‘My dear Pig, you always hoped for the impossible, didn’t you!’

‘You’re crying, Maria.’

‘Oh, leave me. I didn’t want you to see. I could have burst into tears when William told me. Then I should have had him weeping too. Living with the Prince taught me, I always thought, to restrain my tears. He shed enough for both of us, but his could be turned on and off at will and they never meant anything. He always wept so effectively, didn’t he? Oh go away, there’s a good woman.’

Miss Pigot lifted her shoulders and left.

She’s still in love with him, she thought. And he with her. He’ll come back one day.

The Queen came into the King’s study unannounced. It was something she would not have done before his illness. He was aware of this but he did nothing to stem the change in their relationship. It was inevitable. That terrible experience five years ago had left a mark on him which would never be eradicated. He faced the fact that for a few months of his life he had been insane. It was not the first lapse; and he lived in constant fear that there would be others.

It was a fear which the Queen shared with him; and such an emotion shared must bring them together. It was not out of affection for him that she worried; it was a case of what would happen to her and who would seize power. He understood a little of what had happened when they had thought he would never recover. There had been the battle in Parliament over the Regency Bill and the conflict between the Queen and the Prince of Wales. Then he had recovered and there was a return to normality – at least a show of normality. But the King’s mind was not so impaired that he did not know that nothing would ever be the same again.

There she was, the mother of his fifteen children – two had died so only thirteen were left to them – a woman whom he had never loved but by whom he had done his duty. He often remembered their marriage, when he had been in love with the beautiful, mischievous and inconsequential Lady Sarah Lennox and could have married her, he supposed, had he insisted. After all he had been the King at the time. But he had been under the rule of his mother and her lover, Lord Bute, and they had pointed out the need for him to marry a Princess and had chosen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. He knew why now. It was because she was so plain, so unattractive that they believed she would never cast a spell on him and therefore would have no power to influence him; that she could not speak English was another point in her favour. They had been determined that he should not have Sarah, because in spite of being the most seductive creature for whom, as he wrote to Lord Bute, he ‘boiled’ she was related to the Foxes – that ambitious politically minded family who would have been ruling the country before long. Charles James Fox was her nephew – and the King was well aware of the mischief that fellow had done. He believed he had ruined the Prince of Wales, teaching him about drinking, gambling and women, and incidentally politics – Whig politics. So they had snatched Sarah from him and married him to this plain German Princess and meekly he had complied and they had lived together for more than thirty years, but he had never allowed her to have a say in anything; even in the nursery he had been the one to lay down the rules.

He had never really known her. He had thought her meek and content with her lot, bearing child after child; she had always seemed to be giving birth to a child or preparing to do so. But when he was indisposed, when he lost his reason, she had thrown aside her docility; the real woman had stepped out from behind the mask of meekness and disclosed an ambitious schemer. Pitt – the great Pitt himself – had been on her side, against Fox and the Prince; and she had shown herself formidable.

So now she did not wait to be summoned; she did not wait for her opinions to be asked: she volunteered them.

‘I’m hoping everything will go well with the bride and bride-groom,’ she said. ‘I thought he was going to refuse right up to the last.’

‘H’m,’ said the King. ‘Nearly did. Was on the point. At the altar. I had to act quickly. Otherwise… what would have happened. I don’t know. I don’t know.’

‘He had a shock when he saw her,’ said the Queen; her wide mouth turned up at the corners in a sardonic smile. ‘I could have told him. In fact I tried to. My niece would have been so much more suitable.’

‘Caroline seems quite a handsome young woman.’

The Queen looked at him as scathingly as she dared. Was he a little attracted by his daughter-in-law? He was attracted by women and had been all his life, in spite of his fidelity. She suspected that he confined his erotic adventures to the imagination. She had little to be grateful to him for. But they must of course stand together against the Prince of Wales, the Whigs and the King’s threatened instability.

‘Settle down perhaps,’ said the King. ‘See reason. I was afraid he was going to say No… right there at the altar. Dreadful moment. Think of the scandal.’

‘I do hope,’ said the Queen, ‘that now that he is married he will realize his responsibilities. We don’t want scandal.’

‘No,’ said the King. ‘Dangerous. Lot of trouble. People protesting. Low wages. High price of food. Thank God for Pitt. Good young man… but arrogant… very arrogant, eh?’

‘I think we should be grateful for Mr Pitt,’ said the Queen.

‘Keep George in order. Seems to have lost some of his love for Fox, eh?’

‘Yes. He upset George in the House over the Regency Bill.’

The King winced. He hated references to the period when he had been unable to govern.

‘Mustn’t have scandals,’ he said. ‘Very bad. Can’t help thinking of what happened in France. The King and the Queen… executed. I dream of it sometimes.’

‘I will tell the doctors to give you something to make you sleep.’

‘Can’t sleep… thinking of those boys. Ten sleepless nights in a row I’ve had worrying about them. Did you ever know such boys for getting themselves into trouble? It’s always women… and money. I can’t think why. Eh? I’ve brought them up strictly…’

‘Perhaps too strictly,’ said the Queen coldly, but the King did not hear her. His mind was wandering back to the past.

The Queen said suddenly: ‘I’ve been thinking about William and his actress.’

‘That Jordan woman. They have another child. It’s disgraceful. They are living like a married couple in Petersham and she is acting on the stage and they are beginning to raise a family. Shouldn’t you speak to William?’

‘What could I say to him?’

‘You could tell him that it must stop. Isn’t it time that he settled down with a wife… a Princess whom we should find for him.’

‘He seems to be living… respectably.’

‘Respectably! Unmarried! And with an actress who appears in male costume on the stage for everyone who has the price of a seat to watch!’

The King’s mind had gone off again. He could see a very young man riding out to a lonely house in which there lived a beautiful Quakeress. They had loved each other tenderly; she had borne his children; and he was a young Prince of Wales and later a King. He understood William’s position. He did not want to be too hard on him.

The Queen was saying: ‘George lived with Maria Fitzherbert and no one knew whether or not they were actually married. Then he had love-affairs with other women and now he is married to Caroline. But I fear they have not settled down. There is Frederick who won’t live with that wife of his who keeps a zoo at Oatlands; I believe he has a host of mistresses. And now there is William… Whichever way we turn we are knee-deep in scandal. George is at last married; Frederick is married. It is time William was married.’

‘There’s George and Frederick. One of them is bound to provide some heirs. Eh?’

‘Do you think so? George already hates his wife; Frederick will not live with his. Who is going to reign when we are all gone?’

‘Everything will depend on what happens between George and his wife.’

‘You mean that if they have sons… daughters will do… if they have children then you will leave William in peace with his actress?’

‘I don’t see why not.’

‘So then everything depends on George’s wife giving us an heir to the throne.’

‘A great deal depends on it,’ said the King.

‘I tell you this,’ said the Queen. ‘I shall never stand by and applaud an illicit union of a royal prince with an actress.’

‘What do you propose to do then, eh, what?’

‘I shall choose the moment to rescue William from that woman. Obviously he must marry.’

‘We’ll wait and see,’ said the King.

Very soon news reached them that the Princess of Wales was pregnant.

The Prince of Wales rejoiced and made it quite plain that he would have nothing more to do with his wife.

The King was pleased that his daughter-in-law had shown such early signs of being productive. He was still less inclined to interfere with his son William’s arrangements.

But the Queen kept her eyes on all her sons; and she had determined that she would not tolerate for ever even a third son’s liaison with a play-actress.

Perdita’s Nobody

DOROTHY WAS AMAZED to receive a letter signed by Mary Robinson, who requested the pleasure of a visit from her that they might discuss Mrs Robinson’s new play in which she hoped Mrs Jordan would play the principal part.

Dorothy was surprised and a little curious for she knew this lady to be none other than that Mrs Robinson who had been known as Perdita when she had enslaved the Prince of Wales, and about whom there had been a great scandal.