A Flaw in the Blood by Stephanie Barron Read Free Book Online

estimation. It was ever thus. When Albert sent him to Curragh to be trained as an officer, Bertie could hardly meet his superiors' requirements, and failed miserably to attain his expected rank. His tutors, from the time he was a little child, despaired of his mastering
anything
. In one field alone does Bertie excel: He dresses to admiration. His style and appearance are the envy of his set. In such frivolous distinction he takes inordinate pride, and will suffer any expense to meet it. I need not observe how little Albert found to approve in his son's dissipation—or the fondness for Society, and gambling, and low entertainments, that inevitably followed on its heels. Even as my Darling's death-hour approached last night, Bertie was summoned from a
party
at Natty Rothschild's. He arrived at Windsor in evening dress, the odour of cigar smoke clinging to his hair.
    When Albert's last breath was drawn, and I lay upon the sopha in the Red Room in the most bitter agony, incapable of tears or speech, Bertie simply stood like a stone with the other children, mute and unmoved as they sobbed. Perhaps at that moment he felt how much he was to blame. I cannot say. His failure to betray the slightest suffering has utterly closed my heart to him. I do not think I can bear to be in the same room with my son.
    The betting in the clubs was odds-on for the Old Man's rallying.
Dear God—and the Old Man was all of forty-two. . . .

CHAPTER EIGHT
    A SSAULTED? IN YOUR CHAMBERS ?”
    He had run Georgiana to earth at last, after a fruitless interval at her home in Russell Square, spent pacing before the drawing room fire and fingering the calling cards he found there. None of the servants could tell him where she had gone; in rising anxiety, he resorted to the cab stand.
    The fifth man in the queue admitted he'd driven Miss Armistead to Covent Garden that morning. Twenty minutes later, he deposited Fitzgerald before a tenement dwelling in the rookery known as St. Giles.
    It being winter and early in the day, the females of the district were within doors; but Fitzgerald had known them to stand in front of their dwellings, naked to the waist, with a bottle of gin in their hands. Most of them were Irish. What could Georgie possibly find to occupy her in this wretched place?
    He entered a narrow hall stinking of urine and cooked pork. There was no light, and he cursed as a cat twined itself sinuously between his legs. A blasted staircase led upwards, past a group of children disposed on the treads, playing at skittles with bleached bones. They told him where to find the lady.
    A cramped set of rooms, notable for a smoking coal fire and four young faces that turned to him expectantly as he hesitated in the doorway. A boy he judged to be no more than ten was toasting a hunk of bread on a poker thrust near the coals; the others huddled at his knees. The straw pallets on which they had slept lay tousled by the fire.
    “Is Sep conscious?” Georgie asked now as she closed the door behind him. “Patrick? Have you summoned a doctor?”
    “He was insensible when I left—a severe concussion of the brain, so the sawbones says. I asked that I be sent word, when he wakes. But I've not been home since—”
    She took his hand, squeezed it briefly. “You believe the attack not unconnected to our adventure of last night?”
    “How could it be else?” he burst out, pacing across the dirty floor. “—Though as God is my witness, Georgie, I've no idea why. It must be papers they wanted—and Sep got in their way. Our chambers were turned topsy-turvy. I'd no time to learn which documents were taken—though I'd wager a guess—”
    “You need a drink,” Georgie interrupted quietly. “You're all to pieces.”
    He broke off, his eyes following the progress of a filthy child, possibly a girl, who stole up to Georgie's skirts and hid her face in the French twilled silk. Georgie swayed slightly, and touched the child's head; he noticed then how dreadful her