Shall We Dance? (2 page)

With no small effort of will, Sir Willard disengaged his impressive girth from the chair and retrieved the rendering, furiously waving it in front of Perry's nose. “See the girl? The one behind the Princess Caroline, just stepping onto the pier, holding on to that dog? Goes everywhere with the woman. She's your entrée into the princess's enclave.”

Perry snatched the paper before his uncle began beating him with it. “The queen's enclave, Uncle. If Prinney is king, Caroline is queen consort.”

“Don't bother me with trifles, not with the kingdom in such a damnable mess. Meet this girl, pay court to her, do whatever you must do, but get yourself accepted into Caroline's circle. That's where your pretty face comes in. Caroline likes pretty faces. Watch, observe, poke into closets, read any papers you may find locked up, and fetch me something the Lords can use to bring the dratted woman down. For England, Perry. And there's not much time. The Lords convene this Pains and Penalties business in a few weeks.”

Perry squinted at the page. “Who is she? The artist wasn't precisely inspired—all the faces look rather alike.”

“She's Amelia Fredericks, one of the waifs Her Royal Highness has brought into her motley entourage, all but adopted. Remember how Caroline set up that supposed orphanage in Kent? No, of course you don't, that was years ago. To hide the bastard son she formally adopted at one point, we all say, but can never prove.”

“Hiding her own son with a bevy of orphans. I'd call that inspired. This girl? She's also one of those orphans?”

“Yes. The daughter of one of the princess's maidservants, I understand, who perished in childbirth. Whatever, she's been with the princess all of her life, a close companion and probably confidante. Meet her, romance her—I wager there will be orgies, knowing Caroline—and you will be in a perfect position to report on all that
lascivious behavior, anything the Lords might use to discredit her. You're a fool, Perry, a dilettante. Not threatening at all. You're perfect for the job. No one would ever suspect you.”

“I believe I have, in this past minute, been insulted in more ways than I care to count,” Perry said, idly stroking the thin white scar on his left cheek with his thumb. “But tell me. If I say no, then what happens?”

“Then we'll send someone else, who might not have your pure heart and chivalrous ways. Why, he might feel that the only way to infiltrate the princess's enclave would be to seduce this Miss Fredericks. Ruin her. Not that you'd care a fig, eh? You don't care a fig for anyone.”

“How very naughty of you, Uncle, to pink me straight in my pesky honor as a gentleman.” Perry held up the broadsheet yet again. “I read here that Her Royal Highness is quartered with Alderman Wood. My, my, he was Lord Mayor of London once or twice, wasn't he? What happened? Was she turned away at the palace, or didn't she chance a rebuff?”

“Wood offered, and it avoided a circus, with the populace there to witness it. But she's already found other quarters in Hammersmith. Right on the water. I do believe our impudent queen enjoys the notion that her many admirers—and, yes, I admit she does have them—can choose to travel across the water to make their bows to her. The woman has a love of theatrics that is most embarrassing.”

“Unlike our new king, who is staid and retired and quite above showing himself off. Why, the Pavilion at
Brighton is no more ornate than a monk's cell, I swear it, if said monk had a fondness for silk, gilt and minarets. But, yes, I understand. Who did you have in mind?”

“What?”

“Whom did you have in mind to seduce Miss Fredericks? You must have all but given up on me by now. So? His name, Uncle.”

“Jarrett Rolin.”

Perry controlled his expression with some effort. “Rolin? I thought he left town with his tail tucked between his legs after that debacle at Westham's a month ago.”

“Yes, I'd heard about that. The Marquis of Westham is your good friend, isn't he? Odd, that, considering he's the one who sliced that scar into your cheek.”

Perry spared a moment to think of his good, once hot-headed friend (hence the dueling scar on Perry's cheek) and their very recent coup of routing Jarrett Rolin after the rotter had attempted to kidnap Westham's beloved.

“Never mind that. Rolin is a bastard. A pretty bastard, but a bastard all the same. The man lives to seduce innocents. You can't think to use him.”

“Can't we? He's perfect, Nevvie. An outcast from Society for the nonce, hiding out on his estate in Surrey. The princess adores outcasts, feels an affinity for them, I believe. But, as I said, he would be our second choice.”

“You know, Uncle, if I have a failing in life it has always been in underestimating you.”

“Only that, Nevvie? If you applied to me, I could provide you with a detailed list of your shortcomings. Now
hurry along, dear boy. Miss Fredericks awaits. Oh, one thing more. Report here tomorrow and I'll explain.”

“I could be on the continent by tomorrow,” Perry suggested, his hand on the door latch.

“True, but you won't be. I do so enjoy honorable gentlemen. And you are that, Perry, for all that you're also an idiot. Tomorrow at two, agreed?”

Perry inclined his head slightly, then departed, carrying off the broadsheet he'd grabbed up, hoping the artist had at least gotten the slim female figure right.

 

“I
COULD BE SKINNY
and bony like you, you know, instead of more fashionably plump,” Her Royal Majesty said as Amelia Fredericks entered the small salon overlooking the Thames. “If I so wished.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Amelia said, smiling at the queen as she placed a fresh dish of boiled sweets on the table beside the woman, then retook her seat in front of the window. “A lovely day, isn't it, although the sun doesn't seem quite as bright here as it did in Jerusalem.”

“Nothing seems quite as bright here,” the queen said, her scowl warning Amelia that another fit of hysteria was knocking on the door of the woman's consciousness, eager for admittance. She had, just minutes earlier, climbed up into the boughs of the queen's injured pride and dragged her down with the promise of the boiled sweets. “Rainy, dreary, damp. And that pile they call a palace? Blow your skirts up over your head, just walking down the hallways on a windy day. I hate it. I hate it all. I hate them all. And I'm old, and I'm ugly, and I'm fat. I hate me!”

The dish of boiled sweets landed on the fireplace grate and smashed into several pieces, the candies skittering everywhere.

Amelia suppressed a sigh. “I'll ring for someone.”

“No! Leave it.” The queen blinked rapidly, her kohl-darkened eyes already tearing. “I must stop this. I must collect myself. That sniveling selfish bastard will not do this to me. I am queen!”

“Yes, ma'am, that you are,” Amelia said, her gaze shifting toward the thick pages of vellum sitting on the table in front of the queen, all stiff and important and covered in official seals. “This means nothing, ma'am, less than nothing. His Royal Majesty is desperate, and desperate men make mistakes. Mr. Brougham said as much before he left us.”

“Henry Brougham, Amelia, wants what he has always wanted, to use me to further his own ends. It has been this way for years. I could have settled for a sizable allowance and exile, you know, but Brougham talked me out of it, talked me into coming back here. He's still talking, damn his eyes. You think he cares a fig for me? Tories, Whigs. They fight each other, using me as their battlefield, their cannon fodder.”

Amelia nodded. That was her role, to agree, to silently nod, and she knew her place. Chafed at it, but knew it.

“I should never have come back here. Even the old king tried to use me, damn his soul. Sick? That's what they said, that he was sick, off his head. And I still say that the old madman tossed me down on a couch soon
as he came back from opening Parliament—when was that? Oh, I remember. Back in '02, while George and I were still pretending. Threw me down, Amelia, and would have had his way with me, were it not that the couch had no back and I was able to kick him off, roll free of him. I never moved so fast, before or since. Filthy Hanovers, the worst of our family. Users. And they all did their best to use me. Me, and my poor Charlotte, lost and gone these two terrible years. They kept her from me, you know, even when she cried for me, begged for me. And now she's gone. My own child…”

Amelia's soft heart was touched. Her Royal Highness could be crude, could be cantankerous, could be ridiculously generous one moment and horribly selfish the next; dangerously free with her affections and her words. Mercurial. But, at the bottom of it, at the heart of it, the woman hadn't had the best of lives, and Amelia loved her dearly.

And, loving her dearly, she said the first thing that sprang to her tongue, “We can leave again, ma'am. The world awaits, all of it eager to please you.”

The queen, her coal-black hair fresh from another visit with the dye pots, nodded fiercely, the childish curls bouncing around her rouged cheeks. “Yes, yes. We could go. Pergami would fly to me, I know it, if I were to abandon this damn, damp island. Byron left, you know. Ungrateful England all but tossed him out.” She blinked back tears. “He was such a pretty boy, even with that twisted foot. I could have had him, you know, if I'd but crooked a finger in his direction. Chose Spen
cer Perceval instead. He was helpful, but not pretty. Sir Sydney Smith? Ah, he was almost pretty, and reportedly hung like a—”

“Yes, ma'am,” Amelia said placidly.

“But you know, Amelia, I only really committed adultery the once—three or six times, in truth. But that was with the husband of Maria Fitzherbert.”

Amelia couldn't help but smile at Her Majesty's reference to the king's morganatic bride. The queen's outrageous statements, as well as her rather erratic behavior, had lost the power to embarrass her years ago. Still, she had to steer the woman back on point, even as she'd stupidly let it slip that she wished to put England behind them once and for all. “So, dear ma'am, shall I give the order? We can set sail by week's end. Paris. Rome. Anywhere your heart desires.”

The queen snorted. “I doubt we could make Dover on what's left of my allowance. That hangs in the balance, you know. The king—I spit on calling him thusly—holds the purse strings now. That's another part of this Pains-and-Penalties business. My pain, the penalties he'd order. I have to win, Amelia, or else he'll control every aspect, every penny in my purse, every bite that goes into my mouth. He'd like nothing more than for me to live in penury.”

“Then we stay,” Amelia said, continuing to guide her queen back toward the correct, the only, path, without letting the woman see the leash. Amelia had been against their return, but also knew they had no choice
but to stay and fight now that they were here. But it had to be the queen's decision, at the end of it.

The queen's sigh ended in a curse that had a lot to do with hungry mice finding a home in her estranged husband's bowels. “Yes, we stay. We stay and we fight. Oh, Amelia.” She moaned piteously, holding out her hands so that Amelia left her seat and took those hands in her own. “I do it for you, my dearest girl. Not for me, for I am old, and ravaged, and have no future save pain until death. For you, for my dear William, for all of you. And for England! England needs me! England loves me!”

With the queen's many rings painfully biting into her skin, Amelia smiled and dropped into a deep curtsy. “And England thanks you, my queen.”

“Yes, yes, of course, there's all that drivel, too,” the queen said curtly, releasing Amelia's abused fingers as the pendulum of her mood swung once more. “Look at that mess. For God's sake, girl, get someone in here to clean it. Am I to live in filth as well as penury?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Amelia said, hiding a smile as she gave the bell rope a tug, then returned to gather up the official notice of the Pains and Penalties that had made for an exceedingly hysterical morning. “With Your Majesty's permission, I shall retire to the kitchens to personally order strawberry tarts for tea. Your favorite, ma'am.”

The queen was suddenly girlish, her cheeks coloring even beneath the spots of rouge, her smile shy. “I really shouldn't indulge, not when I must prepare to meet my subjects. I needs must look my best.”

“You are always at your best, ma'am, and dear in the hearts of everyone,” Amelia said, knowing the words sounded old and worn but unable to think of new ones, and the queen waved her away, toward the kitchens.

 

B
ERNARD
N
ESTOR
sat at the rude table in his ruder kitchen, devoid now of even the single servant he'd had to turn off, and studied the copy of the Bill of Pains and Penalties he'd stuffed into his coat just after Henry Brougham had given him his congé and told him never to darken his door again.

Gratitude. There was none in this cruel and unenlightened world. He'd been a loyal Whig, a loyal employee of Henry Brougham's, a diligent worker.

And what had he gotten for this devotion?

He'd gotten the sack, that's what he'd gotten.

Too rabid. Too rigid. Too intense. Too much of a danger when clear heads, not hotheads, are needed. That's what Henry Brougham had said.

Five years. He'd worked, slaved, and with little financial remuneration, for five long years, monitoring Princess Caroline's movements, warning Henry Brougham in time to head off at least a half-dozen disasters as the woman made a fool of herself across the continent.

And now, now when the queen really needed him, he'd been cast aside as too fervent, too volatile, too dangerous.

England needed their new queen. England needed the Whigs back in power. England would become another France, with its own bloody revolution, if the king and those damn Tories were left to their own devices.