‘Oh, Hester, I didn’t mean that. Don’t let us be at cross purposes for heaven’s sake. The future of Dodee and Lucy… and Fan, means so much to me. I have to give them a good start in life. I want them to have all the advantages that we didn’t have.’

‘We had our mother with us all the time.’

‘They will have you and me, too. Both of us, Hester – to love them and care for them.’

Hester said somewhat mollified: ‘It is such a complicated household. One never knows what is going to happen next.’

‘Oh, why didn’t Richard stay in France. It would have been so much more comfortable if he had.’

‘I don’t think it would have been very comfortable for him. He said that the country is in a fearful state of revolution. No one is safe. He thinks that soon they’ll murder the King and Queen.’

Dorothy shuddered. ‘God forbid that such things should ever happen here.’

She was afraid suddenly. She thought of the King and Queen of France with their family being subjected to humiliation; she could well picture the mob roused to anger. She had seen a hostile audience which was not pleased with the play that was being presented to it; a pale shadow of course of what was going on across the Channel; but she knew the fury of mob violence. And to think that what was happening to the French royal family could happen to the English one. She was part of that family now. It was strange but it was true. She could not bear to think of William in danger, of contemplating losing him.

She was loving a man as she had thought she never would; she would not have believed that she had so much affection to give. Everything must go right now. Nothing must spoil this. She had waited so long for happiness and suffered so much, but if she could remain as happy as she was now everything would have been worthwhile. Richard Ford must not be allowed to disturb her.

‘So he has come back,’ she mused, ‘and discovered that he has some feeling for his children after all. Well, Mr Richard Ford has made his discovery just a little too late; and I suspect that he has made it now that he knows he will not be expected to support them.’

Hester lifted her shoulders.

‘I only want to do as you wish,’ she said. ‘And I do think of the welfare of the children.’

‘I know you do, my dear Hester. But all will be well with them. I merely want them brought up in quiet, peace and respectability; and I want to work hard so that when they come of age I can give them a good dowry. Dodee and Lucy are babies yet, but Fan is not so young.’ A shadow passed across Dorothy’s face. ‘And how has Fan been behaving?’

‘She has her tantrums.’

‘I’ll go and see her now. I expect she knows I’m here.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Hester, ‘there is very little Madam doesn’t know.’

Fanny was just a little like her father and when Dorothy caught that likeness as she did now and then, it always depressed her faintly; it repelled her; she could not help but remember him, with his lecherous face close to hers, demanding submission.

For the very reason that Fanny reminded her of him made her feel that she must be especially kind to her eldest daughter.

In the nursery she found Fanny dressed up in one of her own Harry Wildair costumes. It was quite a good fit for Fanny was almost as tall as her mother.

She was acting for the little girls who were seated on stools watching her.

She stopped when Dorothy entered.

‘So you are playing Wildair, eh?’

‘Oh, yes, Mamma. I wish I had a proper audience… not just silly Dodee and sillier Lucy.’

‘My darlings!’ Dorothy knelt and embraced three-year-old Dodee and two-year-old Lucy.

‘Mamma going to stay?’ Dodee wanted to know.

‘Yes, Mamma is going to stay for a while.’

‘Then you’ll go away,’ said Fanny. ‘I wish I could come and live with you. Shall I?’

‘One day, perhaps.’

‘Now!’ pouted Fanny; and Dodee took up the cry.

‘Now I am here,’ said Dorothy. ‘And I will play Little Pickle for you, shall I, and you shall all be my audience?’

Playing Pickle was the greatest fun and even Fanny lost her sullen looks, for Dorothy thought up all sorts of ridiculous tricks Pickle could play in the nursery and soon the children were shrieking with the same rollicking laughter that she was accustomed to hearing in the theatre.

‘When I’m big,’ announced Fanny, ‘I’m going to be an actress.’

‘Me too,’ added Dodee.

‘Perhaps you will, my darling.’

‘I’m going to marry a Duke,’ said Fanny.

And Dorothy asked herself: What do they hear?

Hester came and took the younger children away and when Fanny was left alone with her she took her mother’s hand, examined the diamond which the Duke of Clarence had recently put there and said that she wanted to live in a grander house than this and instead of having Aunt Hester to look after her she wanted to be with her mother and the Duke.

‘My dear, you couldn’t do that. You must live here and I will come and see you sometimes.’

‘Where is our father? He came here the other day. He wanted to see Dodee and Lucy… not me.’

‘Well, you see, darling, they are his and you have another father as I told you long ago.’

‘I know he was your first husband, and Dodee’s and Lucy’s papa was your second.’

Dorothy did not answer. There were going to be complications as the children grew up. If Richard had married her it would have been so much easier. Not that she regretted that now that she was in love with William and had her new life. She could face the complications.

She decided then that the children should no longer be known as Ford; they should all be Jordans.

Fanny said good-bye to her with great reluctance; she was petulant and inclined to sulk. They would have trouble with Fanny if they were not careful. When she reached Petersham Lodge she found the Duke at home eagerly awaiting her.

He embraced her with fervour as though they had been separated for a month. He was always afraid, he said, when she was out of his sight.

He had been to see Adam again, he told her. ‘An anonymous book is being sold in which you are mentioned… scandalously.’

‘In what connection?’ she asked faintly.

‘In connection with the Irish manager Daly. It’s supposed to be written by Elizabeth Billington, the singer. She declares she knows nothing of it and is taking proceedings against the publishers. I have authorized Adam to buy up all the copies he can find and if necessary I shall take action against the publisher.’

‘You are so careful of me,’ she said.

‘My darling, it is my pleasure to protect you from these… these villains.’

‘I wish they would stop persecuting me,’ she said. ‘I wish they would let me be happy.’

‘I’ll not let them stop that.’

She felt tired and tears came to her eyes.

‘Foolish of me,’ she said, ‘but I am not used to being so tenderly cared for.’

Life had formed itself into a pattern – pleasant and comfortable. Those people who had predicted an early end to the love-affair between Mrs Jordan and the Duke of Clarence now sneered at them because they seemed to have settled into a cosy domesticity.

As William said to her often: he needed no one else but her. To be with other people meant that they could not talk together, be close to each other. Now he preferred his own fireside.

She was working at the theatre and he must be there to watch her play and to bring her home. When he saw Richard Ford at the theatre he was angry and once again tried to prevent his going back-stage. He was afraid that the fellow, having lost his prize, would do anything to regain it; and if he were to offer Dorothy marriage, which was the only thing he himself could not give her that Ford could, he was afraid her desire for respectability and her sense of duty towards her children might make her accept.

He told her of this fear and she laughed at him.

‘Nothing would make me go back to him,’ she declared. ‘Even if I was not in love with the best of men, I would never go back to Richard Ford.’

That contented him.

His brothers smiled at him indulgently. Frederick, Duke of York, was married unhappily. He and his wife did not live together and in fact could not bear the sight of each other. Frederick had his mistresses and the Duchess of York her animals. Her place at Oatlands, William told Dorothy, was more like a zoo than a ducal manor.

As for the Prince of Wales, he was going through a difficult time emotionally. But then he invariably was; but this time there was serious trouble, for he had become so enamoured of Lady Jersey that there was real danger of a breach with Mrs Fitzherbert.

William discussed the matter with Dorothy, expressing his concern.

‘Poor George, he loves Maria. I have always known that.’

‘But if he loved her surely he would want to be faithful to her?’

‘He is under some sort of spell. I don’t know what that Jersey woman has but George cannot resist her. Maria is a proud woman.’

Dorothy conceded that she was. She believed that Mrs Fitzherbert had not been as friendly towards her as the brothers had hoped because she feared they might be compared. Mrs Fitzherbert was very anxious that no one should regard her as the mistress of the Prince of Wales, although if she were his wife it was enough to abolish George’s hopes of the crown.

The affairs of the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York shifted the spotlight a little from William and Dorothy, and this increased their happiness.