Read The Third George: (Georgian Series) for Free Online Page B

shrugged his shoulders and turned his attention to his food.
    ‘People are going to be sorry for you, Sarah,’ went on Caroline.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Oh, don’t be absurd. You are the most publicly jilted woman in England.’
    ‘I shall be very cool to him when we meet and show I don’t care in the least.’
    ‘Try to be sensible. This is the King.’
    Sarah was silent, eating stolidly.
    ‘The wedding will be delayed, I doubt not,’ Mr Fox was saying, ‘on account of the death of the bride’s mother.’
    ‘Perhaps,’ put in Lady Caroline hopefully, ‘it will not take place at all.’
    ‘Little fear or hope of that. I have no doubt that the Duke of Strelitz is not going to miss such an opportunity.’
    ‘He has more sense than some foolish people.’
    Sarah groaned. ‘How we do return to the same point in this house,’ she said.
    ‘It is not every house which has a member of the family so foolish as to throw away a crown.’
    ‘George is a fool,’ cried Sarah. ‘If he had not been he wouldn’t have let them persuade him and he would have asked me himself … not through Susan. If you ask me I’m well rid of him.’
    ‘Well rid of a crown, the power to do your family good, to bear a king?’ said Caroline.
    Sarah looked at her sister helplessly. ‘There are other things we might talk of. What of our sister Emily’s confinement? Is that not more important than my being jilted?’
    ‘Nothing that has ever happened to this family is more important than your being jilted by the King.’
    Sarah picked up her hedgehog and flounced out of the room.
    ‘I’m sick of all this talk, Sukey,’ she said to the hedgehog, and she laughed for she had named him after her friend Susan Fox-Strangeways to whom she had given the nicknames of Sukey and Pussy. ‘But Sukey was more suitable for you, Sukey,’ she said. ‘You could hardly be Pussy could you? I have an idea that might have offended your dignity.’
    Reaching her room she did what she enjoyed doing when she wished to soothe herself: wrote to Susan.
    ‘Dearest Susan …’
    She paused and thought what fun it would be if Susan were here. Everything seemed a joke then, although Susan was far more serious than she was. If George had had any sense he would have fallen in love with Susan rather than her. She was sure Susan would have known how to deal with the matter. There! she was as bad as her sister and brother-in-law; the thing was constantly in her mind. It occurred to her that Susan might not yet have heard the news of the King’s proposed marriage.Could it be that it had not yet reached Somerset?
    She wrote rapidly:
To begin to astonish you as much as I was, I must tell you that the – is going to be married to a Princess of Mecklenburg … Does not your choler rise at this … But you will think, I daresay, that I have been doing some terrible thing to deserve it, for you won’t be easily brought to change your opinion of any person; but I assure you I have not. I have been in his company very often since I last wrote to you, but though nothing was said he always took pains to show me some preference by talking twice and they were mighty kind speeches and looks. Even last Thursday the day after the news came out, the hypocrite had the face to come up and speak to me with all the good humour in the world and seemed to want to speak to me but was afraid …
    Sarah laid down her pen and thought: I am angry with him after all. He has behaved badly, and when I next see him I shall show him what I think of him.
    She wrote rapidly and went on to say:
In short his behaviour is that of a man who has neither sense, good nature nor honesty. I shall have to see him on Thursday night, and I shall take care to show that I am not mortified to anybody, but if it is true that one can vex anyone with a reserved cold manner, he shall have it, I promise him.
Now as to what I think about it myself, excepting this little revenge, I have almost forgiven him. Luckily for me I did