Devil Water (33 page)

“And why not!” she cried, tossing her head. “Can’t one feel pity for gentlemen of rank who are dying ignoble deaths?”

She looked lovely as she gazed straight at him, her eyes flashing, her auburn curls quivering beneath the lace morning cap. Frank was suddenly convinced and he smiled. “Ah, you always have a tender heart, my love.” He got up, and coming around the table kissed her on the cheek. “But you must
not
allow it to ache for the unworthy. And I’m concerned about your health. A change of air, I think. Take Harry and go to your father at Ditchley Park for a while. He’s not well, and would be delighted to see you. Take Jenny too, if you like,” he added kindly. “I know you’re fond of the little thing.”

Betty acknowledged her husband’s kiss by a faint smile, and made a play of drinking her chocolate, while her frightened mind tried to cope with this new threat. Of all times she must not be out of London now. “Why, I don’t want to leave you alone here, Frank,” she said. “I assume you won’t go to Ditchley at present?” She held her breath while she waited for his answer.

“No,” he agreed. “It would be unwise. Since the King is off to Hanover, and the Prince is seeking regent’s powers in his father’s absence. The situation for the Whigs may be ticklish.”

Here Betty had a sudden gleam of hope, and her heart beat fast as she nodded intelligently and said, “Ah yes. The Prince and Princess of Wales incline towards the Tories, don’t they!”

“The Prince inclines towards anything which will annoy his father!” Frank snapped. “Most unfilial. My dear, this has nothing to do with you. Where your health is in question, I don’t hesitate to sacrifice my comfort. I’d miss you but I insist that you go. You look quite ill, dear!”

“I’m
not,”
she cried in desperation. “It’s just that I believe I’m breeding. You know how nervous women are at these times, and I couldn’t bear to be cooped up in the country!”

Frank looked astonished, and then very pleased. It had been three years since his heir, little Charles-Henry, was born. “Why, Betty --” he said tenderly. “What excellent news. I’d no idea. Of course that explains -- and you must do precisely as you wish in all things. A Venice treacle is what you should take, treacle with pounded viper flesh to strengthen you. I beg you will send to the apothecary for it at once.”

“Oh, I will,” said Betty on a sigh of relief, and Frank in high good humor kissed her again and left her alone.

So -- more lies, Betty thought. She had this very morning found evidence that she was
not
with child. The situation would have to be explained later, yet in the meantime she had gained at least a month of free action in London.

While the footmen hovered nervously by the sideboard, Betty sat on at the littered breakfast table, her thoughts pounding this way and that in search of some plan for Charles’s reprieve.

An hour later Betty was ready, dressed to go calling. She had goaded her waiting woman, Mrs. Clark, into unseemly haste, and rushed through all the elaborate ritual of hairdressing, painting and powdering, the pulling in of stays, the donning of silk stockings and jeweled red-heeled shoes. Then to Clark’s amazement, her mistress had demanded to wear the new embroidered gold paduasoy, the best cap of Mechlin lace, the pearl necklace and drop earrings. She also demanded her two diamond rings, and her French fan with the gold sticks.

Wherever can we be off to? thought Clark with great interest, though her ladyship was so frowning and hurried the waiting woman didn’t dare ask. Clark was a stout, comely person of forty who considered life dull in the Lee household, never a bit of flirting or intrigue to liven one up. Not at all the sort of fashionable home other waiting women managed to find. Though the wages were good, and her ladyship usually sweet-tempered.

Betty ran downstairs and was crossing the hall towards the door when she heard a child crying. Betty stopped and looked around, thinking it was little Harry. But it was Jenny whom she finally spied huddled in a nook under the stairs.

“What is it, dear?” said Betty painfully struck anew by the likeness to Charles in the exquisite little face. “Has someone been unkind to you?”

Jenny shook her head, on which the silver-gilt curls were now properly clean and brushed. “No, m’lady. ‘Tis just that I want R-Robbie so, an’ he niver-r comes.”

Betty felt mingled sympathy and impatience. Of course the poor child was still strange and lonely, and it was a pity that Betty had had little time for her -- but there was certainly none now. “Someday, I promise you, you’ll see your precious Robbie,” she said more sharply than she meant. “Now go to the nursery and you may play with Master Harry!” She hurried through the door into her chair.

The child looked after her with round eyes, startled out of her own grief. Clear as spring water, she knew that her ladyship was unhappy and frightened. How odd that it could be so. If Robbie was here he might tell her what it meant. Robbie had always explained things when she asked him, back in that far-off Northern land where lived her silent, dour mother and uncles and her mad old grandfather. She hadn’t missed them on the long journey down here, because on the ship she saw Robbie every day when he wasn’t running up the mast, or hauling on the sails. But here she missed her family, for there was nobody to talk to. Master Harry was a baby still. And the servants made fun of her speech.

In her luxurious blue-upholstered chair, Betty sat tense while her liveried chairmen carried her towards St. James’s Palace. This was the only plan she had found -- a bold venture and a supreme gamble. She had explored and discarded all the other possibilities. The elderly Earl of Peterborough, he was a good friend of hers in his worldly bantering way; but Lord Peterborough was at the ebb of one of his periodic fortune changes. He was totally out of favor at Court, and had gone off to the Continent. The new Marquis of Wharton then? His father had been a famous Whig, and a cousin of her own; he had even lived at Ditchley. But no, Philip Wharton was too young, only eighteen, and too unprincipled. Lady Cowper again? Never. The last interview when Betty had pled for Lord Derwentwater had been decisive. Lady Cowper announced that she had already done what she dared for some of the rebels, and was weary of the topic. She also expressed astonishment that the wife of so good a Whig as Colonel Lee should concern herself with such matters. An awkward moment, which Betty had contrived to shrug off, praying that Frank would never hear of it. Fortunately, he had little contact with the Cowpers. His great friends were Robert Walpole, and Walpole’s brother-in-law, Lord Townshend, the Secretary of State.

Betty knew nobody else who might have power. She had never moved in Court circles, and beyond a formal presentation to Hanoverian royalty after the Coronation she had never gone to St. James. Frank preferred it so, he deplored the morals and levity of fashionable life.

Betty looked up to see that her chair had stopped at the Prince of Wales’s entrance to St. James’s Palace, where the Prince shared cramped quarters with his father the King. Her running footman nodded to the guards and accosted the porter. The porter disappeared and presently told her footman that the ladyship might enter. That Her Royal Highness was still holding levee.

Betty entered the Palace and followed a page up the stairs to a small anteroom crammed with people. There were a milliner and a goldsmith, each holding their boxed wares for the Princess’ later inspection. There was a starveling poet come to beg for patronage. There was a country squire from Somerset, his accent unmistakable, as he boomed a grievance into the bored ears of a simpering young beau who twirled a muff and pomander ball, and occasionally inhaled snuff. There was a German gentlewoman with a face like a sheep, who kept glancing nervously at the letter of recommendation someone had given her.

Betty gave her name to the vice-chamberlain. “Urgent business,” she added, feeling angry looks from the others who all had “urgent business” of their own. Betty’s name meant nothing to the vice-chamberlain, though he was impressed by her title and dress. After a slight delay he bowed her into the Bed Chamber, which was large and also filled with people. Three giggling and very pretty maids of honor were playing cards by the window and chattering loudly. A fiddler scraped away at tunes from Handel’s
Rinaldo.
There were two waiting maids fussing over a stain on a white brocaded petticoat. A stout florid blonde in a pink silk nightrobe must certainly be the Princess. Her breasts were like pumpkins, her belly round with early pregnancy. She was not as handsome as they said; her skin was rough, but the cascading yellow hair and large sky-blue eyes were pleasing. The Princess sat on the edge of her canopied bed trying on embroidered slippers and smiling absently at the importunate words of a blowzy middle-aged woman with an elaborate headdress of dyed brassy hair. This woman kept pointing towards a handsome foreign-looking youth, who stood awkwardly by the wardrobe, and seemed embarrassed.

For some moments, nobody paid the slightest attention to Betty, and the announcement of her name went unheard in the din of talk and violin. Then the raddled woman with dyed hair looked around, and Betty, with a woeful shock, recognized her. The Duchess of Bolton! Now Betty remembered that the Duchess was one of the Princess’ ladies-in-waiting, but as there were seven of these, and they rotated their duties, it was appallingly bad luck to encounter this particular one.

Betty stood stock-still while the Duchess came to up her, and spoke in the remembered cooing voice. “You wish to see her Royal Highness? I did not hear your name, but -- but there’s something familiar. ..”

There was a strong smell of brandy on the Duchess’ breath, the once beautiful sapphire eyes were bloodshot and peered myopically through pouched lids. Betty realized that she -- though happily in a different way -- had changed as much as the Duchess. That this new disaster might still be averted. Though not if she gave her name, which must be forever associated with Charles in the Duchess’ memory, and with the vile trick Henrietta had played on the young people on the night of the sham robbery in the ducal coach.

“Spelsbury,” said Betty quickly, using the lowest of her father’s titles. “I’m Mrs. Spelsbury from abroad. On my way to London I heard something which would interest Her Royal Highness, I’m sure.”

“Vat does she vant, Duchess?” called Princess Caroline, standing up and flexing her big feet in the new slippers. “And how many more uff them are outside vaiting to see me?”

The Duchess was thus distracted from Betty to her own problems, which concerned the handsome young Frenchman, for whom she had a consuming passion, and whom she was persuading the Princess to appoint as Dancing Master. “There’s no one of consequence outside, ma’am,” she said returning to the Princess. “And if you would only deign to watch Monsieur Alexandre dance, you would see how able and graceful--”

“Oh, go avay, Duchess!” interrupted the Princess with a good-humored laugh. “Alvays vith you, there is some
able,
graceful young man to be placed here --
nicht wahr?”
She waved her hand in dismissal. “No doubt you vish to show him the ballroom
yourself?”

Into the Duchess’ flabby face there came a look of lascivious satisfaction. She walked to the young man and put her hand coaxingly on his arm. They went out together, and Betty was spared.

She went resolutely up to the Princess and, seeing that nobody was very near them, abandoned all pretense. “Your Royal Highness,” she whispered curtseying, “I’m in great trouble. Only you can help me!”

The Princess frowned. Day in, day out they came, the place-seekers, the intriguers, the petitioners, and especially of late -- now that everyone knew the King was leaving the country and that the Prince would be temporarily in control.

“Vat is it you vant?” said the Princess impatiently. “A position? For you or a friend?”

“No,” said Betty. She clenched her hands. “I want a human life -- oh madam, madam --” her voice broke, and tears started to her eyes.

The Princess stared, and recognized real suffering, a rare emotion at Court. Moreover, her interest was piqued. “Tell me,” she said, “of vat do you speak?”

Betty glanced at the maids of honor, at the fiddler, at the kneeling shoemaker who had brought the slippers, at the waiting women who were smoothing the coverlet on the bed, and watching her curiously. “If I might see you alone --” she whispered. “Dear madam -- I’m so afraid . . .”

“Veil,” said the Princess after a moment, “come into my dressing room. Ve can be private there!”

The others in the Bed Chamber looked around as Betty followed the Princess. Mary Lepel, the prettiest of the maids of honor, laughed, shrugged her shoulders, then played a card. The Princess had many whims, she took sudden fancies to people, and her German ways were sometimes startling. So nobody in the room thought anything in particular of this signal attention. The Duchess of Bolton would have been instantly suspicious, but she was elsewhere occupied.

In the dressing room while the Princess sat and toyed with a comb, Betty stood by the gold inlaid toilet table and poured out all her story.

Princess Caroline listened carefully, and at the end when the flood of relief at having told someone at last forced a gasping sob from Betty, the Princess produced her own handkerchief and offered a whiff of smelling salts. “So--” she said thoughtfully, “I see, my dear. You vish to save this Radcliffe, and your husband must not know it.”

Betty bowed her head. “It is so, madam.” She knelt down by the embroidered slippers and clasped her hands in the unconscious immemorial gesture. “I beg of you to help me.”

“Vy should I help you?” said the Princess watching her narrowly. “So that you may then undermine the throne -- as this cousin of yours whom you love has tried to do?”

“No! No!” cried Betty. “I swear it on my soul. I’m as loyal to the Crown as my husband is. But death, madam! Another horrible, shameful death when there have been so many -- surely the King has revenged himself enough! Have mercy, now!”

The Princess was silent, while her shrewd mind considered the situation. These continuing Jacobite executions were most unpopular; only the King and his rigidly Whig ministers, Walpole, Townshend, really approved them. Upon entering the qualified regency, which was all his father would permit, the Prince intended to show England how much more sympathetic he was to the people than the King, how much better fitted to rule. Some small gesture like this might be valuable, and would also annoy Walpole, whom the Prince disliked intensely. Moreover, though she was shrewd, Caroline was full of German sentiment, and the predicament of this young woman -- an earl’s daughter, it seemed -- moved her very much.