Cain His Brother - Anne Perry [183]
Amusement flickered over her face. “No. Did Sir Oliver not tell you that? There is no question of the accident’s being deliberate, you know. She would never do anything so bold or so extremely risky. Not many people die in riding falls. One is far more likely to break a leg, or even one’s back. The last thing she wanted was a cripple!”
“It would stop him returning home to lead the resistance to unification,” he argued.
“He wouldn’t have to lead them physically, riding on a white horse, you know,” she said with dismissive laughter. “He could have been a figurehead for them even in a Bath chair!”
“And you believe he would have gone, even in those circumstances?”
“Certainly he would have considered it,” she said without hesitation. “He never abandoned the faith that one day his country would welcome him back and that Gisela would have her rightful place beside him.”
“But you told Rathbone that they would not accept her,” he pointed out. “You could not be mistaken about that?”
“No.”
“Then how could Friedrich still believe it?”
She shrugged very slightly. “You would have to know Friedrich to understand how he grew up. He was born to be king. He spent his entire childhood and youth being groomed for it, and the Queen is a rigid taskmistress. He obeyed every rule, and the crown was his burden and his prize.”
“But he gave it all up for Gisela.”
“I don’t think until the very last moment he believed they would make him choose between them,” she said with faint surprise in her eyes. “Then, of course, it was too late. He could never understand the finality of it. He was convinced they would relent and call him back. He saw his banishment as a gesture, not something to last forever.”
“And it seems he was right,” Monk pointed out. “They did want him back.”
“But not at the price of bringing Gisela with him. He did not understand that—but she did. She was far more of a realist.”
“The accident,” he prompted.
“He was taken back to Wellborough Hall,” she resumed. “The doctor was called, naturally. I don’t know what he said, only what I was told.”
“What were you told?” Monk asked.
“That Friedrich had broken several ribs, his right leg in three places, his right collarbone, and that he was severely bruised internally.”
“Prognosis?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“What did the doctor expect of his recovery?”
“Slow, but he did not believe his life to be in danger, unless there were injuries that he had not yet determined.”
“How old was Friedrich?”
“Forty-two.”
“And Gisela?”
“Thirty-nine. Why?”
“So he was not a young man, for such a heavy fall.”
“He did not die of his injuries. He was poisoned.”
“How do you know?”
For the first time she hesitated.
ANNE PERRY is the bestselling author of two acclaimed series set in Victorian England: the William Monk novels, including Execution Dock and Dark Assassin, and the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novels, including Buckingham Palace Gardens and Long Spoon Lane. She is also the author of the World War I novels No Graves As Yet, Shoulder the Sky, Angels in the Gloom, At Some Disputed Barricade, and We Shall Not Sleep, as well as seven holiday novels, most recently A Christmas Promise. Anne Perry lives in Scotland. Visit her website at www.anneperry.net.