The Stuart Sapphire Read Free Page A

against any survivors.’
    His Royal Highness’s sporting tastes were not shared by his fifteen-year-old daughter Princess Charlotte, stammering protests at his side.
    ‘I – I – Do you think Papa, co – consider – such – m – m – matters?’
    Prince George regarded his only legitimate offspring,heiress to the throne of England, with distaste. Aware that he had never liked her from the very day she was born, repulsed by the sight of ‘an immense girl’ and remarking before witnesses who had long memories: ‘We would have hoped for a son.’
    And that was it, the fact that gnawed at his guts through the passing years, the gross unfairness that even the power of Divine Right of kings did not extend to producing a son – and securing the future dynasty of England.
    Wearily he turned his back on Charlotte, seeing a parade of all the women he had slept with since he was a lad of sixteen. The latest and very voluptuous Sarah Creeve was also mistress of his younger brother Frederick, Duke of York, which gave the affair a certain extra titillation. Last seen and heard snoring as he crept out and looking less like the ‘Kitten’ (so-called for her slanting green eyes) than a fat tabby cat, with a passion for jewels to enhance her nakedness.
    He sighed. Even the poorest peasant was welcome to his favours, his proud boast that satisfaction of his lust merely required a tolerably pretty woman with full breasts: ‘a bright wench and clean straw.’
    It was unfair that Fate had been so grossly unkind. Considering that his scattered seed could have populated a small town with a multitude of largely unacknowledged (but still eternally clamouring) fine, healthy sons, on more than one occasion he regarded Charlotte closely.
    He would have liked to prove that she had not sprung from his loins. God only knew how many lovers his wretched Princess Caroline of Wales had taken to her bed in the sixteen years since their marriage. But seeing the girl’s face reflected beside his own in the mirror left him in no doubt over her legitimacy. She was unmistakably his daughter.
    The miraculous product of an arranged marriage, hideous to him, and from only two copulations with his unsanitary foul-smelling bride. The first on their wedding night heavily reinforced with wine. Rising from the floor where he had slept as dawn crept through the window of their bridal chamber, he had slipped between the sheets and performed his dynastic duty. And again with equal reluctance some days later when this most unlikely princess had been spawned.
    After her birth he could have, should have, tried again, fought back his nausea for his bride’s unwashed body: ‘fore and hind parts indescribably filthy,’ he whispered to his intimates. And although his manhood could normally be guaranteed to rise to the occasion, ready and eager when required, even fortified by large quantities of stimulants, it remained limp and flaccid in his lawful marriage bed with his lawful or, as he most frequently referred to her, his ‘awful’ wife.
    Charlotte was clutching his arm, stammering her protests, whining that she was cold, she wished to go indoors. He signalled to her governess whose curtsey did not quite conceal a look of disapproval.
    He watched them head back towards the Pavilion and sighed deeply. He must marry the girl off without delay. There were plenty of royal families in Europe hovering in the wings anxious and eager to negotiate an alliance with the future Queen of England.
    An arranged marriage to a royal prince, such as William of Orange, had a certain appeal to the Prince Regent. Candidly he cared not to whom, and refused to listen to Charlotte’s protests that she did not want to marry for years and years and, when the time came, that she would choose her own husband. Her future, such a small matterof whether she would be happy or not, did not concern him, his only reason for the hustle was the hope of male issue. The nearest he would ever get to