As soon as Charlotte saw the woman she knew that something especially exciting had happened.
‘I don’t know if I should tell Your Highness. It’ll be common knowledge soon enough … but there’s been a terrible tragedy in your Uncle Ernest’s apartments at St James’s.’
‘Do you mean Uncle Ernest is dead?’ asked Charlotte, her eyes round with horror.
‘He’s come pretty near it.’
Then she told the terrible story of how Uncle Ernest had been found in his bed with a great wound in his head which, so it was said, was meant to have killed him. But it did not kill him.
‘Providence was looking after him,’ said Mrs Udney with a knowing smile. ‘And lying in the next room was his valet Sellis … with his throat cut.’
Charlotte cried: ‘Did he try to kill Uncle Ernest? And who killed him?’
Mrs Udney shrugged her shoulders. Who could say? There would be a trial of course. This was murder … royalty or not.
There was a hushed atmosphere through Carlton House and at Windsor, in fact wherever the family were. If Charlotte attempted to mention the matter she was hastily silenced by one of the Old Girls. But that did not prevent rumours reaching her. Her mother showed her some of the cartoons, and some of the sly allusions in the papers.
It was being said that the Duke’s valet had a very pretty wife and that the valet had found her in bed with the Duke. The valet had almost killed the Duke and then committed suicide.
It was the biggest scandal that had ever touched the royal family. The romantic affairs of the Prince of Wales had never gone as far as murder. It was true he had once let it be believed that he had attempted suicide when Mrs Fitzherbert threatened to leave the country to elude him. But was that true? And in any case it was very different from murder.
Was Uncle Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, a murderer?
Aunt Amelia was very melancholy. She said once: ‘This has upset your poor Grandpapa more than anything that has ever happened.’
And poor Grandpapa was upset. He mumbled quite incoherently to Charlotte and did not seem at all clear who she was.
Amelia herself was looking more wan than ever. She was very melancholy, and Charlotte wondered what it was that made her so.
I don’t really know very much about them, she thought. They had been the old aunts to her for as long as she could remember; but when she thought of the sadness of Amelia she wondered if there was any cause besides her illness and that of her father.
Poor Amelia, thought Charlotte. It must be dreadful to be twenty-six and never to have been anywhere, never to have married, just ceasing to be a young girl and becoming an old girl.
But that, of course, was the fate of all the aunts.
Death of an old girl
AMELIA SAT IN her window looking out at the sea. She was feeling no better in spite of the sea breezes; but she was happy because her eldest brother had promised to ride over from Brighton.
Her embroidery lay in her lap. She was, in fact, too tired even for such work. Her tiredness increased with every week and she had a premonition that this time next year she would not be here.
Her sister Mary was with her. What would she do without Mary – the favourite among her sisters as George was among her brothers. Yet she supposed she had grown accustomed to Mary. George was a being from another world, a world of gay romance, whereas poor Mary who had been so pretty when she was young and who was now like a faded flower, was one of the frustrated sisterhood.
Mary came into the room and saw her sister’s hands lying idly in her lap.
‘You should sleep a little,’ she said.
‘I have slept all morning. I don’t want to sleep my life away … what’s left of it.’
‘Don’t speak like that, I beg you.’
‘Oh, Mary, let us be frank. You know it can’t be long now.’
‘I know nothing of the sort.’
‘But you do, dearest sister, and you won’t accept it.’
Mary shook her head almost angrily and Amelia said gently: ‘Come and sit down and talk a while.’ Mary picked up a footstool and leaning it against Amelia’s chair sat down.
‘What a lovely day,’ she said. ‘I hope it will be as pleasant for George’s journey tomorrow.’
‘It will be wonderful to see him. I wish he were happier though.’
‘Why shouldn’t George be happy? He has everything he could wish for. He is free.’
‘Freedom only seems good when you don’t possess it … like good health and riches … like youth.’
Mary sighed. ‘We are all getting old now. Even you, Amelia, are twenty-six. Twenty-six and the youngest of us all. As for George, if he is not content it is his own fault. They say he is breaking with Mrs Fitzherbert. I am sure that will not make him very happy.’
‘He thinks he will be happier with Lady Hertford.’
‘Our charming brother can be a little foolish sometimes.’
Amelia was not going to have him criticized. ‘His life is so full. It is natural that he should often act in a way we do not understand.’
Mary softened towards her brother. All the sisters were fond of him. She said: ‘He always said that the first thing he would do on coming to power would be to find husbands for us. I think he is sorry for us. He has a kind heart although he does not let his pity for us disturb his pleasures.’
‘It would be foolish if he did, for what help would that be?’
‘Oh, Amelia, sometimes I feel so frustrated, so full of resentment that I will do something really wild. Run away, perhaps, something like that.’
‘I understand,’ said Amelia. ‘But it would kill Papa.’
‘Amelia, has it ever occurred to you that Papa has killed something in us? He has kept us here. He has never allowed us to marry. It is like shutting birds in cages and letting them see other birds flying about around them in the sunshine … soaring, swooping, mating …’
‘Yes, it always comes back to that,’ said Amelia. ‘We should have married … all of us.’
‘But Papa does not wish it. We are royal Princesses. There is no one royal enough. Our sister Charlotte was the only one who found a husband. And do you remember how we feared that her marriage would not come off because her husband had had a wife who died mysteriously and they weren’t quite sure that she was dead?’
‘Poor Charlotte, she was so ill when she thought it was going to come to nothing. I could weep to think of her terror. It all seems so clear to me.’
Mary regarded her sister anxiously. ‘Does such talk upset you?’
‘Pray don’t change the subject. I want to talk about us … us and our lives. But it does not make me love dear Papa any the less.’
‘You were always his favourite.’
‘The youngest. Papa’s girl.’ Amelia smiled. ‘They used to send me in to amuse him when he was melancholy.’
‘And you always made him happy.’
‘He used to hold me so tightly that I was afraid. Do you remember the time when he clung to me so fiercely that they thought he would do me some harm?’
‘I remember it well. They put him into a straitjacket because he cried so much when they took you from him. That was when he was very ill.’
‘Mary, do you think … he will be ill again?’
‘I often wonder. I think of it often.’
‘So do I. We ought to remember it. We ought never to do anything that would upset him.’
‘Yet we are young … or we were once. Didn’t we have lives of our own to lead?’
‘Sophia thought so.’
‘Sophia!’ murmured Mary. ‘She was more daring than the rest of us.’
‘Poor Sophia. Is she happy, do you think? Oh Mary, what must it feel like to be the mother of a child you must never acknowledge?’