Page 1 of The Heir (A Young Queen Victoria Mystery #1)

H e’s dying.

Victoire, Duchess of Kent, sat on a hard stool at her husband’s bedside and willed him to keep breathing.

The room was dark, except for the fire that sputtered fitfully in the hearth, trying in vain to match the roar of wind and surf outside, trying also to warm the room and bring some small chance of life to the man who lay so still in the narrow bed.

The doctor—William Maton—was speaking. Dr. Maton was a fussy, fat, pale, bald man.

He had spent the past four days swearing as to the unfailing efficacy of his knives, cups, and leeches.

Now he was saying something far different.

Victoire’s mind was too dulled by exhaustion to fully translate his English into her native German, but she understood his tone.

“We have done all we can,” he was saying, or something like it.

“Now we must wait.” Or something like it.

Perhaps there was also something about trusting in a merciful God.

Victoire ground her teeth to shut in the sob that threatened to escape her.

The doctor fell silent, but a fresh noise insinuated itself into the room’s chill—a thin, insistent bawling.

The baby, tucked up in her cot in the adjoining room, was crying.

She was cold, or she was hungry. Or she simply wished to protest that she was alone in a dark cottage, surrounded by a foul winter storm, while the man who loved her most in the world was dying.

Drafts curled around Victoire’s neck. She imagined them like the fingers of a ghostly hand. She imagined that hand dragging itself up the quilts to caress her husband’s cheek. To cover his mouth. To stop his breath.

Dr. Maton was speaking again. A second voice answered.

That was Conroy, her husband’s equerry and assistant.

Victoire had forgotten he was even in the room.

Their English whispers fluttered around her ears.

Victoire made out hope and strong and hour .

She tried to understand the rest, but it was no good.

She turned her face toward the window, but there was nothing to see. The shutter had been closed. For all the good it did in keeping out the cold or the sound of the storm.

The baby was still crying. Where was the nurse? Where was Lehzen? Or even Feodora? She would have to do something. Give an order. Make herself understood.

She could not even make herself move.

“Victoire.”

The sound of her name was less than a whisper, but she still heard it. Her heart thumped. Edward’s eyes were open and searching for her.

“Yes, my heart, I am here,” Victoire said in German. She seized his hand. It was hot and light, as if his bones had already burnt to ash. Or perhaps it was because he had been drained dry of blood. Dr. Maton said he’d taken only a pint this time. It looked to her as if it had been a gallon.

“Victoire,” Edward said again.

“Rest, my heart. You must regain your strength.” She spoke lightly, praying that he would not notice the tears slipping down her hollow cheeks.

Edward had always been so strong, and so proud of that strength.

Let all his royal brothers drink and debauch themselves.

Let them carouse with their wastrel friends and squander their fortunes.

Edward would not follow their examples. He would keep to strict, simple habits, eat a plain diet, and get plenty of exercise.

Oh, the sight of him on horseback or on the driver’s box of a carriage!

It was enough to stop any woman’s heart.

Even her heart, which had been withered by her first marriage, her two children, her poverty, her fear for her future.

The future Edward saved me from.

He had driven her out of her tiny, trampled German kingdom all the way to England.

She had protested that she was too far gone in her pregnancy to make the journey, but he had insisted.

Their child must be born on English soil.

He hadn’t wanted anyone to be able to question whether the babe really belonged to him or whether it could very well be the future of English crown.

He had installed them in Kensington Palace and dared his brothers to protest his right to rooms in the royal residence, especially once the baby—their pocket Hercules of a princess—was born.

But now where are we?

Fat George squatted in Windsor and rubbed his greedy hands at the bedside of his blind, mad father. He debauched his mistresses, railed against his legal wife, swilled his wines, and gambled away England’s treasury. But Fat George lived and, to all appearances, would continue to live.

Freddy, the grand old Duke of York, had grubbed under his mistress’s skirts with one hand and stolen from the public treasury with the other.

Silly Billy, Duke of Clarence, walked the streets without remembering to put on his hat, heartsore for the whore-actress he’d thrown over so he could marry a princess even poorer than Victoire and get himself at least one legitimate heir.

Augustus, the Duke of Sussex, had decided to stick a thumb in the eye of the entire family by refusing to marry anyone acceptable, but that marriage had failed. Now he puttered uselessly about the ruin that was Kensington Palace with his collections of clocks and Bibles.

And all the while, Ernest—the lecherous, damnable, scarred, half-blind Duke of Cumberland—leered at his brothers from his wife’s palace in Germany and waited to see which of them fell first.

But Edward? Strong and plain-living Edward had taken Victoire and the children away from London because Fat George would not advance him the money he needed to live there. They had come to this dreary seaside town and huddled together in this tiny hovel of a cottage.

And Edward had gone for a walk in the December rain and had gotten his feet wet.

That was all. How can he be dying when that was all that happened?

Victoire pressed her hand against her eyes.

And still the baby was crying. And her husband wanted to speak to her.

“Conroy,” she said.

“Yes, your grace?” John Conroy was a tall man with a long face, bright blue eyes, and thick, dark hair. Ladies blushed and batted their eyes at him. The more vicious gossips wondered what kinds of services he performed for the duchess now that the king had brought her to England.

“Go see to the baby,” she said. Conroy is a father. He does not fear a nursery. “Go talk to the nurse. See that Feodora and Karl are still asleep. I . . . I cannot.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

If he bowed, she did not turn her head to see it. She rinsed the linen cloth in the basin on the nightstand and dabbed at Edward’s forehead. His skin was too dry. His eyes were too bright, and yet his cheeks were far too pale.

Bloodless.

“You are not crying, Victoire,” he said in German. He tried very hard to teach her English, but still, they always spoke German when they were alone together.

“No, of course I do not cry,” she lied. “I never do. You know that.”

“I know.” His fingers curled around hers, feather soft. Her heart twisted inside.

“I will show them yet,” he told her. “I have done what they could not. I have found a good wife. I have fathered a healthy child. You and I will take up the crown together, my heart. We will make a place for our Alexandrina Victoria. We will see them all bow their heads to her and to us. To us .”

Victoire held her husband’s burning hand and willed herself to believe. But if he had been hollowed out by the fever and the bloodletting, she had been made equally hollow by fear. All the belief she could muster did not fill even an inch of her emptiness.

“Now, it may take some little while for me to get better,” he went on. “In the meantime, you may rely on Conroy. He has been with me these many years. I trust him absolutely.”

“Yes, my heart.” She wished he would stop. He was so weak. This talk was doing him no good. But she had not the strength to tell him so.

“And do not let them take our daughter.” By them he meant his family.

His mad father, his ridiculous mother, his spidery spinster sisters and, most of all, his greedy brothers.

“They will try, but they want only to turn her against us and use her for their own purposes. You must hold her tightly to you.”

“They will have no chance to take her.” She meant to speak lightly, but her voice broke. “You will be better long before they can do any such thing.”

“Yes, yes. I have promised, haven’t I?” His eyelids fluttered closed.

Dr. Maton was back. He maneuvered daintily around her. She was a duchess, after all, and could not simply be elbowed out of the way. Instead, he took himself to the far side of the bed, coming to stand between Edward and the wall. He lifted Edward’s wrist and stared at his watch.

Fresh fear bubbled up in Victoire. As Edward weakened, Dr. Maton was all the hope that she had.

He had scarcely left her husband’s bed, ceaselessly battling the encroaching fever with his knives and his glass cups and his jar of glistening leeches.

He was so attentive, so unstinting. She tried to look at him now and believe he had succeeded.

He must succeed. He was all that they had left.

“Well,” said Dr. Maton softly. “Well. His fever has increased. Yes. I think we may bleed him one more time.”

“ Bleed ?” she breathed, ashamed of her weakness, her irrationality. “He surely has no blood left.”

From the way Dr. Maton stared at her, Victoire knew she’d spoken German. But she could not now summon her English.

“Ma’am.” Conroy stepped out from the shadows. “We must listen to the doctor.”

Dr. Maton was staring past her at Conroy, clearly uneasy. Afraid, perhaps, the duchess had gone mad with her grief and was spouting gibberish.

Edward’s hand twitched in hers. His eyes opened again.

“Edward?” she cried.

“Sir?” The doctor bent close. “Sir, we must bring your fever down! I must bleed you once more.”

Edward’s tongue pressed against his lips, trying to wet them. Victoire snatched up the cloth and rinsed it again and dabbed it against his mouth.

Edward’s eyes closed. He swallowed. Victoire felt her heart creak, like ice in the last moment before it shatters.

“Let it be done,” Edward said in English. His eyes opened, and she saw the spark in them. Her heart cried out with hope, and the pain was worse than despair.

“Conroy,” Edward breathed. “Conroy, look after my wife and my daughter.”

“Of course, sir.” Conroy bowed crisply, like the soldier he was.

Then in German Edward said, “Fear not, my heart. I am still strong. Maton will drain this fever out of me.” His fingers curled around hers again. “Then we will show them. You and I and our daughter. We will show them a true queen, and they will all kneel.”