‘No, we’ve established that, haven’t we?’ said Charlotte brittlely. ‘Several times.’
‘Then I’ll make myself very plain this time.’ Robert spoke very slowly and clearly, as though to the village half-wit. He was still breathing heavily through his nose. He might not want her for himself, but the notion of her dallying elsewhere clearly discommoded him.
Charlotte lifted her chin and regarded him haughtily, in her best imitation of her grandmother squishing the peasantry. ‘And what are your pronouncements, O Master?’
Enunciating every syllable, Robert pronounced, ‘If Sir Francis Medmenham asks you to marry him, don’t.’
Charlotte blinked. She had missed a vital link there. So, as far as she could tell, had Robert. Since when had a ride in the park become a euphemism for matrimony?
Charlotte abandoned her duchess impression to wrinkle her nose at her erstwhile lover, who had clearly gone utterly mad. Or maybe he had always been utterly mad and she just hadn’t realised. Much more of this and she would go utterly mad.
Madness must be in the air.
‘He hasn’t even asked me to go riding yet. I only have your word on it. And we both know what that is worth.’
‘Well, if he does, don’t.’
‘Go riding with him or marry him?’ Taunting Robert was actually rather fun, once one got into the swing of it. Poking him with little sticks would probably be fun, too, but there weren’t any to hand. Too bad.
‘Either.’ If Robert gritted his teeth any more, they were going to fall out. Charlotte watched the process with fascination and no little satisfaction. Serve him right to be a toothless wonder. That would put a spoke in his future seduction plans.
‘I don’t see by what right you tell me to do – or not to do – anything.’
‘By my right as the head of the family.’
‘Oh, naturally!’ Charlotte wafted her arms in the air. ‘The same right you exercised oh so diligently all those years while you were away in India. The same right you employed with such stunning’ – Charlotte ground to a stop, momentarily at a loss for a suitably scathing noun – ‘conscientiousness by running away.’
A wry expression settled across Robert’s face, painfully reminiscent of the man she had known at Girdings. ‘Which time?’
‘Either,’ Charlotte shot his own word back at him. ‘You needn’t pretend you have the slightest concern, however minuscule, for my well-being or happiness. You just don’t want your little friend being diverted by matrimony.’
If she hadn’t known better, she might have thought that he looked … sad. That was nonsense, of course. ‘Right. Naturally. You’ve hit it entirely,’ he said tonelessly. ‘Will you grant me my request?’
‘No.’ Some inner devil prompted Charlotte to add, ‘I haven’t so many suitors that I can afford to lose one. Even if he is yet another piece of rotten fruit.’ She let that sink in before continuing, ‘But at least he makes no pretence about it. He’s never pretended to be anything else. Now may we consider this interview at a close?’
It would have been a very impressive speech if her voice hadn’t cracked at the end. With a flourish, she gestured towards the open door into the hall, where, she had no doubt, Stwyth and at least two under housemaids would be busy dusting the wainscoting along the side of the door.
Robert briefly closed his eyes, in a gesture indicative of unspeakable weariness. Without moving, he said, ‘I’m sorry I hurt you. If you believe nothing else I say, believe that.’
‘You’re right,’ Charlotte said, and waited deliberately, cruelly, before adding, ‘I don’t believe anything you say.’
Plunking her nose firmly in the air, she turned on her heel and swept out, nearly tripping over a crouching maid in the process.
Robert didn’t make any attempt to pursue. She could see him reflected in a vast Baroque mirror propped against the wall awaiting rehanging. He didn’t move. His expression didn’t change. He just stood there in Henrietta’s blue and white morning room, watching her walk away.
She should have felt triumphant. She had said all the sorts of things she had always intended to say, but never actually did. And it had been easy. They had just come pouring out. But instead of feeling victorious, she just felt drained. And very, very confused. How could he say he hadn’t meant to hurt her when he had? Why come and bedevil her when he had made it very clear he hadn’t wanted anything to do with her? Charlotte’s gloved hands curled into fists at her sides. It just plain wasn’t right.
Tripping down the front steps, Charlotte took a deep breath before letting a groom hand her up into Henrietta’s carriage. She just needed to put it all behind her. It was all over. Nothing Robert said had any power to move her. If she repeated it to herself often enough, she might even begin to believe it. Grimacing, Charlotte sank back against the blue satin cushions.
At least it would be peaceful at the Queen’s House.
At the Queen’s House, all was havoc.
The queen’s pages greeted her with wide, frightened eyes as she passed down the halls. One of Princess Mary’s ladies stumbled past, crying, her handkerchief over her eyes. Apprehension quickened Charlotte’s steps until she was all but running, her slippers padding against the varnished wooden floors.
In the Warm Room, so called because it boasted one of the only carpets in the palace, Princess Sophia was pacing maniacally back and forth, her butter-blond curls sticking out at odd angles from their bandeau. On seeing Charlotte, she turned a tear-ridden face her direction. ‘Oh, Lansy,’ she moaned. ‘It’s happened again.’
‘What has?’ Charlotte asked breathlessly, fearing that she knew very well what.
‘Papa! He’s gone … well, you know.’
Charlotte sagged heavily against the back of a gilded chair. ‘Oh, dear.’
Princess Sophia cast a nasty look in the direction of her mother’s dressing room, ‘She drove the darling to it, I have no doubt. You’d best go in to her. She is having her own hysterics. As if she really cared!’
Princess Sophia’s tone implied that the queen had no right to any hysterics, much less hysterics of her own. The animosity Princess Sophia bore for her mother only seemed to intensify with every day Charlotte had spent at the palace.
That, however, was no business of Charlotte’s. Releasing her death grip on the chair, she resolutely shook out her skirts. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she promised.
‘You’re an angel, really,’ said Princess Sophia. ‘Not that she deserves it.’
Charlotte smiled fleetingly and was gone, through the door into the queen’s dressing room. If the queen had had hysterics, she wasn’t anymore. She drooped in her chair, still wearing her dressing gown. Her face was so grey that it seemed as though the crimson walls had drained all the life out of her. Next to her hovered Princesses Mary and Elizabeth. Above her head, six portrait miniatures of Charles I gazed mournfully down from their case on the wall in sad commentary on the perils of bearing the crown.
Princess Mary, always so calm, was as disarrayed as her mother, her fair face flushed and her usually immaculately arranged hair straggling in wisps around her face. Dropping her mother’s hand, she made her way to Charlotte.
‘You’ve heard, I take it?’ she asked, in a low voice, as the Princess Elizabeth continued to hover over her mother’s shoulder, patting her arm and making soothing noises.
‘Princess Sophia just told me.’
‘It’s dreadful,’ said Princess Mary heavily. ‘Just dreadful. Worse than last time, even. It was so sudden.’
Charlotte thought of what she had seen the night before, but held her tongue. There could be no use in mentioning it now.
‘They won’t let Mama in to see him,’ Princess Mary continued despairingly. ‘Papa has dismissed all his pages and his Lords of the Bedchamber. At least, they say it’s by his own wishes.’
Charlotte’s eyes widened. ‘Surely, the doctor—’ she began.
‘They have appointed a new doctor,’ said
Princess Mary. ‘They say Papa doesn’t want the Willises anymore, not after the way they treated him last time. They wouldn’t allow Mama’s physician in to see him.’
‘They?’
‘He, rather,’ Princess Mary corrected herself, with a shrug to show the futility of syntax at such a time. ‘My brother’s man, Colonel McMahon.’
‘Oh,’ said Charlotte. And then again, ‘Oh.’
The Prince of Wales had apparently lost no time in securing his hold over the household.
‘Mama is frantic for lack of news. And,’ the princess admitted, ‘so are we. Poor Papa!’
‘Have you sent to the Prince of Wales?’ asked Charlotte tentatively.
‘He is probably too busy celebrating to take any notice,’ said Princess Mary, who was usually quite fond of her brother, bitterly. ‘Why must this happen again and again? Papa is so good. Why must he be afflicted so? Why must we be afflicted so?’
‘Is there anything at all I can do?’ asked Charlotte. ‘Any assistance I might render?’
Princess Mary sighed. ‘Unless you can persuade my brother to lift his ban …’ With a shrug at the futility of it, she suggested, without much enthusiasm, ‘Perhaps you might read to Mama. Mama?’
‘I should not do the listening justice.’ The queen’s voice was hoarse and cracked, as frail as her skin. ‘Not now.’
It was enough to make anyone think decidedly nasty thoughts about the Prince of Wales. How could he be so abandoned to filial feeling, much less common human decency? He had done the same before, grabbing charge of the king’s household and forbidding his mother and sisters access to the king. It was said that on those previous occasions, the prince had done everything possible to arrest the king’s recovery in the hopes that if his father’s mind remained deranged, he would be granted all the powers of a regency.
The notion that someone would be willing to sabotage his own parent’s sanity for personal gain made Charlotte’s skin crawl.
As she looked at the pathetic figure of the queen, a germ of an idea fluttered through Charlotte’s brain. ‘The king’s bedchamber is next to the Great Library!’ she blurted out.
The two princesses looked at her as though she were the one to have run mad.
‘Yes,’ said the Princess Elizabeth. ‘Where it has been these thirty years.’
‘If Your Majesty were to desire me to read to you,’ Charlotte suggested haltingly, ‘a new book might need to be procured for your amusement. It is the merest coincidence that the library opens directly into the king’s chamber …’
The queen’s dull eyes lifted to Charlotte’s, comprehension lighting in their depths. The royal spine straightened.
‘Fetch me a new book, Lady Charlotte,’ the queen commanded in her charmingly accented English. ‘I find I desire to be read to.’
Chapter Sixteen
To promise daring deeds was one thing; to actually accomplish them quite another.
Even though it was the same route she had walked a hundred times before, Charlotte felt dreadfully conspicuous as she made her way from the queen’s apartments to the Great Library. How did proper spies manage? Charlotte couldn’t help feeling like her purpose must be blazoned in fireworks above her head for all to see. But no one else appeared to notice anything out of the ordinary. They were all too busy whispering about the king’s health to bother with her – ‘I heard he jumped right out of bed and built an ark in the middle of the night!’ she heard one footman whisper excitedly to another. ‘Calls himself Noah and runs around looking for animals to put on the ark!’
With news of the king’s madness already spread, the library was completely deserted. It would, Charlotte supposed, take rather a lot of cheek to go on reading Plautus or Livy with the king suffering in the next room.
Feeling like a poor excuse for an emissary, Charlotte placed a palm carefully to the surface of the door to the king’s room and pushed. The door gave without the slightest murmur, moving soundlessly. With the door merely an inch open, Charlotte paused, listening for all she was worth. There was nothing to be heard, no footsteps, no voices, nothing – except for a low mumbling monologue like water running over the rocks of a stream, an indistinguishable burbling punctuated by low sobs and a sort of rustling sound.
Throwing caution to the winds, Charlotte pushed the door the rest of the way open and beheld a sight to stir the hardest heart. In a sodden nest of disordered linens, the king lay curled into a protective ball, knees tucked up to his chest. The poor royal legs were bare beneath his nightshirt, pitted with goose pimples in the merciless cold of the room. Charlotte’s nose wrinkled at the reek of an unemptied chamber pot.
Had the servants never come? The fire was still banked from the night before and the room was dreadfully cold, with the bone-aching January chill that fires could keep at bay but never quite eliminate. With his covers off, the king was all but exposed to the elements, shivering and crying and sweating despite the cold, crooning to himself in a low, continuous monotone. Charlotte stood frozen with pity and horror.
How, oh, how was she ever going to tell the queen? Surely, such things couldn’t be allowed to happen. Not to a monarch. The servants must be called and scolded, the fire stoked, the linens changed, a soothing draught of some sort prepared …
But all that faded into insignificance next to the most horrifying sight of all. As the king floundered among his sheets, Charlotte at last saw just what it was that made him move so awkwardly and lie so strangely. His arms were twisted and tied around his chest in a hideous contraption of a waistcoat, holding his upper body all but immobile.
Charlotte must have made some noise, of horror or pity, because the king paused in his whimpering and, with an effort that made the veins of his neck stand out, twisted his head in a pitiful effort to try to see.
‘Emily?’ he called, in piteous echo of the night before. ‘Oh, Emily, why won’t you save your father? Take off this cursed waistcoat, my Emily! Emily …’
Charlotte didn’t know what she might have done. Her automatic instinct was to take the king away, free him from his bonds and spirit him up to the queen, where his poor shrinking flesh would be covered with warm robes and his anxious daughters would lavish him with every attention that might soothe and heal. But in that instant the sound of another voice was heard through the door that led to the king’s dressing room.
‘I say,’ someone called. ‘What was that?’
It was too late to escape back to the library; the door lay clear across the room. Without stopping to think, Charlotte dove for a squat mahogany cabinet in the corner of the room, decorated with an elaborate design of garlands and flowers, all made out of tiny pieces of inlaid wood. The side curved inwards in the rococo style, leaving a space just large enough for Charlotte to crouch. On its squat ormolu legs, the cabinet was nearly flush with the ground, leaving no telltale gap underneath.
The king thrashed uncomfortably in his bonds, jerking his neck from side to side in an attempt to see her. ‘Emily?’ he called. ‘Emily?’
‘This way, Doctor,’ said a voice she didn’t recognise, a smooth, almost too-polished sort of voice. ‘And you’ll see what we’ve been telling you about.’
Charlotte scooped in the last, betraying fold of her skirt and pressed herself as small as she could make herself between the curve of the cabinet and the wall. She was ridiculously grateful that today wasn’t a Drawing Room day; the spreading hoops of her court dress would have been impossible to hide. There was nothing to be done about the white muslin of her dress, but at least her red spencer blended nicely with the crimson hangings of the wall behind her.
The floor, uncarpeted like most of the palace, vibrated beneath the sudden onslaught of footsteps. Charlotte could feel the floorboards quivering beneath her fingertips.
‘Emily?’ moaned the king, jerking like a fish on the line. ‘Emily?’
‘As you can see, Dr Simmons,’ said the first voice again. A pair of booted legs strode past Charlotte’s hiding place,
polished to a mirror sheen and smelling of leather, champagne, and horse. ‘The situation is dire.’
‘How long has he been like this?’ It must be the doctor this time, with snagged and dirty stockings and buckled shoes with the crossbar of one buckle missing. Mad-doctoring was seldom a lucrative calling.
More shoes, this time shiny buckled ones, attached to heavily muscled legs, every step thundering down like a giant trampling on a village. ‘Since last night.’
Charlotte froze stiff as a board against the side of her cabinet. She knew that voice.
‘He grew agitated last night, so we had to restrain him. Upon his Royal Highness’s orders,’ Lord Henry added, with the instincts of a born coward. ‘I found him with one of the queen’s maids of honour. He appeared to be making, er, indecent conversation.’
The very idea! Charlotte rolled her eyes in the general direction of Lord Henry. It wasn’t a very satisfying response, but it was all she could do without giving herself away. As if the king would do such a thing!
‘As he has before,’ said the smooth-voiced man with crocodile regret. ‘I am sure we all recall his fascination with Lady Pembroke the last time this … unfortunate situation occurred. Both Her Majesty and Lady Pembroke were most embarrassed by it. And then, of course, there was the incident with Mrs Drax on His Majesty’s yacht at Weymouth.’
‘You mean when he told Mrs Drax she had a pretty ass and demanded that she bring it over so he could pat it?’ Lord Henry sounded as though he wished he had thought of that. ‘It’s good to be the king, hey?’
‘There is no need,’ said smooth-voice chillingly, ‘to go into details. But you can see, Doctor, why the prince thought it necessary that his father be restrained.’
Smooth-voice, Charlotte realised, must be the prince’s man.
‘Well done.’ The doctor’s voice vibrated slightly, as though he were nodding. ‘I approve your reasoning entirely, Colonel McMahon – and that of the prince, your master, of course.’