The Earl looked at her as if he questioned whether or not that was true.
Then, as his eyes met hers, Salrina found it hard to look away.
When she was alone in her bedroom with the curtains drawn, being told by Mrs. Freeman that she was to sleep for nearly an hour before she need get up, she found herself thinking about the Earl.
‘He is a very strange man,’ she thought. ‘I don’t hate him anymore, but he frightens me and I think he wastes his brain instead of doing something positive and worthwhile to help England.’
She was not quite certain what he should do, but was sure that all she had heard about him in the past indicated a waste of someone who was so intelligent.
Then she told herself that it would seem very impertinent of her if he knew what she was thinking and anyway it was none of her business.
‘After tomorrow I shall never see him again,’ she told herself, ‘but it will be difficult to forget him.’
It was her last thought before she fell asleep to awake with a start when the maids came into the room to draw back the curtains and bring in her bath.
The water was scented with the fragrance of carnations and she learned that the perfumes came from a shop in Jermyn Street called Floris, which was patronised by the Prince Regent.
“I have never smelt anything so lovely!” Salrina said to Mrs. Freeman.
“I’ll give you a bottle when you leave, miss,” the housekeeper replied. “You must tell me which fragrance you prefer so that when it’s finished you can order some more for yourself.”
Salrina longed to say that was an extravagance that would never happen.
Instead she thanked Mrs. Freeman and said for the moment, at any rate, she preferred carnation to verbena.
“Tomorrow, miss, you shall try gardenia,” Mrs. Freeman promised.
Salrina reckoned that would be the last bath she would ever take as the Earl’s guest.
When she was dressed, she could hardly believe that she was not a Princess who had stepped out of a Fairytale.
The white gown that had really been too young for Lady Caroline looked exactly right on Salrina.
There were camellias with silver leaves to wear at the back of her head and Mrs. Freeman must have spoken to the Earl, for when she was dressed Mr. Stevenson knocked on her door and offered her a necklace to wear of perfect pearls that were resting in a velvet-lined jewel box.
“His Lordship’s compliments, miss!” Mr. Stevenson said. “He asked me to bring you these from the safe.”
“Pearls!” Salrina exclaimed. “But – I cannot wear those! Suppose I – lost them?”
“There is a safety clasp that Mrs. Freeman will fasten for you,” Mr. Stevenson said. “They belonged to his Lordship’s mother when she was a girl and nobody has worn them for a very long time.”
He smiled at the surprise on Salrina’s face and added,
“Actually, Miss Milton, if you wear them tonight, you will be doing the family a real kindness.”
“What do you mean?” Salrina asked him.
“Pearls only live if they are worn regularly next to the skin,” Mr. Stevenson replied. “I mentioned this to Lady Caroline only a short time ago and suggested that she should wear them since otherwise they would change colour.”
“What did she reply?” Salrina asked.
“She said that they were too young for her and she preferred diamonds,” Mr. Stevenson smiled. “So you do see, Miss Milton, that you will do us a good turn if you wear them tonight.”
“You are making it very easy for me to say ‘yes’, Mr. Stevenson,” Salrina answered, “and actually I am longing to wear something so beautiful. I suppose that I shall never have any pearls of my own, but I shall always remember these.”
“Now, don’t you go sayin’ things like that, miss!” Mrs. Freeman interposed. “I’m sure lookin’ as lovely as you do now there’ll be a dozen young gentlemen askin’ you to marry them. And you must be very careful to choose one who can afford to give you a pearl necklace and much more besides!”
Salrina laughed, but thought that it was very unlikely.
When she went downstairs to where the Earl and Lord Charles were waiting for her, she thought that she would tell them how pleased she was with her pearls.
Then, as she entered the library, she looked at them and gasped.
If they had seemed smart last night dressed in their evening clothes, tonight in the full regalia of silk stockings and knee-breeches and with decorations on their evening coats, they were stupendous.
The Earl wore a cross on a ribbon round his neck which Salrina guessed was the decoration for gallantry and Lord Charles too was wearing his medals.
As she joined them, she knew without being told that they approved of her appearance and Lord Charles put it into words by saying,
“You look as if you have just emerged from the lake at Fleet Hall or else floated down from a planet to bemuse and bewitch us human beings!”
“Very poetic, Charles!” the Earl came in. “Equally, Miss Milton, I must congratulate you as I know everybody will be congratulating me tonight on having with me anybody so beautiful in our cynical and bored Beau Ton!”
Salrina laughed at the word ‘bored’ knowing that it had a special meaning for them all.
Then she agreed to just to sip the champagne they gave her before they drove off in the Earl’s large and comfortable carriage that was waiting for them outside.
His Coat of Arms was emblazoned on the doors and the horses’ harness was a burnished silver.
“I am sure,” Salrina said as they drove off, “that this is an illusion! I shall wake up to find myself at home, while your carriage is nothing but a pumpkin!”
The Earl laughed.
“As your Fairy Godfather, I can promise you, you are going to the ball, although you will find when you get there that ‘Prince Charming’ is rather overaged and portly!”
“At the same time very very precious!” Salrina pointed out.
“Of course!” the Earl agreed. “And now we must talk seriously for a moment. When you see the man we are looking for, you must not draw my attention or Charles’s in a way that might warn him. Instead I suggest that you carry your handkerchief in your hand and, when you are quite certain that the assailant is present, you drop it.”
“Supposing before I can do so – he manages to – shoot His Royal Highness?” Salrina asked in a frightened voice.
“Charles and I have been discussing it and we are quite certain that he will not do so.”
“Why not?” Salrina enquired.
“Because before he could draw out a pistol from his pocket, a very difficult thing anyway to conceal in these clothes, he would be seen and we would seize him.”
“Then what do you think he will do?” Salrina enquired.
“We are both convinced that he will use a dagger or rather what the Italians call a ‘stiletto’. The French carried them in night attacks on our troops when they did not wish to raise the alarm!”
“That’s right,” Lord Charles murmured.
“They would creep up to where men were sleeping in tents or in the open,” the Earl continued. “A soldier would be stabbed in the heart or the throat before he could even open his eyes and long before he could give the alarm to anyone near him.”
“I see what you mean,” Salrina said reflectively.
“What I think,” the Earl went on, “is that the assassin will strike when he is presented to His Royal Highness. He will offer the present from the Marquis you heard mentioned and, as the Prince Regent takes it, he will stab him quickly and skilfully either in the heart or in the space between the ribs where a man can be killed instantly.”
Salrina gave a little cry of horror and the Earl added,
“A stiletto can be so sharp and thin that if he is as skilful as we think he must be, he will have time to move away before the Prince Regent actually falls down to the ground. In those few seconds, while everybody’s attention is centred
on the man who is dying, the assailant escapes.”
Salrina clapped her hands together.
“You frighten me!” she said in a low voice. “And if it is so quick – we might be too – late.”
The fear in her voice was very obvious and the Earl reached out his hand to lay it over hers.
“We will not be too late,” he assured her, “but it all depends on you, Miss Milton! I think that it was a very lucky day for His Royal Highness when you overheard quite by chance this dastardly plot being planned.”
Without meaning to, Salrina’s fingers tightened on his.
“You are – quite sure I will not – fail you?”
“Quite, quite sure, “the Earl said very quietly.
Chapter 6
Carlton House was all that Salrina had expected it to be.
The splendid hall decorated with Ionic columns of brown Sienna marble was very impressive.
As they walked up the graceful double staircase, she so wished that she was not so agitated about what might happen and could really enjoy what she was experiencing.
Beyond the music room they were led into first there was a drawing room decorated in the Chinese taste that Salrina had read many criticisms about in the newspapers.
When it had first been finished, she remembered her mother saying to her father,
“It seems incredible that the mercer’s bill to visit China and buy the furniture for just one room amounted to six thousand eight hundred pounds!”
“I agree it seems incredible,” her father replied. “I would rather have spent such a sum on horses!”
They both laughed, but Salrina remembered over the years that there had been the same complaints over clocks, Sèvres porcelain, tapestries, silks and, of course, paintings.
Her mother, however, had not complained about the expense of the paintings.
“They are a joy forever!” she said to Salrina. “I am glad that so many by the great European Masters should now belong to this country.”
Then, as they reached the Chinese Room, Salrina could think of nothing but that, incredible though it seemed, she was actually going to meet the heir to the Throne, the much admired but also much criticised Prince Regent.
He was, as the Earl had warned her, looking portly and no tight lacing could reduce the size of his stomach.
At the same time he was still extremely good-looking and, although he found it easy to make enemies, he had not lost the art, which he had developed as a young man, of making friends, not only with women but also men of his own age and older.
When the Earl presented Salrina and the Prince Regent smiled at her, she thought that his charm radiated out from him and, as she curtseyed gracefully, he said,
“Thank you, Alaric, for bringing me such a lovely guest. You did not exaggerate her attractions.”
Salrina felt shy not only at the compliment the Prince Regent had paid her but also because it implied that the Earl had praised her.
Then she remembered that he would have done so only because he had wanted to get her accepted at Carlton House for a very different reason than her personal looks.
The Chinese Drawing Room seemed already almost filled when they entered it and more people arrived after them, making up the numbers for a very large dinner party in the dining room.
To Salrina’s relief Lord Charles escorted her into dinner and he was seated on her left.
On her right was a garrulous old Member of Parliament who only wished to talk about himself.
She therefore had a chance to look round and admire the highly polished table with its exquisite silver and gold ornaments and the Sèvres porcelain, which she was aware had come from France after the Revolution when the Prince Regent had sent his chef, because he spoke French, to buy furniture from the Palace of Versailles and anything else that he thought his Master would appreciate.
Everybody had been astonished at such extravagance at the time on the part of the young Prince. But Salrina thought now that the exquisite furniture she had noticed on her way to the dining room and the pictures that hung on the walls could only increase in value as the years went by and the Prince’s good taste would eventually be appreciated.
Lord Charles, she knew, was as apprehensive as she was of what might happen later and it was difficult for either of them to think of anything else.
The Earl had already discovered when he visited Carlton House that morning who was on the guest list for dinner and he had told Lord Charles and Salrina that they could enjoy the large rich meal before they started their duties in defending the Prince Regent.
The Earl had given them orders on the way to Carlton House rather, Salrina thought, as if he was addressing his troops before a battle.
“The Frenchman will arrive after dinner,” he said, “when as usual the Prince Regent has invited an enormous number of people to enjoy the garden, if the weather is fine enough or if not perhaps the Gothic Conservatory.”
He paused for a moment and smiled as he added,
“Salrina will find it is designed like a small Cathedral and quite dazzling in its magnificence!”
He spoke with that dry note in his voice that puzzled Salrina because she was not quite certain if he was amused or being sarcastic.
“We can only be thankful,” Lord Charles said, “that tonight is not one of those Fêtes that ‘Prinny’ enjoys when we are deafened by four bands playing triumphant airs and the garden is cluttered with huge marquees!”
The Earl glanced through the carriage window before he said,
“Since the Prince Regent hates the cold, I guess that tonight, as it is slightly damp, we shall be indoors, which will make it easier for us to keep an eye on him.”
When the dinner was over and there were so many entrées that Salrina was obliged to refuse them one after another, the ladies moved back into the Chinese Room.
When the gentlemen joined them and other guests began to arrive, it was obvious that the music room would also be filled with people as would several other rooms opening out of it.
On the Earl’s instructions Salrina kept close to the Prince Regent, who had taken up his position in the middle of the room where he greeted his guests with the same charming affability he had extended to her.
Looking at the female guests who fawned on him and whom she could hear paying him extravagant compliments, Salrina was extremely grateful for Lady Caroline’s pretty gown.
It would have been impossible for her to come to Carlton House wearing anything she owned herself. And how could she possibly have afforded to buy a gown that would have passed muster amongst the ladies glittering with tiaras, necklaces, bracelets and corsages of every known precious stone?
Salrina knew that the simple but valuable necklace of pearls that the Earl had lent her was exactly right for a young girl and she thought that it showed how knowledgeable he was of women.
Then she looked across the room to see him laughing at something a very beautiful lady, festooned with rubies, was saying to him.
Her décolletage was so low that Salrina blushed when she looked at it.
She thought that the Earl looked more amused than she had seen him before and she found herself thinking how dull he must find her beside such sparkling creatures who were like Goddesses.
Then she laughed at her own fancy and thought that everything she was watching was unreal and she had in fact stepped into a theatrical performance without really knowing her part.
Then a very much more frightening thought came into her mind.
Supposing the Frenchman did not appear and there was no attempt of any sort on the Prince’s life?
The Earl would then be certain that he had been right in his suspicion in the first place that her story was just a trumped-up trick to get herself into what he called the ‘Holy of Holies’.
Because the idea agitated her, Salrina clasped her fingers together until her knuckles showed white.
Mrs. Freeman had not, as she had expected, given her long whit
e kid gloves to wear, but instead had found an exquisite pair of lace mittens which were far more comfortable in the evening and far lighter and more attractive with her gauze and silver gown.
“These were what Lady Caroline always used to wear when she be young,” she told Salrina, “and very pretty they always looked. Now she says she’s too old, but I thinks she’s mistaken!”
Salrina must have shown what she was feeling not only by clasping and unclasping her hands but by the expression on her face for she heard Lord Charles say quietly,
“Don’t look so frightened, Miss Milton. Somebody might notice it and think you were crossed in love!”
The way he spoke made Salrina laugh, which, of course, was what he had intended.
She lifted her face up to his and because he was so tall the long line of her neck was very lovely.
Without looking towards him, as if she felt him watching her across the length of the room, Salrina was aware of the Earl.
She thought perhaps that he was rebuking her for her inattention and she knew that while listening to what the lady with the rubies was saying, his eyes were on the Prince and those coming across the room to greet him.
Then, because there was so much chatter that it was difficult to hear the names being announced by the butler from the doorway, she only just heard the words ‘St. Cloud’ and realised, although they were said in a very English manner, that it was in a French accent.
She tried to see who had arrived, but at that moment the Prince Regent moved from the centre of the room to show the man he had been talking to a picture that he had recently acquired.
It was hung on the wall just beside the opening into the room that contained his famous miniatures.
A large number of people seemed to have moved with him and, as Salrina craned her neck amongst the gentlemen in gold-braided Diplomatic evening dress and soldiers resplendent in uniforms, she suddenly saw only a few feet away from the Prince Regent the top of the head of a smaller man whose face she could not discern.
Quickly, without alerting Lord Charles, she moved past two elegant ladies discussing the latest fashion in bonnets and pushed her way through two gentlemen arguing about the political situation.
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