Jean Plaidy - The Regent’s Daughter

‘I am happy to be under that of my mother,’ retorted Charlotte.

So many people had now come to Connaught House that it was like the gathering before a conference. It was growing late, being past midnight, and they went on talking together and coming to her one by one and telling her that she must either go back to Warwick House or to Carlton House.

‘Mercer,’ she whispered, ‘you understand.’

‘Yes,’ said Mercer, ‘I understand, but they are right. You should never have come.’

‘Why not? My mother wants me. Why should a daughter not be with her mother? Because he hates her that does not mean that I must. Where is Brougham? He is the only one who is not afraid of my father.’

Hearing his name he was at her side.

‘Mr Brougham,’ she said, ‘tell these people that I must stay here.’

He shook his head. Even he! She wanted to burst into tears.

‘Your Highness should not spend a night anywhere but under your own roof.’

‘But this is my mother’s house.’

‘You should not stay here.’

‘So you are against me, too?’

‘It is precisely because I am for you that I say this.’

‘Please, listen to me.’ She began to cry weakly. She was tired; she was frightened, too. At dinner it had seemed so different; with her mother laughing beside her she had believed that she had escaped and that they were going to be together from then on. But her mother was not beside her now. She was yawning in a corner, her wig awry, her paint beginning to run.

Charlotte felt frightened and alone but she clung to her resolution. ‘I won’t go. I will stay here. My place is with my mother.’

Brougham said: ‘Come to the window. It’s nearly two o’clock. It’ll be dawn soon.’

‘And this fearful night will be over.’

‘Your Highness, soon the streets and the Park will be full of people. They will learn that you are here, that you have run away from your father to come to your mother.’

‘Do you think they will be surprised? And why shouldn’t they know the truth?’

‘It could mean riots, bloodshed. They would attack Carlton House. It needs only a little thing like this to ignite the bonfire. Are you going to be the one to do this? You would never forgive yourself if you brought about such conflict.’

She was silent, looking out on the darkness of the streets and the Park.

‘If you return to Carlton House now, this need go no further.’

‘It means I … I accept what he has planned for me.’

‘You can refuse Orange.’

‘He will make me his prisoner and you will then tell me that I must take Orange or there will be bloodshed.’

‘I will never tell you that. In fact you can sign a statement now to the effect that if you ever marry Orange it will be against your will. If I have that paper in my possession to show the people, you may rest assured that they will never allow you to be forced into marriage. You have nothing to lose now by going back. You have escaped Orange. The victory is yours and believe me that is the only one which is of importance.’

‘I want to live with my mother.’

‘You cannot do that.’

‘Why not? She wants me to be with her and I with her. She is my mother. Why should we be parted?’

Brougham hesitated. Then he said: ‘Your mother would not want you to live with her now. It would mean cancelling her plans to go abroad.’

‘Cancelling her plans …’

‘You did not know that she is leaving this country shortly? The Regent has given his permission; he has increased her allowance. Nothing would change her mind now, I am sure.’

‘But this will change her mind. I will change her mind.’

‘Speak to her,’ said Brougham. ‘Speak to her now.’

Charlotte went to her mother.

‘Mamma,’ she said, ‘there is something I must say to you. Brougham has just told me that you are planning to leave England.’

‘Yes, my love.’

‘But now that I am going to live with you …’

Caroline’s eyes were evasive. How could Charlotte live with her … abroad.

‘Now, Mamma,’ Charlotte pleaded, ‘you will not go, of course.’

‘It is all arranged, my pet. We will write to each other … every day. Perhaps we can arrange a visit for you …’

Oh God, thought Charlotte, she doesn’t care.

Brougham was at her side.

‘It will soon be light,’ he said. ‘I think Your Highness should delay no longer.’

She stood up; her eyes were very bright. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I will go now. But I insist on travelling in one of my father’s carriages. To do otherwise might be harmful to my reputation.’

‘Your Highness shows great wisdom,’ said Brougham. He kissed her hand. ‘It shall be my pleasure and my duty to serve you with all my heart now and in the future.’

Charlotte felt limp and listless. She would go back to prison. She saw now that it had been a mistake to leave it.

The strange adventure was over.

‘THIS IS THE saddest and most desolate time of my life,’ said Charlotte to Louisa Lewis, one of the few who had been left to her, presumably because she was too insignificant to be considered of any importance.

‘It’ll pass,’ Louisa comforted her.

So it might, but she would never be quite the same again. She could not forget that her mother did not want her, that all those protestations of affection in the past had meant little. Hadn’t Charlotte always known that she preferred Willie Austin? More important than Charlotte’s welfare was her desire to leave the country.

‘She will stay there, I suppose,’ she mused. ‘I have a feeling that I shall never see her again.’

Louisa tried to interest her in a new dress. As if she could be interested in dresses now! She had defied her father to go to her mother because she had wanted him to know that someone loved her if he did not; and she had been shown so clearly that her mother did not care that she was lonely and desolate and desperately in need of her.

‘So here I am, a prisoner,’ she said.

Her great comfort was in thinking of Queen Elizabeth who had been a prisoner so many times. Why, she comforted herself, look what humiliations she had to suffer! Yet she became a great queen. So shall it be with Charlotte.

It could not last. Every month that passed was a month behind her. She must endure this imprisonment in Cranbourne Lodge because it could not last.

She had not seen him since he came to Warwick House on that fateful night. His carriage had taken her back to Carlton House where she had stayed for a few days before the journey with her band of old ladies.

‘Ugh!’ she said aloud, considering them. Lady Ilchester! Well, give her her due. She tried to be pleasant. As for Lady Rosslyn, she could not endure her. She was so thin that you imagined you could hear her bones rattling. ‘Old Famine’, Charlotte secretly called her. And then Mrs Campbell who had been in her household long ago. She had liked her well enough then, but the fact was she deplored the change and was not prepared to like any of them now.

She thought often of her father who at least had cared enough to make rules for her and to be shocked by her behaviour. Her mother had laughed with her, consoled her, comforted her and deserted her.

It was fortunate perhaps that she felt too listless to care. Her head ached and there was this persistent pain in her knee. She was content to spend long hours in her room reading. She liked reading about great queens of the past, Elizabeth naturally being her favourite of them all; she imagined her imprisoned in the Tower in fear of her life. At least, she thought, they can’t kill me. And when she came to the throne she hoped she would be as great as Elizabeth. She dreamed of herself being crowned in the Abbey. ‘Long live the Queen!’ She could hear the echoes of peers’ voices. To achieve greatness one must reckon to suffer first.

She would endure it – all the petty humiliations. She was not even allowed to have a bedroom to herself for it was her father’s order that one of her laides should sleep in her room. She had insisted that the woman sleep in the next room with the communicating door open and this wish had been granted her. She wondered whether her father had had a debate with his ministers over the matter, and she laughed, which showed she was no longer so miserable.

Every letter she wrote must be censored by Lady Ilchester or by Old Famine; every letter which arrived for her was first read by them. How could she receive the letters which might be coming to Cornelia from F? And Cornelia herself was completely cut off from her.

It’ll pass, she told herself, every week that goes by is a step towards something better.

Her optimism was rewarded when one day Lady Ilchester told her that she had a visitor who came to see her with the Regent’s permission.

She could not believe her eyes when the door opened.

‘Mercer!’ she cried.

‘Yes, I am here,’ said Mercer. ‘His Highness thinks that my friendship does you no harm.’

Charlotte began to laugh and hug Mercer at the same time and so fiercely did she laugh that she was almost in tears.

Mercer was shocked by Charlotte’s appearance and decided that she would find some means of letting the Regent know that this treatment was harming his daughter’s health. But the very sight of her beloved friend brought a sparkle into Charlotte’s eyes.

Mercer set out to cheer her with the news. The Regent had given a wonderful fête at Carlton House in honour of Wellington and there had been two thousand five hundred people there. The dresses! The costumes! Mercer described them in detail. People had lined the Mall to see the carriage pass along and there had been no dissenting cries at all. Everyone had been delighted with the celebrations.