Shall We Dance? (36 page)

Perry turned and bowed to her. “Miss Fredericks, if you would be so kind.”

“Really, Perry? You don't have to, you know.” She smiled. “I mean, consider your reputation as the peer who will not dance.”

He lifted her hand to his lips, his gaze on her, lovingly. “A pox on my reputation, madam. I shall set a new fashion dancing only with one's wife. Every waltz, my love, from now until I'm tottering so badly I can no longer take the floor.”

“Really. But only the waltz? What if I were to fancy a Scottish Reel?”

Perry made a great business of sighing, rolling his eyes. “If I must.”

“I can see you'll always be incorrigible. And the very crack of fashion, just as you pretend you wish to be.”

He stepped closer. “It sometimes frightens me, how well you know me. Now, darling, shall we dance?”

Amelia looked to the musicians, and then back to Perry.
“Quando si è in ballo, bisogna ballare,”
she whispered quietly. Lifting her skirts by slipping her right hand into the delicate loop fashioned just for that purpose, she moved into his arms.

“When at a dance, one must dance,” Perry said, moving her into the first turn. “My Italian, it would appear, is not so rusty as I thought.”

“Hush,” Amelia told him, moving closer to him than was the custom, or accepted in Polite Society—not that she cared a snap for Polite Society. Not when Perry held her, smiled at her, loved her.

As the musicians played, Perry and Amelia floated around the ballroom, the skirt of her gown held in her
hand, the two of them dancing together effortlessly, Perry leading without really leading, Amelia following without hesitation.

“I adore you, you know,” Perry said at last, his expression one of love and just a trace of sadness. “And I will wait for you, forever if I have to.”

“Forever, Perry?”

“You doubt it?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Please, let's walk. I have something to tell you. While you were otherwise occupied I…the queen and I had a moment to talk.”

Perry halted so quickly that Amelia nearly stumbled. “She's leaving? Her Majesty's leaving England? Damn it, Amelia! Where? When?”

Amelia raised a hand to his cheek. “Her Majesty goes nowhere, Perry. She won, you see, at least this battle. Mr. Brougham brought news here with him tonight. The king is all but convinced that to continue the trial, to force a vote, would only serve to embarrass him further. He won't pursue a divorce, so no one is going to be peeking in any more of the queen's closets, into her secrets. It's over, Perry, and it isn't over. There's still the matter of the coronation.” Amelia sighed. “Mr. Brougham said that the king is adamant that he will not have the queen present at his coronation.”

“And what does Her Majesty say?”

“I believe her exact words were ‘We'll see about that!' She seems to have found new hope, although I can't understand why. Except that her allowance has
been restored. In any event, Her Majesty chooses to stay, and fight.”

“With you by her side.” He covered her hand with his own. “And me by yours.”

Amelia blinked back tears. Happy tears, sad tears. “No, Perry. I won't be with her, at her own request. Her own order, actually. She's asked that you present yourself to her tomorrow, at noon, to petition her for my hand.”

“Are you serious? Amelia, she'd really allow you to—”

“She…she asked me to go. And she told me…she told me to grab at love with both hands and to never let it go. She told me that nothing else is important.”

Perry didn't know where to turn, where to look. “Tomorrow is so far away. She might change her mind. I want to go to her, now.”

“She won't change her mind, Perry. Remember, she's already told me everything, so I understand her motives. It…it suits her to have me gone from London, at least until after the coronation.”

“And I won't question that motive,” Perry said, taking Amelia into his arms. “I'll never ask you for answers. I have what I want. I have you. A man can sanely ask for no more.”

“Your Lordship?”

Perry shot a quick look toward the musicians, one of whom had stood up. “Yes?”

“Begging your pardon, Your Lordship. But are you done?”

“Done?” Perry repeated, grinning at Amelia as he
pulled her toward the open doors to the terrace. “Go home, my good fellow—we're done here. And yet,” he said more quietly to Amelia, “we've only begun.”

A
MELIA
E
LIZABETH
S
HEPHERD
,
Countess of Brentwood, sat alone in the simple marble gazebo only just completed and dedicated to the memory of Her Majesty, Queen Caroline, that her husband, Perry, had ordered built on the grounds of their estate, overlooking the ornamental pond.

The queen would have admired it very much, for there had been one very much like it at the Villa d'Este at Lake Como.

Amelia had come out here to sit, to remember.

But soon she would walk back to her home, the first real home she'd ever known; to her husband, to her child.

“Dearest? Someone's been asking for you.”

Amelia turned away from her memories at the sound of Perry's voice, and smiled as he carefully made his way up the four steps to the gazebo, their infant daughter wrapped in a soft wool blanket and cradled in his arms.

Caroline Amelia, her blond head nestled into her father's neck, her thumb firmly stuck in her mouth, was very much asleep.

“Asking for me? Oh, I very much doubt that. You're
spoiling her terribly, you know, carrying her about like this.”

“I know, but I can't seem to find it in me to put her down. You have a rival for my affections, I'm afraid.”

Amelia patted the seat next to her, and Perry, moving slowly, as he held precious baggage, carefully sat down.

“You know, Georgiana told me that Nate told her that he thinks you've gone absolutely dotty over our daughter. But Georgiana also says that she's sure he'll be twice as dotty when their own child is born.”

“Nate is already dotty, on all counts, clearly past redemption,” Perry said, grinning at her. “And if we're speaking of dotty, I've just had a letter from Uncle Willie.”

“He hates when you call him that.”

“He loves when I call him that,” Perry said, gently rubbing Caroline's back. “He preens.”

“If you call his ears going all red preening,” Amelia said, remembering Sir Willard's last visit, when Caroline was christened. The infant had been dressed in the hundred-year-old christening gown that had been passed down in the Shepherd family, with a slightly yellowed-with-age white satin ribbon pinned to one shoulder. “What does Uncle Willard have to say?”

“He's over the moon about another variety of orchid that just arrived from some island. Went on for two pages about it. Do you know how difficult it is for me to think of the man up to his elbows in dirt in his greenhouse?”

Amelia adjusted her shawl around her shoulders. “He's found something he loves, Perry. You should be happy for him.”

Perry grinned at her. “Well, when you say that, I suppose I am. After all, the man's been in dirt to his elbows all his life.”

“Yes, and he's very sorry for it. Look how he's been so kind to Clive, setting up him and his Dovey to run that taproom. That was very sweet of him.”

“No, pet, that was very prudent of him. Clive and his Dovey know entirely too much. Buying them a taproom in Leeds was fairly brilliant. Now, come on, walk back to the house with us. It's a fine day but growing cool.”

Amelia leaned her head against her husband's shoulder. “Don't fret, Perry, I'm not out here being maudlin. But I do wish I could have been there for her, at the end.”

“That was impossible, with your pregnancy. She understood, pet. And she was delighted for us. Now give me a kiss and promise you won't be long.”

Amelia smiled, kissed her husband and adjusted the blanket about their sleeping daughter before Perry headed back across the lawn.

Blinking back tears, she slipped the gold locket from her pocket, opened it and looked at the miniature portrait it contained. She could still hear what had proved to be the last words the queen had ever spoken to her:
You've found love, and that's what's important, my child. Nothing else. Remember. Nothing else.”

Amelia closed the locket, held it tight in her hand. “Thank you…Mama,” she said.

Then Amelia left the gazebo, lifting her skirts above her ankles as she ran to catch up with her husband….

You'll have noticed that I left Amelia's parentage unmentioned, save for those last few cryptic words she speaks in the gazebo. I did that on purpose, so that you, dear reader, can draw your own conclusions. I know I've drawn mine.

I have spent nearly a quarter century writing about England during the Regency, sometimes casting Prinney as an object of fun, sometimes in charity with him, for he was a complex man; I'd never realized quite how complex.

But I have never written about Caroline. Why? Because, I'm sorry to say, most histories of the time barely mention her.

When they do, the stories are so conflicting, so subjective, so dependent on the personal views of those who have written them, that it is difficult to know what is true and what is fiction.

But then I stumbled upon an original copy of the 1818 book,
Memoirs of Her Late Royal Highness Princess Charlotte Augusta.

And so a fiction writer plays the game of “what if,” which is what I have done in
Shall We Dance?
There was, of course, no Amelia Elizabeth, not in any history, although she became very real in my mind as I wrote this story.

I can tell you that there definitely was a Princess Caroline of Brunswick. I can tell you that her marriage to the future king of England was not a happy one.

I can tell you that she was kept from her daughter, that she finally left England and did a very good job of making a spectacle of herself, that there was a Pergami, that there was a William Austin, that there was a green bag, and there most definitely was a Bill of Pains and Penalties, complete down to the weighty discussions of clothing stains and chamber pots.

And, lastly, there was a tin traveling case with the words “Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales, To Be Always With Her” painted on top in white letters. It was the book that first drew my mind to Caroline, and the mention of that tin case that first began months of “what if?” before I created Amelia.

Caroline's story doesn't end with the dismissal of the Bill of Pains and Penalties. She went on, feeling triumphant, to keep inserting herself into Society all through the months leading up to the coronation of George IV, even going so far as to write to him to ask what he wished her to wear to the ceremony. Imagine the king's dismay when he received that letter!

But as the months passed, the fickle crowd that had
cheered her grew tired of her, and looked forward to the coronation, looked forward to getting on with the business of England. Caroline, whatever her reasons, had stayed too long at the fair.

The day of the coronation, Caroline was driven to the Abbey and made a great business of knocking on the doors, demanding admittance. She was turned away, the reason given that she had not been issued a ticket of entrance, and returned to her home in disgrace.

Poor Caroline.

Nineteen days later, on July 30, Caroline, queen only in name, was taken suddenly and mysteriously ill while attending a performance at Drury Lane Theater. “I know I am dying,” she reportedly said to any who would listen. “They have killed me at last.”

By August 7, at the age of fifty-three, she was dead, all her secrets dying with her. Official reasons for this death were varied; an intestinal blockage, “female troubles,” whatever.

But who knows? Who knows?

Perhaps Caroline did, for she'd already let it be known she wished her remains returned to her native land, and had ordered these words engraved on her coffin: “Caroline of Brunswick, The Injured Queen of England.”

King George IV, becoming ever more sober and sedate, lived on for another nine years. He never did remarry, so that upon his death, Victoria, daughter of his brother, the Duke of Kent, became queen, and reigned over a much more restrained, circumspect Empire into the next century.

As George Noel Gordon, Lord Byron, another Regency Era personage variously cast as villain or victim wrote:

“'Tis strange—but true; for truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.”