Jean Plaidy: The Regent's Daughter

Minney expressed delight, but the main emotion of Charlotte and George was apprehension.

Lady de Clifford’s anxious eyes were on her charge.

‘Your hair is very untidy, Princess Charlotte. And may I see your hands?’

Charlotte held them out and Lady de Clifford tut-tutted in exasperation.

‘The Princess is so energetic,’ said Mrs Fitzherbert with a smile. ‘They should be washed. His Highness would most certainly notice. He is so fastidious.’

Charlotte forgot that she had been about to protest – a gesture of defiance to show George and Minney that she did not care. Because Mrs Fitzherbert had spoken one had to obey. She thought fleetingly how different it would have been if Mrs Fitzherbert had been her father’s only wife and she had been that lady’s daughter. To wish this were so would be disloyal to dear Mamma who loved her so violently, yet how much happier – how much more tidy – it would have been. But, thought Charlotte, immediately ashamed of disloyalty to Mamma, not so exciting. And Charlotte liked excitement.

‘I should go at once, dear, and then you will be ready when His Highness comes.’

So Charlotte was led away by Lady de Clifford, leaving Minney and George – those little paragons who had managed to keep clean – alone with Mrs Fitzherbert.

Charlotte washed her hands in the water which was brought and Lady de Clifford began a long monologue to which Charlotte did not listen entirely, just enough to know that it consisted of the usual entreaties to remember this and not forget that when in the presence of His Royal Highness, so that she did not shame herself or her governess.

The long light brown hair had to be combed and made tidy. ‘Princess Charlotte, do stand straight. His Highness has noticed …’ ‘Princess Charlotte, when you begin to stutter, speak slowly. It should help to correct the fault.’

Lady de Clifford took an extra pinch of snuff – always so useful in moments of tension. Charlotte’s gown was a little grubby. His Highness, that arbiter of elegance, would notice. He would be reminded of the distressing fact that although the Princess Charlotte looked like him she had inherited the habits of her mother. It was to be hoped that any unfortunate characteristics she had inherited from the Princess of Wales would be suppressed.

She looked critically at her charge. A pity the Princess had not remembered that visits to Tilney Street could often mean that she might meet her father, and that on those occasions she should not indulge in the rough horseplay for which she seemed to have such a fancy. But there was nothing further to be done. At least Her Highness was clean.

‘We should now go to Mrs Fitzherbert’s drawing room,’ said Lady de Clifford. ‘Come, Your Highness.’

When he comes, thought Charlotte, I will sweep such a curtsey that will astonish him. Not like last time when I almost fell over doing it. She giggled at the thought, but it was a nervous giggle; it had been most shaming. She knew why she so often caught a certain expression in his eyes when they were on her; it was as though he had to force himself to look, force himself to speak affectionately. It was because she was reminding him of someone whose existence he preferred to forget: her mother.

She walked sedately to Mrs Fitzherbert’s drawing room with Lady de Clifford and told herself: This time I will try to please him.

Lady de Clifford opened the door and stood aside for the Princess to enter. Charlotte took a step into the room and then stopped. The scene which faced her was unexpected. Minney’s high-pitched laughter was mingled with deep chuckles of pleasure and the occupants of the room were so absorbed in each other that they had not heard the opening of the door.

Seated on an ornate chair which Charlotte knew was kept for one person only was a large figure, sparkling, handsome, elegant, scented. The Prince of Wales had arrived while Lady de Clifford was tidying her charge. On his knee was seated Minney, one arm about his neck, her face close to his, far more at ease than she was in the company of his daughter. She was pulling the curls of his wig and saying in a very loud voice: ‘Why, you are a very curly Prinney today.’ How dared timid Minney whom she could reduce to terror by a sharp word or a pinch of the ear, behave so … so familiarly towards the Prince of Wales! And there was that bold George Keppel leaning against the Prince of Wales with his hand resting on one elegant white buckskinned thigh and laughing as though the great figure in the chair was of no more importance than his snuffy old grandmother.

Charlotte’s impulse was to stride towards them, send George Keppel flying and pull Minney off her father’s knee. Surely if that were anyone’s place it was Charlotte’s? But when had she ever sat on his knee? Vague memories came back of days long, long ago when she was a baby and had been taken to see Grandpapa, and her father had been there and had set himself out to amuse her. But the memories were so vague that she might have dreamed them.

She did not move; she knew she dared not. And a great pride came to her. If he preferred silly Minney Seymour to his own daughter, let him.

Mrs Fitzherbert, aware of her standing there, came over to her and laid a hand on her shoulder. Charlotte wanted to turn and bury her face against that delicately perfumed plumply elegant figure.

‘And here is the Princess Charlotte herself.’ As though, thought Charlotte, she was the one he had come to see. But it was not true. Mrs Fitzherbert was merely pretending because she understood.

Charlotte came forward and curtsied clumsily. George Keppel moved away from the Prince’s chair; Minney remained clinging to him.

There was a change in Mrs Fitzherbert’s drawing room.

The Prince held out his hand and Charlotte approached him. Minney slid off his knee then and went to stand beside Mrs Fitzherbert.

‘I trust you are well,’ said the Prince. ‘There is no need to ask. Your looks answer for you.’

‘I am well, Y … Your Highness.’

How gauche, he thought. And that stutter!

He could not help the cold note which crept into his voice when he spoke to her. She brought back such unpleasant memories. That woman they had forced him to marry. His first sight of her. Coarse and over-rouged, her eyebrows crudely blackened; her hideous white gown; and the immediate knowledge that she was not personally clean. His nose twitched at the memory. How could they have done that to him! He had known it had to be a German princess but why had Caroline of Brunswick had to fall to his lot? He would never forgive Lord Malmesbury, his father’s ambassador, for not warning him. And the wedding – which he had almost refused to continue with and the wedding night! God preserve me from memory of it! he thought. In fact he could remember little of it for the only way he could face it had been by reducing himself to a state of intoxication. She said he had spent the greater part of his wedding night under the grate. She may have been right for he was certain that he would have preferred the grate to a bed shared with her. But by exerting tremendous will power and subduing his finer feelings he had managed to consummate the marriage and had actually lived with the creature until she became pregnant.

And the result was this gangling girl, this hoyden; who looked so like himself yet reminded him, whenever he was in her company, of that woman.

He could not take to her for that reason. Normally he loved children. He would play with dearest Minney when he came to Tilney Street; and he would look for her, flattening her nose against the glass when she was watching out for him. With Maria and Minney and himself it was a family circle – the sort of home, he told himself, he had always longed for, so different from the dreary atmosphere in his father’s royal palaces – or even the ceremonies he could not escape at Carlton House.