Perdita's Prince: (Georgian Series) (16 page)

The King looked distastefully at the Queen. She was not really an old woman … thirty-five or so … but having spent some nineteen years in almost continuous child-bearing this had naturally aged her. Compared with women like Elizabeth Pembroke she was old and ugly. And she was the woman with whom he was expected to be content while his brother sported on sofas with Grosvenor’s wife and before that matter was settled was doing the same with a timber merchant’s wife and before very long marrying the woman he had made his Duchess. Not that he was faithful to her. He was living dissolutely … frequenting gaming clubs, hanging about the theatres in the hope of seducing every little actress that took his fancy. Disgusting! The King could not bear to think about it … yet he could not stop himself thinking about it … and when he looked at Charlotte … plain, fertile Charlotte sitting there, smug and so obviously with child … he felt bitter against a fate which had made him a king with a high moral standard who had forced himself to be a faithful husband all these years to a woman who did not attract him at all.

‘I will deal with this affair of Cumberland,’ he said sternly.

‘Do you mean you will summon him to an audience?’

‘I will deal with him,’ said the King finally.

Charlotte looked disappointed. It was humiliating never to be able to voice an opinion. She would not have believed all those years ago when she had come here from Mecklenburg-Strelitz that she could have been relegated to such a position. She had been quite a spirited young woman when she arrived. But of course she came from a very humble state to be the queen of a great country and that had overawed her a little, and just as she was growing accustomed to that she had become pregnant – and she had been pregnant ever since.

So she accepted the snub as she had so many others, and, sighing, thought: It is no use trying to change it now. If she attempted to it would anger the King; it would upset him; and the most important thing to her now was not to upset the King. At the back of her mind was a terrible fear concerning him. At times he was a little strange. That quick method of speech, the continual ‘eh’s’ and ‘what’s’. He had not been like that before his illness … that vague mysterious illness, the truth of which his mother and Lord Bute had tried to keep from her. But she had known. During it George’s mind had become affected. It had passed but he had never been the same again; and always she was conscious of the shadow hanging over him. Sometimes … and this worried her most … she thought he was haunted by it too.

So the last thing she wanted to do was disturb the King.

The King changed the subject to the Prince of Wales.

‘I think the people liked to see the Prince with us at the theatre.’

‘I am sure they did,’ replied the Queen, glad to see him more easy in his mind again. ‘It was a splendid evening. I thought the players very good. That actress who played Perdita was very pretty.’

‘H’m,’ said the King. Very pretty, he thought. Too pretty for comfort. He had seen a young man flirting with her in the wings when she was waiting to go on stage and he believed the fellow was attached to the Prince’s entourage. He didn’t want young profligates who flirted in public with actresses about his son.

He went on: ‘The Prince should be seen more often in public with us.’

‘I am sure that is so.’

‘But I am not sure that I like to see those play actresses parading themselves before young men. I would prefer something more serious. Some good music.’

‘I am sure,’ said the Queen, ‘that would be an excellent idea and far more suitable than a play.’

Now the King was happier. He could settle down cosily to arrange an occasion when it would be most suitable for the King, Queen and Prince of Wales to appear in public.

The Queen smiled contentedly. After all, she had accepted the subservient role all these years, why complain about it now?

She folded her hands in her lap; she would never complain, she vowed, if only all the children remained in good health, her firstborn did nothing to offend his father and the King remained … himself.

*

The King had sent for the Prince of Wales and when young George faced his father the latter thought: He is handsome. Looks healthy too. A little arrogant. But perhaps we all are when we know that one day we will wear a crown.

The King cleared his throat. ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘I hear you’ve been meeting your uncle Cumberland in the Park.’

‘We passed while taking the air, Sir.’

‘H’m. And your uncle stopped and behaved very affectionately, I hear.’

‘He behaved as one would expect an uncle to.’ Just faintly insolent … as insolent as he dared be. Resentful too. No doubt imagined he was a man already. Well, he was not. His eighteenth birthday was months away – and even then he was not fully of age. The King started to wonder as he often did in his eldest son’s presence why there was always this tension between them, as though they were enemies rather than father and son. When had he ceased to regard the Prince as one of the greatest blessings in his life and seen him as one of his greatest burdens? He kept thinking of the pink chubby baby who, everyone declared, was a bold young rascal. Spoilt from his birth, thought the King. The
lord of the nursery, charming everyone with his good looks and his laughter and his arrogance … yes arrogance even in those days. But how they had doted on him – he as well as Charlotte. This Prince who, he thought then, had made marriage to Charlotte worthwhile. He had been almost as foolish about the child as Charlotte, gloating over that wax image she had had made of him and which she still kept under a glass case on her dressing table. In the Park people had crowded round to look at him, to adore him; and he had accepted all this with a cool disdainful gaze of those blue eyes as the homage due to him but of which he had such a surfeit that it bored him.

And then the others had come along and they had begun to realize that the Prince of Wales was headstrong, liked his own way, screamed for it, cajoled for it – and, the King thought grimly, invariably got it.

The result: the handsome dandy who now stood before him, seeking to discountenance him because he was young and handsome and George was old and looked his age … because he was a prince who would one day be King and perhaps resented the fact that he was not already.

There he was working up a hatred of the boy before he had done anything to aggravate him, except to stand there with insolence in every line of his – the King noted – slightly too fat body.

‘Your Uncle Cumberland is not received at my Court,’ said the King. ‘Therefore I find it unfitting that he should stop to speak to you in the Park.’

‘The people seemed pleased that he did.’

‘I have refused to receive him at Court.’

‘Yes,’ repeated the Prince, ‘the people were pleased. They are not fond of family quarrels.’

‘Your uncle Cumberland has shocked the whole country by his behaviour.’

‘I don’t think they hold it against him. Perhaps they were amused.’

How dared he stand there and say such a thing! He was trying to behave as a man of the world. Why, he was not out of the nursery yet!

‘You should take more exercise,’ said the King. ‘You’ve put on weight.’

The insolent eyes swept the King’s figure and the King was unable to prevent himself straightening up, holding in his stomach. In spite of all his efforts he did have too much flesh there.

‘I would not wish the people to think I was starved as well as treated like a child,’ murmured the Prince.

‘Eh? What?’ demanded the King.

‘I said, Sir, that I should not wish people to think I was starved.’

‘H’m.’ The King changed the subject. ‘The people were pleased to see us at the theatre together. It was a pleasant evening.’

A dreamy look came into the Prince’s eyes. ‘A very pleasant evening, Sir. One of the pleasantest I have ever spent.’

‘The play was well done, though it was Shakespeare, and not as good as some.’

‘They do other plays, Sir,’ said the Prince eagerly. ‘There is Sheridan’s
School for Scandal,
and er …’

‘I don’t much like what I hear of that fellow Sheridan.’

‘Sir, he’s a brilliant playwright.’

‘A bit of a profligate, I fear. He has a beautiful wife and I’m sorry to see her married to such a man.’ It was the King’s turn to look sentimental. Elizabeth Linley with the golden voice. He had heard her sing several times in one of those concerts her father arranged. A beautiful voice … the best he had ever heard; and she looked like an angel herself. One of the most beautiful women I ever saw, he thought. I’d set her side by side with Hannah … or Sarah.

‘He’s a friend of Mr Fox and I’ve heard it said they are the most brilliant pair in the whole of London – and act as a foil to each other.’

‘Any friend of Mr Fox is no friend of mine,’ said the King shortly. ‘I am very sorry to know that Miss Linley has married that fellow. Nor do I wish to go to his theatre. I was thinking of something more suitable.’

The Prince looked scornful. What a fool the old man was, he
was thinking. He deliberately turned his back on the people who would be most well worth knowing. No wonder his Court was the dullest the country had ever known. He was not surprised that his Uncle Cumberland tried to set up a rival court. It was time somebody did.

His own turn must come soon. Was that what the old man was afraid of? The Prince’s eyes glistened. He thought of the people he would gather round him when the time came. Mrs Robinson would be there. What joy! What bliss! Mrs Robinson in pink satin with feathers in her hair – or simply gowned as she had been in some scenes of the play with her dark hair about her shoulders. He was not sure whether he did not prefer her like that than more grandly attired. Oh, no, he preferred Mrs Robinson any way. It would not matter how she was dressed. Everything she wore … everything she did was perfect.

That was why he felt so frustrated. Here he was unable to behave like a Prince … and a Prince of Wales at that … forced to present himself to his father whenever he was summoned, to stand before him and listen to his drivel about Mr Fox and Mr Sheridan. They were the sort of men he would have at
his
Court. Wait … just wait until he had his own establishment. It will be when I’m eighteen. I swear I’ll not allow them to treat me as a child any longer.

‘More suitable,’ went on the King, ‘and I have sent for you to tell you what I have chosen.’

Sent for you! What
I
have chosen! Oh, it was humiliating!

‘I have ordered a performance at Covent Garden – an Oratorio. Handel’s setting of
Alexander’s Feast
. You will accompany the Queen and myself there.’

‘Oh?’ said the Prince of Wales, and the King thought he detected a trace of insolence in his voice.

‘And now I give you leave to go and visit the Queen.’

‘Your Majesty is gracious.’

The King studied his son intently; he always felt the young fellow had the advantage because he was quicker with words than he was himself. That was the pity of it, he had turned all his good points to disadvantage – his good looks, his ready tongue,
his scholastic accomplishments which far surpassed those of most young men … all these were now turned into weapons to use against his father.

‘And don’t show her how anxious you are to run away, eh, what?’

The Prince bowed. ‘I shall, as ever, obey Your Majesty’s commands.’

He retired; and the King said of his son what his grandfather George II had said of his: ‘Insolent young puppy.’

*

When the Prince of Wales returned to his apartments he sent for Lord Malden.

‘I cannot understand,’ he said, ‘why Mrs Robinson will not agree to a meeting.’

‘Sir, Mrs Robinson is a lady of great sensibility. She is not even sure that Your Highness is the author of the notes she has received.’

‘But you have told her.’

Lord Maiden lifted his eyes to the ceiling. ‘She cannot believe it. She still fears that someone may be signing himself Florizel. What if she agreed to meet you in some place and then found it was not Your Highness after all? I think that is what she fears.’

‘Then we must put an end to her fears. I will make her sure. I have it. I am to go to Covent Garden to the Oratorio. She must go too.’

‘Your Highness, the King and the Queen …’

The Prince laughed. ‘My box is opposite theirs at Covent Garden. See that Mrs Robinson is in the box above the King’s and Queen’s. There they will not see her and I can spend the whole evening gazing at her.’

‘Your Highness, what if you betray yourself?’

‘Malden, I think the King is not the only one who forgets I am the Prince of Wales. I pray you make these arrangements without delay. Go to Mrs Robinson. Tell her that I beg her to come to Covent Garden and there I will give her reason to doubt no longer that those notes have come from me.’

*

‘Lord Maiden to see you, Madam.’ It was the discreet voice of Mrs Armistead.

‘Show him in at once, Armistead.’

Lord Maiden appeared, elegant as ever. What a handsome man he was and his eyes told her how much he admired her, and for a moment disappointment swept over her because she feared he might have come on his own account.

He soon reassured her.

‘I come direct from His Highness, the Prince of Wales.’

She forced herself to look sceptical.

‘Mrs Robinson, I assure you this is so. His Highness is most unhappy because he fears that by approaching you he has offended you. He wishes to assure you that this is not the case. He would die rather than offend you.’

‘I would not wish to be responsible for the death of the heir to the throne.’

‘So I thought, Madam. Therefore I hope you will listen sympathetically.’

‘If the Prince wishes to write to me why does he not do so in a manner which could leave me in no doubt that he is the writer of the letters?’

‘His Highness is romantic. He thinks of you as Perdita and himself as Florizel.’

‘So could a hundred other gallants.’

‘His Highness is determined that you shall cast away your doubts. That is why he suggests a meeting.’