A Matter Of Delicacy

The Game

     Mother Quinn's deal was still running through my head three days later, when Princess Caroline hosted a card party for the ladies of her court and some visitors from the Prince Regent's. The weather had turned muggy, with heavy clouds pressing the heat closer to us and forcing us indoors. The Princess had refused point-blank to do any practice, waving me away with her hand as she lay prostrate on the sofa eating strawberries from a bowl on her stomach. It was almost too much even for me to practice, so I contented myself with an early morning walk of the perimeter fences to check for bent rails or broken posts. The guards had grown used to seeing me on their paths, though they hadn't quite become reconciled to my trousers and smallsword.
     That day, however, I had forced myself into a light afternoon dress, beautifully made my Mr Arthurs to have a concealed slit up the thigh. It was decorative enough to be admired, but simple enough not to catch the eye. I remained impressed with the ease at which Mr Arthurs had created my altered wardrobe, with all necessary amendments necessary to hiding a weapon. He had barely batted an eyelid and with each new piece her created there was some new change to make my life easier. In each, I felt more like Katherine Wentworth of Munich with the dead parents, and less like Katherine Wentworth the Silver Sword.
     The Katherine Wentworth of Munich, however, was struggling intensely to enjoy the card party. For an hour I'd stood by the window, eyes fixed on the Princess as she sashayed around the room, touching an arm here, batting someone with her fan there, and generally spreading largesse around the room. The men of the party generally looked bored, sulking by the drinks table or excluding themselves round the green lawn tables, shouting for more glasses or fresh packs of cards. I didn't recognise anyone, they were all stern and straight-laced with tightly tied cravats and wedding rings screwed onto their fingers. Several of them had crests pinned to their jackets that glittered with care.
     Finally, there was someone I recognised, albeit Sarah's old and fat husband who came in leaning drowsily on her arm. She was struggling under his weight, his purple-blotched fingers clasped over her skin and his wheezing breath stirring the hair that fell round her face. He waved, 'over there my dear, by Lord Ashgrove. Fancy I have a shot at beating him at whist.'
     A man, I assumed Lord Ashgrove, turned at his name and grinned, 'you can fancy all you like Lynton, but this horse has some miles in him yet!'
     Sarah deposited her husband in a chair by the only free table and, at a flap of his hand, settled into the one next to him and started dealing the cards. Ashgrove staggered slightly as he came over, and his fingers slipped on the crystal sherry glass he held. He was drunk, and it was only three hours past midday.
     I spotted my opportunity. Sliding out from behind the gaggle of ladies that stood in the corner I went and joined the group, easing myself down in between Sarah and Lord Ashgrove. Sarah gave me a confused look but stopped when I bobbed my eyebrows back at her.
     'Lord Ashgrove, this is Miss Wentworth, our newest lady of the group.'
     'Miss Wentworth,' he blinked hard and tried to focus on me. 'Such a pleasure to meet ladies like yourself here, her Royal Highness always fills this place with such wonders.'
     I drooped my shoulders and giggled, just loud enough to catch his attention, 'why thank you my lord. Although I'm sure you can hardly call this place wonders, when you live at Carlton House with the Prince. Why, it must be the very picture of sophisticated elegance.'
     Sarah's hands had stilled over her dealing and she gave me a look of shocked confusion. I kicked her under the table and she shook herself, carrying on with her task.
     'Pfft, Carlton's nothing to fuss about, not in the state it's in these days.' Ashgrove picked up his pile and examined them, leaning in and out for better focus.
     'Oh but you mustn't say such things and disappoint me! Just yesterday I heard of the party being planned for next week, with acrobats and fireworks and masquerades. Doesn't it all sound divine!' I even stooped to jigging about in my chair, my voice a good measure higher than it usually was and my smile hurting my cheeks.
     He snorted, 'acrobats. The vermin are practically running the place now, His Royal Highness is so enamoured of them.'
     'I say, aren't we playing cards?' Lord Lynton grumbled opposite me. 'No good in complaining about the company the Prince likes to keep, it's not our job.' He doled out a jack of hearts and shot a look at Ashgrove.
     His compatriot didn't seem quite so fussed, 'very little seems to be our job now Lynton.' The king of hearts fluttered down onto the pile and he gulped again at the last of his sherry. A servant appeared as if by magic at his elbow and refilled it for him.
     'Oh but surely it's too exciting!' I mimed being distracted and playing a low card, which Sarah trumped and swept away. 'With all those people coming in and out from all over the world, getting to speak to people you'd never thought you'd meet.'
     'And never hoped I'd meet, I assure you.' Ashgrove gulped at his sherry again, his eyes misty and his hand shaking. I'd never seen such a young man hold his drink so poorly. 'Bloody upstarts walking round like they own the place, having the gall to talk to us equally-'
     'Ashgrove..' Lynton warned, his hands still over the cards.
     'Oh don't say you haven't thought it too Lynton. At least our status came to us honourably, we didn't have to lick anyone's boots to get our position...'
     'Ashgrove, that's enough.'
      '... just come here from who knows where and expect to tell us what to do, just because they're being paid to do someone's dirty work. You wouldn't have me doing that skulking for any kind of money that's for certain.'
     'Enough!' Lynton hissed, and threw his cards down. Standing, he grabbed Ashgrove by the arm and dragged him away from the table, all the weakness I'd seen moments ago, as he dangled from Sarah, gone in this new vigour. He pulled the drunk man outside into the garden and behind the wall, though I doubted Lord Ashgrove would remember any of our conversation by the morning.
      'Oh Kate, we shouldn't have heard that.' Sarah was standing next to me, looking after her husband and rubbing her lip. 'That was close to treason, doubting the Prince like that.'
     'It was useful, was what it was.' I squeezed her arm. 'Thank you for not exposing me, I thought Lord Ashgrove would be more talkative if he thought I was some stupid fairy of a girl asking questions.'
     'It was good, you got me for a moment. But what did it all mean? I've never seen the Duke be like that.'
     'Mercenaries, Sarah.' I was excited, even though I knew I shouldn't be. 'It's got to be. He's hiring mercenaries and other people who will do things no nobleman wants to do, something that will never trace back to him.'
     Sarah's eyes widened, and her perfect rosy mouth opened in a neat little o. 'Mercenaries?'
     'I have to go, I need more information.'
     'But the Princess!'
     'You can handle it, just keep an eye on her -'
     Even as the words left my mouth Princess Caroline gave me reason to contradict myself. There was a peal of enraged shriek from a card table two away from us, and she surged to her feet in a bundle of red face and pink skirts. Her partners at the table all started, cards spraying everywhere as the ladies struggled to their feet and the men coughed on choked wine.
     'How dare you?!' The Princess cried, her chest heaving and her small fists balled. 'You come into my home, the small house that your master has exiled me to, you insult me, my ladies, my servants, and now you deign to give me an ultimatum?! You have some gall Duke, to sit there like some fat, made-up little mouse and tell me, the future Queen of England, what to do.'
     The man into whose face she had been spitting her words was leaning back in his chair, his puffy red face startled and his mouth working furiously. The Princess swept out of the room, followed hurriedly by Lady Bruce. Sarah nudged my elbow and together we ran after them, letting the door fall behind us to hide the ruined party.
     The Princess was pacing, her hands digging into her sides and her jaw clenched tightly. Lady Bruce was fanning her, a look of matched fury on her face, 'that insubordinate, arrogant, cow-faced little worm!' she hissed, 'jumped-up, self-righteous, odorous little man.'
     I looked at Sarah but she only gave me the same confused look.
     'I'll have him for this,' Princess Caroline spat, 'I'll show him, he thinks he can bargain with me like I'm some common fishwife, or one of those actresses he likes. I'll show him who can bargain...'
     'What's happened?' I asked.
     The Princess's eyes flashed, and she waved at Lady Bruce to explain.
     'The Prince Regent has offered Her Royal Highness an ultimatum. In return for her signature on the divorce papers, and her immediate reparation to the country, the Princess Charlotte will be allowed regular visitations and contact.'
     Sarah gasped and covered her mouth. The Princess' face spasmed and she turned away.
     'I haven't seen her in a year. My little girl, she's only eleven you know?' She turned to me, 'by eleven you were probably riding bareback and fencing pirates but Charlotte? She's so delicate, so quiet, and she's all alone in that huge house scarcely a mile away, and yet I am refused entry. You can even see it, the house. If you stand at the top window in the servants' quarters, you can just glimpse the towers in the distance.' Her eyes moved away from mine and into the distance. 'I saw her once through the window. It was fourteen months ago, just after her tenth birthday. I had only just been barred from her, and that awful witch governess of hers had closed the door in my face, mine. So I bribed someone to let me into the herb garden, and I saw her through the window of her play-room. She was waving out madly at me, her little hand patting the glass. I could have wept. She blew kisses at me and I caught them and held them to my heart, and we just waved at each other for an hour, until she came and took her to her lessons.'
     Lady Bruce took her hand. The Princess's face was red and blotchy, her mouth pulled firmly downwards at the edges but a fire blazed in her eyes. After a moment she turned to look at me. 'Your job here, Miss Wentworth, is to protect me. I am, by my own rights, now extending that task to involve the welfare of my daughter.'
     I gaped at her.
     'You are to find a way into Rothwell House and bring me to her. I don't care what you have to do, who you have to bribe, I just need to see her again.'
     'Your Highness, it's not my place to-'
     'Your place is to do as I tell you, no matter what that is.' Her eyes flashed again, 'if I am to be exiled from my daughter's life like some leper then by God I will see her one last time. I expect you to do this, not purely because you are my bodyguard and in my service, but because you are a woman protecting a woman in a world of men. What do you say?'
     Again, my eye were wide and my mouth slack, staring at her and trying to comprehend the task she was adding to my life. This was breaking the law. It was all fine and well to bend the rules a tad in the right situations, when it was necessary, but this was disobeying the Prince Regent, the future king. Could I do that? Could I blatantly barge into the house of the heir to the throne and expose her to a woman who had been expressly forbidden from seeing her? What was my duty here?
     But it was her mother. The woman standing in front of me was not some debauched harridan or poisonous manipulator ready to brandish her daughter in the face of politics. This was a lonely woman, surrounded by silk and flowers and jewels, who just wanted a hug from her daughter. My heart broke for her. 'I'll do it.'
     She visibly relaxed, and Lady Bruce clutched at her hand even tighter. 'Thank you, you will not go unrewarded, I promise you.'
     I nodded minutely, and smiled at her. She breathed in deep and pursed her lips. 'Right, that's enough emotion for the afternoon, I think. Time to go back to whist with the vipers that I've let into my parlour.' She turned on her heel and strode off, Lady Bruce and Sarah falling into step behind her. A true princess, even if not in recognised rank.
     I sighed, the weight of the promise I'd just made falling heavy on my shoulders. With this new quest and my debt to Mother Quinn, I was rapidly swearing myself away to women I neither knew nor wholly trusted. And while I could take any consequences myself, I was not convinced of the cost that would fall on the people I loved, or those I served.
     James Willoughby drifted into my head, a place he'd not been welcome in many days. I missed him, I realised, with his easy demeanour and his relaxed way of breaking down people's anxiety. I could do with a joke about now, or a gentle laugh and an offer for a walk in the garden.
     'Miss Wentworth?' A voice behind me sounded. I turned, it was a servant from Montagu House, a young man with eyes like a rabbit and a habit of wringing his hands together whenever he was asked to speak to anyone at all.
     'Yes?'
     'A letter for you, Miss,' he held it out to me, a grubby scrap of paper barely worthy of the hand it was in let alone the House. 'Delivered to the back door, Miss.'
     I gasped, and grabbed it, waving him away with a hurried thanks. The devil may be fast, I thought, but Mother Quinn taught the devil everything he knew. Her writing was crabby and spiked, as if she'd written it in the middle of a sword fight. I opened it, my eyes greedily raking over the paper for detail.

B and P meeting an old contact in Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens tonight 9.30.

See you soon

     My breath stilled. She'd done it, she'd tracked them down. Her ominous familiarity sent cold thrills through my blood, but I had to hand it to her, she did not disappoint. I had another chance, another go at gathering the intel on the men I had been interrupted in my last spying of. Princess Caroline and her daughter would have to wait, this was not an opportunity I would get again.
     'Kate?' Sarah leant through the door and raised her eyebrows, 'are you alright? We should go back in.'
     I beamed at her, my heart racing with excitement, 'I have to go, Sarah.'
     'Go? Where? It's nearly dinner time!'
     'I need to get ready, I need to plan! I know where they are, Sarah, or where they will be. The men who are involved in the Princess's attack!'
     Her eyes widened, 'what? Where?'
     'The Vauxhall Gardens! Of all places there! I need to go, this is my chance. Give my excuses to the other guests, although I think with all this chaos they'll hardly miss me.'
     She caught my hand lightly, 'please be careful, they could be dangerous.'
     I smiled and gave her hand a squeeze, 'yes, they could be. But so am I. Don't worry about me. I'll see you later.' Dancing around her and back into the hallway I started contemplating what I would wear to a night out in the heart of luxurious London debauchery.