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By Root 1373 0

as they washed her stockings, shifts, and dancing costumes. Then she had to put on her makeup in preparation for the long, boozy dinner to come. By early evening, Uppark's graceful dining room was a riot of drunken men, rowdily using the chamber pots, which were out on display, and shouting for more wine. Stuffed with fine venison and beef, they gambled eagerly at cards and watched Sir Harry's beautiful mistress dance and sing. In the candlelight, their eyes glinted with pleasure— and desire. Emma smiled gaily, but she was far less delighted to have them catch at her dress than she seemed. She was going through the motions, well aware that her job was to keep up the pretense that the guests were attending a wild society soiree, rather than a mundane gathering of hunting-obsessed men. Her life at Upparkwas one long theatrical performance.

She was lucky to be out of London. In early June 1780, a protest about giving Catholics the vote blew up into the biggest riot the capital had ever seen. King's Bench prison was burned down, the distilleries at Holborn burst into flames, and escaping gin turned the water supply alcoholic. For four nights, the London sky blazed as houses were torched. Four hundred fifty people died and swaths of the city lay in ruins. Sir Harry and his MP friends stayed well away and kept on hunting.

Surrounded by other people's possessions and portraits of the Fether-stonhaugh family and their horses, Emma grew lonely. She had food, handsome rooms, clothes, a good allowance, and endless compliments, but she felt neglected by Sir Harry. He and his friends feted her, but they joked about her and implied she could be passed between them. In Sir Harry's view, he had paid for her services, and she should reward his investment by being always engaging and enthusiastic. Low spirits and headaches annoyed him. Increasingly, Emma was sent off to the house in the grounds because he had visitors he did not wish her to meet. Always shy of emotional commitment, Sir Harry was too busy having fun in the 1780s to worry about a needy teenage mistress.

In search of sympathy, Emma began to strike up a friendship with a man she had previously overlooked: Charles Greville, second son of the Earl of Warwick and MP for Warwick, in the Midlands. Older and much poorer than Sir Harry's friends, he hated hunting and had very little in common with his brash host other than an enthusiasm for Italy and faith in Charles James Fox. Neither rich nor good-looking, he was thirty-two, still unmarried, and excluded from circles of power at Westminster and the London social set. Greville was a forgettable type of man—the wallpaper of a party rather than its life and soul. Sir Harry and his young blades tolerated him but laughed him off as an oddball and ignored him outright when he talked about his collections of minerals, and they were utterly baffled by his hatred of hunting. Once Greville thought lovely Miss Lyon might pay him some attention, he made every effort to spend time with her, lagging behind the hunt with her and no doubt staying back at the house when she did. Excited by the idea of a secret intimacy, he was soon in love with Sir Harry's glamorous mistress.

Emma began to look forward to spending time with this shy, serious man whom the others shunned. In London he socialized with painters and art collectors, and after her work as a model Emma wanted to know more about art. As Sir Harry's interest in her began to wane a little, she welcomed Greville's attention and flirted terribly with him, singing for him, begging his opinion, and hanging on his every word. He called her Emily, a pet name, and when Sir Harry sent her away from the house for a particularly long period, she even traveled up to London to visit him. Soon, however, her thoughts about any kind of new relationship were superseded by a more serious worry. By the summer of 1781, Emma was beginning to suspect that she might be pregnant.

CHAPTER 13

Desperate Letters

Emma's child with Sir Harry was conceived in late June or early July. She could have purchased