Chapter Eight #2
Carlton House dazzled the senses. Chandeliers glittered; servants moved with choreographed precision; voices echoed softly through vast rooms. Elizabeth was treated with scrupulous correctness there—fed well, dressed elegantly, taught diligently.
Her governesses praised her progress, and no one was unkind.
But the kindness was impersonal, carefully measured.
She missed Aunt Caroline with an ache that did not dull with time, an absence felt most keenly at night, when the house seemed too large to shelter her grief.
Prince George would summon her to his presence once each year without fail.
The interviews followed a familiar pattern. Elizabeth would be brought into his sitting room, instructed where to stand. She folded her hands, lifted her chin just so, and waited while he regarded her with an appraising eye.
“You have grown,” he would remark, his gaze flicking over her as though measuring inches. “Your governess reports improvement in French.”
“Yes, sire.”
“And German?”
“Yes, sire.”
“Dancing?”
She executed a small curtsy. “I practice daily.”
“Good. See that you continue.”
He asked about her studies, her posture, her accomplishments—never about her feelings, her preferences, or her memories of her parents.
After one such interview, when she was perhaps ten, he added, almost as an afterthought, “You will begin Italian next year. Music as well—seriously, not purely for your amusement.”
Elizabeth inclined her head, as she had been taught. But as she left the room, her thoughts were sharp and surprisingly clear.
He does not ask what I like, she reflected. Only what I can be made to be.
The prince’s attention confused her. She had overheard him more than once referring to her as of no particular importance, spoken with careless dismissal to courtiers who nodded in agreement.
And yet his actions belied those words. He monitored her education; he dictated her movements.
He removed her from Blackheath whenever it suited him.
Importance, Elizabeth was beginning to understand, was not always announced. Sometimes it was imposed.
In these absences from Blackheath, Elizabeth learned another lesson as well—that her presence could wound as easily as it could comfort.
When she was taken from Aunt Caroline, the princess bore the loss in silence, her composure unbroken before servants and visitors alike. Only once did Elizabeth see the cost.
“You must go,” Aunt said softly, kneeling to straighten Elizabeth’s cloak, her hands trembling despite her calm voice. “And you must not be afraid.”
“I am not afraid,” Elizabeth said, and then hesitated. “But I do not like it.”
Aunt Caroline met her gaze fully. “Nor do I, but you are strong. And you must remember—this is not your fault.”
Elizabeth carried those words with her into every cold, glittering chamber of Carlton House.
She returned always to Blackheath when permitted, a little older each time, a little more guarded. And her dear aunt welcomed her back without reproach, without bitterness, as though no separation could diminish what they had built together.
In those early years, Elizabeth learned how power could reach into the quietest corners of a life—and how love, when it endured such reach, was both delicate and formidable.
Her Bennet relations taught her, as did her dear aunt.
When she missed her cousins, she was comforted by letters.
And when she was taken from her aunt’s side, she found comfort in her friendship with little Princess Charlotte.
All in all, Elizabeth took solace in those she loved—and those who loved her in return.
Her education was extensive. Aunt Caroline insisted upon it.
Elizabeth shared tutors with Princess Charlotte when she was in residence with the young princess—languages, deportment, history.
She learned to walk, to speak, to sit like royalty, because she was taught alongside one.
But Aunt Caroline added what the court would not: mathematics, natural philosophy, astronomy, encouraging her to sharpen her mind with extensive reading. Elizabeth adored these lessons.
“Why should a lady not understand the world she inhabits?” Aunt Caroline said firmly when objections were raised. “Ignorance is not a virtue.”
Elizabeth drank those words in, taking them to heart and applying them.
She became fluent in French and German, conversational in Italian, and proficient in Latin.
Her command of Spanish and Portuguese could not be faltered, either.
She could discuss Euclid and Newton, knew how tides moved and why stars shifted across the sky.
She learned, too, how to guard herself.
“Do not give your heart easily,” Aunt Caroline told her one evening when Elizabeth was nearly fourteen, the words spoken softly but with intent. “Affection is precious. It must be earned.”
Elizabeth thought of the prince and princess, of power wielded without tenderness. “I will marry only for love,” she said quietly.
Aunt Caroline smiled. “That is my wish for you.”
Elizabeth traveled often with Aunt Caroline—quiet journeys when allowed, retreats to seaside towns for the princess’s health, visits to sympathetic households where she was welcomed rather than endured. Elizabeth saw England through these travels and learned how differently life could be lived.
She also learned fear in 1806.
At first, Elizabeth understood only that the household changed.
Voices lowered. Letters arrived and were carried away unopened.
Visitors who once called freely at Blackheath ceased to come at all.
Aunt Caroline grew guarded, watchful in a way Elizabeth had never seen before.
Her kindness was undiminished but sharpened by caution.
Even as a young lady, Elizabeth sensed that something vast and impersonal had turned its attention toward them.
Then came the removal.
During the investigation—the whispers, the scrutiny, the deliberate cruelty—Elizabeth was taken from Aunt Caroline’s household entirely, removed to Carlton House without warning or explanation.
No farewells were permitted. No assurances offered.
One morning she was told to pack; by afternoon she was gone.
Only gradually did Elizabeth come to understand what had prompted such severity.
The Delicate Investigation, as it would later be called, was not concerned with her at all.
It was an official inquiry—quiet in name but ruthless in practice—ordered by the King’s ministers at the urging of the Prince of Wales.
Its purpose was to examine allegations against Princess Caroline: insinuations of improper conduct, of unsuitable companions, of moral failings grave enough to justify further separation and the complete removal of her daughter.
Servants were questioned. Movements were scrutinized.
Innocent acts were given malicious interpretations.
Everything Caroline did or had ever done was weighed for potential scandal.
Elizabeth did not hear these details at the time. She learned them later, pieced together from overheard conversations and careful explanations offered years afterward. What she understood then was simpler and more terrifying.
I am not a child to them, she realized in the cold splendor of Carlton House. I am leverage.
She was kept there as a means of control, her absence a silent threat. If the princess submitted, if she remained quiet, if she endured, perhaps Elizabeth would be returned. If she resisted, if she protested too loudly, Elizabeth might remain away indefinitely.
Carlton House felt different that year—less indulgent, more vigilant.
Elizabeth was watched closely, her lessons supervised with unusual rigidity, her movements restricted.
No one spoke unkindly to her, but kindness was replaced by distance.
She was treated as something weak and dangerous all at once.
Months passed. When she returned at last to Blackheath, the house felt unchanged—and yet everything was altered.
Aunt Caroline was thinner, paler, her eyes too bright in a face drawn by strain.
She embraced Elizabeth fiercely, as though afraid the child might be taken again at any moment, and for a long time neither of them spoke.
Nothing was said aloud of the ordeal. No names were given to what had happened. Princess Caroline did not burden Elizabeth with details she had no power to alter. But Elizabeth saw the cost written plainly in her guardian’s face and understood more than she had before.
Elizabeth never forgot.
From that moment on, she ceased to believe in the safety of silence. She learned that innocence offered no protection where power wished to wound and that love—particularly a woman’s love—could be turned against her if it were deemed inconvenient.
And she learned that endurance was not submission. It was survival.
Yet even in that season of fear, Elizabeth was not entirely alone.
Princess Charlotte was there.
Elizabeth had known the little princess before—had shared lessons and walks, had been instructed in the careful politeness required when one stood near the heir’s heir.
But during the months of Elizabeth’s enforced stay at Carlton House, Charlotte became something more than a distant companion. She became constancy.
Charlotte was younger, still unburdened by the full weight of what surrounded her, and she possessed a stubborn cheer that refused to be extinguished by adult disapproval.
Where Elizabeth was watched, Charlotte was indulged; where Elizabeth was assessed, Charlotte was adored.
And yet, for all her privilege, Charlotte understood loneliness with an instinctive clarity.
They were together often then—during lessons shared, walks supervised but prolonged, afternoons in which Charlotte refused to be parted from Elizabeth’s side.
“You are my sister,” Charlotte declared one morning with absolute certainty, her small hand slipping into Elizabeth’s as they waited for their tutor to arrive.
Elizabeth startled. “I am not—”
“Yes, you are,” Charlotte insisted, her chin lifting with royal stubbornness. “You stay when Mama cannot. That makes you my sister.”
Elizabeth hesitated only a moment before answering, firmly, “Then you are my sister too.”
From that day forward, the title stuck.
Charlotte called for Elizabeth constantly. If Elizabeth was delayed, Charlotte demanded to know why. If Elizabeth was removed to another room, Charlotte followed. Servants quickly learned that separating them invited tears and tantrums that no amount of reasoning could soothe.
In Charlotte’s presence, Elizabeth found a strange relief. The little princess asked questions Elizabeth could answer—about books, about words in foreign languages, about why the moon followed them on walks. Charlotte listened with complete attention, her faith in Elizabeth unqualified.
“You know everything,” Charlotte declared with admiration.
Elizabeth smiled faintly. “I do not.”
“You know enough,” Charlotte said firmly.
It was Charlotte who crept into Elizabeth’s room at night when the house grew too quiet, climbing into bed with whispered confessions and childish fears.
Charlotte, who laughed too loudly during lessons and dared Elizabeth to laugh with her.
Charlotte, who pressed a sticky hand into Elizabeth’s and refused to let go when the surrounding air grew tense.
Elizabeth came to understand that Charlotte, too, was watched—measured, guarded, protected not for herself but for what she represented. And in that understanding, something between them solidified into loyalty.
When Elizabeth thought of Aunt Caroline during those months, it was Charlotte who eased the ache.
“She will come back for you,” Charlotte said once, with simple certainty. “She always does.”
Elizabeth believed her.
Charlotte was the one light during that dark time—the single presence untouched by calculation or cruelty. In her, Elizabeth saw what power could not yet corrupt: affection freely given, loyalty unquestioned, love without condition.
When Elizabeth was finally returned to Blackheath, she did not forget Charlotte any more than she forgot the fear that had preceded her removal. The two memories existed together, inseparable.
Years later, Elizabeth would understand the full cruelty of that period—not merely that she had been taken, but that she had been spared knowing why. She would recognize that Charlotte’s companionship had not been accidental but permitted because it served a larger purpose.
But at the time, Charlotte was simply her sister. And in that, Elizabeth found the strength to endure.
As she grew older, she continued to spend each autumn—September through December—with her Bennet relations in Hertfordshire. There, she used the name Elizabeth Bennet, as her aunt insisted.
“You must protect yourself,” the princess said. “Your true name carries power others may misuse, and your connection to me makes the temptation greater.”
In Hertfordshire, Elizabeth found something she did not have elsewhere: freedom.
She walked through fields with her cousins, laughed without fear of censure, and learned to be herself without observation.
Though two burly footmen accompanied her whenever she went to her uncle’s house, they remained unobtrusive.
She grew especially close to Jane Bennet, whose gentle steadiness anchored her.
Mrs. Bennet, mindful of Elizabeth’s proximity to royalty, curbed her worst impulses and insisted upon proper education for her daughters.
The Bennet girls modeled themselves after Elizabeth—her composure, her intelligence, her restraint.
Only Jane and Mary were out in society, and only when they turned eighteen, but all were improved by example.
Elizabeth loved Netherfield Park, though it was rarely occupied. It was let carefully; the income was invested wisely. Her fortune grew, untouched, compounding steadily. Likewise, her cousins’ dowries increased through careful management by Mr. Gardiner.
Elizabeth understood money now—not greedily, but clearly. It was freedom, if wisely used.
At eighteen, she hoped to be presented.
Prince George refused.
“No,” he said coolly when Aunt Caroline pleaded. “She will not enter society.”
“Why?” the princess demanded.
“Because I have decreed it to be so.”
Elizabeth was furious, but she learned to master it. She enjoyed society only in Hertfordshire, under her uncle’s name, where she could be herself.
Now, as another autumn approached, Elizabeth stood at Blackheath, packing for Hertfordshire once more.
She smiled as she folded her gowns, carefully chosen so she would not stand out in the country society.
I will see Jane, she thought. And I will walk the fields. I will breathe freely.