A Royal Love Match Read online

  Now he was in his element.

  There was never any moment of any day, Alissia reckoned, when someone was not either knocking on their door or sending a servant to say her father was wanted in another part of the Royal Palace.

  *

  After the tennis match she thought she would take Jimbo for a walk in the Park.

  The King’s dogs would have gone there earlier and there was nothing to see except the ducks on the river.

  So she sat down on a bench to watch them.

  She was thinking how pretty they looked when she was suddenly joined by Lord Pronett.

  She had not heard him approaching the bench and as he unexpectedly sat beside her, she felt a little shiver go through her almost before she realised who he was.

  “Her Ladyship informed me that this is where you were likely to be found,” he began, “and I would like to talk to you.”

  “I often come here because it makes it easy for me to think,” replied Alissia. “I really enjoy the silence in the Park.”

  “How charming for you,” quipped Freddie, “but I really want to ask you which pictures you would think His Majesty would like to add to his collection.”

  Alissia looked at him in complete surprise as it was something she had not expected him to say.

  She had not thought of him in connection with art.

  “I don’t think you know,” continued Freddie, “that when I came to London I brought with me a Van Dyck and a Holbein as a present for the King. They have been in my family for years, but I felt, as those appalling Cromwellians had sold the Royal Art Collection, his need was somewhat greater than mine.”

  “That was so kind of you, Lord Pronett. My father has told me how hard the King has been working to replace the collection he had lost. It was yet another wicked thing those horrible Cromwellians did.”

  “I agree with you, Alissia, but I have quite a lot of pictures at home that I feel would be giving more pleasure to people if they were here in the Royal Palace than they are at the moment in the depths of Norfolk.”

  “Is that where you live?” Alissia asked him.

  “That is where my home is, but I am thinking of buying a house in London and I would like to ask you your advice on that subject too.”

  Alissia laughed.

  “I am afraid you have come to the wrong person. I have lived in the country all my life until we came here to the Coronation and everything is thrilling to me. I want to see far more of London than I have seen yet.”

  “Then you must let me show you around.”

  Alissia shook her head.

  “No, I am intending to go with my Papa. He is very knowledgeable about houses, and of course, he grew up in London and lived here except when he was at school.”

  “I have a great admiration for your father,” Freddie said, “but even more for his very beautiful daughter.”

  Alissia did not understand quite why, but somehow his compliment made her feel strangely uncomfortable.

  She had received many compliments since coming to London and she was actually beginning to take them as a matter of course.

  But there was something unpleasant about the way Lord Pronett paid his or maybe it was the man himself.

  She felt strongly that there was something wrong about him, yet she could not put a name to it.

  She rose to her feet.

  “I must go back to the Palace, my Lord, I am sure there are things waiting for me there which I have to do, although I have for the moment forgotten what they are.”

  “Then keep on forgetting them, Alissia. Stay here and talk to me. I have been longing to be alone with you, but somehow you have always managed to evade me.”

  Alissia did not answer him.

  And then he expanded,

  “Need I tell you just how beautiful you are and how really exciting it is for me to meet someone I really admire for the first time in my life. Someone who from the first moment I set eyes on her made me aware that she was the only woman in the world I really wanted to know.”

  He was speaking with what seemed to be a great deal of emotion and yet somehow Alissia felt it was what he had been planning to say.

  There was something missing in the way he spoke and in what he said.

  None of it was genuine or spontaneous.

  It was as if he had thought out his little speech very carefully in advance.

  Maybe her stepmother had told him what to say.

  Impulsively Alissia jumped to her feet.

  “I am sorry to appear rude, my Lord, but I have to get back to the Royal Palace and Jimbo wants a run.”

  She walked away so quickly that before he could even think about rising to his feet, she was almost flying down the footpath and out through the gate of the Park.

  He looked after her in surprise and then he gave a laugh.

  He thought that she must be frightened of him and it amused him to think that anyone so lovely, so beautiful and so glorious should be afraid of Freddie Brown.

  Then he told himself that all young women desired a title.

  And as the Countess had pointed out to him, Alissia was very young and unspoilt.

  It was the Countess’s idea that he should marry her and for a moment he had laughed when she suggested it.

  On his way to London as the new Lord Pronett with a considerable amount of money at his disposal, he had thought of the many things he might say and do.

  He had rehearsed in his mind a thousand times what he would say to the King.

  And yet it had never really occurred to him that at his age he should get married.

  A wife, however, could easily be a great advantage to him in the social life he craved.

  The moment he had made himself Lord Pronett he had wanted above everything else to discuss the affairs of State with Courtiers and politicians.

  He knew that all those following the King regularly did so and he was sure the ‘open sesame’ for him had been the two pictures he had brought for the King’s collection.

  He could trust his native cunning to smooth his way upwards once he had managed to gain his entrée into the Royal Palace itself.

  Everything had gone even more smoothly than he anticipated and he was exceptionally pleased with all that had happened since his arrival.

  The King’s appreciation of his present of two such significant pictures enabled him to mingle with the Court, who were all distinguished men on their own ground.

  When he spoke of the other pictures he owned, they were astounded.

  “I had no idea” a Duke had said, “that such a fine collection as you tell us you have has been unnoticed for so long.”

  “I think all the family have been collectors,” replied Freddie in a serious voice. “Only as we are so far away in the country from London you did not hear of us.”

  “Which was certainly a great blessing in disguise for you,” another Courtier came in. “King Charles I was a patron of Rubens and Van Dyck and had a great number of their pictures in his Collection.

  “I well remember seeing them!” another Courtier exclaimed. “Then they were all sold off in that disgraceful way by those ghastly followers of Cromwell. But thanks to you, Lord Pronett, we now at least have one Van Dyck and a Holbein!”

  “I must talk to His Majesty about the Rubens I have at my home,” added Freddie. “And I think he would also be interested in a Velazquez.”

  He was aware as he spoke that the eyes of the men listening were shining and he knew he was on a very good wicket.

  He was not surprised when later in the day the King discussed with him the changes he would like to make at Windsor Castle.

  He needed to build some new Apartments there for himself and the Queen and he also told Freddie he wanted to add to the Royal Library.

  One thing Freddie had been able to do when he was alone in the house in Norfolk was to read, as his employer was too weak to talk much to him and the servants were not interested.

  He had been able to learn ab
out the books in the Royal Collection and who had contributed to beautifying the Royal Palaces over the years.

  He would not have known about the magnificent ceiling in the Banqueting Hall in the Palace of Whitehall, which had been built by Inigo Jones in 1622, if he had not read about it before he arrived in London.

  He had an excellent memory that had been trained by his father since he was a boy, and thanks to his father he spoke without a provincial accent, even though the children he played with in childhood all had accents which revealed the County they had been brought up in.

  Freddie could now see himself settling down in a grand house in London as he definitely wanted to be near the Royal presence and the Courtiers surrounding the King.

  He would keep Pronett Hall in Norfolk to supply him with an income from the estate and he could use it as a holiday home if he ever had a family.

  ‘I have my whole scenario planned in great detail now,’ Freddie reflected as he went to bed that night.

  He congratulated himself on having been so clever as to win the interest of the King through his pictures and to be able to converse with the most cultured of the Court about art.

  He knew that the pictures and other items he could sell from Pronett Hall would ensure him a place at Court for the rest of his life.

  Of course once he was established he would want to entertain and it was the Countess who had put the idea of marriage so firmly into his head.

  She suggested that no one would make him a more attractive or acceptable wife as far as the Royal family was concerned than her husband’s daughter by his first wife.

  “Alissia is not only very beautiful,” she said, “but she is also very intelligent. I can understand so well, Lord Pronett, that you need someone who will appreciate art in the same way as you do yourself.”

  It was difficult when he received a compliment of this sort for Freddie not to laugh.

  He had not taken the slightest notice of the pictures at Pronett Hall for years and then suddenly it had struck him that they were very valuable and could be of great use to him.

  When Oliver Cromwell died he had known with a quickness of mind inherited from his real father that he had a passport to King Charles II if he ever returned.

  Before Freddie left for London he hurriedly read everything he could find about the pictures in the library at Pronett Hall.

  He had, of course, used the library in the long years when he was acting as secretary to Lord Pronett when he had nothing else to do.

  He had at first been thrilled by tales of adventure and he envied the men who had crossed deserts or climbed mountains.

  It did not take him long to realise the importance of painters such as Rubens and Van Dyck and also Bruegel, Holbein, Titian and a number of other great artists.

  But they had never occurred to him as being of any particular relevance to himself.

  Now he had brought three volumes of Histories of Art with him from the library and he learned from them with the same concentrated attention he had given to his arithmetic as a boy.

  However he had at first been overcome by the sheer magnificence of the Royal Palace itself.

  The King kept saying there was a great deal to be done to it, but it was difficult for Freddie not to exclaim at everything in sheer astonishment.

  It was so completely different from anything he had ever experienced in his life before.

  But now his conversation with the Countess had made another idea spring into his head.

  He had been so astonished at his own brilliance at impersonating the heir to Lord Pronett and taking over his house and estate – then being accepted without question at Whitehall.

  Now he felt as if he was an explorer seeing in the distance something even greater than he had ever imagined previously.

  ‘I will start a family of my own,’ Freddie decided, ‘and they will be brought up to be Courtiers as I intend to be myself and the most aristocratic ladies in the land will be at their disposal.’

  He had carefully thought out every detail before he left Norfolk for London.

  He would be of more influence than he had ever dreamed possible when he had made himself Lord Pronett.

  There was one point the Countess had made very clear, although she had not actually intended it that way.

  It was that he should start a family and his children would naturally all be members of the English aristocracy.

  For this he required a wife.

  *

  In the sitting room of their Apartment in the Palace of Whitehall, the Countess of Dalwaynnie was, as it so happened, thinking of Lord Pronett.

  What she wanted was that he should sweep Alissia away quickly and leave the road open for Nancy to marry the Marquis of Morelanton.

  Freddie, if he was to be believed, was very well off with a large estate in Norfolk.

  But Clive was entirely different.

  His ancestors had become Kings of Scotland in the past and while he lived on the border, he was respected by the Scots as well as the English.

  One of his great-aunts had become the Queen of a Scandinavian country and the Countess had been told that his mother had been a Lady of the Royal Bedchamber.

  She could easily imagine Nancy eventually taking that place at Court and this she wanted to achieve more than anything else.

  In fact there should have been no difficulties at all if it was not for Alissia.

  She had only to see her lovely golden hair shining in the sun and to hear Alissia’s soft and enchanting voice to know that if she was honest Nancy could not compete with her.

  She had found it very difficult when she had first married Bruce not to be jealous of his first wife.

  He had obviously adored her and the servants and everyone she met had told her how beautiful she had been and how much she had been loved by everyone with whom she came into contact.

  Any woman would have found it difficult to hold her own under such circumstances, but the Countess was persistent in everything she did.

  She was quite certain that Bruce really loved her.

  He would in fact, she believed, have forgotten his happiness with his first wife were it not for the presence of Alissia.

  The Countess had become obsessed with this idea and she thought that every time her husband looked at his daughter and saw how beautiful she was, he was repeating beneath his breath, ‘exactly like her mother’.

  Nanny did not make it any better by continually referring to her.

  She had been told by Bruce to be very careful as to what she said about Elizabeth and to remember that while the Cromwellians were in power she was always plain Mrs. Dalton.

  But Nanny had always spoken to the older servants about ‘her Ladyship’ and she did not change when Lady Hestor arrived.

  “Her Ladyship always insisted that we did ‘so and so’ at this time of year,” she would say continually.

  She had no idea she was making the new Countess wince.

  ‘Immediately Alissia is married,’ she told herself, ‘I will get rid of Nanny. I will pension her off and make sure I do the same to all the other servants who have been with my husband for far too long.’

  When they came to London, it had been Bruce who had insisted that Nanny should accompany Alissia.

  His new wife had protested loudly, but he insisted and once they finally settled in at Whitehall, Nanny took over as she always did.

  The servants who were provided for them in the Royal Palace looked to Nanny for their instructions rather than to the Countess.

  So every day when she thought it all over, she was more and more determined that Alissia must somehow be rapidly disposed of.

  If she was not around, the Countess was sure that Clive would feel it his duty to marry Nancy – if only as a thank-offering to Bruce for saving his life.

  Instinctively, although she could really not explain it, she was quite certain that Lord Pronett was determined to marry into the aristocracy.

  He spoke of himsel
f as having many generations of an aristocratic family behind him, but she had to admit that she had never heard of the Pronetts before.

  But there was little reason why she should have as she had lived in a very different part of England.

  At the same time she was sure that the Pronetts had not shone at any stage in history or for that matter had been very well known, as he now said, for their art collection.

  However he was a young man, quite nice looking and socially ambitious.

  What could be more to his advantage than if he was to marry the daughter of the Earl of Dalwaynnie?

  Naturally she had heard the full story on the Palace grapevine that he had so generously given two outstanding pictures to the King.

  She had even made that the excuse for discussing with Freddie the pictures in their country house and asking his advice.

  “I am sure my husband does not want to sell them,” she said lightly. “Equally I do think they should be insured if they are really valuable. I have heard you are an expert on the great artists, Lord Pronett, so therefore you must tell me what you think the value might be of our pictures in the country.”

  “Of course,” Freddie replied. “I would be only too delighted to help your Ladyship. If you give me a list of the pictures and who they are painted by, I will be glad to mark those that I think should be kept safely not only from burglars, but also from too much sunlight or neglect of any sort.”

  “You are so kind,” the Countess cooed. “So please come to us this evening when I have talked to my husband about it. I know he will be grateful to you for taking such an interest in his possessions, which I rather suspect have been neglected and taken for granted in the past.”

  Freddie laughed.

  “That happens with a great number of collections,” he responded. “In fact several gentlemen of the Court have told me that their finest pictures have been damaged simply by neglect.”

  He saw the Countess was impressed and continued,

  “I feel they are all part of our heritage so we should not only enjoy them but make absolutely certain they are not taken from us or damaged inadvertently.”

  “Of course you are right,” the Countess agreed with a look of admiration. “If only everyone was as sensible as you. The Duke of Hamilton was saying to me only a short while ago that all his pictures need cleaning. The Duke of Richmond said much the same about his collection.”