“It is the way of things.” Caroline turned to the doorway where her husband now stood, his appearance sudden and oppressive, his expression coldly resolved. “The child will be raised here and at Windsor Castle, as is customary for a royal child. You will return to Blackheath. Having birthed an heir, there is now no need for us to live together as husband and wife.”
“But—” She was given no opportunity to reply as Prince George departed, already finished with the matter, the echo of his footsteps fading down the corridor like a sentence passed and executed without appeal.
A maid appeared and tried to take the baby. “No,” Caroline snapped, her voice cutting through the room with unexpected force. “I will hold my child until I must depart. Leave.” The maid curtsied hastily and backed away, her eyes wide with unease.
Caroline watched with a numb sort of detachment as her things were packed away in trunks. Each folded gown felt like a small erasure, each closed lid a quiet theft. She thought of the nursery at Blackheath, empty forever now, its carefully chosen fabrics and waiting cradle rendered cruelly irrelevant, and of the staff she had employed to help with her child—women who would never now know the sound of Charlotte’s voice or the weight of her in their arms.
I have not even been churched yet,she thought sadly, the ritual denied her as thoroughly as the child herself. Pain from the birth lingered, a dull ache that flared whenever she shifted.Has he no heart?
Scarcely an hour later, her trunks were removed from the bedchamber. The maid appeared again, and this time Caroline was forced to relinquish her precious burden. She bent her head over Charlotte, pressing her lips to her daughter’s soft hair, inhaling deeply as though she might imprint the child upon her very breath. She did not protest aloud again; there was nothing left to be said that would alter the outcome.
She maintained an air of dignity as she went downstairs, out the front door, and boarded her carriage. Servants lined the hall, their faces carefully blank, though more than one pair of eyes shone with restrained sympathy.I will not cry,she swore, though her eyes burned with unshed tears and her chest felt hollowed out.If this is to be my reality, I would rather die.
The carriage door closed. The wheels turned.
The pain of separation pressed upon her with a force that stole her breath, and when she arrived at Blackheath, she locked herself in her chambers and wept—not prettily, not quietly, but with the raw, broken sobs of a mother torn from her child. There, in the silence of the house that had once promised comfort, Caroline mourned not only what had been taken from her, but the knowledge that this loss had been neither accidental nor temporary.
It had been intended all along.
Time ceased to have meaning.
The days at Blackheath blurred into one another until Caroline could no longer say with certainty how many had passed. She hid in her chambers, drawing the curtains against the light, against the sight of the heath beyond that had once promised solace. She waited in a dull, aching limbo until her body resumed its normal courses—until the physical signs of childbirth had faded enough that the world might consider her whole again. Yet nothing about her felt restored. The emptiness where her child should have been was louder than any pain she had known.
She did not speak. There was no one to whom speech might matter. Mrs. Harding came and went with quiet efficiency; Drew moved about the room with anxious care; but Caroline had no words for them. What could she say that would not sound either hysterical or futile? She spent long hours seated by the fire, hands folded uselessly in her lap, staring at nothing at all.
Her letters—to the palace, to Carlton House—went unanswered. Each plea was phrased with increasing restraint, her language carefully deferential, her desperation hidden beneath formality. She asked only to see her daughter. Only for an hour. Only to hold her once more. Silence met every request. No acknowledgment. No refusal. Nothing.
The absence hollowed her out.
Her appetite vanished; sleep came only in fragments. She woke often with the sensation that she had heard Charlotte cry, only to remember—again—that her child was not there. Her head ached constantly, her limbs felt heavy, and even walking across the room required effort. Mrs. Harding murmured gently about rest and nourishment; Drew hovered with worried eyes. Caroline heard them as though from a great distance.
Caroline was in this state—pale, silent, and perilously withdrawn—when Rebecca came to call.
Caroline had not known she was capable of moving so quickly until she heard her friend’s name announced. Rebeccawas ushered in at once, her expression alarmed when she saw Caroline rise from her chair, unsteady and altered from the woman she had last embraced.
“Oh, my dear,” Rebecca breathed, crossing the room in an instant.
The restraint Caroline had maintained for days shattered. Words poured from her—broken, tangled, unmeasured. She spoke of the morning Charlotte was taken, of the silence that followed, of the unanswered letters and the terror that she would be erased from her child’s life entirely. She wept openly now, clutching Rebecca’s hands as though they were the only solid things left in the world.
“I have borne her,” Caroline said hoarsely. “It was I who carried her, I suffered for her—and yet I am nothing. I am permitted nothing. Not even grief, it seems.”
Rebecca held her without interruption, rocking her slightly as one might a child. “You are not nothing,” she said fiercely. “And this will not be the end. I swear it.”
She stayed only a short while—long enough to coax Caroline to drink a little broth, long enough to see that she was not alone—but before she left, she made a promise.
“I will come again tomorrow,” Rebecca said. “And I will not come alone.”
The next day, she returned with Elizabeth.
The child burst into the room with unguarded joy, curls flying, eyes bright with relief at seeing Caroline again. “Princess Caroline!” she cried, flinging herself forward without hesitation.
Caroline sank to her knees and caught her, holding her close, breathing her in. Elizabeth’s small arms wrapped around her neck with unselfconscious affection, her presence warm and solid and alive. Caroline closed her eyes, her cheek pressed to the child’s hair, and for the first time in weeks, the crushing weight upon her chest eased—if only slightly.
“There you are,” Elizabeth said seriously. “Mama said you were sad.”
Caroline laughed weakly through tears. “She was quite right.”
Elizabeth pulled back to study her face, then reached up and patted her cheek with solemn gentleness. “I will stay with you,” she declared.
