“Halloo!” I called.
I rapped upon the door and, receiving no reply, flung it open, only to discover one of the serving wenches—a dirty, squalid girl named Matilda—in the arms of Mr. Robinson, legs akimbo, the nipple of a pendulous breast poised between his teeth.
I shrieked with anger and alarm. “In my very own bed!” I shouted. “How dare you?”
I dashed to the china ewer and doused them with water as one might break apart a pair of rutting dogs. “Out of this house—immediately,” I hollered. “The both of you.” As Matilda scrambled to rearrange her clothes, I snarled, “And don’t be expecting any references.”
My bare-bummed husband bent over to hunt for his breeches.
“What am I to do with you?” I lamented. “You mock our marriage everywhere. You don’t even have the decency or sense to limit your conquests to strangers in other venues. I know you keep two mistresses—no wonder we never have a farthing. Every penny I make on the stage goes into your pocket, and you shame me in my own boudoir! With a girl so dirty it’s a wonder she doesn’t carry the plague.” Matilda was not the first servant in our employ to become the target of my husband’s advances, but perhaps she was the only compliant one, as other girls had complained to me of Mr. Robinson’s overtures and I had repeatedly cautioned him to keep his distance from them.
Having located and laced up his trousers, Mr. Robinson made to embrace me, but I flung out my arms to repel him. “Don’t even consider a kiss! I’m like as not to catch the clap off you and your scurvy whores.” I shook my head in consternation. “What can I do? We are bound to each other for life, before God, no matter how ill you treat me, unless there is some new law under the sun that will rescue me from this farce of a marriage. If I were to invent your low, licentious character in a novel, the fiction would not be half so heinous a creation as the original!”
I fairly kicked him to the curb, and for all I knew he scuttled like a horrid black beetle to his own lodgings.
I rang for Dorcas and she helped me yank the bedclothes from where they lay, tumbled about. “Burn them,” I commanded.
She looked at me as though I’d been speaking in tongues. “But, ma’am, you always tell me how these was so costly—”
“I know they were, but I don’t care. Burn them. And the candlewicked bedspread as well.”
“Are you well, ma’am?”
“No, Dorcas, I am not.” I threw myself on the bare mattress, soaking it with my sobs.
“Why are you crying, Mummy? Did someone make you sad?” Maria heaved herself onto the high bed and nestled beside me, shoving her tiny thumb in her mouth. I wrapped my arm around her and drew her to me, her warmth and sweet scent a comfort to my wounded pride.
“Sometimes, my angel, sometimes your papa is not a very nice man.”
But I wasn’t weeping merely out of the humiliation visited upon me by Mr. Robinson’s disgusting conduct with the serving wench. I cried over a pattern I had seen before, and one I knew too well: a pain inflicted on my mother and her children by my own father, Nicholas Darby.
The buds of my husband’s neglect and indifference had blossomed into a reeking, cankered bloom. There was no longer a shred of esteem between us, and yet I had done nothing to cause Mr. Robinson’s animadversion to me, whilst his own transgressions in this regard would fill a chronicle. His cruel behavior, more than any other element, reconciled my mind to the idea of a separation, and pushed me toward that fateful first encounter with the Prince of Wales.
At length, an evening was fixed for the interview. How I agonized during the long days leading up to it! Among my chief concerns was what to wear to such an event—an assignation with the most comely and noble youth in Europe. I must have changed clothes a half dozen times that day in anticipation of the meeting.
It had been left to Lord Malden to arrange the particulars. At first, His Royal Highness had proposed that I come to the viscount’s residence in Dean Street; but the prince’s social sphere was too restricted, governed as he was by a rigid tutor; and therefore, slipping off to Mayfair was an impossibility.
At length, it was determined that our initial rencontre was to last but a few moments—any longer would have imperiled detection—and would take place at Kew, along the banks of the Thames.
Lord Malden and I dined first at the inn on the narrow spit of land betwixt Brentwood and Kew. Such was my anticipation, so riddled with anxieties, that I was trembling so hard I could scarcely wield my fork.
“Now, once we depart the inn, we must wait for the signal,” instructed the viscount.
My heart pounded so fiercely I could scarcely breathe. I admired the prince prodigiously and was grateful for his affection, believing him the most engaging of created beings. By this time I had corresponded with him over the course of many months, and his eloquent letters, the exquisite sensibility that permeated every line, his ardent professions of admiration, had all combined to shake my feeble resolution. The very thought of him buoyed my spirits; I felt as though I walked on air. “Are you sure he will come?” I whispered to Lord Malden.
“He has talked of nothing else for a fortnight,” his lordship assured me. “Ah! Look—there is the handkerchief. We must make haste!” Through the dusky gloom, I spied a glimmer of white on the opposite bank. It was our cue. “Give me your hand.” Lord Malden held out his own for me to take, and he steadied
