Why Kill the Innocent (Sebastian St. Cyr #13)(96)
“Oh, I do so wish I could have gone to the Frost Fair,” said Her Royal Highness Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales. She stood between Hero and Miss Kinsworth at the side of Blackfriars Bridge, one finely gloved hand resting on the stone parapet, her cheeks rosy from the fresh air, her eyes shining as she looked out over the broken ice of the Thames. The wind was warm out of the south, the sun so bright that the glare off the melting snow dazzled the eyes. One of the fair’s remaining tents shuddered out on the ice and then tipped sideways as the section beneath it collapsed, and a sigh went up from the crowd gathered on the bridge.
Watching the young Princess gaze longingly at the ruins of the Frost Fair, it struck Hero just how cruel it had been for the Regent to keep his daughter away from what had surely been one of the grandest spectacles of her age. She really was a coddled version of Cinderella—without the promise of a handsome Prince Charming to someday sweep her away from a dark, narrow existence in a gilded cage to which Prinny had doomed her.
“Miss Kinsworth told me how Jane died,” said Charlotte, casting a quick stricken glance at her companion. “That this all happened because of those letters.”
“I believe they truly have been destroyed,” said Hero.
“It was unforgivably foolish of me to have written them,” said Charlotte. “And now Jane is dead because of my folly.”
Hero’s gaze met Ella Kinsworth’s, and the older woman looked away, blinking hard. Charlotte stared out over the icy waters. Her features were solemn, but the agitation of her breathing betrayed the extent of her inner turmoil.
“Don’t marry him,” Hero said in a sudden rush. “Orange, I mean. Forgive me, Your Highness, for speaking so boldly. But without the Hesse letters hanging over you, you are no longer as vulnerable as you were before.”
Eyes wide and hurting, Charlotte turned to face her. “But how can I not?”
“Drag out the negotiations over the marriage contract. I’ve heard Orange’s father is anxious for his son to marry and beget an heir. That means it’s not unlikely he’ll tire of the delay and look elsewhere for his son’s bride. This dreadful war will be over soon, and then so much will change—doubtless far more than we can even imagine.”
For a long, pregnant moment, the Princess held Hero’s gaze. Then she nodded silently and smiled.
It would take courage for a powerless girl of just eighteen to stand against the overbearing will of a selfish, bullying father who was also her prince. But Hero suspected Charlotte had the grit to do it.
“How did two people as selfish and foolish as Prinny and Caroline manage to beget a child as basically good and decent as Charlotte?” Devlin asked later that evening when they gathered in the drawing room before dinner.
Hero looked up from where she sat by the fire with Simon and Mr. Darcy. “I honestly can’t imagine.”
He took a long, slow swallow of his wine. “Do you think she will indeed stand up to Prinny?”
“I believe she might. In some way I can’t quite define, I think Jane’s death has given Charlotte the determination she needs to refuse to let her father destroy her life.”
Devlin cradled his glass in one hand, his gaze on the flames dancing on the hearth. “I wish I could have met her. Jane, I mean.”
Hero watched their son pet the big black cat with studied care, and felt a part of the burden that had weighed so heavily upon her begin to shift. “I’m glad we know how and why she died—and that Princess Charlotte knows, as well. I suppose in the grand scheme of things it makes no real difference. And yet, on another level, it does.”
“She was an extraordinary person—steadfast, loving, and brave.”
“Yes,” said Hero. “Yes, she was.”
Author’s Note
T he Frost Fair of 1814 was the last Frost Fair held on the Thames. It came at the culmination of a horrid winter that included what was known as the Great Fog. Smothering London from late December to early January, the fog was followed by days of massive snowfall that buried the entire Kingdom and then weeks more of freezing temperatures and continuing snow. Food and coal in the city became scarce and prohibitively expensive, and many of London’s poorest died. In late January, ice floating down from the upper reaches of the river became caught between London Bridge and Blackfriars; eventually the remaining open water froze, and the people of the city took to the ice for a Frost Fair that lasted until the fifth of February. Then a shift in the wind and warming temperatures led the ice to break up rather suddenly, carrying off booths and people. The exact number killed was never determined since most of the bodies were never recovered. There had been other Frost Fairs on the Thames down through the ages, but with the removal of the old narrow-arched London Bridge in 1831, the Thames has never again frozen so solid.
The verse on Liam Maxwell’s souvenir is adapted from one actually printed at the fair and reproduced in John Ashton’s Social England Under the Regency. Maxwell’s “free press” sales pitch was also used at the fair.
The Prince of Wales was every bit as horrid to his wife, Caroline, as portrayed here. He did send his mistress to meet her ship when she landed, had Lady Jersey attend their wedding feast, and took her on their honeymoon (along with a bunch of his male friends who—like the Prince—were constantly falling-down drunk). He also forced Caroline to accept his mistress as her lady-in-waiting. The nasty stories about the furniture and pearl bracelets he took back are likewise true. Through his unsavory personal secretary, Colonel McMahon, he deliberately spread false gossip about his wife and paid newspapers to print ugly rumors about her, and he actually did award a certain Lady Douglas a pension for life after she swore to a tawdry—and easily disproven—pack of lies about the Princess of Wales as part of one of his numerous attempts to secure a divorce. In his preserved letters to friends and family, the Prince comes across as a petty, manipulative, breathtakingly narcissistic pathological liar, and paranoid to the point of being mentally unbalanced. He actually did have a fervent but totally unfounded belief that Caroline was conspiring to destroy the British monarchy.