She must, he thought, be able to take his mother’s place, as hostess in the houses he owned and more important still be as acceptable at Buckingham Palace as he was himself.
He knew this involved something very different to what it would have meant under the last Monarch.
George IV, up until his dying day, had liked the men who surrounded him to be raffish and witty and, because he had always been so himself, promiscuous with women.
Equally, the late King had only admitted ladies to the Royal circle that were attractive to the opposite s*x – and easily persuaded to relax their morals.
But Buckingham Palace today had a very different atmosphere. The Marquis often thought it was not the same place now that the staid and prudish little Queen Adelaide was on the throne beside the King.
Th
