Perdita's Prince: (Georgian Series) Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Jean Plaidy

  Title Page

  The Queen’s Maid of Honour

  Encounter in Hyde Park

  Command Performance at Drury Lane

  The Reflections of Perdita

  Incident at Covent Garden

  ‘A Triumph of Chastity!’

  The Meeting at Kew

  Mr Fox calls on Mr Sheridan

  ‘So Turtles Pair’

  Cumberland House

  Blackmail

  The Queen Plots

  Danger on Hounslow Heath

  Birthday Celebrations at Windsor

  Humiliation in Hyde Park

  Love Letters of a Prince

  Mr Fox and the Government

  Carlton House

  Epilogue

  Bibliography

  Copyright

  About the Book

  George III, fighting madness and the loss of the American colonies, has a domestic crisis as well. The 17-year-old Prince of Wales, fighting the puritanical decorum of his parents’ court, is about to begin his career of womanizing, gambling and consorting with the King’s political enemies.

  At the Drury Lane Theatre, the Prince is enchanted by popular actress Mary Robinson in the role of Perdita in A Winter’s Tale. Although she is older, married and a mother, the Prince sets her up as his mistress. Mary has had many adventures, and is not averse to the attentions of the young Prince despite much opposition from those around them.

  Like most royal scandals however, the affair doesn’t last. George has no notion of fidelity and soon loses interest in her, but she won’t let him escape without a fight. The affair is used to advantage by the King’s political opponents, while the Prince moves on to newer, more flamboyant dalliances, happily anticipating the unbridled indulgence his 21st birthday will permit.

  About the Author

  Jean Plaidy, one of the preeminent authors of historical fiction for most of the twentieth century, is the pen name of the prolific English author Eleanor Hibbert, also known as Victoria Holt. Jean Plaidy’s novels had sold more than 14 million copies worldwide by the time of her death in 1993.

  Also by Jean Plaidy

  THE TUDOR SAGA

  Uneasy Lies the Head

  Katharine, the Virgin Widow

  The Shadow of the Pomegranate

  The King’s Secret Matter

  Murder Most Royal

  St Thomas’s Eve

  The Sixth Wife

  The Thistle and the Rose

  Mary, Queen of France

  Lord Robert

  Royal Road to Fotheringay

  The Captive Queen of Scots

  The Spanish Bridegroom

  THE CATHERINE DE MEDICI TRILOGY

  Madame Serpent

  The Italian Woman

  Queen Jezebel

  THE STUART SAGA

  The Murder in the Tower

  The Wandering Prince

  A Health Unto His Majesty

  Here Lies Our Sovereign Lord

  The Three Crowns

  The Haunted Sisters

  The Queen’s Favourites

  THE FRENCH REVOLUTION SERIES

  Louis the Well-Beloved

  The Road to Compiègne

  Flaunting, Extravagant Queen

  The Battle of the Queens

  THE LUCREZIA BORGIA SERIES

  Madonna of the Seven Hills

  Light on Lucrezia

  ISABELLA AND FERDINAND TRILOGY

  Castile for Isabella

  Spain for the Sovereigns

  Daughters of Spain

  THE GEORGIAN SAGA

  The Princess of Celle

  Queen in Waiting

  Caroline, the Queen

  The Prince and the Quakeress

  The Third George

  Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill

  Indiscretions of the Queen

  The Regent’s Daughter

  Goddess of the Green Room

  Victoria in the Wings

  THE QUEEN VICTORIA SERIES

  The Captive of Kensington

  The Queen and Lord M

  The Queen’s Husband

  The Widow of Windsor

  THE NORMAN TRILOGY

  The Bastard King

  The Lion of Justice

  The Passionate Enemies

  THE PLANTAGENET SAGA

  The Plantagenet Prelude

  The Revolt of the Eaglets

  The Heart of the Lion

  The Prince of Darkness

  The Battle of the Queens

  The Queen from Provence

  The Hammer of the Scots

  The Follies of the King

  The Vow of the Heron

  Passage to Pontefract

  The Star of Lancaster

  Epitaph for Three Women

  Red Rose of Anjou

  The Sun in Splendour

  QUEEN OF ENGLAND SERIES

  Myself, My Enemy

  Queen of this Realm: The Story of Elizabeth I

  Victoria, Victorious

  The Lady in the Tower

  The Goldsmith’s Wife

  The Queen’s Secret

  The Rose without a Thorn

  OTHER TITLES

  The Queen of Diamonds

  Daughter of Satan

  The Scarlet Cloak

  Perdita’s Prince

  The sixth book in the Georgian Saga

  Jean Plaidy

  The Queen’s maid of honour

  THE PRINCE OF Wales stalked up and down his apartments in the Dower Lodge on Kew Green and aired his grievances to his brother, Prince Frederick.

  ‘I tell you this, Fred,’ he declared, ‘I have had enough. The time is now coming to an end when we can be treated like children. Like children, did I say? Why, bless you, Fred, we are treated like prisoners. Our father, His Majesty …’ The Prince made an ironical bow which brought a titter to Frederick’s lips ‘… is the slave of his own passionate virtue. God preserve us, Fred, from virtue such as that practised by King George III. And our mother? What is she but a queen bee? There in her hive she grows large, she gives birth and, by God, before she has had time to walk a dozen times through her Orangerie or take a pinch of snuff or two, she is preparing to give birth once more. I thought Sophie would be the last, but now we are to have another little brother or sister despite the fact that we have eleven already.’

  ‘At least His Majesty does his duty by the Queen, George.’

  ‘I doubt not that our noble mother would wish him to be a little less dutiful in that direction – although giving birth has now become a habit with her. Really, they are a ridiculous pair. What has the Court become? It is small wonder that people mock. Have you heard the latest?’

  Frederick shook his head and his brother quoted:

  ‘Caesar the mighty King who swayed

  The sceptre was a sober blade;

  A leg of mutton and his wife

  Were the chief comforts of his life.

  The Queen composed of different stuff,

  Above all things adored her snuff,

  Save gold, which in her great opinion

  Alone could rival snuff’s dominion.’

  ‘You see … that is the popular verdict on our King and Queen!’

  ‘Kings and queens are always targets for public ridicule, George.’

  ‘Criticism, not ridicule. I shall commit sins … royal sins, Fred. But I shall never be accused of doting on a pinch of snuff and caper sauce. Oh, when I look back I wonder how I have endured it for so long. Do you remember the frilled collars I used to be made to wear until only a short time ago? Frilled
collars, Fred! A man of my age … a Prince … a Prince of Wales!’

  Frederick put his head on one side and regarded his brother. Ever since he could remember he had admired George – the elder brother exactly one year his senior, seeming wise, bold and brilliant – everything that Frederick would like to have been; but he bore no malice, no resentment, because George would beat him to the crown by exactly twelve months; George, in Frederick’s eyes, was all that an elder brother should be, all that a prince and king should be; the English, in Frederick’s opinion, were going to be very fortunate to have George as their king.

  He pondered this now. By God, he thought, for he imitated his brother’s mode of speech as everything else, they are going to find George IV a mighty change from George III. The Prince of Wales was contemptuous of their father – so would Frederick be. Caper sauce! thought Frederick with a smirk. When the Prince of Wales became king it would be very different. He would not have a plain wife; he would have a beauty, and perhaps mistresses. Kings should have mistresses; and George was constantly talking of women. He would sit for hours at the windows watching the maids of honour pass by, even though they were not a very exciting band. Their mother had seen to that. George had imitated her taking her pinch of snuff and murmuring in her German accent: ‘Nothing that can tempt the Princes!’ But there was one pretty one the Queen seemed to have overlooked. George had noticed her. Trust George.

  But George was now thinking angrily of frilled collars, and he began to laugh, and so did Frederick, recalling that occasion when George had taken the frilled collar from his attendant’s hand and flung it at him, his pink and white cheeks suddenly purple with rage as he cried: ‘See how I am treated! I’ll have no more of this.’ And he had proceeded to tear the collar into shreds.

  ‘You were at once reported to our Papa,’ Frederick reminded him.

  ‘That’s my complaint,’ went on George, narrowing his eyes. ‘We were surrounded by spies then and we still are. I should have an establishment of my own. But they are too mean. That’s the point, Fred, too mean!’

  ‘I heard it said the other day that the Queen’s only virtue was decorum and her only vice avarice.’

  ‘There! That’s the way they are spoken of. They live like little squires, not like a king and queen. I’m heartily tired of this state of affairs.’

  ‘Still, they don’t flog us now.’

  ‘No. I put a stop to that.’

  ‘Every complaint that was taken to our father brought the same answer: “Flog ’em”.’

  ‘It makes me fume to think of it.’

  ‘But I remember, George, the day you snatched the cane from Bishop Hurd just as he was going to use it on you and how you said very sternly: “No, my lord Bishop, have done. There shall be no more of that!” ’

  ‘Nor was there,’ said George, laughing, ‘which makes me wonder whether if we had not stood out earlier against these tyrannies they might never have continued.’

  The two young men began recalling incidents from their childhood. George could remember being dressed like a Roman centurion in a plumed helmet and being painted, with his mother and Frederick, by Mr Zoffany. Poor Fred was even worse off because when he had been a few months old they had made him Bishop of Osnaburg, which had so amused the people that the child was represented on all the cartoons in his Bishop’s mitre. George was particularly incensed by the wax model of himself at the age of a month or two which his mother still kept on her dressing table under a glass dome. This doting sentimentality went side by side with the stern way of bringing up children. ‘Completely Teutonic,’ said George. ‘By God, can’t we forget our German ancestry?’ Hours of study; shut off from contact with other people; the King’s special diet – meat only a few times a week and then with all the fat pared off; fish served without butter; the fruit of a pie without the crust, all specially worked out by the King who might appear in the nursery dining room at any time and discountenance poor Lady Charlotte Finch, who was in charge of them, if these rules were not carried out to the letter.

  ‘What a life we led!’ sighed the Prince of Wales. ‘And still do!’

  ‘Worst of all,’ added Frederick, ‘was growing our wheat.’

  ‘Farmer George would make little farmers of the whole family.’ George shivered distastefully, remembering their father’s taking them out to show them the little plots of land which he had allotted to them.

  ‘There,’ he had informed them as though, said the Prince of Wales, he were offering them the crown jewels. ‘There’s your own bit of land. Cultivate it, eh? Grow your own wheat … make your own bread. Nothing like tilling the land, eh, what?’

  Nothing like tilling the land! Going out in all weathers; preparing the soil, sowing the corn, while the cold winds chapped their hands. The Prince of Wales was proud of his beautiful white hands. The heat of the sun spoiled his complexion. He was proud of that, too, because in spite of a tendency to develop pimples – which would pass – he had a beautiful soft skin, pink, very pink and white. And this precious skin must be burned in the summer sun while the Prince of Wales worked like a farm labourer. They had even been obliged to thresh their own corn and supervise the baking of their bread.

  The indignity of it all! But it had to be done otherwise the cry would go up: ‘Flog ’em.’ And their parents – the King and Queen of England – would inspect the little loaves of bread that had been made with their own wheat and the Prince of Wales had been infuriated to see that George III paid more attention to this bread produced by his sons than to matters of state.

  ‘I must have an establishment of my own,’ declared the Prince.

  ‘It’s ridiculous that you should be denied it,’ soothed Fred.

  ‘I shall demand it.’ The Prince rose and was about to strut across the room when his eye caught a dainty figure crossing the green on her way to the Queen’s Lodge. He was immediately at the window. ‘By God,’ he cried. ‘She’s a beauty.’

  Frederick murmured agreement.

  She was small, dainty and dark; and suddenly it seemed as though by instinct she raised her eyes to the window where the two Princes stood watching her.

  George immediately bowed. She stood still for a moment, dropping an enchanting curtsey and then turning away, sped across the lawn.

  ‘One of our mother’s maids of honour,’ said George.

  ‘How did our mother allow such a charmer to get in?’

  ‘Like Homer, she nodded,’ laughed the Prince. ‘And let us be thankful for it.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘I, because I intend to know more of the lady; and you because you will be so delighted in my good fortune.’

  ‘Do you think, George …’

  George looked astonished. Of course he would succeed with the lady. Wasn’t he the most handsome, the most desirable young man in England? Wasn’t he the Prince of Wales?

  Frederick hastily agreed: ‘Yes, of course, George, but our father …’

  ‘By God,’ cried the Prince, ‘I thought I’d made it clear to you that I have had enough of this treatment. Everything is going to be different from now on. I am seventeen years old.’

  Frederick, at sixteen, looked suitably impressed.

  ‘Time, dear brother, to have left childhood behind and if our miserly parents will not allow me an establishment at least I shall have a life of my own.’

  *

  In the Queen’s drawing room the royal family was assembled for the evening concert. These concerts took place twice a week, on the King’s orders, and every member of the family was expected to attend or the King would want to know the reason why. Only baby Sophie, not yet two years old, was spared. Even three-year-old Mary was there, seated on a foot-stool at her mother’s feet while Queen Charlotte, pregnant with the child who would shortly make its appearance and bring the number of royal offspring to thirteen, industriously worked on her embroidery.

  The King was comparatively content on occasions like this. It was while he sat with his family �
� all outwardly docile – while he listened to the excellent performance of some piece by Handel, that he could forget his anxieties. There were many of these. The trouble growing steadily worse over the American colonies; the conflict among his ministers, the growing truculence of the Prince of Wales; and worst of all the voices in his head which would not leave him alone, which mischievously mocked him, starting a train of thought and suddenly snatching it away so that he could not remember what had been in his mind a moment before, malicious voices which whispered to him: ‘George, are you going mad?’

  But here in the drawing room with his family seated quietly about him and the Queen looking placid, as she always did when pregnant, listening to the mastery of Mr Papendiek with his flute and Mr Cramer at the harpsichord and the Cervettos – father and son – miraculously performing on their violins, he felt more at peace than at any other time.

  He let his eyes linger on the younger children; he sometimes wished that they did not have to grow up. The arch-trouble maker was his eldest son and as Frederick was his intimate companion that made a pair of them. Young William was only fourteen; he would get him off to sea as soon as possible; that would provide some necessary discipline. Twelve-year-old Edward should go to Germany – as should the other boys, except the Prince of Wales of course. There would be an outcry if he were sent out of England; and he had heard that his son had expressed very strong opinions about that too. George was anxious to forget that his great-great-grandfather, who had become George I, was a German who could speak no English. The Prince of Wales was trying to win the approval of the English people already. The King looked uneasily at his eldest son. A tall, good-looking boy, quite handsome, fair and fresh-complexioned; his only physical imperfection being the family tendency to fat. The King wondered whether the Prince had cajoled his attendants into leaving the fat on his meat or to giving him crust with fruit pies. The King was coming to the conclusion that his eldest son was capable of anything.

  Why had George turned out so differently from what he had hoped? The rod had not been spared. He himself had had a hand in those beatings – and well deserved punishments they were – but he carried a memory with him of the flushed angry face of the Prince of Wales, and much resentment at the outrage to his dignity.