Victoria and Albert by Evelyn Anthony

Author:Evelyn Anthony
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media

13

“If I hadn’t you to encourage me, I don’t know how I could have got through it! Really, Albert, I felt so irritable when I saw him come into the room, and when he stood in front of me and pointed his feet again I could have screamed!”

Victoria swept aside the skirts of her dress and made room for Albert to sit near her in the window seat. She had just come back from her interview with Sir Robert Peel, but this time she had received him in one of the less formidable state rooms. At the Prince’s suggestion Peel had been spared that long, nerve-racking walk down the White Drawing Room, with its unpleasant memories of that other meeting two years earlier.

Melbourne’s Government had resigned and the Tories were in power. Albert was thankful for the assistance of Stockmar and Anson in persuading the Queen to welcome Peel and his associates as gracefully as possible. He had never appreciated how difficult she could be, or how hard-pressed Melbourne must have felt at times. Her refuge from anything she disliked was her own impregnable position as Queen; whatever the electorate decided, she was able and determined to show that she did not approve of its choice, and to make the sweets of office very indigestible to the men who were unable to govern without her. That was her privilege, and it took hours of patient argument and tactful pleading to dissuade her from exploiting it to the utmost.

Peel was a worthy and honest man, most anxious to earn her trust and forgiveness for past mistakes. Any hint that she had been in the wrong or that she had no real alternative but to be nice to him would have been disastrous, and the combined efforts of the Prince and her advisers had soothed her resentment into polite hostility. Albert sat beside her and patted her hand.

“I know what an effort it was for you, dearest; but I do hope it went off well.”

“Yes, I think it did,” she admitted. “I didn’t say anything disagreeable, and I avoided staring at his feet.” She smiled at the memory. “I think you would have been proud of me, I was so controlled. Perhaps I may be able to tolerate him after a time. But he’ll never be as pleasant as Lord M.”

“Pleasantness isn’t the most important quality in a Prime Minister,” Albert said. Melbourne must be banished from her mind as well as her sight. Stockmar had been so emphatic on that point that Albert couldn’t allow the comparison to pass unchallenged. Melbourne was already writing long letters to her, which he, as a member of the opposition, had no right to do, and that would have to be stopped.

“No, but it is a help,” Victoria sighed. “Especially since I am in this condition again.”

She was not at all pleased to be pregnant again so soon, and her attitude had shocked Albert. He felt it was not quite womanly and proper to enjoy the privileges of married life so heartily and so obviously for their own sake.

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