Page 55 of The Heir (A Young Queen Victoria Mystery #1)

T he tour dragged on.

Every morning Sir John shook her awake, always before dawn, even if she’d only gotten to bed a few hours before.

Some days he allowed her one cup of tea.

Some he did not. Always, he dropped his folio onto her lap, handed her the pen, and waited for her to sign.

When she did not, he took away the tray.

Victoria complained to Mama, but Mama said, “Well, then, sign the letter, as you know you should. It will save us all a world of trouble.”

She asked Lehzen why she was not in the room in the mornings, and she thought Lehzen might cry. “He orders me out,” she whispered. “If I did not go, he threatens to send me back to Kensington without you.” Victoria gripped her hand. Lehzen kissed hers.

The third morning Victoria closed the folio and threw it across the room.

But then there came the fourth morning, the fifth, the sixth.

The tenth.

The fifteenth.

She was never permitted a moment alone with Lehzen. Her governess was kept awake until after Victoria was asleep, and shooed out of the room before she was awake.

She missed Dash. She missed Jane. She was so angry and so tired.

There was the concert in York where she pinched herself black and blue, trying to stay awake.

There was the crowd in Doncaster that pressed so close they threatened to overturn the carriage and the horses reared in their traces.

There was the storm in Leeds, where the thunder rattled the windows and the streets ran six inches deep in mud, so that the carriages stuck and had to be levered free.

And every morning Sir John woke her a little earlier, and every day Mama told their hosts that the princess must be kept on the strictest of diets to preserve her health.

“But I’m hungry, Mama,” she said.

“You’re fat,” Mama told her. “You cannot be stuffing yourself.”

At first, Victoria was able to keep her anger suppressed and her spirits up.

She told herself that all she had to do was endure.

Jane was at work. She would soon have news.

By the time they reached Ramsgate, Jane would have proof .

Then Victoria would be able to tell Mama what had really happened to Dr. Maton.

It would be something that could finally be turned against Sir John. Something even Mama could not ignore.

But it was hard. She was so cold; she was permanently hungry; and she was continually exhausted by the noise, the faces, the carriages, the late nights and early mornings.

By Sir John’s hearty cheer. By the way Mama swung from tearful concern and gratitude in public to stern admonishments in private.

“Mama, my head aches,” Victoria said.

“And whose fault is that? If you had not gone riding when you should not, you would not be feeling the effects.”

“Mama, I’m ill,” she said.

“Ah, now it comes. You told us yourself you would try this tactic. Perhaps you regret that particular bit of honesty now.”

The days blurred. Victoria could no longer remember which town she was in. Sometimes she could not remember to whom she was speaking. When Sir John came into her darkened room to lay the letter down in front of her, she blinked at it stupidly.

One morning she found herself sitting up, with the pen in her hand and no memory of how it got there. She threw it away as if it were a snake.

Then came the morning when she could not sit up at all.