Below stairs they were abuzz with curiosity at this unusual behaviour, and sensed that something was in the air. Mary Cadogan, with a firmness they had come to expect, made sure that not one of them tried to sneak upstairs. Whatever Sir William had in mind was to be carried out without disturbance.
Emma didn’t hear him enter, concentrating on playing the harpsichord part of a Haydn concerto. That allowed Sir William to examine her, which he had done a thousand times these last few years. Dressed for the climate in garments of light material, he could see her breasts moving as she swayed across the keyboard. Her hair moved too, its ends close enough to the sunlight coming through the window to flash red at one second, then burnished gold the next.
Carefully, his silver-buckled shoes making no sound, he approached her back, admiring the way the tendons and bones flexed and moved as she played. Emma must have turned because she sensed him; he was sure she hadn’t heard. But turn she did, swiftly, gracefully, her green eyes lighting up with pleasure as she saw him.
“Sir William?”
“My dear Emma.”
“Flowers. Is there some occasion that I have missed?”
“No, my dear. But there is, I am happy to say, one that you may anticipate.”
The frown of curiosity on such a flawless complexion was delicious, creasing her forehead slightly, moving those full red lips together without ruining their shape. The frown deepened as Sir William went down on one knee and placed the posy he was carrying in her open hand. Then he took the other and lifted it to his lips, holding on to it when he had kissed her hand.
“My dear Emma. You have been companion to me now for near five years, and I am certain my life has been improved by the association. It is my fond hope that the same truth holds for you. With that in mind, and knowing that it is something you desire to come to pass, I have come here, and gone on to one knee in time-honoured fashion, in order to ask you to be my wife.”
The green eyes opened wide with shock. “Wife?”
“You would make me the happiest man on earth if you merely said yes.”
“Wife?”
Chapter Twelve
1791
“CHARLES, I swear to you, Emma couldn’t say anything but ‘wife’ for several minutes. She kept repeating that one word.”
“How amusing,” said Charles Greville, though both his tone and the sour look on his pale serious face belied his words.
They were in a coach, heading back from Windsor. Sir William had used his right as a returning ambassador not only to report to his sovereign regarding his Neapolitan mission but to pass over the request from Maria Carolina that King George’s Minister Plenipotentiary regularise his position vis-à-vis her good friend and confidante, Emma Hart. Greville, returning from his family home in Warwickshire, had met him at the royal castle.
“She agreed to a wedding in the end?”
“Most assuredly.” Sir William could recall the scene now. Emma had flown around the room in a torrent of excitement, before acceding to his request that she help him back to his feet. Emma had obliged, showered him with kisses, rushed to tell her mother, embraced all the servants, who seemed just as ecstatic, then rushed back up the stairs to embrace him again.
There was pleasure here, too, in almost guying his nephew. Charles Greville should know he had nothing to fear in the matter of his inheritance, yet he was piqued by his uncle’s intentions. It was as though he still considered Emma his own; was annoyed that the man he had put in as a surrogate had usurped his prerogative. Now, for the first time in five years, he was on his way to meet her.
“The King was gracious?” Greville asked.
“My old foster-brother George has no knowledge of grace. He sees directness as a quality. It is a good thing that I represent him abroad and not the other way round. We’d be forever at war.”
“Any hint of madness?”
“None, unless you count that damned habit he has of saying ‘what, what’ all the time. He was always a bit of an odd fish, even as a child.”
He had been a damned unhappy fish earlier, King George, searching for a way to refuse his ambassador permission to marry. Throughout a deeply uncomfortable interview Sir William had searched in vain for a sign of the child and young man he had known. Whatever his oddities, George had possessed a degree of humorous vulgarity. In the rollicking life they had led as young men he had always been to the fore when it came to causing mayhem. George loved women, married, single, betrothed; high-born, lowborn, and anywhere in between. He drank like a fish, sang loudly, badly and frequently, teased any watchman whose path he crossed, and flew in the face of authority. He had also, as a prince, set up house and fathered a bastard by a commoner.
Now he was Farmer George, father of the nation, model husband with a dog of a wife who had raised dullness to a performing art. He preached marital fidelity as if he had never bedded the wife of another man, bore down on his sons in the article of low-born mistresses for behaving exactly as he had himself, and had hummed and hawed to his old friend like the worst kind of pious hypocrite. Sir William, angry at the hypocrisy, had enjoyed his discomfort: the letter from Maria Carolina had made it impossible for him to refuse. He hadn’t quite squirmed, but it was a close run thing.
“Brown’s Hotel,” said Greville, indicating that they had arrived at the place where Sir William and his intended bride had taken rooms.
It was with an attitude of studied calm that Greville ascended the stairs to their suite. It would be a curious reunion, which Emma had known she would have to face, and which she had signally failed to mention on the journey from Naples. Opening the door, Sir William was surprised to see Mrs Cadogan. But that made sense: Emma must be nervous that by some inadvertent act she would destroy a prospect of the happiness she had come to London to set in stone.
With that air of theatricality that never deserted her, she had taken station by the bow window. The light was nothing like as flattering as that of Naples: indeed, there was scarce any sun to speak of, even on this, a late-spring day. But what there was played across and flattered her features. Emma had dressed carefully too, in a dark blue dress that hinted at sobriety. Yet she had also taken care that it did not hide her magnificent figure, so that Charles Greville should be sure that the creature he had abandoned was even lovelier now.
Sir William had to admire her poise. The slow turn, the look towards him to receive a nod that told her of the King’s consent. Then an even slower smile, followed by an advance across the room, both hands outstretched. Emma was every inch the lady.
“Charles.”
“Emma,” he replied, bending to kiss one of those hands.
This was a moment of truth for Emma, the point at which she would know her feelings. Would there be that frisson running through her hand and her arm? She knew she was being watched by her future husband, knew that Charles, if only for the sake of his pride, would be looking for a response. She felt nothing, just the touch of dry flesh on her moist skin. The breath that she had held, in fear of finding the love she had once harboured for Greville still there, was released. Greville saw it and the disappointment was plain in his eyes.
“I arranged to meet Charles at Windsor, my dear,” said Sir William, “so that I could fetch him back to see you.”
A slight untruth. Greville had suggested meeting at Windsor, taking advantage of the interview to bring himself before royalty. His excuse was that gossip of the worst kind regarding Emma had flowed to the King’s ears from every malicious voice in London. If necessary he wanted to be on hand to refute it.
“Then I thank you for that, Sir William,” said Emma, voice slightly over-modulated to show Greville she was truly now a lady. “Your nephew and I have much to catch up on. Letters can never do as much justice to events as conversation. Mother, would you oblige me by ordering for us some tea?”
Sir William was content. The prospect of this meeting had caused him some concern. He disliked the notion of committing himself to Emma withou
t being sure that her previous regard for his nephew had cooled. His concentration, at that moment of contact, had been total: he had seen her response and it had pleased him. But more than that he had observed how stiff Greville had become, like a man rebuffed. He could now leave them alone with an easy mind. And the way she had said “your nephew” was like a deliberate blow aimed to wound Charles’s pride.
To take Emma out into society carried many risks, but they had to be borne. Some people, Sir William knew, would slight her without ever allowing themselves the chance to test defamation against experience. Others, ogres to his mind, would come to peer, but with a set view that would not alter whatever Emma did. Yet, even in stuffy London, so different from pleasure-loving Naples, there were those who would receive both the Chevalier and his intended bride and make them welcome.
Sir William Beckford, author of Vathek and a famous pederast with a reputation to put Emma’s to shame, accommodated them at Fonthill, eagerly discussing the plans for his new house to be built as a seal at the end of his ten-year self-imposed exile. Bath, home to the fashionable world in August, was split. Sir William’s old friend the Dowager Countess Spencer fled to Longleat to avoid a meeting; her daughter, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, welcomed the pair with open arms.
Emma sat once more for old Romney, feeling different from the chattel who had been painted so many times before. Now she was there in her own right, as a future ambassadorial bride, posing for pictures that would not be sold off for her keep. It seemed that every artist in London wished to capture her likeness, though time allowed her to accede only to a youngster called Thomas Lawrence. This came at the behest of his patron Lord Abercorn, Sir William’s cousin, who had agreed to stand witness for her, this in a family that was scandalised in the main by the match.
There were parties at the Richmond home of the Marquis of Queensberry, where Emma performed opera buffa songs that enchanted all present, one fellow so much that he offered her two thousand pounds to appear in a pair of concerts. That was something to make an old friend laugh when they went to Drury Lane. Jane Powell, Emma’s fellow housemaid, was now a famous actress, ever grateful to that rat Gil Tooley, who had engineered her and Emma’s dismissal from the Budd household, for forcing her into the profession.
Mary Cadogan went north, first to Hawarden to see her mother and settle some money on the family, then to see Little Emma. She was able to report on her return that the child, now supported by Sir William, was well, that her education progressed at a goodly pace, and that she had no idea that the lady she was talking to was a relation. “Better to let her grow up in ignorance,” was the grandmotherly conclusion.
The temptation to send a note to Arlington Street, to Kathleen Kelly, was to be avoided. Besides, she was a woman with her ear to the ground. She would know that Emma Hart was back in London on the arm of a Knight of the Bath. Perhaps, on the day of the wedding at St Marylebone Church, she would be outside to see Emma.
The sun shone as if by command, giving a golden tinge to the stone of the church. Crowds had gathered to watch the nuptials, the usual mob drawn to any hint of scandal, but leavened with more than just the curious. Some members of society might not be able to bring themselves to attend, but they were determined to see a woman famous now, all over Europe, as a beauty.
There was gentle applause mixed with ribald good wishes for Sir William, dressed in cream silk, the sash and brilliant star of his knightly order very prominent. Strangers watched for infirmity, but saw only the sprightly gait of a fit and healthy man, and a face that could only be described as patrician. A hush fell as Emma’s carriage approached, open-topped, with the bride in a pale green dress of fine silk, set off by a dark green sash around her waist, both designed to show her fair unblemished skin and highlight her huge green eyes. On her head she wore a high hat of the same colour as the sash, held in place by a silk scarf and topped by a huge curled feather, both of a hue to match the dress. Her rich auburn hair, so beloved of every man she had known, she wore loose and long, the whole ensemble bringing forth from the crowd a spontaneous ripple of acclaim.
From inside the small church they could hear the music and the singing, not a choir, nor a doleful church melody, but musicians hired by Sir William to lend an air of gaiety to the proceedings with light, quick airs from Austrian and Italian composers. She stepped down from the carriage on the arm of Lord Abercorn, and went into the dim interior of the porch.
Few had attended the ceremony, at Sir William’s request, and he stood at the end of the short aisle facing Emma, erect, looking proud as she walked slowly towards him, nodding to those present. Greville was facing her, his eyes searching her face, perhaps in the hope of seeing doubt. After a brief glance at him, Emma looked away and produced a dazzling smile aimed at his uncle.
Would Greville see it for what it was—performance? From her earliest days Emma had dreamed of marrying a prince. Sir William wasn’t that, but he had a palazzo, he lived in the grand manner and she rode in carriages as fine as any nobleman could muster, and all worshipped at her feet. But she had also dreamed of an all-encompassing love, a depth of passion so profound that her heart would burst at the thought of union. But as she reflected on the life she had led so tar, which was different from those childhood dreams, Emma knew that she was lucky. To ask for perfection at a moment like this seemed the height of selfishness.
Sir William bowed to her before turning to face the cleric, who stood ready to carry out the ceremony. As he spoke the words of the service she could hear the soft crying of her mother in the front pew. As a woman who had done much to engineer this moment tears seemed an odd response. Did she wish for better too?
Her future husband’s skin felt as dry as parchment as he took her hand to put on the ring. She noticed a slight tremble as he aimed it at her outstretched finger and wondered what doubts he too harboured at this, the final moment, as he bent to kiss her hand.
“I now pronounce you man and wife.”
“Lady Hamilton,” said Sir William softly.
The musicians, silent throughout the ceremony, burst into a joyous rondo of harpsichord, violas, and French horns, and all present applauded as the couple turned to them. At Sir William’s bidding, he bowed and she curtsied, before they turned to enter the vestry, there to sign and solemnise their marriage. What doubts Emma had were now gone. Those words Sir William had used chased her demons away. She was now the lawful wedded wife of the Ambassador and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of the Two Sicilies.
She was Lady Hamilton.
Sir William, preparing to return to Naples, sent to tell King George of his intentions. That was, by custom, another occasion on which an ambassador was obliged to meet the monarch, also an occasion, if he was married, to present his wife at court. The reply came back from Windsor, couched in terms of no politeness whatsoever, that neither the King nor the Queen recognised Emma as his wife; that while he was welcome to attend and receive his instructions, on no account was he to be accompanied by her. Sir William had no choice but to go, but he used the occasion to tell the man with whom he had shared a nursery what he thought of such behaviour. Their meeting wasn’t private, as it should have been, but held publicly at the normal weekly levee.
“I depart at the end of the week, Your Majesty.”
“Time to be gone, what, what?” King George replied, with a knowing look aimed at those courtiers close enough to observe and hear the exchange. “I daresay you yearn for the warmer climate of Naples. They allow for things there that would not pass elsewhere.”
“We shall stop in Paris, Sire.”
Farmer George shook his head. It wasn’t a happy prospect for a reigning monarch to look on, the events taking place in the French capital: King Louis and Queen Marie Antoinette had been dragged from Versailles to be kept in the Palace of the Tuileries and denied the freedom to move. Mobs gathered in the faubourgs and orators on street corners incited the mob to violence. Would the contagion spread to Farmer George
’s own realm? “Bad business there, Sir William, what, what?”
That raised a murmur of assent from the eavesdroppers.
“But interesting, Sire.”
The bulging Hanoverian eyes bulged a little more. “Interesting?”
“Of course, Sire. It will be instructive to observe how a king goes about his duties when his subjects are in a position to command his behaviour.”
Sir William bowed, turned on his heel, and left the audience chamber, which was buzzing with his carefully honed insult.
Emma thought they looked a sad pair, King Louis and Queen Marie Antoinette, as they made their way through the gardens of the Tuileries to attend mass, an absolute precursor of their holding court, a sign of their continued belief that the office they occupied came from God, not man. The nation, or at least the National Assembly, didn’t agree, and was just days away from the ceremony that would inaugurate a new constitution.
Louis seemed vague, bereft of that regal air so necessary to command a nation like France. Dress like monarchs they might, but for both himself and his Austrian wife the appearance of their office had deserted them along with their power. After the mass, King Louis’s conversation with Sir William and Lady Hamilton was perfunctory. His wife, however, knowing that Emma was a confidante of her sister, was eager for their company.
Observing Marie Antoinette as she talked, Emma could see a family likeness to Maria Carolina in her face, but that was where it ended. The French Queen was taller than her sister, a more willowy creature, had clearly been a beauty, and those physical traits seemed replicated in her behaviour. The eyes betrayed a weak, distracted personality, her conversation was floating and inconsequential, odd given her circumstances. The assurance that the prayers of Naples were with her and her family lifted her spirits somewhat, and she pressed on Emma a letter for delivery to Maria Carolina. The Hamiltons were also presented to her children, who showed punctilious behaviour in the way they greeted these visitors from England. Emma remarked after they left that the Dauphin was “quite the little man.”
Tested by Fate Page 14
