Read Perdita's Prince: (Georgian Series) Online
Authors: Jean Plaidy
Perdita's Prince: (Georgian Series)
Contents
Command Performance at Drury Lane
Birthday Celebrations at Windsor
About the Book
George III, fighting madness and the loss of the American colonies, has a domestic crisis as well. The 17-year-old Prince of Wales, fighting the puritanical decorum of his parents’ court, is about to begin his career of womanizing, gambling and consorting with the King’s political enemies.
At the Drury Lane Theatre, the Prince is enchanted by popular actress Mary Robinson in the role of Perdita in
A Winter’s Tale
. Although she is older, married and a mother, the Prince sets her up as his mistress. Mary has had many adventures, and is not averse to the attentions of the young Prince despite much opposition from those around them.
Like most royal scandals however, the affair doesn’t last. George has no notion of fidelity and soon loses interest in her, but she won’t let him escape without a fight. The affair is used to advantage by the King’s political opponents, while the Prince moves on to newer, more flamboyant dalliances, happily anticipating the unbridled indulgence his 21st birthday will permit.
About the Author
Jean Plaidy, one of the preeminent authors of historical fiction for most of the twentieth century, is the pen name of the prolific English author Eleanor Hibbert, also known as Victoria Holt. Jean Plaidy’s novels had sold more than 14 million copies worldwide by the time of her death in 1993.
Also by Jean Plaidy
THE TUDOR SAGA
Uneasy Lies the Head
Katharine, the Virgin Widow
The Shadow of the Pomegranate
The King’s Secret Matter
Murder Most Royal
St Thomas’s Eve
The Sixth Wife
The Thistle and the Rose
Mary, Queen of France
Lord Robert
Royal Road to Fotheringay
The Captive Queen of Scots
The Spanish Bridegroom
THE CATHERINE DE MEDICI TRILOGY
Madame Serpent
The Italian Woman
Queen Jezebel
THE STUART SAGA
The Murder in the Tower
The Wandering Prince
A Health Unto His Majesty
Here Lies Our Sovereign Lord
The Three Crowns
The Haunted Sisters
The Queen’s Favourites
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION SERIES
Louis the Well-Beloved
The Road to Compiègne
Flaunting, Extravagant Queen
The Battle of the Queens
THE LUCREZIA BORGIA SERIES
Madonna of the Seven Hills
Light on Lucrezia
ISABELLA AND FERDINAND TRILOGY
Castile for Isabella
Spain for the Sovereigns
Daughters of Spain
THE GEORGIAN SAGA
The Princess of Celle
Queen in Waiting
Caroline, the Queen
The Prince and the Quakeress
The Third George
Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill
Indiscretions of the Queen
The Regent’s Daughter
Goddess of the Green Room
Victoria in the Wings
THE QUEEN VICTORIA SERIES
The Captive of Kensington
The Queen and Lord M
The Queen’s Husband
The Widow of Windsor
THE NORMAN TRILOGY
The Bastard King
The Lion of Justice
The Passionate Enemies
THE PLANTAGENET SAGA
The Plantagenet Prelude
The Revolt of the Eaglets
The Heart of the Lion
The Prince of Darkness
The Battle of the Queens
The Queen from Provence
The Hammer of the Scots
The Follies of the King
The Vow of the Heron
Passage to Pontefract
The Star of Lancaster
Epitaph for Three Women
Red Rose of Anjou
The Sun in Splendour
QUEEN OF ENGLAND SERIES
Myself, My Enemy
Queen of this Realm: The Story of Elizabeth I
Victoria, Victorious
The Lady in the Tower
The Goldsmith’s Wife
The Queen’s Secret
The Rose without a Thorn
OTHER TITLES
The Queen of Diamonds
Daughter of Satan
The Scarlet Cloak
Perdita’s Prince
The sixth book in the Georgian Saga
Jean Plaidy
The Queen’s maid of honour
THE PRINCE OF
Wales stalked up and down his apartments in the Dower Lodge on Kew Green and aired his grievances to his brother, Prince Frederick.
‘I tell you this, Fred,’ he declared, ‘I have had enough. The time is now coming to an end when we can be treated like children. Like children, did I say? Why, bless you, Fred, we are treated like prisoners. Our father, His Majesty …’ The Prince made an ironical bow which brought a titter to Frederick’s lips ‘… is the slave of his own passionate virtue. God preserve us, Fred, from virtue such as that practised by King George III. And our mother? What is she but a queen bee? There in her hive she grows large, she gives birth and, by God, before she has had time to walk a dozen times through her Orangerie or take a pinch of snuff or two, she is preparing to give birth once more. I thought Sophie would be the last, but now we are to have another little brother or sister despite the fact that we have eleven already.’
‘At least His Majesty does his duty by the Queen, George.’
‘I doubt not that our noble mother would wish him to be a little less dutiful in that direction – although giving birth has now become a habit with her. Really, they are a ridiculous pair. What
has the Court become? It is small wonder that people mock. Have you heard the latest?’
Frederick shook his head and his brother quoted:
‘Caesar the mighty King who swayed
The sceptre was a sober blade;
A leg of mutton and his wife
Were the chief comforts of his life.
The Queen composed of different stuff,
Above all things adored her snuff,
Save gold, which in her great opinion
Alone could rival snuff’s dominion.’
‘You see … that is the popular verdict on our King and Queen!’
‘Kings and queens are always targets for public ridicule, George.’
‘Criticism, not ridicule.
I
shall commit sins … royal sins, Fred. But I shall never be accused of doting on a pinch of snuff and caper sauce. Oh, when I look back I wonder how I have endured it for so long. Do you remember the frilled collars I used to be made to wear until only a short time ago? Frilled collars, Fred! A man of my age … a Prince … a Prince of Wales!’
Frederick put his head on one side and regarded his brother. Ever since he could remember he had admired George – the elder brother exactly one year his senior, seeming wise, bold and brilliant – everything that Frederick would like to have been; but he bore no malice, no resentment, because George would beat him to the crown by exactly twelve months; George, in Frederick’s eyes, was all that an elder brother should be, all that a prince and king should be; the English, in Frederick’s opinion, were going to be very fortunate to have George as their king.
He pondered this now. By God, he thought, for he imitated his brother’s mode of speech as everything else, they are going to find George IV a mighty change from George III. The Prince of Wales was contemptuous of their father – so would Frederick be. Caper sauce! thought Frederick with a smirk. When the Prince of Wales became king it would be very different. He
would not have a plain wife; he would have a beauty, and perhaps mistresses. Kings should have mistresses; and George was constantly talking of women. He would sit for hours at the windows watching the maids of honour pass by, even though they were not a very exciting band. Their mother had seen to that. George had imitated her taking her pinch of snuff and murmuring in her German accent: ‘Nothing that can tempt the Princes!’ But there was one pretty one the Queen seemed to have overlooked. George had noticed her. Trust George.
But George was now thinking angrily of frilled collars, and he began to laugh, and so did Frederick, recalling that occasion when George had taken the frilled collar from his attendant’s hand and flung it at him, his pink and white cheeks suddenly purple with rage as he cried: ‘See how I am treated! I’ll have no more of this.’ And he had proceeded to tear the collar into shreds.
‘You were at once reported to our Papa,’ Frederick reminded him.
‘That’s my complaint,’ went on George, narrowing his eyes. ‘We were surrounded by spies then and we still are. I should have an establishment of my own. But they are too mean. That’s the point, Fred, too mean!’
‘I heard it said the other day that the Queen’s only virtue was decorum and her only vice avarice.’
‘There! That’s the way they are spoken of. They live like little squires, not like a king and queen. I’m heartily tired of this state of affairs.’
‘Still, they don’t flog us now.’
‘No. I put a stop to that.’
‘Every complaint that was taken to our father brought the same answer: “Flog ’em”.’
‘It makes me fume to think of it.’
‘But I remember, George, the day you snatched the cane from Bishop Hurd just as he was going to use it on you and how you said very sternly: “No, my lord Bishop, have done. There shall be no more of that!” ’
‘Nor was there,’ said George, laughing, ‘which makes me wonder whether if we had not stood out earlier against these tyrannies they might never have continued.’
The two young men began recalling incidents from their childhood. George could remember being dressed like a Roman centurion in a plumed helmet and being painted, with his mother and Frederick, by Mr Zoffany. Poor Fred was even worse off because when he had been a few months old they had made him Bishop of Osnaburg, which had so amused the people that the child was represented on all the cartoons in his Bishop’s mitre. George was particularly incensed by the wax model of himself at the age of a month or two which his mother still kept on her dressing table under a glass dome. This doting sentimentality went side by side with the stern way of bringing up children. ‘Completely Teutonic,’ said George. ‘By God, can’t we forget our German ancestry?’ Hours of study; shut off from contact with other people; the King’s special diet – meat only a few times a week and then with all the fat pared off; fish served without butter; the fruit of a pie without the crust, all specially worked out by the King who might appear in the nursery dining room at any time and discountenance poor Lady Charlotte Finch, who was in charge of them, if these rules were not carried out to the letter.
‘What a life we led!’ sighed the Prince of Wales. ‘And still do!’
‘Worst of all,’ added Frederick, ‘was growing our wheat.’
‘Farmer George would make little farmers of the whole family.’ George shivered distastefully, remembering their father’s taking them out to show them the little plots of land which he had allotted to them.
‘There,’ he had informed them as though, said the Prince of Wales, he were offering them the crown jewels. ‘There’s your own bit of land. Cultivate it, eh? Grow your own wheat … make your own bread. Nothing like tilling the land, eh, what?’
