In despair I wrote to the prince.
If ever you cared for me, I beg of you to see your way to relieving my financial distress. I am your devoted supporter, as is Ban.
I appealed to him not only as his former lover, but as his political ally. And from Brighton I received a kind, though brief, reply.
My dear Perdita, though my own purse is somewhat strained, I will see what I am able to do for you within my means.
George
Signing the note with his Christian name was a good omen. But it could not prevent the sheriff of Middlesex from placing an execution on all my possessions. Once more the spectre of the Fleet hovered before me. If someone—anyone—were to post a bond of two hundred and fifty pounds, my property would be released to me, but not a soul stepped forward. I was in anguish.
In torment I watched as my cherished belongings were auctioned off, one by one, including Gainsborough’s full-length portrait of me as Perdita, which now hung in my turquoise salon. All I was able to save was the diamond-studded portrait of the Prince of Wales, the same miniature I clasped in the Gainsborough and which Marie Antoinette had much admired. That most prized gift from His Royal Highness would have to be pried from my cold dead hands.
There was only one thing to be done: flee. My former lover, the duc de Lauzun, offered refuge at one of his châteaux, and thus we evaded our creditors and bolted for the Continent.
In the autumn of 1784, accompanied by Maria and my mother, Ban and I boarded the Brighton-Dieppe packet boat and began our new life together in Paris. We holed up in the small but sumptuously appointed L’Hôtel de Russie. On October eighth, we returned from a walk along the Seine to discover Ban’s elder brother John, waiting for him. John’s broad face could not mask his surprise at seeing me.
I suggested to Mother that she and Maria might wish to rest in the adjacent room.
“I thought you wrote to Mama that this connexion was closed,” John said, after my relatives had quitted the salon. His voice was quiet but firm. I guessed that the family had set him up to fetch his prodigal brother and bring him home. “Were not those your exact words, in point of fact?” John Tarleton tilted his head and raised his eyes, the better to recall Ban’s letter. “‘Mrs. Robinson is too proud to follow me, and she has long been too generous; always I should have said to become a drain on her lover and thus increase the poverty of any man—I most solemnly assure you she has not been the occasion of my bankruptcy—play alone, which I abjure, has…’”
“When did you write that?” I asked Ban, but received no reply. I had no idea he had absolved me before his family for his pecuniary misfortunes. I blinked back grateful tears.
“Mary has been terribly unwell,” Ban told his brother. “You can see for yourself how compromised is her condition. It is not expected she will last the winter.” My stomach started at such a remark. Did my lover know something I did not? But then I caught his gaze and in his eyes I read the cleverly worded chapter John would take home and recite to their mother. Jane Tarleton would glean from it that our liaison was on its last legs, as God was planning to call me home within the season. My agenda was nothing of the sort, however. I had Ban back and would do everything in my power to keep him in my arms.
“Our parents have been quite clear that I am to manage on my own from now on,” Ban said evenly. “I appreciate your concern, John, but it affects no sway in my decisions. We are set to depart by week’s end for Villefranche, where it is hoped that the temperate climate and the soothing waters will alleviate Mrs. Robinson’s suffering to whatever extent it is possible. If her health improves, it is our expectation to journey from there to the warm springs of Aix-la-Chapelle, on the advice of her physician.”
John Tarleton left Paris, his embassy unfulfilled. Ban and I enjoyed the delights of the glittering city and the hospitality of our friends, spending the winter of 1784–85 safe and cozy in Lauzun’s country château.
“I could do this every night,” I murmured, nestled in Ban’s warm embrace after a particularly enjoyable evening of lovemaking.
“We do,” Ban grinned, stretching like a cat on the duc’s thick Aubusson rug. The amber glow from the imposing marble fireplace illuminated his strong jawline and the sculpted planes of his torso.
I buried my crabbed fingers into the dark matted curls on his chest, savoring the now-soft, now-prickly sensation of his hair against my hand.
“More,” I whispered, kissing Ban’s chest a dozen times, then nuzzling his neck, journeying upward until my lips met his. “No matter how often you satisfy me, you always leave me craving more,” I breathed into his mouth.
“Well then, my angel must be satisfied,” sighed Ban, breaking into a smile even as he feigned hardship.
We began to pleasure each other anew, the licking flames mimicking the flicking of our tongues on each other’s warm and fragrant flesh.
We did not travel to Villefranche until the spring. There, the balmy climate did much to improve the pains in my joints, and for the first time in months I began to feel almost myself again. Ban was ever solicitous, carrying me tenderly to and fro, from my carriage to the coastline, where the moist mists of the sea breezes caressed my skin almost as lovingly as Ban did.
We journeyed then to northern Germany, where the mud baths and hot mineral springs of Aix-la-Chapelle rejuvenated me
