She put her head on one side and smiled. “I am sure she will be charming. Fishy, perhaps, but charming.”
The Grand Duke took her hand, and as he looked into her eyes, she echoed the words he had said to her at the ball, “We cannot marry where we please, you and I,” and this time she sighed. She heard a rook cawing mournfully behind her and remembered Melbourne holding her hand at Brocket Hall.
Alexander gave her a melancholy look through his long lashes. He thought, of course, that she was thinking of him.
“If things were different…” He leant towards her, clearly hoping for a valedictory kiss, but Victoria evaded him and said brightly, “I am sure that you and the herring eater will be very happy.”
Alexander threw his arms wide. “I will do my duty, marry her, have many sons, and one day I will choose their brides.”
Victoria laughed. “I hope you choose wisely.”
“Perhaps you will have a daughter who will come and rule Russia with my son.”
“You forget that I have decided not to marry.”
The Grand Duke shook his head. “No, I do not forget, but I think I do not believe that a woman such as you would live without a husband. I am sorry he will not be a Russian one.” He raised Victoria’s hand to his lips and kissed it.
* * *
The Duchess did not come down to dinner that evening, and when Victoria sent Lehzen to enquire after her health, the Baroness was sent away without a message. Victoria felt a lump form in the pit of her stomach. She knew quite well that she should have gone to her mother’s apartments herself, but had been unable to summon the courage. Much as Victoria loathed Conroy, she knew how much he meant to her mother. While she could never condone her mother’s attachment, since that day at Brocket Hall, she thought she could perhaps understand that strength of feeling.
The next morning she asked Skerrett to show her what lace she had. Skerrett brought out a cabinet with drawers that filled the air with the scent of cedar when they were opened. Victoria went through the delicate collars and gossamer veils until she came to a shawl piece so finely embroidered that as she shook it out it glittered like hoarfrost. She heard Skerrett gasp.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“It’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, ma’am.”
Victoria put the shawl under her arm, and before her resolve could weaken set off towards the north wing.
She found her mother sitting on a sofa, staring at nothing. She was dressed, as usual, in black, but her blonde ringlets hung limp and neglected. Seeing her mother’s desolation, Victoria felt the knot in her stomach tighten.
As she sat down on the sofa beside her mother, the Duchess did not acknowledge her presence but maintained that terrible glassy stare. Victoria wondered if she had done the right thing in coming, but as much as she wanted to leave, she knew that she must do something to put this right.
Leaning over, she placed the lace shawl in her mother’s inert hands. The Duchess did not move. Victoria unfolded the shawl, and spread it out over her mother’s lap.
“This is for you, Mama. The lace is made in a convent in Bruges. Look how delicate it is.” She held it up in front of her mother’s frozen face and shook it so that it trembled like cobweb in a breeze.
A minute passed, but to Victoria it felt like an hour, and then her mother turned her head at last. Fixing her daughter with that hollow stare, she spoke in a low voice stripped of all emotion. “You sent him away, Drina.”
Victoria let the lace drop onto her mother’s lap. “No, Mama,” she said softly, “he wanted to go.” Taking her mother’s hand, she continued, “But I know you feel his loss, and believe me, Mama, I understand.”
She looked down at her mother’s hand and saw the gold wedding band beneath the swollen knuckle of the ring finger.
“How can you possibly understand? You are just a child; how can you know what a woman feels?” The Duchess’s voice broke on the word “woman” and her eyes, which had been dry, filled with tears. Victoria felt the knot in the pit of her stomach unravel and the words came out before she could check them.
“No, Mama. You are wrong. I do know how hard it is to lose someone you care for.”
Her mother heard the note of despair in her daughter’s voice and saw beyond her own misery. Looking into her daughter’s pale blue eyes, the same colour as her own, she understood. And checking her own tears, she put her hand to Victoria’s flushed cheek and stroked it with infinite tenderness. “No man would give you up, Drina, unless he knew that it was his duty.”
At this unexpected kindness, Victoria’s resolve finally broke and she threw herself into her mother’s arms in a storm of sobbing. “Oh, Mama … I think I will never be happy.”
The Duchess wrapped her arms around her daughter’s shaking body and held her tight. “You are still young, mein Liebe. You will find a place to put your heart, I promise you.”
As Victoria’s sobs began to subside into the occasional hiccup, the Duchess lifted her daughter’s chin so that it faced her own. “We have both lost something, Drina. But,” and her eyes were warm with love, “today I have found something too.”
Victoria looked at her in watery bewilderment.
“I have found your Schokoladenseite. Your chocolate side. And I thought I had lost it forever.”
Victoria heard the plea for forgiveness and laid her head on her mother’s lap. As the Duchess’s hand stroked her hair, Victoria closed her eyes and inhaled the scent of lavender.
Leopold, who had come to the Duchess’s apartments to tell her that Albert and Ernst were already on their way to England, saw this tableau from the door and tiptoed away. He knew, of course, that Conroy had been banished and was thankful for it, but he had worried that a permanent rift between mother and daughter might threaten Albert’s chances with Victoria. The sight of his niece lying on her mother’s lap like a modern Pietà was most encouraging, most encouraging indeed. If Victoria could be reconciled with her mother, then Albert would not be rejected as a suitor simply because he was a Coburg.
As for the Duchess, she would miss Conroy, but if she regained her daughter’s affection then his loss might be a price worth paying, he supposed. And in time his sister would come to see that Conroy had only stayed by her side for the promise of power; once he saw that he was never going to be more than Comptroller of the Duchess of Kent’s household, he had given her up. It was unfortunate that the Duchess could not find another man to amuse her, but the Queen’s mother, like Caesar’s wife, must be above reproach. He thought of his own chère amie, tucked away in a villa in St. John’s Wood, and thought how much better these things could be arranged if you were a man. As he walked down the long corridor back to his own apartments he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and was pleased to see that his toupee was sitting at precisely the correct angle.
CHAPTER NINE
On the jetty at Ostend two young men were shivering in the brisk November wind. They were both tall and fair, with a clear family resemblance in their wide foreheads and delicately formed lips. While one had the broad back and swaggering movements of a soldier, the other, though a fraction taller, had none of his brother’s careless freedom; he moved carefully as if calculating how much effort each step would cost him. He looked apprehensively out over the choppy sea and turned to his brother, saying in heavily accented English, “It looks as though the sea will be too rough for us to be sailing today.”
His brother clapped him on the shoulder. “Nonsense, Albert, the packets to England sail in much worse conditions than these.” Then he looked more closely at his brother’s white face and said, “You will feel better when you are there, you know. What are those lines from Shakespeare that you are always quoting to me, ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood…’”
“‘Lead on to fortune.’” Albert finished the quotation, as his brother knew he would. “But Ernst, I do not know if this is the right destiny for me. Victoria is not s
erious. She only cares for dancing and ices. I do not know that we are suited.”
Ernst smiled. “So she is a young girl who likes to enjoy herself. I think that is a good thing. The giddy ones are always the most fun. And besides Victoria is charming, small, and…” He outlined a curvaceous sweep with his arms.
Albert looked at him. “Perhaps you should marry her then, Ernst.”
“I don’t think Uncle Leopold would like that at all.” Ernst pursed his lips in a tolerable imitation of the King of the Belgians. “‘It is Albert’s destiny to marry Victoria.’”
“But suppose she does not think it is her destiny to marry me? She did not seem to care for me so much the last time we met.”
Ernst looked his brother up and down in a parody of appraisal, taking in Albert’s dark blue eyes, his noble profile, the long legs in their red-topped boots.
“You have changed a great deal in the last three years, Albert. You don’t notice them, but the girls in Coburg are looking at you now in a way that, if I didn’t know you to be the most serious man in Christendom, would make me quite jealous. She may be a queen, but she is also a young woman, and I think she will be quite happy when she sees you.”
“But I do not care to be exhibited for her approval like a waxwork, Ernst!”
“Oh, don’t be so sensitive. Do you want to spend the rest of your life in Coburg watching me behave badly, or do you want to be the King of England?”
Albert shook his head. “Even if I marry her, I would only be the Queen of England’s husband.”
Ernst shrugged. “Well, if you arrive with a face like that you won’t be marrying anyone. Remember, Albert, women like to be charmed, not lectured. When you see her you must smile and pay her little compliments. There will be plenty of time to tell about the glories of Italian architecture and the wonders of Babylonian drainage when you are on your honeymoon.”
Albert shook his head again. “But I cannot be someone I am not, Ernst. I cannot pretend.”
Ernst threw up his hands in mock despair. “Then, my dear little brother, I suggest we go back to Coburg and you can marry Frau Muller, the mayor’s widow, who has an excellent library and a well-stocked carp pond. Reading and fishing, what more could a man want? I know she likes you, and widows, well…”
Albert looked out over the grey sea. “You find everything so easy, Ernst. But for me this is difficult.”
Ernst put a hand on his brother’s shoulder and said in a different tone, “My dear brother, you are a man of great worth. That is why Victoria will be lucky to have you as a husband. It cannot be easy to be so young and to have so much responsibility. She needs someone like you to help her.”
Albert looked at his brother and smiled for the first time. Ernst thought surely Victoria, however willful she had become, would not be able to resist one of his brother’s smiles. As rare as they were, Albert’s smiles transformed his face with a childlike radiance that made the recipient feel as if the sun had come out. If only Albert could smile at Victoria, all would be well.
A huge swell broke over the jetty, and the spray landed on their faces. Albert shook his head as he looked over the ferry boats bobbing precariously on the stormy sea.
“But first we must get there,” he said.
* * *
In Buckingham Palace Victoria was amusing herself, as she waited for Melbourne’s morning visit, by copying one of the portraits of Elizabeth that hung in the picture gallery. Elizabeth looked a little younger in this painting than she did in the miniature that Lehzen had given her, younger and more vulnerable. If she were Elizabeth, Victoria thought, she would not have put this picture on display: it showed her not as Gloriana the painted queen but as the woman beneath. Was it possible, she wondered, as she painted Elizabeth’s russet curls, to be both? Could one be a monarch and a woman? None of the queens who had come before her on the throne had been blessed with a family. Mary Tudor had married too late and had a pregnancy but no child. Elizabeth, of course, had not taken a husband, and the Stuart Queens—Mary and Anne—had both married, but neither had managed to produce a child that survived them. Mary Queen of Scots had married three times and had a child, but her reign could not have ended more disastrously. Victoria’s knowledge of history was not exhaustive, but it seemed to her that only Isabella of Castile had managed to be a successful queen and a wife and mother; and of course she had married the king next door. Even if Victoria had been tempted to encourage the advances of the Grand Duke, the idea of jointly ruling England and Russia was geographically impossible.
No, if she looked at the queens of the past, only Elizabeth was truly admired, and she had reigned alone. Of course Charlotte, the dead cousin whose death had engendered her very existence, had been married to Uncle Leopold, but it was the marriage that had killed her. Marriage was a dangerous business.
Victoria started to paint in the pearls on Elizabeth’s bodice. She was putting off the ruff, which with its intricate lace pattern looked rather difficult to copy.
She heard a cough and, turning round, saw Melbourne standing behind her. “I thought you would like to know that the Newport Chartists are on their way to Australia, ma’am.”
“I am so glad, Lord M.”
Melbourne hovered over a chair behind her, and she gestured to him to sit.
“Although whether the wretched men will feel grateful when they get there is anyone’s guess.”
“Their families will be pleased, I think,” said Victoria.
“Perhaps.” Then, realising that he was being unduly cynical, Melbourne stood up and inspected Victoria’s sketch. “Elizabeth has become something of a favourite of yours, ma’am.”
Victoria turned to face him. “I have decided to follow her example and reign alone.” She tilted her head a little. “With companions, perhaps,” and she smiled. If Elizabeth could have Leicester, then surely she could have Melbourne.
But Melbourne did not return her smile. “Really, ma’am? Have you told your Coburg cousins? I hear they are to arrive at any moment.”
Victoria stood up, brandishing her paintbrush like a sword. “My Coburg cousins. Albert and Ernst? But I have not asked them.”
Melbourne avoided the paintbrush. “Nevertheless, ma’am, they are coming.”
Victoria began to pace up and down under the pictures. “Uncle Leopold must have sent for them, against my wishes. Why doesn’t he understand that I am quite happy as I am?”
She looked at Melbourne for confirmation, but he slid his eyes away from her. “I will not be your Prime Minister forever, ma’am.”
Victoria stopped in front of him, forcing him to look at her. “Don’t say that, Lord M.”
Reluctantly Melbourne met her indignant blue gaze. “But I must. If the Tories don’t do me in, my infirmities will.”
Victoria laughed, relieved that he was joking after all. “Infirmities! You always say that illness is for people with nothing better to do.”
Melbourne did not join in her laughter. He shook his head, then said with urgency, “Let the Coburgs come, ma’am. Perhaps Prince Albert will surprise you.”
Victoria looked at him, aghast. This was not the answer she was expecting. “But you told me that the public would not approve of a German bridegroom.”
A muscle quivered next to Melbourne’s mouth. “I am sure they make admirable husbands.”
Victoria sat down very suddenly and in a small voice said, “But I don’t want things to change.”
Melbourne looked at her with an expression that was almost stern. “I know, ma’am. But I believe you will not be happy alone”—he touched her very lightly on the shoulder—“even with companions. You need a husband to love and cherish you.”
Victoria shuddered as his hand rested on her shoulder. “But there is no one I care for,” she cried, her eyes saying something quite different.
Melbourne gave her a wry smile. “Forgive me, ma’am, but I think you have not really looked.”
Victoria put her hands to her eyes
as if she did not want to see what was in front of her. Then she gave a great sigh and said, through her hand, “I was so happy … before.”
“I find that happiness can always be recollected in tranquility, ma’am,” said Melbourne.
Victoria put her hands down and looked up at him, her pale blue eyes searching his face. “You were happy too?”
When Melbourne spoke, it was in the voice not of the urbane prime minister, but of a man of advancing years who is facing the loss of the only thing that is still capable of bringing him joy. “You know I was, ma’am.”
The silence that followed was thick with the weight of all the unspoken feeling. Melbourne saw that Victoria’s lip was trembling, and had to clasp his hands together so that he would not reach out and take her in his arms. He thought that if she were to cry now he would not be able to resist the temptation to kiss away those tears. He dug his nails into his palms, and told himself that the only way he could serve his Queen was to find her a husband who would make her happy.
With a brave smile that almost broke Melbourne’s heart, Victoria lifted her chin and said, “But I am not going to get married just to please you, Lord M.”
Melbourne tried to match her smile with his own. “No indeed, ma’am, you must please yourself.”
And then he took her hand, her small white hand, and kissed it.
BOOK FOUR
CHAPTER ONE
Albert could hear the music coming down the corridor. Beethoven’s sonata in A flat, played a little too fast. He glanced at his reflection in one of the mirrors lining the walls. Ernst had insisted that they both wear their uniforms.
When Albert had argued that he was not a soldier, his brother had asked, “But don’t you feel like you are going into battle?” Albert had been forced to admit that he did, though it was hardly a glorious military exploit to walk into a drawing room and be inspected by a young woman. Still, he was glad of the uniform; there was nothing more magnificent than a Hussar’s gold-braided jacket, worn with skintight white breeches and boots with gold tassels.
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