Page 53 of A Tale of Two Dukes

Richard was received by his grateful Regent in the Crimson Drawing Room at Carlton House one foggy winter afternoon.

He did not consider himself a person easily impressed by gilded splendour or exalted persons, but afterwards, he was surprised how jumbled his reflections were, when he attempted to describe the interview to his wife in detail.

He’d known he would be kept waiting, perhaps for hours; one did not walk in off the common street and find oneself ushered straight into the presence of the country’s ruler.

There was a certain etiquette to be observed.

But his stay in the grand antechamber with its huge chandelier did not seem long, and other unlucky persons who had been in attendance before him were still there when his name was called, and watched him gloomily as he made his way across the ornate carpet.

They must have been wondering why he was so favoured.

Viola had not been summoned to attend with him, and neither of them was sorry that she was so excluded.

The Regent had been a notorious philanderer since his youth, and was known by all to favour more mature ladies with statuesque figures, a fact which was confirmed soon enough when he and Lord Ventris were left alone together by the laced and powdered flunkies who had shown the Baron in.

Richard bowed deeply, and the magnificent royal head was inclined towards him with great affability.

The Prince then gestured him to a seat, and took a thronelike chair opposite him.

He found himself scrutinised intently by those famously prominent, pale-blue, Hanoverian eyes, and the first thing Prince George said was, ‘I hear you are just married, Ventris, and that your wife is a great beauty. A damn fine figure of a woman, everyone tells me. You must bring her to meet me, by God you must!’

This statement was made in what Richard could only describe later as an oily, insinuating tone, which underlined the tasteless nature of the remark.

He could not doubt that if he had felt like describing his wife’s appearance and attributes in extraordinary and even indecent detail, which he emphatically did not, the Regent would have been very happy to hear it, and perhaps even forgotten the ostensible purpose of his visit.

Instead, he murmured some banal response, and tried to turn the subject, which was no easy task.

He was very smartly dressed for his royal audience, in black, satin knee breeches and swallowtail coat, his dark locks brushed more neatly than was usual for him, and an old-fashioned bicorn hat, specially purchased for the occasion, under one arm.

The boys had laughed at him when they had seen it, and clamoured to try the ridiculous thing on.

But now he was sweating into his snowy white linen, and felt not the slightest inclination towards mirth.

Apart from anything else, the apartment was hideously warm; he wondered if any of the windows in this palace had even been made to open.

The Prince was eager enough, when finally distracted from the contemplation of Viola’s charms, to hear of Richard’s unconventional career, on which he had obviously been briefed in advance.

It was plain that he considered it all damnably exciting, especially the saltier aspects involving clandestine visits to ladies’ bedchambers, and would have been prepared to listen to details all day long, as many as Richard cared to provide.

This was a problem in itself, as his masters had not failed to point out to him with awful threats and menaces.

Nobody suspected the Regent of disloyalty to his nation – the very idea was preposterous, naturally – but clearly, nobody suspected him of possessing a particle of discretion either.

There was simply no knowing what he might do with any confidential information Richard carelessly let fall, or whom he might tell, in his cups or in his bed.

Much as Britain’s spymasters might hope that they had rooted out all of Bonaparte’s agents by now, they could not be completely sure of it, even at the so-called highest levels of society.

And in this crucial time, when Wellington’s army was about to cross the Pyrenees at last, and men would soon be fighting and dying on French territory, the need for intelligence was even more vital, on both sides.

No wonder Richard perspired, and was obliged to use all his ingenuity to find things that he might safely say that would still satisfy his royal interrogator.

The man should have been ridiculous, even despicable, but somehow, he wasn’t.

He was a good listener, which was a surprise – it was obvious now why Richard had been warned in no uncertain terms to be careful what he told him.

He was even charming, and Lord Ventris began to detect in himself a tendency to like him, which he could only quash by remembering that this was the man who had taken friends of his – and fine friends they must have been – into his poor mad father’s chambers, to laugh at him and mock him, half-blind and confused as he was.

That unpleasant thought did the trick, and kept him on his guard.

It was a curious interview from start to finish.

He had understood already from those who knew the Regent that the Prince had the uncommon ability to absorb information about martial deeds and then genuinely convince himself that he had taken a prominent role in the events just described to him.

In an ordinary man, you’d call it lying.

He was known to be quite shameless in describing battles at which he was, naturally, not present, to people who were there, took part, and might be presumed to know about them much better than he.

Richard now saw that this was all too true, as George – a man who had never known a moment’s real danger and been safe in his bed in England when the event took place – evoked the recent siege of Pamplona in such vivid terms that it was hard indeed to believe it all came second-hand.

One of the distinguished men who’d once controlled Richard’s fate had told him wryly the day before, ‘If we win this war, Ventris, as surely we will if we don’t bitch it up at this late stage, Prinny will be convinced in his own mind that he carried it all off himself.

Wellington and all the other commanders will have had precious little to do with it. Let alone us poor bastards.’

Lord Ventris, recollecting this frank comment now, was hard put not to smile as he listened with feigned attentiveness to his Regent’s flights of fancy and wondered when he would be free to go home to his wife and his dinner.

It was all very well to be honoured, and he was grateful for it after all these years of danger and anxiety, but it wouldn’t feel real till he had Viola in his arms again.