We each arrived separately, and masked, His Highness in a borrowed domino that concealed his noble features entirely. The boisterous tavern crowd barely looked up, both accustomed and indifferent to the stream of anonymous beings that ascended the creaking oaken treads for their nocturnal rendezvous.
A single, guttering candle illumined the room, its mean and meager appointments scarcely befitting a lowly holy pilgrim, let alone a prince. “My Perdita—let me look at you,” exclaimed His Highness, removing his cloak and clasping me in his arms.
“My Florizel,” I murmured, nestling my cheek against his chest. His salmon-colored silken coat was like the caress of a rose petal on my skin. I felt protected. In the amber glow, he appeared even younger, his countenance almost pretty.
He cupped my face in his hands and brought his lips to mine, tasting my tongue with his, eager and ardent. Then, puppyish, he sought to divest me from my garments in such a hurry I feared he might rend them to shreds.
“Oh, my darling, you have much to learn,” I laughed, when he appeared utterly stymied by the maze of ties and fasteners.
“Then show me,” he urged. “Show me how to undress you.”
He was all kisses and fingers. I taught him to unhook my stomacher and unlace my robe and stays, and then untie my petticoats and shift—leaving me in white silk stockings that clung to my thighs through the good offices of a pair of satin garters, and my blue brocaded slippers, to which I had affixed one of his gifts to me: a set of buckles inlaid with brilliants.
“Even in my dreams, you are not this beautiful,” murmured the prince, fussing to divest himself of his own attire as quickly as possible.
“Here—allow me,” I said, and untangled him from his jacket and waistcoat. “I’m not going anywhere. There’s no need to rush.”
“Oh—but there is! There is!”
I helped him remove his boots and hose, and watched him perform a rather comical dance about the room, in which he attempted to extricate his legs from his breeches. Finally, he stood before me, in his linen, but for his smooth bare chest. He was indeed well made then; a handsome youth and noble to behold in every way.
I slipped my arm about his waist and drew him closer, and closer still until I could feel him growing firm against my thigh. “I do believe the royal standard is flying, Your Highness,” I whispered, and we both broke out into peals of laughter. My Florizel pressed me to his breast and showered me with a thousand adoring kisses. It was the first time in my life that a man had made me feel beautiful—and truly loved. In his arms I felt warm and safe. And, to my astonishment, powerful. The sensation was so heady that I was near to losing my balance from giddiness.
“Teach me about the world, Mary.” Our bodies sank as one onto the faded counterpane. “Tell me everything,” he murmured into my mouth. “I want to know it all.”
Nineteen
Riding High
1780…age twenty-two
As the stage was no longer my world, I became determined to make the world my stage.
Soon, everyone in London knew that I was the prince’s mistress and had set myself up in an establishment in Cork Street, Burlington Gardens. The house was neat, but by no means splendid. The accommodations were rather modest, in fact, though the dwelling had acquired some notoriety before I became its tenant, having once been fitted up for the Countess of Derby when she deserted her lord and children for the waiting arms of her lover, the Duke of Dorset.
Here, I entertained the prince and his friends with music and cards in the evenings. His young Highness felt completely at liberty to express himself, free from the scrutiny of his tutors and his parents’ disapproval of nearly all of his acquaintances and everything he undertook—or failed to undertake, for in their view he shirked his duties at every possible turn. I knew he was chafing under a very painful bit, so I sought to make the hours we spent together as charmed as a prince royal deserved.
Only a week after my final performance, His Highness invited me to the evening ball at St. James’s Palace, to celebrate the king’s birthday. Everyone was terribly afraid that the thing might not come off—first it was postponed a day because June 4 fell on a Sunday that year—and of course the Gordon Riots had put the entire city in a state of high alarm.
These dreadfully violent anti-Catholic protests had begun in the face of parliamentary proposals for Catholic emancipation, granting Papists the same civil and political liberties that we Protestants enjoyed.
The royals feared getting caught in the melees, and worse, dreaded the possibility of massacre. For days the streets had been ablaze; angry swarms of Protestants had turned arson and vandal against anyone and anything Papist. There had been a terrible rumor that the mob planned to storm St. James’s Palace and upset the king’s birthday celebrations; accordingly, many of the nobility suddenly found themselves with something more pressing to do that evening.
I would not have missed the occasion for the world, though I must confess I was not actually permitted to accompany the prince. “I profoundly apologize, my darling,” he had told me, kneeling at my feet as if a penitent, “for I’m afraid you must watch the ball from the spectators’ box. But at least you will be in attendance. And as certain as my name is George Augustus Frederick, Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall, I will show you proof of my affections, that everyone there might know, my Perdita, that my heart is completely and irrevocably yours.”
My heart throbbed with a strange mixture of regret and glee—disappointment that we could not publicly be
