Jane and the Barque of Frailty (35 page)

And then without warning Albert seized my head, forcing it down, as the ball whined benignly over us.

He would have protected me if he could. That was his nature. But I fought his hands, staring without fear at Edward Oxford, this half-mad son of a mad mulatto labourer, inviting him to shoot as he raised his second pistol. The coachman did not drive on. Albert cried out in German. The second ball sang wide.

It was Providence, I suppose, that preserved me.

And I must read in that preservation a sign: That I am ordained to rule. That it is right, and just, for me to endure as Queen of England.

Oxford was seized by some passers by, and the whole episode devolved into the sordid business of courts and newspapers—of men like Patrick Fitzgerald. Men who owe no one loyalty. Who profit from conspiracy. Who believe a killer may be innocent, simply because he is mad.

Would death then, in the full flower of my youth and love, have been preferable to this abandonment? This grief cutting a trench through my heart?

All those years of pregnancy—child after child after child; the deep abiding depression that rode me like a curse; the weight I could not shed; Albert more remote with every birth; the demands of Royalty I refused to face; the way he became King without ever needing the crown.

Only once in recent memory did I recognise the ardent lover—the youth who took my face in his hands and drank from my lips. It was the day he nearly perished in the wreck of his carriage, and the mistress he pursued was Death.

Did he feel that same clarity, as his horses raced toward the crossing bar last autumn? Did he stare down the train as I did Edward Oxford? Neither of us lacked courage. It was for Death to decide whether to take us.

And now I have given Her my Albert. No one will shield me any longer. No one will treat me like a child. It is for me to suppress his ravings, the mad words that drowned him at the end—for me to protect what he was, at last—from such villains as Patrick Fitzgerald.

JANE AND THE BARQUE OF FRAILTY
A Bantam Book

Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2006042765

Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-307-48652-3

www.bantamdell.com

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Table of Contents

Cover

Outstanding Praise for JANE AND THE BARQUE OF FRAILTY

Other Books By This Author

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1: A Night Among the Ton