Perdita's Prince: (Georgian Series) Read Free Page A

protect was now dead – and he could not be sure that her death had been a natural one – after being involved in a storm of intrigue. Married to a near imbecile she had taken a lover and with him had been accused of treason. The lover had died barbarously and she, the Queen of Denmark, had come very near to the same fate, and would have succumbed to it but for the intervention of her affectionate brother – himself, the King of England. He had been deeply disturbed by the death of Caroline Matilda. Such events haunted him in nightmares. Poor Caroline Matilda had paid a high price for her follies.
    With his brothers it was a very different matter.
    William, Duke of Gloucester and Henry, Duke of Cumberland, had defiantly made their scandals and brazenly shown their indifference to disgrace. Yet they did not arouse half the resentment and mocking scorn which was poured on the King for being a good husband.
    Cumberland had been involved in a most disgraceful affair with the Grosvenors because he had seduced Lady Grosvenor and had – young fool! – written letters to the woman which gave no doubt of the relationship between them. George remembered phrases from those letters which made his face burn with shame – and something like envy – even now. Accounts of intimate details when they had lain together ‘on the couch ten thousand times’. His brother, who had been brought up so carefully by their mother, watched over, never allowed to meet anyone but the immediate family in case he should be contaminated, had written those words! And as soon as they escaped from Mamma’s apron strings, there they were running wild, getting into scandals like that of Cumberland and the Grosvenors. And Lord Grosvenor had had the effrontery to sue a royal duke and to win his case. The jury had brought in a verdict of £10 000 plus costs of £3000 against the Duke of Cumberland which George had had to find with the help of Lord North … out of the King’s household expenses.
    And as if that were not enough, Cumberland had tired of Lady Grosvenor by the time the scandal broke and was having an intrigue with the wife of a timber merchant – a very wealthy one it was true and fortunately for the royal purse, the timber merchant was too flattered by the royal Duke’s attentions to his wife to make trouble; but no sooner had that affair been freely discussed in the coffee and chocolate houses than Cumberland had a new love and this had turned out to be the most serious matter of all, for Mrs Anne Horton, who was the daughter of Lord Irnham, was intent on marriage, and as she had according to that gossip, Horace Walpole, ‘the most amorous eyes in the world and eyelashes a yard long’, Cumberland was fool enough to marry her.
    This had caused the King so much anxiety that he had done what his mother had urged him to do before her death; he had set about bringing into force the Royal Marriage Act which forbade members of the royal family to marry without the King’s consent. Too late for Cumberland … and for Gloucester it seemed, for no sooner was the Marriage Act passed than Gloucester came forward to announce that for some years he had been secretly married to Lord Waldegrave’s widow – a mésalliance if ever there was one,for the lady was not only the illegitimate daughter of Sir Edward Walpole but her mother was said to have been a milliner!
    ‘Banish them from Court!’ George had cried. And Charlotte had declared that she would receive no daughters of milliners. So there was an unsatisfactory state of affairs with his brothers; and since his sons were so wild, the King did wonder what trouble would come through them.
    Worry, worry, worry! thought the King, whichever way one turned. Oh, if only life were just living at Kew with Charlotte and the little ones, what a happy man he would be! Well perhaps not happy; he would always think of women like Hannah and Sarah and Elizabeth Pembroke with longing, but while he remained a