Page 105 of The Heir
In the street below, Liza was climbing out of a private carriage. The footman came out of the house to collect her luggage, which the coachman had dropped unceremoniously onto the cobbles.
A scant few minutes later, Liza breezed into the sitting room.
“Hello, Jane!” She pulled off her bonnet and tossed it aside. “What’s that? The dinner menu? Oh good. I’m sure I haven’t had a decent meal in a week. I would cheerfully commit murder for one of Cook’s apple pies.”
What are you doing here? I was sure you eloped!
But no. Liza sat calmly on the lounge and began pulling her gloves off. She glanced up at Jane, and Jane saw the deep shadows under her eyes and the hollows of her cheeks.
She also saw her sister’s silent plea that she not remark on any of this.
Jane swallowed hard. “How . . . how is Miss Schumann?”
“Oh, it was a marvelous time,” said Liza brightly. “They would have kept me longer, but I thought I’d best be getting home. I knew the place would be in an absolute shambles without me. I think Mrs. Pullet is happier to see me than Mother is.”
“What about Miss Schumann’s brother?” asked Jane cautiously. “You’d mentioned him particularly before you left . . .”And you said you weren’t waiting for Mother and Father to make any kind of match for you . . .
“Oh, well, that.” Liza’s voice shook. She cleared her throat and went on more calmly. “You know what young men are. Desperate flirts, all of them, but you can’t take any one of them seriously. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that!”
Jane looked at her sister.
Liza looked back.Don’t make me say anything, her weary eyes said.Please.
But Jane stood up and walked over to her. She sat on the lounge and took her sister’s hand, and Liza did not pull away.
“Is there,” Jane began, “anything you will . . . need help with?”
A single tear trickled down Liza’s cheek. “No, Jane. I didn’t . . . almost, but not quite. So, no.” She smiled weakly. “But thank you.”
After that, there was nothing for them to do but hold on to each other while they cried.
Chapter 50
The 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.
