Chapter 46
Friday, 4 February
“It’s true, then?” said Hero as she and Miss Ella Kinsworth walked side by side around the high-walled, snowy gardens of Warwick House.
The older woman nodded, her hands gripped tightly together in her fur muff. “Please tell me you understand why I couldn’t say anything about the Hesse letters.”
When Hero remained silent, Miss Kinsworth looked away, her eyes blinking rapidly. “Dear God, is that why poor Valentino Vescovi was killed? Because of the letters?”
“I think it very likely, yes.”
“But . . . why?”
“How much did Vescovi know about Hesse?”
Miss Kinsworth sucked in a deep breath. “After Lady de Clifford realized—belatedly—what was happening between the two cousins, she put a stop to Charlotte’s daily drives around Windsor Park and convinced the Regent to allow the Princess’s household to move back to London.”
“Did the Prince know about Charlotte’s growing feelings for her cousin?”
“Not then, no.”
Hero kept her gaze on her friend’s half-averted face. “What I don’t understand is how this correspondence even came about. I was under the impression the Prince had someone read all of Charlotte’s letters. So how was she able to write to Hesse?”
“Through her mother.”
“Good heavens,” said Hero softly.
Miss Kinsworth nodded. “That’s how Vescovi was involved. He carried the letters between Charlotte and her mother.”
Hero stared up at the bare, snow-shrouded trees. “Why on earth would Caroline do such a thing?”
“Who knows? The Princess of Wales is nothing if not eccentric. Perhaps she did it because she felt sorry for the unnatural way Charlotte has been kept so horribly isolated. But the truth is, I wouldn’t put it past her to have done it to spite the Prince—or in a spirit of pure mischief.”
“Her own daughter? I can’t believe that.”
Miss Kinsworth pressed her lips together and said nothing.
Hero watched her for a moment, then said, “There’s something you’re not telling me.”
The older woman drew a deep, troubled breath. “At the time of the flirtation, the Princess of Wales was staying in apartments in Kensington Palace. After Charlotte’s return to London, Hesse used to come to the palace’s garden gate when Charlotte was visiting her mother, and Caroline would let him in so that the cousins could meet.”
“What utter folly.”
“There’s worse. One evening Caroline actually locked the young couple alone together in her bedroom and told them to ‘have fun.’”
“For how long?”
“Hours.”
“Dear Lord. Why?”
“Who knows why Caroline does the things she does? Perhaps she’d had too much wine with dinner. But for whatever reason, it was beyond inexcusable.”
“And Charlotte referenced this incident in her letters to Hesse?”
Miss Kinsworth nodded miserably. “Charlotte swears nothing happened and that Hesse behaved most gentlemanly. But if it becomes known . . .”
“She’ll be ruined,” said Hero. “Utterly, irreparably ruined. Princes can get away with such behavior—and far, far worse. But not princesses.”
The older woman’s lips tightened into a thin line. “Prinny hasn’t helped matters, either. He’s spent the last ten years and more endlessly accusing his child’s mother of adultery, all in a sordid attempt to divorce her. He even paid that horrid Douglas woman to swear the Princess gave birth to one of the little boys she fosters! If word of Charlotte’s relationship with Hesse gets out, people will say, ‘Like mother, like daughter,’ and everyone will believe the worst.”
Hero stared out over the snow-filled garden. “When did you learn the Hesse letters had been taken from Portsmouth?”
“It’s been several weeks. Word came on a Sunday evening. I remember because poor Charlotte was so distraught she cried all night, so that by the time Jane arrived for their lesson the next morning, the girl was hysterical.”
“Jane already knew of the letters’ existence?”
“Oh, yes. Charlotte told her about them months ago, when she first started trying to get the letters back from Captain Hesse. You have to remember that Jane taught Charlotte from the time the girl was six or seven, so they were unusually close. It was Jane who offered to go out to Connaught House and ask Caroline if she had the letters.”
“But Caroline didn’t have them?”
“So she claimed.”
“You don’t believe her?”
“I don’t know what to believe. It’s been weeks now since the letters disappeared, yet no one has come forward with them. Obviously I’m grateful that they haven’t been published. Yet at the same time, I can’t help but worry.” The older woman was silent for a moment. “What I don’t understand is how the Hesse letters can be implicated in Jane’s death . . . unless of course she somehow discovered who has them. Is that possible?”
“Who do you think has the letters?”
Miss Kinsworth’s face hardened. “Honestly? I’d say the most likely culprits are the Whigs around Caroline, rather than Caroline herself. Not Earl Grey, but someone such as Brougham or Wallace. They’d do it. They’re passionately opposed to the Dutch alliance, and I don’t believe either of them would hesitate to ruin Charlotte if they thought it would stop the marriage.”
“Yes, I can see that,” said Hero. “Who else?”
“There must be forces in the Netherlands who feel the same way, but I know nothing of them.”
“You said the Regent didn’t know about Hesse at the time the cousins were meeting in Windsor Park. That implies that he does now.”
Miss Kinsworth brought up one hand to rub her forehead. “I can’t begin to guess how he discovered the truth, but he’s said one or two oblique things that made it obvious he found out somehow. He has so many spies. Everywhere.”
“Could the Prince himself have sent someone to steal the letters?”
“It’s possible, isn’t it? He knows Charlotte is furious with him for tricking her into the betrothal to Orange. And she is determined to fight his attempts to set things up so that she’ll be forced to spend most of her life outside of Britain.”
“You’re suggesting the Regent might see the letters as some sort of insurance against the possibility that the Princess could try to break her betrothal? So that he could essentially blackmail her into marrying Orange? Surely even he couldn’t be that contemptible and conniving.”
“Oh, he’s that contemptible. As for being that conniving, perhaps not the Regent himself, but someone determined to see that His Highness gets what he wants.”
“Someone like Jarvis, you mean.”
“I didn’t say that, my lady.”
“No.” Hero gave her friend a slow smile. “You were very careful not to.”
On Sebastian’s second visit to Connaught House, he found Caroline of Brunswick seated beside a roaring fire in her rather sparsely furnished morning room. She wore a tattered shawl over a plain gown with a plunging round neckline and was fashioning a crude doll out of wax when he was shown into her presence.
She looked up, her plump face breaking into a wide smile. “I thought you’d be back.” She did not give him permission to sit, so he stood with his hat in his hands and watched her work on what he realized was a wax image of her husband, the Prince of Wales. She said, “Do I take it you’ve learned something new?”
“Jane Ambrose’s husband was murdered yesterday.”
“So I heard. He vas a nasty man.” She used her shoulder to swipe at a loose curl tickling her cheek. “I told Jane she should leave him long ago. But she never listened to me, and now she’s dead, isn’t she?”
“You think he killed her?”
“You don’t?”
“I don’t know. The question is, if he did, then who killed Edward Ambrose?”
“Obviously someone who did not like him. I’ve no doubt there are many.”
“Valentino Vescovi is also dead.”
“Ja. That death is far more triste.” She gave a heavy sigh that heaved her ample expanse of exposed bosom. “He played the harp like an angel, and now he plays vith the angels.”
The sentiment was undeniably maudlin, but Sebastian suspected the tears he saw glittering in her eyes were real. He said, “Several weeks ago, someone stole a packet containing letters Charlotte once wrote to her cousin Captain Hesse. Do you know who did that?”
She focused on draping a doll-sized purple velvet cloak around the wax figure’s shoulders. “You think it vas me?”
“No, Your Highness.” Not necessarily. “But I’m hoping you might have some idea who did.”
She smiled faintly as she settled a miniature tin crown on the figurine’s head. “Vhen I vas first married, Vales gave me my own rooms at Carlton House and furnished them to his own taste. And then, several months after we ved, he sent servants to take back most of my furniture. He said he could not afford to pay for it. But I noticed none of the furniture in his rooms disappeared.” She held the wax figure at arm’s length, studying it. “He also took back the pearl bracelets he gave me as vedding presents and gave them to his mistress, the putain Jersey. She delighted in wearing them in my presence. And there was nothing—nothing—I could do about any of it.”
The implication was clear: As a new, young bride she had been alone and powerless, unable to defend herself in any way, let alone strike back. She was not so powerless anymore.
Is that what this is? he wanted to ask. A game of revenge against your bastard of a husband? With your daughter as the helpless pawn?
Except of course that one did not say such things to the Princess of Wales.
She took a pin and thrust it into the wax doll’s foot, her face twisting with bitterness as she shoved it deep. Then she laughed and said, “I hear he has a bad case of gout. I vonder how that happened?”
She picked up another pin, then paused to look over at Sebastian. “Vhen Vales sent my daughter down to Vindsor for months, trying to keep her avay from me, young Charles Hesse vas kind enough to carry letters back and forth between us. Then, vhen he and Charlotte were forbidden to meet, she came to me in tears, begging for my help.” The Princess shrugged. “So I passed correspondence between them and arranged for them to meet in my apartments in Kensington Palace. It vas all intensely romantic and utterly innocent, and I regret none of it.”
And locking them alone together in your bedroom? thought Sebastian. Was that “innocent”?
Caroline thrust the next pin deep into the wax figure’s bowels. “Are you familiar vith vhat happened to Sophia Dorothea, the mother of King George I? Her husband imprisoned her in the castle of Ahlden vhen she was just twenty-seven, and he kept her there for thirty-three years until she died. Then he ordered her casket thrown into the castle’s cellars.”
When Sebastian said nothing, she continued. “My aunt Caroline Matilda was sister to the present King. She married her cousin, the King of Denmark, who like Orange preferred men and vas all messed up in the head. He had her arrested and strangled at the age of twenty-three.”
Sebastian had heard George III’s unhappy sister died of scarlet fever, but he also knew that could simply be a tale put out for public consumption. She had most certainly died while under arrest, and her husband was utterly mad at the time of her rather convenient death.
“And you know vhat happened to my sister,” said Caroline darkly.
Sebastian nodded. Caroline’s sister, Augusta, had married Prince Frederick of Württemberg when she was just fifteen. He beat her so viciously the young Princess was given asylum by Catherine of Russia, only to then die under suspicious circumstances and be hastily buried in an unmarked grave.
Choosing another pin, Caroline thrust it with slow deliberation into the wax figure’s groin. “I vill do anything,” she said, “anything I must, to stop vhat the Regent is trying to do to my Charlotte.” She looked up to meet Sebastian’s gaze. “But I don’t have the Hesse letters, and I don’t know who does.”
It was a dismissal. Sebastian thanked her and bowed low.
As he backed slowly from her presence, he saw her throw the wax effigy into the flames and watch, smiling, as it flared up and then melted into nothing.