Queen in Waiting - Plaidy Jean (электронную книгу бесплатно без регистрации TXT) 📗

"Yes, Your Highness."

"You will take von Eltz with you. You will be his friend, von Eltz, calling yourself Steding. But on no account let it be known who you are. If you do, you can depend upon it the King of Prussia will hear, and he'll take the Princess back to Berlin and force her to marry the Archduke Charles. No one must know. Do you hear me? Particularly women. Now go and prepare. Leave tomorrow. If you decide you want to marry her, remember delay could lose her. So could gossip. Remember that."

He dismissed them and they went off to make ready for the journey.

George Augustus was excited but he was not even tempted to tell his sister where he was going.

Those months at Ansbach were the saddest Caroline had ever known. Each morning on waking her first thoughts were: She is dead. I shall never see her again.

She had wept until she was exhausted with weeping; she had shut herself into the bedroom which had been hers as a child and had seen no one for days. Then she had told herself that Sophia Charlotte would have chided her, would have reminded her that she must not give way to grief; that she must be brave as she had always been taught to be.

But there is no longer anything to live for, Caroline thought. How could I have believed for one moment that I

could have left her and gone to Spain? This is a judgement on me because I was tempted by the glitter of a crown.

If she would only come back, I would tell her that I would never never leave her.

Her servants tried to rouse her from her melancholy. Would she not like to see the gown her seamstress was making for her? The woman wanted to know whether she would like embroidered panels or should they be of plain velvet. She had no interest in clothes. Would she care to do a little needlework? Embroidery was such a restful occupation. She had never cared for needlework. Sometimes they told her amusing stories about people of her brother's court—and of other courts, but scandal did not interest her.

She and Sophia Charlotte had talked of religion, philosophy, history, art, literature. With whom could she talk of such things now?

There is nothing ... nothing left to me, she thought.

Her brother was unusually understanding. She was grateful to him; it was fortunate that having now become Margrave he could offer her this refuge of her old home. He would talk to her of the days of their childhood before she had known Sophia Charlotte, and somehow this was soothing. Certainly here in the old Palace of the Margraves, so ornate and flamboyant as she now knew, having been educated in good taste by Sophia Charlotte, she could be less miserable than anywhere else. She liked to walk round the gallery and look sadly at the portraits of the Hohenzollerns, her ancestors, and wonder about their lives. Had they ever known grief like hers? How could any have felt such a loss? There could only have been one in the world like Sophia Charlotte.

William Frederick, her brother, seeking to bring her out of her melancholy told her that she must make a definite decision about her marriage. He was sure that once she had settled that matter she would begin to build a new life.

"I shall not marry the Archduke," she said. "I do not believe she wished it."

Frederick William, being piqued because he had not been consulted in the matter—after all he was the head of the family, even though younger than Caroline—was secretly pleased. The

Austrians should have consulted him. He was young and had not long before succeeded to the title; he had been made to feel, for so many years, that he was of little importance, so now he felt he must continually remind people how his position had changed.

"I think it is the right decision," he said.

"You seem very certain."

"I am sure you would never have been a Catholic."

"No. I never should. I could never be so definite in my beliefs. She was not. She always said on religious matters we must always have an open mind."

"Then you would have been unhappy in Spain."

"I will write at once to Leibniz. He will tell me how to handle this matter. He will draft the letter I must write. I know he too will be with me in this."

She went at once to her apartment. Her brother was right. Now that she had made her decision her spirits had lifted a little.

Leibniz was at Hanover in attendance on the Electress Sophia.

He read to her Caroline's letter asking him to draft the refusal.

The Electress was delighted. If only, she thought that stubborn fool of an Elector would listen to me. If only he would ask for Caroline for George Augustus. Sometimes I think he refuses to do what I ask simply because I ask it!

And what could an old woman do? It had been the same in the old days with Ernest Augustus. He had allowed Clara von Platen to influence him, but not his wife. She remembered how her husband and his mistress had decided to marry George Lewis to Sophia Dorothea and had not told her anything about the plan until they needed her help to put it into action.

And she, the granddaughter of a King, and King of England at that, had allowed this to be. Well, at least she had kept her place in the Electorate; she was honoured; and although Ernest Augustus would not be influenced by her, he allowed

her supremaq^ in her own little Court. She had remained to bear his children—not like poor Sophia Dorothea, languishing in prison now. Had she protested as that foolish woman had, would her fate have been similar? These Germans had no idea how to treat women. How different her cousin Charles of England had been. How different was Louis XIV, the Sun King, the most admired monarch in Europe. These men were gentlemen and that fact helped them to be great rulers.

As for her son George Lewis, he was the crudest of them all. And foolish too. He was going to lose the opportunity of bringing the most accomplished of Princesses to Hanover.

Leibniz read Caroline's letter aloud.

"Heaven, jealous of our happiness, has taken away from us our adored and adorable Queen. The calamity has overwhelmed me with grief and sickness, and it is only the hope that I may soon follow her that consoles me. I pity you from the bottom of my heart for her loss to you is irreparable. I pray the good God to add to the Electress Sophia's life the years that the Queen might hav« lived and I beseech you to add my devotion to her."

Sophia wept quietly as she listened.

She and I alone could console each other, she thought.

Yet it was no use talking to George Lewis. What did he know of grief? What did he know of love?

The clocks were striking midnight when George Augustus with the Baron von Eltz and one valet rode through the narrow streets of Hanover, past the gabled houses with their sloping roofs, past the Markt Kirche, the Rathhaus, out of the town and away towards Ansbach.

This was the most exciting adventure he had ever undertaken; the miracle was that it should be happening at his father's suggestion.

Caroline! He was half-way to falling in love with her already. He hoped she was not too clever. He didn't like clever women. He had never enjoyed studying and had avoided it when possible; a wife who knew more than he did would be intolerable. But they said she was beautiful; and if she should

choose him after refusing the Archduke Charles he would be delighted with her.

The Baron was giving him some uneasy glances. He was afraid he would give himself away, afraid he would show that arrogance which was always ready to appear at an imagined slight. If he betrayed the fact that Monsieur de Busch, the name under which it had been decided he should travel, was in fact George Augustus, Electoral Prince of Hanover, the news that he was wooing Caroline of Ansbach would be all over Europe in a very short time.