The Lioness and the Lily

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1841-1

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1841As the Earl of Rockbrook drove down the drive of the enormous Georgian mansion that had been in his family since the days of King Charles II, he felt no pride of possession.

In fact he hardly saw it as deep in his thoughts he drove his horses between the ancient oak trees to draw up in front of the steps leading to the front door with its high Corinthian pillars.

One look at their new Master’s face told the servants wearing the Rockbrook crested buttons that he was in a dark mood.

They were all a little nervous of him as he was an unknown quantity.

They had naturally anticipated that the late Earl’s only son would inherit the title on his death and they had not expected that to happen for at least another ten or twenty years.

However, in an accident that happened when the Earl and the Viscount, his son, were travelling together in one of the ‘new-fangled’ and in most people’s minds ‘dangerous’ trains, they both had been killed and the Earldom had passed to a cousin who had had no expectation of ever inheriting it.

The new Earl at the age of thirty-two, who had lived a very hard life as a soldier with slender financial means, was delighted if somewhat overawed by the grandeur of his inheritance.

It was not only his vast possessions and the position that he held in the County which required getting used to, but also his position at the Court of Queen Victoria.

He was actually no newcomer to the protocol which had to be followed at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle.

He had for the last year been an aide-de-camp to the General commanding his Regiment who, because he was a particular favourite of Queen Victoria, stayed quite frequently in the Royal Palaces.

The General had always insisted on taking him with him because as he had said,

“You have been with me long enough to know my ways, Brook, and not to ask me a lot of damned silly questions. So if I go to Windsor you come to The Castle with me.”

The young Officer had taken it as a compliment, although he was aware that the other aides-de-camp were jealous and complained of favouritism. However the General was adamant and there was nothing they could do about it.

The Earl was thinking now that what had seemed at the time quite an enjoyable interlude in his Army life, had proved to be a scare and a delusion.

He walked across the great marble hall with its many statues of Greek Gods and Goddesses set in alcoves and into the magnificent library where he knew that his uncle had always sat when he was alone or there were no ladies in the party.

He thought that later, as he began to make changes to what had ‘always been done”, he might choose a smaller, more comfortable and certainly a warmer room in which to relax.

But for the moment he was prepared to let things go on as they always had until he was ready to assert his authority and alter things round to his own liking.

Now when he should have been feeling a positive thrill at knowing that he was the owner of the pictures he had just passed in the corridor and the books that ranged from the parquet floor to the painted ceiling, he was only conscious of the darkness that covered him like a fog.

Outside the spring sunshine made the daffodils into a glowing carpet of gold and enveloped the shrubs of syringa and lilac with light and grace.

Ever since he had been a small child he had stayed frequently with his father and mother at Rock Castle and had thought it the most beautiful place in the world.

In the heat of India he had dreamed of the coolness of the lake when he had swum in it and the shadows under the trees where the spotted deer lay until he approached them.

He remembered games of hide-and-seek along the corridors and up in the attics that were filled with forgotten relics of the past and how the old butler had taken him down into the cellars and he had thought the cold stone floors and the heavy doors with their huge locks made it seem like a tomb.

Then unexpectedly and straight out of the blue, when he had never anticipated for one moment that such a thing might ever happen, he had inherited Rock Castle.

When he had first learned of the death of his uncle and of his cousin, he had felt as if someone had dealt him a blow on the head.

Only after the funeral was over and relatives who had never given him a thought for years and County dignitaries who previously had never accorded him anything but a distant bow now fawned on him, he realised the difference between being just a member of an important family and being the Head of it.

That unfortunately was not the only difference.

Even now after having laid awake all night thinking about it he could hardly credit that a pit of destruction had opened up at his very feet and he could think of no way that he could prevent himself from falling into it.

Soon after Christmas the General had been invited to stay at Windsor Castle and as usual he had said to his favourite aide-de-camp,

“You will come with me!”

Although Windsor Castle was cold in the winter and the less distinguished guests were often extremely uncomfortable, Captain Lytton Brook, as he was then, had accepted this duty with pleasure.

“We will not stay longer than we have to,” the General growled, “but I will be interested to see if the German Consort has made any improvements.”

“There are plenty to be made, sir,” the Earl had replied and the General had acquiesced with another growl.

Not only were the rooms of The Castle utterly cold but visitors to Windsor and the other Royal Residences soon became aware of the extremely inefficient way that they were run.

Frequently there were no servants to be found to show them to where they were sleeping and newcomers often found it almost impossible to find their way to bed when leaving the drawing room after dinner.

The Earl had learned that on one occasion the French Foreign Minister had spent nearly an hour wandering about the corridors at Windsor Castle trying vainly to identify his own bedroom.

Finally on opening what he hoped to be the right door he found himself looking at the Queen who was having her hair brushed by her maid before going to bed.

Another guest who was a friend of the Earl’s had told him that he had abandoned the search in despair.

“I went to sleep on a sofa in the State Gallery,” he said, “and, when a housemaid found me in the morning, she thought I must be drunk and fetched a Policeman!”

The Earl thought that this was extremely amusing and related it to the General, who capped it with a story about Lord Palmerston, who for obvious reasons was called ‘Cupid’.

When searching for the room of a very attractive lady, he found that he had stumbled into one where the occupant at the sight of him screamed for protection expecting him to be a rapist!

The gossip now was that with the help of Baron Stockmar the Prince Consort had set himself the formidable task of bringing order and decency to the Queen’s household.

But unfortunately as far as the Earl was concerned it was too late.

On that last visit he had gone up to his bedroom having enjoyed not only an excellent dinner with surprisingly good wines but also the dance that had taken place afterwards, which was far more amusing than standing about making desultory conversation in one of the State Rooms.

He had just finished reading one of the newspapers and was about to blow out the candles beside his bed when the door opened and to his astonishment Lady Louise Welwyn appeared.

For a moment in the candlelight because she was wearing a white negligée the Earl felt that she was a ghost.

Then, as she advanced towards the bed with a sensuous smile on her lips and an unmistakable glint in her dark eyes, the Earl knew that everything he had heard about her was true.

He had been told by his brother Officers that she was in the same category as Lady Augusta Somerset, the oldest daughter of the Duke of Beaufort.

She, as her father had once been warned, was a ‘very ill-behaved girl ready for anything that her caprice or passions excite her to do.’

There was a tremendous scandal when it had been rumoured that Prince George of Cambridge, a highly flirtatious but rather timid young man, had given her a baby.

This subsequently had proved to be untrue, but as tongues wagged and the Dowagers asserted acidly that there was no smoke without a fire Lady Augusta had faded from the picture and Lady Louise had taken her place.

She was extremely pretty and the Earl would not have been human if he had not accepted this ‘gift from the Gods’ or rather what Lady Louise offered him.

What was more, as he thought cynically later, it was a very cold night, his bed was inadequately supplied with blankets and the proximity of a lovely young woman certainly made it much warmer.

Actually he was surprised at the fire Lady Louise engendered both in him and in herself.

He had had many loves in his life, none of which was particularly serious and most of which cooled off rapidly.

It was not entirely fickleness on his part but rather because his Regimental duties made it very difficult for him to play the lover except spasmodically.

He had certainly not come to Windsor Castle with the thought of having a love affair.

He had danced twice with Lady Louise after dinner and, although he thought her attractive, he had actually found the conversation of another of the Queen’s Ladies-in-Waiting far more amusing.

But obviously her feelings about him were different.

“I wanted to tell you to come to me,” she said frankly, “but it was difficult to talk without being overheard, so I had to find my own way here.”

Remembering all the stories he had been told of other people’s experiences, the Earl could only think it extremely adventurous of her to have undertaken such a task even in search of a partner in passion.

He stayed at Windsor Castle for three nights on each of which Lady Louise found her way to his bedroom and, if he felt somewhat exhausted the next day, he thought it well worthwhile.

He had, however, said ‘goodbye’ on the last night without any heart-searching.

“Thank you,” he had said, “for making this the most delightful visit I have ever had to a Royal Residence.”

She did not reply, but drew his head down to hers and her lips, wild and demanding, aroused him once again.

He had, however, thought when he was back in his Barracks that one of the reforms the Prince Consort might well make would be to remove young women like Lady Louise and Lady Augusta from being in constant attendance upon the Queen.

The Earl had found the Queen charming and in his opinion exactly as a young Royal woman should be.

He liked the way she was obviously head-over-heels in love with her German husband and he liked too the fact that she was undoubtedly very young, unspoilt and anxious to be as she had said when she was told that she was to be Queen ‒ ‘good’.

He could understand that the atmosphere at Court had become, since the Queen’s marriage, quiet and dignified with a respect for formality that was, the Earl thought, exactly what a man required in his own home.

London catered for gentlemen of leisure and soldiers when they could afford it with diversions to please every type of exotic taste.

But it was a very different thing from letting what every decent man thought of as the ‘seamier side of life’, encroach on his family.

As it happens, the Earl, if he was honest, had been shocked by Lady Louise’s behaviour, not so much because she was promiscuous or offered him a fiery passion, but because it had taken place in what should have been the sanctity of one of Her Majesty the Queen’s homes.