A Flaw in the Blood

Gunther hailed the strangers in his deliberate German way. One of the men straightened, and came forward to meet him; the other doggedly persisted in repairs to the carriage. Handshakes, gestures followed; Louisa interpreted a broken lynchpin. It ended with them all sitting down near the waterfall to share the food she'd brought in panniers strapped to Jacques's back. The French driver walked into Cannes to fetch a wheelwright.

“Did Mama send you?” Leo blurted out almost as soon as they had sat down. “Is she desperately unhappy because of Papa?”

“I am sure she must be,” the woman said. “But no. I have come to the south of France for my health—not on behalf of the Queen.”

She was certainly thin with illness, and her voice was guttural in her throat.

“You're looking remarkably well, Your Royal Highness. Cannes agrees with you. I should not have known you for the boy I saw in Russell Square.”

“It is all the exercise I'm taking,” Leo said proudly. “Gunther insists upon it. He's a doctor, too.”

“Too?” Louisa interjected.

“I qualified in Edinburgh,” Miss Armistead said apologetically. “The Consort was so gracious as to request that I . . . visit with Prince Leopold. But that was at least a year ago. How extraordinary that we should meet again, in a foreign clime!”

“Yes,” Gunther murmured. “Quite extraordinary. I once spoke with your late guardian, Miss Armistead—I should say, Dr. Armistead—regarding the statistical manifestation of scrofula among able seamen in the Royal Navy . . .”

They walked off a little way together, among the junipers.

The Irishman called Fitzgerald smiled down at Leo. He was too old to be handsome, Louisa decided—forty if he was a day—but there was a charm to his tousled head and a humour in his looks that were oddly winning. Was this what Mama termed a rake? she wondered suddenly. Was the stranger, despite the decent cut of his clothes, not quite a gentleman?

“What if the three of us were to find this Christmas tree, while the others talk of Science?”

Louisa smiled. She could see that the roguish Mr. Fitzgerald did not approve of women pretending to medicine.

After that, they were able to enjoy the piney sunlight and the cool sound of water over stone. Louisa felt perfectly comfortable inviting the strangers to Château Leader, for Christmas.

Chapter Thirty-Two

I am Tired, and the hour is late; but I must not sleep: I must not drink the sedative dear Jenner has sent to me. In the silence of an Osborne Christmas Eve, I may compose myself, and write, as I must, to the precious ones who are far away. Vicky, of course, in whom it is as natural as breathing to impart the most sacred thoughts of the hidden soul, and to Affie at sea, and to Leopold.

My wretched, miserable existence is not one to write about, I began—and then set down my pen.

Poor orphaned boy! To be left fatherless, at such a season and at such an age—when one is far from home and lodged among strangers, however kindly disposed toward one—however well paid! What to say to little Leo, of the awful stillness of the Blue Room, when once that dear soul had departed? He is unlikely to comprehend very much, after all.

You are an affectionate little Boy—& you will remember how happy we all were—you will therefore sorrow when you know & think that poor Mama is more wretched, more miserable—than any being in this World can be!

Impossible to write the truth. I have never regarded Leo as particularly intelligent. His temper is so very bad; he is unlikely to feel his loss as he ought. He is the least dear to me of all my children—being so delicate, and giving rise to such anxiety and trouble in his father's breast and in mine, he has never been anything other than tiresome.

I pine & long for your dearly beloved precious Papa so dreadfully . . .

I do not think poor Leo ceased crying in rage from the first hour of his existence until the close of his first twelvemonth; and even at two, he was so frequently given to fits of screaming that I once remarked he ought to be soundly whipped. He resembles a frog in his features, and his posture is generally stooped, so that I have never been moved to sketch him in any manner other than the grotesque— Indeed, I avoid the necessity of drawing him at all. I find better subjects in Arthur, who is so charming and well-favoured that everyone adores him; and in the pretty ways of Louise and Beatrice.

Leo's frequent clumsinesses and the resultant confinements to bed—here with bruised knees, there with an oozing lip, yet again with a swollen elbow—make him a pitiable object; but one cannot help feeling exasperation at his endless demands for attention. Not even the best of governesses could make him more like other children—by the time he reached the age of five, I had despaired of any improvement in looks, bearing, manners, or disposition. His speech was marked by an impediment, and his tantrums not to be endured. These past several months in which he has been absent, in the south of France, should have been the most restorative of my life—but I am doomed to find the prospect of peace and happiness forever set at a remove. They are not for me; or at least, not this side of the grave.

I shall enclose in Leo's letter 2 photographs of beloved Papa, wh you can have framed—but not in black,—a Locket with beloved Papa's hair & a photograph—wh I wish you to wear attached to a string or chain round your neck . . .

Leopold is flawed—dreadfully flawed, in every aspect of body and soul. My darling Albert searched, to the very hour of his last breath, for causes he could name—enemies he could accuse—demons he could exorcise. My heart whispers that in pursuing the Truth—in daring to question the goodness of Providence—Albert tasted a bitterness that broke his heart. But for Leopold, we should all have gone on as before—innocent in our happiness.

Is it any wonder I quite detest the child?

Chapter Thirty-Three

“Have you ever seen a sea so glorious?” Georgiana exulted as they walked up the Toulon road together at noon the next day. Her voice was still husky with disease, and she had certainly grown thinner; the bones of her face looked fragile as porcelain beneath the tissue-wrap of her skin. Illness had honed her beauty so that it became almost terrible. Fitzgerald could not stare at her enough.

“Never,” he said, “though I will always prefer the view from Cobh.”

“You miss Ireland so much?”

“The view was precious, because I was looking away.”

She grasped his hand and shook it slightly; the warmth ignited his fingertips, and for an instant, he could hardly breathe. The need to take her in his arms—potent and ravaging—had been growing in Fitzgerald for most of the past week, when Georgiana had never been out of his thoughts and only rarely out of his company.

We'll tell people I'm your niece, she had suggested when they landed at Calais, so that no one makes a fuss about arrangements.

Arrangements. Train compartments and carriages. Tandem hotel rooms. Fitzgerald lying awake during the long hours of the night in the hope of hearing her movement through the wall.