The innkeeper looked sly. ‘Oh, Madam, we entertain the quality here. I could tell you …’
She did not answer. She went out to the phaeton. Mrs Armistead! Meynel! How very strange.
All the way to Windsor she was thinking of the strangeness of this encounter. A suspicion had come into her mind. The Prince had shown an interest in Armistead. She had caught him watching her now and then. There had been an occasion when she had seen his arrival and he had been a long time coming into her room. And Armistead had left her … after all these years … so oddly.
Armistead! An assignation with the Prince!
‘Oh no, no,’ she murmured.
But in her heart she believed it was true, and something told her that if it was, this was indeed the end.
The next day she arrived in Windsor. She gazed wistfully at the castle and thought of how happy she could have been had she been a princess who might have married him. Everything would have been so different then. There would have been none of the anxieties which had led to friction between them.
She saw herself as a princess arriving from a foreign country, startling him with her beauty.
But encroaching reality was so alarming that it robbed her dreams of any substance; at such a time even she was forced to recognize them for the fancies they were.
She would be brisk and practical; so she pulled up at an inn where she wrote a letter and sent the postilion to the castle with it instructing him to find Lord Malden who, she was sure, was with the Prince, and when he had found him to tell him from whom the note came and beg him to deliver it into no hands but those of the Prince of Wales.
The boy was away for a fretful hour and a half before he returned and said that he had at length been taken to Lord Malden and given the note to him.
‘You did well,’ she told the boy.
The waiting was almost unbearable. At one moment she was assuring herself that the note would bring the Prince to the inn full of remorse; at another she pictured his becoming angry with her for following him to Windsor, but soon to be placated by her soft words and beauty. One thing she could not visualize and that was that he would not come at all.
It was Lord Maiden who came, looking melancholy and anxious. Dear Lord Maiden, who had always been such a good friend!
She greeted him eagerly. ‘The Prince …’
Lord Maiden shook his head.
‘You gave him my note?’
‘I did.’
‘And you have a reply for me. Why did he not come himself when I begged him to?’
‘The Prince is determined not to see you.’
‘But why … why … what have I done to deserve this? Did he read my note?’
‘Yes and …’
‘What? Pray do not hide anything.’
‘He tore it into pieces and said he had no wish to see you again.’
‘But …’
Lord Maiden took her hand and looked into her face. ‘You should return to Cork Street. You will find you have many friends … many friends …’
He was regarding her with that hungry expression which she knew so well.
She withdrew her hands impatiently.
‘I must see the Prince.’
Malden shook his head. ‘He is determined.’
‘And so am I.’
‘But …’
She seized his hand suddenly. ‘Promise me this, that you will do your best to persuade him …’
Lord Maiden replied tenderly: ‘You know that if there is anything on earth I can do to add to your happiness it shall be done. You have lost the Prince of Wales but you have friends left.’
She felt so sickened with anxiety that she turned peevishly away. She had never known Maiden not to plead his own cause! She knew what he was hinting. Don’t mourn because you are no longer the mistress of the Prince of Wales. There are many other men who are ready to take you on.
The shame of it! she thought. That was what they would be saying and thinking now.
‘I will go back to Cork Street now,’ she said. ‘There is nothing more to be done here.’
Malden bowed his head.
And Perdita, sick at heart and defeated, climbed into her phaeton. How much better if she had never come.
She rode back to London, bruised and wounded – yet thinking not so much of the Prince of Wales as the bills which would be coming in as soon as the news leaked out that the Prince had finished with her.
How would she meet them? It seemed to her that as she rode across the Heath – in daylight this time – a shadow loomed over her. Not a highwayman, but the debtors’ prison.
Birthday celebrations at Windsor
IN THE GREAT drawing room the Prince stood beside his father receiving congratulations on attaining his nineteenth birthday. He looked magnificent in his elegant coat, on which flashed the diamond star as brilliant as the buckles on his shoes.
Handsome enough, thought the King. But getting fat. Have to speak to him about it. If he shows signs at nineteen what will he be at my age?
The King felt that he was an old man although only in his early forties. The weight of state affairs, the trials of a family …
The Queen looked on almost complacently for having produced such a handsome son; she was pleased, too, because although her little scheme to provide him with a nice comfortable German mistress had failed, there were rumours that he was not nearly so friendly with that dreadful play actress.
He’ll settle down, thought the Queen.
The Prince was thinking of women. He was free. Dally was amusing and how experienced! He was enjoying his encounters with Dally; and as for the rather sedate Mrs Armistead, she was a treasure. It was amusing to ride out to the Magpie when he felt in the mood and there she would be, never reproaching him, always pleased to see him, so different from Perdita that she reminded him of her – most pleasantly. Reminded him of what he had escaped, of course. That virago-saint! How had he endured her for so long?
There were going to be changes when he returned to London. He was not going to Cumberland House so frequently. He did not like his uncle and he was not going to pretend he did. The fellow was an ignoramus. The more friendly he became with Fox and Sheridan the more he realized this. Insolent too! Taffy! He would have his friends remember that although he liked to be on terms of intimacy with them he was still the Prince of Wales. No one was going to call him by familiar epithets without his permission. Taffy indeed!
Yes, there would be changes.
The celebrations were to last several days, and it was enjoyable to be at the centre of them. He was behaving with such propriety that even the King had nothing of which to complain.
When they met they talked of politics, which at the moment meant the affair of the American Colonies which occupied the King’s mind almost exclusively. The Prince did not set forward his views which, having been acquired through Charles James Fox, were in exact opposition to those of the King.
The King was a little optimistic.
‘The French,’ he told the Prince, ‘are not so ready now to help our rebels. And I’ll tell you why. They have troubles of their own, big troubles. I would not care to see the finances of this country in the same condition as those of France.’
The Prince nodded.
‘You should take an interest in these affairs. They concern the country. More important than gambling or running after maids of honour, eh?’
Oh dear, the old fool hadn’t advanced since Harriot Vernon – and he himself had almost forgotten her name and certainly could not recall what she looked like.
‘I do take an interest,’ said the Prince coolly. What if the old man knew about those long discussions he enjoyed with Fox and Sheridan over innumerable glasses of wine! That would startle His Majesty. But of course Mr Fox could bring a lucid and brilliant mind to the subject; not like poor old muddled Papa.