After a sleepless night, I found myself trying to convince Amelia at breakfast that perhaps this night would not be the best time to go to St. James’s.

“It’s the dark of the moon,” I argued, “never an auspicious time to embark on a new venture. The weather has warmed a bit but not yet enough to turn all the icy roads to slush, which means more courtiers will brave the cold and the reception room will be more crowded than usual. I may not even be able to reach the king to present my petition.”

Amelia merely looked at me across the teapots and toast. Phineas was off on another trip to see to his merchant ships, so it was just the three of us—Amelia, Lucy and myself. Amelia was, as usual, a perfect picture, even early in the morning. Her cap was snow white, exquisitely starched and ironed, with an edging of delicate lace that had probably been purchased in Flanders at great expense. Her dressing gown was a pellucid sea-green that matched her brilliant eyes.

I sometimes felt that Amelia’s authority, while clearly derived from her personal strength, was enhanced by the daily perfection of her appearance. Who could oppose a woman who put herself together each day with such consummate self-possession?

“Of course, we can postpone the visit,” said Amelia at last. “And perhaps we should kill some poultry so we can read their entrails, as the Romans did, in order to identify the most auspicious occasion for daring deeds. I will ring for the scullery maid to bring us a chicken to sacrifice… Or we could go to St. James’s Park and chart the flight of waterfowl overhead and thus determine our course of action.”

I eyed her steadily and then dropped my gaze.

She reached across the table and took my hand.

“I understand that you are afraid,” she said. “But you know as well as I that time is growing short. Now that everything is ready, you cannot afford to wait. Delay could cost you everything.”

“Forgive me,” I whispered, staring into my teacup.

“There is to be no talk of forgiveness,” she insisted. “You didn’t ride to London through the worst snowstorm in decades to lose your nerve now. It is understandable that you will quail at the task before you from time to time, but you will take a deep breath and summon your fortitude. I’ve never met a more intrepid woman.”

Then she began to give me a series of instructions. I must eat during the day, she said. “Fear feeds on an empty stomach,” she told me sagely.

“And just before we leave for the palace,” she added, “I will give you a half coupe of champagne, which you will drink very slowly after the bubbles have dispersed. No more than that. Just a little taste of courage.”

She reviewed the procedure for presenting a petition to the Hanoverian again. We were to wait with the massed courtiers until he entered the room. She would point him out to me.

She smiled. “He is short,” she confided. “If he is surrounded by taller gentlemen-in-waiting, you will not even see him.”

I began to protest. How would I complete my mission if I could not even locate my target?

She laughed softly. “But he is vain and so aware of his lack of stature that he will seldom permit tall men to stand close to him for more than a minute or two. Why do you think all of his ministers have taken to wearing shoes with only the slightest elevation of heel? It has become a new style!”

She entertained me with court gossip while she near hand-fed me white soup (veal, cream and almonds) and bits of toast to keep my stomach calm. My heart overflowed with gratitude. I could tell from the way Lucy beamed upon Amelia that she was equally appreciative.

But whenever I tried to bemoan the fact that I would never be able to repay Amelia for her generosity, she put a long, cool finger against my lips and assured me she was in reality a very selfish woman and was merely making use of me to pile up credits for herself in Heaven.

“Because of you,” she said, with another of her broad smiles, “I have already skipped Purgatory and am well on my way to Beatification. You will attest to my performance of miracles and by the time of my death, I will already be Saint Amelia, patroness of all worthy women in need.”

I could not help but laugh.

Inevitably night fell. Making ourselves ready to attend the king’s reception required at least two hours of placing layers of petticoats and hoops, lacing the bodice and arranging the fine satin gown over all the underpinnings. Then came the elaborate ritual of painting face and bosom while sheets were draped to protect our costumes from stains.

Amelia did not think that either she or I would need to apply the full mask of cosmetics—the stark white forehead and décolletage, startlingly jet-black eyebrows, brilliantly rosy cheeks and deeply crimson lips.

“Let us retain some semblance of who we are in our appearance,” she said. But after I was done up with a “light touch” by Amelia’s chambermaid, I hardly knew myself. It was hard to see the woman beneath the paint.

Then the maids brought the heavy wig, which had to be firmly fixed in place, dressed with tiny bows and bits of lace, and heavily powdered while I held a mask over my face to protect my eyes, nose and mouth. The last portion of the process was the laying on of the jewels—the pearl eardrops, my mother’s ruby ring and the draping of Amelia’s pearls around my wig.

I found myself envying with a sigh Charles Perrault’s heroine Cendrillon, who was transformed from a servant comfortably resting in warm ashes on the hearth, to a princess fit to go to the prince’s ball with nothing more than the wave of a magic wand.

At last we were ready. Amelia was resplendent in a sunlit yellow gown with a more subdued pattern than mine, composed of golden apples and pears against a background of umber stems and pale green leaves.

The maids threw fine woolen cloaks over our shoulders. Lucy blew us each a kiss, since an attempt at embracing us would have rumpled our skirts. Amelia’s steward sent a boy to bring us two sedan chairs from among the chairmen who congregated in Smith Square.

Just as Amelia had warned me, it was nearly impossible to squeeze the mantua hoops into a sedan chair. The skirts had to be folded and compressed while the wig was precariously positioned through the opening in the top of the chair. Because of the volume of the skirts, I could not fully sit down on the sedan seat and had to maintain an awkward half-squatting position while tilting my head back. Fortunately, we had not far to go.

I was able to draw the curtain slightly aside as we approached the red-brick gatehouse of St. James’s Palace with its two octagonal towers on either side of the central arch. Much to my amazement, in addition to the crush of sedan chairs trying to get through the arch, there were hundreds of Londoners gathered by torchlight to watch the court beauties and gallants arriving.

Never comfortable, as I have said, amidst a nighttime crowd lit by flickering flames, I pulled the curtain closed, my heart beating faster. It was a relief to pass under the arch and emerge in the Great Court, even though we were still caught in a boiling sea of sedan chairs and carriages, bustling servants, and imperious courtiers attempting to dismount.

Once we had breached the curtains and disentangled ourselves from our chairs, Amelia and I had to rearrange each other’s garments as best we could. The hoops snapped back into shape instantly, but the skirts over them still required pulling and straightening.

As soon as we were presentable, we went through the columned portico and glided up the grand staircase past the scarlet-uniformed Yeomen of the Guard, who reminded me uncomfortably of the Yeomen Warders at the Tower. Amelia had warned me to adopt an air of complete confidence, as if I had visited the Court of St. James’s many times before.

I did not remind her that, in fact, I had been to St. James’s Palace many times before and had been present when the Chevalier, young James Stuart, was born in the queen’s bedchamber in that very palace. But my memories of the joys of the court of James II and the birth of the young prince seemed like tales I had heard in the nursery. It was all so long ago and far away and had possibly happened to some ancestress of mine, in a previous era.

Still, my knowledge that I had once been a young lady-in-waiting to a real queen in this very palace inspired me to straighten my shoulders, hold my head erect and roll forward down the long halls with tiny steps as I had been taught. We went on through the guardroom, the presence chamber and the privy chamber till we came to the new Great Drawing Room.

Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, we caught glimpses of the torchlit park outside. A heavy gold chandelier hung above our heads and the tapestries, which looked to be from the time of Henry VIII, were interspersed among large portraits in ornate gold frames.

My primary impression of the room was that there was a stultifying excess of both heat and light. The myriad of candles in the chandelier and in sconces around the room sent rays of light bouncing off so many jewels and bright silver and gold designs on the gowns of the women and waistcoats of the men, that the overall effect was dizzying. I found myself staring down at the carpet from time to time just to rest my eyes.

The night was cold but there were soon so many courtiers pressing into the room that there was hardly a breath of air to be had. There were no chairs, of course, so that no one could possibly commit the unpardonable faux pas of being seated at the moment the monarch entered the room.

I fanned myself vigorously but soon saw I was in danger of elbowing a neighbor or accidentally slamming the fan into my own nose. Fortunately, as the crowd became too large for the room, it overflowed into other nearby rooms so that waves of glittering lovelies and would-be lovelies and their attendant suitors washed back and forth, in and out of the Great Drawing Room where we remained.

I spotted the blue sashes of the Knights of the Garter and the red sashes of the Knights of the Bath, and noted that the younger men seemed to be indulging this season in a fashion of pale blue silk coats. The mantua gowns I saw were undoubtedly all fearfully expensive, but few were as tasteful and beautiful as the one Amelia had arranged for me. Some of the flowers on the gowns around me were so large they reminded me of silver soup plates.

I noticed that the largest crush seemed to eddy, with much pushing and shoving, around two particular figures. Amelia indicated with gestures, since she could not be heard above the cacophony of shrill voices, that one of these magnets was Prince George Augustus, Prince of Wales and heir to the throne, and the other was his wife, the excessively rotund Princess Caroline arrayed in bright pink. Set among her ladies-in-waiting who were garbed in paler pink, Caroline resembled, as one observer later commented, “a lobster among attendant shrimps.” I realized that I had already seen the prince at my husband’s trial and quickly looked away, fixing my eyes on rosy Caroline.

Occasionally a female courtier would drop a nod in Amelia’s direction with a slight curtsy. Amelia had already told me that many of these women came to her to advise them on their mantuas, since she was noted for her intimate knowledge of fine silks. She recommended dressmakers and fabric designers like James Leman. Amelia visited the Court of St. James’s occasionally, partly to amuse herself, partly to display the sophistication of her taste and partly to remind the gilded ones that her husband was a renowned silk merchant without saying a word. As Amelia had explained to me before, anyone who was properly attired was admitted.

I saw that the most experienced women at court seemed to spin gracefully from place to place, somehow never colliding with their neighbors. I thought they were like women who, as a consequence of some curse, were buried to the waist in huge, misshapen cakes mounted on wheels and had learned to twirl their cakes around and about in a strange dance of confections.

I was so intent on watching for any sign that the Hanoverian was coming that I did not notice for some time that I myself had attracted some interest. I’m sure that newcomers generally stimulated speculation—especially if the newcomer could not be readily identified. Amelia would gaze at me sweetly until she had my attention and then drop a subtle nod in the direction of a courtier, male or female, who was unabashedly staring at me.

At one point she managed to whisper, “Don’t you see? The women are envious of you, and the men are intrigued.” I rolled my eyes. How could an unknown woman at my advanced age of forty-three arouse any emotion other than disdain in these radiant creatures?

At any rate it was immaterial. I was not there, as they were, to flirt or to seek advancement. This place of idle revelry and vain display was only the necessary backdrop to my plea for mercy for my husband. I did not care if I was admired except as it might help my cause.

Amelia and I waited…and waited, as the hours passed. Candles slowly burned down and were replaced. The crowd dwindled. Some of the courtiers, a little the worse for champagne, abandoned their hope of seeing the king that evening and tottered off to their waiting sedan chairs while they could still maintain a vertical position. At least we could then move about a bit and fan ourselves more freely.

I was beginning to think that all our effort had been wasted. I would have to come again the following night and perhaps the night after, and was it even permissible to wear the same mantua to court two nights in a row?

All at once a frisson passed through the remaining aspirants to royal favor. Amelia gave me a meaningful glance, and I realized that George was nearly at hand. Moving as swiftly as I could, heart pounding so hard I thought it might bend my whalebone stays, I managed to position myself near the entrance to the Great Drawing Room so that I would be one of the first to confront him.

A small group of courtiers entered the room together, gabbling in German. I missed my first chance to reach my target because I was not sure which one he was. When I had identified him, I was so shocked by the appearance of the man who was styling himself king of England that I could not act. I have never seen a man who less resembled a king.

He was indeed the Toad that I had heard tell of—only worse than I had imagined. He looked like the kind of troll who lived under a bridge.

He was startlingly short and bandy-legged with a sizable paunch, an over-large cranium and a blunt, square face. His large, blue eyes protruded from his head, his long nose broadened into the shape of a flower bulb at the end, his mouth was disproportionately wide and his short, plump chin was supported by three or four additional chins.

I gasped but quickly got over my shock and glided after him, almost tripping him as I managed to drop to my knees, holding out my petition, and cried out in French (which I had been told he understood) that I was the most unhappy Countess of Clarencefield who had come to court to beg mercy for my husband. To my horror, he made as if to ignore me completely and began to move around me and pass me by.

This I would not allow.

In all likelihood, he would not grant my plea for mercy. But he could not be permitted to behave as if I, a most pitiable petitioner, did not exist.

I was overcome with fury that this grotesque creature, given such immense power, might flout all the traditions of English kingship by refusing to even accept my petition. In my extremity I reached out with both hands and grabbed the lip of his pocket, attempting to thrust my scroll inside it.

He still refused to look at me and kept walking—as if I were a troublesome young terrier that had not yet been taught to sit. Or not even so much as that. As if I were no more than a ball of lint that had caught on his coat.

But I would not loosen my hold on him. He dragged me along the carpet as my hoops flew up behind me, and first one shoe, and then the other, dropped off my feet and were left behind.

I became aware of the strong odor of snuff about him, snuff mingled with too much scent of bitter almonds. The heavy wool scratched my skin and the capacious pocket was beginning to tear loose just an inch or so from the coat. I thought it might rip entirely, and I would be left sitting on the floor with a royal pocket in my hand.

I heard the exclamations of the courtiers around us. I heard audible gulps, small cries and even one suppressed giggle, but I did not care. I had come to court to get the Usurper’s attention and to beg for a life worth a thousand of his, and I would not let go until my purpose was achieved.

The brute pulled me the full length of the Great Drawing Room, but still I hung on to him. The layers of petticoats under me kept the rug from burning my legs, but the awkward position and rapid forward motion threatened to dislocate my shoulders or wrench my arms from my body. The initial squeaks and mumbles of the crowd were succeeded by an echoing silence in the room that had been so full of noise, as shock at such a display of cruelty caused even this raucous assembly to lose its voice.

At last the German’s attendants seemed to come to their senses. One grabbed me around the waist and lifted me away from the king while the other opened my fingers, one by one, almost gently, removing them from the lip of the coat pocket. I lay in a collapsed heap, my wig awry, my petition still clutched in my damp fist.

The king moved rapidly through a door into the next room, never looking back, as the startled courtiers slowly recovered themselves and followed after him. If they turned to stare as they passed me, I did not see them. Abandoned, crumpled on the great carpet, I was lost in my own circle of despair.

Amelia and I were left almost alone, save for the ushers who remained still and impassive around the perimeter of the room. Amelia gathered me up and lifted me to a sitting and then slowly to a standing position, deftly straightening my wig. She had even managed to collect my shoes and put them down on the carpet in front of me. I was able to lift my front petticoats and step back into them.

“We had better go,” she said quietly, equal to every circumstance. “That was a rather dramatic moment and not to his credit. The king may decide to send guards to seize you, once he knows that there is no longer an audience to witness his revenge.”

I was still stunned and her words puzzled, rather than frightened, me.

“His revenge?” I said. “For what? He got the better of me.”

“Oh no, my dear,” she said, guiding me towards the door so we could return the long way we had come. “All he had to do was accept your petition and move on, as any true English king—as any gentleman—would have done. Taking the petition from a petitioner is not a commitment to grant what the petitioner asks, but merely a traditional gesture of kingliness. But you took him by surprise, and he behaved precisely as the untutored boor that he is. The entire court witnessed his shame. He will never forgive you.”

I could not absorb her words. I was still too intent on getting my petition to the king somehow. Just then one of the beardless young men in a pale blue silk coat, probably not yet twenty, returned to the Great Drawing Room. He walked boldly up to us and held out his hand for my petition. At first I would not hand it over. In my dazed state, I imagined he might be planning to rip it to shreds to please the king.

Amelia took it from me and gave it to him. He bowed deeply.

“His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales will make a point of delivering this document personally to the king,” he said, with a slight German accent. “His Highness regrets that you were discommoded this evening.” He bowed again, turned and left.

“Lord Dorset,” said Amelia. “He is one of the close attendants of the Prince of Wales. The prince will certainly make sure that his father receives your petition, if only to embarrass him further.”

“Oh!” I wailed. “None of this will save my husband.” I would have stood there longer, tears cascading shamelessly down my cheeks, if Amelia had not insisted that we leave at once.

I said nothing more until we had returned to Smith Square.

The maids were able to help me shuck the entire absurd costume much faster than they had caged me in it. They washed the sticky cosmetics off my face. My cheeks were already pink and tender to the touch from the vile stuff, but lavender water soothed them.

They wrapped me in one of Amelia’s dressing gowns, carefully removed the wig, and Lucy brushed out my curls with a damp silver-handled brush till my hair lay long and loose and unencumbered on my shoulders.

Through the entire process of the hair brushing, having already cried until I could cry no more, I sat still and stony, and remained so as Lucy plied me with tea in the parlor. I was fighting the darkness that was attempting to drown me. I was trying to pull threads of hope from the web of despair that bore in on me.

At last Lucy said, “You always knew the petition was unlikely to win His Lordship a pardon. You have another plan.”

“Yes,” I said. “I do, but we will need the devil’s own luck.” Then I put my hand over my own mouth. If I sought the renewed blessing and presence of the Blessed Virgin, I would do well not to lapse into blasphemous language.

Lucy was unperturbed. “Audentis Fortuna iuvat; Fortune favors the brave,” she said smugly, enjoying the opportunity to trot out one of her store of Latin phrases. “You’ve always known that. I believe the Blessed Virgin also favors the brave in a righteous cause.”

She put her hand on mine and said, “Tell me of your plan.”