“Your children?” asked Sebastian, keeping his voice steady with difficulty.
Ambrose followed his gaze. “Yes.” He sucked in a quick breath that shuddered his chest. “That was painted seven years ago. They’re both dead now. We lost Benjamin last summer, and Lawrence in November.”
Oh, Jesus, thought Sebastian, his heart aching for this man’s tragic series of losses. “I’m sorry.”
Ambrose swiped one hand across his face and nodded.
Sebastian said quietly, “Did your wife have any family?”
“Not really. Jane lost her mother when she was still quite young, while her father passed away ten years ago or so—not long after Jane’s twin, James. And then her sister, Jilly, died two years ago. Consumption, same as James. A dangerous weakness to the disease seems to run in the family.”
“How long has Jane served as Princess Charlotte’s piano instructor?”
Ambrose looked thoughtful. “It must be nine or ten years, at least. Why?”
“So she knew the Princess well?”
“She did, yes. But surely you don’t think her death could have anything to do with Charlotte?”
“At this point, I don’t know. Did she talk much about the Princess?”
“Not really. You don’t stay with the Princess long if you talk about her—or even get too friendly with her. If Prinny could have his way, that poor girl would be attended only by deaf-mutes who hate her.”
The rough anger in the man’s voice didn’t surprise Sebastian. There were few in contact with the Prince Regent who didn’t come away with sentiments ranging from contempt to disgust. “Who else did your wife teach?”
Ambrose frowned. “She’s had various pupils over the years. But the only one I can name off the top of my head is Anna Rothschild.”
Sebastian knew a flicker of interest. “The daughter of Nathan Rothschild, the German financier?”
“Yes. Jane’s been teaching Anna for three or four years now. Or, at least, she did until several weeks ago, when Rothschild suddenly dismissed her.”
“He dismissed her? Do you know why?”
“No. All I know is that Jane was extraordinarily upset by it. Rothschild’s daughter, Anna, was a talented pianist, and Jane was disappointed to lose her as a student. Although . . .” Ambrose’s voice trailed off.
“Although?” prompted Sebastian.
Ambrose drew in a quick breath that flared his nostrils. “She refused to talk about it—she actually became angry with me when I tried to press her on it. But to be honest, I’d say she was more than upset or disappointed. She was frightened. Don’t ask me to explain it because I can’t. But that’s the only word I can use to describe it.
“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
