A Royal Love Match Read online

  In those days women on the whole were quiet and rather withdrawn into themselves, but whatever it might have been, Barbara was great fun for the young gentlemen who enjoyed her company.

  She took care to keep a good table for anyone who called on her and her cuisine was praised by the French Ambassador, a renowned connoisseur of good food, so it was obviously outstanding.

  Barbara was also genuinely kind-hearted.

  On one occasion when a small boy was hurt when a scaffold collapsed in the theatre, she was the only Court Lady to go to his assistance.

  Now waiting for the Queen in her own extensive Apartments in Whitehall Palace, Barbara lifted up her firm and beautifully curved chin.

  She then vowed secretly to herself that she would not surrender her Royal lover to any woman.

  There was no need for her to worry that she would not attract the rapt attention and tenderness of other men as whatever they might feel about the Queen, a great number of them found Barbara irresistible.

  Just like every woman she was determined to draw attention to herself by her appearance.

  When the King and the Members of his Court dined to celebrate the arrival of the Queen, Barbara Castlemaine outshone all the other ladies present.

  Throughout his life King Charles’s way of dealing with a woman’s tears or hysteria was to present her with something to ‘cheer her up’ – just as a parent might give a sweetmeat to a child.

  Where Queen Catharine was concerned her obvious piety gave him plenty of opportunity to placate her.

  The Queen had such a passion for religious relics that she had brought with her great coffers of them. They were all covered in red velvet embroidered with the Royal Arms of England.

  King Charles added to her relics with a number of crosses and other pious ornaments.

  Barbara Castlemaine had very different ideas and was far more difficult to appease.

  She raged at the King, demanding that he should make her Lady of the Bedchamber to the new Queen and eventually, worn out by the endless arguments, he agreed.

  He explained lamely he had ruined her reputation which had been ‘untainted’ until Barbara became ‘friends’ with him.

  It was an extraordinary way to behave and at the same time a considerable insult to his wife.

  Queen Catharine however had already learnt a great deal about the King without his being aware of it.

  She recognised Barbara’s name on the list of Ladies of the Bedchamber presented to her for her agreement and crossed it out angrily.

  However, when Barbara was first presented to her, to everyone’s surprise she greeted her cordially, but it was her poor understanding of English that had prevented her from realising who Barbara really was.

  The moment she discovered the truth, the Queen’s eyes filled with tears, her nose started to bleed profusely and she collapsed on the floor in hysterics.

  The King, when he was told of what had happened, sent Lord Clarendon to reason with her but needless to say his Lordship failed completely.

  The King was faced with torrents of tears and the Queen’s threat that she would return to Portugal.

  The King’s sister was extremely shocked by her brother’s behaviour and wrote to him,

  “It is sad to hear she has grieved beyond measure, and to speak frankly I think it is with reason.”

  However the King merely played more tennis with his friend Clive and swam most mornings in the Thames.

  It took Queen Catharine some time to discover that hysterics and threats were quite ineffective where Charles was concerned.

  Catharine found out that the strength she required to deal with him was the goodness of her character and the sweetness of her nature.

  Clive, in an effort to help the King, talked to her gently.

  He told her that her dignity, her tact and restraint were far more effective than rudeness and tantrums would ever be and he certainly helped to calm down the storm.

  She therefore behaved as Clive begged her to do as Queen of England.

  Whilst Barbara foolishly became more noisy and as quite a number of people felt, more vulgar.

  *

  While all this turmoil was going on, Clive himself was being bombarded, although that was not the word she would have used, by the Countess of Dalwaynnie.

  She had made up her mind as soon as she saw him.

  She thought he was undoubtedly one of the most handsome young gentlemen she had ever seen.

  And he would surely be just the right husband she desired for Nancy.

  As soon as she and Nancy had arrived in London, the Countess started to nose around the Palace searching for the perfect husband for her beloved daughter.

  She was determined Nancy should have the highest possible title, but the majority of the King’s Courtiers were already married and were anyway too old.

  Those who were not made it clear to the Countess from the moment of their acquaintance that they were not interested in young girls.

  Then when Clive arrived her spirits rose.

  As Marchioness of Morelanton, Nancy would have exactly the position in the social world she craved for her.

  The Countess soon became well aware of potential danger from the beautiful Alissia.

  She had tried to make it clear to her husband that one unmarried daughter at Court was enough, but Bruce had been determined to bring his beloved Alissia with him.

  And she came with him for the Coronation and he knew that it would have broken Alissia’s heart not to see the pomp and glory of the great day – beside the fact that she had always had a most respectful admiration for the King.

  Clive had written to her father regularly during the years they were apart.

  Alissia had leapt for joy when she heard that he was coming from Scotland to London to join the King.

  Clive wrote in a letter to Bruce,

  “We have certainly waited long for this marvellous moment and the King is entitled to all the applause and adulation he can get considering the way he has suffered for such a long time.”

  “And Clive has suffered too,” Bruce added when he read the letter out to Alissia. “He returned home to find his brother had been killed by the Roundheads and his father was in ill health.”

  He paused before he added,

  “He has written to me over the years telling me how much he has improved his estate and made the Castle more habitable than before. I have a great admiration for that young man and I look forward to seeing him again.”

  “And I very much look forward to seeing him too,” said Alissia. “You remember Nanny gave him two pieces of my hair and he told me it had brought him luck.”

  “Of course it did, and as Nanny is coming with us to London, I am sure Clive will want to see her too.”

  They had set off, travelling in the most comfortable way they could, not only with Nanny but also with Jimbo, Alissia’s spaniel.

  “I cannot leave Jimbo behind, Papa,” she insisted, as she knew how much the Countess disliked dogs. “And I will do my best to keep him quiet and out of sight.”

  “Of course,” her father agreed at once. “I am sure he would pine away without you. I only wish I could take all my horses too!”

  “We must not stay in London for ever, Papa.”

  “Perhaps it will have to be for a long time,” he had replied. “In which case we will send for the horses and anything else you may require.”

  She smiled at him.

  He thought that there would be no other woman at Court – not even the famous Barbara Castlemaine of whom he had heard a great deal – to equal Alissia.

  She had certainly grown very lovely as the years had passed.

  Her fair hair, which was now arranged on the top of her head, caught the gold of the sun and glittered as she moved.

  Her perfect pink and white skin was an ideal setting for her deep blue eyes, which her father had sometimes described as ‘a stormy sea’.

  “I don’t mind your saying that abou
t the colour of my eyes,” Alissia laughed. “But I would hate you to think that I was stormy!”

  “You are never that, my darling. I’m afraid that so many men will find you irresistible when we reach London that I will see very little of you.”

  What he had not expected was that the Countess would have set her heart on capturing Clive as her future son-in-law.

  She was completely determined that he should not be attracted by her stepdaughter and she was too clever not to realise that while her daughter was good-looking, Alissia was undoubtedly a great beauty.

  She had managed by becoming friendly with the King’s Administrators to ensure that she and Nancy were invited to the small private parties that often took place in the evening at the Royal Palace.

  The Countess kept these secret from her husband and Alissia.

  “We are just going to have dinner tonight with a friend on the other side of the Royal Palace,” she would say. “I’ve ordered you both a delicious dinner and I don’t expect we will be very late.”

  It never struck Bruce for a moment that his wife was being deceitful.

  He himself had been received with delight and the King had made it very clear how welcome he was at Court.

  It did, however, strike him as a little strange that he was seldom asked to dine with the King, and Alissia was never invited.

  It seemed a little odd too that Clive, when he met him, had not asked to see Alissia.

  He was to find out later it was because he had been informed by the Countess that she had been left behind in the country.

  There was so much to see and so many activities she had never encountered before in her life to attract her attention.

  Thus for the first two weeks after Alissia arrived in London she had no idea that Clive, now the Marquis of Morelanton, was also living in an Apartment at the Royal Palace of Whitehall.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Bruce was invited by the King to go to Hampton Court Palace to meet the Queen.

  Of course he was delighted to accept.

  It meant that the Countess had to be invited as well to the exclusion of a disappointed and resentful Lady-in-Waiting.

  Alissia, naturally, was left behind.

  As Nancy was busy with her new friends, she was alone in their Apartment, which she much preferred.

  She had her delightful spaniel, Jimbo, with her who she adored and he adored her.

  She talked to him and found him, she thought, more intelligent than most of the people she had to talk to.

  One day she saw the keeper who looked after the King’s dogs from her bedroom window.

  He was taking the dogs out from their kennels and she ran down to join him.

  For a long time she had wanted to look at the dogs close to and pat them, but she knew it would be very wrong of her to do so when the King was in residence.

  Now with the King away from London, there was just a nice man who smiled at her as she joined him.

  “I see you ’as a dog too, my Lady,” he remarked.

  “He is so longing to meet the dogs you are looking after,” replied Alissia. “He is very lonely having no one to talk to except for me!”

  “I can’t see that’ll be an imposition,” the man said gallantly.

  He was older than Alissia thought and he told her that he had been looking after dogs ever since he was a small boy and that his name is Bill.

  “I be much more fond of ’em than I be of ’orses,” Bill rambled on. “Me brothers all goes to the stables, but I wants to stay with the dogs.”

  “I can see that you love them, Bill.”

  They talked for some time and then, when he took the dogs for a walk in the Park behind the Palace, she went with him.

  Jimbo obviously thought it was the best thing that had ever happened.

  He played with the King’s spaniels, avoiding the older ones who might think of him as an intruder.

  “I think His Majesty is lucky to have such very fine animals,” Alissia commented.

  “He chooses everyone of ’em himself,” replied Bill, “and he calls ’em all by their right names. He likes to ’ave two or perhaps three in ’is rooms with ’im every day. He chooses which shall ’ave the honour after they’ve been for a walk.”

  Alissia laughed.

  She thought it was an amusing idea and something her father ought to do and she would tell him about it when he came back from Hampton Court.

  She had something else to tell him and she had not had a chance before he left because he had been so busy.

  It was that she did not like the man she felt that her stepmother was pressing on her.

  His name was Lord Pronett.

  He had noticed her in the gardens of the Palace and introduced himself to her stepmother.

  The Countess obviously thought him charming and she encouraged him to call on them in the mornings when they were in the gardens as well as in the early evenings when her father was attending Court.

  Alissia did not know exactly why, but she disliked Lord Pronett as soon as she met him.

  Every time he touched her hand it somehow made her shudder.

  Lord Pronett was in fact a very extraordinary man.

  He had been intelligent enough against all the odds to worm his way into the Palace.

  He was born plain Frederick Brown, the son of a schoolmaster in a small village in Norfolk.

  As the school had very few pupils, the master was poorly paid and he often had a great deal of time on his hands, so he had plenty of time to educate his son far more thoroughly than the other local boys and girls.

  Freddie, as he was always called, grew up knowing a great deal about subjects that never entered the heads of the villagers and it gave him a strong ambition to better himself.

  When he was seventeen years old, his father died unexpectedly and his mother told him that he had to earn his own living in the world outside their small village.

  On an impulse he went to the big house which was some way from the village, where he had not been before and offered himself as secretary to the owner.

  This was Lord Pronett, an old man who lived alone in the house of his ancestors.

  He was very lonely as he had never married and had no surviving relations. At least if there were any, they did not bother about him and he seldom had a visitor, but at the same time he lived in reasonable comfort.

  His only major difficulty was that his servants were continually leaving him. They found the house too isolated and the village, which was over two miles away, had little to offer them.

  Freddie proved himself to be a most efficient and useful secretary to Lord Pronett and the old man was really delighted with him.

  He found that Lord Pronett was far richer than he had thought he was and Freddie persuaded his Lordship to spend some money on new horses which he enjoyed riding.

  He was well fed in the house and looked after by the servants and treated as their superior.

  He much enjoyed being with Lord Pronett and had no intention of leaving him.

  Because the house was so isolated and he seldom appeared in public, Lord Pronett was completely ignored by the Cromwellians.

  His Lordship and Freddie therefore learnt only from the newspapers what was happening in other parts of the country and as his Lordship’s eyesight was failing, Freddie would read the newspapers aloud to him.

  He soon learnt, however, that Lord Pronett was not really interested in political matters in the country and so he merely read him the reports of race meetings and other sporting items, while keeping the main news for himself.

  The years passed by.

  Freddie was thrilled when Oliver Cromwell died and he knew it was the end of all the dismal accounts of battles won by the Cromwellians and the reports of those who suffered the death penalty after every uprising.

  Freddie was so elated at the news that he ran in to Lord Pronett’s bedroom and told him excitedly what had happened.

  It was only to find that his Lordshi
p had completely forgotten who Oliver Cromwell was and was therefore not in the least interested in what he had to say.

  His Lordship’s memory had been failing for some time, but Freddie thought he was much worse now than he had ever been.

  If it took a long time for King Charles to claim the Throne of England, it took nearly as long for Lord Pronett to die.

  When he eventually did so, Freddie realised, as he should have done before, that there were no relations or friends to notify.

  He was the only mourner in the village Church as Lord Pronett was interred in the tomb of his ancestors.

  When Freddie went back to the big house, he was aware it was virtually empty of servants – they had been leaving one by one when Lord Pronett lay bedridden.

  Now the last couple, who had been at the big house longer than the others, were leaving for the North.

  “We’ve ’eard of a place that will just suit us fine,” the man had said, “and at least we’ll see some friendly faces and not feel isolated as we’ve been in this ’ole.”

  “I am sorry you must leave,” countered Freddie.

  “Well you take my advice,” the woman said, “a fine upstanding young man like you should be findin’ yourself a pretty wife and somewhere where there’s a bit of fun and frolic.”

  “I am sure you are right,” smiled Freddie.

  As he waved them goodbye he realised he was now alone in the house.

  As Lord Pronett’s trusted secretary he had the key to his Lordship’s will locked away in the safe.

  When he took the will out, he found that the house and grounds were left to a distant cousin, but Freddie knew that he had been killed fighting against the Cromwellians in some obscure battle in the North.

  There were various sums of money bequeathed to people who were already dead or of whom he had never heard.

  Then as he looked down at his Lordship’s signature a sudden idea came to him.

  At first it was so stupendous that he almost laughed at it as madness.

  Then slowly, as if his brain was gradually accepting the thought and turning it from fantasy to fact, he realised what he should do.

  He lay awake most of that night thinking it all out in detail.