Miss Gouldsworthy considered her, unsure.
With grim determination, Sophia squatted and picked up the hem of her skirt, lifting the material to reveal her ankles and white stockings. Gathering her petticoats, she pulled everything up until the bottom of her chemise was visible. Carefully, she held down the edge of her undergarment and lifted the folds of her dress and petticoats right over the bulge. The moment Miss Goldsworthy gasped, she knew she was lost.
‘My dear! How long has it been?’
The words pressed painfully against Sophia’s ears. ‘I – I don’t know. My illnesses often make me miss a course or get strange feelings in my stomach. I thought it was dropsy.’
‘Dropsy!’ Miss Gouldsworthy repeated, incredulous. ‘Surely the father – surely your husband noticed?’
Sophia dropped the swathes of her gown and smoothed them hurriedly. Her big, bulbous stomach was a brand of the deepest shame. She wanted to hide it, make it disappear. ‘No. He only officially comes here three months a year.’
‘An equerry, then?’
Sophia nodded, desolate. Her cheeks were cold and damp – she realised she was crying. ‘Oh Gouly, what will I do?’
Miss Gouldsworthy drew her into her arms. The comforting smell of her only made things worse. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll figure something out. I do not know how, but we will. Does anyone else know?’
‘I hope not.’
‘Not even the father?’
Sophia swallowed. Neither of them thought she could conceive. They had taken precautions, but with little fear. After all, was that not why the princes of Europe steered clear of her? Incapable. That had been Caroline’s word. ‘I do not want him to know. He’d be so angry.’
‘Angry?’ Miss Gouldsworthy peered into Sophia’s face. ‘Surely not?’
‘It is not a normal pregnancy, Gouly. We are both in a lot of trouble.’
‘Your first child. It should not be like this.’
Sophia pressed her hands to her ears. ‘Don’t say that,’ she whispered fiercely. ‘Don’t make me think of it as a person.’
‘But . . .’
‘I can’t. Don’t you understand? I cannot see it and I cannot go anywhere near it. It has to be given away. For the sake of the King.’
‘Oh, my dear.’
Sophia’s throat filled with fluid. ‘It would be better for the poor thing if I miscarried now. What sort of life will it lead?’ She let out a wet sob. It was one thing to toy with her own reputation by taking up with Garth. But now she had destroyed her own child’s prospects before its life even began.
Miss Gouldsworthy wrapped her in another maternal embrace. Sophia slumped into it, paralysed by sorrow.
‘Don’t you worry. You leave it to me.’ Miss Gouldsworthy stroked Sophia’s hair. ‘There is just one thing for you to do alone: you must tell the father.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Hyde Park, London
1800
Charlotte stood in a bright pool of sunlight, watching redcoated soldiers march to the beat of a drum, when she heard it. Beneath the drum’s steady rhythm, a sound cracked out like a whip. She turned her head, but glinting metal dazzled her eyes. She positioned her fan like a visor, shading her face from the sun.
Her gaze fell upon the King just as the man next to him winced and crumpled to the ground. A terrific scream tore through the air. Before Charlotte knew what was happening, guards pressed down around her, moving her.
‘The King!’ somebody cried. ‘Save the King!’
The floor was a tangle of Hessian boots and ladies’ slippers. A dark red substance trickled into a puddle at the King’s feet. It couldn’t be. Not after all she had been through to protect him . . . ‘George!’
Someone clutched at her hand – perhaps one of her daughters – but she shook them off and scrambled through the crowd. She had to get to her husband. In their desperation to flee, the people barely noticed Charlotte amongst them. Those that saw her parted to let her through, but she had to push and shove with the best of them.
Over the tall military hats she made out George’s wig. If he was standing, he couldn’t be hurt. Could he? Relentless in her terror, she beat out a path and dove into the King’s arms – live, warm arms! He was safe. She clung to him like a drowning woman. Blood spotted the fine lawn cotton of his shirt and she dabbed at it, eager to brush away any trace of a wound.
‘None of this, none of this. Have courage!’
Charlotte was aghast as her husband pushed her off. He folded his hands behind his back and calmly surveyed the body on the ground.
‘Poor man. Naval clerk, did you say, what?’ he asked his attendant.
‘Yes, Your Majesty.’
Charlotte had not even noticed the body – she must have hurdled it to reach George. She stared at the sickening sight, wanting to feel pity – but she could only thank God that it wasn’t the King lying there.
The man was bent at a strange angle, an expression of shock carved on his face. There was a small puncture, just under his right breast. Blood bubbled through a ragged hole in his shirt, but the real damage was in his back, where the ball had exited.
Charlotte turned her face from the mangled flesh. ‘For goodness’ sake!’ she cried. ‘A man is dead and you just stand and look at him? That shot was meant for you, George. We must leave.’
He shook his head. ‘No, no. The surgeon will come and fetch him and we’ll carry on. See, the soldiers are still here. Doesn’t bother them, a bit of gunfire.’
Charlotte swept her eyes over the park, the treetops, looking for a sharpshooter. ‘At least send your daughters home! Look at them.’
Her five girls clustered together in a knot, struggling for breath. They were as stone; still and almost bloodless.
‘No, I wouldn’t have them stir for the world.’
A bolt of anger flew through Charlotte. It was his choice to risk his own life, but not that of her children. ‘What? Are you—’ She stopped. She had almost said mad.
Two men arrived with a stretcher and heaved the bleeding corpse onto it, staining their breeches.
Charlotte looked away, letting the terrible seed of suspicion grow in her brain. Madness. It had to be. No one in their right mind would disregard their children’s safety.
‘There now,’ she heard George say. ‘Let’s get back to it, shall we?’
Charlotte took his proffered arm with reluctance. Her flesh shrank from him, as if his touch could taint her with his madness. She couldn’t keep a wicked question from her mind: would it have been better for her family if the marksman had hit his target?
Queen’s House, London
Sophia could not catch her breath or calm the crazed reel of her heart. It was so close – just like that time at the theatre. A few inches to the left or the right and her life would have been transformed.
She pressed her head against the cool blue silk lining the wall. She could not bounce back with the ease of her mother and sisters. A week had passed since the assassination attempt and they had found distractions to push it from their thoughts. Only she sat, trembling still, clutching a dose of laudanum drops mixed with wine and spices.
Of course, it wasn’t just the attack making her jittery. She had written the fateful letter to Garth and received his startled response. Odd snatches of it ran through her mind. Nothing could astonish me more.
He didn’t speculate if their baby would be a boy or a girl, he didn’t wonder who it would look like – of course he didn’t. He knew, just like Sophia, that they had to push it from their lives. Your idea of a poor family seems practical. It is the only option. Acknowledging the marriage would do nothing – the King would simply dissolve the union and dismiss me, and then who would pay for the child’s upkeep?
The writing was illegible in places, smudged, crossed through, evidently written in haste. I suppose there is no predicting the date of these things – when the child is to arrive? How can we contrive to keep you from sight? I think you’ll have
to tell Amelia. We need someone in the family looking out for us. More humiliation. Amelia would judge, blame her for putting the King’s mind at risk. She would be right. A good daughter would have flirted with Garth and no more.
Sophy, if you can swear upon your word of honour it is mine, I might have a plan. Not for the birth. For the future. Trust me. Sophia wanted to trust him. But alone, cloistered in the sickroom, she only felt vulnerable.
Garth didn’t understand what it meant to be a member of the royal family; he didn’t feel the mixture of rebellion and guilt welling inside his chest. She loved the King. She loved Garth. How could she possibly choose between them?
Sophia tossed back the laudanum in one gulp. Dizzy and wretched, she let the glass slip from her hand and dropped down upon the bed.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Erlangen
1801
‘Paul, come away from the window.’
Royal’s stepson didn’t respond to her voice.
‘Paul.’
‘But I’m bored,’ he whined, without turning round.
He did not look much like a Prince of Württemberg in this wretched place. Fingers of dust streaked his back and his coat hung oddly on his skinny shoulders. Royal pitied him, but it was no time for a teenage strop. She strode across the room and seized his arm. ‘I said come away.’ God only knew what he was staring at out there. Flat, colourless sand surrounded their refuge, stretching on for miles. Here and there a mangy brown conifer varied the scene. It was a wasteland, a purgatory, and they were stuck there.
Royal dragged Paul to the sofa and pushed him down next to Trinette.
‘You let Madame de Spiegel go to the village,’ he flared at Royal. ‘Even the bloody kangaroos are allowed outside.’
‘The kangaroos do not have a price on their heads,’ she snapped. ‘No one wants to capture them and no one wants to shoot them. I do not think you realise there are people out there who want you dead.’
‘I am one of them,’ Trinette said cheerfully.
Royal went to the table and sat on a threadbare chair which rocked on uneven legs. She put her head in her hands. This wasn’t what she imagined when she walked down the aisle. She never dreamt she would be a fat woman cowering in a paper house with squabbling stepchildren. No matter what she did, she was imprisoned somewhere; if not Windsor, Erlangen.
The separation from Fritz was the hardest part. When she thought of him, it wasn’t the angry, stressed man who had slapped her about the face. It was the Fritz who had nursed her after the stillbirth, caressed her in bed. She missed him. With the distance of time and space, even that slap seemed like a trivial thing. It was a cry for help, not an attack.
Hadn’t her father been angry and almost crazed with anxiety during the American war? He had turned it inward and injured his humours. Fritz hit outwards – that was the only difference.
Poor, tired Fritz. Her heart went out to him, across the violent continent, all the way to Vienna.
There was little choice now but to make peace with France. The Austrian troops had thrown down their arms and only seven thousand men stood at Württemberg’s defence. She wondered how Fritz would bear the humiliation. Trying to keep her little family safe in this house was an easy trial compared to what Fritz and Wilhelm suffered. She needed to stop wallowing in self-pity and think about her husband.
The front door slammed and Royal wobbled on her illbalanced chair. Madame de Spiegel dashed in, her eyes wide and flashing, and pressed her back to the door.
‘Close the curtains. Close everything up.’
Her tone left no room for argument. Royal obeyed without question, shutting and bolting the windows.
Suddenly, Madame de Spiegel cried, ‘The kangaroos! The kangaroos!’ She ran out to fetch them. Once the animals were inside and the door was locked with a grind of metal, the small house appeared hopeless and dull.
Royal shuddered. It was like being sealed in a tomb. ‘What is it?’ she whispered.
‘French troops. In the village. I saw a patrol so I turned and I ran.’
Royal grabbed Madame de Spiegel’s hand. ‘Thank God you are safe. What –’
A low rumble cut her off. The children clutched at her gown to hold themselves steady as the furniture shook. Fine white powder drifted from the ceiling and settled on Trinette’s hair.
‘Cannon,’ Paul breathed.
It had finally happened: the French were coming.
Royal ran toward her bed, pulling Trinette with her, and pushed the girl down on the mattress. ‘Come quickly. Everyone. Stay away from the windows.’
Back in the spa, after her daughter’s death, Royal had longed for the French and their artillery. She didn’t now. Her instinct to live beat to the surface, bright and demanding. What would the children do without her?
The small household curled up on the bed. Royal pulled the heavy curtains shut, protecting her loved ones in a shell of grey light. Outside, the cannon boomed and thundered.
‘Mama, are they coming for us?’
Royal clutched Trinette and buried her nose in her sweet brown hair.
‘I won’t let them touch you,’ Royal swore. But they would be here soon. She wondered, fleetingly, what the King would do if she was killed.
Shots rang out. The household winced as a body; even the kangaroos shuffled their feet. The play of light and sound was strange, like a discordant storm.
‘I’ll kill old Boney if he comes anywhere near us,’ said Paul, with the pitiful bravery of youth.
It was not just the thunder of artillery now – they heard shouts, screams and the frantic whinnies of horses.
Trinette looked up, her dark eyes swimming. ‘Are those shots killing people, Mama? How many of our men are dying out there?’
Royal shivered. She could almost smell the bitter gun smoke, see the troops biting their cartridges. ‘I don’t know sweetheart.’
But she did know something. Now that the village had fallen, the country was done for. Far away in Vienna, Fritz would be convulsing in the last throes of political death. They would have to join the French – there was no choice.
And what would that make Royal? The enemy of England, of her father, and all she held dear. A traitor. She closed her eyes and gripped Trinette tight as another cannon ball fell and shook the floorboards.
Salisbury
They had been on the road for hours. Outside, a watery moon rode in the sky, painting silver streaks across the trees and hedgerows. In the low light of the carriage, Sophia saw Amelia’s face looking over her, all blonde curls and blue eyes like an angel. Sophia was relieved she’d confided in her sister at last. Amelia was a sweet girl and had not judged. On the contrary, she treated Sophia’s predicament as a romantic adventure.
‘Are you well?’
Sophia wriggled, pushing her belly out. ‘The usual stomach pains.’
Actually, they were worse than the normal cramps, but there was no point in making a fuss. She should have realised the movement of a carriage would cause her agony. Thank God she had persuaded the Queen to let her and Amelia travel to Weymouth a day ahead of the rest. It would have been impossible to hide the truth if she had travelled with the family. The Queen, having endured sixteen pregnancies, would be able to spot Sophia’s all too easily.
‘We’re nearly there now,’Miss Gouldsworthy said to reassure her.
They planned to go slowly and stop at General Gouldsworthy’s house, where, God willing, Sophia would have the baby.
She had barely dwelt on the idea of giving birth – she was more afraid of discovery. What if it decided to cling on to her womb? What if it was days late? They would have to make up an excuse to stay.
She settled her head against the cushions. There was a good chance she would get away with it. The Queen was preoccupied, all her care tied up with the poor King. His nerves had been torn to pieces by the resignation of his trusted Prime Minister, Pitt, followed swiftly by Royal’s surrender to the French, and he was showing worrying s
igns of delirium. If there was any time to drop a baby, unnoticed, it was now.
Sophia dozed on and off, listening to the endless creak of the wheels on the road. Every time she started to drift into sleep, a blast of hot pain snapped her eyelids open. She thought, and not for the first time, that the baby was objecting to her actions. Whenever she tried to put it from her mind and sever the link between them, the child flared up again, strong and violent inside her.
Would it ever understand, when it was older? Would it realise that she did this for its own good – that she had tried to give it a chance? She hoped so. Far better to be the child of Sharland the tailor than the illegitimate grandson of a King, infamous for driving him over the brink of sanity. Despairing of repose, she glanced out at the deepening darkness and wondered where Garth was, and what he was thinking.
They had written, but hadn’t seen each other since she found out about the baby. In Weymouth, probably in front of the King and Queen, they would meet again and Sophia would have to look into his sorrowful eyes and wonder if their baby had the same ones. Temptation teased at the corners of her mind, telling her she might sneak one look at her child before they sent it off to its adopted family. Just one. But if she saw it, she would love it, and then how would she part with it? No, she had to break her heart to save her little one. And to save the King.
The countryside loomed through Sophia’s window, menacing and dark. Again she shuffled, trying to get comfortable. The cushions were warm as she moved against them. Hadn’t the hot bricks cooled yet? She heaved a sigh of irritation, too tired to think about it. The heat spread, through her lap, behind her thighs. Sophia wondered vaguely if someone had thrown a blanket over her legs.
Gradually, she became aware of a slow, dripping noise. ‘Is it raining?’
Even as Sophia spoke, there was a violent shift inside her. A tide of fluid rushed out of her travelling cloak and splashed on the carriage floor. Amelia screamed and pulled her feet up on the cushions. ‘What’s happening?’
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