A Flaw in the Blood Read Online Free PDF Page A

Prince Leopold. The year was 1853. What Snow witnessed at Windsor then was to change all their lives.
    Georgie's head turned on the pillow; she gasped in pain. Fitzgerald had not prayed much—but perhaps he had gotten Snow's attention, wherever he was.
    “I'm going to be sick,” she said. And reached for the washbasin.
    They brought in the dead coachman at twenty minutes past four.
    “Neck's broke,” the innkeeper said with satisfaction. “Wrung clean as a chicken's. You were lucky to crawl away from that smash—but then, the Irish are born with the Devil's own luck.”
    Fitzgerald was leaning over the corpse, laid out on a scrubbed oak table in the public room—a man younger than himself, hatless but clothed in the scarlet livery of Windsor. The brown eyes were still staring; he closed them gently. “You found the spikes?”
    “What spikes?”
    The voice came from a tall figure looming behind the innkeeper, a deeper shadow in the darkness beyond the candle flame.
    “A palisade of lashed poles, set out in the road to snare the horses.” Fitzgerald straightened. “And you, sir, would be . . . ?”
    “Wolfgang, Graf von Stühlen.” He stepped into the light.
    He was dressed for riding, in the polished boots and hacking jacket of a gentleman, a cloak flung carelessly over one shoulder. Gloves and a top hat under his arm, a luxuriant moustache and side-whiskers on an otherwise clean-shaven face. Had Fitzgerald never heard the name, he still would have known von Stühlen instantly: Wolfgang von Stühlen was one of the Prince Consort's cronies, famous for the black canvas patch that covered his right eye. A duelist had winged him there, before dying. He was roughly Fitzgerald's age—but looked younger, fitter. And far better bred. So much elegance at four o'clock in the morning made Fitzgerald feel like a peasant.
    “I set off immediately when news was received of this . . . accident.” Coburg in his tone; a faint Oxonian drawl. “The Queen will be most displeased. Two horses dead. And a coachman.”
    “Not to mention the shock to her guests,” Fitzgerald retorted. “You astonish me, Count. Such an errand's beneath you, surely?”
    A flash of white teeth, with no mirth behind it. “Nothing the Queen desires is beneath her loyal subjects. Particularly at
such
a time. You will have heard of the Consort's passing?”
    “Aye, that we have.”
    Von Stühlen bowed; the Count's gesture had the force of an insult. He said to the innkeeper: “You will see that the body is kept in order until the inquest. It must be held here. Send word when the panel is done.”
    “Yes, yer honour.”
    “But I saw the palisade myself,” Fitzgerald persisted, “when I quitted the wreckage. You'll find the wounds from the spikes on the dead horses.”
    “I found nothing,” the German returned, “but the evidence of my nose. The corpse reeks of whiskey. As, I must say, do
you.
If you will excuse me, Mr. . . . ?”
    “Fitzgerald.”
    “Ah. An Irish name, I collect?”
    Fitzgerald's fist clenched. “And what is that to the purpose?”
    Von Stühlen's lips pursed in amusement. “The Irish are a race known for wild imagination. No doubt you conjured up this . . . palisade. A phantasm of shock. Or deep drinking.”
    He reached in his purse and tossed Fitzgerald a shilling. “Buy yourself another, by all means. And then may I suggest you leave Hampstead?”
    “Von Stühlen! What are you doing here?”
    Georgiana's voice. She was poised on the stairs, swaying as though she might faint, a bandage tied round her head.
    The German Count's face flushed red, then drained white. “Miss Armistead,” he said with a sweeping bow, nothing of insult in it this time; “I might ask the same of
you
.”

CHAPTER FIVE
    I   FORMED THE HABIT OF KEEPING a diary from a very little child. Or rather,
two
such volumes. Like most solitary children who are forced to protect themselves, I lived one life for public view and another entirely inside my