Page 33 of The Heir
Victoria tried to keep her thoughts where they should be. But they kept straying back to yesterday’s ride, to Sir John’s assertions—first, that she had lied, then that she had come across some unfortunate gardener. From there they skittered to Mama catching her out in the palace’s dark spaces and that furious recitation of all her fears as she dragged Victoria back to their bright, safe rooms.
Aunt Sophia going from insisting she would have known if a gardener had died to whispering secrets with Uncle Sussex.
Jane Conroy, stabbing pointlessly at her crumpled fancywork and trying to hide the fact that she finally had something of her own to say.
The rumors sent by Lehzen’s friend that Victoria was finally to be given her own household.
It was a random, ramshackle collection of things. Victoria felt herself piling them all together like a bored child trying to make up a new game from broken toys.
And yet she could not make herself stop. She wanted too badly to make these jolts and jots into something—something that was hers alone and owed nothing to Mama and Sir John or even to Lehzen.
Something that came into being despite all of them.
Even with all these thoughts boiling beneath the surface, Victoria managed to keep most of her mind on her tasks, and her temper largely under control, until the time came for Mama to inspect her journal.
Victoria’s first journal had been a gift from Mama herself for her twelfth birthday. She’d been so excited. She had mistakenly thought that this lovely book with its creamy blank pages could be a kind of friend. She could pour out confidences here, and no one would censure her for what she thought or wondered or doubted. It would be like listening to music—a moment when it would be safe to be herself.
That had lasted all of one day.
The next morning Mama had demanded to see the book and what she had written.
“Shame on you,” cried Mama when Victoria burst into tears. “To say you want to keep secrets from the one who loves you most in the world!” And she, too, started to cry.
Left with no choice, Victoria had surrendered the journal. Once Mama had read her writing, she made Victoria erase it all and replace her thoughts and feelings with several simple sentences detailing what she’d done that day.
Instead of a friend, Victoria found the journal was a new front in her war with Mama and Sir John.
Today, when the time came, she stepped smartly up to Mama’s desk, laid the journal down, and folded her hands behind her back as Mama flipped the pages to her most recent entry.
April 2, 1835
I awoke at seven and got up at eight. Breakfasted with Mama and the dean. Lessons. Practice. Went riding with Jane Conroy and found dead man on the green. Prince startled and shied. . . .
Mama took up her pencil and crossed out the lines.
“Erase that,” she said. “Start again.”
Victoria did not move.
“It is the truth. Even Sir John said it was the truth.” She felt, rather than saw, him raise his head at the sound of his name. “I wrote down exactly what he said last night at—”
“It is not a subject for you to write upon!” Mama shouted. “You are to know nothing of such things! What will people think when—”
“I’m to know nothing of death?” Victoria snapped back. “How many funerals have I attended? How many lectures have I endured about what must happen when my uncle king dies?” She paused. “Or perhaps you are worried because you do not wish me to write honestly about what you and Sir John—”
Sir John stood up. Mama’s face went hard as stone. In one abrupt motion, she tore out the page and crumpled it in her fist. Victoria stared, mute, her fists clenching around the empty air.
“Begin again.” Mama snapped the book shut and pushed it back at Victoria. “And this time remember who you are.”
There was a cough. Everyone jumped. The footman stood beside the door, and Dr. Clarke stood with him.
“Your Highness. Your grace. Lady Charlotte. Sir John.” The doctor bowed. “How does Her Highness today?”
“She should be bled,” said Mama. “Her brow felt distinctly warm this morning, and her spirits are unusually heightened.”
“Well,” said the doctor, “we shall see about that.”
In the privacy of her boudoir, Dr. Clarke settled into the business of taking Victoria’s pulse, examining her eyes and the back of her head, and asking her about her pains and blurred or double vision. When it was through, he once again pronounced her sound.
