Lucky in Love

Chapter One ~ 1880-1

Chapter One ~ 1880Lord Harleston looked round the ballroom of Marlborough House and yawned.

It was late and he had finished what he called his ‘duty dances’ and suddenly had no wish to dance with any of the beautiful women who always surrounded the Prince of Wales.

It was not only that he was not particularly interested in any one of them at this moment but also that he felt saturated with the aura of Royalty that always pervaded Marlborough House despite the fact that the parties were more amusing there than anywhere else in London.

‘I must be growing old,’ Lord Harleston grumbled to himself.

He knew that a few years ago he would have found such an evening absorbing and would have enjoyed every moment of it.

Now he had had enough of a good thing.

As the parties for the Prince of Wales followed hotly one after another, Lord Harleston found, whether they were given by the leading hostesses palpitatingly eager to entertain His Royal Highness or at Marlborough House where the exquisite Princess Alexandra reigned supreme, they were all very much the same.

What was more he thought that the jokes were all the same as was the extravagance, the over-rich food and bottle after bottle of superlative wines.

Because he was taking a jaundiced view of the evening, Lord Harleston was not interested, as he usually was, in the superb pictures and the treasures of the house.

He was one of the Prince of Wales’s friends who really appreciated art and architecture and Marlborough House in Pall Mall, which had been built by Sir Christopher Wren for the first Duke of Marlborough, pleased him whenever he visited because it was in its own way a work of art.

It had quite a history of its own.

Originally allotted to Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold in 1817, it had next been handed over to Queen Adelaide who lived there until her death in 1849.

Queen Victoria had asked for an Act of Parliament to be passed assigning the house for the use of the Prince of Wales on his nineteenth birthday.

Since then the Government had spent sixty thousand pounds on modernisation and additions, while one hundred thousand pounds had been spent on furniture and carriages.

In Lord Harleston’s opinion the money had been well spent, although the public and the more radical Members of Parliament most definitely thought otherwise.

Now approaching forty the Prince of Wales with Marlborough House and Sandringham was comfortably housed and no one could say that he did not make the most of them.

That, however, was at the moment little comfort to Lord Harleston and yawning again he decided that he must somehow manage to go home to bed.

As he thought of it, loud laughter came from the corner of the room where the Prince of Wales was obviously enjoying himself with his friends.

The Prince’s friends were another bone of contention and Queen Victoria was not alone in her disapproval of them.

The Times condemned his patronage of ‘American Cattle Drovers and Prize Fighters’ while other critics spoke harshly of his intimate friendships with men whose names were ‘distinguished by riches rather than birth’.

Lord Harleston certainly did not come into this category, but his reputation as a rake and a roué certainly evoked the Queen’s displeasure, which was, Lord Harleston thought somewhat cynically, not unjustified.

Because he was extremely good-looking, wealthy and an acclaimed sportsman, there was practically no lady in the Prince of Wales’s set who would not think it a feather in her cap to captivate him if only for a short while.

A short while was indeed all it ever was, because, if Lord Harleston was bored with parties, he was equally quickly and easily bored with women.

When he pursued them, or rather they pursued him, he found that once the chase was over there were seldom any surprises or novelty in the liaison.

It was inevitable that he should therefore have gained the reputation of being a heartbreaker and the stories of his infidelity were passed from boudoir to boudoir and from beauty to beauty, as they lamented amongst themselves that even in their moment of victory they had lost him.

There was yet another burst of laughter from the Prince, echoed immediately by the remainder of the group and Lord Harleston was certain that the hilarity had been caused by the lively Portuguese Ambassador, the Marquis de Soveral.

He was noted for his wit and charm and the Prince treated him almost as if he was the Court Jester.

Lord Harleston hesitated, debating whether he should join the Prince of Wales’s party or try to slip away unnoticed.

Before he could make up his mind the Prince saw him and beckoned him to his side.

“I want to talk to you, Selby.”

Lord Harleston moved obediently towards the raised finger.

“I am listening, sir.”

“Not here,” the Prince replied in a low voice.

He slipped his arm through Lord Harleston’s and drew him out of the ballroom, just as another dreamy waltz began, and along a short passage into one of the sitting rooms that had been arranged for those wishing to sit out.

Decorated with a profusion of Malmaison carnations, which scented the air, it looked very enticing with its lowered lights and cushioned sofas, but the room was empty.

To Lord Harleston’s surprise the Prince of Wales closed the door behind him and walked across the room to stand with his back to the flower-filled chimneypiece.

Lord Harleston looked at him slightly apprehensively.

He was wondering what the Prince of Wales wished to say that necessitated such secrecy in the middle of a dance.

It could hardly be anything to do with finance. Although the Prince was permanently hard up, the Sassoons and the Rothschilds were now advising His Royal Highness on his finances and Sir Anthony Rothschild, who had recently been created a Baronet, had arranged for the family Bank to advance him money when he was in difficulties.

Similar services were also offered to the Prince by Baron Maurice von Hirsch, an enormously rich Jewish Financier whose entrée into English Society had been sponsored by him.

The Prince cleared his throat, which gave Lord Harleston the idea that he was slightly embarrassed.

Then almost as if His Royal Highness ‘took the plunge’, he began,

“I really want to talk to you, Selby, about Dolly.”

“Dolly?” Lord Harleston questioned him, reflecting that this was the last thing he had expected the Prince to say.

Dolly was the Countess of Derwent and Lord Harleston had enjoyed a fiery affaire de coeur with her. It had lasted over six months, which was longer than he maintained most of such associations before they were given the inevitable dismissal because he had lost interest.

Since both the Countess was one of the most beautiful women in England and Lord Harleston had a great many rivals, he found it amusing to have a prior claim to what many of his friends desired.

He revelled in knowing that they ground their teeth with fury every time he appeared with the Countess on his arm and she was looking at him rapturously.

That she had fallen head-over-heels in love with him had not been particularly surprising as it seemed to be inevitable in all of his love affairs.

It was, of course, in keeping with his reputation of being a heartbreaker that, when he had intimated to Dolly that everything was over between them, she had wept bitterly and thrown herself literally as well as metaphorically at his feet to beseech him not to leave her.

But even while he had tried to be sympathetic, Lord Harleston was aware that, beautiful though she was, Dolly, when one saw her too frequently, was indeed a bore.

She never said anything that he did not anticipate she would say and, if she ever made a witty remark, which was seldom, it was at the expense of one of their friends and was in a way at variance with the beauty of her face.

Somebody had once told the Countess that she looked like a Rossetti angel and she had tried to live up to that description ever since, assuming a soulful expression that had begun to irritate Lord Harleston because he knew that it was affected.

“I love you, Selby,” she cried, “and I thought you loved me! How can you leave me after all we have – meant to each – other? ”

It was a question that Lord Harleston had heard a hundred times before, but he had still not found an appropriate answer that did not appear brutal.

However, when he had finally extracted himself from Dolly’s clinging arms, he had decided that the best thing he could do was not to see her again.

After sending her a mass of expensive flowers and a keepsake that had cost him a considerable amount of money at Cartier’s, he dismissed the unpleasantness of it from his mind in a manner that had become almost a habit.

All this had happened ten days ago.

Since then a great number of notes had been delivered to Harleston House in the Countess’s unmistakable handwriting, but, as he had no intention of replying to any of them, he had not even opened them.

Because it was so unusual for anyone, even the Prince of Wales himself, to talk to Lord Harleston of his intimate affairs, a liberty that he greatly disliked, he waited somewhat irritably.

“We are old friends, Selby,” the Prince said in a slightly over-hearty manner, “and therefore I feel that I can be frank with you.”

“But, of course, sir,” Lord Harleston replied, hoping that he would be nothing of the sort.

“The truth is,” the Prince went on, “that Dolly has been talking to the Princess.”

Lord Harleston stiffened.

He could hardly believe that Dolly Derwent had been so indiscreet as to complain to Princess Alexandra of his behaviour.

Yet now, as he thought about it, he realised that because she had so little brain, it was in fact the sort of thing she might well do.

Princess Alexandra was deeply respected by everybody who met her. Her gaiety, her sense of fun and of the ridiculous made her play the part of wife to the unpredictable Prince of Wales to perfection.

Everybody who saw her was struck by her beauty and her extraordinarily youthful appearance, but her increasing deafness prevented her from enjoying many of the social activities that she had once delighted in.

She also, with extraordinary self-control and dignity, rarely displayed any of the jealousy she felt when her husband, although he treated her always with the greatest courtesy and respect, made it obvious to the world that he preferred the company of his ‘other ladies’ to that of his wife.

At the moment, as Lord Harleston knew, the Prince was deeply involved with the exquisitely beautiful Mrs. Lily Langtry and Princess Alexandra had bowed to the inevitable and raised no objection to another of the Prince’s inamoratas being invited to Marlborough House.

There was a pause while the Prince again cleared his throat.

Then he said,

“The Princess has therefore told me to suggest to you, Selby, that Dolly would make you an excellent and certainly very acceptable wife.”

If the Prince had exploded a bomb at Lord Harleston’s feet, he could not have been more astonished.

He had made it a rule never to discuss his love affairs with his friends and he had also made it very clear that he had no intention of allowing anyone, and that included his relatives, to speak to him of marriage.

When he had been young, he had often been nagged by his father and mother, his aunts, uncles, cousins and anyone with the name of Harle into choosing a wife.

Young women from suitable families, almost as soon as they had stepped out of the schoolroom, were brought to his notice and the points in their favour were discussed and elaborated on as if they were horses.

He had finally succumbed simply because he was sick to death of hearing the word marriage drummed into his ears and proposed to the Duke of Devonshire’s daughter who was both good-looking and a good rider.