Why Kill the Innocent (Sebastian St. Cyr #13)(9)
“I don’t know why, but Jane was definitely frightened.”
Chapter 6
“I didn’t sleep well again last night,” announced the Prince in a petulant, accusatory voice that informed everyone present that he considered them personally responsible for his sufferings.
His Royal Highness George Augustus Frederick, Prince of Wales and Regent of the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, lay sprawled in naked, bloated splendor in the six-foot-long copper tub that was the focal point of the Moorish-tiled bathing room he’d had installed at enormous expense in his palace of Carlton House. Once he’d been a handsome prince, beloved of his people and cheered everywhere he went. Now in his fifties, he was monstrously overweight, endlessly self-indulgent, notoriously dishonest, and reviled by the same populace that had loved him so long ago.
A half circle of prominent, proud men stood around him, summoned so that he might berate them for their failings: two of his personal physicians, Drs. Heberden and Baillie; the Prime Minister, the Earl of Liverpool; the High Chancellor, Lord Eldon; and the Prince’s distant but extraordinarily powerful cousin, Charles, Lord Jarvis. Only Jarvis remained silent and watchful as the other men rushed to murmur platitudes of sympathy and sycophancy, for Jarvis knew his prince, knew the calculated, manipulative games he played on everyone around him, knew that this whining complaint was mere prologue to something else that had nothing to do with his night’s rest or his health.
When one of the doctors ventured to suggest that a simple solution might be for the Prince to moderate his food and alcohol intake to avoid aggravating his gout, the Prince roared, “It wasn’t because of the port and buttered crab, you fool! I lay awake all night fretting about that Brunswick bitch. She is plotting against me again. I know it.”
This announcement was met with embarrassed discomfort, for “that Brunswick bitch” was the Regent’s wife, Caroline, Princess of Wales.
“I tell you, she is determined to destroy the monarchy of this country,” fretted the Prince. “It has been her intention for nineteen years now, and she will not rest until she has achieved her goal.”
His listeners exchanged knowing glances. It was beyond ridiculous to suggest that Caroline—niece of the current King of England, great-granddaughter to his predecessor, and mother of the young woman who would one day be queen—might nourish any such ambitions. But the Prince of Wales had been convinced of his wife’s perfidy and malignant intentions for years, and no one had ever been able to persuade him otherwise.
When his audience remained awkwardly silent, the Prince shifted in the tub, sloshing sudsy water over the high sides to splash against the tiles. “I blame the Privy Council. Twice the cowards have been given the opportunity to rid me of her, and twice they failed. Twice! We now see the result. She’s scheming to destroy everything I have planned, and she has everyone from Henry Brougham and Earl Grey to that rat Lord Wallace intriguing with her—God rot their souls. In a better-regulated society, they’d all be hanged, drawn, and quartered for treason.”
The assembled men exchanged glances again. There was no denying that Brougham, Grey, and Wallace—all prominent Whigs—had taken the Princess’s side in her long, painful struggles against her husband. But in no sense could they be accused of anything treasonous.
“I don’t think—,” the Prime Minister, Liverpool, made the mistake of trying to say.
“That’s because you don’t know! You don’t know the blackness, the evil that lives inside that vile hell’s spawn of a woman. She actually makes effigies of me from wax and sticks pins in them, like some African voodoo queen! I tell you, she will stop at nothing to destroy me unless I destroy her first.”
This last statement was accompanied by a fierce stare directed at Jarvis, who, unlike the other men present, knew precisely which plans most concerned His Highness.
Jarvis gave a low bow. “We have the matter quite in hand, Your Highness. You may rest easy.”
“Well. At least someone understands the gravity of the situation,” grumbled the Prince. “Perhaps you should bleed me, Heberden,” he added in a plaintive voice to the nearest physician. “I feel my pulse beginning to race.”
“Of course, Your Highness.”
As the other men bowed and backed from the royal presence, Liverpool shot Jarvis a quick questioning glance and said quietly, “What the devil was that about?”
“The Princess,” said Jarvis.
“The Big P or the Little P?” asked the Prime Minister—the “Big P” or “Big Princess” being the Regent’s wife, Princess Caroline, while the “Little Princess” was their daughter, Princess Charlotte.
“Both,” said Jarvis with a smile. “And neither.”
Chapter 7
Rothschild.
Sebastian found himself turning the financier’s name over and over in his head as he slipped and slid his way across the freezing, paralyzed, miserable city toward the financial district in the east.
The son of a minor Frankfurt coin dealer turned banker, Nathan Rothschild had appeared in England just fifteen years before. At first he’d focused on skimming money off the Manchester cotton industry before transferring his unsavory but undeniably brilliant talents to the London Exchange. In just a few short years, he’d managed to become one of the richest men in the Kingdom.