Jean Plaidy - The Regent’s Daughter

She it was who told the Princess of the duel between Mr Canning and Lord Castlereagh, which had taken place because it had reached the noble lord’s ears that Mr Canning had thought him unfit for office.

‘Do you mean they fought … with pistols?’ cried Charlotte, her eyes round with wonder.

‘I mean exactly that,’ replied Mercer. ‘And Mr Canning’s bullet took the button off Lord Castlereagh’s coat and Mr Canning was wounded in the thigh.’

‘Poor Mr Canning! I trust he did not bleed to death.’

‘No, he walked off the field. But can you imagine such folly? Two grown-up men … using such a means to settle a quarrel!’

‘Men have always settled their quarrels in this way,’ Charlotte reminded her friend.

‘There is no need for them to continue in such folly.’

‘When I am Queen I shall forbid men to fight duels,’ declared Charlotte, and Mercer looked at her pupil with approval.

Yes, it was very pleasant, talking to Mercer, and Charlotte felt that she was becoming really knowledgeable under her tuition.

She told Mercer how Mr Canning used to bow to her when she was held up to the window to wave to him.

‘I used to tear my caps imitating him,’ she said, and laughed boisterously to remember it; but Mercer liked her to be serious.

So from Mercer she learned much of politics and the affairs of the world and from Mrs Udney those secrets which others sought to keep from her.

‘Do you know,’ whispered Mrs Udney, ‘Mary Anne Clarke had a service of plate which once belonged to a prince of the Bourbon family. My word, she did well for herself!’

‘Do you think she’s doing well for herself now?’

‘Ha, ha. Those very saleable letters. You can bet your life she will be very highly paid for them.’

‘Poor Uncle Fred! He must be feeling dreadful. I’m glad Aunt Frederica came up to London to be with him.’

‘I doubt he ever wrote such letters to her.’

‘All the more reason why she is to be praised for standing by him,’ retorted Charlotte.

But although she snubbed the woman she was often friendly towards her because she wanted to hear all that Mrs Udney had to tell as well as learn from Mercer. So it was Mrs Udney who showed her the cartoons about Uncle Fred and Mary Anne Clarke and told her how cheeky the woman had been at the Bar.

It is all very regrettable, said Charlotte, but one has to know about one’s own family.

She liked to hear stories about the people. How a sailor had died in Guy’s Hospital and when his body had been opened up eighteen clasp knives had been found in him.

‘He’d swallowed them all when he was drunk. It was for a wager,’ said Mrs Udney. ‘The things people do!’

There were stories of thieves, one of whom had broken into the house of a pelisse maker and murdered him and his family; there was another of a man who had shot a young girl when she refused to marry him.

It was all exciting and highly entertaining if, thought Charlotte, one did not know the people personally, for she would not have cared for any of her acquaintances to be shot dead by disappointed lovers.

But this, she assured herself, was as much a part of life as what Napoleon was doing in Europe.

In October began the great jubilee year. The King had been on the throne for fifty years. Fifty years! thought Charlotte. It was a lifetime. But poor Grandpapa was hardly in a fit state to enjoy a jubilee.

‘And,’ said Mercer, ‘who wants this jubilee? The Tories of course. And for what reason? Because there is so much trouble at home and abroad that they want to turn people’s attention from that to these celebrations at home.’

Charlotte settled down to hear an account of the troubles at home. The loss of trade because of the Napoleonic wars; the difficulty of calling a halt to Napoleon’s domination of Europe. The general ineffectiveness of Tory rule. Mercer would have liked to mention the state of the King’s health, but that was hardly a subject fit for his granddaughter’s ears. There were rumours that his strangeness was increasing; everyone would be prepared now for a return of his malady. He had aged so much in the last few years and was now almost blind and quite often wandering in his mind.

Hardly the man to wish to celebrate his jubilee. But there were banquets and fireworks and festivities everywhere. The Queen and the Princesses had given an open-air fête at Windsor, in spite of the fact that it was autumn; there were coloured lamps in the city of London and fireworks constantly lighted up the sky accompanied by the red glow from bonfires. The various houses of business illuminated their premises with signs of their trade; and in addition to all this there were many thanksgiving services in the church all over the country. The theme was ‘God Save the King’.

Exciting times, thought Charlotte, in which anything might happen.

But she was unprepared for the great scandal which hit the family and put even the Mary Anne Clarke scandal into the shade.

It was Mrs Udney who told her of this.

As soon as Charlotte saw the woman she knew that something especially exciting had happened.

‘I don’t know if I should tell Your Highness. It’ll be common knowledge soon enough … but there’s been a terrible tragedy in your Uncle Ernest’s apartments at St James’s.’

‘Do you mean Uncle Ernest is dead?’ asked Charlotte, her eyes round with horror.

‘He’s come pretty near it.’

Then she told the terrible story of how Uncle Ernest had been found in his bed with a great wound in his head which, so it was said, was meant to have killed him. But it did not kill him.

‘Providence was looking after him,’ said Mrs Udney with a knowing smile. ‘And lying in the next room was his valet Sellis … with his throat cut.’

Charlotte cried: ‘Did he try to kill Uncle Ernest? And who killed him?’

Mrs Udney shrugged her shoulders. Who could say? There would be a trial of course. This was murder … royalty or not.

There was a hushed atmosphere through Carlton House and at Windsor, in fact wherever the family were. If Charlotte attempted to mention the matter she was hastily silenced by one of the Old Girls. But that did not prevent rumours reaching her. Her mother showed her some of the cartoons, and some of the sly allusions in the papers.

It was being said that the Duke’s valet had a very pretty wife and that the valet had found her in bed with the Duke. The valet had almost killed the Duke and then committed suicide.

It was the biggest scandal that had ever touched the royal family. The romantic affairs of the Prince of Wales had never gone as far as murder. It was true he had once let it be believed that he had attempted suicide when Mrs Fitzherbert threatened to leave the country to elude him. But was that true? And in any case it was very different from murder.

Was Uncle Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, a murderer?

Aunt Amelia was very melancholy. She said once: ‘This has upset your poor Grandpapa more than anything that has ever happened.’

And poor Grandpapa was upset. He mumbled quite incoherently to Charlotte and did not seem at all clear who she was.

Amelia herself was looking more wan than ever. She was very melancholy, and Charlotte wondered what it was that made her so.

I don’t really know very much about them, she thought. They had been the old aunts to her for as long as she could remember; but when she thought of the sadness of Amelia she wondered if there was any cause besides her illness and that of her father.

Poor Amelia, thought Charlotte. It must be dreadful to be twenty-six and never to have been anywhere, never to have married, just ceasing to be a young girl and becoming an old girl.

But that, of course, was the fate of all the aunts.

AMELIA SAT IN her window looking out at the sea. She was feeling no better in spite of the sea breezes; but she was happy because her eldest brother had promised to ride over from Brighton.

Her embroidery lay in her lap. She was, in fact, too tired even for such work. Her tiredness increased with every week and she had a premonition that this time next year she would not be here.

Her sister Mary was with her. What would she do without Mary – the favourite among her sisters as George was among her brothers. Yet she supposed she had grown accustomed to Mary. George was a being from another world, a world of gay romance, whereas poor Mary who had been so pretty when she was young and who was now like a faded flower, was one of the frustrated sisterhood.

Mary came into the room and saw her sister’s hands lying idly in her lap.

‘You should sleep a little,’ she said.

‘I have slept all morning. I don’t want to sleep my life away … what’s left of it.’

‘Don’t speak like that, I beg you.’

‘Oh, Mary, let us be frank. You know it can’t be long now.’

‘I know nothing of the sort.’

‘But you do, dearest sister, and you won’t accept it.’

Mary shook her head almost angrily and Amelia said gently: ‘Come and sit down and talk a while.’ Mary picked up a footstool and leaning it against Amelia’s chair sat down.

‘What a lovely day,’ she said. ‘I hope it will be as pleasant for George’s journey tomorrow.’

‘It will be wonderful to see him. I wish he were happier though.’

‘Why shouldn’t George be happy? He has everything he could wish for. He is free.’

‘Freedom only seems good when you don’t possess it … like good health and riches … like youth.’

Mary sighed. ‘We are all getting old now. Even you, Amelia, are twenty-six. Twenty-six and the youngest of us all. As for George, if he is not content it is his own fault. They say he is breaking with Mrs Fitzherbert. I am sure that will not make him very happy.’