The Princesses whispered together.
‘Have you heard the latest news? She is to appear before the Select Committee. She will have to give evidence at the Bar of the House. What a scandal.’ Augusta had left her embroidery to fall to the floor in her excitement.
‘Even George has never given us such a scandal as this,’ added Elizabeth.
‘They say she has produced his love letters,’ said Mary.
‘Just fancy having your love letters read in public.’ Sophia was aghast.
‘And I daresay Frederick’s are rather silly,’ put in Elizabeth. ‘He could never spell.’
The sisters started to laugh; but Amelia said: ‘I tremble to think what effect this is going to have on Papa.’
Mary Anne was rather pleased with all the limelight.
‘It’s somewhat different from the dreary life in the country,’ she said.
Mrs Thompson, her mother, who had ceased to marvel at the adventures of her daughter, asked timidly: ‘Isn’t it something of a disgrace?’
‘For poor Fred. Not for me. Do you know, gentlemen are writing me notes making me the most attractive offers.’
‘Oh, Mary Anne! Will you take them?’
‘I have so much to consider,’ she replied. ‘In the meantime I must make a good impression at the Bar.’
She did. She chose her costume with care. Blue silk – to bring out the blue in her eyes – edged with white fur. Her muff was of white fur, too. She looked exciting, very pretty and quite ten years younger than she actually was. Excitement always improved her; and she had never been at a loss for words. In fact it was her quick wit – often quite clever – which had helped her to her place in society as surely as her beauty had. On her fair curls she wore a white fur hat with the most tantalizing veil. And thus she was ready to face the assembly.
She enchanted most of them. She was so completely feminine, both demure and saucy; and she successfully dealt with those who tried to bully her, scoring over them to the amusement and delight of so many onlookers. If this was disaster for the Duke of York, it was triumph for Mary Anne.
Corruption there had been. That much was evident. The point was how much had the Duke of York been involved in it? Had he been completely innocent of it? This was hardly likely but it was of great importance to the royal family and to Frederick that he should be proved a fool rather than a knave.
Mary Anne, urged by her supporters to bring her former lover to ridicule, produced some of his letters, which were read aloud in the court. This was the highlight of the case, for Frederick was no scholar; his letters were ungrammatical, ill-spelt but intensely illuminating; and gave a picture of his intimate relationship with his fascinating Mary Anne. They were quoted in all the coffee-houses and the taverns.
The King ranted for hours at a time. He sent for Frederick; he demanded to know what he thought he was doing. ‘No sense of duty, no sense of propriety. Can’t settle down like a good husband. Got a wife … what was wrong with that? All those animals it was true. Barren … No children. Very unsatisfactory, eh, what? But not as unsatisfactory … as criminally unsatisfactory as trafficking with this woman and undermining the discipline of the Army, eh, what?’
Frederick was wretched. He couldn’t understand how he had got himself so entangled. He went to Carlton House and talked endlessly to the Prince of Wales who while he sympathized had to admit that it was the worst scandal that had hit the House. He reckoned it was this sort of thing which could start a revolution. They hadn’t to look very far back across the Channel. Mary Anne was a beauty – the Prince conceded that; and he was no stranger to the sudden and irresistible passions for a woman which could beset a man, but Frederick had gone a little far in letting her become involved with the Army. So there was no great comfort even there.
As for William, he shrugged his shoulders. Really Fred was a fool. The other brothers were sorry for him but they did think he had been too absentminded or indulgent or plain stupid. Edward did not come near his brother; he couldn’t help chuckling when he remembered Frederick’s recalling him from Gibraltar. Was Frederick remembering that now? To think he had complained of Edward’s behaviour.
‘Ha, ha,’ said Edward to himself; but not to Julie who might have been a little shocked. Dear Julie, he wouldn’t have liked her to be otherwise. But she couldn’t understand a man’s pride in the profession for which he lived and worked; and what it meant to see an inferior placed above him – just because he was older, just because their father doted on him, just because he was easy-going and good-natured. This would teach them.
So poor Frederick was wretchedly unhappy while the case was being tried. There was no comfort anywhere … except with George, though even he couldn’t entirely hide the fact that he thought Frederick had acted like a fool; he couldn’t go out to any of his clubs because he knew that people were talking about him, remembering phrases from his letters to Mary Anne, tittering over the banal manner in which he expressed his sentiments.
Frederick stood before his mirror and said to himself: ‘Damn it, I’m not a writer. I’m a soldier.’ His reflection mocked him. A soldier. He was an even worse soldier than a writer it seemed; at least that was what his enemies were trying to prove.
There was no one who really stood with him. He had never felt so friendless in his life. George – yes, George— but he knew that things had never been the same between them since their quarrel over Maria Fitzherbert and the Duchess of York.
The door of his bedroom was quietly opened and someone was standing there looking at him. He stared at his wife. ‘You here?’ he stammered.
‘Yes.’ She came into the room and sat down on the bed.
‘You have been hearing of this … affair,’ he said; and he thought: She has come to mock me, which is understandable. She is my wife but I never loved her and I showed it quite clearly. As for her, she always preferred her animals.
She nodded. ‘I have heard,’ she said. ‘And I think at such times it is well that we are under the same roof.’
‘What?’ he cried.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘It is why I have come to London.’
‘But you hate London.’
‘I prefer the country.’
‘And your dogs and cats and birds and monkeys … you prefer them.’
‘They are well looked after. They do not need me now.’
‘And … I do.’
‘It is well at such times that a wife should be with her husband … to show that she believes him innocent of what is being proved against him. They should be seen together. At other times, let them go their own ways … but in times of trouble they should be together.’
He looked at her rather mistily. He was sentimental like the Prince of Wales, and now he was deeply touched that she, of all those near to him, should have been the one to stand by his side.
The case ended with Frederick’s being acquitted of complicity in corrupt practices by 278 votes to 196.
Pacing up and down the drawing room at Castle Hill Edward received the verdict with jubilation.
‘He’ll have to resign his command,’ he told Julie. ‘It’s not possible for a Commander-in-Chief to have suffered the indignity of such a case.’
‘Even though he is not proved guilty?’
‘My dearest Julie, 196 people believed he was guilty. He’ll have to resign.’
‘Will they give you the command?’ she asked.
His mouth was grim. ‘Who can say? It may be that they’ll have had enough of royal dukes. Frederick has disgraced the family as well as himself.’