‘We will go now,’ said Lehzen, ‘and then we shall be back in time for Monsieur Grandineau’s French lesson.’

They were talking of the doll as they came out of the apartment and there was Sir John Conroy smiling the smile which Victoria could not like.

‘Going to buy the doll?’ he asked. What a pity, thought Victoria, that he knew. It was a lesson not to talk too much in future. She sighed. There seemed to be lessons in everything. What tiresome things lessons could be! But perhaps Mamma had told him.

Lehzen replied shortly that they were.

‘And the Princess saved her money for it,’ went on Sir John. ‘That is quite admirable. I know how careful she is with her money. She is getting more and more like her Grandmamma Queen Charlotte. She was very careful with money.’

Victoria coloured hotly and pulled at Lehzen’s hand. I hate him, she thought. I wish he would go.

Like Queen Charlotte! Queen Charlotte was ugly; she was unattractive. Nobody had liked her. Although poor Aunt Sophia and Augusta never actually said so, one could tell when they talked of their Mamma that they had not really loved her.

‘Am I like Queen Charlotte?’ she demanded as they walked through the gardens.

‘Not in the least,’ comforted Lehzen.

‘He once said I was like the Duke of Gloucester.’

‘I do not think,’ said Lehzen in a chilly tone, ‘that we should take any notice of what that man says.’

Lehzen could not have told her more clearly that she disliked Sir John, and Victoria was comforted. If Lehzen disliked him, then she could do so and know that she was right to. Only Mamma did not dislike him. That was the odd thing. Mamma liked him in a strange sort of way.

But they were getting near to the shop and the thought of clasping the doll in her arms at last, of seeing it in the nursery with Queen Elizabeth and the rest drove from her mind such unpleasant thoughts as those conjured up by brooding on Mamma’s relationship with Sir John.

‘I have the money,’ she told the man in the shop and he was so pleased, not she was sure because he wanted to sell the doll but because he knew how pleased she was to have her.

She laid the money carefully on the counter and the doll was taken out of the window.

Would the Princess like it wrapped, or would she carry it?

Wrapped! She could not bear it to be wrapped. The doll was for her a living person. One did not wrap up people.

‘I will carry her,’ she said.

And the doll was laid in her arms and Lehzen touched its face lovingly and said it was a very fine doll indeed, and compared favourably with the Big Doll.

The man at the door opened it with a bow and Victoria holding the precious doll, smilingly happily, walked out. She was glad, she told Lehzen, that it had taken so long to save up the money because this made the doll more precious.

It was a good lesson learned, said Lehzen; and then Victoria was staring in horror at the beggar in the road. His clothes were so ragged that she could see the flesh of his poor thin legs and arms, which was blue with the cold. He looked hungry. Such sights affected her deeply. Louisa Lewis had told her how Princess Charlotte felt the same and used to give all the money she had to the poor people she met, going without what she wanted herself to do so.

And there was this poor man – cold and hungry and his eyes were on the plump little girl in her warm cloak and her pretty bonnet, holding in her arms the smiling beautifully dressed doll.

She said to the man: ‘You are hungry, I believe.’

He nodded.

‘Wait here a moment.’

‘Princess,’ said Lehzen, ‘what are you thinking of?’

But Victoria had gone into the shop. ‘Please,’ she said to the shopman, ‘may I have my six shillings? You may take the doll and put her back in the window, but please put the ticket Sold on her. I will start to save again for her but I must have my six shillings.’

Lehzen looked on smiling softly; and Victoria, taking the six shillings, went out of the shop and gave them to the beggar man.


* * *

‘It was a most affecting incident,’ said the Baroness Lehzen to the Baroness Späth.

‘I am sure it was. The dear sweet soul!’

‘And she needed no prompting.’

‘The people will love her. She has so much heart.’

‘That man sneered when he heard of it.’

‘He would. What a pity he has so much influence with the Duchess.’

The two Baronesses sighed.

‘He will have no influence with the Princess, of that I’m sure,’ said Lehzen. ‘She already begins to dislike him.’

‘Do you think she is aware …’

‘She is so innocent, but I believe she senses something.’

‘Prince Leopold dislikes him.’

‘Oh yes, there is discord there.’

They nodded and the Baroness Späth looked hopefully at the Baroness Lehzen hoping for confidences. But Lehzen, while recognising the trustworthiness of Späth and her great desire to serve Victoria, thought her something of a fool. She remembered how stupidly she had behaved over the affair of Feodora and Augustus d’Este. Foolishly romantic, that was Späth and Lehzen was far from that; and if they shared an antipathy towards that man who was trying to rule the household, that did not mean that Lehzen was prepared to take Späth into her confidence over other matters.

They talked for a while of Feodora who, Späth believed, was already pregnant.

‘How I should like to be with her,’ sighed Späth. ‘But alas that would mean leaving our darling Victoria.’

‘It had to be,’ said Lehzen. ‘The time had come for Feodora to marry.’ She looked at Späth severely … ‘How anyone could have imagined a marriage with that Augustus d’Este would have been desirable I cannot imagine.’

The Baroness Späth looked suitably discomfited and hinted at some duty she had to perform. She could not endure another lecture over her folly on that occasion. The Baroness Lehzen, knowing that Victoria was safely taking an arithmetic lesson with Mr Steward of Westminster School, went off to make sure that the new supply of caraway seeds which she used liberally on all her food, had arrived.


* * *

Something strange was going on. Victoria was aware of it. There were whispers which ceased when she appeared. It was something very shocking and she believed it concerned that bogy Uncle Cumberland. When someone had mentioned his name Mamma had visibly shuddered; and on another occasion when someone had said his name Lehzen had pursed her lips in the way which told Victoria she thought it unwise even to talk of him.

Wicked Uncle Cumberland was like the witch in a fairy story; the evil ogre, the bad fairy. She had seen him once or twice and he certainly looked frightening, with that dreadful face, and he was so tall and thin that he looked like a shadow. When she thought of Uncle King with his bulky body – like a feather bed she had thought it when she had sat on his knee – and his kind face with all the pouches and hanging chins, she had to admit that although he was King and therefore very important he did not frighten her in the least. But Uncle Cumberland … he was the wicked magician whom the good fairies had to be fighting all the time.

She had met George Cumberland and she had liked him very much. She was delighted to have cousins; and she was growing very fond of George Cambridge who was living with Aunt Adelaide now that he had come to England to be educated. He liked to tell her about his Mamma and Papa in Hanover and how he missed them and how they missed him. He was certain of this because his Mamma, the Duchess of Cambridge, was constantly writing and telling him so. He would be very unhappy, he assured Victoria, but for the fact that he had his Aunt Adelaide whom he loved so much that it really made up for being without his mother.

Victoria listened eagerly; she too loved Aunt Adelaide and, although she would not admit this to anyone, secretly thought what a pleasant Mamma she would make and how strange it was that she should not have children of her own.

So George Cumberland was quite different from his father; and she wished that she could ask her cousins what it was that people were whispering about. Bui Aunt Adelaide was at Bushy and she was not allowed to go to Bushy. There was some reason why she must not and she knew too that Uncle William was not very pleased about this.

What a lot she discovered; and yet she could not quite understand what it was that made so much shocking.

Suddenly she discovered this matter not only concerned Uncle Cumberland but also Aunt Sophia.


* * *

The Princess Sophia kept to her apartments in the Palace. She wished to see no one. It was all so distressing.

Her sister Augusta called on her. Augusta was nine years older than Sophia and she was beginning to look her age, which was sixty.

She embraced Sophia compassionately. She did not blame her for this new scandal which was now being whispered in all the Clubs and in fact throughout the Court and the City of London. Augusta knew it was not true. ‘My dear Sophia!’

Augusta had become more reconciled to her position than her sisters. It had always been so. She had her music and this had absorbed her; her compositions were delightful and gave a great deal of pleasure to herself as well as others. Being a musician Augusta had not minded so much being kept in captivity as the others had. Nor did she seem to care that they were the only two who had not – however late in life – found husbands.

‘This is terrible for you, my dear,’ she said.