The Duchess smiled up at him like a wilting flower that has just been watered. “I am so happy to be here with both of you. How nice it would be if you were here always.”
Seeing Albert talking to her mother made Victoria turn to her cousins and say brightly, “Albert, Ernst, how well you look in the uniform. I am so glad that we were able to find them to fit.”
Ernst gave a theatrical bow. “They are certainly most splendid. Your grandfather clearly spared no expense.”
Victoria looked over at Albert, who did not meet her eyes. “And you, Albert?”
“I find the gold braid rather heavy.”
Victoria heard the reproach in Albert’s voice, but could see no reason for it. So she smiled and said, “Perhaps you would care to see the pictures here, Albert. I know how fond you are of art.”
She went to stand in front of the Rembrandt, a portrait of a Dutch burgher’s wife all in black apart from her intricate lace collar.
Victoria began to regurgitate her new-found knowledge. “Agatha Bas by Rembrandt, who is generally considered the finest of the Dutch masters. My uncle George bought this in 1827.”
Albert peered at the painting closely. “He had excellent taste. The brushwork is exquisite. Look at the lace.”
But Victoria looked at the warts that covered the woman’s face and wrinkled her nose. “It is not very flattering, though.”
Albert looked back at her, and said seriously, “Perhaps. But it is truthful. What would you prefer? Flattery or truth?” As he said this, his glance flickered over to Lord Melbourne, who was watching them from the other side of the room.
“Do I have to choose?” Smiling brightly at Albert, she said, “I think I would like the truth presented in the most flattering light possible.”
Albert frowned at her flippant answer, but on the other side of the room Melbourne had to stop himself from smiling.
At dinner Victoria sat between Leopold and Ernst, Albert next to the Duchess, and Melbourne with Emma Portman. “How strange it is to see you and Prince Albert both wearing the Windsor uniform,” said Emma.
“Are you trying to say that you think it looks better on the Prince?” said Melbourne, laughing. “Don’t worry, Emma, I know my limitations. The Princes look like demigods and I am a mere mortal.”
“I meant no such thing, William, and false modesty does not become you at all. No one looks more splendid than you do in the uniform. I believe Prince Albert agrees with me; he keeps looking at you.”
“Not with admiration, I think.”
“No. I think his look has something of the green-eyed monster.”
“I think, Emma, that as a lover of intrigue you are trying to create a drama where there is none.”
“Perhaps, but there he is looking at you again.” Melbourne looked over to the other end of the table and saw that Albert’s eyes were indeed upon him. Melbourne recognised that the frisson of pleasure the Queen’s greeting had given him must have occasioned an equal sense of displeasure in the young Prince. Could Emma be right? Had Albert’s perfect nose been put out of joint? Melbourne allowed himself a moment of ignoble satisfaction, or what the Germans called Schadenfreude. It made his current predicament just a touch more bearable to know that he was not the only person to feel what Emma called “the green-eyed monster.”
The men did not linger at their port after dinner, but headed to the drawing room at the first possible opportunity. Albert went straight over to look at the Raphael, and Melbourne, seeing that the Queen was surprised to be ignored in this way, went over to talk to her. They chatted in a desultory way about this and that, but Melbourne saw that Victoria kept glancing at the back that Albert kept so firmly turned on her.
At last she said in a rather louder voice, hoping perhaps to attract Albert’s attention, “Have you read the new novel by Mr Dickens, Lord M? Oliver Twist? I have just started and find it uncommonly fascinating.”
Melbourne shrugged. “As I have no desire to consort with coffin makers, tavern wenches, pickpockets, and the like, why, pray, would I want to read about them?”
Victoria smiled. “But Mr Dickens is so entertaining, Lord M. I think you would enjoy the book very much, although I daresay you would never admit to it.”
Melbourne was about to reply when Albert turned round. Looking at Melbourne with his clear blue eyes, he said, “I believe that this Mr Dickens writes most accurately about conditions among the poor in London.” He paused and did not bother to disguise the challenge in his voice. “Don’t you wish to know the truth about the country that you govern, Lord Melbourne?”
Victoria gasped, and looked at Melbourne anxiously, but to her relief he smiled and replied in his most aristocratic drawl, “It may have escaped your notice, Your Serene Highness, but I have been in government for ten years, first as Home Secretary and then as Prime Minister. So I believe I am tolerably well informed.”
He spoke a little louder than normal, and those around him turned to listen. Seeing the expression on his brother’s face, Ernst moved forward and said lightly, “Albert, our aunt has been asking to hear some of the Coburg folk songs. As your voice is so much better than mine, I thought that if I were to play, you could sing. That is, if Cousin Victoria will indulge us?”
Victoria turned to him with relief spreading across her face. “I would like nothing more. Mama always talks so fondly about the music of her youth.” She turned to Melbourne eagerly. “Don’t you think that it would be delightful to hear some simple German folk tunes, Lord M?”
“I’m afraid that my appreciation of German music stops with Herr Mozart, ma’am.” Seeing the tremble in Victoria’s lip, he added, “But as the Princes are so musical, I am sure my education will be greatly enhanced.”
He was rewarded by a smile from the Queen, but his self-sacrifice did not extend to keeping his eyes open for the whole of the recital that followed.
* * *
Before retiring for the night, Victoria had engaged her cousins to ride with her in the Great Park the following morning. But when she came down to the stables, Dash at her heels, she found only Ernst chatting easily to Alfred Paget.
When he saw Victoria he said, “Good morning, my dear cousin. I must apologise for Albert. He woke up very early and thought he would go for a gallop before joining us. I hope you do not object.”
Victoria smiled. “Not at all. But I hope he doesn’t see all the trees I was hoping to show him.”
“Albert can never have enough trees, I find.”
They rode through the ancient woods, their horses’ hooves crunching through the gathering leaves, Dash darting about looking for rabbits. The air was still misty, and the hoarfrost still clung to the bare twigs. Victoria looked about her and said, “Albert must have got up really very early.”
Ernst laughed. “Sometimes I find it hard to believe we are brothers. He is always up at dawn, whereas I have only got out of bed for the honour of riding with you.”
“You do seem to be very different. You are so easy, and Albert is … well, he is not easy at all.”
Ernst pulled his horse up and turned to look at Victoria, his face uncharacteristically serious. “I know that sometimes he can be awkward, but you must know, Victoria, that Albert is worth ten of me.”
Victoria was so struck by the expression on his face that she hesitated, then said, “You care for him very much.”
“Since we lost our mother we have been everything to each other. And although I am the older one, Albert has always looked after me.”
They were interrupted by frantic barking from Dash. A moment later Albert rode into view. He was hatless, with his hair tousled from the ride; his cheeks were flushed, and there was mud on his boots. Victoria was struck by how different he looked to the stiff, gold-braided figure she had seen the night before. As he came up to them, she wondered whether he would smile, and was relieved when she saw the corners of his mouth going up. It was not quite a smile, but it was not the mask of disapproval she dreaded.
/> “Good morning, Albert, I hope you find the park here more to your taste than the gardens at the palace.”
Albert pulled up his horse in front of her. “There is a word we have in German. Waldeinsamkeit. A feeling of being at one with the forest.” He gestured to the trees around him. “I have it here.”
Victoria repeated, “Waldeinsamkeit, what a lovely word. I feel I know exactly what it means.”
Albert looked at her, and the softening of his lips became more pronounced. Seeing this, Ernst wheeled his horse’s head around and said, “I had completely forgotten that I arranged to meet Uncle Leopold this morning. Will you excuse me, Victoria, if I go back? You know how punctilious he can be.”
Victoria nodded her assent. Ernst turned to Alfred Paget and, looking back at the long, straight ride that led to the castle, whose turrets were clearly visible, said with a wink, “Lord Alfred, will you be good enough to show me the way?”
Alfred gave him a complicit smile. “With pleasure, sir.”
“And a guinea on the first to get there to make it interesting?”
“You’re on!” The two men set off at a gallop towards the castle.
* * *
Albert and Victoria rode on in silence, apart from the breathy exhalations of the horses, the occasional yelps from Dash, and the screeching of the rooks nesting in the bare branches of the trees. For a moment Victoria thought of Melbourne and the last time she had been alone with a man in a wood. Deciding she must speak, she pointed to a thicket in front of them. “I believe there is an oak over there that’s been here since the Norman Conquest. Would you like to see it?”
“Very much.”
“I think it might be easier on foot.”
Albert jumped off his horse and came over to help Victoria. As he put his hands around her waist to help her down, Victoria felt herself shudder. For a moment their eyes were level, and it felt as if they were looking at each other for the first time. Then, gently, Albert set Victoria on her feet. Tying their horses to a tree, they started to walk towards the wood. But Dash picked up a scent and raced between them after some imaginary rabbit. Victoria hesitated before picking up the skirts of her habit and running after the dog, not checking if Albert was following, but knowing somehow that he would be. They ran through the copse, jumping over branches and dodging the brambles that sprang across their path.
Victoria was running so fast that she did not notice the branch that whipped off her riding hat and the twigs that pulled her hair out of its neat coils, so that it hung loose around her shoulders. As she felt her hair fall, Victoria stopped; it made her feel vulnerable to have it hanging loose. As she began to twist it into a chignon, Albert picked up her hat and handed it to her. Before Victoria could use the hat to cover her hastily rearranged hair, he put up a hand to stop her.
“No, I like to see you like this, unbound. With your hair down, you are not so much a queen.”
Victoria narrowed her eyes at him. “I think that might be treason, Albert.”
Albert stared at her in consternation, and then, at last, broke into a smile which transformed his face, wiping away the look he sometimes had of a little boy trying to remember his twelve times table.
“Oh, I see you are teasing me! Ernst is always telling me that I am too serious.”
Victoria looked back at him, and said with just a little bite in her voice, “And you always tell me I am not serious enough.”
Albert’s smile did not falter. “For a queen perhaps. But now without your hat, and your hair like this, I think you are just right.”
He leant towards her and put his hand to her face and delicately removed a strand of hair that had fallen across her mouth. She looked up at him and for a breathtaking moment thought that he was about to kiss her, but then he pulled away and they started to walk again through the woods, Victoria agonisingly conscious of his body next to hers.
Albert looked up at the canopy of trees above them. “When I was a little boy I was imagining that the trees were my friends.”
“How funny. I used to talk to my dolls.”
Albert looked down at her. “We were not such happy children, I think.”
Victoria heard the sadness in his voice.
“Albert?”
“Yes?”
Victoria said in a rush, “What happened to your mother? I only know that she died when you were young.”
Albert was silent. Victoria saw the shadows coming back to his face and wished she hadn’t mentioned it, but then he continued, “She ran away from my father, just before my fifth birthday. With her equerry. She died a few years later, but I never saw her again.”
Albert turned his face away from her, but Victoria put her hand on his arm. “How awful. You were so young, and you must have missed her so much.”
Albert hesitated and then he turned to look at Victoria. “You know, when I see Aunt Victoire looking at you with so much love in her eyes, I feel jealous. No one is there to look at me so.”
Victoria felt for his hand and squeezed it. “That is not true, Albert. You have Ernst, and now, well, now you have—” But at that moment the leafy ruminations of the forest were pierced by an agonized yelp of an animal in pain.
Victoria froze. “Did you hear that? It sounds like Dash.”
Albert was already running in the direction of the noise. Victoria picked up her skirts and hurried after him. She saw him kneeling on the ground, but without turning round he said, “Stay there, Victoria! You should not see this.”
But Victoria could not ignore her pet’s cries. As she knelt down beside him, she gasped in horror. Dash’s leg had been caught in the steel jaws of a poacher’s trap; the paw was limp and there was blood on the ground.
“Oh, how wicked!” she said, and cradled Dash in her arms as Albert pried the trap apart with a stick and gently took out Dash’s injured paw.
Victoria looked at the mangled limb and started to cry. “Oh, my poor little Dashy!” She felt her dog’s rough tongue licking her hand. “He will never walk again.”
“No, no. I think it is broken, but it is possible for it to mend,” said Albert. “I will make a—how do you call it in English—a frame for the leg to mend.”
Shrugging off his jacket, he spread it out on the ground and gestured for Victoria to sit on it. “Now you must hold him tight while I am making the…”
“Splint.”
“Jawohl, the splint.”
“But we have no bandages.”
Albert took his knife out of his boot and with a quick movement cut a rent in his shirt sleeve and ripped it off. Victoria saw his sinewy arm, the white skin covered in fine gold, the suggestion of dark hair in the armpit. Dash whimpered as Albert ripped the linen in half, and Victoria had to hold the trembling animal as Albert wrapped the linen round two sticks to keep the broken leg in place. He worked quickly, and Victoria could see that he was trying as hard as he could not to cause Dash any more pain. At last it was done. The broken leg was held tight and Dash was already licking the linen bandage trying to worry it off. Albert sat back on his heels and pushed his hair out of his eyes. “I think this will be sufficient for now.”
Victoria kissed Dash on the nose, and then looked up at Albert with wet eyes. “I am so grateful to you. Dash means so much to me. When I was growing up at Kensington, he was my only real friend. Whatever happened, I knew that Dash would always be there.”
Albert put a hand out and pushed a lock of hair away from her tear-stained cheek. “But now it is different, I think?”
Victoria felt her cheek burn under the touch of his hand. She looked down to hide her confusion. “Oh yes, I have Lord M now … and my ladies, of course.”
As she said Melbourne’s name, Albert stood up and the tender look on his face vanished. Looking down at her, he said in a voice that she had not heard before, “I wish, Victoria, that you had not been so much with Lord Melbourne. He is not serious.”
Victoria felt the blood rushing to her face. Still clutching Das
h, she struggled to her feet so that she could answer him with dignity. “Lord Melbourne does not choose to appear serious. It is the English manner. But he is a man of great feeling.”
Albert picked up his jacket and put it on, before turning to Victoria and saying, “Then perhaps you should marry him.”
Dash whimpered as Victoria tightened her grip on him. She stared back at Albert. “That is not possible.”
Albert turned away from her as if he was about to go, but turned back, his words tumbling out in an impassioned torrent, “Do you know what I saw the other day near that fine thoroughfare called Regent Street? A child, maybe three or four years old, selling matches, one at a time. Your Lord Melbourne chooses not to look at these things, but I must. That is the question, Victoria. Do you want to see things as they are, or as you would like them to be?”
If she had not been holding Dash in her arms, Victoria felt that she would have slapped Albert’s self-righteous face. Her voice trembling with fury, she said, “How dare you? Do you imagine that I am a doll waiting to be turned this way or that? May I remind you that while you were looking at paintings at Italy, I was ruling this country. And yet you have been here a few days and assume you know my people better than I do. I am the Queen of England and I don’t need you to tell me what to think!” Hearing the emotion in his mistress’s voice, Dash gave a bark of sympathy.
Albert looked back at her, his blue eyes icy now. “No, that is Lord Melbourne’s job.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The carriage hit a pothole, and Leopold narrowed his eyes at Albert, as if he were personally to blame for every rut in the turnpike from Windsor to London. He had had such hopes of the impromptu visit to Windsor, and had been delighted when Ernst told him that he had left Victoria and Albert riding alone in the Great Park. Surely they would return from their ride an engaged couple?
But when Albert and Victoria returned to the castle a good hour later, Albert leading the horses as Victoria held her lapdog, not only were they not engaged, they were barely on speaking terms. Victoria went straight inside, carrying Dash, and Albert got back on his horse and rode off into the park. An hour later the order was given that the royal party would be returning to Buckingham Palace that very afternoon.
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