“With all due respect to Your Grace, I don’t. The only vice for which I have an unreserved antipathy is gambling. I despise cards and the monsters they make of the players.” I laid my hand solicitously on her forearm. “Are you in need of funds? How much have you lost of late?”
The duchess turned her head away from my prying gaze. “Pray don’t ask. Canis quizzes me enough in that regard as it is. I fear he’s tiring already of paying off my debts.” She turned to me. “I wish you could understand the thrill one gets as the stakes mount! One’s heart beats so much quicker at the clacking of chips and the clink of coins as the ante is raised from player to player.”
“I will sooner be the bride of the Prince of Wales than comprehend that allure,” I said glumly.
“Come, come now, Mary. Take cheer in the fact that His Highness honors you whenever he can.”
“But even at my own fetes, saving Your Grace, birthright takes precedence over what takes place in the boudoir. At the ball he gave in my honor at Weltje’s, he danced first with you,” I reminded her. “I may be his lover, but I’m still a lowly commoner lacking rank and title, and an adulteress, to boot. I know the rules quite well, do not mistake me. Yet the more I feel their restrictions, the more tempted I am to flout them.”
“Is that why you took a side box at the Haymarket Theatre?”
There had been a good deal of gossip in the papers about this. The side boxes were considered the purview of ladies and gentlemen of quality and reputation, whereas people of my stamp and character—though I had been the queen of Drury Lane and much admired for it—were expected to be seated up in “the gods” amid the demireps and outright prostitutes.
“I do believe that my circumstances warrant it,” I said, referring to the location of my theatre box. I awaited a nod of understanding or a word of approbation from the duchess, but her silence conveyed much.
“You must forgive me if I cut short our interview,” said Georgiana, her manner surprisingly brisk. “The Duke of Bedford is having a card party this evening, and I must have my coiffure seen to. It is expected of me to set the fashion.”
She turned toward Devonshire House as I endeavored to mask my disappointment in such coolness after several years of affectionate cordiality.
As I stood several yards from her entrance gate, I felt a fissure open between myself and my esteemed patroness, and feared it would widen into an unbridgeable chasm. Here we were, a pair of high-strung contemporaries; but one of us was wellborn where the other was not, and that made all the difference. Though we were the same age, with pious and disapproving mothers, and with husbands who were far from attentive to our needs and sensibilities—mine preferring his doxies and hers preferring his dogs—and though we shared a passion for fashion and literature, it was becoming clear to me that the duchess viewed quite coolly any notions I might have above my station. Despite our common interests, we would never be equals, and it seemed rather pointed—though unsaid—that I would do well to remember it.
But I had a new role to play—that of the acknowledged mistress of the Prince of Wales—and play it I would, all the way up to the gilded hilt.
To the multitudes, I was a curiosity, no longer renowned for being an actress of some note, but famous simply for being famous. Whenever I appeared in public in those days I was overwhelmed by the masses of intrigued onlookers eager to know where I shopped and what I purchased, that they, too, might copy my taste. One morning I placed an order for clocked hosiery; by that afternoon, the figured stockings were all the rage. I was frequently obliged to quit Ranelagh and Vauxhall, owing to the crowd that had gathered around my box, making an enjoyable evening an utter impossibility. And yet I own I thrived on the attention as much as it deterred me from any aspect of privacy when I was out in the world. It was astonishing to realize that the public had been less curious about me when I was the toast of Drury Lane. I had to smile with amusement at the absurdity of it all: that people were more fascinated with someone for being fascinating, rather than for any legitimate skill or talent.
“Mummy, you have as many gowns as the duchess,” little Maria observed. “Which one will you wear today?”
“Why don’t you choose it, my pet?”
Maria shoved my garments from one side of the massive wardrobe to the other. “Not this one; you were the Amazon yesterday. You looked like the warriors in my picture book.”
“You should have seen people gawking at my matching chariot; it was ever so much fun.”
“Will you drive the chariot again today?”
“No, not today, sweetheart. Mummy nicked it up a bit dashing through Hyde Park. But I’ll warrant you the Duchess of Cramond will order one just like it, for she was green with envy when I whipped past her, sulking in her dull cabriolet, her face as sour as a lemon drop.”
“Ooh, I like this one,
