The Prince and the Quakeress - Plaidy Jean (книги полностью бесплатно TXT) 📗

‘Madam,’ said the Duke, ‘I have come to ask a favour of you.’

‘My dear Duke,’ she replied, ‘you know I will do everything in my power to help you.’

‘My father will listen to you. I want you to break this news to him as agreeably as possible that I am resigning my post as Captain-General and the command of my regiment.’

‘Oh no, you cannot. It is too much.’

‘In the circumstances, Madam, there is nothing else I can do.’

‘I pray you don’t make this decision so hastily. Give yourself time to think.’

‘Begging your pardon, Madam,’ he replied, ‘I have not come here to ask your advice, though it is kind of you to offer it, I merely wish you to pass on this news to the King in the manner less likely to disturb him.’

‘I wish to help...and since you ask me this...I can only do it. But I think perhaps you are over hasty.’

‘I have been falsely accused, Madam. I have no alternative but to resign.’

‘Then there is nothing I can do but obey your wishes.’

• • •

The King arrived at his mistress’s apartments at the appointed time.

He saw at once that she was distressed and that did not please him. He had come to her for comfort, not to be fretted. He frowned but she said: ‘I must tell Your Majesty at once that the Duke of Cumberland has been to see me.’

‘The puppy!’

‘Sire, he is determined to resign his post. That is what he has asked me to tell you.’

The King’s face grew purple. ‘This will be a nice scandal. He must be stopped.’

‘He seemed determined,’ said the Countess, her face puckered with anxiety. ‘But Your Majesty has had a trying day. Should you not shelve the matter until you have...rested.’

The King looked at his watch. He did not intend to spoil this meeting with his mistress.

‘The puppy will have to he brought to heel,’ he said.

‘I am sure Your Majesty will soon have him where you wish him to be.’

This was her most attractive quality: she always made him feel a wise and great man. In fact he felt more comfortable with her than he had with Caroline, although he would not admit that now.

‘I’ll deal with him,’ he said; and shelved the matter as she had hoped he would.

What a soothing, tender creature she was. He was lucky to have found her!

• • •

The King wanted no trouble, He demanded that ‘secret papers’ be brought to him and he feigned to study them. He then announced that he thought better of the Duke of Cumberland than he had, and he believed that there was no need to continue with this farce of a resignation.

But the Duke was determined. He would treat his father with the respect due to a King, for he was a royalist by nature; and having seen the ill effects of quarrels on the royal family’s prestige he did not want to add to that.

He had nevertheless made up his mind that he could no longer take a command in an army in which he was obliged to obey the orders from the Council and his father, and then take the blame when they were unsuccessful.

He had been deeply wounded; he saw only one course of action open to him: resignation; and nothing was going to prevent his taking it.

• • •

The Duke of Cumberland had resigned. The hero-villain of Culloden was no longer in command of the army.

His passion in life had been the army and now he was no longer of it. The action of his father had made it impossible for him to retain his position. But this was no family quarrel. The Duke robbed of his position, of his career through the action of his father, continued to pay him the utmost homage in public.

He now turned appealingly to his nephew. He hoped that the Prince of Wales would allow him to bestow on him that affection which he yearned to give.

The Princess and Lord Bute told themselves that they must watch the Duke of Cumberland.

Joshua Reynolds Calls

The Prince of Wales was very proud of having a daughter and could not resist talking of her to those in the secret.

‘How I wish I could see her!’ sighed his sister Elizabeth.

‘And how I wish you could. Perhaps I could take you one day.’

‘Everyone would recognize my poor body if I attempted to call on her.’

‘If she met you she would love you as I do.’

‘I hope that one day I shall.’

‘I see no reason why I shouldn’t see her,’ declared Edward.

The Prince of Wales considered this. ‘No...I suppose not. Hannah might be a little reluctant. She is very retiring.’

‘Tell her I would not harm her. I should only love her...since you do.’

George beamed on his brother and sister with the utmost affection.

‘Have you ever thought of having that portrait painted?’ asked Elizabeth.

‘Who would paint it?’

‘Anyone would...if you asked them.’

‘Wouldn’t it be dangerous?’

Edward said: ‘If one is going to be afraid of danger one will never arrive at anything. It would not be one half as dangerous as abducting a Quakeress at the altar.’

‘I...I scarcely did that.’

‘Oh, come, brother, you are too modest.’

‘I have seen the work of Joshua Reynolds,’ said Elizabeth. ‘It is quite miraculous.’

‘I do not understand painting much...’ began George.

‘Elizabeth is right,’ corroborated Edward. ‘I have heard it said that he is the greatest living painter. None but the best would be good enough for the Prince of Wales.’

‘I should like her portrait to be painted,’ mused George.

‘Hush,’ whispered Edward. ‘Here comes our sister Augusta.’

Elizabeth began talking hastily about a piece of embroidery on which she was working. Augusta looked suspicious. A strange subject, she was thinking, for Elizabeth to discuss with her brothers. These three were always together, always seeming to share secrets, and Augusta had been told by her mother to try to discover what George talked about to his favourite sister and brother.

But, of course, they were silent as soon as she appeared. It was always so.

But George had something on his mind. It was obvious that he had some secret. She wondered what. It would be a triumph if she could discover it and report to her mother and Lord Bute. They would be so pleased with her.

George smiled at her absently. He had never greatly cared for his sister who was a year older than he was and apt to be resentful that she had not been born a boy, in which case all the honours which were his would have been hers.

George was thinking: Joshua Reynolds, why not?

• • •

A portrait, thought Hannah, as she dressed with the help of her maid. Thou hast become a vain and empty-headed woman Hannah Lightfoot.

She would not think of herself as Hannah Axford, and preferred to regard herself as a single woman rather than as that. She dreamed sometimes that Isaac Axford came to claim her, that he crept into this bedroom while she slept and that she awakened to find him standing over her.

The bedroom was becoming more and more ornate as the years passed. In the early days she had tried to keep it simple, for every now and then her upbringing would assert itself; then she would suffer terrible feelings of guilt and see the gates of hell yawning before her.

Had her marriage to Isaac been a true marriage? Sometimes she liked to think not. On the other hand, sometimes she must believe it was a true marriage when it seemed less shocking for a woman who had been through the marriage ceremony to have a lover, to be a mother, than for one to experience these things who had never been married at all. Then the thought of Isaac as a husband horrified her.

One fact was clear to her: she could never be truly happy. She loved her Prince; he was charming, never failing in his courtesy to her, giving her the respect he would have given to his Queen—yet the load of sin was on her, and she could never shift it.

And now a portrait.

She could imagine her uncle’s stern face if he knew. To dress herself in satin, to sit idly while her face was reproduced on canvas. What vanity. What sin.