Chapter Text
Not every woman was born with a soulmark. It had never bothered William that he and Caro were not bonded. He had loved her all the same. He had been hurt and humiliated by her affair with Byron, but in the end, he could never bring himself to fully forsake her. It was never in his nature to turn his back on those he loved. Caro had still needed him and never refused him during her Times.
The Time was both a blessing and curse. The Time usually happened for the first time around a woman’s twentieth year. Only during the Time, was a woman fertile, and must be mated frequently or suffer greatly over a period of days. A soulmarked woman often refused a man not her mate. But the Time only came every five years and mercifully spaced out children for couples.
Caro had only conceived once more following Augustus, a baby girl that she could not carry to term. Melbourne had sobbed helplessly as the poor child died in his arms, too small to survive.
Caro’s health declined in the years following the loss of their daughter and he found himself a shockingly young widower. Melbourne mourned her loss, especially felt the guilt of what could have been. Still and all, he was grateful for not having been bonded to her. He would have been unable to withstand her infidelity and her death would have destroyed him. Augustus needed him.
Men did not have soulmate marks. If they bonded with someone, it was through marking their mate with a unique body scent. The bonding instinct was more than an overwhelming sexual attraction; it was a connection that did not require words. It was an overwhelming instinct to protect, as well as territorial urges. Once it begun in a man, it could not be stopped.
Melbourne was heartbroken when Augustus died in his arms. The world had lost all color, and life all meaning. For some time he had wondered why he had even served a second term as Prime Minister. It was a feeling he still had the morning he shook off yet another night in his chair after too much brandy and mounted his horse to ride for Kensington to meet the new young Queen England had awoken to.
Alexandrina’s first reaction was that he quite literally stole her breath as he knelt before her and kissed her hand. He was middle-aged, and yet his clothes still fit his fine figure beautifully. His curling hair was still full and dark with only the faintest traces of gray. He had gentle, kind green eyes. And he smelled of sandalwood and citrus. He possessed a gorgeous patina that a younger man simply could not have. She knew her experience was sorely limited, but she could not have imagined a more handsome and dashing man than the Prime Minister. Lord Melbourne was simply the most breathtaking man she had ever seen. It was quite no wonder then that he was “disreputable,” as Lehzen had termed it.
But that was not what shocked her the most. She trusted him. Alexandrina never trusted anyone. The closest she came to trusting anyone was Lehzen, and even Lehzen treated her as a little girl. But no one else. Not ever. Not her simpering fool of a mother, and never that opportunistic viper Sir John.
But she instinctively knew this man would never, ever treat her as though she were too female, too short, too stupid. She knew he would always be kind and gentle with her. It would be a vicious pleasure to inform her Mama and that awful snake that she had already selected a Private Secretary and it would never be Sir John Conroy.
To her surprise, she even felt a lessening of the oppressive loneliness that had smothered her every day in the dreariness of Kensington upon meeting Lord Melbourne. Kensington was no place for a Queen. It was no place for her.
Oddly enough, she agreed with Sir John on one salient point. Her regnal name could not be Alexandrina. She had always hated it, anyway. Tomorrow she would inform Lord Melbourne that going forward she wished to be known as Queen Victoria.
She was tiny, almost childlike at no more than five feet tall. She had shining brown hair and enormous blue eyes in a face of doll-like prettiness. And she smelled divinely of jasmine. She was stunningly beautiful in a winsome and girlish way. Though everything about her was delicate, she carried herself like a queen. She had a regality about her that simply could not be taught.
Though Melbourne knew him but little, he had never liked Sir John Conroy. Everything about him said scheming opportunist. The fact that the man waylaid him outside of Kensington before he could even speak to the Queen? Well,it made Melbourne take notice. He didn’t like what he saw at all. Melbourne had immediately gleaned that the young Princess Alexandrina had been kept isolated in the hopes of making her dependent upon her mother and Conroy once she ascended to the throne. He found himself grateful to the King for managing to live past the Princess’s majority, thus thwarting their plans.
His first instinct upon meeting her was to protect her, especially from Sir John Conroy. There would be others to protect her from as well, those who would underestimate her because of her sex, because of her age.
Despite all the demands on his time, he wanted to be the one to help her, and in order to do that, he must be at the top of his game. He had only slightly surprised himself when he offered to be her Private Secretary.
To the shock of his valet, he demanded clean linens for his bed. Being at his best meant no longer sleeping in his chair, and it also meant no more brandy until he passed out. He was needed. His Queen needed him. For the first time since that terrible day the small coffin had disappeared into the ground, William Lamb felt a purpose.