The Regent's Daughter: (Georgian Series) (54 page)

And now he was invited to England and such an invitation would never have been made if his success was not almost certain. He had, naturally, to win the regard of Charlotte herself and she was a young woman of some spirit for had she not sent Orange packing, although it was a match on which her father had set his heart!

He wished he did not feel so ill; the pain in his head – ‘rheumatism’ the doctors called it – made him dizzy; but when it was warmer he would feel better. This February east wind seemed to cut right into his bones. He must remember that he had acquired these ailments on the battlefield and a life of peace and comfort would soon banish them. He was, after all, a young man.

Lord Castlereagh who had come to meet him advised him to bury his face in his fur collar and make sure his travelling coat was wrapped about his legs. They were going to London where His Serene Highness could rest for a day and after that the Prince Regent would receive him at Brighton.

Charlotte sat bolt upright in the carriage which was taking her to Brighton. There was the faintest colour in her cheeks, a sign of intense excitement. Ever since she had heard that Leopold was coming to England she had had to restrain her emotion; she did not want everyone to know how elated she was. Leopold! Now she could think of him freely; she did not have to
attempt to banish him when he came into her mind. How glad she was that F had not offered for her; what tragedy if she had taken him!

Leopold! The most handsome man she had ever seen. Or he had been. Was he still? That was something she would know in a very short time. She could scarcely wait.

She looked from Lady Ilchester seated beside her – so calm, so unaffected by this great occasion – to Old Famine opposite, bony hands on her lap, looking more like a skeleton than ever.

I’m glad, thought Charlotte, that I am not thin, but that would be very unlikely for a member of our family. But does he like thin women? Surely not. Everyone must like a certain amount of plumpness. Was she too plump? In some places perhaps. But Louisa always said she had beautiful arms because they were rounded and white and well covered. Did he like tall women? Well, she was not tall, and she was not short, either. And her complexion really was very good – if pale – for this smooth white skin
was
attractive. F had commented on it; so had Hesse. But she did not want to think of them.

The Pavilion glittered in the early spring sunshine like an oriental vision. She hoped her father would be kind to Leopold. He would be openly so because good manners would demand it, but if she heard that cold note in his voice she would know that there was going to be trouble.

Oh, dearest Papa, she thought,
please
like Leopold.

And then she laughed at herself. She didn’t eyen know whether she herself liked him yet. After all he
had
run away when he had thought there was going to be trouble.

She would remind him of that.

Her father, seated in a chair on wheels which he could operate himself, was waiting in the Chinese drawing room. His gout was bad, he told her, and he could not, without great pain, put his foot to the ground.

She expressed her concern which pleased him; and she
was
concerned to see him look so old. Even his impeccable clothes seemed for once to do little for him. She thought he looked as fat and ugly as old Louis XVIII. But perhaps that was because she was dreaming of a Prince Charming and with that image in her mind everyone else looked ugly.

‘Well, Charlotte,’ said the Regent a little sadly, still thinking of Orange perhaps, ‘very shortly this young man will be here.’

‘Yes, Papa.’

‘We shall see. We shall see.’

‘I am hoping that we are both going to like him,’ she said.

‘H’m,’ said the Regent, inclined to be predisposed not to like Saxe-Coburg when it should have been Holland.

He glanced at Charlotte. He had rarely seen her look so attractive and she was not uncomely this daughter of his. Lately she had improved.

Charlotte intercepted his glance and knew what it meant. She wondered what he would have said if he knew that the night before she had left Cranbourne Lodge she had put on an officer’s uniform and ridden out into the forest. It was a daring thing to have done but she had felt the desire to do it. She had passed through villages and people had glanced casually at her – an officer from the Guards at Windsor. What would they have said if they had known that it was the Princess Charlotte!

A mad thing to do, Mercer would say when told. It was the sort of thing her mother would have done. But she had had to do it; she had had to curb the wild exultation. And now she wondered why.

Mercer was a little preoccupied with her own affairs, for she had met a fascinating French count, and Charlotte believed that her friend was very serious about this young man. The last time they had met she had talked of little else. The Comte de Flahault had been an aide-de-camp to Napoleon and had come to England when the Bourbons were restored to the throne. He was very romantic and, according to Mercer, madly in love with her.

She will talk of the Comte de Flahault, thought Charlotte, and I of Leopold.

Leopold!

Her heart began to flutter for they were announcing him now.

‘His Serene Highness, the Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg.’ And there he was being presented to her father, every bit as handsome as she remembered him. A little pale, but that made him all the more fascinating.

‘Welcome,’ said the Regent, extending an elegant glittering hand to be kissed. ‘I hear you have had a wretched journey.’

Leopold replied in rather halting English (How endearing! thought Charlotte) that the crossing had been bad and the weather inclement.

‘I must present you to my daughter, Her Royal Highness, the Princess Charlotte.’

They stood and looked at each other and smiled.

It was, said Charlotte, afterwards to Mercer, love at first sight – or rather a renewal of it because I
knew
– although I tried to delude myself that it was not so – that he was the Only One from the moment I first met him in the Pulteney Hotel.

The formal pleasantries over she was allowed to withdraw with him to a corner of the room that they might exchange a few words while the Regent was in conversation with Lord Castlereagh.

‘It gives me great … how do you say … to be here?’ said Leopold.

‘Well, it depends on what you want to say. It could be pleasure, sorrow, happiness or misery. There’s a whole choice. The point is are you
glad
?’

‘Glad?’ His eyes were beautiful, the most beautiful in the world – and serious. She liked his seriousness. F and Hesse had been such
frivolous
men … and look how they had behaved – Hesse refusing to return her letters and F skulking off and letting everything peter out. Leopold would never refuse to return her letters, not that there would be any need to. They would be together so there would be no necessity to write at all; but if they did he would keep them for ever … his dearest possessions.

‘It means you are
pleased
,’ she said. ‘Are you? Shall we speak in French? That’s better. I shall have to teach you English, I can see.’

He told her in French how happy he was to be here, how he had thought of her ever since their last meeting.

‘And yet you went away. I asked you to come to Warwick House and you refused my invitation.’

‘How I wanted to come! But I looked ahead. I thought there would come a day such as this and I was ready to deny myself the pleasure then that this greater and more lasting happiness might come.’

She clasped her hands together. It was the answer she needed. It explained everything.

She was never one to hide her feelings. ‘I am very happy that you have come,’ she told him.

Leopold thought her charming; he was feeling better already.
She was too impetuous, of course; she flouted etiquette and her manners were boisterous, but a tender restraining hand would remedy that. And she was warm in the affection which she already had for him.

She thought him wonderful, a hero out of a tale of chivalry. She needed so much that love which she had missed all her life. Her mother had failed her and she knew in her heart that she would never have from her father what she longed for; even Mercer now had the Comte de Flahault. And here he was – the perfect knight, the deliverer, the most handsome, delightful and desirable man in the world. Leopold!

The Prince Regent, less enchanted, was murmuring to Castlereagh: ‘He’s too thin. Wants fattening up and I don’t much care for the fellow.’

But Charlotte cared – how she cared! She bloomed; she looked almost beautiful and in good health. She rode out with Prince Leopold and the people gathered around the carriage to cheer them. Two handsome young people and a wedding soon to take place with the promise of elaborate celebrations and rejoicing.

‘Long live Charlotte and Leopold!’ they cried.

He was devoted; she was adoring.

‘For the first time in my life,’ she told Louisa, ‘I am truly happy.’

Everyone was delighted except the Regent who could not forget Orange nor really like his daughter’s future husband. Leopold was too solemn; he did not laugh easily. ‘No humour,’ said the Regent. ‘Dull fellow.’ Leopold was abstemious. He looked on with disapproval at the Regent’s drinking habits. ‘I never did believe that the consumption of large quantities of wine was good for the body or the mind,’ he told Charlotte. ‘How I agree with you!’ she cried, and told him about Orange coming home from Ascot decidedly drunk. She shivered when she thought how near she had come to marrying Orange. The idea of being denied all this happiness!

She wanted only to please Leopold. She wanted to know his thoughts on everything. She admired so much his industry because he worked hard every day studying English. He was such a paragon of virtue; she had not dreamed there could have been such a person in the world.

He did not like to see her riding on horseback. He thought it somewhat unladylike.

She laughed, remembering that ride in military costume. Better not tell him about that.

‘Well, my dearest,’ she said, ‘I shall never ride on horseback again. Why should I when I have my carriage?’

‘You are very charming,’ said Leopold; and she would have given up all the horses in the world to hear him say that.

She wrote to Mercer. She was the happiest girl on earth. Nothing else mattered now that she had Leopold. Did Mercer understand her feelings? Did she feel the same for her Comte? Mercer must come at once. She would not be content until her dearest Mercer met her adored Leopold. ‘You two must love each other.’

She talked often of Mercer to Leopold.

‘She is a little domineering, this lady?’ he asked.

‘Domineering! Mercer! Oh, Mercer is
always
right … and so naturally she says so. She has been my
dearest
friend for years and years. You are going to love her.’

Leopold smiled fondly. Was that an order? he wanted to know.

Yes, it was, declared Charlotte. It was going to be one of those orders which he would not be able to disobey even if he wished.

He was everything that she had hoped for. He was calm and gentle – how calm and how gentle! He never insisted on having his way but he did, because naturally she wished to please him and she already believed that everything Leopold did must be right.

When Louisa told her that it had been said that he was the handsomest prince in Europe, she replied she was surprised that Louisa should mention something so obvious in that tone of wonder.

Charlotte was happy as never before. Everyone was aware of it, for she could not keep such a secret. Even the Queen smiled rather indulgently; as for the Princesses, they were torn between their delight and their envy. The Regent was glad that Charlotte was not being recalcitrant and that the people were pleased with the match; but he did wish it could have been Young Frog whom he much preferred from every point of view.

The first little check to Charlotte’s happiness came with the
meeting between Mercer, and Leopold. It was incomprehensible. They did not like each other. Mercer who had dared stand up to the Regent was not going to be overawed by a mere Prince of Saxe-Coburg; and to see Charlotte, who had once been so wholeheartedly devoted to herself, so besotted about this young man was mildly irritating.

‘You two will love each other.’ Such an introduction was almost certain to have the opposite effect.

They measured each other: Prudish, calculating, determined to be the master, thought Mercer. Domineering, wanting to take charge of Charlotte, wanting to run the household. We’ll have to be rid of her, thought Leopold.

They were coolly polite and Charlotte, to make things easier, asked Mercer how the Comte de Flahuault was and when she was going to bring him to see her.

Leopold stiffened and Mercer, sensing this, replied that the Comte was very well and no doubt in due course she would be in a position to present him.

Mercer left earlier than Charlotte had anticipated and as soon as she had gone she cried: ‘Is she not the most attractive woman you have ever seen!’

‘Certainly not,’ replied Leopold. ‘Have I not met you?’

Charlotte giggled delightedly. Giggling was a habit, Leopold decided, of which she must be cured. ‘But next to me, eh, Leopold … next to me, my dear Mercer is the most attractive woman you have ever met?’

‘I cannot say that.’

‘Oh, Leopold, you are not going to say that you don’t think Mercer is beautiful! That lovely red hair!’

‘I like best the flaxen.’

‘Darling Leopold! But you must love Mercer. I insist.’

‘A man cannot love to order even when commanded to do so by one whose all other wishes are law.’

‘But why not this wish, eh, Leopold? Answer that!’

He shook his head. ‘Alas, it cannot be. I can love one woman only. She is Charlotte.’

Charlotte embraced him fiercely. Her darling, darling Leopold!

‘
Doucement, chérie
,’ he whispered, ‘
doucement
.’