Free A Flaw in the Blood by Stephanie Barron Page B

of feeling.
As Uncle William claimed ten bastards by the lovely Dolly Jordan, he could not be deemed fit company for the Heiress Presumptive—although he
was
King of England.
    And so I snubbed the new monarch, whose throne I must eventually fill, and was carried off to Holymount, in the Malvern Hills—by way of Blenheim, and Kenilworth, and Warwick Castle. The year was 1830, and the weather close and hot.
    We had halted perhaps an hour short of Blenheim, so that the horses might be baited and the entire party refreshed. I stood in the private parlour of the inn and stared through the half-open casement, the panes clouded with summer dust. The footman was lording it over the humble ostlers in the stable yard, bragging of his intimacy with the Great; I watched him hawk and spit, and drag his sleeve across the back of his mouth.
    And then a ripple of laughter floated through the open window.
My mother's laugh.
It was of a timbre I knew well—low and suggestive—followed by John Conroy's lilting Irish brogue. My cheeks flushed without warning and I felt an angry heat burn behind my eyes, an impotent fury clenching my fists.
How could they?
Mama had insisted on lying down for a while before nuncheon; she had complained of the heat, she had threatened to swoon. And Conroy had found her there, in the bedroom upstairs. His hand, as I had seen it once before in a chance moment at Kensington, sliding beneath the hem of her thin summer gown and rising along her leg, bare in her sandals at this season, his sensuous lips curling with lust—
    Mama's laughter rippled again.
    Dear Lehzen hurried to the casement and pulled it closed.
    I suppose I ought to have been more understanding. My mother had, after all, buried two husbands—both older than she, both more powerful, both men she was ordered to marry and for whom she cared not a jot. She had borne children as demanded, without the slightest reward of affection or income. My father's death when I was yet a babe at the breast had deprived her of the rank she was owed—something on the order of:
Princess Dowager of Wales,
or,
Queen Mother,
when once I took the throne—titles she made up, in her idle hours, along with lists of stipends, honours for herself and Conroy, peerages and imaginary posts—
    It was Lehzen who instructed and supported me, Lehzen who revealed to me, quite young, what Fate intended I should be. My cherished governess placed my genealogy as if by chance before me, during our long schoolroom hours; and it was only then, examining the family tree, that I comprehended my nearness to the throne. I burst into tears, overwhelmed by the horror of it. That was the moment I suddenly understood exactly
why
Sir John Conroy ruled my weak and silly mother—why his charmed caresses formed a noose round my neck. He meant to
own
the next Queen of England.
    He nearly succeeded. It is in the nature of men to strive for supremacy. All my life I have fought men for power, for the right to claim what is by birthright
mine.
But on the occasion I would mention, I was but sixteen, and ill with fever, and quite deserted by my friends; and Conroy thought to seize his opportunity.
    A squalid bed in a Ramsgate inn, the Demon towering over me in my fever, a pen in one hand and a riding crop in the other. . . .
You will sign, Princess. You will sign this document your mother and I have drawn up, or you will not see a doctor again this side of the grave.
    Mama whipped my thighs herself with the crop that day; she bound my wrists and plunged my head into water until I despaired I would drown.
    Silly girl. Do you not understand what you owe your mother? What you owe the nation? So many sacrifices as Sir John has made for you . . .
    Later I learned that John Conroy believed himself descended from some bastard Royal, that he regarded it as his Destiny to rule England. His madness was animated by the grandest of private delusions.
    That endless day, I refused to sign his scrawl—I sweated, I