Jean Plaidy - Victoria in the Wings

The paper! Of course it was the paper.

He looked down. There it was in large print on the front page. ‘Dukes of Clarence and Kent to marry now. The death of the Princess Charlotte has made it imperative that her uncles do their duty by the State. There are rumours that …’

So it had come.

He threw the paper to the floor. He laughed. ‘Oh come, Julie. Newspaper talk. You know what the press is like.’

She opened her eyes and looked at him. She was begging him to reassure her, and he went on talking. His lips told her what she wanted to know, but in his heart he knew he was lying. He could hear those words she had spoken beating like a malicious tattoo in his head. ‘I think I should die.’

IN HER BED in the Berlin mansion which she shared with her husband Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, fifth son of King George III, Frederica, the Duchess, was resting. She had taken to rising late since the birth of her still-born daughter, for the fact was that she was no longer very young. It was thirty-nine years since she had been born in her father’s dukedom of Mecklenburg-Strelitz; but her vitality, her flamboyant good looks and a certain magnetism which she had possessed since a young girl made her – and all about her – forget her age. She would be the fascinating Frederica until she died.

She stretched luxuriously. Life was good. She was in love with the man she had married – her third husband – and that seemed to her not only an idyllic but also a rather comical situation. She, Frederica of the lurid reputation, and Ernest, the wicked Duke of Cumberland, the sinister member of the British royal family who had been suspected of most sins – as she had herself – had met, and found their match.

She laughed every time she thought of it; and so did Ernest.

She was particularly pensive this morning and was thinking of her old Aunt Charlotte, Queen of England, who, one would have thought, would have been delighted to accept her niece as her daughter-in-law. Not so old Charlotte. Charlotte did not approve of her niece’s reputation, she would not receive her at Court, and if it had been possible she would have stopped the marriage.

Poor old Charlotte! laughed Frederica. Surely one of the most un attractive women in the world. Didn’t they always see evil in those members of their sex who possessed the charms they lacked!

Oh God, she thought. I wish Louise were here.

If Louise, sister and friend who had scarcely been parted from her until her death, could be with her now she would ask nothing more of life. In moments of happiness she would remember Louise. She would see herself sitting at her sister’s bedside at the last, talking to her, trying to divert her mind from pain, recalling the early days of their triumphs when they had been fêted and courted and had shocked the Court of Berlin by being the first to dance the waltz there.

Louise, Queen of Prussia, had borne ten children and she had only been thirty-four when she died. They ask too much of us, thought Frederica angrily. We are bred to breed. Ten children and only thirty-four! Beautiful Louise – born only to breed and to die doing it!

No wonder she felt angry.

But before all that how wonderful life had been in Grandmamma’s house in Hesse Darmstadt, where Grandmamma was the Landgravine. They had gone there because their stepmother had died giving birth to little Charles. Their mother had died two years before, also in childbed, and the child had died with her.

Charlotte, their eldest sister, had married the Duke of Hildburghausen, so she did not accompany the younger ones to Grandmamma Landgravine. There were just Thérèse, Louise, Frederica, George – who was a year younger than Frederica – and now stepbrother baby Charles.

They were happy carefree days which had perhaps helped to make her what she was. The Landgravine was a clever woman. She wanted the children to be happy so she gave them a certain amount of freedom, but at the same time she introduced them to music and the arts and saw that they were endowed with all the social graces. Recognizing the outstanding beauty of the girls, she decided that as they grew older no opportunities should be missed. Thérèse immediately found a princely husband, and the Landgravine then turned her attention to Louise and Frederica.

Life went on gaily, full of trivial excitements, until the carefree existence was brought to a sudden halt. Revolution had crippled France and from the ruins had risen the Corsican adventurer whose dream was to dominate Europe. The Landgravine was alert as each day came news of Napoleon’s successes and every hour brought his invading armies to their home.

It was unsafe, the Landgravine decided; and the girls were sent off to their sister Charlotte.

They were young and lively and the war seemed far away from lovely Hildburghausen in the sweet-smelling pine forest. Charlotte gave balls and banquets to launch her sisters whose beauty had become a legend; Louise and Frederica were the two loveliest girls in Germany, it was said; and they were clearly looking for husbands.

How happy they had been – she and Louise! Everywhere they went they were together. They spoke of each other as one person. ‘Louise and I do this.’ ‘Frederica and I think that.’ They had never thought in those days that separation must inevitably come. Their brother George, who was as gay and vivacious as his sisters, was their staunch ally; he adored them and they him; but in the case of Louise and Frederica they were as one.

Snatches of conversation came back to Frederica now as she lay in bed in Berlin. ‘But, dearest Freddi, when we marry we shall have to part.’ ‘Then I won’t marry. I’ll stay with you! I’ll be your companion. Your dresser. Your lady-in-waiting. I’d rather be with you than marry a King.’ ‘Always so wild,’ chided Louise. ‘If they decided you’d marry, you’d have to. But when I marry I shall invite you to stay with me and you must invite me to stay with you.’ ‘I don’t want to be a guest in your house, Louise. I want to belong.’

And then came that night in Frankfurt through which they had passed on their way home with the Landgravine who had come to collect them from Hildburghausen; there was great excitement because the King of Prussia with his two sons was in the town and it would be unthinkable for two such highly-born ladies not to pay their respects to the monarch. Besides, with him were his two unmarried sons.

The inevitable happened. Or had it been planned? The sons of the King of Prussia needed brides; and the Princesses of Mecklenburg-Strelitz needed husbands.

After that first meeting, the King told the Landgravine that her granddaughters were as beautiful as angels, and that his sons had fallen in love with them at first sight.

Although, thought Frederica ironically, it was not clear with whom the Crown Prince had fallen in love – herself or Louise. As for his brother Prince Louis, he was immersed in his own private love affair, and was unimpressed by either of the beautiful girls who were paraded for his approval.

He had told her afterwards, when they were married, that he knew he had to take one of them and it hadn’t mattered to him a jot which, and the Crown Prince felt the same but as he had to make a choice he took Louise, who talked less and apart from the fact that her neck was too short which gave her a humped look, was quite beautiful.

But then Louis had disliked her because she had been a necessity. But not more than she disliked him, of course. And if Louise’s neck was a little short it was her only imperfection and was easy to disguise by the lovely gauzy draperies she affected.

But the sisters were ecstatically happy because if they married the brothers they would live at the same Court and their fears of separation were groundless. For the rest of their lives they would continue to say: ‘Louise and I think this.’ ‘Frederica and I do that.’