She said: ‘She must spend more time with her aunts.’

Her aunts. His daughters. His darling love Amelia – kind and gentle, always affectionate to her own father, and yet he could not think of her without alarm, because of all the family she was the invalid.

‘Amelia’s cough …’

‘Is better,’ said the Queen.

They always told him it was better. But was it?

‘And that pain in her knee?’

‘It is nothing. The doctors say it will improve.’

He couldn’t really believe them. They had to soothe the poor mad old king.

‘It is time we went,’ said the Queen. ‘We shall be late for the Drawing Room.’

Ugh! thought Charlotte. What a family!

Lady de Clifford was close to her, praying she would do nothing to bring disgrace on herself and her governess. There seated on her chair was the Queen and beside her the King. No one need be frightened of him. He was simply poor old Grandpapa who was always kind and liked to be told one loved him. The old Begum was a different matter.

Lady de Clifford had made her practise her curtsey at least twenty times.

‘But Cliffy, I know how to curtsey.’

‘This is the Queen, my dear Princess.’

Indeed it was the Queen. How ugly she was! When she had been a little girl Charlotte had said: ‘The two things I hate most are apple pie and my grandmother.’ Someone had repeated that. They thought it funny. And on another occasion when they gave her the most horrid boiled mutton she had compared the Queen with that. ‘There are two things I hate most in the world, boiled mutton and my grandmother.’ The dish had changed but the grandmother remained. That was significant.

She must advance across the room which seemed enormous. Her hair hung in long ringlets and she was wearing a pink silk dress. There were a few pearl decorations on it. She felt stupid in it and would have been much happier in a riding habit. But of course one did not attend the Queen’s Drawing Room in a riding habit.

She almost tripped and righted herself in time. She was aware of the sudden silence. All the Old Girls ranged round Grand-mamma’s chair were watching her. Mary would be sorry. Mary was the prettiest of the aunts and she was always charming to Charlotte, but she had begun to wonder whether Mary repeated to the Queen some of the things she said.

She was close to the Queen; she made her curtsey. Yes, it was a clumsy one and the Queen had snake’s eyes; you almost expected a long darting poison-tipped fang to come out of that ugly mouth.

The thought so amused Charlotte that she began to smile unconsciously.

She turned to the King. She should of course have greeted him first. He would not notice though and perhaps the Queen would be pleased even though it was a breach of etiquette. He put out his hand and she grasped it.

‘Dear Grandpapa,’ she said with great affection because he was not like the Queen.

Oh dear, he’s going to cry, she thought. He looked awful when he cried; his great eyes looked as though they were going to pop out of his head. She did not curtsey – the one she had done would do for them both. That would show that it had really been meant for the King. She went and stood close to him and kissed his cheek. It was wrong of course but he did not care. He put an arm about her and said: ‘Well, and how’s my granddaughter, eh, what? Getting on with all those lessons, eh? Leading Fisher a dance? And Nott, eh, what?’

‘As well as can be expected, Grandpapa.’

Amelia laughed and when Amelia laughed the King was very happy. In fact, thought Charlotte, they wouldn’t be such a bad old family if it were not for the Begum.

The Queen said: ‘Stay by me, Charlotte. I have some questions to ask you.’

‘Thank you, Your Majesty,’ she said demurely.

The questions were about her household, about her lessons. How was she getting on with her religious instruction? The Queen had not always been pleased by good Dr Fisher’s reports.

‘But he is so good, Madam. We cannot all be as good as he is.’

‘It should be our earnest endeavour to try.’

‘Oh yes, Your Majesty.’

‘I am asking Dr Nott to let me see some of your work.’

Charlotte smiled, she hoped blandly, to disguise the apprehension in her heart. Would this give rise to longer hours of study? Oh, why could she not go to live at Montague House and become a part of that strange but merry household? Her mother would never have expected her to curtsey at this and that and address her by her title every now and then. Why could not her grandmother be a grandmother as well as a queen?

‘He tells me that you do not seem to be able to master the rules of grammar. Why is that?’

Charlotte thought for a second. ‘It’s because the rules of grammar master me, I expect.’

‘You are too frivolous, Charlotte. Try to be more serious.’

Charlotte lowered her eyes. ‘I fear it is in my nature, Madam.’

‘That is no excuse. It must be suppressed. I hear you are fond of writing letters to everyone you can think of … full of idle observations, and that you write pages of irrelevant nonsense when you should be more profitably engaged.’

‘George was the same, so I’ve heard,’ said gentle Amelia. ‘He loved to write. It is a gift in a way.’

‘What’s that, eh?’ demanded the King, eager to hear what his darling had said.

Amelia went to her father and put her hand on his arm.

‘I was saying, Papa, that Charlotte is like her father. She loves to write. I always remember hearing that.’

Tears again, thought Charlotte. What a watery old Grand-papa! But Amelia did look very affecting leaning against him – she was so slight and slender, like a fairy; she really did look as though she were made of some light and airy substance which a puff of wind would carry off. Perhaps Grandpapa thought this and that was why he was always so frightened of losing her.

‘It is a most unsatisfactory habit and quite useless,’ said the Queen.

Oh dear! sighed Charlotte to herself. How I wish that I were far away. At Montague House? For a while, But there was no security at Montague House. Mamma was affectionate inas-much as she kept embracing and kissing and calling one her love and angel. But there were times when she seemed to forget and perhaps she was more devoted to Willie Austin than her own daughter.

No, she would have liked to be in Tilney Street with calm and dignified Mrs Fitzherbert, whose affection would never be over-demonstrative but steady, so that one would know it was always there.

Tilney Street – or the house on the Steyne – and the Prince of Wales arriving and taking his place as though it were his home.

‘And where is my little Charlotte?’ he would say; and she would run out and climb on his knee and call him Prinney.

But this was what Minney Seymour did. Minney who was not his daughter at all.

It was unfair. She should have been there. How different that would have been.

‘Charlotte, you are not attending to what I am saying,’ said the Queen.

It was less of an ordeal to be with the aunts. They tried to pamper her a little; after all she was their only legitimate niece and they all adored her father, although they were afraid to say so openly.

So she was Darling Charlotte to them; but they kept a close watch on everything she did and said, and she did suspect that to curry favour with the Queen they reported these to her.

They are a nest of spies! thought Charlotte dramatically. Aunt Augusta was the oldest of the Old Girls although she had an elder sister who was now married and living abroad. That was Charlotte, the Princess Royal, who used to write long letters to Eggy – Lady Elgin – who had been Charlotte’s governess before Lady de Clifford’s time. Eggy used to read the letters to Charlotte sometimes to show what a good aunt she had and to teach her to count her blessings, of which Good Aunt Charlotte was supposed to be one. She used to send presents from abroad which were always unusual and welcome. There were dolls dressed like German peasants and once a miniature set of teacups and saucers. These presents however were usually accompanied by some homily. ‘Pray tell Charlotte that I am sending her a fan and when I go to Stuttgart I shall not fail to bespeak some silver toys if she continues to be a good girl.’

Dear old Eggy always read these letters in a voice of deep solemnity, impressing on Charlotte the need to improve herself. Eggy had been far more of a martinet than Lady de Clifford because Charlotte had quickly discovered that the latter was a little afraid of her – afraid perhaps of losing her position, of displeasing the Prince of Wales, of proving to them all that she was quite incapable of controlling the Princess Charlotte. Aunt Charlotte on the Continent must have received long letters about her progress not only from Eggy but from the Old Girls. Fragments of the letters came back to her now: ‘As she has once found that she is clever, nothing but being with older children will ever get the better of this unfortunate vanity, which is a little in her blood as you know full well. I approve very much of your trying to get the better of her covetousness.’

Such a little monster I must have been! mused Charlotte.

And her aunt had suggested that when she went to the country after being inoculated – for she could not be allowed to go near the cottage people until she had been – she might be taken among the very poor so that pity might be aroused in her. She should be encouraged to give freely of her pocket money to the poor.

And Eggy had seen that she had. Charlotte had found one of those account books only recently with the amounts she had given set down in her childish handwriting. It was all ‘To a poor blind man 2s;’ ‘To a lame woman 1s’ and so on – columns and columns of it.