Perdita's Prince: (Georgian Series) Read Free

his mind had darted from his children to the situation in America. They’ll capitulate, he was telling himself. They’ll sue for peace … the rebels! Lord North was uneasy and wanted to give up the Ministry, but he wasn’t going to let him. Who else was there but North? Chathamdead. Charles James Fox was making a nuisance of himself – he was even more of a menace than his father had been. Nothing went right abroad … and at home there was the intransigence of the Prince of Wales. Why could he not be at peace in the heart of his family? Charlotte was dull but he was accustomed to her by now; it was true he looked with pleasure on other women … women like Elizabeth Pembroke, of course, but his emotions were so much in control that he never went beyond looking. His subjects sneered at him for being a good husband. They laughed at his interest in making buttons; in his liking for the land. ‘Farmer George’ they called him, and ‘The Royal Button Maker’. There was scorn rather than affection in these appellations. The people forgot that when he was not with his family at Kew he was closeted with his ministers making decisions on how the campaign against the American rebels was to be conducted, making decisions as to how the armies were to be deployed; discussing naval tactics. Even now he was urging Lord Sandwich to hold the West Indies at all costs. How could we continue to meet our commitments if we lost our revenue from the sugar islands? And what of home defence? What about the aggressive French and the Spaniards?
    Problems everywhere he looked, and the voices every now and then whispering in his head: ‘George, are you going mad?’
    And why shouldn’t a king be a virtuous husband? What was there to sneer at in virtue? It seemed to George that whatever a king did he displeased his subjects if he were no longer young. Everywhere that young rascal, the Prince of Wales went he was cheered. What will become of him I cannot think, mused the King uneasily. Ideas chased themselves round and round in his head; like mice, he thought of them … fighting each other for his attention and when he tried to look closely at them they disappeared; they turned into mocking voices that reminded him of that dreadful time when he had been ill and had lost control of his mind. Pleasant things like his model farm at Kew, his buttons, his gardens, his baby daughters represented safety. If he could have escaped from all his troubles and lived quietly, the voices might be stilled. He glanced at Charlotte … good Queen Charlotte, unexciting but safe. Sometimes he was tormented by erotic dreamsof women. Hannah Lightfoot, the Quaker girl with whom he had gone through a form of marriage when he had been very young and foolishly romantic, long since dead – for which ironically he must be grateful; for while she lived she represented a threat to his marriage with Charlotte, and that was a matter to shake the whole foundations of the monarchy, for if his sons were bastards … well, it did not bear thinking of and set the voices in his head working faster than ever. And then there was Sarah Lennox – Sarah Bunbury as she had become – whom he had wanted to marry, for whom he had as he had told Lord Bute ‘burned’; but he had been obliged to marry his plain German princess because all Hanoverian Kings married German princesses; it was a duty they must observe and when the time came young George would have to do the same. So instead of his dear Hannah Lightfoot whom he had so dangerously loved in his extreme youth, in spite of flighty Sarah Lennox for whom he had so burned, he was married to Charlotte.
    He was a faithful husband, but there were times when his senses were in revolt. Why, he would demand of himself, should he be the one member of the family who observed a strict moral code? His brothers … his sister Caroline Matilda … He shuddered at the memory of them. Poor Caroline Matilda whom he had dearly loved and longed to