Story [Victoria] "A Kingdom Where My Love Can Stand" | 2023/'24 Olympics & More | AU; Victoria/Melbourne

Thanks!

lol! You know, that may actually be helpful with some of these chapters, reading the notes first.

I can only imagine how surrounded by sharks Victoria must have felt at the beginning of the reign, but she's got at least one of them circling for her rather than waiting for her to sink.

In a way, it's almost been bittersweet, writing the disapproving, rather dour old matron the name Queen Victoria more typically evokes as young woman with her whole life still yet to live.

You know, The Talk is already hard enough to process without throwing in these complicated nineteenth century "morals".

Exactly! Family truly is of the heart.

. . . and when it is of the blood, that just means more to love!

I feel like every group of siblings has at least one member like Frederick - I have two, in my case.

Thanks! It's definitely advice that's going to stick with him over the years.

As always, thank you so much for your lovely feedback! I'm thrilled to know that you are still enjoying this collection, and I hope that you continue to enjoy it as it goes!

What you call grossly inadequate I have since reread more than once and am more than grateful for! So thank you!

&

Yes, exactly! Between her youth and the blatant misogyny of this time period (the same as in times past, as the Tower shows in brutal detail), she has everything stacked against her when it comes to asserting her authority - let alone feeling comfortable with extending that authority to begin with!

And I just loved writing the scene with the ravens - imagining a world where that is a common legend associated with the Tower brings me all sorts of joy.

My gosh, but when I read that this tool had the gall to lie and make up a story that is still incorrectly depicted to this day, all because he couldn't admit that he didn't know to his sovereign . . . yeah. His character all but wrote itself from there, and I can't tell you how satisfying it was to give those lines to Victoria on our behalf.

My heart just broke when I read of the state of the chapel by the time of Victoria's reign. And then, for her to see how these queens of old were so easily cast aside in life, and then quite literally lost to history and grossly disrespected in death . . . it had to be chilling, given the still unstable nature of her own rule and tenuous claim to the throne. Her grief and rage are rather understandable as a result, and she tried so hard to hold them back so as to avoid even the appearance of hysteria, but when they broke . . .

As much as I appreciate the mentor/mentee aspect of their relationship, especially in these early days, I do love putting the power in Power Couple. Because you're right: she's still his sovereign, first and foremost, and he quite literally serves at the pleasure of the Crown - which he is more than happy to do. (And, again, that's really what started this AU for me: even at their happiest, Albert struggled with accepting Victoria as his queen, and he bucked against their power dynamics from the first day of their marriage to their last, which is just so . . . sad, ultimately. But maybe, in this other time and place . . . )

*fist pump!*

I feel so seen.

Yes, this; exactly this! I can't tell you what a wonderful experience it was as an author, guiding both of them on this journey. Queens of England is probably my favorite thing I've written in quite some time, and I am so, so happy that you enjoyed reading it too!

Aw, yeah. *high-fives fellow short person*

I am - as I believe the majority of us are - a complete sucker for totally-not-flirting bantering couples, what can I say?

Those were a few of my favorite lines, as well.

They're definitely knights in their own way.

I'm not saying that the second part is almost 10k words and that the third part is looking to be just as long, or anything, but . . . the second part is almost 10k words and that the third part is looking to be just as long.

Honest to goodness, at first I was just trying to write a few short drabbles to explain Melbourne's relationship to women and power as influenced by his childhood, and instead it became this massive character study to explain why he is . . . well, him. Before reading Goodwin's novel, I too only knew about his wife's affair with Byron, and vaguely knew that the city in Australia was named for him. The more I learned about the mess with Byron, the more I wondered why he didn't just divorce her . . . and then I clicked on Elizabeth Lamb's wiki page and everything fell into place with each subsequent link I explored. This is such a complex social web, to say the least, and it's been fascinating to sort out and put into words as an author.

And Byron, speak of the devil! We're going to meet him in this collection very shortly.

Right??

(Though, in my notebook, the tongue-in-cheek title of this story arc was: "101 Reasons Why Lord Melbourne Should Not be Considered as a Suitable Consort for Her Majesty, Presented in Chronological Order -- From the Desk of the Prime Minister to HRM V.R." but that was much too long to actually keep. )

Thank you so much for your kind words! Because that really is what his entire character boils down to, isn't it? Striving to be a gentleman, as was inculcated in him by his father - which, of course, just adds another layer to the story entirely that's impossible to peel away.

George Lamb was such a colorful character - and not always in a good way - that I just couldn't resist adding that scene.

Success!

. . . I really just love this bird-watching, flower-growing, classy diplomat so much - especially when combined with that edge that lets you know that peace is a choice for him, and still waters certainly run deep. (That is a combination that Rufus Sewell play so, so well, too - and having a good actor to imagine along the way never hurts. )

Aw, thank you so much! As always I appreciate any form your feedback takes, whenever it comes! I just hope that you continue to enjoy these stories as they go!



Alrighty! I will be back with the next part some time tomorrow!

Until then:

 

Author's Notes: Before we begin, I have to give a very serious content warning for this chapter. Seriously: CONTENT WARNING. This chapter deals with infant mortality; a terminally ill child, and descriptions of his battle with epilepsy; corelating 19th century medical practices and drug use; and the resulting, severe depression that leads to marital discord between the parents. That's the short of it, but for anyone who may have further concerns, the long of my warning is under the cut below.

Spoiler: More Detailed Warnings

This chapter first deals with a late-term stillborn birth, and the resulting grief suffered by the parents. From there, the story continues with the hardships of raising a child whom I imagine suffers from infant epilepsy (EIEE), which turns into what may be Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome (LGS). I have done my best to write this story as accurately and as sensitively as possible, but please note, I am no doctor, and this is still fiction. The effects of both conditions on such a young brain can impede a child's development both physically and mentally. As a result, epilepsy and autism have been known to go hand in hand; though neither term yet existed at this time. As for details, there is a scene that includes a somewhat graphic depiction of a prolonged seizure, which may be troubling for some readers. (I have to warn now that the child in question is terminally ill, and his death will occur in the next chapter.) Added to this is an imperfect, 19th century understanding of both health conditions. At the time, the only treatment was a very, very strong drug that should never be administered to children - let alone taken by an adult. I've kept my terms vague, and there's only one scene depicting the aftereffects of administering such prescribed "medicine", yet there are also references to this drug's debate in Parliament and implications of its recreational use, too. (And here's where I thank my fellow mods for helping me ensure this chapter remained TOS friendly! ) Finally, these circumstances lead to marital discord and very strong depression - including some wild talk and a few lines that can be taken as suicidal (and wanting peace for one's child, even if that means death) from the mother. Please, if any of that sounds triggering for you, keep yourself safe!

Needless to say, this just may be one of the angstiest things I've ever written, but I've hopefully portrayed this story in a way that's sensitive to both my readers and the characters I'm attempting to convey - for that was truly my aim.

Now, for everyone who's prepared to wade with me through the mire, here we go . . .

---

“Say We Choose (but It’s No Choice at All)”
(Bonus 4x100+ Relay)​

IV.II.II

Affection

Of course, one of the first things required of him as his father’s heir was to find a wife.

He did so in Caroline Ponsonby.

There was no other woman like her – so impossibly clever, so brazenly bright, so searingly lustrous with life. She cut like an unpolished diamond, with a mind like the steel edge of a sword and a tongue like a whip -

“ - indeed, you have found quite the fanged little beast for yourself,” Emily hardly approved – but then, as he suspected that not even the Queen of England would do for him in his sister’s eyes, he could only laugh when she bared her own sharp teeth to match.

It was July, and his hands were dirtied with potting soil up to the rolled line of his shirtsleeves. It was hot in the greenhouse, and the air was thick with the fragrance of flowers. Long months of planning had at last culminated in the perfect bouquet for his proposal to Caroline – with white chrysanthemums, symbolizing loyal love, optimism, and endurance; meadowsweet, for happiness and protection; yellow primrose, for eternal love; and blushing bellflowers, for gratitude. The flowers were all easily found in many traditional English gardens, yet timing their blossoms had been key. Patience and careful cultivation saw to the bulk of the bouquet, but its crowning glory and the great pride of his efforts was a septet of hibiscus makinoi – a striking, pale pink flower with folds upon folds of softly textured petals curling over pulsing golden hearts. A scant few days after meeting Caroline, he’d traded with an East Indiaman for the seeds – seeds that had originated in the southern isles of Japan – and coaxed them to life far and away from their subtropical home. They were now gloriously in bloom, and their meaning, praising rare and unique beauty, could not be applied to a more deserving recipient.

He next had his sights set on cultivating orchids – his admittedly favorite flower. They were tricky to grow – difficult, even. The seeds he planted this day would not bloom for another two years or so – and not for another eight years, even, with one of the species he was particularly invested in. He wouldn’t have any flowers to show for Caroline’s bridal bouquet, but maybe, for every anniversary in the years to come . . .

. . . he tucked the next seed into the damp earth, and let his hands rest against its still slumbering heart. Hello, his own heart whispered, it's time to awaken.

Emily – though she wouldn’t risk dirtying the fine white muslin of her gown as she had in years prior – watched him with an expression that was as fond as it was sad. “I only worry,” she tried once more, “that you are casting pearls before swine.”

“Are you calling your sister-to-be a sow, Emily?” William replied lightly, purposefully choosing to be obtuse as he brought out another shallow terra cotta tray. “I’m not sure that’s what our Redeemer had in mind when he gave that parable.”

“Don’t be daft,” Emily did not appreciate his humor, “you know exactly what I mean.”

“Yes, I do – and I can promise you that I am not the one casting pearls into the mire, but rather, receiving one of great value.”

For that, Emily gave a dainty – but still rather inelegant – snort. “If you say so, brother.”

Her continued reticence to accept his choice in Caroline – a reserve that Frederick, and even George, shared – soured some of his previous good humor. How could they not see what he saw so easily? William set his jaw, but let his frustration go with his next breath. “You just have to get to know her better,” he instead chose to give the situation time – for that was all they truly needed. “And you’ll understand all the more so when you finally meet your own match – indeed, I shall take great delight in teasing you rather mercilessly upon that day.”

He elbowed her playfully, and Emily swatted him away when he was still so covered in dirt.

“I shall give you no cause to tease,” she haughtily proclaimed, “for my match will be a good, sensible man, with whom I may - ”

“ - with whom you’ll tire of within a fortnight," he predicted with all confidence. "Yes, make sure that he is a good, sensible sort of man – but also one who can challenge your mind as you deserve to be challenged.”

“Is that what Caroline does?” Emily raised a knowing brow. “Challenge your mind? Honestly, you hardly have to marry her now that you’ve answered that particular sort of challenge.”

"Emily Lamb!" inelegantly, he sputtered. “For shame, but what would Mother say to hear you speak in such a manner?”

“Oh, don't be so shocked," she abandoned all pretense to roll her eyes with an audible huff of annoyance. "I am merely a sister whose brothers quite fail at discretion – do you think me blind and ignorant, just because I am also a woman?”

William was suddenly very interested in balancing the mix for the next seedling – it was imperative to get the ratio of phosphates and nitrates just right, after all.

“You're adorable when you're bashful.” Then, quite heedless of the dirt, Emily nudged him. “At least you mean to properly honor Caroline with marriage – George is going to be called out in a duel if he doesn’t leave Lady Anne well enough alone, and Frederick is absolutely hopeless, spinning sonnets over the Lenthe girl, knowing full well that she’s bound back for Austria following Michaelmas.”

“He’s never going to marry an Englishwoman, isn't he?” William chuckled in commiseration, happily taking the out she'd so kindly offered him.

“Undoubtedly not,” she agreed. “I'd rather him find a wife closer to home – but then, that’s selfish of me, I must confess.” Her smile faded, ever so slightly, and she added, “Yet I only wish for his happiness; I will bid him adieu with a glad heart if I must, just as I wish . . . I wish for that same happiness for all of my brothers.”

“And if I promised that I am happy,” William said slowly, but with all sincerity, “would you believe my words true?”

For a long moment, she simply held his gaze, and he stared into a mirror of his own eyes, letting her search for whatever it was that she sought to find until it was found.

“Will,” yet she only sighed, “I believe you completely; it is Caroline that I doubt. Please, give serious weight to this matter. Even you must confess that she is somewhat . . . somewhat wild. You say that her passion suits you – and perhaps it does, for now. Yet you, my brother, are far more domestic than you care to admit – what shall happen when you are content with calm waters, and she wants still for a storm? You are naturally inclined to peace, while she is . . . she thrives on . . .” but Emily faltered, and instead bid, “I only ask – nay, I plead that you consider your choice most closely: is she the sort of woman that you want as your partner in life, until death do you part? Is she truly the woman whom you want for the mother of your children – the next heir to our father’s title?”

Her words struck as intended, uncomfortably reminding him of Peniston Lamb’s long-ago counsel . . . that of wives, mistresses, friends, lovers . . . and that heady, impossible combination of all.

“I want her to be every sort of woman to me,” he finally said in all seriousness. “She is every sort of woman to me.”

Yet Emily only released a deep breath, clearly defeated. “I hope, for your sake,” even so, she laid down her sword to give her grudging blessing, “that she truly proves to be.”



.

.

Amongst the duties he inherited from his late brother was a seat in the House of Commons – which he similarly ran for and was elected to without opposition. Even so, he was a MP in little more than name, which admittedly suited him perfectly well. He came, he listened, he voted with his party, and that was that.

Upon their marriage, he was sponsored in the House by Caroline’s uncle – Lord Fitzwilliam, the Earl of Fitzwilliam himself – and took up representing the people of Peterborough. Yet he was still much of a backbencher, even as the protégé of such a powerful man. He was attentive, yes, so as not to dishonor his patron or his father’s name, but he was not as inclined to combat as the vast majority of his colleagues. Rather than raising his voice, he instead listened to the debates of far wiser men and took note – preparing himself for the day when he’d inherit his father’s seat in the House of Lords (though he would later understand where power in their government truly laid). The ground seemingly trembled when the likes of Lord Grey and Lord Holland spoke, and even Lord Perceval and the Duke of Wellington on the opposite side of the aisle were voices to be reckoned with; and so, he marveled and listened and learned – all the while taking many of the ideals of the Whig party to heart until they quite became his own.

Yet, even as he developed a mind for politics, he was far too junior in the House to feel comfortable making a stand on any issue of merit – just as he knew that his voice was yet too small to be effectual, even if he tried. Instead, he did his best to make what small improvements for his borough that he could, and left turning the great wheels of government to far more ambitious men.



.

.

A year into their marriage, William happened upon a newly released novel at Hatchards: Sense & Sensibility, written by . . .

Needless to say, he bought the novel after skimming through the first chapter, already well satisfied with the author’s command of character and language. He had a second copy wrapped with gift paper and tied with a bow – through which he looped a sprig of orange orchids – and, with his gift in hand, he set home for Hertfordshire.

It was nearing evening by the time he alighted from the carriage, yet he didn’t bother first checking inside. Instead, he raced down the long slope of the green behind the house for the river, where he knew Caroline liked to sit and fill journal after journal with pages of her own writing. Indeed, there she was, with the sunlight glinting off the unbound waves of her rich auburn hair and humming as she stroked an absent hand over the now extended curve of her belly, her pen furiously flying all the while.

William felt his heart soar for the sight. She hadn’t been showing when he left for that last debate in the House, but now . . .

. . . with every step he took, he gladly left his duties to Crown and country behind. The cares of the realm were hardly a thought that could touch him – not here, where the only kingdom that truly mattered was his love and their growing family. Together, they were his great delight and every claim to fortune and happiness.

“Caro!” he exclaimed as he crossed the bridge. "Caro, look at this!"

He didn't want her to feel as if she had to rise and greet him – and well knew that she’d protest any supposed coddling – so he darted down the bank and unceremoniously fell to sit next to her on the blanket she had spread over the new spring grass. After a breathless kiss in greeting – and then another that went on for far longer still – he shook his head to collect himself, recalling his gift.

"I cannot wait to see your expression when you open this," William handed her the wrapped parcel, his smile all but beaming from his face.

Caroline matched his grin with one of her own as she first took the flowers. “What do these mean?” she inquired, the same as she ever did. He’d given her a copy of A Comprehensive Guide to Floriography in the earliest days of their courtship, but she ever preferred to ask him anyway – which was no matter, as he delighted to tell her. “I’ve never seen orange blossoms on an orchid before.”

“That is because, as far as we know, there are only three species that bloom thus naturally, and they’re all native to Central America,” he revealed. “This is guarianthe aurantiaca, from Mexico – Banks has been studying it for some time now, and Lindey was kind enough to give me a plant of my own to propagate – there are a few techniques he’d like me to try, and I’ll report back on my findings in due course. The orange color means pride, enthusiasm . . . and good luck.”

“Good luck?” Caroline alighted on the spark of his own joy. “Now I am most curious to see what’s inside.”

“Then tarry no longer,” he encouraged, and she immediately answered by pulling the string aside and ripping at the paper.

"A book?" she asked curiously.

“A book, yes – but not just any book,” he couldn’t help but hurry her understanding. “Look at the author!”

Caroline made a great show of taking her time, much preferring to tease him with her obstinacy. But then, he drank in the sight of her beautiful grey eyes flying wide as she understood. “A novel,” she read aloud as she traced the gold leaf tooled into the leather cover with an awestruck hand, “written by . . . a Lady.”

“A Lady!” William echoed to exclaim. “This Lady is already the toast of Brooks,” he continued with relish. “The Tories may not like her much, admittedly, and she’s scandalized more than a few stuffy old biddies with her talk of duels and seductions – but that matters not. At Holland House, Blake and Wordsworth already applaud her as a most perceptive wit, and Sir Walter Scott is even making inquiries as to her true identity – for he’ll not have such a talent wilt in the shadows, and wishes to encourage her to publish more, if she’s so inclined. He believes that this Lady is capable of far greater works than even this debut achievement.”

Caroline, who was never at a loss for words – to the contrary, she was rarely ever silent or still – was then quite speechless, her expression fixed in shock. Her eyes shone wetly, even as she whispered, “So it’s not . . . it’s not impossible, then?”

“Indeed not,” he confirmed, lifting her pen hand to kiss her knuckles quite ardently. “Whatever you put your mind to, I fully believe you capable of accomplishing – you are no less than this Lady’s equal, and, someday, all the world will know that as well as I do.”

The fingers of her left hand brushed from the book to the orchids – he’d have to dry them for her, so that she could use them to mark her place and remember this day – reverent and amazed. Yet there was a strangely hesitant cast to her features, one that he could not wholly interpret when he’d previously thought to know her every countenance down to its smallest nuance before.

“Sometimes,” she toyed with the flowers to mutter, “I fear that you shall someday realize that you think far better of me than I deserve.”

He scoffed, and warmly pressed her hand against such foolishness. “You deserve your due,” he affirmed with all sincerity. “Someday, you will realize that as well as I do – and I will do everything in my power to see that day come sooner, rather than later.”

"My husband has quite the silver tongue," Caroline still shook her head, but her expression had turned soft and pleased. “You’ve been away at the House for far too long – charmer.”

“I can assure you that there's nothing charming about much of the squabbling of Parliament,” William returned quite wryly. “Though perhaps Lord Wellington would take offense at my saying so – surely Lord Conygham would.”

“I should say, how very impolitic of you,” Caroline laughed, swatting at him in mock-chastisement.

“Ah, yes,” he admitted, catching her hand with an unrepentant grin, “now that I quite learned from the House.”

She was then smiling at him in such a way that he had to kiss her again – and when he at last drew away, it was only due to his questing hands finding the gentle swell of her belly. Amazed, he shifted down on the blanket, positioning himself so that he could press his cheek against the growing proof of the new life they’d created together. He felt a telling wetness burn his eyes as he whispered, “Someday, little one, it shall be one of your mother’s novels that I read to you.”

Caroline laced the fingers of one hand through his own over her stomach, while the other played with the curls of his hair. They remained that way for a long time – with their new family of three, attended only by the murmur of the river and the last of the day's sunlight – before Caroline drowsily bid of him, “May you read to us now? I am rather curious to see what this Lady has accomplished.”

That was a perfectly capital idea, and so he shifted upright once more. He opened an arm to his wife, and held her close while she reclined against him. Then, he picked up the book, and began to read: “The family of Dashwood had long been settled in Sussex. Their estate was large, and their residence was at Norland Park, in the center of their property, where, for many generations, they had lived in so respectable a manner as to engage the general good opinion of their surrounding acquaintance . . .”

He made it to Marianne Dashwood’s wild proclamation, despairing of ever finding her match in love, when he realized that Caroline had fallen asleep. Even so, his fingers continued to trace back and forth over her stomach, and he addressed their daughter – for he secretly suspected that she was, and now rather yearned for her to be – to ask, “What do you say, little one? Would you like to find out what happens next?”

It was yet too early for the quickening – though that would come any day now, according to the books he’d since read on the subject – yet he fancied that he could sense his daughter’s agreement.

“All right, then, I am at your service,” he tipped his head in a courtly gesture, and picked up at the end of Marianne’s speech with, “The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much! He must have all Edward’s virtues, and his person and manners must ornament his goodness with every possible charm – and right she is, too. We shall have quite the talk about what makes a suitable partner and what does not when you are old enough – you will run circles around them all before you find one worthy enough to surrender your heart to, that I know already.”

And, even then, he’d first have words with the young man – though he didn’t need Caroline to laugh at him and say that he was quite putting the cart before the horse, imagining so far into their future together.

Yet, with that thought held dearly in mind, he stayed there, reading to his girls, until the sun began the last of its descent and he could no longer make out the words on the page. He then roused Caroline, and they set back for the house together, hand in hand.

(It was only years later that he'd look back and recognize that moment of perfect happiness for what it was . . . and then, for many years more, unconsciously search for again.)



.

.

Their daughter never drew a breath of her own. Instead, she was born – borne, yet not birthed – with a heart that had beat its last whilst still in the womb.

He’d never heard anything like Caroline’s howls of despair following the long hours of her fruitless labor – not even from dying men on the battlefield. It was a sound that would haunt him to his own grave, he knew, and shook him to the depths of his soul.

Pushing aside his own disbelief, he held onto her, and held on tight – even when she first protested and attempted to push him away, screaming at him to leave her be. When she at last surrendered and clung to him, he let her sob and keen and wail for what felt like an eternity. Then, after they were both spent from that first, impossible maelstrom of grief – and somehow said goodbye to the little girl whom they’d never had a chance to rightly know . . .

Caroline was silent for weeks thereafter, lost in a dazed sort of stupor and trapped deep within her mind – so deep that nothing he could say or do seemed to reach her. The only time she did speak was to ask for her baby – as if her mind had blocked the loss entirely – and he never had the heart to tell her that their daughter was gone. She’d inevitably remember soon enough, and relive her agony anew.

He mourned in private during those hellish days, not wanting to burden his wife when she was already suffering so cruelly. Yet, years later, with the benefit of age and hindsight, he could not help but wonder if he was the one who unwittingly placed the first cracks in the foundation of their marriage, long before he knew that the once strong construct was compromised in its entirety.

One particularly lucid day – her mind had not lapsed in some time, now – Caroline dressed and came down to break her fast for the first time since beginning her confinement. It was a cool day at the onset of autumn, and, afterwards, he invited her to take the air with him. Once outside, he gave her his arm and supported her as gently and patiently as if she was a child. They didn't go down to the river – she was not strong enough to walk such a distance, while he . . . he was not yet strong enough to endure facing such a memory. Instead, they kept to the gardens, and when they came to a bench, overlooking the long reflecting pools, they sat to allow Caroline a moment to catch her breath.

Finally, he broke the heavy silence to ask, “Would you like me to read to you?”

Yet, silent she remained, hardly even blinking as she looked out over the water.

"Perhaps, then,” he whispered, his voice thick, “you wouldn't mind if I read aloud for myself?”

He reached into his coat pocket for a small, well-worn copy of Wordsworth's poems. He opened to a page at random, and, after a moment's hesitation, he let the beautiful words bloom and fill the space between them.

He did not know how long he read – or even what he read – before, at long last, Caroline reached out, and took his hand. Tightly, he returned the lax pressure of her fingers, his breath catching, before he turned the page, and continued.



.

.

He returned to the House when Parliament was next called, and Caroline accompanied him to London. The town helped – or perhaps, more correctly, the distraction of the season and its numerous social engagements helped, even if it did not quite lend itself to true healing. True healing came with time – time, and, when, the following summer, Lord Fitzwilliam warmly invited them to be his guests at Wentworth Woodhouse for the whole of July and August, they gladly accepted the offer. With each passing day, the peace and the tranquility of the countryside worked its magic, and Caroline began to smile once more – she even laughed once more. By hardly won degrees, William found his wife returned to him from where she’d so long laid herself to rest in their daughter’s grave.

Their son was born the following May – hale and healthy and alive. Holding Augustus, passing their baby between them with all the delighted awe of new parents, William truly believed that the worst days of their marriage were at last far behind them.



.

.

They didn’t realize, not at first, that Augustus wasn’t like other children.

It started slowly, with hardly noticeable tremors and convulsions, his arms and legs flying wide, as infants typically did, and going taut for a second or two too long before returning to normal once more. As first-time parents – and Caroline a younger sibling, who did not even have William’s advantage of having known his own brothers and sisters as swaddled babes – they didn't think anything amiss until, one day, his mother took him aside and quietly suggested that he consult with a physician. She did not like the look of her grandson's spasms, and wanted to be cautious – having lost too many of her own children to various maladies as she had.

Yes, they were merely being cautious, William told himself as he wrote to a pediatric physician in London of some reputation – nothing was truly wrong.

. . . nothing.

Yet, scarce days after Elizabeth Lamb expressed her concerns, Augustus suffered his first sustained attack: his core went stiff, his limbs flung out and went taut before trembling uncontrollably. This lasted for a full sixty seconds.

The physician then attended them with the utmost haste, yet had no encouraging prognosis to offer. He’d seen such cases before – most children grew out of their condition, with little to no lasting harm done. Others, however . . .

Well, the doctor concluded, it was best not to worry for such things yet. As for treatment, there was distressingly little they could do – they were told to not even hold their baby when he experienced his fits (seizures, the doctor called them – an awful word that William’s now distant grasp on Greek translated as to take hold), for which Caroline of course protested. All they could do was wait the seizures out; from there, the rest was in God's hands.

The physician's only medicinal solution was to prescribe a tincture of poppy, to help relax the body against further attacks.

William stilled for the medical advice, already concerned that such a cache cure-all was the whole of what the doctor could recommend for their son's malady. Though a very diluted amount was prescribed, he could not help but recall when he'd taken a much stronger tincture to see him through battle-side surgery as a soldier – when he’d taken a blast of shrapnel that the medic had to pry free from skin and muscle down to bone, one shard of slagged metal at a time. The effects had been . . . most intense, and had lingered with him for days thereafter. Caroline herself had been prescribed a middling dose following . . . following the death of their daughter, and the state the physic had left her in was . . .

. . . needless to say, William was decidedly against giving their three-month-old son any such tincture – especially if this was a condition that may yet cause no lasting damage. However, picking up arms on the opposite side of that line, Caroline proclaimed that she would not let her child suffer if there was anything she could do to help ease his pain. If the doctor himself recommended such a treatment, then she'd have them use it.

They’d never argued like that before. William was shocked by the fury Caroline turned against him, but repeated to himself that she was merely an incensed mother, roused to protect her child – even from that child's father, as she saw necessary. With that thought close in mind, he endeavored to keep his own calm instead of feeding her temper with his own. He understood her reasoning, truly he did, and yet . . .

The base ingredient of poppy – even for medicinal purposes, let alone its growing use as a substance of vice – was currently a matter of great debate in Parliament. How safe was it, really? many physicians and scientists yet argued and cautioned against its prescription entirely. Should the government discourage its use before it became too prevalent to stop? Did the government even have the right to make such decisions for their people in the first place? The debate itself was perhaps fruitless, arguing a lost battle when so much of the population already made use of such medicinal tinctures and cordials, let alone stronger varieties of a more recreational sort.

Eventually, he talked Caroline down to a compromise: time alone would tell how Augustus progressed, and, if his condition worsened, they could discuss the use of further measures then.



.

.

Augustus’ condition did indeed worsen: some days, he was assailed by so many short-burst seizures that William lost track; on other days, he would suffer long, awful fits that would last anywhere from a few minutes, to one gut-wrenching episode that went on for over an hour before they finally gave in and administered the tincture in a fit of panicked desperation, fearing that he would never stop convulsing otherwise.

It was an unnatural peace that the tonic set upon their baby – a death-like stillness – and even Caroline shakingly agreed that they should not ever use it again.



.

.

There were times when he felt a guilty sense of relief to be recalled to London. Even good days with Augustus were feats of endurance, just waiting for the next attack to strike – fraught with a tension he had not experienced since his soldiering days, anticipating enemy fire around every corner. William found a certain amount of peace in losing himself in his duty for a time – where he finally felt like he was accomplishing something, anything, rather than merely reacting – and it was in accordance to his duty that he prepared to speak before the House for the first.

After months of preparation, he asked to be recognized by the Speaker, and stood from the bench. In the strongest voice he could muster, he read the speech he'd prepared, denouncing the importation of poppy and proposing a bill that would severely limit its use in the medical field, and outlaw – or at the very least, highly tax – its use for supposed recreational purposes.

His proposal was denied, of course – jeered and laughed at outright, even, on both side of the aisle. Even those whom he knew agreed with him did not stand with him on that day. It was then that he learned two important things: one, that Parliament was not easily swayed by the rightness of a thing, so much as the profit of a thing – one first had to be addressed before the other; and, two, better was it to work and accomplish in privacy behind closed doors, and then speak in public only when certain of a course’s favorable outcome.

William had damaged his own voice in the House that day; it would be some time before he could speak with any sort of influence again, no matter how rightly he still believed his words to have been spoken.

He was in little mood for amusement that evening, but he attended Holland House when Lord Holland insisted that he should. He had to show himself to hold his head up high, above all else. The older statesman was sympathetic to his cause, at least, and understanding of his plight. Even so, Henry advised, “Some battles simply cannot be won – even when they are the most important battles to fight.”

“Yet, shouldn't those battles be the ones we strive to wage, most of all?” yet William did not – could not – understand, and baldly said so. “What is all of this even for, if not to make right those things that are so very wrong for the people we serve?”

Henry only looked sad then, and old in a way that he seldom seemed. He put a heavy hand on his shoulder, and sighed. “You’ll understand in time, my boy, and even learn how to fight those wrongs as we may within our imperfect system – no matter how I may wish such a lesson to be unnecessary in its learning otherwise.”

Once within the salon, William gladly accepted a glass of brandy – and then a second – and traded pleasantries with the fellow members of his party. Many expressed their sympathies for the thrashing he’d endured in the House; yet many, he noted, pointedly did not.

William was quite ready to depart – to leave London behind entirely, even, and never stir from Brocket Hall again – when Lady Holland introduced him to a distantly familiar figure, sitting with Mr. Coleridge, the poet, and Lord Hobhouse, the Baron Broughton – a radical member of his party who had already won some renown for being outspoken on many controversial matters of note. (Though not, of course, the one he had raised that day.)

“William,” Lady Holland informally introduced him as a mark of her favor – which was a kindness that he was grateful to Elizabeth Fox for, as much as he would have preferred to make it out the door before the canny hostess steered him back in again, “I trust that you know Lord Byron, do you not?”

“Distantly, ma'am,” he answered, taking in the dark-eyed figure who did not rise from his own seat, but instead, rather tipped his glass in greeting. “We share many of the same circles, but ever from opposite ends.”

Byron had already inherited his uncle’s title, and served as such – albeit infrequently – in the House of Lords; he too had attended Cambridge, but his interests in gambling and boxing outside of the classroom had not been shared by William, and they’d each had . . . differing tastes in the less formal company kept within the shadowed halls of Trinity College; Byron was lately returned from the Continent, William knew, where he had toured the sites of the Napoleonic Wars, not as a soldier, but rather as a poet, lamenting the woes inflicted by mankind on both their fellow man and nature itself.

In short, he was not the sort of acquaintance that William would have sought to further on his own – and especially not in the presence of Coleridge, whose every pleasure in life he had just publicly decried. Even Hobhouse – the radical – hadn't saw fit to sponsor his speech, not when he had too many friends that his doing so would offend.

Indeed, Coleridge all but glowered at him before he stood and pointedly took his leave, while Hobhouse blandly held his gaze with an impressive lack of shame. Byron, for his part, gave a faineant sort of smile to answer, “William Lamb? Indeed, I have had the pleasure – though, as you say, distantly so. Better can I claim a connection to your mother – how is Lady Melbourne these days? I trust that she is in good health?”

William fought not to show a reaction. His mother sponsored many artists, and that was all there was between them – or at least, so he hoped – no matter how Byron’s eyes were glittering, clearly looking for a rise like a cat lazily toying with a mouse for no other reason than a general pleasure for such blood-sport.

God, but William was quickly remembering why he'd thought the man a tosspot back at Cambridge; age, apparently, had not helped him in the slightest.

“My mother is in excellent health, I thank you,” he replied stiffly. “She has even lately expressed some delight in one of her protégé's successes with Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. You are to be congratulated, sir, for the positive reception of your work.”

Byron’s shoulders lifted in an indifferent shrug. “I must confess that I did not expect my meager words to bring me such acclaim – I went to bed one night a mere poet, and woke up something of a celebrity.”

“I suppose it can be unsettling, how quickly the wheels of fortune turn.”

“Discomfitingly so,” Byron agreed, before asking, “Have you read the cantos yourself? I should like to know your opinion, if you do not mind indulging an artist's vanity for but a moment?”

William's opinion was that Byron was gifted with words in a way that few besides Shakespeare could claim . . . yet there was an emptiness to his self-inserted protagonist that William could not wholly identify with for how he unceasingly surrendered to his melancholy and despair. For verse upon verse, the character indulged his faults and wallowed in answering vice; he merely observed the world around him, enmired in dark cynicism, rather than actually acting towards . . . well, towards anything, really. It made for uncomfortable reading, though he couldn't quite articulate why.

(It was like looking into a mirror of the worst possible version of himself, he would later understand – and to know that Harold too was a mirror held up to Byron's own troubled soul . . . well, perhaps someday he would better appreciate the irony, but not for many, many years yet to come.)

“I was rather vividly recalled to my experiences in the Peninsular Wars, reading your verse,” William found a diplomatic – yet still truthful – reply. “You are a gifted writer, and adept at infusing your lines with great emotion.”

“You identified with the emotion, then?” Byron, he felt, had an uncanny ability to hear more in what was unsaid than he did in what was spoken aloud. "Which, if I may ask your continued indulgence?"

“The sense of melancholy, perhaps, struck me most particularly.”

“Perhaps?” Byron caught the word with an all-too-sharp grin.

William met his dancing eyes, and, without blinking, finally accepted the implied gauntlet in full. “I, especially when ruminating on the war, can empathize with Harold in his despair. He sees emptiness and hopelessness everywhere he looks – and he may be right, especially with regards to the fragility of man's constructs. Yet I would call Harold – and thus the story, in a sense – stagnate, without any resolution for his grief. I do not find freedom in merely acknowledging the abyss you so aptly describe – nor life in despair, I believe were your exact words. Yet, that may just be my imperfect personal preference speaking; I am, after all, no poet – so the grace of your art may be beyond my admittedly inferior ability to comprehend in full.”

For a long moment, Hobhouse was merely agape; even Lady Holland drew in a breath; yet Byron only laughed. “No poet?" He slapped his knee in mirth, sitting upright for the first and leaning forward. "Aye, perhaps you are merely a politician with those words,” he mimed tipping his cap, “I must commend you for your speech, sir, as a practitioner of my own art.”

“That of a poet or a politician?” William could not help but return. “You too are sworn to the House, are you not? And in a loftier position than I, it may be said.”

Byron waved a dismissive hand. “My great-uncle's title chains me to the House, yet I – what's the word you used? Yes: I find Parliament most . . . stagnant, and little worth the effort of emptying myself into the abyss. A great much is said within the hallowed halls of Westminster without anything truly being said, let alone accomplished, at all.”

“Such are the trials of politicians and poets both."

"And around and around the world still spins," Byron agreed, and Lady Holland shrewdly took the opportunity to turn the conversation back to the safer waters of more typical drawing room pleasantries. William stayed only long enough to finish his brandy, and was then not sorry to leave the salon behind.



.

.

At two years old, their son was officially diagnosed with the falling sickness, and they were recommended to see a specialist in the condition by the name of Sir Charles Clarke.

Dr. Clarke assured them that previous understandings of the disease – possessions by evil spirits being amongst the most barbarous, where priests were called to conduct exorcisms and the sufferers were often condemned to live their lives in hospitals and asylums – were currently changing as the field of science advanced beyond the base superstition of centuries past. There was something within the brain that was simply not quite . . . right, and repeated falling episodes harmed the development of children most of all. For those infants who failed to grow out of their condition . . .

. . . it was not an easy prognosis to hear, nor bear. Already, Augustus was notably falling behind his peers in terms of growth and development. He did not babble, nor had he any interest in mimicking the words of his parents; he had only just began to crawl, and yet made no attempt to stand; even sitting up on his own had been a slowly learned thing, and much rejoiced upon when finally accomplished.

Yet what had happened was that, as Augustus gained the ability to move on his own, he vehemently protested being held by his parents. He did not want to be cuddled; he did not want to be carried; he did not even want to be touched – and, especially for Caroline, to lose that one way she previously had of communicating with her child . . .

Caroline was so thin these days, William could not help but worry; she ate but little, and drank wine in growing disproportion with what she did manage to eat. (Your wife has not the constitution of a nurse, had been his mother's dire warning. She's never had much of empathy, nor patience. She chafes against the role already, and, someday, she just may despise you for it. That was a rare time he'd argued with his mother outright, and quit the room without asking for her leave.) When he was home, Caroline withdrew from their son more often than not, and would spend hours upon hours writing furious pages of verse. Whenever she was not writing, she took longer and longer rides away from the house, one time staying out overnight – or at least attempting to do so, before the search party of frantic servants William organized found her, miles down the Broadwater and contentedly staring up at the stars. She'd scathed at him the whole way back for stealing her peace, and William had to bite his tongue to keep from lashing out in his own turn. Once an accomplished musician, now, any time her fingers touched the keys of the piano, there was a sharp, discordant edge to even the most tranquil of songs. She took to temper so easily – especially with the servants – and when he could coax her to laugh, she did so rather too loudly, without her smile ever quite reaching her eyes.

In short: Caroline was truly, deeply unhappy, and he . . . nothing he could do or say seemed to help make things right.

“I’ve just finished the latest book Dr. Clarke recommended,” William said one evening after they retired to the drawing room together. He sat on the floor with Augustus, who was slowly – but methodically, he thought – moving his colored toy blocks in a pattern of lopsided rows.

Curiously, he moved a green block to a different spot in line, and watched as Augustus considered this. Deliberately, the boy reached out, and returned the green block back to its previous position.

“Did you know that both Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great are thought to have had the falling sickness?” he continued. “That rather cheered me to learn – Augustus can be nothing but happy, living even a tenth of the life of such men.”

Much the same, he displaced a red block; Augustus stared, and then moved it back again.

Caroline – who’d been sitting on the settee, a book held open in her lap but its pages long unturned – only scoffed. “Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great both had the ability to walk and speak; don’t pretend that this is at all the same.”

Yet William was undeterred. “And who’s to say that Augustus won’t do either? He just needs time – the same as, for all we know, Caesar and Alexander were once given similar such time.”

Intrigued now, he tried something different: he held out a yellow block, waiting to see how his son would respond. Augustus looked at the block for a long moment before he deliberately took it and placed it in line according to some criteria that only he knew.

Caroline snapped her book shut with a resounding thud. “Why are you pretending that everything is fine," she challenged, "when clearly it is not?”

Her voice was rising – which Augustus never liked. He moved a red block forward, and William let his own frustration out on an exhale before the emotion could seep into his voice. “Our son is different," he then said, lowly but most pointedly, "that does not mean that he is wrong.”

"Nothing is wrong?" For that, she flew to her feet with an aggravated expulsion of sound. “Look at him, William – really look at him!” she exclaimed, even as Augustus ignored her completely. He moved the same red block back and forth . . . back and forth . . .

“He is different, and that is entirely the problem!" once she'd started, it was as if a dam had been broken and a deluge unleashed. "Don’t you see? Nothing about this is right! Nothing is how it should be!”

“Caro,” William said as sharply as he dared when Augustus went very, very still – fearing the aura that Dr. Clarke had told them to watch for, that often preceded a falling spell. “Please, lower your voice.”

“Why?” she continued in a near shout. “Why should I silence myself? He doesn’t react to anything I say or do – unless it's to scream bloody murder at me when I attempt to comfort him when he does cry and throw his tantrums – and always for reasons I can hardly comprehend! What does it matter?” her voice rose even higher, taking on a shrill edge. “What does any of this even matter?”

“Caro,” he dared a sterner tone – watching as Augustus’ hand trembled, still, over another red block, “please, I understand that you're distressed, but let us continue this conversation after Augustus is returned to the nursery - ”

Yet, inexplicably, his calm – so tenuously held and frayed thin as it was – only incensed Caroline further. “Distressed?” her eyes burned almost feverishly bright. “God damn you, William – but I am heartbroken, how can you not understand that? I can’t . . . I can't do this anymore – I don't want to – I don’t want this life anymore. I can’t bear it – this – him. I can’t . . . I don’t – I need him to - ”

She was hyperventilating by that point; she gulped in air as if she couldn't remember how to breathe, and reached out for the back of the settee for support. He too stood then, his first, deeply engrained instinct to reach out and sooth his wife suddenly, hotly trumped by the reflexive urge to defend his son. “We are not sending him away,” he hissed – that had never been a consideration before, and never would. He'd have Caroline leave and find her peace elsewhere before he'd ever -

Yet that was entirely the wrong thing to say. Caroline whirled on him in shock, at last finding her breath as she clenched a hand to her heart. “And you think that’s what I want?" she could not have looked more pained if he had struck her. "Who is here, day in and day out? I am here with him – I bear his tantrums and suffer his rejections and endure to love my son – my baby – in a cold and lonely silence, while you - ”

“ - you think I’ve abandoned you?” he surmised incredulously, his own voice finally rising.

"Yes! And you cannot deny it – you run to London at every opportunity you have - "

" - to serve my country! I have a duty to - "

" - oh, as if you've ever cared for your seat in the House before!" Caroline allowed him no quarter. "You, William Lamb, are little more than a middling backbencher; you are nothing and no one as far as Parliament is concerned; but here – here, where you are truly needed - "

“ - and that is entirely because, while I serve at His Majesty's pleasure, no role I play to Crown and Constitution is more important to me than our family. How can you even think that I - ”

“ - I do not think, William,” worse than any shout, her cold, deliberate words then seared him to the bone, “I know that when a storm rages, you’d rather seek shelter than stand out in the rain . . . and that is exactly where you have left me.”

Her denouncement fell like the swinging of an ax, and for a moment they both stood – he staring in shock, and she in defiance. For once, words failed him. He did not know what to say – did not know how to address the suddenly bottomless chasm then gaping between them. How had he not noticed it as it gorged itself before? Or, he could then admit in a moment of brutal self-honesty: how had he ignored it for so long as it festered to a near mortal degree?

“Caro,” his voice was little more than a whisper as he reached for her – slowly, hesitant of his reception when he'd always felt himself welcomed before. “Please, I -”

- but anything he could have attempted to say in reparation was cut short when Augustus slumped over against the carpet, his little limbs already beginning to shake.

“Oh, not now,” Caroline all but wailed as she fell to her knees beside the boy. Through the dull ease of long practice, they moved the toys out of the way, and pushed back the settee, too – giving their child room to convulse without fear of injury. His mouth was open in a silent scream, and William made his hands fists to resist the urge to reach for his son. This was a bad one, he thought to know – worse than any he’d had in recent memory . . .

- or in his memory, at least, he thought as if taking fire to the chest. For God alone only knew what Caroline had seen during those long days he was gone away in London.

When the tremors did not subside, but instead seemed to only worsen – and Augustus even ground out a helpless sounding moan, gurgling through the foam frothing at his mouth – Caroline could stand it no more. She reached for him, and pulled her son close, as if by holding on to him as tightly as she could, she could stop his spasms through the strength of her arms alone.

. . . which was exactly what they were not supposed to do.

“Caro, Caro – don’t!” William reached out before he stopped himself, not wanting to harm either mother or child by attempting to separate them. Instead, desperately, he bade, “Caroline, remember what Dr. Clarke said - ”

“ - oh, to hell with Sir bloody Charles Clarke – and to hell with you, too, William! I am his mother, and he needs - ”

- yet her words were cut off when Augustus’ head snapped back on a particularly violent jerk, and collided against her nose with a wet sounding crunch.

With a pained yelp, Caroline released her hold on Augustus – who fell to the floor, still trembling. With a muttered oath of his own, William swept forward to catch the boy as best he could, avoiding his thrashing limbs and arranging him safely on the carpet once more. Feeling helpless and numb – a fugue that he had not felt since he was a soldier, enduring (surviving) the last moments on a battlefield – he watched over his son until, many long minutes later, the seizure finally gave way . . . and subsided.

Yet, by then, Caroline had long since quit the room – instead, a gaggle of concerned servants lingered and fretted by the doorway. Mr. Hodges and Mrs. Sheehy were both godsent, and had damp cloths and a cold compress ready for Augustus. Hodges himself brought the items forward – knowing better than to crowd the boy through similar long practice – and William mustered a grateful look for the butler before he wiped at his son’s mouth and face. Even exhausted as he was, Augustus whimpered when William tried to hold him close – and he sternly reminded himself that what was comforting for him was not comforting to his child, which was all that mattered then.

Even so, he carried Augustus from the drawing room – upon which Mrs. Sheehy ordered the maids inside to put the room back to rights – to the nursery. There, he waved the waiting nurse away, and attended his son himself, looking for injuries, sponging him clean, and dressing him in fresh night clothes. When he finally tucked Augustus into bed, William felt more than battle-weary. He resisted the urge he had to kiss his son’s brow or hold his hand as Augustus at last drifted off into an exhausted, restless slumber. Instead, William sank to the ground and sat with his back against the bed, letting his hand rest just close enough to Augustus’ to let the boy know that he was not alone.

He spent hours there, just watching his son breathe. When he finally rose from his vigil and readied himself to retire, he nearly surrendered to the promising oblivion of his own bed, before he sighed. The battle may have ended . . . yet the war was far from over.

Caroline.

Hesitantly, he crossed their connected sitting rooms, yet paused before the closed door of her bedchamber – it was hardly ever closed, as he usually slept here more often than not, and he wondered, for a moment, if it would even be barred against him. Yet the knob turned when he at last summoned the courage to try, and he let himself through.

He expected Caroline to already be in bed, for the hour was late and the day had been . . . most trying. Yet the bed was still made, and Caroline was instead standing out on the balcony, an empty glass held loosely by its rim that rather cloyingly smelled of poppy wine the closer he came. She looked down over the green and out to the river, illuminated by a cloudless night of moon and stars, yet her eyes were farther away than even those untouchable luminaries above.

For a moment, he felt entirely inadequate to the task before him, before he summoned what bravery he could, and soldiered on.

Caroline did not protest when he wrapped his arms around her, holding her from behind and looking out into the night alongside her – a heartening sign, he tried to tell himself – yet neither did she relax back against him. (When was the last time she had truly taken comfort in his embrace? he wondered.)

They stayed as such for a time in silence, before he murmured, “I want to be your shelter – you know that you are mine, do you not?”

He willed the words to be true, even as Caroline drew in a breath, and held it.

“He just needs patience, and time,” he whispered. "You'll see – time will be the cure of all."

Yet Caroline turned in his arms then, and held his gaze in the moonlight. Yet, she did not reach out to touch him, and her eyes finally fell, staring at her empty glass. “I fear for him – what kind of life is he going to have?" she said in return, her voice vacant and small. "Sometimes, I wonder if it wouldn't be better if God just relieved him of this world . . . for him, and for us.”

"You don't mean that," his answer, when it came, was as much of a reflexive response to the wound her words rent as it was – and he would regret for years to come – accusatory in its own way. “Caroline, you can’t mean that.”

(That was the only time in their marriage, from its joyous beginning to its miserable conclusion, when he ever thought that she truly hated him – even if only for a moment.)

She did not answer. Instead, she pointedly took a step back from him, and he . . . he did not reach for her again.

Instead, she placed her glass down with a resolute gesture, and drew in a breath. "You have your heir," she finally said after the silence stretched and turned into a weighted spectre all its own. "I think . . . I think it would be best if you kept to your own chamber from now on, and let me be."

He stilled as the meaning of her words finally took root in his mind. His mouth worked once, twice, yet he only said: "If that . . . if that is what you want."

"It is," she repeated firmly, and he . . . he nodded somewhat dumbly, taking a step back in adherence to her wishes.

"I . . . I'll bid you a goodnight then," he stammered, feeling every pounding beat of his heart as if it dragged a serrated blade across the inside of his chest. He waited for a moment longer, yet Caroline said nothing more. She held up her chin, merely waiting, and he felt the weight of her dismissal.

So he bowed to his wife the same as he would to any lady of his acquaintance, and quit her room – telling himself all the while that time was all they needed. In time, their wounds would scar over and begin to heal; in time, they'd find their way together again.

They only needed more time.

Spoiler: End Notes

I don't have many notes to add this time – I know, shocking, right? Instead, I'm just going to let the chapter speak for itself, and if you have questions about anything in particular, please don't hesitate to ask!

But, really quick:

Emily and Frederick's Eventual Marriages: Since this was a tongue-in-cheek bit of foreshadowing, I thought I would let you know that Frederick didn't marry until much later in life. He spent his career as a foreign ambassador, and while he was England's representative to the Austrian court, right around the time of Victoria's ascension, he met his own Alexandrina von Maltzan and married her. Though there was a thirty year age difference between them, they were a love match, and remained absolutely devoted to each other - which sure sounds familiar, doesn't it? We will definitely be meeting them later. Emily, for her part, did marry a quiet, sensible man in the Earl of Cowper, but had an affair with Henry Temple, the Viscount Palmerston (another future prime minister) for nearly the entirety of her marriage. When her husband passed away - he was in ill health for most of their time together - she wed Palmerston as soon as she was out of mourning to do so. (Which was still scandalous enough that Victoria had to approve the match as queen, so that Palmerston could retain his role in government. )

William Fitzwilliam, Earl Fitzwilliam of Wentworth Woodhouse: Is totally a real person, and that is a real house. I did not make him up - though it seems that he sure inspired Jane Austen when it came to names. He was indeed Caroline Lamb's uncle; along with being one of the richest men in England, and powerhouse of a Whig politician, he sponsored Melbourne's initial rise in Parliament and heavily influenced his political beliefs.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Was sadly a poet of the time who was famous for purposely seeking out illicit substances to inspire his writing. He was a friend of Lord Byron's, and, on that note . . .

John Cam Hobhouse, 1st Baron Broughton: Was one of Byron's closest friends, from school to death - after which he remained a radical Whig all the way up through and past Melbourne's time as prime minister. He accompanied Byron on the tour of Europe that inspired Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, stood by Byron from one affair to the next, supported him in fighting for Greece's independence, executed his will, and organized his funeral. Historians like to debate just how close they were, but I think it's safe to say that, no matter how you view their relationship, "Hobby" was the easily the most important person in Byron's life, and they loved each other dearly.

Lord Byron and Lady Melbourne: Had a weird relationship, is all I can say on the matter. Somehow, Elizabeth Lamb was a close friend and confidant of Byron's before, during, and after his affair with Caroline, which just boggles my mind. Again, how close is close is a debate for the historians who know this subject better than I do. Following his affair with Caroline, Byron would go on to marry Elizabeth's niece, Annabella Milbanke - a relationship that was once again of the love/hate variety before it fell apart completely.

But, more about Byron in the next chapter.

~ MJ

 

I can ask for nothing more.

Thank you! I know this feeling in my own way - and I bet most of us do - just from being a caregiver in RL, and this was the best way I could think to describe it.

That's an excellent point. The more I read about Caroline, the more she seemed to me like a woman who was looking to escape from her unhappy situation in all the wrong places, and when she started spiraling she just couldn't stop - which is tragic in its own right.


Thanks for reading, as always! I hope that you continue to enjoy - with enjoy being relative for the next update or two - these stories as they go.



Alrighty! I will have the next chapter posted in just a little bit.

 

Author's Notes: Welp, this is a long one, folks. I recommend sitting down with a snack and beverage of your choice if you intend to marathon the full 10k words, or pace yourself in conveniently angst-sized bites.

On that note, the CONTENT WARNING is still in effect for two more cases of infant mortality, continued depictions of a terminally ill child (though not child mortality - that's been bumped to the final section), and more than a little marital disharmony and serial adultery. In a way, this has been one of the trickiest things I've ever written, because this isn't the type of relationship dynamic that I normally enjoy exploring - this is all in the name of character study - and it's definitely easier for me to write about space wizards with laser swords. But, onwards . . .

Oh, and, to repeat: timeline, what timeline? Also, I hand-wave a lot when it comes to politics. Don't look here for strict historical accuracy - because, you know, fanfiction.

---

“Say We Choose (but It’s No Choice at All)”
(Bonus 4x100+ Relay)​

IV.II.III

Friendship

The nation lost their future queen and the boy who should have been king thereafter, together in one fell swoop.

Princess Charlotte had been entirely beloved by the people, and every household in the kingdom seemingly mourned a daughter of their own. William was no exception, and, while attending the funeral at his brother’s side, he could not help but remember his own lost girl as the stillborn baby was enshrined at his mother’s feet in the great crypts of Windsor Castle.

Throughout the ceremony, the newly widowed Prince Leopold was unable to wholly contain his grief. A part of William distrusted the display, and rather cynically intuited that the prince was more bereft of his claim to power and fortune than his bride. The man who would have been married to the queen of England and father of its next king was now bound back for Coburg and his elder brother's humble German dutchy, and that had to sting for such an ambitious man.

But no . . . no; Prince Leopold and Princess Charlotte had been truly devoted to each other. (Hadn't they?) If his tears stemmed from lost aspirations rather than lost love, then that was only for God to decide. With some effort, William silenced that ever louder inner-voice and instead chose to look on the prince with all due sympathy. (In time, that one memory would give him some understanding, and thus forbearance, when Leopold would seek to govern the kingdom he'd been denied through his niece . . . but only to a certain degree.)

All garbed in black, the Houses of Parliament struggled not to panic for the future of the Crown. There was now no legitimate heir to the throne, and with George III on his deathbed and the prince regent hardly promising a durative reign of his own . . .

With the eldest two princes now bereft of legitimate issue and estranged from their spouses, their unwed brothers scrambled to marry and provide England with an heir. Within days of each other, the Dukes of Clarence, Kent, and Cambridge all left behind mistresses and baseborn children aplenty to avow themselves to stout German brides. The Duke of Cumberland, though he’d long been respectably and even happily married (with one viper having quite found its mate in another), had yet to have been blessed for his fidelity to his wife with a surviving child; while the Duke of Sussex had twice married against his parents’ wishes, thus removing both his legitimate and illegitimate children from the line of succession, of which he had many.

It hardly bore saying, but, between the Mad King and his shamelessly profligate heirs, there were times when the House of Hanover made it difficult to hold one’s head high as an Englishman.

In short order, each new princess – and the Duchess of Cumberland, too – bore her hopeful heir to the throne, and Parliament at last breathed a sigh of relief.

Yet, while the people celebrated, the newly elevated George IV only grudgingly acknowledged his younger brothers’ contribution to the security of the royal line. The king even went so far as to publicly slight Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent – whom he had always despised with a particular vitriol – at his daughter’s christening.

“His Majesty wouldn’t let the duke use any of the names he'd chosen for the girl,” George huffed to report the gossip from court. “The princess, until that moment, had been called Elizabeth, but the king refused to allow such a queenly name – and Charlotte and Georgiana too were summarily dismissed as options. By that point, the duchess was quite reduced to tears, and the archbishop hardly knew who to console first – the weeping mother, or his irate head of church and state!”

“What did they finally name Her Highness?” William could hardly envision such a debacle – though, perhaps somewhat tellingly, he was not wholly surprised. “The princess did leave her baptism actually christened, I trust?”

“Alexandrina Victoria,” George revealed with a wince. “Isn’t that just ghastly? The duke is determined to have her name changed by Parliament as soon as the king dies – which he quite shouted across the nave when Father quit the cathedral in a fit of temper, well before the ceremony's completion!”

“Alexandrina Victoria?” William tried for himself, absorbing the name's weight and impact. While not at all traditional, the syllables held a strength and lyricism all their own. Then, to be named for her godfather – a powerful emperor in his own right, who took his name from one of the most famous kings in the history of mankind – and the Roman personification of victory herself . . .

. . . Alexandrina Victoria.

Yes, it was most certainly the name of a queen – no matter how the current king may have wished to discredit her as such.

“It may not be an English name,” William approved aloud – which could potentially prove difficult for a queen who was almost entirely of German blood, “but it’s a strong name. We’ve already had an Elizabeth, and a Charlotte, too. Perhaps it’s time for something new.”

“You may be right,” George considered, and then gave with a shrug. “On that mark, the princess is already a feisty one – I’m told that she rather screamed down the abbey in the ruckus surrounding her baptism, and the duke calls her his pocket Hercules. I’ve entered into a wager with my fellow by-blows - ” William no longer sighed aloud, but he did narrow his eyes in habitual chastisement “ - as to which of the four princes will have ultimately sired our future sovereign, and little Drina has my bet. I look forward to collecting quite the tidy sum when she is at last made queen.”

“What a thing to wager upon, when the Duke of Clarence may yet still have living issue.”

“Oh, don’t look so scandalized – in the midst of tragedy, what can we do but find our sport where we may? At the very least, I’d rather bend the knee to Queen Alexandrina before yet another King George.” George pointedly wagged his eyebrows – utter buffoon that he was. “They can only put so many numbers after your name before it feels needlessly redundant – and, as we’re running out of ways to tell each Cousin George apart as it is, I’ll happily see that trend ended here and now.”

“We English are terribly singular with our names, it can be said. Perhaps, you may break that tradition when . . . ”

George had married Caroline Adelaide St. Jules, the illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Devonshire and Lady Foster, some four years ago, but their marriage had been far from happy. Since his youth, George had adopted many of the worst habits of the royal court when it came to vice and sport, and he was not a man much inclined to kindness when deep in his cups. Caroline herself was a soft-spoken, almost delicately formed woman who was already rather comically mismatched with his oversized brother and even larger personality when he was at his best; at his worst . . . well, George had long-since failed to be worthy of his bride, in every possible way. He had not lived at home for the last two years now, and his wife was all too glad to see him gone.

Yet William’s patiently waiting for good news on that front was then – perhaps unexpectedly, but most gratifyingly – rewarded.

“That’s actually what I meant to tell you, before I started in on Aunt Sophie's gossip. The only good thing to come of Charlotte’s death is that,” but there, George’s throat worked to remember his half-sister, “is that Addy has let me come back home. I’ve been sober since the funeral, you know, and she . . . somehow, she’s truly forgiven me – conditionally, of course – but I’m determined to reward her faith in me . . . I won’t fail her again.”

“George, that is the best news I've had in quite some time!”

“Are you certain?” yet George hesitated. “I wasn’t sure how to tell you, when . . .”

. . . when his own wife yet withheld a similar such welcome, George did not have to say. Though they were not absolutely estranged, William felt his jaw clench to think of Caroline and the merely civil state of their once happy union, but refused to let his woes color what was – and what could only be – the happiest of tidings for his brother.

Towards that end: “You’re my brother; your joy is, and will ever be, my own,” he assured with all sincerity, reaching over to clap an affectionate hand on George’s shoulder. “And these are most joyous tidings, indeed!”

George’s ever-expressive face then colored. He looked down, for a moment quite overwhelmed. “Thank you,” he said with no small amount of feeling. “I know . . . I know that I haven’t always made it easy for you, being my brother. I’ve given you few reasons for pride over the years, but I am . . . I want to be – I will be - ”

“Who amongst us is sinless enough to cast the first stone?” William spoke to his regrets with all sincerity. “I would say that it is all the more difficult to correct our course after having gone astray from ourselves. It’s hardly an easy path you're choosing to walk, and I am proud that you have the courage to take it, even so.”

“It may yet be a long path, at that,” George admitted somewhat dryly. “Addy has only consented to allow me to pay court to her again – and, on that point, I wish to seek your advice. I have questions – and don’t you dare laugh, or I swear I’ll go to Emily instead – about flowers.”



.

.

By the time Augustus was four years old, he still could not speak.

His son could not talk to him . . . and so, William was determined to find a way to talk to his son.

Towards that end, Dr. Robert Lee – who’d previously had success in working with children suffering from various maladies of the mind – was hired through the recommendation of Dr. Clarke to serve as Augustus’ personal physician and tutor. William held only passive expectations for the Welshman's success, but when, one night, he asked Augustus if he would like a story before bed – for he ever kept up a continuous, one-sided conversation, trusting that, somehow, his son heard him in his own way – Augustus pointedly tapped the green square on his ever-present board . . . the one that Dr. Lee had been instilling in him meant yes.

With tears in his eyes, William smiled – exaggerating the expression in hopes that his son knew and could understand his joy. Good, he tapped the blue square; there could be nothing better, even.

“I love you,” he whispered, tapping his heart twice – making sure to hold Augustus’ eyes as he did so. He did not know if his son could yet grasp the meaning of the gesture, but he was determined to repeat it, and hoped that, in time . . .

. . . well, he merely hoped, and was content to receive whatever God saw fit to bless them with in return.



.

.

There came a day in the House when he looked, and – as if each man was bound to another by a string of brightly colored thread – he saw a tapestry.

Currently, the issue at hand was a repealing of Pitt the Younger’s income taxes. Those taxes had paid for their wars against Napoleon, and, as such, were once most necessary, but now represented an intolerable drain on the British people.

Many amongst his party believed that they should start with lowering the tax on malt, but keep the window tax to level off the loss of income to the Crown by degrees. It was unfair to tax the working population so steeply, who quite depended on small beer as a staple in their diets, while the window tax mostly drew coin from landlords and the gentry. Adding to this consideration, they could not, in good conscience, maintain the malt tax when the price of wheat was so steep through the Corn Bills – which would not be so easily repealed, nor even amended, when the arguments for those laws were just as sound as those against. Their current system was grossly slanted against the vast majority of their citizens, rather than a privileged few, and thus, its alleviation was imperative.

Yet King George – who was currently renovating Buckingham House with a truly staggering number of windows – protested the bill, as did several Tories (all of whom owned country homes), and thus, the die was cast. The gauntlet fell, and the debating began in earnest.

What they needed to do, it was finally decided, was agree on a reduced lump sum the king could pay on the new façade for the palace – along with a symbolic outreach, perhaps in having the king supply each worker on the project with malt and grain enough for their families – so that their monarch could save face and leave his ministers be to more effectively govern the cares of the realm in his (frankly less than competent) stead.

Privately, William almost pitied Lord Liverpool in those days – he could think of nothing worse that to be prime minister to such an intractable brute of a man . . . God save the king and all that, of course.

In the end, to pass such a measure, Lord Richmond and his followers had to be convinced, and Lord Richmond would not be convinced without votes to modernize London’s police force – votes which could be garnered if Sir Robert Peel’s Gaol Act was also supported in like turn. For Sir John Sterling, who was looking to amend the existing Relief For Coal Prices and withholding his own support for Mr. William Aster’s proposal of debt forgiveness for the East India Trading Company, could perhaps be persuaded to support the Gaol Act, but only if Lord Liverpool himself would . . .

. . . William, for his part, rather unexpectedly found his long years of quiet service bearing fruit. He’d come to be respected by many for being level-headed and slow to action, yet quick enough to change his mind when rightly convinced by the arguments of others. In his own way, he was a conservative enough Whig for most Tories to humor, and even the radicals in his party who scorned him as a Tory wearing sheep’s clothing (Lamb’s clothing – yes, but Baron Hobhouse was quite clever indeed) trusted him to negotiate with the other side on their behalf.

Under direction from the chief whip, he invited Peel and Sterling to dine in a private room at Rules. There, they negotiated for both the Goal Act and amendments to the Coal Bill in good faith, and it was with some amazement that William saw the two shake hands and agree to vote in each other’s favor. With their deal struck, Lord Richmond’s demands could be met, which would give Lord Liverpool leave to treat with both Mr. Aster on behalf of the all-powerful Company and the king himself -

. . . it was a heady feeling, knowing that he’d help achieve some good for his country, and that was a feeling – a high, even – that he would, in short order, find himself seeking again and again.

Even now, his first inclination was to tell Caroline of the victory he’d help secure – for she was still his partner and helpmate and friend (wasn’t she?), no matter that she was not quite . . .

Yet that desire was of little bearing, as his wife was not present to indulge such a conversation in the first place. Caroline had yet to join him in London, preferring as she did to stay with Lady Oxford at Brampton until the more fashionable high season began in town, and he didn’t expect her until after the new year.

Instead, William rode through the leaf-strewn lanes of Hyde Park alongside Emma Portman, and told her of the matter’s success with all enthusiasm.

He'd long known Emma as the half-sister of one of his many half-brothers, Edwin Lascelles. As such, they shared no actual blood, but she’d been part of the summers of his youth spent at Petworth. Now that she was lately married to Baron Edward Portman, he’d renewed her acquaintance at the Earl of Egremont’s opening ball of the season. She'd grown into a mind even sharper than Edwin’s, he’d delighted to find, and she was especially shrewd in matters of politics. Her keen insight had been essential for getting Peel and Sterling to compromise, although her role in the matter would remain unknown to history – even more so than his own influence, which too would soon be entirely forgotten.

Yet, somewhere, there was a household that could yet afford coal and a prison more humanely administered because of their efforts, and that was no small thing; was it not? This was a day of victory, and he’d allow no thoughts but those of celebration. Towards that end, he described one of Sir Robert Peel’s more bumbling moments (the man, for being of a most gifted political mind, lacked much in social grace) with perhaps more than a little embellishment. Yet he was rewarded when Emma laughed; she laughed, and the look she turned towards him was . . .

She was very beautiful, he suddenly thought, in the fiery sunlight dappling down through the branches of the trees, with her sky-blue riding habit making her seem even more vibrant against the autumn gold. In her presence, he felt comfortable in a way that he hadn’t felt since -

- since those long ago days with his wife, William finally acknowledged as if struck, before they’d known their share of tragedy.

Immediately, he looked away, feeling suddenly ashamed of himself, even if he did not – they had not . . .

Answering the sudden unease of his thoughts, he nudged his horse to put some distance between them, and Emma . . . Emma understood. Her voice remained cheerfully bright (forcefully so, perhaps) as she moved on to discuss a charity she was currently sponsoring, and that was that.

A friend she would yet remain for years to come, but they never approached that line again.



.

.

In time, however, he hardly knew who was unfaithful first.

Since Caroline had dismissed him from her affections, he’d yet to keep a mistress or even seek a lover outside of paid companionship (which, in the stupidity of his younger years, he hadn’t thought as anything improper for a married man whose wife no longer welcomed him to her bed), and, if Caroline chose similar such companionship for herself whenever they were apart, she never told him, and he never asked.

It wasn’t until Lord Holland delicately brought up the matter of Caroline’s increasingly indiscreet affair with Lord Godfrey – Lady Holland’s youngest son by her first husband – that William opened his previously blind eyes to look upon the now festering wound of their marriage with all clarity. Somehow, without stuttering, he promised Henry that he would remind Caroline of a need for discretion, but he . . . he never did.

How did one even begin such a conversation, after all?

Instead, within that same fortnight, when invited by Emily to attend a ball at Almack’s, he was so bold as to ask the Countess von Lieven – another high-ranking patroness of the club and wife of the Russian ambassador (and agent of the emperor in her own right, it was even whispered) – for a second dance. She was a woman who'd made . . . overtures to him before, but he’d ever artfully avoided crossing the line of anything beyond a harmless flirtation. Now, he told himself that he was merely enjoying that flirtation in full.

As such, he closed out the evening waltzing with her – enjoying the incisive cast of her mind as they discussed anything and everything, from the current insurrections in Portugal to the progress of the Congress of Troppau to the re-election of James Madison in America. She was easily one of the brightest women of his acquaintance, and that brightness was not solely restrained to her wit. He was drawn to her, he knew – dangerously so, as if to the warmth of a flame – and when she whispered to remind him that her husband was away, attending Czar Alexander’s summons back in St. Petersburg – where he would deny himself no comfort, and hardly expected his wife to do the same . . .

William waited for that old disinterest, that old disgust to flare for even the thought, but found it slow to come. Instead, there was just Dorothea’s glittering eyes and teasing smile – the promise of a lover who would not be a moment’s passing relief, but rather, a connection that would enrichen and then outlast the night . . .

. . . with a last thought given to Caroline and Godfrey, that was a promise he at last indulged, and returned in full.

Throughout that season – and admittedly several more in the years to come – Dorothea was a pleasant diversion of the best sort: close enough to his heart to make such a dalliance worthwhile, yet far enough away to avoid the risk of any further attachment. He attended Almack’s frequently as a result – and even rather enjoyed the way Dorothea and Princess Esterházy subtly fought over his affections in their ongoing, unspoken rivalry as matching great ladies of the ton.

It was . . . flattering, he could admit, their attentions – and he, perhaps imperfectly, was hardly immune to such flattery.

That same season, Caroline’s brother – Colonel Sir Frederick Ponsonby, a hero of Waterloo and a career soldier of some renown – hosted a ball in honor of the Duke of Wellington. William and Caroline attended together, as was right and proper, but little else could be said about their interactions that night.

Instead, the Duke of Wellington – who was in full uniform for the ball, and more energized than he ever seemed in the House these days – indulged the nostalgia of the occasion by calling him Major Lamb once more, and complimented him on conquering the most important field of all with such a lovely bride.

Caroline, to her credit, did not scoff, and William equally held his own smile when Wellington asked leave to steal his wife for a dance.

He, in turn, took a glass of champagne from a passing server, and paid little attention to Caroline but for the single, obligatory dance that was expected of them as a married couple. He even allowed Wellington the honor of escorting Caroline through the supper set and on into dinner, and instead had a much more pleasant time conversing with Colonel Harewood and Major Murray further down the table – both of whom had been his contemporaries in Spain, and had since continued on with their armed service to the Crown.

Yet when the respectable hour came to depart, he did so alone. Caroline expressed her wish to stay behind with her sisters, and William thought nothing of allowing her to do so.

The next day, he spent most pleasantly with Augustus. Over the years, they'd come to find that their son was sensitive to sound and easily overwhelmed by tactile stimulation. As such, this was the first season they'd dared bring him to London, now that they better understood his condition and felt themselves equal to handling both his fits and seizures when they inevitably came. Their confidence was all the more bolstered by the added supervision of Dr. Lee, who now had rooms of his own at both Brocket Hall and Dover Street. Mrs. Lee, most fittingly, was also a skilled nurse, and, between the two of them, William felt as if God had answered a most specific prayer.

Towards that end, William dismissed the Lees for the day – encouraging the couple to go and enjoy London at his expense, as no sum of money would ever be enough to properly repay his debt of gratitude – and took his son on an outing to Richmond’s.

The only time Augustus suffered to be held was on horseback. He loved the animals, and William loved feeling as any other father, holding his boy close and listening to him cheer as they raced down the green together.

As such, they departed early, and when they reached the park they were quite alone but for a surprised herd of deer, grazing in the morning mist. The sight of them delighted Augustus, and William reined his horse in fast pursuit, more chasing his son’s laughter than the animals themselves. They rode until Augustus visibly started to tire, and he took that as his cue to start back, glad for his son’s drowsiness when they came upon the busying lanes of Hyde Park.

Augustus roused at the promise of an apple bun from one of the street vendors, and he waddled on the shores of the duck pond, quite happy to eat his treat – and share a generous portion with the eagerly expectant waterfowl. His walk was rather unsteady for a boy of five, but with each step so dearly earned and all the more precious for being so, that thought was neither here nor there. Instead, William watched his son in a hard-won moment of absolute contentment, and refused to think of the future.

Yet he knew not to push the outing any further, and, rather than risking any undo taxation, they returned home. In no time at all, Augustus fell into an exhausted sleep on the small couch William specifically kept in his library so that he could keep an eye on his son while seeing to his correspondence for the day.

It was only when the Lees returned, later that night, and asked after Lady Caroline that William started, realizing that he'd yet to hear from his wife. Even so: “She is still with her sisters,” he answered, and didn’t think much of her absence until the following day.

When the next morning too passed without her return, or even a note apprising him of her plans, William took it upon himself to call at Highmore Street, and was received with some surprise by Lady Ponsonby. There, he was informed that Caroline was not with them, nor had she been; instead, she had left the night of the ball, tended home – or so it had been thought – by none other than . . .

William returned to Dover Street in a state of some shock, and remembered but little from the rest of the day besides starting much earlier than his wont on a decanter of brandy. There, with an ever-full glass and an unopened book, he mulled by the fire in his library until well past dark.

It was not until the early hours of the morning that Caroline descended from an unmarked carriage, still wearing her ballgown from nights’ past, and her hair carelessly unbound about her shoulders. She stole inside like a thief, but she was no such common craven. Instead of passing him by without a word, she stopped within the open door of the library, and tilted her chin to meet his gaze.

“I’ve returned,” she said simply. I’m home, she did not say – nor had she, he then realized, in quite some time.

“So I see.” He did not dare move, nor did he risk further speech – not when he could feel the fury roiling underneath the surface of his skin, an unreasonable (hypocritical?) fury that he would not dignify with a voice. Still, underneath that anger was pain – pain that their marriage had come to this, pain that they were not enough, that he was not enough . . .

. . . had he ever truly been enough for her?

He threw back the rest of his glass, and turned to pour another.

Yet Caroline would not leave him be so easily. “Is that all you are going to say?” she bristled, incredulous.

His fingers tightened over the delicate crystal stem, but he managed to expound, “I’m glad to see that you have safely returned,” with the utmost coolness of tone.

“Yes,” Caroline all but snapped the word, “Arthur was good enough to convey me back himself.”

He knew better than to take the bait – truly he did, and yet:

Arthur?

He’d already known, but to hear such a blatant confirmation of his suspicions stung . . . why did it sting so?

“Arthur?” his careful mask cracked for the informality of the address. “But he is so . . . so . . .”

Inelegantly, William sputtered, unable to decide on a single fitting condemnation when a dozen suddenly dammed in his mouth: the man was a Tory; his former commanding officer and his current lord as one of the king’s foremost ministers; and he was . . . he was old enough to be her father, the devil take him, and then some besides.

. . . yet the duke was also a war hero; an admittedly striking man who carried himself with a strength and confidence, borne by experience, that could not be matched by any mere youth; he was charismatic, intelligent, commanding, generous -

- yet William refused to consider how those qualities would appeal to a lover, and banished that line of thought with all immediacy.

“He is so . . . what, William?” Caroline passed the threshold and stalked further into the room. She sounded, oddly enough, genuinely intrigued, and her dark grey eyes flashed a near shade of silver in the last of the hearth-light. “Arthur and Lady Kitty have been estranged for decades now, all of society knows that, yet he is a most . . . passionate man. Who amongst us would judge him for exercising those passions?”

A passionate man? Is that what she wanted? William felt a sudden, primal urge to fly up from his seat – to move before she could realize his intention, to push her back against the wall and plunder her mouth until she wilted against him and would finally submit . . . would finally yield -

- but he sucked in a sharp breath, aghast. No gentleman should even think in such a way, let alone act . . .

As if she could somehow glean his darkest self from the very air between them, her own breathing seemingly came faster. Her eyes were alight with anticipation, daring to push the bounds of his control, and he . . .

. . . he at last relaxed his hands from where they had clenched into fists over the arms of his chair. “Certainly not,” he agreed, albeit with strained neutrality. “I wish you nothing but happiness, you must know,” he forced his mouth to work, but felt as if he spoke around stones. “You deserve . . . you deserve to be happy." For that . . . that, at least, was true. "That is all I desire, above all else.”

For a long moment, Caroline merely stared at him, and the fire in her eyes banked for a now far more familiar scorn. “You are a tepid man, William,” she condemned on a whisper, “and I pity you for that.”

She turned from the room, and he did not attempt to follow.



.

.

Still, there were appearances to be kept.

He gave her a copy of Emma for her birthday, more out of habit than sentiment, along with a bouquet of daffodils.

Yet Caroline did not ask for their meaning, and he did not supply one unprompted.

They continued to go out into society together, and presented a united front alongside a myriad other couples who did much the same. Was anything truly real? William couldn’t help but wonder, watching the clockwork figures move all around him. Such was the way of their world, he grappled with his discontent; he’d been raised in such a family as this, and he’d been happy (hadn’t he?), just as his parents had been happy. (Hadn’t they?) Why, then, couldn’t he – couldn’t they . . .

The Lambs hadn’t been welcome at Holland House in quite some time – which merely stung, at best, and, at his worst, he rather petulantly suspected Caroline of picking a string of lovers that would torment him even more so than they pleased her – but Lady Holland, upon the coaxing of her husband, finally rescinded her black mark against Caroline and invited them to attend her next salon. There, they socialized and made their rounds, side by side if not arm in arm, until they found themselves in a familiar circle of literary figures: with Caroline and Lady Oxford gravitating towards the likes of William Blake and Sir Walter Scott and, of course -

Lord Byron.

Currently, the topic of discussion was the yet anonymous Lady’s – only Scott knew her true name, and he was honor-bound to keep her confidence – latest triumph with Emma. Most were in agreement, applauding her mastery of the genre she so artfully pioneered, except for -

“Nay, nay, but I rather pity her protagonist!” Byron dared the disapproval of all to claim. “For such a beautiful and clever woman to tie herself to a disapprovingly dour old man, when she had no need to ever marry and instead every advantage to indulge in life however she best saw fit? I see no heroine in this Lady’s work, but rather a tragedienne. Emma Woodhouse’s fate is unnatural, and should only be mourned!”

“Verily, sir, but I challenge that it is more unnatural for a poet to speak so cynically of love!” Caroline laughed the loudest to counter Byron – speaking above the chorus of friendly boos his words inspired. “There’s no greater joy to be found than in meeting one’s match and second self – and this Lady pays tribute to that most sublime of human conditions to an unparalleled degree!”

“Sublime?” Byron derided. “To be chained to the will of a man – and the same man, day in and day out, until death do you part? Is that really what women want, Lady Caroline?”

There was . . . something about Byron’s voice that drew William’s attention, and held it – as did, it would seem . . .

Caroline fixed upon the poet’s gaze, and softly – but stalwartly – proclaimed: “To the right man, a woman is not shackled in chains – but rather, dearly bound by a shared yoke.”

It lasted only a second – that smallest increment of time between one heartbeat and the next – but, inexplicably, William felt the air charge as if before lightning struck.

Yet he looked, and saw only the familiar play of the candlelight across Caroline’s face.

“Wisdom bids that I – as a confirmed and most contented bachelor – should bow to your greater experience on the matter, good lady, and so I do.” Byron tipped his glass in an indolent salute, and slid his eyes to William. His look did not lose its sense of challenge, but took on a more subtle edge. “You must share with us your secret, sir, for maintaining such a . . . happy wife – as not all women are so eager to extol the virtues of the married state as she! Do you share your dearly beloved’s opinion of Emma Woodhouse’s fate?”

Quite feeling as if he was back in the House once more – with words spoken beneath words, like unseen fissures in a frozen lake, waiting to crack for an unwary step – William took a moment to consider his response.

“I stand by my wife,” he at last replied. “In this case, the Lady’s heroine,” he placed a slight emphasis on the word, “was neither trapped nor shackled. Miss Woodhouse had no impetus to marry beyond the prompting of her own heart; she accepted Mr. Knightley's proposal because he was what she wanted. For a man to be chosen for himself, rather than for what he may offer from either a material or social regard . . . in my admittedly humble opinion, there can be no higher honor.”

Similarly, too, he appreciated the novelty of a woman being able to decide her own fate in such a way, but he knew better than to say so, even amongst such . . . enlightened company.

“Ah, now I see where our disconnect lies: you consider their attachment a romance – and that is entirely what I cannot countenance. I saw no proof of any such passion upon the page. That naysaying, humdrum old chap was more her teacher than her lover – or worse, her father, for how he spent so much of the novel scolding her!”

“At a mere surface reading, perhaps,” William indulged in the barest of scoffs, “but then, I would argue that he learned just as much from her as she did from him. Is there a greater purpose of marriage than to inspire to the best and similarly be inspired by one's partner in return?”

“Oh, Jove have mercy, but I cannot argue with a true romantic! Fiction is one thing – a fine dream, indeed, as you describe – but show me such a partnership in our waking days,” Byron’s gaze flickered back to Caroline, “and I’ll show you a lie.”

“Perhaps that is why I find more truth from this Lady’s pen, imagining how the world should be, than others I can mention,” William found himself speaking without first considering his words – aggravated, though he could not tell exactly why, “who dwell without relief on how the world is.”

That won a round of well-meaning exclamations from the gathering; even Byron had grace enough to laugh for the hit, no matter that his good humor did not quite extend to his eyes.

Scott, then, could not resist churning the waters even further by adding: “For just that reason, I can tell you that this Lady was decidedly less than impressed with Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage – indeed, a certain line in one of her previous novels addressed you rather directly, didn’t it, Georgie?”

Byron’s smile held – but brittled. “What care I for this Lady’s regard?” he coolly dismissed. “Especially when I would bet my finest horse that this authoress is the daughter – or the unmarried spinster sister – of a clergyman! I’ve no patience for the naïve prating of a daydreaming maiden, and shall not be moved from my opinion until she exhibits a better understanding of the world in her novels.”

It was then that Caroline took up her sword anew. “For shame, but you are most unfeeling!” she accused. “Where is your heart, sir?”

“Perhaps merely trapped in gloom and regrets for the past,” Byron answered, and though William could not work out any particular meaning in the words, he could yet hear more – and Caroline, even more tellingly, looked back as if struck. “If I am in the wrong, then I thank you, once more, for your concern over my own heart – no man has ever had a more valiant champion, I assure you.”

“I had not realized that my words made any such impression,” Caroline replied – carefully, William thought, for the first, “let alone one so lasting.”

“A greater impression than you may currently think me capable of feeling, it would seem,” Byron returned, his voice turning hushed. “I received so many letters from my . . . admirers following Pilgrim’s first publishing that I soon dubbed the multitude star-gazers. Yet you, dear lady, are the only one to whom I replied.”

It was as if there was some great pull between them – so much so that their tide could be felt even by a distant shore. Caroline held his gaze, unable to blink, and William amended his thought to the drowning drag of an undertow.

“I . . .” she faltered, “I had not realized . . . ”

But Caroline could not settle on a further reply, and Byron at last smiled – the lazy smile of some contented tom cat – and leaned back in his seat. “Ah, I see how you do it now,” he turned to William, and laughed off the strange dilection that had previously defined the moment. “Indeed, I shall have to keep this most . . . enlightening of interludes in mind for when I next pick up my own pen.”

Strained laughter met and echoed Byron’s rejoinder, and yet, from there, Scott shrewdly turned to Blake and asked of the older poet’s current progress in illustrating the works of Dante. Blake needed no further prompting, and the conversation quickly turned to the advantages and disadvantages of conveying the figurative with such a literal medium – a truly interesting discourse that William, unfortunately, could only pay but half a mind.

Instead, he was more acutely aware of how Caroline simmered for the rest of the evening in silence – her gaze hot upon Byron, who, in his turn, ignored her completely – so much so that he well knew the danger of her temper by the time their carriage was called. Yet there was, he thought, more to her anger over Byron’s japing than mere embarrassment. She felt . . . she felt slighted, somehow – hurt, even, though why, he could not wholly understand.

“Insufferable, hateful man,” Caroline seethed once they started moving. “Those letters were written in confidence. He had no right – no right at all – to speak of them in company – and so . . . so blithely . . . so carelessly, as if they . . . ”

. . . as if they meant nothing to him at all, whereas, to her . . .

William frowned, and scuttled his first impulse to ask just how many letters there had been and for how long – he’d only known of a single (first?) missive, complimenting an acquaintance on the success of his poems. He especially had not known – with an ugly strain of emotion that he would later define as jealousy – that she went so far as to express her concern for the soul of the poet, rather than merely constraining herself to comments on his verse alone.

“It’s Byron,” instead, he dismissed – for that alone should have said it all. “His interests are always fickle, and hardly worth trusting for any sort of fidelity.”

But her eyes alighted – he could see her face briefly illuminated by a passing streetlight – and, perhaps somewhat inexplicably, he felt her ire turn to him.

“Then you do not – the world does not – know him like I do.”

And how, he wanted to challenge, exactly is that?

Instead, he asked what he thought was the more pertinent question: “Caroline, why does this aggrieve you so?”

For a moment, her mouth opened (her teeth bared) before she swallowed whatever she'd first meant to say. “You wouldn’t understand,” she muttered. "You can't understand."

No, he thought with a sigh, he didn’t understand – nor, more importantly, did he then care to extract any sort of truth from his wife when his doing so would require an inordinate amount of effort and many pains for far too little gained in return. The hour was late, and he was tired of quarreling (of strife); he wanted only the respite of quiet (of peace). So – turning from Caroline, even as she turned from him – he rested his head back against the squabs of the carriage, and watched the streets of London go by.



.

.

The affair of George Spencer-Churchill – the Marquess of Blanford and future Earl of Marlborough – and Harriet Spencer was something of a scandal, even by the standards of their society.

Both George and Harriet were cousins to Caroline, and Harriet had long been a faithful friend and correspondent – even after she supposedly wed George in a non-consecrated ceremony, conducted by his brother, rather than a proper clergyman. (The current Earl and Countess of Marlborough had much higher sights set for their son, and had withheld their approval for a proper, lawful marriage.) Together, the couple lived openly in Scotland as husband and wife, but, according to the ultimate ruling of an English court, their marriage was declared null and void. Eventually, George bowed to his parents’ threats of disinheritance, and returned home to marry the heiress Lady Jane Stewart, scarce days after abandoning the troth he'd shared with his former bride. Then, as for Harriet . . .

Harriet Spencer was not so easily reclaimed by her own family – not when she had a now illegitimate daughter to show from the whole misguided affair and no honorable marriage waiting to save her from the stigma. At length, her parents were able to arrange a match with a distant relation in Bavaria – but Alexander von Westerholt’s kindness only extended to accepting his new bride (and her dowry) . . . and not her daughter.

Caroline did not have to ask; William saw the question in her eyes, even as she read Harriet’s latest letter aloud, and he said -

“Yes,” without having to be swayed to the decision in the slightest.

The way she looked at him then . . . it was almost as if he had his wife of old returned to him, and they prepared for Susan’s arrival as if she was truly a daughter of their own, and not just a ward who would be sheltered by them in spirit in absence of her true parents.

It took time for Susan to find her place in their family – the girl hardly understood why her father had left to begin with, and she cried all the more so for the loss of her mother, innocent as she was in the whole affair – but patience and kindness saw to what healing there could be had. Susan warmed to being a friend, and then a sister of the heart, to Augustus even faster than she did to them as her guardians, and when Caroline joined the children in playing a game of hide-and-seek amongst the lush, verdant foliage of the greenhouse . . .

In that moment, watching them, William remembered what his brother had once said about needing to court his own wife again. Truly, if George and Addy were happier now than they had ever been, the same could not impossible for them, could it? For the first time in years, more so than merely wondering, he found himself wanting . . .

. . . and thus, he acted.

With an exaggeratedly courtly bow – which made Susan giggle in delight – he offered the child a white carnation to join the daisies she'd already placed in her hair. "For my lady."

"What does this one mean?" Susan happily took the flower.

"Why, love, of course," he was just as glad to answer, "the sort that ties families together."

"Oh!" Her brown eyes brightened. "May I pick one for Augustus, then?"

"I thought that you might want as much," he presented a second carnation with a flourish, "and rather anticipated you."

Susan wasted no time in turning to Augustus, and she mimicked his bow from earlier to give him the flower in her turn. The boy considered the gift for a long moment, but then managed to say, "good, thank you," in a heavy, stilted voice. Through Dr. Lee's efforts, Augustus now had about twenty or so words he could manage aloud, and he was painstakingly learning the alphabet – which they yet hoped would open even more doors to communication in the years to come. (That was, if his seizures did not first . . .)

But that was a thought that did not belong with the bright sweetness of the day.

When the time came for them to return to the house, William summoned his courage and approached Caroline. With a hesitation he felt but tried not to show, he offered her an amaryllis bloom to join the daisies that Susan had already picked for her own hair.

Caroline was equally uncertain. She looked towards the door, and he thought that she would turn from him completely. But she did not; instead, she held herself to stillness, and accepted the flower. Haltingly, she asked, "What does this one mean?"

“Hope,” he answered . . . hope and determination and love.

Yet, that much, he could not quite find the words to say aloud.

"Thank you," she managed to acknowledge. "It . . . it's a lovely sentiment." And then, no matter that there was yet a great distance in her voice – her heart was certainly detached from her words – he could not help but think that they may have managed to recover themselves from that point . . .

. . . had it not been for the letters that arrived, day in and day out, and were answered just as swiftly in return.



.

.

The following year was a time of great unrest for England.

The cost of grain was already far too high due to the Corn Bills, and a bad harvest only drove that cost up all the more so. Those adverse conditions, when combined with a growing loss of common lands, drove field laborers and small tenant farmers to manufacturing towns in droves, looking for work. With an increasing demand for cotton and advancements being made in the machinery for its production, industrialism was gaining ground in their once almost wholly agricultural economy. Yet, only the mill owners and their investors reaped such bountiful profits; the wages paid in those booming manufacturing towns were hardly enough to live upon – and the dangerous conditions in which they did live . . . the poor were poorer than ever, and any good that Parliament could do to help alleviate their plight was far too little, far too late.

Unto that stage, hunger and poverty bore fear and anger, which in turn begot crime -

- and uprising.

Following the massacre at Peterloo, which was the most violent act committed by the Crown against its subjects in centuries, he followed suit to vote for a suspension of habeas corpus and a ban on public meetings. Those extreme measures were just as necessary for the sake of the people who would yet again be no match against trained soldiers as those soldiers themselves, just as they were a precaution to spare the outrage that such a use of force would inspire in its own turn. Yet, by the end of the year, once the ringleaders of the riots were caught and tried, he voted against the Six Acts that would make such temporary restrictions any more permanent a law. (Yet that hardly mattered – the people would only ever remember that their rights had once been constrained, without recalling why they’d been constrained in the first place.)

Several voices, both within and without the House, then called for parliamentary reform – yet William was not one of them. He was hardly against the idea in concept, and in fact rather agreed in the realm of theoretical debate; yet he most certainly disagreed in execution – for such reforms would not come without great difficulty, which was something their country could ill-afford. They could not survive the pangs of such a rigorous birth – not when the people they served needed stability and security above all else.

. . . look at what had happened to France, after all, when they'd been driven to revolution – look at France and Spain and Portugal and Italy, all of whom currently battled their own citizens in some form or another . . . even America was unsteady, built entirely on the foundation of for the people and by the people as it was. Great Britain was equally balanced on a knife's edge, and to keep from toppling over entirely, it was imperative to make the system they currently had work for them.

Then, then, once they finally found their footing once more . . .

Yet, it was against the backdrop of discontent that scandal was ever a spark just waiting for flame. The greedy public was hungry, and when they could not feed in one way they would feast in another.

Into that parched maw, Lord Byron threw a match . . . and Caroline answered with wildfire.



.

.

Somehow, the papers had gotten ahold of their correspondence.

Now, in neat rows of black and white, the whole of their affair was made visible for all the world to see. And when the public may have first tired of the subject and forgotten the salacious story with the next news cycle, they turned absolutely gluttonous when Byron answered by publishing verse on the matter. . .

. . . and Caroline answered in like turn.

William was not a man easily roused to anger – but the political cartoons the papers’ published, depicting his wife as the worst sort of harlot, with he an oblivious cuckold and Byron, somehow, the ever suave lover . . .

. . . why had he argued in the House to ensure the freedom of the press, again? He’d happily see the editor hanged – civil rights be damned.

Yet, the same as with many of his thoughts those days, he wouldn’t waste his breath on voicing his frustration aloud. Better was it to contain the scandal at its source, and let the public lose interest on their own – as they inevitably would.

To do so, however, he needed to convince Caroline to abandon the affair – or, at the very least, employ just the smallest amount of discretion, for God’s sake.

Towards that end, he came into the drawing room, and handed her the latest edition of The Times without a word.

Caroline put down her pen – that damnable pen – and raised a brow, before she looked down at the page. Yet she only huffed out a laugh to see herself depicted as a shepherdess – petting a smirking goat while a lamb looked on from a distance in despair.

“How uninspired,” she critiqued with a sniff. “Your family name - ” ours, he wanted to correct “ - has been japed to death so as to make the pun entirely moot.”

When words would not serve, he allowed himself the petty violence of crumbling the news page and throwing it into the fire. Vengefully, he watched the paper burn, his jaw working for speech all the while.

Caroline merely watched him – observing him the same as he would a dying plant that would respond to neither sunlight nor water – and sounded surprised (how was she surprised?) to ask, “Does this anger you?”

“You cannot imagine that it makes me happy,” he retorted – but constrained himself when he saw her eyes narrow, ready as she ever was to pick up arms. “I only ask for discretion,” he finally bit out, not entirely succeeding for calm. (For mildness was never the easy path, and neither was patience the way of cowards – he had bloodied knuckles and broken bones, it felt like, for trying to keep to the virtues of a gentleman – while spite and anger were far too easy to indulge in their own turn.)

So, he breathed in deep, and gentled his tone. "I only ask for discretion," he repeated (and wondered if he was a coward anyway, not to demand that she break off the affair entirely). “That cannot be too unreasonable a request, surely?”

“Or what?” yet Caroline seemed almost amused by his frustration. “Will you put me aside? Divorce me, even?” she challenged, but answered her own question with a jeered, “The ever honorable William Lamb would never.”

Giving into anger was easy, so easy that: “Wouldn’t I?” he countered lowly, all without turning from the flames.

Caroline – for the first time in recent memory – didn't have an immediate reply, and he took a petty delight in being able to land what a blow of his own that he could.

Yet the moment didn’t last.

“Would that you did,” she aimed with a sneer – and found his heart. “Then I would be free to – we would be free to . . .” but even her bold words tapered off, and she gave her innermost wish no further voice for just how impossible it was.

“Is that really what you want?” William turned from the hearth, and found that he meant his question with all sincerity. “I would, should you ask it of me.”

He had not realized the truth of his words until he spoke them aloud – and neither, it seemed, did she.

“I . . .” yet Caroline stammered when presented with the freedom she supposedly yearned for above all else. “I . . . I don’t know.”

William held her gaze most seriously, even as he allowed himself to consider the idea: letting her go. If he was as cancerous to her as she claimed – and she to him – then perhaps it would be better to remove the limb and let the body heal entirely.

Perhaps . . . perhaps he would have, if he only knew that she'd have a soft place to land. For even she knew better than to trust the likes of George Byron to honor her in like manner – even at the zenith of their relationship.

“Then, while you make up your mind on the matter, extend some small kindness to your family – to your children, if not to me – and cease dragging us through the mire behind you.”

For once, he was the one to turn on his wife and leave her in silence – yet he felt no victory for having the final word . . . only a numb, weary sense of defeat.



.

.

In the end, their affair was as violent as it was short.

Seemingly overnight, Byron’s ardor cooled, and he transferred his passions to Lady Oxford – a woman whom Caroline had once trusted as her friend and confidant, but now, Lady Holland sighed to inform him, disparaged her quite openly from alongside her new lover, using intimate details that Caroline had told both Jane and Byron in confidence to twist against her in increasingly public settings.

Caroline did not recover her heart so easily as Byron did, nor was she content to let their marriage of true minds go, and that . . .

. . . that was where their tragedy truly began.

Caroline’s attempts to rekindle their amour turned all the more desperate and inventive as time went on. However, rather than succeeding to remind or even shame him, her efforts only irritated and then outrightly disgusted Byron. Remember me, she took every possible opportunity to entreat, and, in retaliation, Byron published:

Remember thee! Remember thee!
Till Lethe quench life’s burning stream
Remorse and shame shall cling to thee,
And haunt thee like a feverish dream!

Remember thee! Aye, doubt it not.
Thy husband too shall think of thee:
By neither shalt thou be forgot,
Thou false to him, thou fiend to me!

William drew the line at actually comforting his wife on the sad conclusion of her affair, and yet . . . he told himself that he was still her friend (wasn’t he?), and there was something pitiable about the way her hands shook over the newspaper and her eyes stared wide into the distance, truly seeing nothing at all.

A scarce day later, Caroline announced that she was with child.

His wife told him, and then tilted up her chin, statue-still and soldier-braced, as if waiting for a blow – as if she had not just leveled him in her turn – and with an ill jolt he forced himself to put aside his own feelings and consider just how very much she stood to lose. Even now, even with him – who could be called an indulgent, long-suffering husband at his best and an enabling, negligent spouse at his worst – there would be but little recourse for her if he chose to withdraw the security of his protection. He could ruin her, he knew; he could denounce and shame her; he could cast her aside and throw her to the cruel mercies of the world, all the while freeing himself from ever having to feel such pain and humiliation again, but only if he . . .

- instead, he took her yet shaking hands in his own, and vowed: “You will always have a home with me – both you . . . and our child.”

He was Peniston Lamb’s son, after all: he would look on the world and dare them to say that the child was not his very own, and then make sure to love that child as dearly as he did his trueborn son, so that there would never be any doubt, by anyone.

. . . for that was the duty of a gentleman – was it not?

The pregnancy was not easy on Caroline. Her mood fluctuated wildly, with fits of glee and despair taking her by turns, in a way that seemed more than just the heightened emotions that every woman experienced whilst carrying new life. She was sick more often than not, and begun her confinement far earlier than she had with her first two children. The birth itself was no easier, though she'd been told it would be; if anything, it seemed to drag on for interminably long – lasting from well before one sunrise to long after the next – and when the accoucheur at last placed the swaddled babe in his arms, it was not with an expression of happy relief, but rather, one of foreboding.

“It would be prudent,” the physician quietly advised, “if a priest was summoned.”

William could not first understand his words, distracted as he was – for the girl was small, so small. But Caroline was small, he told himself – thin, as well, with hardly any weight to show where she'd carried the child – but that did not matter, their baby would grow. The girl was quiet, too – she did not cry, she did not scream, but she breathed, she breathed and her heart yet beat – and that was all that truly mattered.

Now, to be told that it was not . . .

. . . there was not one moment of his daughter’s – his daughter’s – existence where she was not held close and loved, so dearly loved.

“What is the child’s name?” William finally processed what the priest was asking him – he needed to know for both the baby's baptism . . . and her last rites. Caroline was inconsolable, he distantly understood, and could not be roused for an answer of her own.

So: “Alice,” somewhat surreally, he gave the name that he had always favored for a girl (it seemed, now, that he would never have a living daughter who would bear it), and then repeated on a stronger voice: “Alice Lamb.”

Byron was sent for straight away, with William's own stable master riding his fastest horse straight through to London to deliver the message. William may have despised the man, but he was not so cruel as to deny him this one chance to meet the child he'd sired – but, the same as had been his wont for months now, this letter too was left unanswered. Byron ignored the summons, and did not even give his man a note to carry back in reply.

“I know he will come,” Caroline muttered, over and over again, entreating the priest to wait for as long as possible before conducting the ceremony. “He will come, you’ll see – he will come.”

But he did not come; Byron did not come that day, nor did he show his face in any of the days thereafter.

Instead, following the funeral, William was the one to carry the impossibly small coffin into the churchyard – he needed no other to help him bear the weight, though George and Fred both tried – and there, his daughter was put to rest by her sister. Once the ceremony was complete, he placed a bouquet of nettle and blue nemophila and baby’s breath over the freshly churned earth, and lingered in silence with his lost children long past nightfall.

The day following, Caroline picked up a pen, and furiously began to write.

Spoiler: End Notes

A Note on Victoria's Christening: Yes, this really did happen, I kid you not. I mean, George IV didn't storm off half-way through the ceremony, that alone was me embellishing, but the rest sure did.

A Note on Prince Leopold: I have very divided feelings on this man, and he's going to be a bit of an antagonistic character coming up for obvious reasons. But I truly believe that he loved Victoria and wanted the best for her - even if he didn't quite trust her to decide that best for herself or to rule on her own. At the very least, he did care for Princess Charlotte, and losing her and their son was a tragedy. He most certainly did not follow Peniston Lamb's Rules For Gentlemen in his subsequent relationships, and was involved in more than a few scandals of his own, but to Charlotte he was devoted. His quote in this letter really struck me: "She was a good, she was an admirable woman. None could know my Charlotte as I did know her! It was my study, my duty, to know her character, but it was my delight!" So, in short, he's another very human character to add to the cast.

A Note on Dr. Lee & Dr. Clarke: Both are real doctors from this time period! Dr. Clarke made a marked effort to understand epilepsy, especially in children, though I don't know if Augustus was one of his patients or not. Dr. Lee, however, was Augustus' live-in tutor and physician for five years, and he then used what he learned from Augustus to go on and help with other children. During a time when so much about the innerworkings of the human brain was unknown, these two were unsung heroes on the frontlines, and I wanted to mention them.

A Note on Melbourne and the Countess von Lieven: I actually couldn't find much proof of Melbourne's mistresses from this time period, at least in name. I highly doubt that he was a faithful spouse while being estranged from Caroline, though - more likely, he was just discreet - and so I applied artistic license to imagining the most likely candidates. Dorothea Lieven was very much his type - with the smart and sharp personality he seemed to be drawn to - and he would have known her both politically and socially. Dorothea was an absolute powerhouse when it came to politics, and Czar Alexander really did use her as his agent as much as he did her husband - how cool is that? She is a character we will definitely be meeting again in this collection.

A Note on Caroline and the Duke of Wellington: Technically, their affair was earlier in history. She was Wellington's lover in Paris, following his victory over Napoleon at Waterloo. She did meet him through a celebratory ball her brother hosted, though, as Frederick Ponsonby was a war hero and one of Wellington's particular friends.

A Note on Caroline and Byron: Their affair did start out innocently enough, when Caroline wrote to congratulate him on his publication of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. She went a step further, though, and addressed the dissatisfaction that Byron expressed through Harold's avatar. She told him that he deserved happiness and should not “throw away such Talents as you possess in gloom & regrets for the past.” According to his friends, Byron ignored his fan-mail - which he did dub as being from his "star-gazers" - except for Caroline's, which he was enraptured by, and they wrote a flurry of letters to one another, oftentimes wholly in verse. (Biographers estimate about 300 letters from this time period.) Their actual physical affair didn't last long, and that's when Byron tired of her (an idealized woman on the page was one thing, and I find it easy to imagine that he found the real woman of flesh and blood disappointing) in favor of Lady Oxford, who was Caroline's close friend before this betrayal. Remember Thee was a poem Byron published about Caroline - he very quickly came to despise her, especially when she went to increasingly desperate lengths to rekindle their romance, but, more along those lines, we're going to get into with the final chapter.

A Note on Susan Spencer: The Lambs really did adopt her as their ward. (Random fun fact, but Susan's father, George Spencer-Churchill, would go on to be the great-grandfather of the Winston Churchill with his "legitimate" wife.) After Caroline's death, Melbourne continued to care for Susan alone, but that fell apart due to another messy scandal (this one all entirely his own fault) that I'm going to dive into with the next chapter, as well.

A Note on Alice Lamb: In history, this baby died before Caroline's affair with Byron, so she was most likely Melbourne's - but, as I'm playing very fast and loose with the timeline, and this rather brought everything about Peniston Lamb's long ago counsel full circle, I decided to pour on the angst sauce. Byron was an absolute dumpster fire when it came to his personal life, and I fully believe him capable of ignoring a pregnant former mistress - especially if he'd somehow convinced himself that the baby wasn't his. At this point, Byron was romantically involved with Caroline's former BFF; trash-talking Caroline with Melbourne's mother; and not far out from marrying one of Melbourne's cousins (Melbourne's family really disliked Caroline, even pre-Byron, to say the least). He would have had plenty of whispers in his ear to sooth his ego and tell him that he was doing the right thing - after all, Byron always seemed to have a woman to blame for the trials in his life.

From there, Victoria's diaries mentioned that Melbourne favored the name Alice for a girl - how they got onto the subject of baby names is anyone's guess, or Melbourne may have just been confiding about the children he lost, we don't know. Either way, Victoria went on to name one of her own daughters Alice, and it's been suggested by historians that this might be why.


On that last angsty thought: until next time!

~ MJ

 

Bravo, FavoriteTM. This is absolutely beautiful. Thanks for pouring your heart out and letting it shine through, again.

 

Aw! Thank you!

(And I really feel like I need to put FavoriteTM in my title now, but I don't want to make the other mods jealous. )

Now that is a compliment in and of itself! Thank you! (Lemme tell you, parts of this weren't at all easy to write. )

Exactly! Personally, I'm more of the (and I know you are too ) hopeless romantic type who believes in true love and monogamy and all that mushy stuff, for the win - but, at the same time, life can be messy. Both Melbourne - and Caroline, too - were looking elsewhere for a fulfillment that their marriage eventually lacked, and to ultimately unsatisfying ends.

That's just it! Reading about Caroline, she was so clearly unhappy and looking for anything to help herself cope, but so many of her choices were brutally self-destructive. I think it's safe to say that the traditional roles expected of a Regency woman didn't at all suit her; Melbourne loved that about her, in his own way, and maybe that made it easy for her to truly want to try with their marriage in the beginning - but, after losing one child, to then feel "forced" into the role of a nurse with another terminally ill child and "judged" by her husband for feeling so (she didn't have a career to throw herself into as a distraction, just her own ambitions as an author, which had to have felt impossible to see realized in their own way) . . . she just strikes me as the kind of woman who can shut down emotionally in response to trauma and want to run when faced with that fight or flight instinct - but run, she couldn't.

Because, even at their best, she had to have known better than to trust Byron for any sort of lasting commitment - even if she had been free to marry. She could blame her marriage for trapping her, but she also had an incredible amount of freedom there, too - she could say or do pretty much anything, and Melbourne would still honor her (even if that's a psychological mess all on its own), which, in turn, just irritates Caroline all the more so, and around and around the vicious circle we go.

That was one of the first things that drew me to his character in the book/show, too! This very well could have been his villain origin story, but it wasn't . . . and if Melbourne did let his past keep him from pursuing anything more with Victoria, even unconsciously so, just as much to protect himself as to do what's best for her and for England too . . .

. . . well, I can't wait to fix that.

As always, I can't thank you enough for reading! We have one more heavy chapter to go, but we're all due a mush chaser in this thread soon, I promise.

Ha, right? It was hard for me to write that kind of wordplay at times, just for the sake of "oh no, I need to make my characters say something witty and clever - I am not witty and clever enough for this!"

And you're too right about our little haven here. Isn't TFN just the best? (Mostly. )





Alrighty! I will have the next part up in just a few.

 

Nah, go ahead and rock the FavoriteTM tag. Any jealousy would arise solely because it's true.

 

In that case . . .

---

Author's Notes: And here we are with the final part of this event! Needless to say, when I first started on this bonus entry, I did not at all intend to write a novella - nor did I fully appreciate just how weighty the subject matter would be until I was well in the thick of it all. It's certainly been a learning experience for me as an author, writing this story, and I hope that it's made for just as interesting (if not always enjoyable ) a reading experience for you as well!

Towards that end, I have to give a last CONTENT WARNING for child mortality; yet more serial adultery; references to drug/alcohol abuse; depictions of dissociative panic attacks; and a scene that involves both the threat of suicide, and a brief, aborted attempt to carry said threat out. Please keep yourselves safe, folks, as always!

Now, for everyone who's prepared to wade through the mire with me . . . here we go.

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“Say We Choose (but It’s No Choice at All)”
(Bonus 4x100+ Relay)​

IV.II.IV

Charity

Of course he read Glenarvon – how could he not?

Even more so than the indignity of the now gluttonous public being not only permitted to peer, but invited to look into a distorted mirror of their private-most affairs, it pained him to see his wife's once beautiful way with words twisted beyond all recognition. Entire passages utterly escaped comprehension, and the plot unfolded in sloppy, uneven acts that built upon each other as ungainly boulders stacked upon an ever shifting foundation of sand.

Caroline wrote kindly of him as Lord Avondale, at least – in a way, and only to a certain extent (and if the flashes of fact amongst the fiction cut in their own right, then that was neither here nor there); it was Byron who received the scathing edge of her pen as the titular character. Few, however, would look upon the authoress’ own self in Calantha and see her as she truly was: heartsick with too many dashed expectations, and miserable with all the world. Instead, Caroline had bared her throat for the careless teeth of society's opinion, and they, in turn, were all too happy to rend their mortal wound.



.

.

Just the same, he read Byron’s answering Don Juan.

That particular volume of filth, masquerading as art, William (though he would only ever admit to one other, years later) tossed into the fire and grimly (gleefully) watched as it burned.



.

.

His family had just as many words as Caroline to say on the matter, and few of them kind.

In keeping with her rather singular definition of loyalty, his mother hardly found it necessary to cut her acquaintance with Byron, and instead scorned Caroline for being unable to keep an amorous liaison in its proper place. Out of his own sense of loyalty, he paid the viscountess the respect she was due as his mother, but only to the degree absolutely required of him by propriety, and their relationship never fully recovered.

His brothers, at least, were more circumspect in their opinions – even if, on more than one occasion, George went so far as to offer to call Byron out, and William knew that he only half spoke in jest.

Emily, however, saw no need to blunt her tongue – and he could hardly ignore his sister as easily as he did the others.

“She has been disguising herself as a page boy to see him,” Emily informed him as they took a turn through the gardens together, arm in arm and for all purposes enjoying the warmth of the day as their children played.

Yet her warning was unnecessary. William had already paid The Times quite handsomely not to run that particular story, and he knew that it was not his bank note, but rather the editor’s sense of what would unduly shock the public, more so than merely titillate, that he had to thank for silence on that matter alone.

“We all know that may be the best way to recapture his attention.” Yet, to Emily, he merely shrugged to acknowledge Byron’s indiscriminate taste in lovers. He did not consider it his right to judge, not on such a personal score, and so would not – even if that may have been a somewhat ironic point of view to maintain, this deep into a scandal and with nothing else held back from the voyeuristic eyes of the public.

“I told you it was unnatural years ago,” Emily continued – keeping her voice low when her youngest son came close enough to overhear, holding up the frog he and his brother had found amongst the lily pads in the reflecting pools, “a woman choosing to dress as a man.”

William waited before making reply – instead properly remarking over Charles’ discovery, and then calling his nephew’s name in warning when he ventured too close to where the girls were sketching, well recognizing that spark of mischief for what it was.

Susan would put even worse in the boy’s bed later if he succeeded in scaring little Fanny, after all – and he wished to spare the lad.

“Caroline was at home, just with us,” William disagreed aloud only when it was safe to do so. “She had every right to put on trousers and ride astride, in the presence of her family.” Once, that had been something he’d loved about his wife, even – her spirited refusal to conform to social norms, even if, now . . .

“It was indecent,” Emily sniffed to repeat, “vulgar, even.”

He gave a crooked smile, quite ready to lay the topic of his wife to rest, and instead chose to tease: “I think more women should adopt such fashions – if only for the rather fetching view.”

“William Lamb!” Emily did not disappoint. “Bite your tongue; there’s no need to be crass.” She raised her eyes heavenwards as if to ask God for strength, and then exhaled heavily to demand: “How far must this go for you to take this matter seriously?”

Her words found their mark; his jaw tightened, and he fought to maintain a pleasant expression with the children yet in view. Susan, in particular, had a habit of forgetting who was the ward and who was the guardian in their relationship, and he’d not give the girl any further cause for worry than she already had.

“It truly is a helpless case,” he finally managed, “if you, of all people, think that I am not taking this seriously.”

They continued to walk in silence, each of them lost to their own troubled thoughts as the children broke into a game of chase – Charles, it seemed, had managed to put the toad in his sister's hair, though Fanny was hardly bothered once the shock of the sensation wore off. The little girl now held the – undoubtedly thoroughly flummoxed – frog in the flat of her hands, and showed the creature to Augustus as Susan took off after the boys, threatening to dunk them in the pond once she caught them. It was a sweet day, bursting with spring, but its beauty could scarce touch either of them as it should.

“I know how dearly you are taking this to heart,” Emily softened her words to acknowledge. “Yet that is what I worry for: your heart, more so than anything else.”

“Oh, my heart is a tough old thing,” he made an attempt for nonchalance, “it can bear yet more still, I quite assure you.”

“For my heart, then.” Emily squeezed his arm with no small amount of affection. “Your pains are quite my own, you must know.”

They turned back towards the children – slow to intervene when it was good for Charles to learn the consequences of his actions, but ready to do so regardless – and before they could rejoin Augustus and Fanny, Emily counseled, “I will do my best to have Caroline readmitted to Almack’s, which should aid in many houses opening to her where she is now barred – but, William, I beg of you: take your wife in hand . . . for her sake, if not your own, before this gets any worse.”



.

.

Later that spring, Augustus suffered his worst seizure yet.

The attack went on for longer than any he'd endured before – a small eternity for his parents – and, in the aftermath, he was never quite the same. His mind and body seemingly lost their ability to cooperate in tandem, stealing even his few words and robbing him of all powers of conveyance. Even relatively simple tasks, like holding an object in his hand, were no longer possible without a great deal of strain and effort.

. . . most worryingly of all, it was that effort which was increasingly absent as of late. Augustus always had the most expressive eyes, and William had known – he knew – that his son’s mind was active, even when he could not communicate those thoughts aloud. Now, there were times when he’d stare blankly at nothing – another form of seizure, they’d since come to learn – and they increasingly failed to rouse his attention, let alone hold his interest, even with things that had previously brought him joy.

Dr. Clarke had little by way of encouragement to offer; instead, he suspected that whatever physical malformation in the brain that had originally caused Augustus’ condition was progressing, and, with the unseen damage to his mind that each attack subsequently inflicted . . .

They should prepare themselves, the doctor cautioned, and William attempted to gird his heart even as he refused to mourn his child while he yet still lived.

Towards that end, he forsook his duties in Parliament on one particularly fine day to take Susan and Augustus to the park. Augustus no longer had the strength to sit upright on his own, and could not safely join him on horseback – but he enjoyed being driven in the landau. (Or so William assumed – he hoped.) From there, Dr. Clarke and Dr. Lee had collaborated on building a wheeled chair specifically suited to Augustus’ needs, and it was that which William now pushed down the gravel path to the duck pond.

Susan kept up a steady stream of chatter as they walked, having too adopted the habit of trusting that her brother could hear and understand her, even if he could not make reply. Once they reached the water’s edge, they stopped to feed the geese and ducks on Augustus’ behalf. Augustus’ eyes moved, aware of his surroundings as he watched the clucking waterfowl – who made quite the ruckus before the arrival of a pair of swans and their cygnets. The swans were clearly sovereign in their realm, and would suffer no challenge to their authority – which somehow made them feel entitled to their share of the bread, and yet most . . . defensive when they felt that their young were much too close to their human guests for comfort.

As such, William endured a most cross tirade from the trumpeting father before wisely holding up his hands and ceding the field – and he could have sworn that Augustus smiled, even when his mouth remained motionless.

They lingered by the water until Augustus’ eyes turned unfocused and the straps on his chair looked to constrain him more so than they supported. Still, William took his time pushing him back to the waiting landau, not wholly ready to let the moment go.

Midway up the path, Susan spied a bank of pink flowers growing alongside the canals, and she crossed the grass where Augustus could not to bring him back a sprig. When she was close enough, William felt his heart clench to recognize the blossom for what it was.

Susan’s summoned what a smile she could, and sought to confirm, “For good luck, right?”

William merely nodded, unable to speak – proud as he was for the girl’s retaining his lessons as much as he understood what even she could not bring herself to say aloud.

Yarrow: for good luck, yes . . . but as it pertained to thoughts of protection and hopes for healing.

Susan knelt, but did not give Augustus the flowers outright when his fingers could no longer be trusted to maintain their grip. Instead, she gently tucked their stems into the pocket of his coat. Augustus blinked to watch her as she tapped her heart twice, holding his gaze all the while. “I love you,” she told him solemnly, her eyes gleaming.

In answer, Augustus lifted his right hand, and his curved, shaking fingers weakly dragged against his own heart. He could not manage any finer a motion, and it was possible that the gesture could have meant anything – but William chose to believe in its significance, just as Susan did.

Susan only fell back beside him, where Augustus couldn’t see, when tears threatened to overwhelm her. She bit her lip, determined to mute her grief, and William reached out to take her hand, imparting what strength and comfort that he could. Tightly, Susan returned his grip, and then determinedly wiped at her eyes.

Thus recovered, she stepped forward to walk alongside Augustus once more, and cheerfully began to chat about the upcoming summer, listing all the things she anticipated doing together once they returned to Brocket Hall.

Amazed by the girl, and rightly humbled, William joined her in spinning a list of increasingly unrealistic plans – giraffe racing and a tea party with the fair-folk who lived in the old ash tree chief amongst them – and, for a moment, succeeded in forgetting the cares of the day.



.

.

He saw his father in Westminster but rarely over time, with Peniston Lamb preferring to spend the twilit years of his life in the country, rather than in town. Yet, he’d once been an Irish peer as Baron Melbourne before he was made an English lord and, as such, the current debate in the House pertaining Catholic emancipation was one close to his heart.

To honor his father’s views, just as much as his own, William was glad to follow his party in seeking to repeal the Test Acts and petition for penal law reforms, with those smaller victories, hopefully, culminating in a larger relief act for Ireland by the next session of Parliament. Towards that end, he gave his all (and if seeking peace for others distracted him from the peace that was absent from his own home, then that was of little consequence), and found what contentment he could in his whole-souled service to his nation – all of his nation.

On one of the last days of debate before the vote, William watched from the gallery as his father spoke in the House of Lords with no small amount of pride. While he did not often stand from the bench, the Viscount Melbourne was respected when he did choose to raise his voice, and his softly spoken, but firmly worded, speech was applauded by many on both sides of the aisle.

And yet, when Byron next took his turn to speak . . .

“What is he doing here?” William could not summon his guard in time, and the words lashed sharp and brittle from his mouth.

Frederick – England’s newly appointed ambassador to Portugal, after five years of such exemplary service in Bavaria – had made it a point to be home for this particular vote, and he raised a brow in that thoughtful, nonchalant way of his that was ever reminiscent of their father.

“His job, it would seem.” Frederick shrugged, even as his eyes narrowed. “He is still a lord, is he not?”

“In name, perhaps,” William muttered. “Yet I can’t recall the last time I’ve seen him in Whitehall to vote – let alone speak on a matter.”

Yet Byron – even if nothing else could be said about him – had a way with words, and he spoke passionately, not just to extol the virtues of Catholic emancipation, but to criticize those who supported the idea of British Union in the first place. It was well known that Byron favored home rule for Ireland – yet his calls for action, bordering on encouraging outright insurrection, were dangerous, and for none more so than the very people he purportedly spoke to defend.

“It’s easy to sweep in and make such a grand declaration before just as quickly leaving again,” William scorned as the House broke into divided reactions for the speech – with outright boos and cries of protest and vicious cheers mingling in a raucous cacophony of sound. “I’d like to see him stay and put in the effort to affect change with the system we currently have, without resorting to such inflammatory measures that are ultimately more flash than substance.”

Yet Byron was not – and would never be – a man who ingloriously fought in the trenches, day in and day out. He was not a soldier, but rather, a man who romanticized the idea of war and considered himself a kindred spirit with those great heroes of old, depicted by the likes of Homer and Virgil. Yet the worlds they lived in were far apart; modern statecraft was ugly, tedious business more often than not, yes, but it was the sword with which they were armed; better was it to learn to wield that sword rather than attempting to circumvent the arena of battle entirely.

The Speaker at last called the House to order, and the session was adjourned. With no small amount of effort, William stamped down his lingering irritation as he gathered his notes back into their folios, and then made with Frederick to depart. By the time they descended the steps into the great atrium of the lobby, his mind was already churning, engrossed as he parsed through the matter at hand once more. As such, he’d nearly forgotten about Byron completely before the press of the crowd quite unwittingly threw them together again.

With their paths so clearly intersecting, and so many eyes now upon them, they could hardly ignore each other – not without adding yet more fuel to the still simmering fire of the public's interest. Even so, William could first only rudely stare – knowing that it was incumbent upon him to bow first to the more highly ranked lord, yet slow to do so – and his lapse was noticeable enough that Frederick stepped forward to offer a greeting of his own.

“Lord Byron,” he said, politely and with no noticeable antipathy, as perhaps befitted the now seasoned diplomat.

Recalled by his brother, William too bowed and echoed, “Lord Byron,” in what was almost an entirely neutral tone.

Yet Byron showed no sign of registering the near palpable sense of loathing that William could feel, hotly pulsing through his veins. To the contrary, he even went so far as to smile – an imperturbable, devil-may-care smile that made William glad that he was holding on to so many documents as he was, lest he give into the suddenly intense urge to do something violent.

“Lord Frederick; Lord William,” Byron bowed in that typically irreverent way of his, tipping his hat and flicking his cape. “What an unexpected delight.”

For truth: it was wholly unexpected for actual servants of the Crown to be seen going about their duties, instead of . . . whatever it was that Byron occupied his days with when not writing sub-par verses or carrying on with his dalliance of the hour.

But giving into the temptation of such a petty remark would have been as unseemly as it was undignified. William better knew that he should walk away from the situation before his temper could outstrip the higher logic of his mind. He would have done just that, even – had Byron not asked of their mother’s health, for which Frederick answered, and then had the outright gall to further inquire:

“And Lady Caroline, too, is well, I trust?”

Was she well?

. . . was she well?

Overcome by the sudden roaring in his ears, William thought of the shadows beneath his wife’s eyes . . . the sickly pallor of her skin . . . the gaunt planes of her face . . . how starkly he could now see the hollow of her collarbone and the sharp points of her wrists and elbows – he was haunted by a skeleton, had been Byron’s exact jeer for the physical evidence of Caroline’s declining health, all the while refusing to acknowledge why -

. . . yet it was not until he thought of the baby girl that this man had denied, now tucked into the cold embrace of the earth to sleep, that he found himself taking one dangerous step forward, every muscle in his body rigid with intention -

- only to be stopped by a restraining hand on his arm.

“Lord Byron,” William heard his father say from close to his ear – his voice at once civil and yet devoid of all welcome.

“Lord Melbourne,” Byron hesitated for only a moment before bowing in a somewhat more dignified manner before the elder, more highly ranked peer. Yet he still looked as if he would speak – perhaps to offer more inane platitudes before he was neatly intercepted.

“Baron Hobhouse looks as if he is expecting you,” Peniston Lamb’s words were as iron more so than ice as he gave a clearly dismissive gesture. “Perhaps he wishes to commend you on your performance today. It would be best, I think, if you did not keep him waiting.”

“. . . indeed,” Byron acknowledged tightly. “How good of Your Lordship to point him out to me.” Then, with a last, sideways look, he turned and took his leave.

Just the same, William found himself being pulled in the opposite direction – through the lobby and back up the stairs to the long gallery. Somewhat distantly, he registered Frederick stopping to fend off Sir Gladstone before the long-winded baronet could intercept them, and before he wholly understood what was happening, he turned into the now empty Painted Chamber at his father’s direction.

Once they were safely out of sight from any onlookers, William felt his mask crumble – his every muscle went rigid with tension, and he stared blankly at the newly refinished walls as if he could see through to the smothered medieval murals beneath, feeling his breath come sharp and quick in his chest. Too sharp; too quick – his heart seemingly bucked as if it was trying to escape the cage of his body, beating against his ribs and pushing on his lungs. He’d not had an episode of battle fatigue in quite some time, but he keenly endured the brunt of that malady now as sweat broke out on his brow and his hands began to shake. He felt entirely too present in his body and yet impossibly far away, both weighted down to the ground and untethered from himself all at once.

“William,” he heard his father speak as if from across a great distance. “William, you must control yourself.”

Control himself? the words echoed in his ears.

. . . control himself?

God, but how the irony of that thought cut through his stupor. It seemed like all he ever did was exercise control. He swallowed his tongue and schooled his temper and hid his wounds from the sight of any and all; he presented himself as a gentleman, day in and day out – and for what? A failed marriage? His dead (dying) children? His middling political career, which, if it was even remembered by history in the first place, could be defined by all that he did not do . . .

. . . the devil take it all, but his greatest legacy so far was that of the cuckolded spouse of a woman who'd entangled herself with one of the greatest poets of their age – an otherwise worthless man who'd immortalized himself through his admittedly singular capacity for verse.

William sucked in a breath – biting back the undignified urge to sob – and ruthlessly forced himself to focus. His eyes found the Tilbury Tapestry – the smaller companion to the grand Armada Tapestries that defined the foremost wall in the House of Lords – and he fixed on the blazing beacon of Gloriana as she galvanized her troops for an anchor. He inhaled deeply, in through his nose and out through his mouth, until, at long last, he succeeded in returning to himself.

“How did you do it?” he finally asked on a raw voice, continuing to stare at the crowned figure – suited in armor and her sword raised proudly high, her long red hair forming a halo about her in the ocean breeze – rather than turn to his father. He did not yet trust himself to attempt even the smallest of movements without breaking.

His father did not have to ask of his meaning; instead, he only sighed, deep from his chest. “It was different for us,” his own voice sounded weary to say. “We had an understanding that preceded our vows. My heart was previously claimed where I was not permitted to wed,” he finally admitted aloud what William himself had come to suspect over the years, “and your mother was not . . . she yet is not the type of woman who is inclined to surrender her own. I respect Elizabeth, and she remains my friend. We had – we have – a partnership built specifically on those parameters, and nothing more.”

While, with Caroline, he'd once thought . . .

“If you could go back and do it again?” William yet struggled to put his thoughts into words. “Would you?”

Peniston Lamb’s answer was immediate: “I would not make any choice that would cost me my children,” and heartening in its own right. William could well understand those sentiments for himself, even. His lost girls . . . Augustus . . . and Susan, too, he would choose over a happier marriage every time.

And yet . . .

“And yet?” William prompted aloud.

“If I could . . . yes, I have a great many regrets,” his father then seemed very old to confess. “One of those regrets is wishing that I once advised you differently – I did not do right by you, I fear. I want . . . I want better for you, you must know, and I blame myself that you do not have it.”

For that, William turned, and met the elder man's gaze. “It wouldn’t have made much difference,” he admit his own truth. “In the beginning, I thought that Caroline was . . . I thought she was that woman, the one who is everything. Nothing would have convinced me otherwise.”

But she was not – and he was not . . . now, there was nothing left but to make the best of what remained of their bond. “We’re going home soon,” William said to that effect, but with little optimism, “after the king prorogues Parliament for the summer – and then, we’ll try again.”

In the end, what more could any of them do?



.

.

They never made it back to Brocket Hall that summer . . . at least, not while their son was still alive.

Augustus’ health continued to decline, and he was soon much too weak to stir from bed, let alone endure an hours' long journey in the carriage. In London, they were at least in close proximity to the best minds in medicine. And yet, even those physicians were ultimately powerless to hold back the resolute hands of nature and fate. There was nothing that Dr. Clarke could do for Augustus except help make him comfortable, and Dr. Lee’s services had since turned superfluous – not that the man and his wife would quit their contract before . . .

. . . before the end.

On one particularly intense night of storms, just before midsummer, William sat by his son’s bedside and determinedly began to read. Augustus had been shaking on and off for hours now, but his eyes would flutter open and stare blindly in the shadows at the sound of thunder, and William thought to know that he was frightened. (He was frightened too.)

So he read through one page after another, burning down an entire candle and then a second, refusing to rest his voice while Augustus could yet hear him speak. He registered but few of the words of Mansfield Park for himself, but continued:

“It was impossible for her to be insensible of Mr. Crawford’s change of manners. She had long seen it. He evidently tried to please her: he was gallant, he was attentive, he was something like what he had been to her cousins: he wanted, she supposed, to cheat her of her tranquility as he had cheated them; and whether he might not have - ”

“You know that he can’t understand a word you're saying.”

Caroline’s arrival had gone entirely unnoticed by him – whether concealed by the thunder or by his world constricting solely to the little boy in the bed, he did not quite know.

William swallowed – his throat was parched these many chapters later, and thick with emotion besides – and whispered, “You don’t know that.” You don’t even try, he thought, but did not say. “If he's aware enough to cry for the thunder, then I believe that he can yet take comfort from my voice.”

"Perhaps," Caroline murmured bitterly. “If you can tell a difference between one fit and another.”

Fury struck him like a bolt, lighting every nerve ending with fire, even as lightning flashed through the window. She was his mother, he wanted to rage; if anyone could know, or should want to make the effort to know . . .

. . . yet his words died in his throat when he turned back to properly look at her. Caroline cut a pathetic figure in her own right, with her soaked hair limply plastered to her too-pale skin and her long cloak clinging to the angles and hollows of her body. He distantly wondered how long Byron had left her to pound on his door in the dark, just as he wondered for the lack of anything that he felt for the thought. He wondered when she had stopped being his friend, let alone his wife; any affection he'd once felt for her was by then depleted and most tenuously strained. He had nothing to say to her, and could not quite summon the urge to try when every moment he had left with his son was now finite.

So, he turned his back on her without bothering to speak. He was far too weary to argue; he spent most of his life arguing, it sometimes seemed – in the House and in his home and in his mind, and even in his prayers – for when it came to God, he had no end of the most scathing words. At his lowest point, he very much doubted that God was there to hear him at all; at his best, he trusted that God was strong enough to bear him at his worst.

. . . his wife, however, was not.

As such, he refocused his attention on Augustus, and resumed the story: “Reflecting and doubting, and feeling that the possession of what she had so much wished for did not bring much satisfaction, she now walked home again, with a change rather than a diminution of cares since her treading that path before.”

Caroline blessedly left before he could make it through the page, and he was grateful for her absence. Thunder rumbled, low and menacing as the rain sluiced against the windowpanes with a renewed fury, and Augustus’ eyes fluttered for the violence of the storm. Somewhat desperately, William reached out and squeezed the boy's hand – unsure if his touch would be welcomed, but needing . . .

Rather furiously, he blinked his eyes to clear his vision of tears. He bit his lip as he turned the page to the next chapter, and carried on reading with all determination.

His son knew enough to be afraid of the dark.

He refused to let him go into that dark alone.



.

.

He was made Chief Secretary to Ireland, shortly after Augustus’ death.

The position was a compliment in its own way – for he was yet still a Whig, no matter how conservative, and Lord Canning’s Tory ministry was on tenuous footing with many of the hard-liners in his own party. Yet, even more so than his pride for the seat he’d earned in the cabinet, he gladly anticipated the distraction his new duties would provide. Life in Dublin (and Kerry, too, where he’d already leased a country house) would be . . . different, in no small part, and, at the moment, he did not mind fleeing from everything that was yet familiar in England and ultimately dissatisfying for being so.

Towards that end, he hardly knew if his wife would accompany him or not. Since Augustus’ passing, he was only ever in the same room with Caroline when Susan too was present – for their ward deserved the best of them, and had been robbed of the familial comfort they’d once promised to provide her for far too long. Poised as she was on the edge of her childhood, she’d endured far too much already, and William endeavored to be a friend to her, as well as a guardian. Caroline, in her own way, did much the same.

It was not until a sennight before his departure that Caroline finally asked: “Do you intend to leave me behind?”

She’d appeared on the edge of his study like a ghost, neither wholly present nor absent from the world of the living. She seemed almost transparent in the glow from the hearth-light, as if the slightest breath would see her dissolve into the shadows like a vapor.

William did not answer to one course or another; instead, he asked, “Do you want to come with me?

Caroline hesitated, but could not immediately form a reply.

When she continued to remain silent, he stood to retire for the night, finding that he had naught the patience to wait her out.

“You may do as you wish,” he said, passing her by. One way or the other, he didn’t truly care. (Didn’t he?) “I know that you will, regardless, and shall not prevent you.”



.

.

Ultimately, Caroline did accompany him to Ireland.

He saw but little of her on the crossing from Holyhead – which he did not mind, especially when Susan was so amazed for her first time on a steam boat. William too was quite taken by the novelty of the spectacle, even if his heart was still rather set in the past, and he would always favor the great sail ships of his age. There was a beauty that was fading from the world for the advent of industry – taken by the likes of the black smoke puffing up into the blue-bird sky high above them – and there was a part of him that already instinctively knew to mourn for the transcension.

In Dublin, Caroline was just as disinclined to company for the fortnight they stayed to acquaint him with the city and his posting. When they settled in Kerry to pass the remainder of the summer, she showed a similar disinterest to acquaint herself with their new neighbors.

Yet Lady Branden showed a great deal of tenacity with her repeated calls, and although she was first merely tolerated by Caroline, she was, eventually, truly welcomed. Caroline hadn't allowed herself to enjoy the company of a female companion since Lady Oxford's betrayal, let alone let down her guard enough to truly trust another woman as a confidante and friend.

Elizabeth Crosbie was the wife of the current heir to the Branden barony – yet, as his inheritance was not one he had first anticipated as a previously younger son, William Crosbie was currently under holy orders as the rector of Castleisland. Caroline had first suspected Elizabeth as an agent of her husband – who must have surely been worried for the fate of her immortal soul – yet patience and time put those misgivings to rest. Elizabeth, it seemed, was merely a woman of genteel breeding who was pleased to have another lady of similar age and circumstance to add to her somewhat limited acquaintance in this wild and relatively lonely part of the country. Of all the rumors that Caroline feared followed her from England, the only one that Elizabeth seemed to heed was that she was a mother who’d just recently suffered the loss of her son.

Elizabeth too had laid her own little boy to rest far too young, and her one living daughter, Cecilia, was of matching age with Susan – and the girls were fast, close friends.

So particular was their friendship that Cecilia – and her mother too – accompanied them to holiday at Glanleam on Valentia Island that August. There, they toured the gardens that Elizabeth’s cousin, Sir Maurice Fitzgerald, the Knight of Kerry, was cultivating in the most singular subtropic climate that existed in the windbreaks provided by the island’s mountainous landscape. Here, where the frost of the north never touched, Sir Maurice had managed to grow wonders that were normally only found under glass, and he was a good-humored gentleman who was just as eager to talk about his leisure pursuits as he was the reforms he wished for Ireland on a larger scale – for which William inclined his ear most closely in preparation for his own position. The man was a canny landlord, and he had strong opinions about the failings of his class as a whole and ways to ease the plight of the average Irishman. As such, William quickly made plans for the knight to attend him in Dublin to see some of those ideas potentially made into law.

Just as awe-inspiring as the veritable Eden at Glanleam – the sunburst protea and the pink-violet fuchsia and the exotic grove of date palms – was the ocean itself. Here, the Atlantic greeted one of the westerly-most points of Ireland with great swells of water that crashed and broke with enough power to shake the ground beneath them, hundreds of feet high on the cliffs above. One evening, as they watched the sun set – taking in the glory of an oncoming storm out on the horizon as the waters thundered and thrashed, sending up a spray enough to touch their faces with a fine mist of fury and brine – William could not help but stand close to Caroline and say:

“Sometimes, I think that I understand why you are drawn to write.”

Yet she showed no acknowledgment that she heard his words. Instead, she breathed in deep – as if her eyes saw beyond the play of fire and night coloring the heavens, and he knew . . .

. . . she was hardly sharing the moment with him, but rather, with someone else entirely.

It was a dull pang that thought inspired – as if he was one of the sea stacks below, long used to the violence of the surf – yet, when he turned from his wife, he noticed that Elizabeth was watching them too. She met his eyes, something knowing in her gaze – and perhaps sad for being so – before she turned back to the ocean, and closed her eyes to better appreciate the last of the sunlight.



.

.

Lord Canning did not last an entire season as prime minister – not through any vote of no confidence, but rather due to the failings of his body, which refused to match the vigor of his mind.

William returned to London for both the funeral and the subsequent formation of Lord Goderich’s intermediate government – wherein he hoped to maintain his position, but was not in any way yet assured. There were whispers, after all, that Lord Goderich would not last long as prime minister, with the Duke of Wellington purportedly being interested in the position for himself. If a High Tory government replaced the Conservative one that now held, William could hardly expect to maintain any rank beyond that of the Opposition, just as he knew that if it came down to a contest of popularity, even more so than political acumen, the Iron Duke would win every time.

Towards that end, Wellington was currently courting favor from friends and foes alike, and, as ever, William could not say exactly where he fell in the duke's good graces.

Friend or foe, he was nonetheless invited to Wellington's winter gala – and, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, Caroline was too.

. . . or perhaps not so surprisingly. The public had naught to fan the fickle flames of their interest in months now, and Caroline’s scandal with Byron was at last receding from popular memory. Time would continue to dull the edges of her notoriety, even if her actions would never completely be forgotten – not in whole.

Even now, the only one of his mother’s arguments to ever stick with him – like a thorn, irritating his flesh – was that he’d never attain a higher position in government with Caroline as his wife. Yet, if he divorced her . . .

But no . . . no. He’d said his vows to Caroline long before he'd ever sought to bind himself in public service, and he’d continue to honor her until death did them part.

Besides, he'd already climbed higher than he'd ever thought possible in his career – what more could he possibly want? The uppermost ministerial positions would only mean larger headaches and an intolerable increase in paperwork – not to mention the fact that it would be a sad day for his country, indeed, if they could not find a better candidate for the likes of, say, a theoretical prime minister.

He was content with what he had now – truly he was. (Wasn't he?)

The ball was, as could perhaps be expected, an indulgently lavish affair. The guest list numbered in the hundreds, and spilled over into a specially constructed series of outdoor tents on the bordering corner of Hyde Park that had been decorated to mimic a veritable fairy land. The wine flowed freely, and the glittering of hundreds of candles over the artificial forest of silvery trees under the crystal stars, studded into a canopy of blue velvet, gave an almost surreal glow to the champagne-tinted spectacle. The dancing went on for hours before breaking for supper – which was hosted in both grand dining rooms and the actual ballroom of Apsley House in order to accommodate such a large number of guests.

If, however, Wellington had thought nothing of welcoming the current cabinet to join him in the state dining room . . . and then called on the famed poet he’d also honored with an invitation to share his latest verses to entertain his guests . . .

For once, when William reached for Caroline’s hand under the table, she returned the pressure of his fingers and held on tight – if only to have something to hold onto at all.

Byron stood from his seat and walked to the head of the table, where his voice could ring out from the high, apsidal vault of the ceiling for all to hear. He raised a glass of wine to the applause that greeted him, and waited for silence to fall.

“I read the Christabel,” he began to recite, and, after a theatrical pause, he shrugged to give his opinion with: “eh, very well.

“I read the Missionary;
pretty – very.

“I tried at Ilderim;
ahem!

“I read a sheet of Marg’ret of Anjou;
can you?

“I looked at Wordsworth’s milk-white Rylstone Doe;
hillo!

“I turned a page of Webster’s Waterloo,” and there he stopped just long enough for the veteran soldiers amongst their ranks to raise their voices, before echoing their sentiments with an animated, “pooh, pooh!”

But, before continuing, his eyes flicked down the table, and unerringly found . . .

“I read Glenarvon, too, by Caro Lamb,” Byron pronounced, and then uttered his final riposte: “God damn!”

He punctuated his words by drinking the rest of his wine back in a single gulp, and then raised his arms to the applause he clearly expected – and was hardly disappointed to receive – as his due.

Reflexively, William's opposite hand clenched over his fork, yet he forced himself to stillness. The eyes of the table had turned their way – watching, waiting – and he’d not indulge them with any sort of spectacle when just such a spectacle was almost rabidly anticipated. However, neither did he applaud – nor could he, when Caroline’s grasp on his hand had turned nearly desperate. He could feel her nails bite into his skin, and when he looked, she was staring down at her untouched plate, her breath coming fast and uneven.

She only released her grip in order to reach for her own glass of wine, which she then drank down most unsteadily.

From there, he registered but little of Byron’s next poem – some tawdry excerpt from Don Juan or another – and looked down the table to find his cousin’s gaze. Annabelle Milbanke – Lady Byron, now – had gone nearly as pale as Caroline for her husband’s petty bit of revenge, which threw into stark contrast the bruise-like shadows around her own eyes. Remembering the clever and happy girl she’d once been – highly devout and exceedingly bright – he felt his anger rise anew, threatening to overwhelm him.

Yet he focused on his breathing – on the sound of his heartbeat, thundering in his ears – as he’d used to do as a soldier when absolute calm and control were needed when the field of battle turned anything but, and, at long last, the party broke from the dining room.

Without consciously directing his feet, William quit the house in favor of the cold bite of the night air, and found himself in one of the gala tents once more. At first, Caroline was by his side, until, at some point, she was not. He hardly registered her absence as the tent filled and the dancing began anew – lost as he was in his own mind as his heart continued to skip and race beyond his ability to control – and he took another glass of wine from a server in an attempt to steady his shaking hands. The room seemed to blur in shifting streaks of silver and fire, so much so that when he heard a strangled:

“George!”

- he could not first recognize the sound as coming from his wife.

The spinning couples fluttered to stillness; there was a discordant sound as a violinist dragged his bow too roughly against the strings of his instrument and the orchestra fell out of tune; the waltz ceased, and every soul within the tent seemingly held their breath as Byron stalked through the now motionless stand of dancers . . .

. . . and Caroline followed at his heels.

“George, please,” her voice shimmered with anguish. “Why must you run from me?”

That finally drew a response from Byron: he stopped and spun on his heel, the motion so abrupt that Caroline nearly bowled right into him, before he hissed, “Madam, kindly return to your husband and leave me be – for God's sake, woman, have you no pride?”

“But I have your letter – just as I've received all of your letters!” she cried, heedless of the venom in his voice as she reached into the neckline of her gown to pull out a folded and worn sheet of paper. “I fled all the way to Ireland to escape you; I was determined to rid myself of you, yet your words followed me, even there.” She clenched the letter in a raised fist, as if she brandished a sword instead. “You could not give me up any more so than I can you – by your own pen!”

She stepped forward, and shoved the letter rather violently against his chest – but Byron brushed her aside with a virulent look of loathing, and let the abused paper fall carelessly to the floor.

“I know naught of what you speak,” Byron disavowed. “I am, as of late, a happily married man – and your hysterical imaginings are just that: delusions.”

“Delusions?” Whatever twisted hope that may have yet remained in Caroline’s expression then broke, and she rather pitiably knelt to pick up the letter that he’d trampled underfoot. Without rising, she whispered, “Perhaps I imagined . . . there are times when I imagine so many things . . . but no.” She looked up, her eyes hotly burning. “I know what you said – your mouth may lie whenever I stand before you, but your words speak true when you write them – I have proof of them here! Damn you, George, but I am a woman of flesh and blood who loves you! I am more than just words on a page!”

“Indeed,” yet Byron only sneered, “it is the physical whole which I now find entirely repulsive.”

Caroline, then, to the great surprise of all gathered, flew up from her previously supplicant position on the ground. Viper-quick, she snatched a glass of champagne from one of the stock-still servers, and broke it over the crown of Byron’s head with a wordless exclamation of fury.

“I wish I'd never met you!” she lamented, wildly waving the remaining stem of the glass in her hand. “I wish that your words never infected me; they have since burrowed inside my heart and yet devour me alive! I am both drowning and dying of thirst, and you . . . you would truly refuse to reach out a hand and save me?”

Slowly, his every motion fraught with resentment, Byron wiped his now wine-soaked hair back from his face. Then, with a last, contemptible look, he turned, and left her in silence.

“I will not survive you!” Caroline shrieked from behind him – yet she did not attempt to give chase; not this time. “I shall haunt you until you find your own grave and then pursue you to hell, where the devil may devour both our souls as one – I swear I will.”

And, with that, William watched in horror as Caroline pressed the jagged edge of the ruined glass into the skin of her arm . . . and began to tear.

It was as if every limb in his body was suddenly filled with lead; he'd gone paralyzed and numb from the very beginning of the encounter – as if he was a green soldier all over again, seizing with disbelief when presented with enemy fire for the first – and he could not immediately act until -

“Major Lamb,” he heard his old rank all but snarled into his ear – and he distantly registered that Wellington had grasped him quite firmly by the shoulder. “To arms, now – and that is an order.”

Even these many years later, a command from a superior officer was just that: the fugue trapping him in place broke, and he dashed forward even as his general shoved him, catching Caroline’s hand before she could inflict any further injury upon herself and kneeling to the ground with her as she crumpled.

“No, no,” she struggled against him like a thing possessed. “Let me go, William,” she sobbed. “Please, let me go. I cannot bear . . . I do not want, not anymore . . . ”

Yet he ignored her – tearing the glass from her hand and tossing it without a care for the onlookers who had to step aside as it clattered and rolled to a stop. He then yanked off his cravat and used the neck tie to stem the flow of blood. Scarlet instantly bloomed against the white silk, soaking it through, but he had to fight to keep the makeshift tourniquet in place as Caroline continued to flail against him – pounding the fist of her uninjured arm against his chest in impotent rage before, finally -

- she fell into blessed unconsciousness, and slumped against him, boneless. He brought his arms up around her, supporting her weight, and for a moment just held her, staring without seeing into the all-too-close press of the still gaping crowd.

Fixing his own expression in a glare and all but daring anyone present to utter a word in judgment, William shrugged off his tailcoat and used the fine material to both sop up the now sluggish flow of blood and cover her injuries from view.

Then, ignoring the dumbfounded stares of all who watched, he stood with his wife in his arms and, his head held high, carried her from the ball.



.

.

Caroline did not return with him to Ireland. Instead, she stayed behind in England, under the care and supervision of a now constant nurse, and he could not bring himself to mourn their separation.

(Yet still just a separation only, rather than a divorce – what would happen to Caroline now, if he abandoned her completely? The answer to that question was one that he thought to know, and thus, refused to entertain in the slightest.)

Caroline stayed in England, but Susan came with him – for it was, unfortunately, just as good for the girl to be away from Caroline as it was for him, and he hoped that a return to Ireland would aid in lifting her low spirits, old enough as she now was to understand the whispers of her elders in their entirety.

Towards that end, Lady Branden was one of their first callers in Kerry – and, by her husband’s leave, she even came to Dublin Castle to stay as a paid companion and governess for Susan, with Cecilia at her side. As such, while they were not quite a family in the traditional sense of the word, even as they mimicked one in form, he rather came to enjoy Elizabeth’s company for her own sake as much as he did for Susan’s. She was a canny and clever woman – beautiful, too, though that was of course inconsequential – and it was . . . nice, to have someone to talk to over breakfast and attend social functions in his wife’s place in the evenings. There was peace and laughter in his household once more, and Susan fairly blossomed with each day she spent returned to stability and security, just as she always should have known within the safety of her home.

(It was for Susan’s benefit that he was grateful for Elizabeth in those days – and for Susan alone.)

As the months passed, letters came from Emily, advising him on his wife’s condition when Caroline herself did not write. Her health was failing now, more so than merely declining, his sister warned. Her physician had diagnosed her with dropsy – a condition exacerbated, if not caused, by her now chronic malnourishment and utter dependence on poppy and wine – and feared for the disease's progression, even if Caroline succeeded in quitting either habit. The doctor did not have to say – even if Emily starkly put the words to paper herself – that the prognosis was just as troubling as Caroline's seeming resignation to her fate. She'd lost all joy in life, and if she could not rouse herself to fight . . .

William knew that it was his duty to return home to her side; a man of honor would resign his position and nurse his wife, either back to health or through her final days. He should, as a gentleman -

. . . yet he was tired, so tired of doing what he ought in the name of honor. Perhaps it was selfish of him, but he’d found what little bit of contentment here that he could, and he’d not surrender it yet. Caroline could either choose to live or die without him – much as she ever did.

If that made him a disreputable man . . . then so be it.



.

.

The dance was called the Haymaker's Jig, and, according to Elizabeth, it should have been one of the easier forms of céilí for them to master.

The promenading came easily enough – similar as the style was to their own English dances – as did the going round by right and left. It was the buzz swing where they usually began to falter (Susan started one round saying that Cecilia's hold around her waist tickled, and it was all downhill from there with each subsequent turn), and by the time it came to strip the willow they were completely hopeless.

"I may never be able to make it through this dance with a straight face," William huffed after another failed turn – casting a look of feigned exasperation on the girls. "And when the Duke of Leinster asks why, I shall be obliged to tell him that it's on account of the tickling, and then I fear that His Grace will never take me seriously again."

"Truly? I would have thought our Most Honorable Lord Secretary to be quite adapt at schooling his features when needs must – otherwise, how would you have lasted in your own Parliament for so long?" Elizabeth's eyes glittered to tease, and he bowed to acknowledge the truth of her words.

"Yes, but learning to keep an amiable expression for the Right Honorable Lord Lyndhurst whenever he rails against any perfectly reasonable bill otherwise – or, admittedly, the ability to keep my eyes open whenever Sir Robert Peel speaks – does not quite translate to a capacity to keep from laughing where laughter is due."

"Where laughter is due?" Elizabeth's eyes brightened even further to score her mark. "Are you saying that you too are ticklish?"

"Oh, frightfully so – to my great and everlasting shame."

He was rewarded when the girls continued to giggle, and huffed out another dramatic sigh. "Now that I have given these devils all the ammunition they shall ever need to get their own way in the future, perhaps we may try again? I feel confident of our success this time around."

The fiddler picked up his bow once more, and William lined up across from Elizabeth, just as Cecilia did across from Susan, as the first measure sounded. He bowed, heard the right note strike, and then -

- this time they made it through the dangerous buzz swing – the none of them able to hold back smiles, if they yet constrained their laughter – stripped the willow, threaded the needle, and promenaded again. William and Susan managed a passable jig step – or at least, he did, Elizabeth could not quite abandon her sport; they'd make an Irishwoman out of Susan yet – and they'd almost finished an entire pass of the dance before the time came to strip the willow once more. He traded off to spin with Susan – still gratified by her smile (she smiled far easier and more often as of late, which did his own heart good to see) – and then turned back to find Elizabeth's hand again, when -

- Susan reached back the opposite way for Cecilia than she should have, and, to compensate, the girls added in an extra twirl that quite threw them off balance – right into the path of their guardians.

It was both instinct and reflex to pull Elizabeth out of the way in order to prevent a collision – yet he had not anticipated Elizabeth's already moving to adjust her own course, and her momentum when combined with his own led to a misplaced step entirely. Elizabeth stumbled, and he caught her, breaking what would have been a potentially painful spill on the ground otherwise.

It was just a moment of unanticipated intimacy – her hands braced against his chest as his fell to her waist to steady her – but it was long enough for him to register softness and warmth and something more that both tantalized and sparked. That alone was enough for him to release her as if burned, and that would have been that, if not for -

. . . if not for the way her cheeks flushed, and he caught a glimpse of something in her eyes, too, before she stepped back and avoided his gaze completely.

"I am so sorry!" the distress in Susan's voice quite recalled them both. "I did not mean - "

"Please, don't even fret," Elizabeth assured the girl. "See?" she held her arms away from her body to demonstrate. (And William did not stare at where the fitted bodice and ever-lower waistlines that newly dominated women's fashion emphasized the curves of her figure.) "No harm done. I'm right as rain."

"Are you sure?" Susan still fretted.

"Oh, quite sure," Elizabeth's expression softened, exuding affection and warmth (an even more dangerous enticement), before she bid: "So much so that I'm ready to try again, if you are? I'd not have us end on such a note, not when we were so close – I have a feeling that this time through will be the one."

Susan nodded, clearly unconvinced, but resolute when she took her place across from Cecilia once more. She dipped into an exacting curtsy when the fiddler struck his note, and then began to promenade with an expression of the utmost determination.

Yet, as the promenade ended, William found his own attention then quite taken by his own partner. They locked arms with each other in the buzz swing, and this time, as they spun and spun and spun – sixteen beats that instead both felt like an eternity and flashed in an instant – he found himself wholly taken by the look in Elizabeth's eyes, and he wanted -

"My lord?"

The sound of Seamus Cleary, his secretary, interrupted his thoughts, and he rather sprang back from Elizabeth as if they'd been caught doing something improper. (Hadn't they?)

"Yes?" he asked, still somewhat rattled – but his mind, at least, sharpening for whatever could have brought Cleary to interrupt them.

"This just arrived by express from London."

William raised a brow to accept the letter that was handed to him. He looked down, at first expecting some missive from Whitehall to be sent by such a currier, but then felt apprehension pit in his stomach when he saw that it was from Emily, instead.

He bowed and made his excuses – even going so far as to bid Mr. Cleary to take a turn with Elizabeth so that Susan, at least, could finish her lesson – before departing the ballroom for his study. There, he debated pouring a drink first, before ripping the seal and diving into the breach with all temerity.

It was, unfortunately, quite as he expected: Caroline's health had taken a turn for the worst, and he was being recalled home in time for . . . in time for the end.

He glanced at his pocket-watch, and then looked out the window to the overcast skies above. Grimly, he knew that there would be one more crossing to England that day, and he intended to be aboard that ship.



.

.

It was a rough crossing from Dublin – enough so as to feel more like a divine punishment from above, rather than any fittingly negative omen borne by coincidence – and the foul weather continued to chase him on the long road south to Hertfordshire. The rains slowed their progress, and even halted them entirely when the storms turned too dangerous for the horses to travel in, giving him plenty of time alone with his thoughts – unkind as they invariably were. From the last posting station, he chose to continue on horseback for the speed of the conveyance, and did not wholly mind the rain as the water pooled on the brim of his hat and stung in icy droplets against the exposed skin of his face.

When he at last arrived at Brocket Hall, he came in the door to see Emily leaning over the banister above. He tensed, expecting to hear that he was too late, but she shook her head in the negative.

"You're in time," she came down to inform him, greeting him in a whisper as he gave his hat and soaked greatcoat to Hodges.

"Thank you," he merely pressed her hands to say – indebted to his sister as he was, as always – and then ascended the stairs to his wife's chambers.

Caroline's rooms were shadowed when he entered. A single candle burned at her bedside, along with the fire in the hearth, and she had the drapes open to the dim light of eventide. The air smelled stale, of sickness and something sharply medicinal – and something else vaguely metallic, undoubtedly from the last bloodletting. The wet, heavy sound of her breathing was loud on the air, and he felt his own chest clench for the sight of her – smaller than ever, and so colorlessly wraith-like against the soft white of her sheets.

Swallowing against the thickness in his own throat, he summoned his courage, and made his way forward.

He was not sure how aware she was – or if she even had the capacity for awareness – but her eyes fluttered open as he sat by her bedside. Blearily, they focused on him.

"William?" her voice was whisper-small.

"I'm here," he answered – unsure what else he should say . . . unsure what else he should feel.

"I'm glad," it took her a moment to sound the words, and even that little seemed to unduly tax her already struggling lungs. "I thought . . . I thought you would not come."

The words stung – though from her faithlessness or for their truth, he hardly knew – before she coughed to amend: "I have not given you much reason to want to come, haven't I?"

He did not reply.

Yet she heard him, even so. They spent some long minutes in silence, and William half thought that she'd drifted back off to sleep again, before she roused herself.

“Do you regret me completely?” her words were nearly faint enough to escape his hearing, but she managed their speaking.

How could he answer that? He hated that he did not have a clear reply, even for himself. His feelings were so many and so varied so as to escape comprehension entirely, and all so entirely muted – as dim and grey as the stormy ether that yet bound them together.

. . . was he truly as tepid as she had once accused him of being?

It was that last thought that let him utter what a truth he could: “I regret not being enough for you.”

Caroline's throat worked, before she managed, "My regrets are the same."

In the end, what more could be said than that? There was just the flickering in the hearth and the steady cadence of the rain, until, she bid on a rasp, "Would you . . . would you read to me, perhaps?"

For the first, William felt his eyes burn as he looked to the bedside table for the book Emily had left behind. Perhaps somewhat ironically – or not, ultimately – it was Persuasion, by Jane Austen. (With that good Lady's name only at last becoming known upon the tragedy of her own premature death.)

He took in a breath for fortitude, and opened to the first page. He exhaled, and then began: "Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage . . ."

And so he read, long into the hours of the night, about a love that was lost and found again, and, all the while, he listened to his wife as she breathed.



.

.

His father died a mere fortnight after his wife's passing – an attack of the heart that was as unexpected as Caroline’s ending had sadly been anticipated.

As was its wont, death came in threes, and the scourge of consumption that swept through London with the turning of the weather took George’s life as well – which was, in its own way, a loss he more deeply mourned than that of his wife, and even his father. George was his little brother, after all, and he . . . he should not have . . .

. . . the world was suddenly so much smaller with him gone.

He was the Viscount Melbourne now, and thus elevated to the House of Lords; yet without wife or heir and an empty, empty home and a vastly diminished family, what was it all for?

. . . what was any of this even for?



.

.

He brooded most darkly upon his return to Ireland, and was in no way fit for company upon his arrival.

The hour was late, and he was glad that Susan was already abed, so as to put off greeting the girl until the morrow – upon which, he firmly expected to have control of himself once more.

Instead, he settled himself in his study with the intention of immersing himself in the accumulated paperwork on his desk until his eyes crossed and he'd finally be able to sleep. That intention, however, did not make it beyond pouring a rather generous serving of brandy – and then another – and dragging his chair over to sit and stare listlessly into the hearth-fire.

He was well into his third glass when he became aware of a whisper at the door.

"Is there enough to share?" he heard Lady Branden ask, not quite inviting herself in before making sure of her welcome.

He snorted for her words. "Indeed, I believe that you'd be doing me a favor," he admitted somewhat sardonically, holding up the decanter to demonstrate. "Please, join me."

Elizabeth came in and took the seat next to his, and he poured her a glass. She raised hers in wordless acknowledgement before drinking it back. He obliged her by pouring another. This one she sipped slowly, and they sat together in silence.

"If you'd like to talk," she offered at last, "I'm here to listen."

"That is very kind," he said somewhat woodenly in return. "But, you see, there's really nothing to say."

"Isn't there?" Elizabeth pressed him – though not unkindly. "Sometimes, William Lamb, I feel as if you could fill entire books with all the words you do not have to say."

"I had a wife," he shrugged, looking down into his glass, "then I lost her – and lost her long before her death, even. It's not so uncommon a story."

"Yet still a tragic one."

"Is it really, though?" he could not help but counter. "Sometimes that's what worries me most of all: how very little I have mourned. Is it that we had so little of a relationship left to grieve, or did I just mourn her slowly over the years? Or," he could hardly put the worst possible version of the truth into words, before he at last gave it a voice, "maybe it is that I am incapable of feeling - "

- perhaps, then, it wasn't entirely surprising when she leaned over, and refuted the unspoken with a kiss. Neither was it surprising when he returned that kiss – sliding his fingers back into her hair and deepening the contact with a sudden, almost desperate sense of urgency, one that she responded to, and answered in her own right.

For a moment, the world didn't seem so small and hopeless and bleak – and, in that moment, that was all that mattered.



.

.

What followed was, admittedly, an affair that was as violent in its passion as it was, ultimately, incautious in its discretion for being so.

Yet, for months, Elizabeth shone as the moon in his night, and he was as helpless to worship her as the tide. If anyone else glimpsed a shadow of that light, then he was lost enough not to think anything of it. That was, until . . .

A time came when he was obliged to let Mr. Cleary go as his secretary. The young man had showed up late to his duties too many times for forbearance – even for an employer who treated mornings laxly himself – and other times, came into work with the stale smell of ale on his breath. William gave what he'd thought was sound advice about the sensibility of drinking in moderation, paid him well in severance, and even offered to write him a favorable – if yet still honest – letter of character for any future employment he sought.

Mr. Cleary, however, saw naught of kindness in his charity, but rather, hypocrisy. Who was the likes of the Viscount Melbourne to judge any man, when he -

- when his own sins were so many, and worth quite a pretty penny to the likes of The Post? The Irish papers were all too happy to publish the letters that his erstwhile secretary had copied without his knowledge and then sold. With Byron now in exile from England, and Caroline dead, the press was all too happy to capitalize on his former connection to that salacious story of old with a sordid affair of his own. The letters, when combined with Cleary's supposed first-hand observations and conjectures relayed as facts . . .

. . . well, that was just the thing, wasn't it? There was enough truth, intermixed with the false, that made the resulting scandal unavoidable in its entirety.

And a scandal it truly was when Lord Branden – a previously indifferent husband to an unhappy wife, and an active clergyman, besides, who considered it his duty to set an example for his flock – refused to extend Elizabeth the continued protection of his name, and divorced her as an unfaithful woman. William too was brought up in court on charges of criminal conversation – which, rather than arguing when they were true, he instead paid both husband and judge for a verdict of not guilty.

He would have gladly paid Lord Branden even more, if it meant a home for Elizabeth to return to – yet she had as little desire to salvage their marriage as her husband, and, in the end, even confessed herself relieved for the official sundering of their long unsatisfying union.

That alone would have been indignity enough – bearable as the shame was for himself, even as he regretted it for Elizabeth's sake – but when the gutter snipes in the press thirsted for fresh blood, and dared to call into question his suitability as a guardian for Susan . . .

For a single moment, he was glad that his father was dead, so as to not have to suffer having a son accused of abusing orphans in his care in the lowest possible manner – even if just in the uncredible papers that no one took as fact, until those whispers were repeated enough for the public to forget where those whispers originally had their foundation.

For the first, William found it truly difficult to hold his head up high in public. It didn't matter that King George wrote, expressing his continued support of him as a minister to the Crown – William drafted a letter of resignation that he didn't even have to send when the Duke of Wellington was appointed prime minister with the change of the parliamentary season, and he lost his posting in Ireland anyway. He was to return to England, and could not say that he was entirely sad to leave Dublin behind.

He did offer to marry Elizabeth, once her divorce was finalized – to grant her the shield of his name and the promise of a home, if she wished to share one with him. For he did care for her, even if he did not quite . . .

Yet she only smiled sadly at him, and gently told him no.

“I do not find myself wishing again for the wedded state so soon – not even for you, who may tempt me more so than any other," she wryly confessed. "And yet, for the girls . . .”

For, even if they wed, they would not be able to keep Susan – merely the rumors alone, implying any sort of impropriety with her guardian, would damage any hope she had of securing a respectable match for herself, which was imperative now, with her nearly of an age to come out in society. Elizabeth would give him up – could give him up – but keep Susan close, and continue to look after her in as much love as she did her own daughter.

They’d be happy in Switzerland – where Elizabeth ultimately intended to go and settle with her mother's family, and he’d continue to pay to ensure their every comfort for as long as they had need of him – but he could no longer be a part of their happiness.

He bid them goodbye at the side of their ship, and then returned to his own empty dwelling and the cold consolation of what little he could yet hope to salvage from his political career.



.

.

For the next two years, he continued to serve as a member of the Opposition against Wellington's ministry, and, slowly, he built up his reputation as a moderate voice of reason once more. The previous scandal of his role in the Branden divorce was somehow not enough to keep him from the appointment of Home Secretary in the very first entirely Whig government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Lord Grey.

From there, he (somewhat surreally) inherited the premiership from Earl Grey when the elder statesman retired due to his own declining health – but only because (his critics scorned and even he believed himself more often than not) there was no one better to be had.

William IV, who had since succeeded his late brother as king, did not like him, but he needed him – if only to hold the kingdom steady for his niece, who was now the great hope of England’s future.

He never considered marrying again (could not consider marrying again), and instead enjoyed (didn't he?) a long line of fleeting paramours that were only ever indulgences instead of any more dangerously lasting connections – all until his reputation for doing so cost a good, innocent woman everything when her husband attempted to blackmail him and then publicly took him to court when William laughed him out of his office. Caroline Norton was one of his greatest regrets in a long line of such regrets, and, following that scandal, he kept particular company only with those women he knew he could absolutely trust – the likes of the now Princess Lieven and Countess Stanhope and Lady Eden. It was . . . it was safer that way, and with their companionship, he was content. (Wasn't he?)

A barely tolerable king; a prime minister of questionable reputation; and a mere girl who would yet rule over them all – those were strange days for Great Britain as they held their breath on the cusp of something more.

Far from his native land, Lord Byron met his own premature end, finally fighting for a cause that he truly believed in, and, releasing the last of his bitterness and hate, William drank to his memory. He hoped that – wherever he now was – the man’s troubled spirit had at last found some peace . . .

. . . just as he wished the same for his wife.

(And yet hoped, someday, to find for himself.)



.

.

King William was determined to live long enough to pass the crown to his niece, unencumbered by her would-be regents – and so, he did.

Mere days after her eighteenth birthday, Alexandrina Victoria ascended to the throne, and William made his way to pledge fealty to his new sovereign with admittedly mixed emotions – hesitation and apprehension being chief amongst them.

As such, he extracted himself from Sir John's clear ploys to secure him as an ally from the moment he dismounted from his horse (he knew a snake in the grass when he saw one) and waited to be admitted to Her Majesty's presence. From behind the closed doors, he could hear one voice – older and heavily accented – speak, and recognized that Baroness Lehzen was counseling her former charge most stridently.

“I feel that I must stay with you, for your own protection. Your prime minister," he could almost see the woman's face crinkle in sour distaste, "is a man of . . . well, he is known to be a most disreputable man.”

“Would anyone have dared suggest that my uncle not meet with his prime minister alone?" came another voice – clear and commanding and pleasantly timbred – to insist. "I do not require a chaperone with him, nor shall I with any of my ministers."

"But, Drina – Your Majesty, as a matter of honor -"

" - that will be all, Lehzen; thank you," was the most pointed reply. "You may show Lord Melbourne in on your way out."

A part of him wanted to tell the baroness that any doe-eyed maiden was quite safe from him, let alone a cosseted child-queen who may have found more freedom being raised in a nunnery than she had in Kensington. Indeed, his service to Crown and country was all that he yet held sacred – the Constitution was the one constant love of his life, and he would serve Her Majesty thus, with all due devotion in proper reverence.

. . . yet he rather suspected that the baroness wouldn't at all find that vow reassuring, no matter his intentions.

Instead, he bore the slight against his character in silence, much as he ever did – merely favoring the baroness with a pleasantly knowing smile as she exited the room and crossly gave him permission to enter – and then forgot about her words entirely as he bent the knee before his queen for the first. Kneeling in a gesture as old as the bond between sovereign and subject itself, he reached out to kiss the back of her hand . . .

. . . and looked up into a pair of the bluest eyes he’d ever seen.

Spoiler: End Notes

A Note on Byron and Caroline: The ball scene was one that unfortunately happened in history; I could not - and would not - make something like that up. Technically, Byron predeceased Caroline in RL, but again: timeline, what timeline? The poem that Byron recited really was one of his latter works, but it wasn't published until after his death. The haunted by a skeleton line was lifted right from a letter from Byron to Lady Melbourne. Byron publicly decried Caroline as an obsessed stalker to anyone and everyone who would listen, but then continued to write her letters for a five-year period, including when she went to Ireland in an attempt to start over, in her own way. Again, my arm-chair analysis is that he loved the idea of Caroline, and couldn't resist engaging with her on an artistic level, but then found much wanting in the real woman herself. I actually tried reading Glenarvon out of curiosity, in an attempt to get inside Caroline's head, but most of the novel was indecipherable. Even so, there were some real flashes of beauty in her prose, and I can only imagine what she would have been capable of in a less tormented state of mind.

A Note on Melbourne and Lady Branden (and Susan): Their affair did seem to stem innocently enough, from falling into a "family" together when they technically weren't. Melbourne and Elizabeth's letters to and from England, just after Caroline's death, were filled with shared grief, as Elizabeth was just as distressed to lose a friend as Melbourne regretted the state his marriage had ended in. One thing led to another, and their friendship sparked into an affair that was rather intense by the standards of the day. (Their letters contained references to a few non-TOS-friendly inclinations, to say the least - but that is something we won't get into in this collection, for obvious reasons.) Their affair was then made public knowledge through the words of a former, disgruntled secretary, who published their letters and then sold his own version of their story.

That did result in Melbourne having to give Susan up when his suitability as her guardian was called into question, and Elizabeth took both Susan and her own daughter to Switzerland – where Susan eventually married a Swiss banker and settled quite happily into a family of her own. Her name was even included in the name of the bank her husband eventually opened, and she was listed in the charter as a co-founder. I don't know if that was merely a mark of honor, as a tribute to the role her fortune played in starting the bank, or a testament to her having some hand in the business side of things – as the Lambs had seen quite thoroughly to her education. Melbourne gave Susan a dowry to marry on in the place of her biological father, and she named her son William after him. From there, they kept in contact through letters until Melbourne's death. Much the same, Melbourne paid Elizabeth a yearly allowance to live on, and they remained regular pen-pals and friends for the rest of their lives. (History is wild, again - I couldn't make any of this up.)

A Note on Melbourne and Caroline Norton: Oh boy, but this was a mess too. We're going to get into this more, further on in this collection, but to make a long story short: Caroline Norton was in an emotionally/physically abusive relationship with a man who was commonly known to be a cruel husband - as domestic violence was legal at the time, so long as it didn't endanger the life of a wife. It seems that she came to Melbourne, a mutual acquaintance, for legal advice (at the time, a woman could not divorce her husband, and Mr. Norton had taken her children from her and hid them in Scotland as a punitive tactic) that actually turned into conversations of how to turn the laws of the time to be more fair to women.

(Side note: or so it can be assumed. Years later, one of the first laws passed in the UK to give divorced women rights over their children was co-authored by Caroline Norton - though of course not officially so. Due to his past connection to her, Melbourne publicly spoke against the law - so as to avoid negatively impacting its passing, it can be argued. He didn't even show up to vote, which you can also argue as proof of him being an utter tool in history, which is certainly probable (I feel the need to state, again, that I like Goodwin's Melbourne much better than RL!Melbourne, which is why this collection is fan fiction ), or this could have been in an effort to keep his scandal from aversely affecting a good bill.)

At the time, they, perhaps unwisely, built up a friendship that could have been perceived as something more. Mr. Norton tried to blackmail Melbourne into paying for his silence on the matter of their "affair", which Melbourne refused to do, and then took him to court for adultery. Melbourne was found not guilty, but Caroline was put aside by her husband and lost all access to her children.

Now, was there something more going on between them? It's very possible. But Melbourne publicly protested Caroline's innocence - in a way he hadn't done with Elizabeth - and, on one hand, I like to think that he had to have known just how much Caroline stood to lose, and wouldn't have let things go too far just for that reason alone. On the other hand, people - and hearts - are stupid and don't always listen to reason. Caroline was miserable and lonely, just as Melbourne was, and she fit the usual criteria of being a smart, sharply opinionated, politically savvy woman that Melbourne seemed to be drawn to. Maybe they were actually guilty. Either way, the optics looked bad, and that alone was enough to ruin Caroline in the end. Melbourne tried to resign as prime minister over the matter, but King William refused to hear anything of it, and even the Duke of Wellington encouraged him to stay in power. (More unequal consequences for men and women, I know.)

This would have been about a year before Victoria ascended to the throne. Which brings us to . . .

~ MJ

 

Oh this entry was lovely, too.

 

Oh your entrails are lovely, too...

 

Thank you!

The human mind and body is amazing, isn't it?

They were so terribly matched but mismatched, weren't they?

Sometimes that's all you can do, isn't it?

Thank you so much, as ever, for your wonderful feedback!

Success!

Thank you for reading, my friend, as always!



Alrighty, then! I will have more up in a jiffy.


~ MJ

 

Author's Notes: For this next entry, we are going to take a break from Olympic prompts to write an Angstober story or two - the first of which will be a look at Victoria's backstory, much the same as I did for Melbourne. This will be told in three parts, and I will do my best to keep these entries well below the 10k mark, I promise.

The Angstober prompt I chose is No. 27: “Home is the first grave." (Bandaged Wound | Outnumbered | “I don’t care.”)

Enjoy!

​

---

“The First Grave”
(Angstober Prompt No. 27)​

V.I.

There was one story that her mother delighted to tell, more so than any other: how, at eight months pregnant, she'd endured a journey of nearly five-hundred miles from her home in Leiningen to ensure that the future Queen of England was born on British soil.

The crossing from France, it would seem, had been most torturous from the beginning, and was made all the more so by the advent of a spring gale. Her father – Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent – had worried for the foul turn in the weather, fearing for the dangers of an early labor when his wife could not keep her stomach for the tossing of the ship on the frenzied waters of the Channel.

Yet her mother would always say – exasperated and proud – that her baby seemingly danced in her womb, thrilling to commune with the violence of the storm. Her daughter knew, the Duchess of Kent ever swore, the exact moment they crossed into English waters.

By the time they arrived in Dover, the skies had cleared, and her curious subjects gathered on the quays and lined the streets in droves to greet their future queen.



.

.

Her half-brother Carl, Prince of Leiningen, rather said that England was cloudy and grey upon their arrival – it was always cloudy and grey in England – and the streets stank of fish and rot and mildew. The people, his memory differed in several key points from his mother’s, only looked up for their queen-to-be when her passing caravan of gilded carriages splashed up the muck of gutter-water on the roadway.

Captain Richardson, who’d commanded the royal yacht for their crossing, said that the princess had a bit of a tempest in her, even before she drew her first breath – which was only right for the woman who would someday symbolize their island kingdom’s dominance over the oceans.

Her Uncle King, newly crowned as George IV, had merely grumbled to mutter that there was nothing special about yet another fat Hanoverian prince with a German bride equally swollen with child – and, for the most part, his subjects quite agreed.



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.

Years later, when eight months pregnant with her own first child – uncomfortable and ungainly and cross with all the world – Victoria would merely look at her mother and drolly ask why she’d waited so long to travel to England in the first place.



.

.

Her princely father hadn't lived long enough for her to form any conscious memory of him – though she sometimes liked to think that she recalled an impression of big hands, holding her tight, and the even larger sound of his laughter. Sometimes she could remember the scent of snow on the sea, as if through the haze of a dream, in the Christmas holiday to Devonshire that had been her father’s last.

Edward had been entirely smitten by his daughter, her mother assured, and quite confident – even though she was only fifth in line to the throne at the time – that she would be England’s next queen.

(Throughout her life, Victoria remained determined to make the man she’d never known proud – and she clung to that desire, even as he stepped in to assume her true father’s place in his stead.)

Perhaps somewhat inauspiciously, her first fully formed memory was of the time – she couldn’t have be more than three years old – she was introduced to the Archbishop of York, and the Most Reverend Primate lowered himself to kneel on the ground alongside her. Kindly, he'd bid an introduction to her porcelain dolls. She'd stared up at the man, bedecked in his holy finery, and then, rather than acceding to his request, reached up to pluck his cap from his head – thus disturbing the wig beneath – to the horror of nearly every soul gathered in the room. Completely unconcerned by her mother’s mortified rebuke, she’d placed the mitre on her own head – quite thinking it a crown – and then returned to playing with her dolls as if nothing was amiss.



.

.

Baroness Lehzen had scolded her as a most wicked child, and was always careful to keep her young charge at arm’s length from future visiting dignitaries, lest she give into the temptation of her worst impulses again.

(Victoria never did manage to learn the art of self-denial, after all – nor did she ever see much of any need to.)

Yet, if only to herself, her governess thought the princess spirited and independent, which would someday be necessary virtues for a queen regnant. Sir John Conroy too saw spirit and independence, but better called the girl spoiled.

Edward Venables-Vernon – the archbishop himself – took no offense for her actions, and even reminded her of the incident years later, once she was queen. His Grace was absolutely delighted that she too recalled their shared memory, even if she did have the wherewithal to flush and apologize for her actions as a woman grown.

Lord Melbourne, on that same occasion, rather enjoyed the way his queen blushed for the tale’s telling, and then privately remarked to Her Majesty that, even if unbeknownst to her at the time, that event may have been somewhat portentous of her future irreverence to ecclesiastical authority.

(For years even further to come, that portent would continue to prove itself most accurate.)



.

.

Yet, in whole, her childhood memories were quite defined by The Kensington System – as the rules governing her existence were named most officially by Sir John, an Irish knight who’d previously been her father’s equerry and was now comptroller of her mother's household. (Somehow, the man ever confused his duties of custodian and advisor with that of a true guardian – a legal role that her father had most shrewdly denied Sir John before his death.) An orderly list, detailing the particulars of the System, was posted on the walls of her nursery and schoolroom, and she had them inculcated into her every waking moment until the words seemingly rattled in her skull and she wanted to scream for the sound of them.

The System, in short, included the following:

1. Her Highness is never, under any circumstances, to be alone.

This was paramount, for her mother was convinced that there were assassins lurking behind every corner – and her suspicions, whether or not they were ever correct, were fueled by Sir John until they became more paranoia than maternal concern.

2. Her Highness is never permitted to receive a guest without at least two witnesses present.

One such witness was to be either her mother or Sir John – preferably both, or, at the very least, Sir John himself.

3. Her Highness is only to associate with approved companions.

Such approved companions were limited to her half-sister, Feodora, for the few blessed years that she too lived at Kensington – and Sir John’s youngest daughter Victorie, who was a honey-venomed little girl who hid fangs behind a smile like her father. Any and all of her numerous royal cousins were most certainly not approved companions, and in a family that numbered in the dozens, she most often found herself alone, tended by an ever present assortment of silent adult sentinels as she played.

4. Her Highness is only to be educated on a list of approved materials.

She was taught scripture and language and art and music and dancing – but mathematics and science were both limited subjects as being wholly unnecessary for the female mind. History, too, was learned only so that she could understand her place in it – when those stories of old weren’t providing moral lessons for a properly modest and devout Christian woman, of course. She was given sparce instruction on the Constitution she would someday swear herself to serve and the laws she would be anointed to uphold. Her mind could not be too burdened by the impending weight of her crown, Sir John reasoned and her mother quite agreed – after all, she would have advisors, and then her kingly husband, looking out for her best interests, who would assume all meaningful matters of state on her behalf.

5. Her Highness is to dine only on acceptable foods.

This was to guard against the Hanoverian penchant for roundness, which Sir John thought she displayed an inclination towards – his words, comparing her to the rather portly Duke of Gloucester and asking her if she truly wanted a second slice of cake on her twelfth birthday, lingered with her for decades to come. Her mother saw nothing untoward in those fears, and agreed that her health was of the utmost importance. She thus broke her fast on milk and bread, and supped on an approved list of meat and vegetables, with sugary treats only being allowed in careful moderation when they were hosting Acceptable Company.

6. Her Highness is never to sleep alone.

Her mother wished to keep her close, following her father’s death, and perhaps quite understandably housed her baby in her own rooms. From the beginning, the duchess kept no wet nurse, and made use of the nursery and its staff only when she had need of them during the day. As she grew into a child, her mother was determined to be her last line of defense against any would-be assassins; and then, as a teenager, it was simply a matter of propriety. Victoria was thus, the duchess could swear with all confidence, a maiden in every sense of the word – a pious virgin queen to succeed a line of debauched kings, and a pure wife to be given to the husband that had already been chosen for her. An attendant was appointed to stay with her until her mother retired on evenings when the duchess entertained – or was entertained by, if the rumors could be believed – and Victoria slept on a cot at the foot of her mother’s bed until the day she was made queen.

7. Her Highness is only to partake in appropriate exercise.

She was never to run, it went without saying; swimming was too dangerous, for its inherent risk of drowning, as was sailing. She could not skate on the frozen pond, even when her half-siblings did, nor could she join Feodora when she took up an interest in archery. She was permitted to ride on horseback – for a queen would have to be seen before her people as such – and that became her favorite pastime of all. Even when she would dare to nudge her pony into a canter – and was immediately commanded back to a trot – those brief, stolen moments of movement and choice were everything to her, and she craved them more so than any other.

8. Her Highness is not to leave Kensington except on approved outings.

Visits to her Uncle Leopold’s estate in Surrey, and official summons to attend her Uncle King being amongst them – though the latter, her mother did her utmost to avoid, and begged off attending more often than not.

9. Her Highness is not to risk her person, even by the smallest degrees.

This included never walking down the stairs without holding the hand of an attendant, for fear of a fall. Not even a drop of rain could touch her, and the smallest cough or sniffle was treated with poking, prodding physicians and cautionary bedrest. Cutting her own food with a knife was out of the question, and her meals were rigorously tasted for poison before ever touching her plate. She was not allowed to enter a room that had not been swept for potential dangers, and again, never, ever alone.

10. Her Highness shall abide by the wisdom of her elders in all things.

Her elders, of course, being Sir John Conroy, first and foremost, and her mother the duchess.

Needless to say, Victoria was hardly a good little girl when it came to abiding by the System.

. . . not in the slightest.



.

.

Victoria was eight years old, the most memorable time she’d escaped from Lehzen – determined as she’d been to walk down the stairs alone, without anyone to hold her hand. She remembered the exhilaration she'd felt for that stolen moment of freedom; the novelty had been thrilling – so thrilling that she further ignored the System to quicken her pace into a run. She ran down the hall, and felt as if she flew down the staircase. She did not even hold onto the banister for support, instead keeping to the center of the scarlet carpet runner until -

- she tripped on one of the ribbons trailing from the doll in her hand, and then she was truly flying, and -

- her pride was bruised, even more so than her ankle – which she had, admittedly, landed on at a most awkward angle. Victoria hardly noticed the pain, furious as she instead was for the fall, and utterly incensed that he had been there to witness the full extent of her disgrace.

Ignoring the throbbing in her ankle, she’d scrambled to her feet – hissing to put weight on her injury, but quite determined to stand tall before this man, even so.

“Your Highness!” Sir John said sharply – exhaling the honorific of her title so as to make it sound like a rebuke instead. “Whatever do you think you are doing? You know that you must not - ”

- Victoria recoiled when he reached for her, fearing that he would carry her himself if he felt that she could not walk, and unwittingly put weight on her ankle again.

Pain was as good an impetus as pride when she interrupted him to exclaim: “Must, must, must – oh, how I am tired of that dreadful word! I wish to never hear it again!”

“Don’t be unreasonable, child.” As if he had not heard her – he liked to ignore her completely whenever she showed signs of hysteria – Sir John spoke over her to say, “You have clearly injured yourself, and must sit still while we send for the physician.”

But she had no mind for the supposed good sense of such counsel in that moment.

“I must do no such thing!” Victoria squared her shoulders and declared with every ounce of command that she could muster: “You are not my father, and may not tell me what to do!”

Sir John was little impressed. “No,” he agreed in that way which made her feel something even less than small, before she determinedly stuck up her chin, “but your father entrusted you to me, did he not?”

“He would not have,” her voice pitched nearly to a shriek – loud enough for the entire household to hear, if not all the way to the court of St. James' itself, “if he knew how very, very wicked you are!”

It perhaps went without saying that Victoria spent the next day of her recovery – for she had indeed turned her ankle, and was thus confined to bed until permitted otherwise – forced to write in her much abhorred Books of Conduct in punishment for her most ungrateful and uncourteous behavior.

I was very, VERY rude and very, very, VERY naughty to those who only have my BEST interests at heart.

She filled out a hundred pages with that single sentence, over and over again, her pen digging into the paper as if hoping it would tear.



.

.

Years later, her daughter (and foremost biographer of the time) would cross-reference that date with her diaries when preparing to share her story with the world. Victoria said only this of the day’s events:

It was intolerably hot today. The weather cannot break soon enough.



.

.

Her Uncle King eventually delivered such a strongly worded letter to the Duchess of Kent (Victoria would later discover that he threatened to evict her from Kensington, which he provided to his brother’s widow and orphan only in the name of Christian charity) that precipitated the need for them to attend George IV’s summer court at Windsor Castle.

The journey was a great adventure for Victoria, who looked out the carriage windows at the rolling hills of the countryside with wide, awestruck eyes. Every turn in the road was to be gaped at and remarked over – even if her mother closed the curtains at the posting station, and Victoria was not allowed out to stretch her legs until the soldiers cleared the yard of anything truly interesting – and by the time the great medieval structure of the castle came into view (even if Sir John muttered that her uncle's renovations vandalized the original design and threatened to bankrupt the royal purse when the likes of Kensington yet remained in such a state of disrepair), she was quite certain that she could spend her entire life in a carriage, travelling from one place to another, and be quite happy indeed.

That day, the king was holding a drawing room in a blue walled audience chamber laden with tapestries and paintings. The air was stuffy and warm, and bright summer sunlight glittered on the gilt candelabras and crystal chandeliers that dominated the space.

Victoria, before that moment, was not quite sure what a king should look like – in paintings, kings were always quite formidable and grand – but her Uncle George, contrary to her vague expectations, just seemed . . . old.

She felt rather wicked for the thought, but his face was a worrying shade of red beneath the white greasepaint caked on his skin, and fraught with perspiration. He looked as if he had been rather stuffed into his clothes – no matter how fine the brocade and encrusted with jewels – and he was indeed most . . . Hanoverian in shape. (Though she hated to think Sir John correct in that regard.) He did not smile, and instead looked to be in pain; he slouched in his massive, throne-like chair, and seemed to grumble rather than speak. He drank from a goblet of wine that was refilled most often – even when Victoria sat upon his knee and asked most seriously what it was he did as king every day.

Her words were not intended to be in any way uncourteous – she truly wished to know, as she only had the vaguest idea for herself. She knew that it was important, to be a king – to be a queen – but she didn't yet know exactly why.

Her uncle, however, glared at her mother – as if blaming the duchess for her question – and replied: “Every day I rule, as king.” He continued, quite clearly, to speak directly to her mother: “I rule over this entire bloody nation, and every damn subject within.”

“Oh,” Victoria frowned to acknowledge his words. That was not much of a helpful reply, nor very polite. She considered how best to rephrase her question, and finally settled to ask: “Are you allowed to go down the stairs by yourself?”

That, somehow, was not at all the right thing to say. (She would learn, years later, that due to his gout and weight, her uncle had to be carried on a litter up and down the stairs.) The king's already red face seemingly purpled, and he fixed inexplicably livid eyes on her mother. “What nonsense have you been filling this girl’s head with, Louise?” he informally used her Christian name, though not at all in a familial way.

Yet the duchess – who, for once, Victoria thought, was pale and quiet herself – could not make reply before the very young and very pretty woman, who'd until then sat by the king’s side in silence, spoke. She was dressed in one of the most beautiful gowns Victoria had ever seen, and diamonds glittered at her throat, even if she wore no crown.

“Your Royal Highness,” she invited with a smile, “would you like to accompany me to the gardens? Your cousins are playing there, and they would enjoy making your acquaintance, I am sure.”

This, Victoria thought, made her mother most angry – even Sir John looked as if he would speak in protest before the king himself said: “Surely there can be no objections,” in a voice that, indeed, allowed none. “You have our permission to withdraw.”

The woman stood, and dipped into a very low curtsy, before leading Victoria from the drawing room.

Victoria almost immediately preferred the fresh air outside the castle to the cloying scent of perfume within. She liked even better, the group of children who played a game of chase around the bubbling fountain in the center of the privy gardens. They were, the lady informed her, the king’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and they were attended by three adults besides those clad in vivid red livery – her cousins all, it would seem.

In short order, she was introduced to Georgette Seymour and Georgiana Brown and Charlotte Churchill and Charlotte St. Aberdeen. There were three Georges present – George F. and George W. and George St. George, respectively.

One of the adults – who had the king’s surplus of height and broad shoulders, if not so much his girth – noticed her perplexed expression for the assortment of Georges, and introduced himself with a flourishing bow. “You may call me George as well, Your Highness.”

(The none of them, Victoria would reflect only later, introduced themselves with titles – even though they were more closely related to the king than she was.)

“I have many Cousin Georges,” she pointed out, returning his bow with a careful curtsy of her own. (Lehzen, she thought, would have been very pleased.) “How may I differentiate you from the rest?”

“George Lamb, at Your Highness’ command.” His mouth stretched into a grin, and his green eyes – which she thought were most striking – glittered in a way that made her want to smile back. She liked this Cousin George very much indeed.

Yet she could not acquaint herself further with him, nor with any of her cousins, when Sir John came stalking through the neatly tended flower beds, a cloud seemingly following behind him as he walked. Instinctively, she drew in a breath.

“Sir John,” George Lamb treated the knight to a bow in greeting, which was answered by a mere nod in return, “have you come to collect Cousin Drina so soon?”

Sir John, she saw, blew out a breath from his nostrils in that way he did when he was most particularly cross – that dangerous sort of angry that even Victoria knew better than to provoke any further – but wished not to show it.

"Who are you, to so informally address the princess?" Sir John's voice was icy enough to cut. “I would kindly counsel His Lordship to remember that he is a viscount’s son, and has no right to claim any such connection.”

“Indeed, I am a viscount’s son,” George Lamb admitted easily – even cheerfully – which Victoria did not at all understand. “And you are the son of a most honorable barrister, I believe? Now that we have that little bit of minutiae settled, would you care to join us for some refreshment? We were just having lemonade served for the children.”

Victoria looked hopefully at Sir John, even as she quite anticipated his answer.

Sure enough: “Do you think that is at all appropriate for the princess?” Sir John challenged.

“You should tell me,” George Lamb only shrugged to answer with a question of his own. “Can you both base your claims for such . . . familiarity on the same grounds that you would then exclude from others?”

There were, Victoria thought, entire pages being spoken that she could not even begin to read for herself. Sir John’s expression was as steel, while George Lamb’s remained pleasantly cordial.

“We’re done here,” Sir John finally hissed. “Come, Alexandrina.” He snapped his fingers the same as he would when demanding the obedience of one of his hounds. “Now.”

“Shouldn't that be for the princess to decide?” Her cousin took a step closer to her, putting himself between her and Sir John. "Your Royal Highness," George Lamb’s voice assumed an edge for the first, but he addressed her most directly, looking her in the eye as if she was a woman fully grown. “Do you wish to go with this man, or do you wish to stay here with us?”

Victoria hesitated – glancing to where lemonade and iced biscuits were indeed being served. George St. George called her name, and Georgette patted the seat she'd saved next to her. Oh, she felt her heart twist in longing, how dearly she wanted to stay! Her feet all but itched to turn her back on Sir John and run over to join them.

. . . but she thought, too, of the System and how she knew that she should answer . . .

“Forgive my insistence,” Sir John took advantage of her hesitation in a way that did not sound very sorry at all, “but Her Grace has asked me to return her daughter inside. The sun is much too bright, and she is without a parasol.”

Victoria wanted nothing more than to make her own insistence, and yet . . .

“If my mother calls,” she dutifully agreed, the words hollow, “then I must obey.”

For a long moment, there was only silence. She looked back and forth between the two men, feeling most uncomfortable in the tension that yet refused to break, before George Lamb grudgingly conceded the field.

“Indeed,” he gave somewhat ruefully, “mothers are not to be gainsaid, I quite understand.” His eyes were soft on her, before sliding back to Sir John. “In the future, I look forward to your ability to come and go from Windsor as you please.”

She very much looked forward to that day as well.

Yet, for the time being, she dipped into another curtsy. “Until then, Cousin George.”

He bowed as low to her as if she was the queen herself. “Until then, Your Highness.”



.

.

George Lamb, when writing to his brother of the princess' aborted visit to Windsor, concluded that he did not believe the rumors that said that John Conroy was the girl's true father – even if the late Lady Conroy may have been Victoria’s half-sister through her father the duke, as had long been assumed at court. What he did believe was that Sir John was a most ambitious man . . . and the widowed duchess a much enamored woman.

Princess Lieven, who'd attended George IV’s rare public drawing room that day, later said to Czar Alexander that His Majesty rightly fawned over his unknowing heir, but could not hide his grimace to balance that tiny slip of the future on his aging knees. More privately, she cautioned that if the elder Hanoverian kings could not serve their country by living long enough for the girl to rule alone, then it was not the Duchess of Kent who would preside over the throne as regent, but rather the Mephisto who spoke with a forked tongue behind her.

Prince Carl, who returned to England at the request of Princess Feodora – fearing for the future of their half-sister once she too returned to Germany to marry, thus depriving her of one more champion in a house increasingly devoid of such – appraised the situation, and ultimately approved of Sir John’s efforts to remove Victoria from the gross immorality of the royal family. He dismissed Feodora's concerns as unfounded, and instead praised the man for his service to his mother and sister – both of whom required a strong hand to guide them, and would all the more so with every day they came closer to the crown.



.

.

Victoria was ten years old when she first understood that she was more likely to become queen than not.

The idea, before, had been hazy and undefined. She understood that her Uncle George was dying, and that he had no children of his own to take his crown. (Though he had many children otherwise – children born in wickedness, her mother had since explained, who did not belong to his wife, though Victoria was still unsure how that happened, if a baby was given to a wife by her husband.) From there, her Uncle William would next be king, but – she’d overheard Sir John whisper to her mother: the sooner he drinks himself to death the better, that way she, Victoria, could come into the throne while she still had the proper guardians to protect her interests and shape her rule for the best . . .

Victoria squirmed in her seat, as much for the sprig of holly pinned to the back of her gown, keeping her posture straight, as she did for the fine spring day outside. The snow had melted and the ground was finally thawing; she was all but itching to go out on her pony again. She had the most unformed need for movement, and she very much wanted to run. Yet first were lessons, and, as such, she dutifully recited the line of the Kings and Queens of England. She was proud of her ability to navigate where the House of Tudor gave way to the Stuarts following Queen Elizabeth's reign, and then the House of Hanover through Princess Sophia, daughter of the Winter Queen. She made it all the way to her grandfather without faltering even once . . .

“King George III and his wife Queen Charlotte,” she closed her eyes to better aid her memory, “had issue through the Princes George, Frederick, William, Edward, Ernest, Augustus, and Adolphus.”

The holly scratched at her neck as she made sure to put Augustus and Adolphus in the right order when they were instead Uncle Sussex and Uncle Cambridge to her. The fresh air beyond the palace walls seemed to beckon, whispering just out of reach.

“King George IV and his wife Princess Caroline,” she swallowed the urge she had to say Queen Caroline, corrected as she’d been on that mark before, “had legitimate issue through Princess Charlotte,” her Uncle Leopold’s wife, she felt sad to know that her admittedly favorite uncle was now quite alone in the world, “who died in childbirth with her son.”

As ever, even the idea of such a fate in her own child’s mind turned the comfortably cool air in her schoolroom to a chill.

“George IV shall thus be succeeded by Prince William, with Princess Adelaide as his queen.” Victoria liked her Aunt Adelaide very much – she gave very warm hugs, and always had a kind word to say. Her Uncle William was often inclined to temper, but Aunt Adelaide could even make him smile too, so wonderful were her own smiles.

Yet, even though Aunt Adelaide was always surrounded by children, none of them were her children, Victoria knew. Instead . . .

“King William IV and Queen Adelaide will then be succeeded by . . . ”

But there she paused, going through the list in her head twice and thrice and then yet a fourth time again, just to be certain.

Her father should have been next . . . but he was gone; and, after him . . .

. . . oh, but that could not be.

Could it?

“Lehzen?” her voice trembled to ask. “Does that mean . . . does this mean that I am to be queen?”

Lehzen, she thought, seemed to startle for her words – as if she only realized then that she did not understand what everyone else had assumed about her fate for so very long – and watched her most carefully.

Yet she did not have to confirm what Victoria suddenly knew.

“I am closer than I thought,” was all that she said aloud, and allowed herself to think no more on the matter – not then; not yet.

Instead, she picked up the next book waiting her, listing the kings and lords of Ireland, and dutifully set herself to her studies.



.

.

Decades later, her governess would tell the story of how she dropped to her knees and prayed to God once she understood that she would someday be queen, begging him for wisdom and grace. She then held up a single finger and declared, "I will be a good queen." And so, Lehzen always insisted with pride, she quite was.

Her cousin, Prince Albert, was informed by their Uncle Leopold that she fell into tears and wept most bitterly to learn of her fate. It would someday be – Albert had been told since before he wholly understood what such words even meant – his duty to rescue her from the burden of her throne as knight and king and husband, all.

Lord Melbourne only ever purported that Her Majesty once told him that she'd briefly wondered how her uncle’s crown would ever fit her, with his head so large and hers yet so small, and then returned to her studies.



.

.

Victoria, for her part, stopped playing with baby dolls from that day forth. Instead, she dressed little wooden figures as her favorite characters from history and legend. She called these women by great names – Elizabeth and Esther and Cleopatra and Frigga and Nike and Joan and Boadicea – and then, eventually, by numbers. They were no longer imaginary children for her to nurture, but rather, subjects to her future crown.

She was to be queen to a nation, after all, even more so than a mother. She would start by presiding over this court of her own making.

Spoiler: End Notes

I should start these notes by saying that most of the quotes and anecdotes that I included were pulled from various biographies (especially Victoria by Julia Baird) and documentaries (like A.N. Wilson's documentary concerning her numerous diaries and journals, which you can watch in full on YouTube), and I'll be here forever if I list them all. So if there's one that interests you, I can dig up my reference. (Except for George Lamb's remarks - his inclusion was entirely made up, because this dufus has quite endeared himself to me. )

A Note on the Crossing to England: Victoria's parents were married in England, but then chose to live in her mother's native Germany. This was because her father was deeply in debt (how one over-spent the combined income of a prince and a duke is amazing in its own right), and, in Leiningen, the cost of living was much cheaper. They lived on her mother's jointure from her first husband - and it was important for the duchess' son Carl, from her first marriage, to live in the duchy where he still had power as prince. They waited so long to travel to England because of George IV - who was Prince Regent at the time. None of the Hanoverian brothers liked each other very much, but these two absolutely detested each other. George dragged his feet to give his bankrupt brother use of a royal yacht and a royal residence in England - Kensington, needless to say, was not Prince Edward's first choice. Kensington may have been a palace, but it was in gross disrepair at the time - mushrooms grew on the ceilings, and when the sewers flooded the lower levels, everything from teeth and corks and dead animals and once a human corpse were found there. The Duke of Sussex and his family, and Princess Sophia had the honor of living on the upper levels of the palace, which were in somewhat better condition. Their bickering continued for months, and pushed their date of travel further and further until they could wait no more. It did storm on their crossing to England, too - which could not have been fun for the duchess, who'd just endured nearly two weeks of travel in a carriage.

A Note On Victoria's Books of Conduct vs. Diary Entries: This was 100% taken from real life, even if I paraphrased the quotes from the Book of Conduct and her journal. Victoria wrote lines as punishment, and was an amazingly prolific diarist. (She left behind a modest estimation of six million pages.) Also, in RL, Victoria's daughter Beatrice was famous as one of her first biographers - but also infamous for extensively editing her journals and letters. Her "sanitized" journals were often a mere third in length of the originals. George V, Victoria's grandson, however, was distressed by his aunt's alteration of history, and managed to save what copies of the originals that he could from destruction - for about 111 of the books. In this AU? Let's just say that I have a different biographer in mind altogether . . .

A Note on the Kensington System: These rules are not at all exaggerated in any way. Sir John was just as much of a power-hungry piece of work in RL as I wrote him to be here. In the end, under-educating Victoria and keeping her almost cripplingly dependent on others was all in an effort to make sure that Victoria, as queen, would rely on him as her foremost advisor - if not outright "regent" as the controlling force behind her mother, if she came to the throne before reaching her majority. Towards that end, he was verbally abusive in a concentrated effort to make Victoria doubt herself. He regularly called her stupid and ungrateful, amongst other names, and he criticized her height and weight. (The Duke of Gloucester line was one that Victoria still remembered when she herself was a grandmother.) Her mother - who was at least in love with Sir John, even if they were not lovers outright - allowed this abuse for sake of that love, trusting that this was ultimately best for her daughter. (This damaged Victoria's relationship with her mother for years, needless to say.) But the System had unforeseen consequences: Victoria, instead of submitting, became fiercely independent and all the more determined to stand her ground. Sir John sought to mold a puppet, but ended up being Victoria's first crucible as an immovably sovereign queen.

A Further Note on Sir John: Even modern historians like to wonder if Sir John was actually Victoria's father or not. I very much doubt that - but Sir John did believe that his wife was one of Victoria's father's illegitimate children (seriously, these princes were mind-bogglingly proliferate), and, as such, he was most . . . displeased when Prince Edward denied him legal guardianship of Victoria when he was on his deathbed. Make of that what you will.

A Note on Victoria's Half-siblings: Her mother had two children from her first marriage, both of whom were significantly older than her. Carl - Charles, Victoria called him - fully supported Sir John; Feodora did not, and went so far as to try to get her brother to intervene in what she thought was a toxic situation. Victoria absolutely adored her half-sister, and was devastated when she departed Kensington to marry. Victoria was only nine when Feodora left for Germany, but they kept in contact the rest of their lives, and visited each other whenever they could.

A Note on Victoria's Reaction to being Queen: Lehzen's story is one she told to her dying day. Albert, to the contrary, said that Victoria broke down in tears and exclaimed that she didn't want to be queen. (This may have been repeated from a truth that his wife confided in him, or it might have been from Leopold, who played matchmaker between the two from their infancy. For the purposes of this story, my money is on Leopold. ) For Melbourne's POV on the subject, I took what Victoria told him in the book/show - as that rather adorably pragmatic line was one of the first things that sold him on her suitability as queen. (He was smitten not even five minutes into their acquaintance, I know. )


Until next time!

~ MJ

 

Thank you!

I do love describing shiny things.

Exactly! Sir John can take a lesson from him, for sure.

Thank you so much for reading, and leaving your thoughts, as always!


I will have the next part to share in just a few minutes.

 

Author's Notes: I don't have too much to say, but to give a cautionary Content Warning for toxic family situations, bordering on child abuse, with one scene quite tipping over that line - look for the mention of Ramsgate if you'd like to bow out there. It's all subtle, but still, it that's something you find triggering, I wanted to give a fair head's up.

On that note, I borrowed a few paraphrased lines from Daisy Goodwin's Victoria for the Ramsgate scene. So, credit where credit is due!

---

“The First Grave”
(Angstober Prompt #27)​

V.II.

Following the death of her Uncle George, her Uncle William was next made king.

After the requisite period of mourning had passed, Victoria was delighted, not only to attend the coronation at Westminster Abbey, but to be invited to take part in the ceremony itself, now that she was heir presumptive to the throne.

Her mother and Sir John, too, were eager for her to be seen in her new role by the collective peers of the realm – until just prior to the ceremony, when her Uncle King decided -

“She is to walk behind those dreadful princes? This is an outrage!”

The duchess' furious voice could be heard throughout the halls of Kensington – in a way that Victoria would have been (and had been) scolded for herself.

“It would seem,” Sir John said – softly, but with a ripple to his words that both slithered and spun, “that the king believes his brothers should take precedence over his heir presumptive, as they have been princes for many long years, and the princess is yet a child.”

“As if the people want to see a parade of such vile old men, who are nothing but leeches to the royal purse,” the duchess huffed. “Drina is the future – but William cannot stand the thought that it is my daughter who will succeed him, and not his own.”

Victoria – who had knelt many times with Lehzen in order to pray for the souls of her infant cousins – did not think her mother’s words at all courteous, but knew when best to remain silent.

“There may be a way for you to illuminate that point,” Sir John waited for her mother to cool from the worst of her temper before musing, as if suddenly struck by a half-formed thought, “but I would not presume to speak for Your Grace in this matter.”

“Oh, please, Sir John – you must know that there is no presumption.” The duchess quit her pacing and fell to sit next to her comptroller on the settee, leaning towards him with her eyes quite bright. For a moment, Victoria thought that she would reach out and take his hand. “I utterly rely upon your counsel, and find myself in desperate need of your wisdom.”

Looking between them, Victoria was suddenly struck by the memory of watching her brother fish in the lake – how she'd felt a morbid pang for the wet and flopping creature, who’d met its fate for willingly swallowing the hook that had once been so enticing for its lure. She did not yet have the full maturity of mind to think her mother anything like that poor, doomed fish, even as she unconsciously decided that she would never be reeled in as such by any man herself.

Sir John made a show of hesitating, setting the bait; her mother leaned forward even further, and swallowed the hook.

It was thus decided, on Sir John's direction, that they would not attend William IV’s coronation after all.

Instead, the duchess wrote her brother-in-law to say that her daughter had fallen and skinned her knee. The princess would be unable to walk in the procession, her mother regretted to inform His Majesty, and would, in fact, not be attending the ceremony in any capacity.

Her uncle’s reply was, as could perhaps be imagined, forceful and immediate.

Yet his summons came too late to the empty halls of Kensington Palace – for her mother had decided that a holiday was needed, and they’d already departed for the Isle of Wright for rest and relaxation.

At sea, her mother demanded a military salute from the navy ships in their procession, and she ran up the royal standard at Carisbrooke Castle – a pointed reminder to the grey-haired king swearing his oaths that his time was ebbing, and a new sun was yet dawning.



.

.

The Times criticized the Duchess of Kent’s snub as a “systematic, determined opposition to His Majesty in all things,” and called her “the most restless, persevering, troublesome devil possible.” Victoria – through no fault of her own – had indeed gained the notice of the realm, but from a place of ridicule, rather than power.

King William had many words to say on the matter – but he was convinced, for the most part, by his wife to pour them into her ears alone. Adelaide soothed his temper, and refocused his anger into concern for their niece – for the new queen had written her sister-in-law with an invitation to stay the summer with them at Bushy Park, and her offer had not only been declined, but her letter most pointedly unanswered. Adelaide feared that too firm a hand would not punish the duchess, but rather her daughter – and everything now depended on that one little girl.

Lord Melbourne – newly appointed as prime minister and struggling to temper the king’s involvement in far too many matters that were ultimately beyond the purview of the Crown – merely huffed to remark that he was surprised that His Majesty had approved the expense of a gown of cloth-of-gold for the princess in the first place, and turned his mind back to the business of government.



.

.

Months following his coronation, King William at last succeeded in demanding that the Duchess of Kent attend his wife’s summons at Clarence House.

(Years later, Victoria would learn that the new bill Parliament had passed – granting her mother a further ten thousand pounds a year for her education – was instead being used to finance improvements on Kensington Palace itself. Her mother argued that her daughter could hardly learn a single thing – and certainly not in health – when mushrooms grew from the ceiling and the walls were stained with mold. Yet she needed the king’s permission to alter any royal residence, and was thus, for the moment, quite dependent upon her brother-in-law’s good will.)

For her part, Victoria felt most grown up as she sat in her Aunt Adelaide’s drawing room, and listened as plans for the queen’s first levee of the season were discussed. This ball, Victoria learned, welcomed young girls from all across the kingdom to come out in society before the royal presence as women grown. It sounded most official, and Victoria applied herself to learning all she could – for she would someday reign as queen, and this long-standing tradition would fall to her to oversee in her aunt's stead.

Her Aunt Adelaide was everything a queen should be, Victoria thought as she attempted to mimic her gestures and poise, so far down as to the way she elegantly balanced her tea cup on its saucer. The queen was beautiful and graceful and kind, and when she spoke, she held the ear of every soul gathered – and those ears listened. The queen may have been soft-spoken – in a way that Victoria was unsure if she could ever fully adopt for herself – but she commanded the obedience of every lady in the room.

. . . or, that was, every lady except for one.

Yet there was a ruckus at the door – the exclamation of a maid; a startled sound from one of the guards – and a little boy came running into the drawing room.

“Grandmama!” the child exclaimed, throwing himself at the queen without a second thought for his acceptance – and his trust was rewarded. With an expression of genuine concern for his flushed cheeks and distressed sniffles, Adelaide caught the boy and settled him in her lap, already moving to sooth him as he cried, “Jamie took my new toy horse! When I insisted that it was mine – that Grandpapa had given it to me – he pushed me and ran away with it! Now I fear that I shall never see it again!”

But a second voice rang out from the doorway as yet another little boy dashed inside, “Grammie, Charles is lying – I did not push him - ”

“ - did to! - ”

“ - and if I did shove him a very little to break his grip on my horse, I most certainly did not - ”

“ - Grandmother Addy,” a slightly older girl – who looked quite put out by her brothers (or so Victoria assumed) – marched in last, “I saw what happened, and can tell you everything!”

“No, no – don’t listen to her!”

“Yes, Lizzy, tell her that James is a liar!”

“Hush, children, please,” Adelaide said, and that gentle command was enough to silence them. “Now, tell me what happened – one at a time – and I am sure we can put this to rights.”

Her aunt proceeded to counsel and correct – and soon, all three children were mollified (if not completely happy) with the queen’s final say on the matter. Adelaide then bid the young ones to remember their manners, and they turned to bow and curtsy, respectively, to the room at large.

The queen’s ladies-in-waiting were already quite familiar with the king’s grandchildren, it seemed, but when Adelaide made to introduce the FitzClarences to her guests, Victoria was shocked when her mother stood – and, without acknowledging the queen in the slightest, turned to her and said:

“Come, Drina, we are leaving.” Her mother chose to speak in German, and Victoria felt her ears burn as the queen’s ladies sucked in horrified breaths. Two of their number even began to murmur amongst themselves, aghast for the gaucherie of the glaring faux pas.

“Now, Mama?” she did not at all understand.

Her mother’s eyes flashed with blue fire. “Now, Drina. I will not have my daughter stay in this . . . in this house of Babylon any longer.”

Yet her Aunt Adelaide too had been born a German princess, and she clearly understood each and every word as it was spoken. She stood, and though her face betrayed not a single one of her emotions, Victoria could feel her displeasure whisper through the room like a crisp breeze, only just too cold for comfort.

“I pity you, Louise,” the queen said likewise in German, as much as for the children's benefit as her mother's, “that you cannot find it within your heart to extend Christian love and kindness to those who need it most – and these children, I very much consider my own.”

“And I quite pity that you are a wife whose home is only filled with her husband’s bastards – that is not the example I would have set for my daughter.”

With that, Victoria found herself grabbed by the wrist, and she was tugged quite firmly from the room.

The queen watched them depart with narrowed eyes, but ultimately let them go.



.

.

Needless to say, her Uncle King did not approve his sister-in-law’s renovations to Kensington.

Her mother quite ignored the king and demanded the repairs done anyway.



.

.


My Dear Sister,

I write once more to inform you that His Majesty the King and I wish for our niece to join us when Parliament is called into session this season. There is much for Alexandrina to learn of the art of governing, and, attached, I have included a list of tutors that come recommended by both His Majesty and His Lordship the Prime Minister. It will, of course, be to you to ultimately approve or disapprove any selection, but it is strongly suggested that such selections are made, and made with all expedience.

His Majesty promises that, as long as his niece is in residence, Her Royal Highness will attend state functions by his side – and privy councils and meetings with his ministers, too, as is deemed proper – in order to ensure an orderly transition of power, unto the shoulders of a prepared ruler, once Alexandrina ascends to the throne.

Your Grace is quite welcome to stay at Clarence House, as well – and it is our hope to continue such a tradition, of our entire family, together under one roof, for as long as the arrangement proves favorable to all.


I remain, yours,

Adelaide Amelia, Queen of Great Britain etc.




.

.

The queen’s invitation – and every subsequent offer of its like – was declined by her mother, and she used William IV’s FitzClarence by-blows as the reason she would not have her daughter sleep under a roof where all of the royal family yet did so.

The king, however, refused to give up his children – and the duchess would not budge for the sake of her own child.

And thus, their cold war of frigid animosity yet remained.



.

.

Rather than having her daughter join the king's household at the center of government in London, her mother’s next action – taken at Sir John’s suggestion – was to embark upon a royal tour. It was time for Victoria to see – and to be seen by – the people she would someday rule.

Towards that end, they set out from Kensington in a caravan of carriages emblazoned with the Kent coat of arms and flying the royal standard – stopping at Chelmsford and Colchester and Ipswich before turning east for Cambridge and Nottingham and Birmingham.

The northern counties of England were, in many ways, a shock to her. Victoria knew what poverty was, but only in theory; Lehzen had explained the concept to her, and she’d seen the poor of England in the village of Kensington and London itself. But that was nothing as compared to how the people – her people – lived in these over-crowded manufacturing towns.

“This is the future,” Sir John proudly proclaimed as they drove past massive, ugly buildings stained with char and belching fire. Even the grass was brittle and dry and drained of all color, and the rivers seemed to flow thick and slow in their dark cradles. “We are living in a great age of industry, and the profits these factories promise are yet limitless.”

Yet, for once, her mother moved to circumvent Sir John, and closed the curtains before her daughter's wide, unblinking eyes.

“Some things,” she muttered, “are not fit for a princess to see.”

“But these people are my people, too, are they not?” Victoria could not shake the sight of a barefoot little girl – with sooty hands and a sooty face, pushing a cart of coal that seemed twice as big as she was – and rather thought that she never would.

Her mother only shrugged. “They are the poor,” she waved a hand in dismissal, “they are their own people. That is how it always has been, and how it always will be.”

Oh . . . she supposed that made sense, and yet . . .

And yet.

By the time they made it to Bristol, she felt perpetually weary and ragged from the endless days of traveling. These long months had been nothing like what she thought they would be – opportunities to meet her people and to explore her kingdom and learn everything there was to learn of the world beyond the cloistered walls of Kensington.

Instead, she found herself herded like a prize cow from one great house of the nobility to the next. Victoria never interacted with . . . well, with anyone, really, and she saw and learned just as little. In those homes, she sat for tea like a showy bric-à-brac before being shuffled off out of sight as a young lady not yet out in society, and her mother and Sir John accepted the hospitality of those great lords and ladies on her behalf. At three and ten, she was still considered quite the child, no matter that she was also the future queen. She did not speak when they did stop for the curious crowds; she only waved as they passed through, like a dressed up doll – a puppet on strings.

What was even worse was when the crowds turned dense and demanding, rather than curious and cheering. She’d lost count of how many times the riff-raff – her mother’s term for the desperate mobs – tried to overwhelm her carriage, asking for but a moment of the Crown’s time and begging Her Highness' mercy and indulgence. (Little did they know that there was nothing Victoria could do, even if she was permitted to hear their complaints.) Many others, even more so than beseeching her favor, cursed and spat at her carriage outright. They were so very angry, she was bewildered to find – why were they so angry?

Wasn’t England the mightiest nation on Earth? Weren’t the people of England proud to call this land their home?

“They’re merely hungry, and their children are hungry – and hunger ever begets rage,” Lord Melbourne would wearily sigh to explain to her, years later. “The glories of Britannia mean nothing to them when they toil so hard for so little, and see no way to better their prospects.”

“What can I do to help them?” she would ask then, just as she did now – only for her mother to blink owlish eyes at her, and for Sir John to huff as he did when he thought her particularly foolish.

“It is for them to help themselves; until then, they help their betters,” he sniffed, and ordered the carriage to press onwards through the crowd, trusting the soldiers to see to the most determined of the malcontents. “You’ll understand that, in time.”

Perhaps she would, Victoria hesitated to agree, and yet . . .

And yet.



.

.
By the time they made it to Claremount, her Uncle Leopold’s estate in Surrey, Victoria had never been happier to leave a carriage behind in all her life.

Their visit here, even more so than to break their journey, was to celebrate her uncle’s new appointment as the King of the Belgians – for Belgium had just succeeded in gaining independence from the Netherlands, and had chosen a constitutional monarchy for itself. Her uncle had been voted into that role, and he would soon leave England to take up his place on his nascent throne. They would use this time to wish him well on his journey, just as they were here to welcome -

“Feodora!”

Victoria had not seen her half-sister in five years, and they were reunited with the utmost joy. Feodora had come to visit from Leiningen with her two toddling children – Charles and Elise – and it was with every happiness that Victoria was introduced as an aunt for the first.

That night, Feodora sat up with her – while her mother played at cards and drank sherry with Sir John and Uncle Leopold – and listened as Victoria expressed her frustrations, hopes, and fears. There was much to say, and much to be remarked upon in return – so much so that they conversed until their mother was ready to retire, and her presence necessitated their silence.

The next morning, Feodora announced that she had a present for her – a companion, she teased with a mischievous grin, who would be there to love her sister even when she could not, and she gestured for her maid to bring out -

- a puppy.

And not just any puppy: but the dearest, sweetest puppy there ever was, with glossy black and white fur and charmingly floppy ears. The spaniel had the biggest brown eyes, and Victoria knelt on the floor – much to the chiding of her mother – to welcome him closer as his curiosity overcame his hesitation. His little tail was wagging madly by the time she finally picked him up, and then and there she became quite certain that she'd never want to put him down again.

Feodora watched her, and Victoria smiled through her tears, hoping that her sister knew just how much this gift meant to her - for all of its unspoken meaning, and more.

Victoria spent the day playing with her new dog – Dash, she decided to call him, for the way he liked to chase after the leather ball she threw – and her niece and nephew. When the children were put down for their nap, she went up to the third storey of the house, intent to stay out of the way as she continued their game – for she’d already tried Sir John’s temper more than once with her racket in the salon below. Yet, when the ball rolled into one of the distant-most rooms on that floor, and Dash barked, she was surprised to turn through the door and see -

- a woman, sitting alone in silence and staring out the window.

She clearly wasn’t one of the household staff – her clothing was far too fine, and pearls were looped in long strands about her throat – but then, why had they not been introduced? Victoria frowned, knowing that she was rudely staring, but unable to help herself. The girl was very young, and very pretty with her golden-brown hair and dark blue eyes; she seemed familiar to Victoria, even if she could not countenance exactly why.

“Hello,” but Victoria remembered her manners, and politely curtsied. “I don’t believe that we’ve met; I am Alexandrina Victoria – and this is Dash.”

The young woman smiled, and said in a voice heavily accented with German, “It is a pleasure to make Your Royal Highness’ acquaintance – and His Little Highness’ too.”

Oh yes, Victoria quite approved of Dash being addressed as such – she would have to make that a habit in the future.

Yet, before she could inquire of the woman’s name – as she did not immediately offer her own in return, Victoria felt a shadow cross the door.

“Drina, there you are,” her mother sighed. “Enough with your games. Your uncle wishes to speak with you about - ”

- but her words abruptly cut off, and the duchess fixed a cold stare on the girl – who, for her part, fell into a deep curtsy and held the position. She kept her eyes fixed downward, and did not immediately rise – nor did her mother grant her leave to do so. Victoria frowned, entirely puzzled.

“Come, Drina,” the duchess turned her back without a single word of acknowledgement, “you are wanted in your uncle’s study.”

Victoria waved at the girl – who did not look up to see the gesture – and then dutifully followed behind her mother.

“Who is she?” Victoria could not wholly contain her curiosity as her mother held out a hand, and they descended the stairs together.

“She is part of a world that you do not need to know about,” her mother answered primly, “and that is all we shall say on the matter.”

Slowly, Victoria nodded her understanding – even if she hardly understood at all.



.

.

Later that night, Victoria sneaked out of bed when she heard raised voices – careful, all the while, not to wake the attendant who had fallen asleep on her watch – and padded to the edge of the room. She cracked the door open, ever so slightly, to better hear from the foyer below . . .

“I thought that trollop was gone,” her mother huffed in angry German. "Why is she still here, Leopold?"

“It’s a delicate business. Lina thinks herself to be my wife.”

“Your wife? God have mercy, but is there any validity to her belief?”

“We said vows, but they were unconsecrated,” Victoria heard her uncle answer, before his voice lowered and she caught only snippets of “hardly binding” and "nor is the title of countess" and “a moment of weakness."

More was said, but quietly so, until the duchess quite firmly declared: “I will not have my daughter in the same house as an actress – see her gone, or we shall take our leave.”

Again, more was muttered.

“I have a house that will do.”

“Private; secluded.”

“Can’t keep her there forever.”

“Does she expect anything more of you?”

“Thinks to be queen – morganatic marriage.”

“Preposterous – surely you know?”

“Of course I know.”

“Written to her mother – comes to collect her.”

“For shame, brother, but do you want a scandal to define your reign before it even begins?”

Her uncle was only silent. There was a long sigh, before: “It is time for you to stop dallying with girls," her mother pronounced quite firmly, "and find a proper wife once more.”

Steps then sounded on the stairs, declaring an end to the conversation, and Victoria scurried back to bed before she could be discovered. There, she buried her face against Dash’s silky fur, and wondered for all that she had heard.



.

.

Their royal tour continued, and by the time they reached Ramsgate, Victoria found herself exhausted and increasingly in low spirits. She missed her sister, and her niece and nephew; she missed her Uncle Leopold (even if she wondered if she ought not); and there was even a very small part of her that missed Kensington, in a strange way - for its familiarity, if nothing else.

Even the novelty of the sea was hardly enough to move her – and oh, how she loved the seaside, with its pounding waves and the tang of salt in the air. To the contrary, she found herself feeling ill, with a sore throat and burning eyes to join her now long-standing headache.

She told her mother, who brushed her symptoms off as a summer cold; a bit of tea and an early night to sleep, and she’d be set to rights again.

Yet tea and rest both failed as a remedy. Instead, the following morning, Victoria struggled to rise from bed, feeling dizzy as the room spun almost angrily around her. Lehzen, by then visibly concerned for her health, held the back of her hand to her brow, and frowned to feel a fever.

Her mother came at the baroness' summons, and did the same; yet she declared that she felt no such thing and really, child, but we are due for church – where many are already gathered to see you. We can hardly disappoint your people, now, can we?

By the end of the service, Victoria could hardly take communion, so swollen and sore was her throat, and she did not know how she walked from the church on her own power. She only knew that she was determined not to falter when so many eyes were upon her; so, she did not.

Come that evening, even Sir John could not deny that she was ill – though he waved a hand for what he declared her tendency to malinger. She was thus excused from welcoming Lord and Lady Cranford before dinner, but a doctor was out of the question, and she would be expected to present herself for their morning appointment to tour the Royal Harbor.

. . . the princess could not be reported as weak, after all – not when her claim to power as a queen-to-be was already so tenuous as it was.

When her mother came in, much later that night, Victoria caught the scent of the perfumed rose water she wore through the scarlet haze that had seemingly engulfed her – and she wanted nothing more than to turn into the promise of warmth and comfort that scent yet offered. But her mother only sighed, and turned to ready for bed.

The next morning, Victoria could not rise – she could not do anything but thrash and moan until, finally, Lehzen’s raised voice pierced through her feverish state. Her governess insisted that a doctor would be summoned, even if she had to walk and fetch him herself.

The doctor at last arrived, and only later would Victoria be told that she was diagnosed with typhus – with her life in very real peril.

Then, she only knew that her body was rubescent with fire and yet wracked with icy chills. A rash broke out over her skin, rubbed miserable and raw against her sheets, and she sank in and out of consciousness, where she dreamed strange dreams, disjointed and fragmented and wholly beyond her ability to recall in any sort of entirety.

Any time she managed to surface from her delirium, it was to Lehzen wiping her brow with a cool rag, and Lehzen spooning broth into her mouth, and Lehzen praying or reading aloud to her or holding her hand in a tight, urgent grip.

Once or twice did she think to smell rose water again – her mother had a fit of nerves upon learning her prognosis, and was advised by the doctor to keep her distance for fear of contagion. “I will have to go back to Coburg if she dies,” the duchess had wailed – though Victoria wondered if that too was from a dream. (She hoped it was just a dream.) “All of these years will have been wasted; everything is ruined – everything!”

At some point, the windows were opened to let the sea air in – and Victoria remembered wondering if that was the last scent her father had held onto before meeting his own end.

But no . . . no.

This was not . . . and she would not . . .

She refused.

Days passed where she was utterly insensible, but Victoria slowly managed to ascend from the fiery red pit that had threatened to swallow her. The first time she opened her eyes and managed to croak, “Lehzen,” on a rasped voice, her governess cried and kissed her brow and her cheeks, thanking God aloud for his goodness and mercy.

When her mother was finally permitted to see her, her eyes too gleamed with tears. “Of course my daughter is strong,” the duchess proudly answered the doctor’s compliments for Victoria’s fighting spirit, “she is a Coburg.”

She was the future Queen of England, Victoria thought, the daughter of a long line of kings going back to William the Conqueror himself – but was yet too weak to say. Coburg was in her veins, yes, but it was not her pulse and life’s blood. She was proud of her maternal heritage, but that side would never define her.

Instead, she drifted off to sleep again, and, when she woke, she blinked with confusion to see Sir John standing with her mother at her bedside.

“Drina,” the duchess said, holding her eyes. “This . . . episode has showed us exactly why it’s now more important than ever that you have a protector in place, to look out for your best interests, even when you yourself cannot.”

Victoria hardly understood what she was saying – she’d been ill; her body weak, but not her spirit, and her mind too had recovered. Her thoughts were yet unfocused, and she struggled to rouse herself when her every instinct warned of threat and danger.

“As such,” the duchess continued, “Sir John and I believe that it is time for you to sign this.” She laid out a long piece of parchment, and a pen already wet with ink on her writing desk. “This will make Sir John your Private Secretary, and give him the ability to act for you and properly guide you in all things. He will advise you well in your reign – just as he has long advised me.”

Her mother then turned a most admiring look towards the clearly self-satisfied man, and Victoria felt her blood turn hot to boiling – but, this time, not with fever.

She could not immediately find her voice – though due to the force of her emotions or her lingering malaise, she hardly knew – but when she finally did, she clearly ground out: “I . . . will . . . not . . . sign.”

The duchess frowned, as if she could not comprehend her meaning; a muscle jumped high in Sir John’s cheek.

“Don’t be foolish, Drina,” her mother moved to physically press the pen into her hand, bringing it to the paper. “You are so young and frail, and you are fortunate to have a man such as Sir John to look out for your best interests.”

Victoria made a fist of her hand, and cast a beseeching gaze to Lehzen – who did indeed intervene to say: “Perhaps this is something that may be discussed when Her Highness is better recovered; she is still so very weak.”

“Indeed, that is why it's vital that she signs now,” Sir John said sharply. “The details may be discussed later, but first, she must sign.”

“No,” Victoria rasped. “No.”

“Drina,” her mother sighed, quite exasperated, “you are being ungrateful. After all that Sir John has done for you, this much is owed to him. Are you so very wicked, to not do this one small thing for him in return?”

But it was no small thing – she would be signing away her agency and giving him very real power to influence her rule from behind her throne; she would be giving him a seat in the House of Lords, as well, which would last well beyond her twenty-first birthday and any regency that could be forced upon her; towards either such end she would not – she refused -

And so, with a surge of strength borne by desperation, she wrenched her hand away and swatted the ink well – overturning its contents onto the paper and slinging black drops across her mother and Sir John, both of whom jumped back, startled and aghast.

For all of his evils, Victoria had never once thought that Sir John would truly strike her – no matter how she'd angered him – but in that moment, she tensed, expecting -

“You stupid, impudent girl,” Sir John spat, livid with rage, “I will not tolerate this gross disrespect a moment longer - ”

“ - that is enough!” Lehzen intercepted him, bodily placing herself between the incensed knight and her charge. “Leave, now – or I will have no choice but to report this matter to His Majesty, and you know I shall.”

For a moment, Victoria quite thought the baroness would bare her teeth, incensed as she was, but all she did was stand, firm and unyielding. Lehzen did not move, nor would she be removed.

“Fine,” Sir John finally bit out, flashing his own teeth in a sneer. “We may discuss this matter later, when Her Highness is more . . . herself.”

“Yes,” her mother echoed – looking to sooth him, rather than her daughter, Victoria felt something twist and break, deep inside of her, to understand. “Drina is still confused from the fever. She will sign when she is better, I am sure of it.”

But Victoria held Sir John’s gaze, and stared with the truth in her eyes:

She would never sign.

And soon, it wouldn't matter; in less than four years, she would turn eighteen, and there would then be nothing her mother or Sir John could do to keep her from reigning alone as queen, without a regency – but only if her Uncle William should live that long.

Yet, for the time being, Victoria could only watch as her mother glared at her before turning to chase after Sir John – calling behind him in a voice that beseeched, that begged . . .

Only then did Victoria let herself cry, turning her face into her pillow as Lehzen stroked her hair and soothed her in her mother’s place.



.

.

She became very, very good at refusing every attempt to make her sign that dreadful contract from that day forward – no matter what they took from her, no matter what they threatened her with, no matter how sweetly they cajoled or how viciously they abraded . . .

. . . she held firm, and she never signed.



.

.

Yet even her staunchest allies had trouble seeing her as the future queen, sovereign in her own right; instead, she was viewed as the mere wife of the future king her marriage would empower, and a waiting vessel from which the next true king would be born. As such, talks of potential suitors ran wild from nearly every tongue in the kingdom, at every turn.

Towards that purpose, just after her fifteenth birthday, her Uncle King summoned her to Bushy Park to meet the Princes of Orange.

It was her uncle's desire to form an alliance with the Netherlands – especially after England had backed Belgium in its move for independence – and thought to do so through marriage. A Dutch prince on the throne of England as consort to the queen – who was the niece of the King of Belgium, himself – would settle the matter quite nicely for all parties involved.

(Privately, William IV sneered to his prime minister – who was rather more interested in turning the king’s attention back to the workhouse bill Parliament was set to vote upon than the marriage market that had erupted around the princess – there’s enough Coburg blood polluting the royal line as it is.)

So, Victoria attended her uncle’s summons – with her mother and Sir John’s complaints loud in her ear, favoring as they did the more Coburg match that the king decried – and was introduced to the princes.

The elder, Prince William, was hardly interested in her – he would someday be King of the Netherlands in his own right, and he had no desire to marry a queen who would be unable to rule by his side, just as she would never step away from the throne of England to attend a lesser court in subjection to her husband’s rule. Prince William did, however, seem to be interested in many of the young ladies who attended the king’s summer court as daughters of his lords and ministers.

“Are you not here for little Drina?” Lady Mary de Grey, at least, sought to divert the prince’s attentions – with limited success.

“Little is indeed the word I would use to describe Her Highness. I have no desire to pay court to any child," Prince William proclaimed, "let alone one who is as straight and flat as a boy.”

“Truly?" Lady Mary politely disagreed. "I would call the princess too pretty, by far, to mistake her for anything else.”

“Pretty?” yet Prince William rudely snorted – unaware that Victoria was in earshot, made quite invisible by her aforementioned height and stature, and absolutely frozen in mortification. “I can hardly even call her that; but you, Lady Mary, are quite beautiful . . . ”

- Victoria heard no more of his attempts at flirtation before she turned, and walked away with her head held high.

(She would only ever confide to one soul, years later, just how much those words had wounded her – and then be quite thoroughly convinced of their untruth by the man whose opinion mattered the most to her in all the world.)

Prince Alexander, the younger Orange brother, she may have called handsome and she may have called agreeable – he did try to make her laugh, at least – but his good humor faltered the first time she managed to out-race him on horseback. When she beat him a second time, he failed to keep even a false smile fixed upon his face.

Once they returned to the palace, and her uncle inquired after their outing, Alexander answered: “The princess tired during our ride, and we were forced to cut it short."

“Did I?" Victoria challenged his lie, feeling her ire spark, even as she smiled sweetly. "To the contrary, I feel most invigorated – as victory often energizes me. Perhaps tomorrow we shall race again and you may have better luck, Your Highness.”

Prince William laughed outright for his brother's livid red cheeks, and her Uncle William sighed, most heavily.

The next day, Prince Alexander turned down her invitation to ride, and Victoria instead dressed to go out with Lady Mary and Lady Emily Taylor – the both of whom promised to be far more excellent company.

“That young man wishes to woo you," Baroness Lehzen wryly remarked as Jenkins went about settling the last pins in her riding hat. "He can hardly do so when you present yourself as a competitor to be subdued, rather than a partner to be matched."

“Then he may woo me, and not who he thinks I ought to be," Victoria frostily declared. "I will be vanquished by no man who cannot see me as an equal partner in return."



.

.

So much for the Oranges, Victoria wrote to her Uncle Leopold when Prince William and Prince Alexander finally took their leave at the end of the summer. Instead, she went on to describe how pleased she was with her new mare, and how she looked forward to him visiting England again, so that she could demonstrate how far she had come with her skills on horseback.



.

.

If not the Netherlands, King William yet insisted, there were other royal houses in Europe with whom an alliance could be made. He’d see his niece married to anyone, so long as it wasn’t another one of them.

To the ears of his fellow Tories at Whites, The Duke of Wellington opined that Her Future Majesty would serve the realm best by marrying an Englishman – the crown was far too German as it was, and dangerously verging on Papist, at that. It was time – it had long since been beyond time – for the English to be ruled by the English, and no other foreign power.

Lord Melbourne had but little patience for the subject when the cost of bread was yet so high and the wages earned by the vast majority of the population much too low, and when asked for his opinion, he only drolly remarked: “Just let them not be cousins, for God’s sake.”

The Duchess of Kent, for her part, agreed with the wisdom of her mother, who wished to see a union between her grandchildren. She wrote to her brothers, and advised that the time was now ripe to have her nephew come to England. In short order, both King Leopold and Prince Ernst, the reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, quite agreed:

It was time for Prince Albert to meet his future wife.

Spoiler: End Notes

A Note on King William IV and Queen Adelaide: William IV was the oldest king ever crowned in England, until Charles III. His coronation ceremony was widely regarded to be a disaster – he thought the whole thing a waste of time, treated the proceedings with irreverence, and was frugal to the point of tacky when it came to investing in the pageantry. His queen, however, was widely regarded as being his saving grace for her own dignity and reverence throughout the ceremony. Adelaide, for her part, was thirty years his junior, and married to William in a joint ceremony with Victoria's own parents. The five children they had together did not survive infancy, and – as I think I stated in a previous note – she welcomed William's previous illegitimate children and grandchildren to live at the palace. (That was one of the things William looked for in a wife, and ultimately why he chose Adelaide.) She did love them as her own, and maintained her relationship with the FitzClarences (whenever you see the name "fitz", that proclaims a royal bastard - in this case, illegitimate children born to the Duke of Clarence) after her husband's death. Adelaide and William had a strong partnership, and there was very real affection in their union.

The battle of wills I portrayed between the Duchess of Kent and King William is all taken from history, too - she did refuse to attend his coronation when she felt that Victoria was slighted by her place in the procession, and she did walk out on one of the queen's drawing rooms when one of the FitzClarence children walked in and was welcomed to stay. William and Adelaide tried to involve Victoria in their rule and prepare her as their heir, but the duchess - no doubt encouraged by Sir John - resisted them at every turn.

A Note on Victoria's First Royal Tour: Went much as I described. Her thoughts on the poor are taken directly from her diary entry, here: "Men, women, children, country and houses are all black. The country is very desolate everywhere; there is coal about, and the grass is quite blaseted and black. I just now see an extraordinary building, flaming with fire. The country continues black, engines flaming, coals in abundance, everywhere smoking and burning coal-heaps, intermingled with wretched huts and carts and little ragged children." She was shocked by what she saw, and disturbed when mobs gathered around her carriage, demanding accountability from the royal presences within.

A Note on King Leopold I: After the death of his wife, Princess Charlotte, he continued to live in England for a time, until he was appointed as King of the Belgians. He did not, however, have a good track record with women; Caroline Bauer, the actress I wrote of, was one such instance where he lured a teenage girl to live with him as his mistress with promises of marriage and a title. (The Duke of Wellington said that Bauer bore an uncanny likeness with the late Princess Charlotte - make of that what you will. ) Bauer ever insisted that they were actually married and she was given the title of countess; she expected to be Queen of Belgium in a morganatic marriage. (That term will come up again - it just means marriage between two unequal social stations, where the marriage is recognized, but any children resulting from that marriage cannot inherit the higher parent's titles.) Leopold, whether it was merely the promise of a future union or actual vows, broke that trust - and had to summon Bauer's mother to pry her away from him, I kid you not.

Leopold went on to marry a French princess for his queen, and they had four children together, but he famously kept Arcadie Claret as his mistress until his death. Claret was forty years his junior, and he married her to an official at court to keep her close, with the veneer of a respectable union to raise their children within - even if their affair was commonly known to all. He visited her and their children nearly every day of his life, and Claret separated from her "husband" and did not marry again following Leopold's death. As you've seen from the Hanoverian princes, this was a scandal - the Belgians hated his mistress and quite sympathized with his shy, introverted queen - but not wholly atypical for the time. The main reason I mention this is because it really makes Leopold's later protesting Melbourne as a potential match for Victoria on account of the difference in their ages and social standings somewhat ironic, wouldn't you say? His condemning Melbourne for his own scandals really was a case of throwing stones in glass houses.

A Note on Sir John and the Infamous Ramsgate Scene: This really happened in RL. Victoria was in mortal danger due to a case of typhoid fever - but, according to her journals, she wasn't believed when she complained of her early symptoms and, ultimately, a doctor was summoned to see to "a servant" in the house. Upon her recovery, her mother and Sir John did try to force her to sign a letter, giving Sir John power in her rule as her Private Secretary (which came with a seat in the House of Lords); extending the age requiring her to have a regency to 21, rather than 18; and appointing her mother as her regent in her stead until she reached the age of her majority. Victoria refused to sign - with Lehzen's backing - and held out against both her mother and Sir John until her 18th birthday. This severely damaged her relationship with her mother - whom she accused of failing to protect her from a power-hungry man - and it took them years to recover.

. . . but we'll pick up with that battle of wills again in the next installment.

~ MJ