“What everyone is saying. The latest on dit about the Prince.”

“What is it?”

“Well, quite a number of people are absolutely convinced that he has married Maria Fitzherbert.”

“That is impossible!”

“So Charles Fox avers, but others are sure that a Marriage Ceremony has taken place.”

“Do you really know what you are saying?” the Marquis asked. “Just before I went abroad last year Mrs. Fitzherbert had left for France, swearing that she would have none of the Prince and his amorous philanderings. I do not know the woman, but I understood that she had finished with him for good and all.”

“That’s what we all thought,” Lord Wroxhall agreed. “But she returned last December, they say at the Prince’s urgent invitation. The buzz round the Clubs is that they were married soon after she arrived.”

“You must have all taken leave of your senses!” the Marquis said angrily. “How could the Prince marry a Roman Catholic? How could anyone credit such a ridiculous, absurd and idiotic state of affairs in which the Prince would deliberately put his head into a noose of that kind? Parliament would not stand for it. The country would not stand for it. A Roman Catholic, Wroxhall! They may have received a few concessions lately, but they will not get any more.”

“I am only telling you, Julien, what is being said. I am not saying, personally, whether it is true or untrue. I am only relating to you that a large number of people believe it to be a fact.”

“Then the Carlton House Set must be more bird-witted than usual,” the Marquis said rudely.

“Well, you had best come and see for yourself. The Prince is asking for you and, if he has not yet married the lady in question, then you may be able to prevent it.”

“I will prevent it,” the Marquis said grimly, “if I have to shake some sense into the Prince. These damned scheming women are all the same. Perdita Robinson had a bond for twenty thousand guineas from him. And the King paid five thousand for her letters. And now this damned Roman Catholic is out to bleed him.”

“She is a lady, Julien.”

“Lady, be damned! A Roman Catholic and a woman. Could there be a worse combination? If I have to throttle her with my own hands, I will stop her making a fool of the Prince. After all he is little more than a boy.”

“Then you will come to London?”

“I will come tomorrow. You can tell His Royal Highness that I will attend him at Carlton House after dinner.”

“Best put it in writing,” Lord Wroxhall suggested. “You know how the Prince enjoys formalities of that sort.”

“I will write him a note,” the Marquis agreed. “But if you have been foxing me, Wroxhall, I swear I will call you out for it.”

“I vow that I have been telling you the truth,” Lord Wroxhall replied suavely.