“How… obscene.” She thought of the half-starved children she saw when volunteering at the hospital and felt ill. The choking miasma of the unwashed bodies surrounding her did not help matters.
Just as the Archbishop of Canterbury anointed the monarch with holy oil, a commotion broke out by the doors. Whispers soon gave way to shouts and jeers before erupting into pandemonium as people jostled each other, trying to get a better look.
“What is going on, Jane?” Angelica cried, elbowing aside the bodies that threatened to suffocate her.
The duchess was silent a moment, assessing the spectacle. “Oh, my God! I think it’s… it is! Look over there.” She pointed. “Queen Caroline is seeking entry to the ceremony and she is being barred by armed guards. I heard this might happen, but I did not believe the rumors!”
The king’s face was twisted into a crimson mask of rage. Angelica smirked. It served him right to have his moment ruined.
She stood up and shouted. “Long live the Queen!” Her voice was lost amongst the clamor, but her friend clapped a hand over Angelica’s mouth anyway.
“Hush!” Jane admonished, her stern warning quite ruined by intermittent giggles. “You would catch too much trouble if the wrong ears heard you. And you definitely do not want anyone to take notice that your husband is absent. After all, we are all required to be here by royal command, skin condition or no.”
Angelica sobered immediately. It would be just her luck that Ian would be thrown in the tower and burned to death by the sun before they could leave for Paris. “I still think the King is a cad for how he has treated her,” she grumbled. “I hope she did have at least one of the grand affairs she’s been accused of. The poor woman deserves a bit of happiness.”
“I agree,” her companion said then leaned in to whisper, “I had heard that, when on trial, she said, ‘I have only committed adultery once, and that was with Maria Fitzherbert’s husband, the King.’”
Angelica laughed. “One must admire her droll wit.”
The commotion eventually abated and the ceremony droned on. Angelica found herself quite vexed with the Elders. If they’d responded to Ian’s petition with sufficient alacrity, she could be sleeping the day away at her husband’s side. She breathed a deep sigh of relief when the ordeal was finally over and they were able to go back outside, though it was only so they could make the brief journey to Westminster Hall for the banquet.
The banquet would have been the disappointment of a lifetime, sheer torture, in fact, for the wives of the peers had to be seated in galleries above while the men enjoyed the vast array of food below, but the Duchess of Wentworth was prepared for the occasion. She pulled two carefully wrapped meat pasties and a flask of wine from her reticule, and the two women devoured the meal with relish. One lord below apparently had the same idea, for he wrapped a capon in his napkin and tossed the meager repast up to his grateful family.
Angelica had a moment of fear that the King would now notice her husband’s absence, but she saw that he was distracted, nodding and winking at someone in the gallery to his left.
“Whoever is he trying to communicate with in this throng?” she whispered behind her fan.
Jane pointed her fan at a dark-haired, voluptuous woman seated across the vast chamber. “That is Lady Elizabeth Conyngham, his latest mistress. They have been barred from seeing each other throughout Queen Caroline’s divorce trial. She is a vulgar woman, hence her appeal. It was her husband that the King promoted to marquess earlier. Were you not paying attention?”
Angelica shook her head. “No, I think I must have dozed off around then. So the King is done with Mrs. Fitzherbert then?”
Jane laughed. “Maria was old news far before Elizabeth. His last mistress was Lady Hertford, and before that, Lady Jersey.”
“Lady Jersey?” Angelica gasped, as she remembered the prim and proper patroness of Almack’s throwing her out for her scandalous behavior with the duke.
The duchess shook her head. “Not Lady Sarah. It was Lady Frances, her mother-in-law, that I am speaking of. Though Lady Sarah has had plenty of affairs of her own.”
Angelica fought to muffle her laughter as Jane entertained her for hours with delicious gossip.
By seven-thirty in the evening, with the sun at the windows compounded by hours of three hundred bodies in closed quarters, the heat became too much for King George. He departed for Carlton House, no doubt with his mistress following close behind. Half the procession followed him; the other departed in the opposite direction.
“There is to be a party at Hyde Park with a fireworks display and hot air balloons. Would you care to join me?” Jane asked.