The Eternal Collection

Chapter One ~ 1870-1

Dinner was finished and the ladies moved into the large salon with its crystal chandeliers and masses of exotic flowers.

They looked like beautiful swans with their gowns swept back into the new bustle, which on Frederick Worth’s instructions, had just supplanted the crinoline.

The bustle accentuated their tiny waists and above it tight bodices outlined their curved breasts and seemed to draw the eye to the low décolletage, which again had just come into vogue.

décolletageAn uninformed observer might well have been surprised at the sight of so many beautiful women congregated in one room if he had not known that their host was Prince János Kovác.

Everything in Alchester Castle seemed to have surrounding it an aura of wealth that was inescapable.

Only one or two of the older members of the large house party assembled there for the weekend could remember what The Castle had looked like before the Duke of Alchester had sold it to the Prince.

“One consolation,” said one Dowager glittering with a fortune in diamonds as she looked at the paintings hanging in the salon, “is that the Alchesters have not only been able to pay their bills but can now live in comparative comfort since they gave up The Castle.”

“My dear, can you remember what it was like?” her companion exclaimed.

“Bitterly cold in winter and the walls and ceilings damp because the roof leaked. Nothing has been repaired or mended for at least fifty years. And the food was quite inedible!”

The Dowager laughed.

“Rather different from tonight.”

There was silence as both of them thought how superb the dinner had been and how as course succeeded course the wines accompanying them had all been the joy of every epicure present.

It was inevitable that everybody should extol the Prince’s possessions until they ran out of adjectives.

Prince János Kovác, who reigned over thousands of acres in the East of Hungary, had come to England in the first place to hunt.

He had been so delighted with the sport he had enjoyed in the Shires that he had not only joined several famous packs but had also set up a Racing Stable, which had already begun to win the Classics one by one.

Had he been any other young man, he would have aroused the envy and hatred of those he competed with.

But Prince János was exceedingly popular not just with those who backed his horses and then cheered him past the Winning Post, but with the Jockey Club, of which he was now a member.

Those he entertained with lavishness and generosity acclaimed him as a true sportsman after every Englishman’s heart.

That invitations to his superb house parties were sought after went without saying and he contrived, someone said a little enviously, to pack more beauties into the square yard than any other host had ever managed to do.

Looking round the room at the ladies, whether they were blonde, brunette or red-headed, no one could doubt that if Paris himself had been present, he would have found it very hard to decide who he should award the Golden Apple to.

All the famous beauties of the time were known to the Prince and there was little doubt that they were fascinated, intrigued and often infatuated with him.

But strangely enough, even the most inquisitive gossipmongers of the Social world could find little to say about Prince János which was the least scandalous or even indiscreet.

However, that did not apply to his guests and, as Lady Esme Meldrum moved across the room to look at her reflection in one of the gold-framed mirrors, the Marchioness of Claydon followed her progress with hatred in her dark eyes.

There was no doubt that Lady Esme was exceedingly beautiful in the traditional mould that was accepted by all the artists of the time.

With her golden hair, her eyes the colour of a thrush’s egg and a pink-and-white skin like transparent porcelain, it was impossible to think that anyone could be lovelier.

She carried herself superbly and her figure was like that of a young Goddess.

She had been married when she was eighteen to Sir Richard Meldrum, with whom she had fallen head-over-heels in love.

Her parents had expected her to make a much better match, but, as Richard Meldrum was already spoken of as one of the most promising Ambassadors in Europe, they became more reconciled to their daughter’s choice.

However, after eight years of marriage to a husband who was increasingly occupied by his duties, Lady Esme was looking round for amusement.

It was fortunate for her that the Earl of Sherburn should recognise her attractions just at the moment when she had decided that he was without exception the most attractive man she had seen since she fell in love so many years ago with her husband.

Osmond Sherburn was rich, handsome, slightly bored with his success and extremely elusive when it came to the question of matrimony.

A large number of ambitious Mamas had thought that their daughters would grace the Sherburn jewels and make a very charming Chatelaine in the Earl’s ancestral home and in the other houses he possessed.

But then he was wise enough to devote his attention to married women with complacent husbands. He certainly annoyed a large number of them to the point where they longed to call him out for a duel.

But the Earl’s friendship with the Prince of Wales and his position in Society made them think twice and decide that to challenge him would be an undoubted mistake.

The Earl therefore enjoyed himself as he wished and he found that few women, if any, refused what he desired.

He had just had a brief but enjoyable affaire de coeur with the Marchioness of Claydon.

affaire de coeurAs was usual, he had begun to cool off first and he was in fact wondering how he could extricate himself from the clinging and very possessive arms of the Marchioness when Lady Esme came into view.

To say that he was bowled over would be an exaggeration for the Earl always kept his feet very firmly on the ground.

His most ardent and tempestuous love affairs were conducted with a certain amount of discretion on his part, which meant that his head always ruled his heart.

It was perhaps this more than anything else which made the women who fell in love with him aware that he was never completely their captive.

However ‘siren-like’ they might be and however alluring and attractive, they could not hold him forever.

“I cannot think why I lost Osmond,” one beauty had sobbed to the Marchioness before she and the Earl had really become aware of each other.

“Perhaps, dear, you were too subservient,” Kathie Claydon had replied.

“How can you be anything else with Osmond?” the beauty had then asked. “He is so dominating, so masterful and, because one is so thrilled by his supremacy, it is impossible to do anything but what he wishes.”

The Marchioness had thought privately that from what she had seen of the Earl, she was sure that he needed a challenge.

When they next met at a house party, at which neither of them was particularly interested in anybody else, she had looked at him with Sphinx-like eyes.

She had been deliberately provocative and at the same time intriguing, inviting and very mysterious and, as she had hoped, he had responded by being ardent and possessive.

But she had found that, after the Earl had become her lover, her willpower had gone and she could no longer challenge him as she had intended.

Instead she became entirely submissive and obedient to everything he asked of her.

She was very experienced at the art of loving and finally, when she realised that he was beginning to draw away, she became frantic.

She realised then that she loved the Earl as she had never loved anyone else in the whole of her life.

Her marriage had been arranged for her by her parents and, as she had been extremely gratified and delighted to be the Marchioness of Claydon, she had never found any pleasure in the more intimate moments of marriage.

It was only when, after giving her husband two sons and a daughter, she had taken her first lover that she discovered passion.

After that she had realised what she had been missing.

Even then she had never really been in love until she met the Earl.

Then, having fallen so deeply in love that she had the greatest difficulty in not begging him on her knees to run away with her, she had realised that she was just living in a ‘Fool’s Paradise’.

That Lady Esme should have supplanted her made it, she thought, even more bitter than if it had been some unknown beauty who did not belong to the same circle they inevitably saw each other almost every day and every evening.

The Prince of Wales had begun to enjoy a new freedom in the last few years.

He had gathered round him the younger and more amusing members of London Society and certainly the richest and the most raffish.

He had been married to the exquisitely beautiful Alexandra of Denmark in 1863, but by the summer of 1868, when their third child, Princess Victoria, was born, his love affairs had grown too numerous to be hushed up or ignored.

Two years earlier, when he was visiting St. Petersburg to attend the Wedding of Princess Alexandra’s sister, Dagmar, to the Czarevitch Alexander, there already were whispers that he was doing more than just flirting with the alluring beauties of the Russian Capital.

More tales trickled back from Paris, which he visited, again by himself, the following year.

And from then on, his conquests, or what was described as his ‘troupe of fine ladies’, followed one another in quick succession.

The first of many actresses in his life was the alluring Hortense Schneider. And after her there were beautiful women ranging from debutantes whom he saw at Presentation Balls to mature married beauties in the Beau Monde.

debutantesBeau MondeWhen the Prince of Wales then set the pace, a very different one from what his father and mother had considered conformable, who was not ready to follow him?

What was more, as one cynic remarked,

“Having invented infidelity, the Prince of Wales is now overwhelmed by it.”

If the primrose path was made very easy for the Heir to the Throne, it likewise became increasingly easier for other gentlemen who up to now had led outwardly most circumspect lives.

Indeed, until the Prince Consort died, at even a breath of scandal they had always been liable to be scolded and more or less ostracised from Court.

Now the barriers were truly well down and so the Prince of Wales’s love affairs were openly accepted, except by some of the more strait-laced families like that of the Marquis of Salisbury.

So everything became far easier and considerably more pleasant for the aristocrats of the Prince’s age and those who were a little older.

But this did not make it any easier for the Marchioness of Claydon to accept that, to put it bluntly, the Earl of Sherburn was bored with her.

She had tried to delude herself into believing that it was just a transitory mood and he would return to her.

But the intervals between his visits became longer and longer and his explanations that he had other pressing business to attend to were not convincing.

When it became clear that ‘business’ was Lady Esme Meldrum, the Marchioness’s anger and jealousy were almost uncontainable.

Never in her whole life had she hated anybody as much as she hated Lady Esme.

She would stare in the mirror for hours, wondering why her beauty had failed to hold the Earl when, in the opinion of most people, with her dark hair, flashing eyes and distinguished features, she was far more attractive than her rival.