The Reckoning (76 page)

‘
It's intolerable,' Marcus fulminated. 'When a man is tried and acquitted – that, after all, was what the whole thing was
for! And you remember how the crowds cheered –'

‘
Everyone loves a lord,' Rosamund said, 'as long as they're
at a great enough distance from him. But I'm afraid he'll
always be remembered as the lord who was tried for
murdering his wife – not the lord who was found innocent.'

‘Poor Harvey! He's lost everything. It isn't fair!'

‘
Yet he brought it all on himself,' Rosamund said. 'Too
weak to insist on marrying Polly in the first place, and too
weak to leave her alone when he'd married Minnie. I wonder if that's why Polly's refusing to go away with him? Perhaps she's
finally seen how weak he is, and fallen out of love with him.'

‘
Well, she was pretty weak, too,' Marcus said crossly. 'She
should have repudiated him long before, and then all this
might never have happened.'

‘
All what?' Rosamund asked him with grim significance.
‘You mean he might never have murdered my sister?'

‘
God, no, of course –!' Marcus opened his eyes wide as he
realised what his words had implied. 'Of course, you're right,'
he said quietly. 'And he's right. There will always be a
shadow over him. It would be better, perhaps, if he stayed abroad. He's rich enough now, at least, to live in style and
comfort. But, oh Lord, what are we going to do with Polly?'

‘
Do with her?' Rosamund enquired, knowing exactly what
he was going to say.

‘
Well, we can't keep her here. Mama don't like having her
in the house as it is. And it isn't fair on Bab, either.'

‘
You want to send her away, do you? Perhaps you'd like to
throw her out yourself?'

‘
Don't be unreasonable, love. I didn't mean that, but –
well, it would be very awkward having her with us all the
time. You know how unkind people can be.'

‘
People? Yes, your mother, for one. Can you give me any
reason your mother's wishes and opinions should rule our
lives? Can you give me a reason why she should live here with
us at all?'

‘
She is my mother, for heaven's sake. And
she
didn't bring
disgrace on the family,' Marcus said hotly.

‘
Polly's my cousin, and we were brought up together like
sisters,' Rosamund said, in a hard, calm tone that was more
chilling than anger. 'If Mother were here, she would feel
herself responsible for Polly, and since she's not, I must take
over that responsibility. And if you don't care to pay for her
upkeep, I'll do so myself out of my own allowance.’

Marcus flushed at the last words. It was true that his
mother had complained about the expense of keeping Polly
almost as much as the shame, but she had done so only to
him, and Rosamund couldn't possibly know about it.

‘
Don't be silly,' he said. 'I didn't mean to cast her off, as
you very well know.'

‘
I know nothing,' Rosamund said turning away. 'Your
mother seems to rule you just as much as before you were
married. I wonder she took the trouble to make you propose
to me.'

‘
There's no need for that!' Marcus began, hurt, but she
turned on him swiftly.

‘
There's every need. I tell you this, Marcus, I won't have
my every decision in this house questioned by her, and since I see no prospect of her changing her ways, you had better start
thinking of a way to get her out of here and into her own establishment where she can do as she likes. In the mean
time, since you feel it's a disgrace to have Polly in the house,
I'll take her down to Wolvercote. She won't be any trouble –
or expense – to you there.’

*

It was their first quarrel, and it upset Marcus a great deal
more than Rosamund, for she was upset already on a far
greater scale. She did carry out her scheme of taking Polly to
Wolvercote, for when Harvey had left, there was nothing
Polly wanted more than to get away from prying eyes and
whispering tongues, and to return to what was, after all, her
childhood home. The servants there had known her all her life, and would never think harshly of her, and she would
have the whole of the park to wander in, with the sweetness of
nature to restore her, and no strangers near.

For much the same reasons, Rosamund, having taken Polly
to Wolvercote, stayed there, and for a week enjoyed the sen
sation of freedom from her mother-in-law's irksome restraint
on her. But it didn't answer – Marcus had not married Rosa
mund to be apart from her, and was soon fretting to follow
her into the country. At first Lady Barbara was for remaining
in Town – company was a little thin, but there were many of
her old friends who lived in London permanently, and it
would not be long before the families started to return for the
Season. But a few days sufficed to prove to her that the only
thing anyone wanted to discuss with her was the Trial and
Harvey Penrith's possible guilt. Soon she and Marcus and
Barbarina were on their way to Wolvercote too, where Lady
Barbara could comfort herself for the pain of having to share
a roof with Polly Haworth by the gratifying knowledge that
they were all living at Lady Theakston's expense.

That summer of 1818, England was treated to the diverting
sight of the stout middle-aged sons of George III scrambling
into marriage to secure the succession to the throne.

The death of Princess Charlotte had revealed in what a
parlous state the succession lay. The King himself was an old
man, now for many years hopelessly mad and shut away as a
virtual prisoner at Windsor. He had done his duty by the
throne, producing fifteen children by his queen, of whom
seven sons and five daughters survived: but not one of these
was under forty years of age, and with the death of Princess Charlotte, none of them had a single legitimate offspring to
inherit the crown.

The Regent himself was fifty-five, and had separated from
his legal wife, Princess Caroline, twenty years before, since when he had amused himself with a succession of mistresses
all very much older than him. He was now grossly fat, and
his health was impaired by the style of his living. Even if a
way could be found to divorce him from Caroline, and to
persuade him to remarry a woman young enough to conceive,
it seemed unlikely that he would be able to father an heir.

The second in line, the Duke of York, was married to that
‘pretty little Princess Fred' who had been Brummell's good
friend and patroness. She lived in deep retirement at
Oatlands surrounded by her pet animals, and had never
produced a child. The third son, the Duke of Clarence, was
fifty-two, and had been living for twenty years in quiet
domesticity in a house at Bushey with his mistress — a retired
actress named Mrs Jordan — and their ten illegitimate
children.

The next son, Edward, Duke of Kent, had made his career
in the army where he was renowned as a niggling despot and
ferocious martinet, given to public executions and flogging
men to death. He had never married, but lived in apparent
content with his middle-aged Canadian mistress, Madame de
St Laurent. The fifth son, Cumberland, was married to a
twice-widowed princess and had no living child.

The Duke of Sussex had been married twice, and his first marriage had produced a son and a daughter, but since both
marriages were contracted without the sovereign's permis
sion, they were void under the terms of the Royal Marriages
Act, and the children were excluded from the succession. The
Duke of Cambridge, the youngest of the princes at forty-
three, lived mostly in Hanover in order to save money, and
had never shewn any interest in women, not even having ever
kept a mistress like his brothers.

Yet within a few months of the death of the Princess
Charlotte, the three unmarried royal dukes had rushed helter-
skelter into wedlock. Cambridge married the daughter of
Frederick of Hesse-Cassel; Kent the thirty-year-old widowed Princess Victoire of Leiningen, who was the sister of the late
Princess Charlotte's husband, and who had a son and
daughter by
her
first marriage; and Clarence took the
twenty-five-year-old Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen.

‘
We must simply hope the Clarences produce a child,'
Marcus said one day in July as he read from the paper the
account of the joint wedding ceremony at Kew Palace for the
Kents and Clarences, 'for the notion of the Duke of Kent's
offspring coming to the throne positively chills the blood. The
man is quite mad, you know!'

‘
Really?' Rosamund enquired absently. She was trying to
decipher a letter from her mother which, at some point on its
long journey from Venice, had got wet, causing the ink to
smear.

Marcus found this encouragement enough. 'Oh yes. When he was given command at Gibraltar in the year two, he insti
tuted a positive reign of terror. There were such floggings and
hangings and punishments that in the end the men grew
desperate and there was a serious mutiny. The authorities
had to remove him from command. If his blood is to produce
the next heir to the throne, England will be lost indeed!'

‘
Poor Princess Charlotte was always fond of him,' Lady
Barbara remarked stiffly. 'She called him her "favourite and
beloved uncle". And my father used to say that he was not
fairly treated by his parents.'

‘
Well, Mama, the Beau couldn't stand him at any price, and that's good enough for me,' said Marcus, to whom the
Duke of Wellington was still the fount of all wisdom.

‘
The only thing I know about him is that he disapproves of docking horses,' said Rosamund, ‘so I suppose he can't be all
bad.'

‘
Trust you to know something like that!' Marcus said,
smiling. Lady Barbara looked as though she were thinking
exactly the same thing, but with strong disapproval.

‘
Uncle Edward sold a horse to him once,' Rosamund
explained. 'Still, if you're worried about blood-lines, we may have high hopes of the Duke of Clarence, mayn't we? He did
have ten children by Mrs Jordan, after all.'

‘Pity he couldn't have married her,' Marcus said.

‘
It's a great pity the Royal Marriages Act was ever passed
at all,' Lady Barbara said vigorously. 'It meant that when the
princes were young – and they were all handsome men – they
simply ran wild in society, made love wherever they wanted,
and then said they were very sorry they couldn't marry. It
quite spoiled them. They'd have married respectably if it
weren't for that.'