he replied gallantly. ‘That must reflect the character of its chatelaine.’ The duchess curtsied, and I saw her glance round the
room with renewed pride. I noticed that Albert had deftly put her at ease, giving her the attention she always demanded.
I looked at Albert’s back, fine and upright in a red military tunic, and noticed that his breeches were very white. Soon he was bowing to Lehzen and speaking to her warmly about her birthplace in Hanover, and now, having discovered his involvement, he was complimenting my father on the colour scheme.
It was Victoria herself who had to give me a little prod to get me moving once more. ‘Wake up, moonface!’ she whispered. ‘They are so soft and girlish compared to my other cousins, are they not? Ernest has rather a soulful face, and Albert is almost beautiful. They look like a couple of angels. Not my idea of handsome.’
I thought privately that soft smiles were much better than smouldering good looks, and that kindness and politeness were worth far more than arrogance and grandeur. ‘Oh, I’m not so sure,’ I murmured back at her. ‘I’ve never shared your taste for rogues.’
I hardly joined in the conversation over our drawing room tea and did not presume to sit with Victoria and her two cousins at the round table. I had observed Victoria subtly excluding my father from the group by asking him to fetch the chart with the family tree so that they might see clearly how they were related, and then hardly paying it any attention when he returned. I stayed by myself in a corner, slightly out of sight behind a pillar, and took up some embroidery.
‘Have you been long in the service of the princess?’
It was Albert, unexpectedly standing there in front of me, that same merry smile on his lips.
I’d been deeply engaged in my needlework, though, in truth, I had also been lost in a gentle reverie about his very self. I’d had no expectation that the younger brother, my favourite, should pay me special attention. But here he was, come across the room particularly to speak to me.
‘Yes, indeed, my whole life, it seems,’ I said, stammering.