The Regent's Daughter: (Georgian Series) Read online

  Charlotte always felt a strange emotion when she was in Mrs Fitzherbert’s company. Mrs Fitzherbert moved regally, like a queen. In Charlotte’s eyes she was beautiful … perhaps the most beautiful woman in the world. The Prince of Wales thought so and he was a connoisseur of beauty and elegance. Her clothes were never flamboyant but always becoming; she wore no rouge, but then she had the most perfect natural complexion, that pink and white which no artificial adjuncts could quite produce; and her hair was lovely, a mass of gold-coloured waves, unpowdered and completely natural, not puffed out with false pieces. And although she was beautiful she had a look of what Charlotte thought of as a mother. She was comfortably plump with a magnificent bosom – soft and pillowy, thought Charlotte, to cry against, which was perhaps one of the reasons why the Prince of Wales loved her so much; he was always weeping, in the most elegant way of course. Even she had watched his performance occasionally with the utmost admiration. Mrs Fitzherbert was the complete opposite of the Princess of Wales. There could not have been two women less alike – and how strange that they should both be her father’s wives. But were they? Nobody seemed absolutely sure … except Mrs Fitzherbert, of course, who would never have received the Prince so intimately in her house if she did not believe it.

  What a strange family I have! thought Charlotte.

  Now Mrs Fitzherbert’s eyes had gone to Minney and they were soft and maternal. Charlotte would have liked them to look at her in that way. She had her own mother, but in spite of the fact that the Princess of Wales covered her with kisses, fed her with her favourite sweetmeats, declared that she lived for her darling Charlotte’s visits, she was not as motherly as dignified Mrs Fitzherbert was towards Minney.

  There was a change in Minney too. She was no longer the meek one, the one who had to take the most humble part in any game, who was subjected to the bullying of Charlotte and patronizing protection of George Keppel. She was the loved one now.

  Mrs Fitzherbert, her eyes still on Minney, said: ‘His Royal Highness will soon be here. You should be ready if he wishes to see you.’

  Minney expressed delight, but the main emotion of Charlotte and George was apprehension.

  Lady de Clifford’s anxious eyes were on her charge.

  ‘Your hair is very untidy, Princess Charlotte. And may I see your hands?’

  Charlotte held them out and Lady de Clifford tut-tutted in exasperation.

  ‘The Princess is so energetic,’ said Mrs Fitzherbert with a smile. ‘They should be washed. His Highness would most certainly notice. He is so fastidious.’

  Charlotte forgot that she had been about to protest – a gesture of defiance to show George and Minney that she did not care. Because Mrs Fitzherbert had spoken one had to obey. She thought fleetingly how different it would have been if Mrs Fitzherbert had been her father’s only wife and she had been that lady’s daughter. To wish this were so would be disloyal to dear Mamma who loved her so violently, yet how much happier – how much more tidy – it would have been. But, thought Charlotte, immediately ashamed of disloyalty to Mamma, not so exciting. And Charlotte liked excitement.

  ‘I should go at once, dear, and then you will be ready when His Highness comes.’

  So Charlotte was led away by Lady de Clifford, leaving Minney and George – those little paragons who had managed to keep clean – alone with Mrs Fitzherbert.

  Charlotte washed her hands in the water which was brought and Lady de Clifford began a long monologue to which Charlotte did not listen entirely, just enough to know that it consisted of the usual entreaties to remember this and not forget that when in the presence of His Royal Highness, so that she did not shame herself or her governess.

  The long light brown hair had to be combed and made tidy. ‘Princess Charlotte, do stand straight. His Highness has noticed …’ ‘Princess Charlotte, when you begin to stutter, speak slowly. It should help to correct the fault.’

  Lady de Clifford took an extra pinch of snuff – always so useful in moments of tension. Charlotte’s gown was a little grubby. His Highness, that arbiter of elegance, would notice. He would be reminded of the distressing fact that although the Princess Charlotte looked like him she had inherited the habits of her mother. It was to be hoped that any unfortunate characteristics she had inherited from the Princess of Wales would be suppressed.

  She looked critically at her charge. A pity the Princess had not remembered that visits to Tilney Street could often mean that she might meet her father, and that on those occasions she should not indulge in the rough horseplay for which she seemed to have such a fancy. But there was nothing further to be done. At least Her Highness was clean.

  ‘We should now go to Mrs Fitzherbert’s drawing room,’ said Lady de Clifford. ‘Come, Your Highness.’

  When he comes, thought Charlotte, I will sweep such a curtsey that will astonish him. Not like last time when I almost fell over doing it. She giggled at the thought, but it was a nervous giggle; it had been most shaming. She knew why she so often caught a certain expression in his eyes when they were on her; it was as though he had to force himself to look, force himself to speak affectionately. It was because she was reminding him of someone whose existence he preferred to forget: her mother.

  She walked sedately to Mrs Fitzherbert’s drawing room with Lady de Clifford and told herself: This time I will try to please him.

  Lady de Clifford opened the door and stood aside for the Princess to enter. Charlotte took a step into the room and then stopped. The scene which faced her was unexpected. Minney’s high-pitched laughter was mingled with deep chuckles of pleasure and the occupants of the room were so absorbed in each other that they had not heard the opening of the door.

  Seated on an ornate chair which Charlotte knew was kept for one person only was a large figure, sparkling, handsome, elegant, scented. The Prince of Wales had arrived while Lady de Clifford was tidying her charge. On his knee was seated Minney, one arm about his neck, her face close to his, far more at ease than she was in the company of his daughter. She was pulling the curls of his wig and saying in a very loud voice: ‘Why, you are a very curly Prinney today.’ How dared timid Minney whom she could reduce to terror by a sharp word or a pinch of the ear, behave so … so familiarly towards the Prince of Wales! And there was that bold George Keppel leaning against the Prince of Wales with his hand resting on one elegant white buckskinned thigh and laughing as though the great figure in the chair was of no more importance than his snuffy old grandmother.

  Charlotte’s impulse was to stride towards them, send George Keppel flying and pull Minney off her father’s knee. Surely if that were anyone’s place it was Charlotte’s? But when had she ever sat on his knee? Vague memories came back of days long, long ago when she was a baby and had been taken to see Grandpapa, and her father had been there and had set himself out to amuse her. But the memories were so vague that she might have dreamed them.

  She did not move; she knew she dared not. And a great pride came to her. If he preferred silly Minney Seymour to his own daughter, let him.

  Mrs Fitzherbert, aware of her standing there, came over to her and laid a hand on her shoulder. Charlotte wanted to turn and bury her face against that delicately perfumed plumply elegant figure.

  ‘And here is the Princess Charlotte herself.’ As though, thought Charlotte, she was the one he had come to see. But it was not true. Mrs Fitzherbert was merely pretending because she understood.

  Charlotte came forward and curtsied clumsily. George Keppel moved away from the Prince’s chair; Minney remained clinging to him.

  There was a change in Mrs Fitzherbert’s drawing room.

  The Prince held out his hand and Charlotte approached him. Minney slid off his knee then and went to stand beside Mrs Fitzherbert.

  ‘I trust you are well,’ said the Prince. ‘There is no need to ask. Your looks answer for you.’

  ‘I am well, Y … Your Highness.’

  How gauche, he thought. And that stutter!

  He
could not help the cold note which crept into his voice when he spoke to her. She brought back such unpleasant memories. That woman they had forced him to marry. His first sight of her. Coarse and over-rouged, her eyebrows crudely blackened; her hideous white gown; and the immediate knowledge that she was not personally clean. His nose twitched at the memory. How could they have done that to him! He had known it had to be a German princess but why had Caroline of Brunswick had to fall to his lot? He would never forgive Lord Malmesbury, his father’s ambassador, for not warning him. And the wedding – which he had almost refused to continue with and the wedding night! God preserve me from memory of it! he thought. In fact he could remember little of it for the only way he could face it had been by reducing himself to a state of intoxication. She said he had spent the greater part of his wedding night under the grate. She may have been right for he was certain that he would have preferred the grate to a bed shared with her. But by exerting tremendous will power and subduing his finer feelings he had managed to consummate the marriage and had actually lived with the creature until she became pregnant.

  And the result was this gangling girl, this hoyden; who looked so like himself yet reminded him, whenever he was in her company, of that woman.

  He could not take to her for that reason. Normally he loved children. He would play with dearest Minney when he came to Tilney Street; and he would look for her, flattening her nose against the glass when she was watching out for him. With Maria and Minney and himself it was a family circle – the sort of home, he told himself, he had always longed for, so different from the dreary atmosphere in his father’s royal palaces – or even the ceremonies he could not escape at Carlton House.

  And now here was Charlotte spoiling the illusion that he was in the heart of his family – a reminder of her mother, the last person in the world of whom he wished to think.

  ‘The children have all been playing together,’ said Mrs Fitzherbert, sensing his discomfiture and doing her best to dispel it. She was reminding him that he must not blame Charlotte for her mother’s conduct; and she was right.

  They would play a game together – the sort of game he played with Minney. Oh no, he could not play games with Charlotte. She would be whooping round the drawing room irritating him and he might let her know it.

  So he could only ask Charlotte how she was proceeding with her studies and her riding. He talked about horses for some time, but Charlotte noticed how he avoided looking at her. Mrs Fitzherbert noticed too.

  And after a while the Prince rose and said he would leave.

  He kissed Charlotte coldly on the cheek; he tweaked George Keppel’s hair when the boy bowed to him, to show that he need not stand on the ceremony his grandmother had warned him he must show; he picked Minney up and held her over his head while she giggled and screamed: ‘Put me down, Prinney. You’re dropping me.’

  And then he went out with Mrs Fitzherbert, slipping his arm through hers and calling her ‘dear love’.

  And Charlotte, watching, felt a black anger rise in her that was half sorrow, because here was a family circle from which she was shut out.

  George Keppel was with his grandmother waiting for Charlotte to join them; she had imperiously dismissed them, implying that she had something to say to Mrs Fitzherbert.

  Charlotte stood in the drawing room with the blue ruched satin on the walls and the gilded furniture which seemed royal in the most comfortable way, just like Mrs Fitzherbert herself.

  Charlotte knew that the Prince had curtailed his visit because she was there and she wondered whether he had implied to Mrs Fitzherbert that he was displeased to find her entertaining his daughter.

  Charlotte believed in saying what she meant. The niceties of diplomacy were not for her. It was not honest, she had long ago decided, to say one thing and mean another; and she would not be dishonest if she could help it.

  ‘He left because I was here,’ she burst out.

  ‘He had only called in for a short time,’ Mrs Fitzherbert assured her. ‘He did mention that.’

  ‘Yes, when he knew I was here.’

  ‘My dear Princess, surely a father would be pleased to see his own daughter.’

  ‘Not this father; not this daughter.’ She laughed. ‘We don’t want to pretend, do we, Madam.’

  Mrs Fitzherbert did not answer, but she looked sad.

  ‘Because,’ went on Charlotte, ‘if we did, it would be no use, would it? The truth remains however much we try to hide it.’

  She lifted her head defiantly. Mrs Fitzherbert had taken a step towards her, her beautiful face softly maternal, her hand a little unsteady as she laid it on Charlotte’s arm. Charlotte’s defiance suddenly deserted her; she flung herself against Mrs Fitzherbert and hid her face. She needed every bit of restraint to prevent herself bursting into tears.

  ‘I’m his daughter,’ she said in a muffled voice, ‘and he doesn’t like me. It’s the truth. No one can deny it.’

  Mrs Fitzherbert placed her hand tenderly on Charlotte’s head and held her against her. She did not deny Charlotte’s words; she was mutely telling her that it was so and that she was offering her sympathy.

  ‘Why,’ cried Charlotte. ‘Why … why?’

  Mrs Fitzherbert did not answer. What need was there for an answer? Charlotte knew it already and was not so much asking a question as expressing indignation at such injustice.

  Charlotte gave herself up to the luxury of this sympathetic embrace.

  Then she said: ‘You … you could perhaps speak to him.’

  She looked up into Mrs Fitzherbert’s face and saw there were tears in the lady’s eyes; this was too much. Charlotte began to cry in a quiet, sorrowful and resigned way.

  Then they were sitting side by side on Mrs Fitzherbert’s blue satin couch, Mrs Fitzherbert’s arm about her while they both wiped their eyes.

  ‘You … you will speak to him?’

  Mrs Fitzherbert nodded.

  ‘If anyone could make him like me, you could.’

  ‘I will do my best,’ promised Mrs Fitzherbert.

  Charlotte smiled wryly and thought: People should not have to be persuaded to love their children.

  After a while she took her leave of Mrs Fitzherbert and went and joined George and Lady de Clifford in the carriage.

  She was silent during the journey back to South Audley Street. George noticed the traces of tears on her face and was apprehensive. Charlotte rarely wept except in sudden anger and then the mood was over almost as soon as it had begun. But it was unusual for her to be so quiet. Clearly this mood was due to her encounter with her father.

  Lady de Clifford did the talking. Her turban shook with dismay. The Princess had not been a credit to her governess. Upon her word, it would not surprise her to receive a summons from His Highness to be told that she was not considered suitable to have the charge of his daughter. Oh, no, that would certainly not surprise her, for by the manner in which the Princess Charlotte had behaved, he would most certainly be right.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Lady de Clifford, ‘I should resign. Perhaps I should admit my unworthiness before it is pointed out to me.’

  ‘Perhaps you should,’ snapped Charlotte suddenly.

  George looked from his grandmother to the Princess. In a moment Charlotte would leap up and fling her arms round Lady de Clifford’s neck, kiss her rouged cheeks and beg forgiveness. That was Charlotte’s way. Her dear, dear Cliffy must not talk of leaving her. Charlotte would be desolate without her.

  Charlotte did no such thing, but she allowed the drive to proceed in silence.

  Oh dear, thought George, she is put out. And he longed for Minney’s comfortable society.

  In his grandmother’s house he was aware of the seriousness of the occasion.

  When they were alone together, she said, ‘I’m angry, George Keppel. I’m boiling over with anger.’

  ‘With whom are you angry?’ George asked fearfully.

  ‘With fate,’ she said mysteriously.

 
‘That’s a funny thing to be angry with,’ said George with a giggle.

  ‘It’s not funny in the least. It’s t … tragic. You have to soothe your feelings; and that is what we are going to do now.’

  ‘How do you soothe feelings?’

  ‘I’ll show you.’ She was mysterious. ‘I’m glad,’ she went on, ‘that we haven’t got that silly little Minney Seymour under our feet.’

  ‘Oh,’ protested George mildly.

  ‘I know you think she’s pretty and you want to protect her and all that, which is just what you would do. She doesn’t need protecting. She has Mrs Fitzherbert to do that, and I can tell you this, George Keppel, she’s the best p … protector anyone could have.’

  ‘All right,’ said George. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Follow me,’ said Charlotte.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘You don’t ask questions. You obey your future Sovereign.’

  She laughed suddenly, her resentment momentarily forgotten. She could always make George do what she wished by referring to herself as his future Sovereign.

  She herself was not certain where she was going. All she knew was that she wanted to soothe her hurt feelings. She wanted some sort of revenge.

  Her steps led her to the kitchen – always an attractive place. The servants at South Audley Street were in awe of her and at the same time they were delighted when she came down and ate fresh cakes as they came from the oven.

  She pushed open the door of the kitchen and looked inside. There was no one there. But on a baking tin lay two juicy looking lamb chops.

  ‘Those,’ she said, ‘will be for your Grandmamma’s supper, I’ll swear. There’s nothing she likes so well.’