Jean Plaidy - The Regent’s Daughter

‘And he is very angry. Mercer, you are not on his side?’

‘Sides?’ said Mercer. ‘Why should it be a matter of taking sides? While I think you were right to refuse Orange, I do not think you should have run away.’

Charlotte was crestfallen. Could it possibly be that Mercer was afraid of offending the Regent?

There was the sound of carriage wheels below. Charlotte had run to her window. The guttural penetrating tones of the Princess of Wales could be heard below.

Charlotte turned to Mercer triumphantly. ‘She’s come. She turned back immediately. I knew she would.’

She ran to the door. The Princess of Wales was coming up the stairs.

‘Where is Charlotte? Where is my daughter?’

‘Here, Mamma.’

The Princess Caroline opened her arms with a dramatic gesture and Charlotte threw herself into them.

‘So my angel came to her Mamma! Bless you, my precious daughter. And what is he going to do about this, eh?’

The embrace was suffocating; but it was what Charlotte needed. Reassurance. Security. At last she had come home.

‘Travelling makes me hungry. It’s dinner time. We’d better eat, my love. I’ve an idea we may have company tonight. Now, Lindsay, love, give the orders. Tell them that I’m back … if they don’t know it. Tell them that I’ve got a very important guest and I can’t let her starve.’

Charlotte began to laugh. ‘Oh, Mamma, it is so good to be with you.’

All this time, she thought, I have tried to love him when she was waiting to love me. It had had to be a matter of taking sides and now she had taken hers.

Dinner was served in the dining room. Caroline was in good spirits; she kept bursting into laughter, imagining the scenes that must be going on around the Regent.

She laughed hilariously and Charlotte, in a state of near hysteria, joined in. Mercer was cool and seemed remote. She was not so happy with the situation as Charlotte was.

When they were half way through dinner the carriages began to arrive. The Duke of Sussex was the first to come. He had not seen Caroline since the Delicate Investigation in which he had played a part, but they greeted each other affectionately. Charlotte was immediately aware of his dismay.

‘You shouldn’t have run away,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t wise.’

‘Should I have stayed to be a prisoner?’

‘You should have stayed,’ he told her.

‘I hope,’ said Charlotte, ‘that some of you are going to be on my side.’

‘We are on your side,’ he assured her.

‘Yes,’ she said bluntly, ‘and on my father’s at the same time.’

But there was her mother. She could rely on her.

Lord Eldon arrived. That coal heaver! thought Charlotte. Trust him to come. He would do all in his power to humiliate her.

Dinner was over and no one seemed to be quite so merry as they had before. People kept arriving and each one whispered to Charlotte that he wanted to help her but he feared she had acted rashly. The best thing was to return to Carlton House and then try to come to some agreement with her father.

To all this she replied: ‘No. I shall stay with my mother.’

Caroline whispered to her: ‘Brougham and Whitbread will be here soon. I called at their houses on my way but they weren’t at home. I left messages for them to come at once. They’ll be here soon.’

She was right. They arrived in due course and they both looked grave. Surely they were not going to tell her that she ought not to have come!

Miss Knight arrived – unlike herself and tearful. What had happened to Cornelia? Charlotte had thought she would be calm and precise in any circumstances, but it seemed that the Regent had the power to change people; he had certainly changed Cornelia.

‘I have brought Louisa Lewis with Your Highness’s night things,’ she said.

The Duke of York, who had since arrived, not very pleased to have been called from his card party, but kind and gentle with his niece as always, retorted: ‘Night things! Charlotte cannot stay here. My dear niece, you must not spend a night other than under your own roof or that of your father.’

‘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.