Victoria

by Daisy Goodwin

  Victoria looked up at their arrival and reached out an imploring hand to Melbourne. “Oh, Lord M, you must come and play with me. I feel sure you will bring me luck.”

  “With pleasure, ma’am.” Melbourne looked over at Albert and Ernst. “Perhaps we could set up another table so that the Princes can play too.”

  Albert looked at him with what Melbourne thought was a faint trace of hostility. “Please don’t bother. I do not care to play cards.”

  Again the moment of discord was broken by Ernst, who said with a determined smile, “But I do. May I join the game, Cousin Victoria? I warn you I am very unlucky with cards, but you know what they say,” and he directed his most flirtatious gaze at the beautiful Harriet Sutherland, who lowered her eyelids in acknowledgement.

  Victoria gestured to the footmen, who brought chairs for Ernst, Melbourne, and Alfred Paget, and they began a game of whist.

  Albert walked over to the pianoforte and, after a brief hesitation, sat down and began to play, quietly at first and then with increasing confidence.

  The Duchess looked at Albert with a happy smile about her lips. “Dear Albert, he looks so like you at that age, Leopold.”

  Leopold glanced sideways at his sister, but it was clear that she meant nothing more by the remark than an innocent observation.

  “Yes, I believe there is a certain resemblance.”

  The music from the pianoforte grew louder, but Victoria may have been the only person in the room to notice that Albert was playing the Beethoven sonata in A flat minor that she had been playing as he and Ernst arrived the night before. There was a particularly difficult passage coming up, which she always struggled with, but Albert played it effortlessly.

  Victoria looked at him, impressed despite herself. Ernst noticed the look and said with a look of supplication, “Cousin Victoria, would you do me the very great honour of playing for me?”

  Victoria glanced at the other end of the room. “The piano is in use.”

  “But I feel the evening can only be complete with a Schubert duet.” He turned to Harriet Sutherland with a wolfish smile. “Don’t you think, Duchess?”

  Harriet stretched her long white neck. “I adore Schubert, and the Queen and her cousin both play so well.”

  Rather to her own surprise, Victoria found herself standing up and walking to the piano. At her approach Albert immediately stopped playing and got to his feet. “Apologies. I did not know you wanted to play.” His tone was studiedly formal.

  He began to move away, but Victoria put out a hand to stop him, and said with equal stiffness, “Ernst has requested a duet. Schubert. I believe there is some music here.”

  She pointed to the sheet music lying on top of the piano. Albert looked at it and nodded. “Yes, I know this. Which part do you prefer? I believe the primo part is more difficult.”

  “I have never had a problem with it,” Victoria said, taking her seat at the upper end of the keyboard.

  “No? But it has so many chords and you have such small hands.” They both looked at Victoria’s hands, which were resting on the keyboard, poised to play. Victoria tried to keep them still as he sat down next to her on the piano stool. Although he was careful not to touch her body with his, she was aware of the heat from him and the sweet faint scent of his skin. When she looked down at the keyboard, she could see that his hands too were shaking.

  Without looking at his face, Victoria lifted her chin and said, “Ready?” and, before he could reply, “One, two, three.”

  She struck the first chord and Albert echoed it in the bass, but as they reached the melody it was clear that while Victoria was playing with attack, Albert was keeping to an altogether more contemplative tempo.

  As the difference in their tempi became a jangling discord, Victoria stopped playing and turned her head. “Am I going too fast for you, Albert?”

  Albert looked back at her with his clear blue eyes, which were, she realised, so like her own. “I think you are going too fast for Schubert. But if that is the pace you want…” With a softening of his mouth that might in another man have been mistaken for a smile, he laid his fingers on the keys, waiting for her to begin.

  This time they played not against each other but together. He followed her tempo, and she resisted the temptation to rush through the difficult bits in the hope that the speed would disguise her mistakes. As they reached the end of the page, Albert reached up to turn it. For a moment their eyes met and there was an echo of the moment when Victoria had first seen him the night before. The second movement of the duet required the players to cross into each other’s register and as Albert’s hand crossed over Victoria’s she felt a flash of heat. A few bars later it was her turn to play a chord in the lower octaves and this time she could not lift her wrist high enough to clear his, so that they could not help but touch. His skin felt warm and the suggestion of a hair tickled the underside of her palm. Her fingers found the notes by themselves; all her conscious attention was on the tiny patch of skin on her wrist that was touching Albert’s. She dared not glance at his face and felt something like relief when the movement came to an end and their hands moved apart.

  In the third movement, the legato passage called for the sostenuto pedal. Victoria automatically reached for the pedal with her foot, only to find she was pressing down not on the cold brass pedal but on Albert’s leather-shod instep, her ankle in its cloud of skirts rubbing against his calf. This time it was Albert who shuddered as her foot touched his. Victoria felt the pressure of his thigh through her petticoats and thought that underneath the torrent of notes she heard him give a sigh.

  As the piece drew to its conclusion, they found that they were exactly in time, and when they struck the final chord at the same moment, they looked at each other in triumph. Victoria could not help but smile, and for a moment she thought she saw a glimpse of white teeth beneath the golden moustache. They sat looking at each other, quite still, listening to the sound of each other’s breathing until the moment was lost in a clattering of applause from the card table.

  Albert immediately got to his feet and gave Victoria a formal little bow of the head. Still slightly breathless, he said in a low voice, “You play very well, Victoria.”

  Victoria looked up at him. “As do you. Albert.”

  Leopold, who could contain himself no longer, turned to Melbourne with a smile of triumph. “The Coburgs are such a musical family, don’t you think? To see the two cousins playing together as if they were one is most pleasing.”

  Melbourne gave him a polished smile that did not reach his eyes. “It was a most enjoyable performance.”

  Victoria laughed and said playfully, “At least we were making so much noise that you could not fall asleep as you usually do when you think I am not looking, Lord M.” Melbourne held out his hands in surrender.

  After watching this exchange, Albert turned to his cousin, and said in a clipped tone, “But you will forgive me, Victoria, if I observe that you do not practise enough. It is necessary to play every day for at least one hour.”

  Now it was Victoria’s turn to stand up, stung by the reproof, and also by the return to his cold, stiff manner. Holding herself very straight, she said with regal hauteur, “Indeed. But I must remind you that a queen does not have time for scales every day.”

  Albert dipped his head as if to acknowledge her remark, then said, his blue eyes as wide and as antagonistic as Victoria’s own, “No. Only for card games, I think.”

  Victoria looked at him blankly, and then with a sharp turn of her head she walked over to the card table and sat down. Only after she had made a great show of looking at her cards did she glance at Albert. He was staring at her as if he might be trying to map her face, but the moment their eyes met he flinched and looked away.

  That night Victoria and Albert both looked at miniatures before they went to sleep. Victoria picked up the likeness of Queen Elizabeth that had been her inspiration, and wondered whether the earlier queen had ever felt the surge of exci
tement she had experienced when Albert’s hand had touched hers. How was it possible that her body should react so violently to someone she found so difficult?

  She put the miniature down and lay back on her bed and looked at the ceiling. How long would her cousins stay, she wondered. Surely they could not be here for much more than a week; then they would go back to Coburg and life would return to the way it had been. But even as she told herself this, her hand still tingled in the place where his wrist had touched hers.

  Albert was looking at the portrait of the young woman with the blonde ringlets. He stared at it intently and then put it away in the drawer of his nightstand and threw himself facedown onto the bed.

  CHAPTER THREE

  G flat minor was the hardest scale, thought Victoria, as she tried for the third time to make her fingers get to the third octave without stumbling. She knew that she ought now to try playing the scale contrapuntally with both hands going in the opposite direction, but just the idea of it was daunting. Then she thought of Albert’s face as he had taunted her about card games, and plunged in, trying to obliterate the image from her mind’s eye. She had reached the opposite ends of the keyboard and was making her painful, chromatic way back when Leopold walked in carrying a cup of coffee.

  Victoria stopped playing and looked at him in irritation. Why couldn’t he understand she was busy? Leopold ignored her frown and, taking a sip of his coffee, said inquiringly, “So, Victoria?” He raised an eyebrow.

  She knew exactly what the eyebrow meant but kept her face blank. “Uncle Leopold?”

  Taking another sip of coffee, Leopold observed her. “Normally it is the man who must declare his love.” He gave her a little nod of the head. “But in your case you will have to overcome your maidenly modesty and propose to Albert.”

  Victoria did not move. “Or not.”

  “No?” asked Leopold. “But the duet yesterday was so charming.”

  Victoria brought the lid down over the keyboard with a crash. “I’m sorry, Uncle, but Albert and I are not suited. He has no manners; yesterday he was playing my pianoforte as if he owned it!”

  Leopold raised his cup to his lips. When he put it down on the saucer, Victoria could see that he was smiling broadly, as if her vehemence only served to confirm his assumptions.

  “I must congratulate you, Victoria.”

  Victoria stood up, and answered reluctantly, “On what?”

  “On the excellent coffee at the palace. When I was married to poor Charlotte it was undrinkable, but now it is almost as good as the coffee in Coburg. Yes, I think Albert will be very happy here.” Before Victoria could reply, he walked out of the room.

  Victoria wished she had something to throw at him as he walked jauntily away. Catching sight of herself in the looking glass over the chimney piece, she decided that her hair, which was still dressed in the temptress style, was all wrong. She walked quickly back to her dressing room and told the footman to fetch her dresser.

  A few minutes later, Skerrett arrived, looking a little flustered. “I am so sorry, ma’am; I went down to breakfast.”

  Victoria waved a hand to dismiss her apology and sat down in front of the mirror, looking at herself critically. “I want you to redo my hair. I think that it looks too…” She paused, trying to find the right word. “Too frivolous.”

  Skerrett met her eyes in the mirror and looked puzzled briefly, then nodded with sudden understanding. “I suggest something very close to the head, with the accent at the back.”

  Victoria looked back at her earnestly. “I want to look substantial, you see.”

  “Of course, ma’am.”

  Skerrett began the tedious work of unpinning Victoria’s hair and redoing it, but her mistress kept fidgeting. At one point Victoria moved her head just as Skerrett was pinning a false braid to the crown of her head, and a hairpin almost pierced the scalp.

  Victoria gave a little yelp of surprise and pain, and Skerrett made a grimace of apology. “If you could try to keep your head still, ma’am.”

  Victoria quivered with impatience. “Yes, yes, I know. But everything takes so long, and I told Harriet that I would meet her for a walk around the palace gardens at eleven.”

  Skerrett tried to distract her squirming subject. “Are you not going riding this morning, ma’am?”

  “Not today. Harriet Sutherland suggested last night that the Princes might like to see the gardens here, and I remembered that I have not been to see the summer house since it was repainted. I think that the Princes will be most favourably impressed by the gardens. I don’t suppose they have anything on such a scale in Coburg.”

  “No, ma’am,” said Skerrett, concentrating on the task in front of her. Ever since Prince Albert had arrived, the Queen had been a good deal more particular about her appearance. Skerrett remembered the wager in the servants’ hall concerning Victoria’s marital prospects and thought that Mr Francatelli might be onto a winner with his sixpence on the Coburg sausage.

  * * *

  At another mirror, on the other side of the palace, Albert was being shaved by Lohlein. Normally he shaved himself, but that morning his hand kept slipping, for some reason, and he had asked Lohlein to take over before his chin resembled a battlefield. Ernst came in just as Lohlein began to pull the cutthroat razor against Albert’s skin. Although Ernst was smiling, Albert could see that he was pale from lack of sleep. He looked at his brother in the mirror but dared not speak with the blade so close to this throat.

  Ernst leant against the doorjamb. “I went to a most interesting establishment last night, called a nunnery—but I saw no nuns there.” He gave a leer that Albert knew was a reference to their father, who was notorious for his carnal appetites.

  “Among the lower orders they are using an ingenious code: ‘titfertat’ means ‘hat,’ ‘whistle and flute’ for ‘suit,’ and ‘trouble and strife’ for ‘wife.’ Quite poetic, don’t you think?”

  Albert found his brother’s eyes in the mirror, and repeated slowly with a mischievous glint, “Trouble and strife.” Then his face clouded over. “I wish you would be more prudent, Ernst. It is bad enough with Papa; if you were to go the same way I don’t think I could bear it. Without you I have no one.”

  Ernst heard the appeal in Albert’s voice and, coming forward, put a hand on his shoulder. With sudden seriousness, he said, “Don’t worry, Albert. I will not be like Papa.” Then his expression lightened. “But the girls here are too delicious. The sooner you marry Victoria, the faster I can go back to Coburg, where there are no distractions.”

  Albert shook his head. “But Victoria is impossible. She spends more time talking to her lapdog than to her mother.”

  His brother shrugged. “Oh, what does that matter?” He leant down and faced Albert directly in the mirror. “I saw you at the piano; it seemed to me that you played together rather well.”

  He winked at Albert, who pretended not to notice. “She has some facility, I suppose.”

  Ernst poked his brother in the ribs. “But did you have to touch her quite so often?”

  “It was a complicated piece.”

  Ernst raised his eyebrow and stared with such knowingness that finally Albert had to smile.

  * * *

  It was so mild for November that Victoria and Harriet went out into the gardens without bonnets or shawls.

  “Another new hairstyle, ma’am? I hardly recognised you,” said Harriet as Victoria came down the steps.

  “I worried that the ringlets were too frivolous.”

  “Well, the chignon is both elegant and serious.”

  “And becoming, Harriet?”

  “Most becoming, ma’am.”

  Reassured, Victoria led the way through the parterres to the path that led to the lake. Distracted, her eyes flicked from left to right until she finally said, “I think, Harriet, that I must do more to entertain the Princes.”

  “Indeed, ma’am?”

  “Yes, I think perhaps a small dance after dinner, with perhap
s a few of the household—nothing elaborate.”

  “An excellent plan. Would you like me to ask Alfred Paget to arrange matters?”

  “Yes, do ask him.” Victoria was still looking around, but then she stopped walking. Harriet saw the Princes coming round the corner of a beech hedge.

  Ernst smiled at them warmly. “Good morning, Cousin Victoria.” He turned to Harriet. “Duchess, I have just seen a most unusual shrub. I am thinking that perhaps you would be able to tell me its name.”

  Harriet caught the hint. “With pleasure, sir. Strange shrubs are my specialty.” When Ernst offered her his arm, they went down the avenue of beech hedges, leaving Victoria alone with Albert.

  They were silent with each other. Victoria noticed that Albert was wearing a frock coat of an unusual cut and white cashmere breeches that showed the muscles of his thighs. Feeling self-conscious, she cast around for something to say. “Do you like gardens, Albert?”

  Albert looked out across the box-trimmed parterres, the neat clipped hedges of russet beech, and shook his head. “No. I prefer forests.”

  Beginning to wonder if Albert would find anything that he liked, Victoria said tartly, “I must tell you that this is the largest private garden in London.”

  “But it is still a garden, a man-made creation.” Albert began to walk towards the lake, Victoria following. Gesturing up towards a clump of elms on the other side, he said, “A forest is part of nature. To be among the trees when the wind is blowing is to feel the sublime.”

  As he lifted his head to look over to the trees, Victoria saw the muscles of his jaw and the strong column of his neck. He had changed so much from the thin, rather hunched boy he had been on his last visit.

  “Well, if you like trees so much, you should go to Windsor. There are plenty of trees there; the Great Park has some which are over a thousand years old.”

  Albert turned to her. “But I can only go there if you invite me, Cousin Victoria.” Was there reproach or supplication in his tone? Victoria could not be sure.