I had not been invited to the family reunion between the duchess, Leopold and Victoria, which took place in the first-floor drawing room of the boarding house, with its panoramic view of the harbour and the tide slipping slowly out over the smooth sand of the beach. But I had heard the gales of laughter and knew that the German family was together once more and happy to be so. My ear, though, was attuned particularly to Victoria’s voice, and I heard it less than I expected.
I did not exactly have my ear pressed to the door, but I was sitting in the hallway with a book, just in case I might be called. I wanted sal volatile for my head, and tea to drink, and I had neither. I had spent so many hours in this fashion, and perhaps Victoria had grown too accustomed to being able to call me to fetch and carry, without even rising from her sofa.
Were we really cousins? Is that why we looked so alike? My thoughts churned on. King Leopold had treated me to his confidence today; he took me seriously. I could not help noticing that Victoria, on the other hand, had been treating me rather like her dog. Or worse than her dog, as Dash had been invited into the tea party while I had been left to wait outside. I wasn’t her dog; I was her cousin! But did she even know? I dug my fingernails into my palms as I thought of how my father had thrust me into this life without having told me all its secrets. How many years would pass before I knew the whole truth?
But before the tea party was over, my father came strutting in through the boarding house’s front door below and began to climb the curving stair. He stopped when he saw me sitting primly on my banquette next to the grandfather clock, and he smiled. In his long face any movement of his eyebrows was particularly striking. He raised them now in his quizzical fashion.
‘Patient and faithful as Dash himself!’ he said quietly. ‘Come up and give me my tea, Miss V.’ I was almost annoyed to realise that today, of all days, he had understood at once that my burden of service seemed painfully heavy. I stood up, smoothed down my skirt and led the way to our own sitting room at the top of the house.
Although it was smaller than the drawing room where the duchess and her daughter sat laughing down below, our own sitting room was – in my father’s usual fashion – warmer, brighter and more conveniently furnished than theirs. In my angry mood, it once again struck me – as it did every so often – that this was odd. Why did the Conroys live so much better than the Kents? We had a little silver tea kettle, an embroidered fire screen and a velvet sausage to keep out the draughts from the sea wind. But then the duchess had always favoured grandeur over comfort, and had no eye for the domestic details that made life snug.
We sat down to our cakes, and my father asked me how long King Leopold had been in the house, and what had been said. I looked down at my cup, reluctant to answer. I felt that earlier in the afternoon Leopold had been treating me, in the nicest possible way, as his spy. Now my father wanted to do the same thing. I sat, rebelliously silent, stirring my tea and thinking. I did not really want to be a spy for either of them.
‘So King Leopold has been nobbling you, has he?’ my father said, watching me carefully. ‘Did he mention his nephew Albert?’
I gasped, annoyed. I’d had enough of being pumped for information. I decided to say, for once, what was really on my mind. I gathered my breath and spoke all in a rush.
‘He said,’ I snapped, ‘that my mother is the natural daughter of the Duke of Kent! And that you married her just to become part of the princess’s family!’
The word ‘daughter’ emerged from my mouth as a strange squeak. In fact, the whole sentence had come gushing out almost hysterically.
He looked at me in surprise.
‘Yes, I am not always Miss Goody-Two-Shoes,’ I said huffily, almost under my breath. These days it often seemed that I needed to do something out of the ordinary to make him see me, his daughter, rather than his servant, the dependable Miss V. I knew that he had come to think of me as a cog in his machine. Well, I needed a little oil or I would continue to squeak.
‘Yes,’ I went on, louder and angrier now. ‘I am tired of finding out secrets second-hand. It’s as if you don’t trust me.’
He seemed positively dumbfounded and sat with his mouth foolishly hanging open. Then he jumped up, strode to the door, quickly opened it, glanced outside and sat down again. It looked like he was checking that there were no boarding-house maids in the corridor, but I also suspected that he was buying himself a little time.
‘That’s right, Miss V,’ he said. ‘Although they tried to hush it up, your grandfather was not Major Fisher, as you have always thought, but the Duke of Kent himself. Your mother is not alone in standing among the unrecognised offspring of the royal dukes. I believe that there are more than forty of them.’
‘Forty!’ I cried. ‘But is this not very … immoral of them?’
‘Why, of course it is!’ my father said, exasperated. ‘Royalty these days is debased, weakened. It’s a plant that’s dying. And that’s why you, and I, my dear, can insinuate ourselves into it. The Conroys are a very old Irish family, that’s true, but I – for example – could never have become comptroller to a royal duchess one hundred years ago. But now, today, with my energy and my hard work, I have done so. I have created a fine life for myself and for my family. A royal duchess needs me. And this need, which only I can fulfil, keeps you and me very comfortable. Is that not right?’
I had wanted an apology, and an admission that he had not been straight. Was he trying to throw me off balance with this talk of illegitimate children? But his idea intrigued me. ‘You mean,’ I began, ‘that you and I … may reach a high position in society purely through our own efforts? Normal people, like us?’ He nodded slowly as he watched me take in what he was saying.
‘Yes,’ he said firmly. ‘Even royal personages must win respect through their personal qualities. The old days when they used to receive deference unquestioned are long gone.’
Of course I had heard many people talking against the old king, who had died very soon after we saw him at the Royal Lodge, and more recently his brother the new king, and their loose and immoral ways. ‘Debased’ and ‘debauched’ were the words people used when they talked about the royal family. And then, even worse, there were the younger brothers of the two kings. Some of them lived with their mistresses, and one of them was our enemy, the Duke of Cumberland.
‘We are the people whose age is to come, Miss V,’ he said. ‘It is our time. The days of royalty are over, but we are the vigorous plants that will thrive among the ruins.’
His eyes glittered, but whether with malice or pleasure I could not tell. I remembered how cross I had felt just a couple of minutes earlier. But reluctantly I admitted to myself that I could see what he meant. Why should people rule over us just because of their blood?
‘You may be related to the princess,’ he continued. ‘You may think that it will open doors or win the admiration of others. Not true! I have found that out for myself in marrying your mother. No one cares about her, as she was born out of wedlock. Good society will never recognise a relationship unless it is dignified through marriage. But good society will recognise service and assiduity, and that you have given. And so you have earned its respect.’
He had taken the wind right out of my sails.
But still something remained. An itch at the back of my mind. An anger.
‘If all that is true, Papa … why did you marry my mother?’ I had wanted to know the answer to this question for a long time, and only now did I have the courage to ask. Was it to feed like a weed on the ruins of the royal family? I looked away, steeling myself for what he might say.
He did look shamefacedly at the floor. ‘Now, Miss V,’ he said, ‘I guessed that you would be too young to understand, and so you are. Despite your being mature beyond your years. I did not marry her just because she was the natural daughter of the Duke of Kent. I married her because we fell in love.’
‘In love?’ I asked. ‘You and my mother were in love?’ The words came out almost scornfully. All the hot rage at what I had seen that day in the park, which had been simmering ever since, boiled over.
I had pushed him too far. He slammed down his teacup.
‘YOU have no right to question your father!’ he shouted. ‘You can count on a Conroy to behave honourably. How dare you interrogate me?’
‘I’m sorry, Papa,’ I said at once, clasping my hands.
We sat silently, both of us staring at the carpet. I was shaking with the shocking violence of his words. How long would the storm last? Not long, not long, it never did. And within a couple of minutes, he was once again pouring his tea.
As I relaxed an inch, and waited, our startling earlier conversation about royalty forced its way back into my mind. I could perceive a glimmer of truth of what he was talking about. Where would the duchess and princess be without our help? Royal blood would not pay the bills. They would be penniless, and given the dangers the princess faced, possibly even lifeless too.
‘Now,’ he said, smacking his hands together, ‘now then, perhaps I was hasty. I know you are a good girl. We must go back to the business of King Leopold. You haven’t told me if he spoke to you of Prince Albert of Coburg, and his plans for the princess’s marriage. Did he?’
I was stunned into saying nothing but the simple truth. ‘Yes. He did.’
‘We must never allow that to happen,’ he said decisively. ‘That would be a great gun in Leopold’s armoury. And we cannot have a foreigner controlling who will sit upon the throne of England.’
‘But Victoria will sit on the throne, surely?’
Now that there was only the life of King William the Fourth between her and the crown, I thought constantly about when that day might come, and whether she would be strong enough to bear it.
‘Well, not if the old king dies before she is eighteen,’ my father said slowly. I could tell that he was unwilling to share so much confidence, but my questioning had certainly damaged his composure a little. ‘If that should happen,’ he went on, ‘then her stupid mother, the duchess, will be regent, and the princess will be under her care.’
The word ‘stupid’ made me blink. I could see that she was not clever like my father was, but the duchess had her own dramatic way of living which made sense to her. And certainly she did care for Victoria. Did she care for my father? I could not tell. It was confusing.
‘But I will tell the duchess and the princess what to do, and how to do it. I will know the way to rule. Leopold is thinking of the children that the princess and Albert might have. He wants another damned member of the damned Coburg family to be near the throne of England – and for Victoria’s children to be half-German.’
‘But what if Victoria herself does not wish to marry this Albert?’ I asked tentatively.
‘Ha!’ he said, almost slapping his thigh. ‘You are not foolish enough to think that she has any choice in the matter, are you? A princess can never marry for love.’
I had not thought of this. I remembered Victoria’s joke, only today, about meeting a handsome highwayman. She loved romance, the idea of falling in love. But she could never, ever do so herself. How grim!
My father could see this realisation crossing my face like a shadow.
‘So King Leopold is not quite as disinterested as he seems with his good advice,’ he went on, with a low laugh. ‘So now we must hope and pray for something quite wicked, Miss V. We must hope and pray that a certain person does die within the next two years, so that another certain person will become regent. And then John Conroy, commoner though he is, will know what real power tastes like.’
I saw his coal-black eyes glowing, and his colour was up.
My father, always ready with an answer to every question. I turned away from him with a sigh. Sometimes I adored him, sometimes I feared him. Whichever it was, I had no way of escaping him.