Free A Flaw in the Blood by Stephanie Barron Page A

so fortunate. No, Patrick—I won't come with you. I have poor Lizzie to think of, and others—”
    But her words died in her mouth. Fitzgerald looked toward the doorway. Georgie's housekeeper was racing to meet them, a stricken expression on her face.
    Georgiana's rooms were like the woman herself, Fitzgerald thought—elegantly spare; intelligently arranged. Not for Georgie the excess of velvet hangings or the wave of bric-a-brac crowding every surface, the plant stands overflowing with ferns; Georgie's walls were cream, picked out with gold, the simplest of hangings at the tall windows. Light poured into the rooms even in the darkest months of winter. To sit there with Georgie was to stem the turbulent beat of his days, the wild disorder of his thoughts and passions. Georgie was the voice of reason. The air of decision. The order of science. Caught in a form as breathtaking as Venus.
    Now, however, the house was a scene of devastation.
    The Aubusson carpet was rucked up over the floorboards; a gilt picture frame lay smashed in the fireplace, its canvas torn; a piece of the marble mantel had been broken off and tossed at yet another picture, which hung askew and ravaged above the settee. Chair upholstery was slit down the middle and feathers strewn everywhere.
    “I just stepped round to St. George's, Hanover Square, to pray for the repose of the dear Consort's soul,” the housekeeper said as Georgie stopped dead in the middle of her drawing room, her medical bag slipping to chaos on the floor, “and you always give the staff their afternoon out, of a Sunday. So the place was empty, do you see? And when I returned—just
look
at it! We've had thieves, miss, and what I can't make out is what they thought to come for! All the silver's in the pantry, and your jewels never touched in the boudoir . . . but my word, your
desk
!”
    “My desk?” Georgiana repeated faintly—and then swept through the drawing room to the library beyond. “Oh, Patrick!”
    Papers scattered everywhere, as they had been in Fitzgerald's chambers.
    He took one step forward into the room and stopped short. He had never seen Georgie cry before—not even when John Snow died.
    “My darling,” he said, and went to her.
    “It's just that it's so cruel,” she muttered against his shoulder. “These aren't my things, Patrick—they're Uncle John's. All his case notes. Documents he kept for
decades
—statistics of populations, meticulous research. It will take me days to reorder them all. And for what?”
    He held her away from him, studied the swimming eyes.
    “You'll have to find out,” he said. “Now, not later—because whatever you may think, Georgie, you're leaving London with me tonight. I
will not
allow you to remain in this house.”
    “But—”
    “Those men came
here
. They tracked you to St. Giles. They wanted something
you
had. They didn't come because of Sep or even because of me—they came because von Stühlen glimpsed you in Hampstead at dawn. Do you understand?
You're in danger, love.
Now start picking up these papers and tell me what the men found. They didn't want your candlesticks—they wanted something in this room, in your desk. What was it?”
    “My letters.” Her voice was colourless. “All my private correspondence is gone.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
    I   KNOW EXACTLY WHAT AGE I was, when I learned that Mama was a whore.
    Well-bred and exceedingly high in the instep, to be sure—demanding the respect and consideration of the Polite World, as must be only natural in one of
Royal blood
—but a whore regardless.
    It was in the midst of one of our incessant Progresses, when Mama and Sir John Conroy—her Master of Household, the Demon Incarnate—put the Heiress Presumptive on display, among the great houses of England.
    I was eleven. My uncle, George IV, had died at last and I was exceedingly angry at being forbidden to attend Uncle William's coronation—Mama ascribing this calculated rudeness on our part to her
delicacy