Queen in Waiting: (Georgian Series) Read Free Page B

agreeable to have a settled home.’
    ‘When are we going?’ asked Caroline.
    ‘You are impatient, my dear, but when you are at Dresden we must see you often. You shall visit us and we shall visit you.’
    ‘Then,’ said Caroline, ‘I am glad we are going to Dresden.’
    Sophia Charlotte smiled over the girl’s head.
    I wish, thought Eleanor, that I could feel as pleased.
    It was arranged that the wedding should take place at Leipzig and neither the Brandenburgs nor John George’s ministers saw any reason why it should be delayed. It was only the bride and groom who wished for that.
    Both had considerable misgivings. Eleanor, who had gone back to Ansbach to make preparations, spent a great deal of the time on her knees praying for a miracle, by which she meant some occurrence which would make the marriage unnecessary. Blankly she faced the future, trying hard to convince herself that it was all for the best and that marriages which were made as this had been, often turned out to be the most successful.
    John George in Dresden had no such illusions. The more he thought of marriage with Eleanor the more he loathed the idea; he was beginning to hate the woman they had chosen for him.
    His ministers had suggested that while he was waiting for his wedding day he should not see his mistress. It would not be considered good taste and it was impossible to keep suchmeetings secret. If news reached the bride-elect that her husband was spending his nights with a mistress she might decide not to marry him after all.
    That made John George laugh aloud. ‘Then for the love of God tell her.’
    ‘Your Highness is not serious.’
    ‘Never more. Never more,’ he cried.
    But he dared not oppose his ministers. His position was too precarious. Harried on one side by them and by Magdalen’s letters on the other, he was frantic and when he was frantic he was furious.
    ‘I won’t go through with it!’ he declared a hundred times a day.
    But his ministers assured him that he must.
    Magdalen’s letters were smuggled in to him every day. He had betrayed her, she wrote. He had promised her marriage. He had taken her virtue… and so on.
    He laughed reading them. All written by her mother, he knew. Magdalen was too lazy to write; all Magdalen wanted to do was make love. ‘Very creditable, my darling,’ he said fondly; and he wanted her with him, no matter if she did say what her mother had taught her to; he didn’t care if the old woman was taking bribes from Austria. Magdalen was worth it. With her masses of dark hair, her willowy body which was at the same time the most voluptuous in the world, how different she was from the flaxen German women he had known before! She was a perfect animal; she cared nothing for politics; she cared nothing for anything but sensual pleasure.
    He wanted to be with her. He would marry her if he could – to please her mother and her too, for that ambitious woman had convinced her daughter that what she wanted was to be the Electress of Saxony.
    He might defy his ministers and the Brandenburgs yet. What if he married Magdalen… secretly? What if he summoned them all to his presence chamber and told them they could stop the preparations for the wedding in Leipzig for he was already married?
    He shivered. They were powerful old men. They had theexperience which he lacked and had deposed their leaders for less.
    No, he must do as they wished. He must marry that woman. He would prove to them that she was a spy… a spy for the Brandenburgs. What was the difference between spying for the Brandenburgs and spying for Austria?
    To hell with the agreement they had made with the Brandenburgs and which they fondly called The Golden Bracelet!
    But a pretty princeling who is young and uncertain cannot say to hell with his ministers or his ministers may say to hell with him.
    He must do as they wished but it should not always be so. One day they would have to obey him. In the meantime there was nothing he could do