A Flaw in the Blood

all as the crow flew.

“Trains?” Fitzgerald asked.

A local one existed, to be sure. They could change at Würzburg.

They thanked him, paid their bill, and put Coburg to their backs an hour and a half later.

“The present Prince of Leiningen, Charles, is Queen Victoria's half brother,” Georgie said as the train chugged slowly south. “Their mother—the Duchess of Kent to us—was married to the old Prince when she was just seventeen. Two children and a decade or so later, he died—and the widow married Edward, Duke of Kent. Poor Kent survived only a year after the wedding. He left his duchess to raise their girl to be queen. But what has all that to do with an equerry's wife?”

Fitzgerald frowned. “There were always rumours, I believe, about the Duchess of Kent and her man-of-all- work, Sir John Conroy. He was the Duke's equerry before he became the Duchess's man, after Kent's death. But he was Irish—and had no ties to Amorbach I ever knew.”

“The person the Baroness spoke of must be a link to Victoire,” Georgie mused. “It is her past—or perhaps I should say the Princess of Leiningen's, as she then was—we're seeking in Amorbach. Victoria—or Albert, for that matter—never had anything to do with the place.”

“Then we must find out who served as the Prince of Leiningen's equerry in Victoire's time.”

“Is anyone likely to remember?” Georgiana threw up her hands in frustration. “She married Kent and left Amorbach in 1818. We're asking the local people to think back more than forty years. Patrick, it's impossible!”

“I know.” He ran his fingers through his tangle of hair. “This whole trip has been a fool's errand, hasn't it? We can't exactly drive up to the palace and ask Victoire's son for the name of his mother's lover. He'd be unlikely to know much at all. He must have been a child when she married Kent.”

“A servant could tell us something. One of your old retainers, long tied to the Leiningen family.”

“Let's hope, then, that they feel no loyalty to Victoire's memory.”

They had been expecting something like Coburg: a thriving city, fit for a prince. But Amorbach was a small town lost in the hills and the dense growth of the Odenwald Forest. It was known for its Benedictine abbey, which had been founded in the thirteenth century and converted to a country manor in the last one; for the cathedral that graced its northern heights; and for the schloss that dominated the western edge of town. In between, there wasn't much: pretty half-timbered cottages, a tavern or two, and the railway station where the trains from Würzburg and Mainz arrived each hour.

They were the only passengers getting off. Georgiana glanced about her as they descended to the platform.

“There can't be more than a thousand people in this place,” she said to Fitzgerald. “It might be Windsor, but for the trees.”

“Let's try a tavern, first.”

They chose what seemed to be the principal inn, on a side street not far from the cathedral, with the arms of Leiningen swinging over the door.

Fitzgerald presented himself as an English writer, commissioned to research the life of the late Duchess of Kent—almost a year after her death, he told the credulous, he was preparing a distinguished biography at the direction of the Queen. The work would be serialised in the London papers and published later, in three quarto volumes, by a prestigious British press.

His manservant, George, translated this deferentially into French, which the innkeeper's wife at least understood. She had been educated at the convent school in Mainz. When they had done with the explanations, she conferred in German with her husband, and then called out into the taproom. A hurried confabulation with two men ensued, after which she turned once more to Fitzgerald.

“She says that most of Victoire's household have died, but we must of a certainty talk to the Prince of Leiningen's nursemaid, who is nearly eighty, and pensioned off,” Georgiana murmured. “The nurse came from Coburg to Amorbach with Victoire, at her marriage to old Prince Emich, God rest his soul; and now lives with her son, a tenant farmer, near the Schloss Leiningen.”

“Eh, that's grand.”

“There is also the late prince's old steward, who lodges here in town.”

“Ask if the equerry is anywhere to be found.”

Georgiana put the question; Fitzgerald saw the woman hesitate, shake her head, and then add a few words.

“Dead years and years ago, she says. And, of course, Captain Schindler—that was the equerry's name—was a military officer, far above the serving class, so she did not even consider of him. But his widow”—Georgiana's voice trembled slightly with excitement—“his widow lives with her married daughter, in the Otterbachtal. The innkeeper will draw us a map.”

In the end, they put very few questions to the equerry's wife. Not many were necessary.

They found their way to her daughter's house, a handsome and substantial home belonging to an Amorbach burgher, on a morning of uncertain sunshine. The widow Schindler received them in the morning room, which overlooked a snowy garden; a fire burned brightly in the hearth. She was a faded beauty of perhaps sixty, purposeful and calm. To their relief, she spoke French; and again, in the guise of manservant, Georgiana served as translator.

She had married Captain Schindler forty years before, long after the Princess of Leiningen left Amorbach for England. “My husband was in his late twenties, then. When the Princess married Kent, Richard was made head of the schloss's household guard by the Royal Wards—the council that served as Regent for the young Prince Charles, until he came of age. Prince Charles spent a good deal of his youth with his mother in England, you know, when he was not in Amorbach; and the Duchess of Kent—as she became—was exceedingly worried that his throne would be usurped. Old Prince Emich, Charles's father, had a number of bastards—all pretending to the crown. But with my husband at the castle, the Duchess could be easy.”

“He was devoted to her interests?”

“Of course,” Frau Schindler said simply. “Richard adored the Princess. He told me once that he would have died for her. And she rewarded him for it. Even after she went to England and married Kent, she sent him a yearly draft on her bank. Coutts, I think it was. I saw the letters come, year after year. When he died, of course, they stopped.”

Georgiana glanced at Fitzgerald.

“Did you ever meet the Duchess of Kent, ma'am?”

Frau Schindler shook her head. “I married Richard four or five years after she left Amorbach. Even Richard did not see her once she removed to England. He did not like her husband, the Duke. He thought the man much too old for Victoire—lacking in vitality. A mariage de convenance. The Duke came to Amorbach once after their marriage, before the child was born. Et voilà! It was as my Richard said: The Duke was dead before Victoria was a year old. Richard did not see the Duchess again after that. He began a new life. Later, we were married, when I was just sixteen.”

A visit to Coburg, before Victoria was born. Yearly payments, from an account at Coutts. Had the Duchess bought her lover's silence?

Fitzgerald calculated rapidly. The Kents were married in London in July 1818. Their child was born at the end of the following May. Victoria must have been conceived in late August or early September.

“Ask her when the Kents visited Coburg,” he told Georgiana. “Sometime in the autumn of 1818?”

Frau Schindler shrugged. She could not remember something she had heard about only once or twice, four decades ago.

“How did she lose her husband?”

The door to the morning room was thrust open, and a little boy of about six limped carefully across to his grandmother. He held a tin soldier in one grubby fist; tears stained his cheeks. Frau Schindler went to him, and held him close—then spoke hurriedly in French.

“Her daughter's youngest, and very delicate,” Georgiana told Patrick, her brows knitting. “He has just had a bruising fall. It is best that we leave . . .”