Chapter Text
The very idea of it was ludicrous – so any unaffected observer would not have noticed the small glances exchanged between the Queen and her ex-Prime Minister, nor the little smile shared between the Prince and the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, nor the laughter shared between her husband and the Duchess of Sutherland. Who could possibly have imagined the tangle of souls that lay beneath the orderly marriages? To the casual onlooker, the marriages were good and efficient and the trip to Paris was one of monarchical duty, not a lovers’ trip.
"Psyché ranimée par le baiser de l'Amour,” Victoria read aloud.
“Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss,” Melbourne replied, in translation.
They turned their faces up, in unison, to view the statue that bore the name. Two marble figures: a great, winged man, and a woman. The supple flesh of marble about her breast was being hammocked by the cupid’s white hand, and her two arms rose in a soft circular embrace to take her saviours head. And he, with lips of cold stone, seemed to warm as he descended without movement to her mouth to give his great kiss, lifting her weakened body which fell, shrouded in smocks and scarves that draped effortlessly from curve to curve. The form was mesmerising. Rising in two great spikes of bird-like wings, but then falling in drapes. It looked as if one could reach out and touch the skin of these figures and it would feel downy as a person’s skin does.
Victoria’s stomach tightened as she saw their moment of passion, and the twisting turned into a pulsing as she turned to look at Lord M, who was a little flushed.
This was the Louvre and, though Victoria had never been one for the arts as such, she was convinced by Albert that it was the place to go. And Blanche had confessed an interest in the French masters. And Lord Melbourne liked a good painting here and there, and so everyone was bustled along through the gallery. Victoria had moved with the rest of them, but had stopped to observe this sculpture. Observe was not a word for it. She marvelled. Perhaps that was better. For what word can give justice to observing an artist’s work that feels akin to one’s very heart? When the shape of the marble seems to mirror one’s very own being? When something unliving would seem to possess the same heartbeat and same brain as one’s own?
“I feel as if I am that woman, there,” she muttered, keeping her voice down, but gesturing towards the figure of a woman cut in alabaster, leaning up in desperation towards the kiss that would revive her. “I was lost and vulnerable, and then you came down like a winged angel from heaven to save my life.” Her voice was so low that Lord Melbourne strained to hear it, but each syllable he was able to detect was music to his ears. Music that he quickly banished with a shake of his head and a quiet protestation of his own,
“I think you romanticise me too much, Ma’am.” Victoria was about to object; she turned and opened her mouth and drew a sharp breath but then William continued, gently, “If anything, you were the one to save me.” With that, he turned his eyes to her and set her alight. Her burning was imperceptible, contained within a finite space that dimensioned her, flaming beneath the paper of her skin and illuminating the curves of her face which flickered – as a flame does – with her emotion, before settling in a teary look at the face her love had become. Victoria uttered a stifled laugh: half of her disbelieving, but the other half of her knowing. Knowing that Lord Melbourne had once had his heart broken, and knowing that the heart of his she now held in her hands and her bosom was full and repaired. His eyes were teary, too, and neither could see the statue when they returned to gaze at it. Their eyes were too blurred with bleary tears. And even if they had the capability of sight to see it – they could never see it the same way. For now, they would each see their own face in the figure laid out bare on the stone, and would see the other’s face in their saviour.
“How do you find Paris, Duchess?” Albert asked the dark-haired woman which had now become his lover and, more importantly, his brain’s companion. Blanche was more than happy to discuss the art with him, and she did so with such sensitive perception that Albert felt challenged by her, enlivened by her, excited by her. This was a relationship like he had never dreamt. And now she was tearing her eyes away from a portrait to reply to the Prince.
“Very… enlightening, sir,” she grinned, tracing feather-light fingers down the arm of his coat. Albert could feel the soft fingertips tensing on his arm, and then letting go, and flying away as if they had never been at all. He pressed his blush from his cheeks and turned politely to the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland and Ernest. The Duchess and Ernest were – of course – walking very closely together, and the Duke of Sutherland was side-lined somewhat.
“And how are you finding that artworks?” Albert asked the small group that had formed.
“They lack some of the finesse of life, I feel, brother,” Ernest replied, lending a flirtatious look to the subject of his affections – the purest and prettiest life he could imagine.
“I think they mirror life quite beautifully, sir,” Harriet replied, a little harshly, but teasingly. The Duke of Sutherland was about to reply, when the group were interrupted by a mature, but handsome, French woman. Dressed smartly but simply, with all the manners of character that struck the Englishmen and women of the group as remarkably English, but all of the quirks of the face that made her undeniably French, she was an art expert. The Duke of Sutherland had never met a woman who claimed to be an expert in art before. Perhaps the French did things a little differently, he assumed. But she seemed very agreeable. And she was certainly an attractive thing. And she talked of art to a degree of great intelligence. And she talked to such length about the works that Albert, Ernest, Harriet, and Blanche all grew bored and walked away, following the Queen and Lord Melbourne, and the Duke of Sutherland was left behind with this young woman – Amelie, being her name – and listened in fascinated silence all the while as she told him of the varying tones, the tenuity of brushstrokes, and the work of the great masters.
When they had caught up with the Queen and Lord Melbourne, they found them laughing. They could laugh so easily together. That was remarked upon by all. Though their passion was strong, though their conversation was animated, though their looks were loving: nothing was quite so strong between them as the capability for laughter, when the times are good, and the season allows it.
They had been prevented from laughter for so long. But to laugh again. To laugh again!
What he had said, or she had observed, was unclear, but they were laughing and smiling together for hours, as they took to the gardens, and spent the rest of a dreamy day in the foreign sunshine.
“And what do you think of Paris, Lord Melbourne?” Victoria asked, kicking her feet playfully into the gravel, and rolling the term ‘Lord Melbourne’ around on her tongue, enjoying the strange sound of it now that she had moaned the name William into the thick air and the silence of the night. He chuckled at it, as his ears had been the sole hearers of those moans, which had trembled into his skin. With his chuckle came a shrug as she turned the corner of a bush and observed the flowers.
“It is beautiful,” he sighed, reaching down and running the petals of the flower over in the palm of his hand, “But I miss home.”
“Brocket Hall?” she asked, tipping her head to the side, and grinning. Melbourne shook his head.
“Buckingham Palace,” he replied. Victoria furrowed her brows. Brocket Hall had always been where he felt he belonged. He had grown up there, lived there, become a young man within those walls, relaxed there and loved there, and he would retire there, and die when his time came in the slumberous cocoon of Brocket Hall. But Melbourne’s head insisted on shaking, and he explained, seeing her confusion, “Your place is Buckingham Palace. And, therefore, it will always be mine.”
If they were not in danger of being discovered, she would have kissed him, now. She would have pushed him to the ground and kissed him until he could no longer draw breath. But she could not do so, now. So, she told herself that she would do exactly that. Later.
It had become clear that when two people are told to part, they grow closer, and the bond between them is more unbreakable than it ever could have been before. No one could know, of course, how long this strange affair could last. They could be discovered before the end of the week – and ripped apart as quickly as they had come together. But that did not seem to matter for them. They were living on borrowed time: but the life was magnificent.