Then Mrs Udney brought her a note which had come through the Princess Caroline. It was from Captain Hesse who was coming to Windsor when he hoped he would have the pleasure of seeing the Princess Charlotte. Charlotte was delighted and after that she often contrived to give the grooms the slip and meet Captain Hesse in the forest.

One must make the most of dull old Windsor. What was there to do but ride and practise dancing and write to Mercer telling her how she longed for her company? George Fitzclarence had arrived and what fun it was to divide her smiles between the two young men.

The aunts were shocked.

‘I do declare, Charlotte,’ said Aunt Mary, who had once been the prettiest of the Old Girls and still was, though faded, ‘that you are a regular flirt.’

Poor Aunt Mary who hoped to marry her cousin the Duke of Gloucester. Charlotte wondered why they didn’t because surely the Prince Regent would put no obstacles in their way. It was only poor mad Grandpapa who had done that – and of course the Begum. That wicked old woman did not wish her daughters to marry because she did not want them to have any independence and wanted to keep them dancing attendance on her. But if Mary and Gloucester were ever going to marry they should do so now before it was too late. Perhaps the Regent would give his consent if they asked it, but it might be that having waited so long they had lost the urge to marry.

Poor old things! thought Charlotte. When one was approaching the charming age of seventeen one could be sorry for these old people – particularly such as Aunt Mary who had never lived any life but one in subservience to the old Begum. So what did she know of flirts? Though, considered Charlotte, I believe I am inclined to be one. She would write and tell Mercer. Dear Mercer, who meant more to her than anyone.

During that stay at Windsor when she was not reading Mercer’s letters smuggled in to her very often by the services of Mrs Udney, or writing her own to be smuggled out by the same ready hand, when she was not writing to Captain Hesse – and how much more familiar she could be on paper than in conversation when they were so spied upon (and in any case she had inherited her father’s gift for letter-writing and his indiscretion in the art, because after all it was indiscretion which made a correspondence exciting) – she became aware of a certain tension in the atmosphere. Poor old Lady de Clifford seemed to have become more scatter-brained than ever; Mrs Gagarin was remote and Charlotte feared she was sometimes in pain, a fact which disturbed her greatly; Louisa was worried about Mrs Gagarin; and there was something secretive about the aunts. As for the Queen, she was more tight-lipped than ever, more disapproving, and attendances on her were becoming intolerable.

Something was about to happen, thought Charlotte.

One day when she came in from riding in the forest Mrs Udney said: ‘Talk about scenes. We’ve had some excitement while you’ve been out. Who do you think called? None other than the Princess of Wales. And what do you think? Her Majesty refused to receive her. Of course it’s not the first time. The Princess was furious, shook her fist at our stone walls as she got back into her carriage and talked a lot of German, but I did understand her to say that she was not going to allow things to remain as they were. She was going to see her daughter when she wished. She was not going to be kept away and she had friends to help her.’

‘I should like to have seen her.’

‘Trouble’s brewing,’ said Mrs Udney and the sparkle in her eye proved that she was one who felt that to be rather a desirable state of affairs.

One could not keep the girl at Windsor indefinitely, ruminated the Regent. However troublesome, she had to be brought back. She would be seventeen at the beginning of the new year and that was but a year from her coming of age.

It had been more comfortable when she was a child.

His advisers had said that she must be seen now and then; she must begin to take a part in public affairs. ‘So, we shall have to bring her back to be a plague and torment, I suppose,’ he had remarked to his Lord Chancellor, Lord Eldon. ‘We must bring her back and put her on show.’

Lord Eldon, who was well aware that the Princess would soon have powerful advisers in parliamentary circles and that they would be opponents of his, reluctantly agreed.

‘My sisters can be her chaperons,’ said the Prince. ‘I think they will be pleased to come out a little themselves, poor souls. They lead very dull lives.’

So it was agreed that Augusta, Elizabeth and Mary should, with the Princess Charlotte, attend the opening of Parliament.

The Regent was not looking forward to the occasion as his valet prepared him for it. It was tiresome because this was an occasion which he should have enjoyed. Position and power still excited him. He could have been content to be the centre of some splendid scene, magnificently apparelled – the benign and charming Regent – King in all but name. This is how he had pictured it in the days of his youth when he had assuredly not thought of a Regency but of reigning in his own right. After all he had been reared for that purpose. He had always known from those early days when he strutted about the nursery that he was to be a king one day. He had not foreseen the tragic illness of his father. Poor old man, living out his clouded existence in the hands of keepers … for that was what it amounted to, almost totally blind now and struggling to grope a way out of his madness. What a fate to overtake a man – and a king at that!

The Regent was sorry the relationship had not been more amicable between them; but he had made occasional attempts and the old man had always been a sore trial. Moreover, parents and their children were rarely good friends in this family – in fact often open enemies. And this brought him back to his own tiresome Charlotte. Why could not the girl behave with decorum? Why did she have to be such a bouncing indiscreet hoyden? The answer was simple. Because she was That Woman’s daughter and although she might have inherited some admirable qualities from the paternal side of the family no one could deny the fact that she was her mother’s child.

Charlotte must be kept in her place which she must understand that for another year or so was not an important one. Until she was of age she must be treated as a minor; and she must not forget – for God knows he never did – that the muchlonged-for divorce was not an impossibility and that if by some heaven-sent opportunity he was able to achieve it, he would marry with all speed, get a son and then young Charlotte would be of no more importance than one of his sisters whom she seemed to despise.

But Charlotte had more spirit than his sisters. She was, after all, his daughter. And they had been brought up without hopes whereas it seemed very likely to everyone that Charlotte would one day be a queen.

Trying creature! Oh, what an unhappy day when he had married her mother! It all came back to that odious, revolting, vulgar, ill-smelling creature who was known as the Princess of Wales.

Well, now to the opening of Parliament and very splendid he looked in the uniform of a Field Marshal. He himself had designed the cocked hat and had he still been on terms of friendship with Brummell he would have challenged him to produce a better.

Surely they must applaud such a figure. He was aware of the interest and admiration in everyone’s eyes. Whatever they said of him they must admit that he graced an occasion. He might be a little portly but a lean man would not have been so impressive.

The horses were restive but how beautiful – all matching in colour. A few people had gathered to see him get into his coach but they stood in silence, which was of course preferable to vulgar insults – but he would have preferred a little enthusiasm.

The coachman whipped up those beautiful light-coloured horses and as they started off he was remembering the old days when he was young and how the people had stopped his carriage to cheer him.

He wondered whether Maria would see him today and if so what she would think. Happy days when he had called on her and it had been like coming home. Home was something he had missed in life. Carlton House and the Pavilion might be the most splendid residences in the country but they were scarcely homes. If only Maria … but that was an old story. Maria had failed him. He had almost lost the crown for her sake and she had left him all because of his friendship with Isabella – that pure friendship which was one of the mind. And she had taken Minney with her – Minney, his gift to her. And Minney had loved her Prinney.

There were tears in his eyes and he hated the woman who, he assured himself, had ruined his life because he blamed Caroline for everything, even Maria’s desertion. He was ashamed of the German princess to whom they had married him. That he, the most fastidious and elegant of princes, should have been given that drab was cruelly incongruous. And the fact was that whenever he saw Charlotte he was reminded of her. She might have his looks but she never failed to recall her mother to his mind.

Suddenly he was thrown forward. The coachman, still clutching the reins, had been thrown to the ground and the coach swayed dangerously for some seconds before righting itself.

The crowds were beginning to gather. The Prince, realizing that he was unhurt, looked through the window and called to those who were helping the coachman to his feet: ‘Is he hurt?’

‘No, Your Highness,’ the coachman answered for himself. ‘It was the post, Sir. We struck it and it all but overturned us.’ He was still clutching the reins which had no doubt prevented the horses from bolting.

The unsavoury crowd, the curious eyes, he hated it all. So different from the old days. He wanted to give immediate orders to drive on but that consideration for his servants for which he was noted and which endeared them to him no matter how unpopular he might be outside his own household, was second nature to him.

‘Are you fit to go on or would you like another driver to take over?’

The coachman’s eyes were a little reproachful. ‘I’m all right, Your Highness. It wasn’t what you’d call a spill. Just that old post, Sir.’

‘Then let us go.’

So the coachman got on to the box and they were off; the entire incident had only taken up five minutes.

Still, it had shaken him a little, not the accident of course but the sullen looks of the people. They no longer liked him. They would be glad when it was Charlotte’s turn. How had the change come about and what was the precise reason? Why were monarchs so popular in their youth and why did that popularity almost inevitably wane as they grew older?

Walking between the peers, the crown carried before him on its cushion, he felt better; he would deliver his speech effortlessly and in his beautifully modulated voice. His manner would remind them that they could always rely on him to grace an occasion.

Charlotte watched him with those feelings to which she was now accustomed. She hoped that when the time came for her to perform a similar duty she would do so with the same elegant panache. She was proud to be his daughter and at the same time she had to fight those waves of resentment. She was fiercely proud of him and yet ashamed; she loved him and she hated him.

If he would only show that he cared a little for her, it might be so different; but often it seemed that he enjoyed humiliating her. Even on this occasion he had commanded that on their way from the Speaker’s House she must walk behind the Old Girls. She, the heir-presumptive to the throne, to walk behind old women who were not and never could be of any significance. It was done surely to humiliate her, to remind her that as yet he considered her of no importance.

Very well, she would show him that she was the one the people liked. She would do everything she possibly could to win their cheers when they rode back to Carlton House.

She could have wept when she heard him reading the speech. It was so beautiful. Surely they must admire him. But then of course he had behaved so badly to poor Mamma and the cartoons were becoming more and more scurrilous although, having promised Mercer, she did not look at them … well, only a quick glance when Mrs Udney brought them in or her mother sent them, not what one could call a real look.

It was fun riding through the streets. What a lot of people there were about!

‘God bless the good Princess Charlotte.’