Sir Robert Peel went to London at once. He left in a carriage immediately after receiving news of the riots. He was going to administer justice, he'd said. The military would get involved.
Now Victoria stood in a drawing room in her pink wedding gown, with Melbourne and the Duke of Wellington in their Windsor Uniforms. It was very strange, she thought. She'd just celebrated her marriage, and now she was fretting over riots in London. She cradled her belly and paced a little, worrying,
"What if innocents are harmed over this?"
"Sir Robert will see to it that the riots are suppressed quickly," Melbourne assured her. But Wellington cleared his throat and said,
"I'm sure you remember just as well as I do the rural rioting of 1830, Melbourne. And I'm sure you remember the way my carriage and home were attacked by mobs."
Victoria gasped. She hadn't known that Wellington himself had been attacked. Would people come here, targeting her and Melbourne? Would they be set upon and assaulted, too, here at Windsor?
"It is of utmost importance that Her Majesty stays here," Wellington pronounced, "for her own safety. Peel will keep the violence contained to London, I hope."
"You hope?" Victoria repeated shrilly. She shook her head and felt tears boil up in her eyes. She tossed her hands up and demanded, "Why are they rioting? Could people possibly be so aggrieved about me marrying a Viscount that they -"
"It's not that I'm a Viscount," Melbourne cut in quietly. He shook his head and rubbed at his jaw. "It's that they are all now convinced that I am the father of your child."
"And are you?" asked Wellington. Victoria glared at him,
"How dare you, Duke?"
"Of course I am," Melbourne sighed. Victoria's eyes went wide, and she stared at him for a long moment, but Melbourne met Wellington's gaze and declared, "I think you have known for some time, sir, that Her Majesty's child is also mine."
Wellington nodded. "It has been… a bit obvious. I must say."
Melbourne turned to Victoria and said, "The rioters are not offended by you and I marrying in the wake of Albert's death nearly so much as they are offended by you passing off our child as the heir to the throne. By trying to pretend that the father was Albert, you are lying to your subjects. They are not taking kindly to it."
"So what do I do?" Victoria demanded. "You and I are in a morganatic marriage; our children can not be in the line of succession."
"There is always your cousin, Prince George," murmured Melbourne. Victoria scowled.
"You want me to abdicate?" Victoria was in disbelief. She scoffed. "I am the legitimate Queen."
"Of course I do not question your legitimacy, Your Majesty, but please remember that there was quite a succession crisis before you came to the throne. There are those who believe…"
He trailed off, but Victoria knew precisely what he meant. There were those who believed the teenaged queen was not fit to rule. But Victoria remembered her trips around the country as a younger girl, when she'd been enthusiastically welcomed as the heir presumptive. She pinched her lips and looked at Melbourne.
"If I abdicate, what will become of us?"
He tipped his head and sighed a little, and he said quietly, "You would become Her Royal Highness the Duchess of… whatever the Prince titled you… and I would likely become the Duke. And we would retire to a place of our choosing and raise our family together in quiet solitude."
"Oh." Victoria's throat felt thick all of a sudden. She blinked a few times and whispered, "That sounds pleasant."
Melbourne was quite serious as he shook his head and said, "You have made a terrible mistake in marrying me, Victoria."
"Ought I have married my cousin George instead?" Victoria spat. "I married you for love. It matters, love. Doesn't it? Doesn't it count for something?"
"They are burning down London because of our child, Ma'am," Melbourne said softly, and Victoria huffed a breath.
"Then they shall have their King, and we shall have our family."
A few hours later, a message arrived from Sir Robert Peel. The military had had to stop an angry mob from storming Buckingham Palace. Bastard! The Queen's child is a bastard! They had been shouting.
Melbourne had insisted to Victoria that the British people were riotous but not revolutionary, and that the crisis could be overcome, but she couldn't help feeling helpless, like she'd personally imposed violence upon her people simply by falling in love.
She lay facing Melbourne in her bed and reached for his greying hair. She shook her head against the pillow and whispered,
"I did not mean to love you quite like this."
"Nor I," Melbourne confirmed.
"William, I did not mean to need you like this," Victoria said. "When I asked you to put a child on me, I was trying to save myself from an unwanted marriage. If only Albert had stayed alive… but then you and I would not be in this bed together."
"No, we would not," Melbourne said stiffly. She reached between them and started to stroke gently at his limp cock, her fingers brushing over him as he seethed through clenched teeth. Victoria whispered,
"We could live at Brocket Hall. Would you like that?"
"There is no good that comes of you abdicating, Victoria. You were born to be Queen," Melbourne said. "It would be an unmitigated tragedy. I do not at all wish for you to lose your crown."
He started to stiffen up beneath her hand, and Victoria murmured,
"You are so much more important to me than any crown. You and our child. I want nothing more than the two of you. And I wish to live out my days as a Duchess. The Duchess of York, perhaps. And you will tend to your flowers, and we will tend to our children, and -"
He cut her off then by snaring his fingers into her hair and pulling her close for a kiss. He pressed his lips against hers, and he went harder than ever beneath her hand.
"It is our wedding night," he noted, and she nodded.
"I carried your roses," she said against his lips, and he whispered,
"You wore pink and pearls. You were magnificent."
"I love you." Victoria kissed him so hard that her lips hurt a little. "I love you, William. More than anything. So much more than being Queen."
"They know about that time on the wall at Dover House," he fretted. "They know."
"Well, they don't likely know it happened against a wall," Victoria laughed softly. She kissed Melbourne again, and he nodded.
"Right. I need you now, Victoria. I do need you."
She knew what he meant, for he was throbbing beneath her touch. Melbourne reached to hike up Victoria's nightgown, and he touched his fingers between her legs. She shut her eyes and just sank into the touch, into the way the pads of his fingers pulsed gently on her nub. After twenty or thirty seconds of him massaging her, she started to flush wet, and he muttered,
"It is our wedding night."
"So it is," Victoria confirmed. She was damp now, and she felt Melbourne's hand go to the small of her back and pull her closer to him. They were still facing one another, and she yanked up on his nightshirt until his cock was revealed. She lay on her back, her swollen belly big enough now to tent the blankets. Melbourne curled up alongside her and slid one leg between the two of hers. She rocked to face him, and he slid his cock inside of her. Victoria gasped at the sensation of being filled by him, at the glorious feel of him within her. She let her belly press against his and wrapped her arm around his shoulders. He rocked slowly back and forth, and he leaned to kiss her.
She would never climax like this, she knew, but she didn't care. This was so, so intimate - the way they were lying facing one another with their bodies tangled and twined. Victoria felt him pump his hips, felt him splay his hand on her back, and she relished the feel of his tongue within her mouth. After what felt like an absolute eternity, Melbourne broke the kiss and touched his forehead to Victoria's.
"I need you to find pleasure," he whispered, but she replied,
"William, this is exceedingly pleasurable."
"Oh." He quickened his strokes a little, and then he went still and his breath hitched on Victoria's lips. He gasped slightly, his hips jerking a few times. Victoria felt him twitch inside of her, and she knew he was spilling himself. She shut her eyes and smiled. She was with him. She was with him.
"Lord M," she whispered, and she felt him kiss her. "Lord M. William."
"I love you," he said back. "More than you'll ever know."
He slid out of her, but they still faced one another. Melbourne put his hand on Victoria's stomach and sighed. Then, suddenly, there was a flutter and a little jolt within Victoria's abdomen, and Melbourne gasped. Victoria giggled.
"You felt that?"
"I felt that," he said in wonder. She stared at him, and a tear immediately streamed down his cheek. "I felt that."
He swiped roughly at his cheek with the back of his hand, and Victoria felt her own tears well up. She shook her head and said,
"I don't want them burning down London over our baby. And I won't lie anymore. I am going to go live with you at Brocket Hall."
"No more talk of abdication," Melbourne complained. "It is our wedding night, and I have just felt our child move. I beg you, let us find happiness together for a few hours."
They did, talking quietly about his flowers and other happy things, until at last Melbourne whispered,
"Sarah. As from the Bible."
"The baby, you mean," Victoria said. Melbourne rubbed at her belly and whispered,
"If it is a girl."
"Sarah. I feel that the child is a girl," Victoria said. "Sarah was banished from Egypt. She had to pretend about who she was, lying to the Pharaoh."
"But in the end, her truth was revealed." Melbourne stared at Victoria. "Sarah."
"Your abdication will prevent several things, Your Majesty," said Sir Robert Peel. "First, it will prevent the Tories in government from dissolving the government and causing a Constitutional Crisis. Second, the news has stifled all rioting and will likely quell the ill temper of the people. This decision will spare lives, I should think."
"Right," said Victoria, putting her hand on her belly. "And this is all because the people… because of the child's parentage?"
"It is, Ma'am," Peel said awkwardly. "It was not the marriage that was so opposed, but rather that the child is viewed as having been conceived when His Royal Highness Prince Albert was still alive but unwell. And, frankly, Ma'am, I do not suppose there are many people who still think the child's father was the Prince."
"Right," Victoria said again. She let out a shaking sigh. "I have signed the instruments. The last thing to do is to give my Royal Assent to the Declaration of Abdication Act. I shall do so now."
She walked on trembling legs to her desk and sat. She thought over the last few weeks and nearly cried. Her mother had shrieked at her when Victoria had brought her back to court to hear the news of the abdication.
"Drina!" the Duchess of Kent had screamed, and then she'd rattled on in German that Victoria had inherited her grandfather's madness, that she was not fit to rule if she were willing to give it all up just to marry Melbourne and bear his bastard.
Only, the child was not a bastard, Victoria thought. Victoria and Melbourne were married now. Perhaps the baby had been conceived under questionable circumstances, but it did not matter now. Mother and father were wed. Still, the newspapers had praised Victoria's "willingness to see the displeasure of her subjects about her morganatic misdeeds." Another newspaper had written ad nauseam about how Melbourne had always been a scandalous man, and how his latest scandal had crossed a line and cost the Queen her crown. It was right and just, the newspapers had said, that Victoria hand over her reign to her cousin George.
So Victoria had signed the instruments in the presence of George, her Uncle Sutherland and her Uncle Cumberland, and of course Sir Robert Peel had been there. Her hand had shaken like mad the entire time. She would no longer be Queen, and all because she and her Lord M had needed one another so badly.
She'd asked him to save her from a new marriage after Albert's death, and he had done so. He had rescued her from marrying someone like George, or some Russian or German whom she did not care for. She had been spared a new, loveless marriage to produce heirs. She had married Melbourne. She bore his child in her womb. And now she was signing away her reign as Queen because she had chosen love, and because Melbourne had rescued her.
"I am so relieved to hear the rioting has stopped," Victoria choked out. Sir Robert Peel shifted on his feet and said carefully,
"The people will still adore you personally, Ma'am."
"My cousin George has insisted that I be named Her Royal Highness the Duchess of York," said Victoria, "but my beloved William will not be given a royal title. He will remain William Lamb, Second Viscount Melbourne. And we will go to Brocket Hall, and I will have our child there."
"Brocket Hall, Ma'am," Peel repeated, sounding surprised. "It is a plain home for a Duchess and former Queen."
"It will be the perfect home," Victoria insisted. She blinked through her tears and read over the Act on her desk. She dipped her pen into ink and put it to the paper, and she signed,
Victoria R.
"There," she said, blowing on the paper and holding it up to Sir Robert Peel. "It is done. I am no longer Queen."
He took the paper from her and nodded. Then he bowed respectfully and said in a soft voice,
"God save you, Ma'am."
He backed slowly from the room, and the moment the door shut behind him, Victoria erupted into great, heaving sobs, leaning heavily on her hands at her desk.
Author's Note: Well, we all knew that the rioters and Parliament weren't going to settle for the ruse Victoria tried to push on them, nor the marriage to Melbourne. So will they go live a happy life at Brocket Hall? Thank you as always for reading and reviewing.