‘I know. I just wondered. Perhaps she has already met him. She surely would for she would have been at her sister’s wedding, I daresay.’
Sophia looked expectant, but the Princess Royal said quickly: ‘I should not dream of discussing my future husband with Caroline in any circumstances.’
‘I shouldn’t dream of discussing anything with Caroline!’
‘I have decided to make my own wedding gown. I am starting on it without delay. I shall sit up all night to finish it if need be for I am determined to put every stitch into it myself.’
‘Have you no qualms about leaving your home and going to a strange land with your widower?’
The Princess Royal looked pityingly at her sisters. ‘You should be the ones to suffer qualms,’ she told them, ‘for it may well be that the King has decided that none of you shall ever have a husband.’
Caroline heard of the proposed wedding and was saddened, remembering her sister Charlotte who had married Frederick William, Prince of Würtemburg.
Charlotte had been sixteen then and she herself fourteen and how she had envied the elder sister who was starting out on her married life!
But what had happened to Charlotte? She would never really know. It was a shock too, to learn that that same bridegroom was now coming to England to marry the Princess Royal for she had never really believed that Charlotte was dead.
Charlotte’s story was strangely mysterious. Caroline knew that her father had sent messengers to Russia to try to discover the true story. And what sort of a husband was this Prince of Würtemburg who had deserted his wife, leaving her in Russia, after taking her three children away from her.
Was it true that she had had a love affair with the son of Empress Catherine— that woman whose own life was something of a legend? Or had she dabbled in politics? How could they know? But the fact remained that Charlotte had disappeared and no one could be quite sure where.
And now her death must be accepted as a fact— for how otherwise could her widower come to England to marry the Princess Royal?
What strange lives we lead, thought Caroline, when we are married to strangers. The Princess Royal was not the least bit disturbed by the rumours. Her great desire had been to be married and escape from the thralldom of Court life under the stern eye of her mother. She stitched happily away at her dress and her sisters came in to marvel at her happiness as her needle worked on the white satin making what Sophia called the most perfect little stitches in the world.
She was in transports of joy when she was fitted for her trousseau. She clasped her hands together in ecstasy over the jewellery which Forster, the Court jeweller, was making for her. She listened patiently to her mother’s advice on how to be a good wife, and to her father’s assurances of his love for all his children. He looked upon her as a child which might have been exasperating in other circumstances since she was past thirty, but all this she accepted in a kind of ecstasy— so delighted was she to have a husband.
‘My one fear,’ she confided to Elizabeth, ‘is that something will go wrong and prevent the marriage taking place.’ ‘Can you feel so strongly about a bridegroom whom you have never seen?’
‘It is marriage I want.’
‘Any marriage?’
‘Oh, come, sister, the Prince is handsome we hear. He is not deformed. He is not a monster.’
‘He has been married before.’
‘I tell you I don’t care. I don’t care.’
‘I wonder about his first wife.’
The Princess Royal frowned. She had not heard very much about the first wife except that she had been the sister of Caroline and had had three children and was now dead. But what more did she need to know?
‘Stop looking like a wise old witch,’ she cried. ‘I tell you everything is going to be all right.’
But was it?
The case of the diamond ring seemed like an omen.
It was to be a beautiful ring set with thirty diamonds.
Forster had brought the design and the stones to the Princess’s apartments to discuss the setting with her.
He then took it back to his shop and set to work on it. He had done some work on the ring and left it on his bench and while he was absent, a chicken— which by some strange manner had found its way into the workshop— was attracted by the diamonds and swallowed some, even pecking one out of the ring.
Their disappearance would have remained a mystery if one of Forster’s workmen had not arrived in time to see the chicken pecking at the stones in the ring and guessed what had happened.
News was hastily sent to the Princess Royal who was deeply distressed— not at the loss of the diamonds but because she feared it to be an omen. She was hearing strange rumours about the first wife of her future husband and although she was reassured that she was dead, there did not appear to be absolute proof of this.
Her demeanour had changed a little and she now no longer sang as she stitched away at her wedding dress.
But a few days later, the jeweller called on her in triumph. There was the ring just as it had appeared in the design— with thirty brilliants bravely glittering.
‘It’s another ring?’ she asked.
‘No, Your Highness. We killed the chicken and recovered all the diamonds from his gizzard.’
He was looking at her, expecting her approval for his cleverness in recovering the stones; but she took the ring gingerly and slipped it on her finger.
She could not help looking on the incident as an omen.
The King summoned his daughter. He was looking worried and the Princess Royal, like all the family, felt uneasy to see him so.
She would never forget that terrible day when they had first known that he was going mad, when he had caught the Prince of Wales by the throat and tried to strangle him. She remembered too the occasion when she had been going for an airing with him and he had kept getting out of the coach to give the coachman instructions so that at last she had felt quite hysterical herself and dashed back into the Palace declaring that she could not ride with Papa. She remembered too his excessive fondness for Amelia and how he had hugged the child so tightly on one occasion that they had feared he would kill her and had dragged her from him and put him into a strait-jacket. He was supposed to be cured now but there were times when he talked in that quick way of his until he became hoarse and incoherent. This was when he was upset about something. He was upset now.
‘I have something very serious to say to you,’ he began. ‘Difficult. In a quandary. Don’t quite know what it means but we shall have to discover. Can’t let you marry if the bridegroom already has a wife, eh, what?’
‘Already has a wife!’ cried the Princess Royal. ‘But she is dead.’
‘So we think— so we hope. At least one should not hope for the death of others, eh, what? But there are rumours. Some say that she is not dead— but a prisoner in Russia— and if she is, then that means that Prince Frederick can’t take another wife, can he— because that would be bigamy and something we couldn’t have, eh, what?’
The Princess Royal looked stricken. What a worry children were! thought the King. But they couldn’t have bigamy in the family— although in a way they already had it, because the Prince of Wales was supposed to be married to Mrs.
Fitzherbert and he’d married Caroline.
Oh dear, oh dear, families were difficult to control. Why could they not all be docile like himself and the Queen, who had always done their duty!
The King said: ‘Well, my dear, you see what this means. You must prepare yourself for no marriage. Though it may be it won’t come to that. The Prince assures me that his wife is dead. He has a letter from the Empress of Russia dated two years after he left his wife in her country and the Duke of Brunswick also has a letter from the Empress and in both the letters it states that the Princess Charlotte of Brunswick is dead.’