Free The Captive of Kensington Palace by Jean Plaidy

I think he is beginning to feel that Bushy is his home.’
    The Duke said: ‘I trust she remembers that you take precedence over your Cambridge cousin.’
    ‘There is no precedence at Bushy, Papa. We never think of it. It’s great fun there.’
    ‘Well, don’t forget, son, that you come before him; and if there should be any attempt to set him ahead of you … at the table shall we say …’
    ‘There couldn’t be. We just sit anywhere.’
    The Duke shrugged his shoulders.
    ‘It’s all right while they’re young,’ said the Duchess. She turned to her son. ‘So your Aunt Adelaide has written to you, not to us?’
    ‘She always writes to me, Mamma.’
    ‘It is a little odd. But that’s your Aunt Adelaide.’
    He smiled and he was so beautiful when he did so that the Duchess, hard as she was, was almost moved to tears.
    ‘Oh yes,’ he said ‘that is Aunt Adelaide.’
    ‘So you want our permission to accept.’
    ‘Yes, Mamma.’
    ‘Then go along and write your letter and when you have written it bring it back and show it to me.’
    He went off and left them together.
    ‘So,’ said the Duke, ‘he goes off to mingle with the bastidry.’
    ‘It’s true. But he’ll come to no harm through them. Remember William and Adelaide may well be King and Queen.’
    ‘That’s true enough and it does no harm for George to be on good terms with them.’
    ‘What will happen if William gets the Crown? What of the family of bastards?’
    ‘They’ll plague the life out of him, I’ll swear.’
    ‘William is a fool over his bastards.’
    ‘That’s because he can’t get a legitimate child.’
    ‘But we are wise to let our George go to Bushy. You can imagine what would happen if we didn’t. Adelaide would become too fond of George Cambridge and you don’t know what schemes might come into her head.’
    ‘Schemes? How could Adelaide scheme?’
    ‘It may well be that Adelaide thinks George Cambridge might make a suitable husband for Victoria. Oh, I know you don’t think she will ever grow up to need a husband, but we have to take everything into consideration. What if Adelaide makes a match between young Cambridge and Victoria? What I mean Ernest is this: Suppose Victoria does come to the throne … suppose there is no way of stopping her, then her husband should be our George, not George Cambridge.’
    The Duke was silent. He could not with equanimity let himself believe that Victoria would come to the throne; but he saw the wisdom of his wife’s reasoning. Consort would be the second prize if it should prove to be impossible to achieve the first.
    The Duchess went on: ‘George must accept Adelaide’s invitation. I know we are determined that – if it is humanly possible – Adelaide shall never be Queen of England, but just suppose she is. Then she will be powerful; she leads William now. What she says will be the order of the day. So … as my second string … if George can’t be King of England he shall at least be the Queen’s Consort.’ The Duke regarded his wife shrewdly. She was right of course. He was going to fight with all his might to keep Victoria off the throne but if by some evil chance she should reach it, his George should be there to share it with her. ‘Oh yes, it is well to be on good terms with Adelaide,’ he said. The Duchess nodded. They saw eye to eye. Let him have his little philander with Graves’s wife. What did it matter? What was fidelity compared with the ability to share an ambition?

    It was very lonely in Kensington Palace without Feodora, but true to her word the older sister wrote regularly to the younger one and it was the delight of those days to have a letter from Feodora. Victoria read them all again and again and could picture the fairy-tale castle which was Feodora’s home. It was Gothic and seemed haunted; there were so many dark, twisted little staircases, so many tall rooms with slits of windows from which Feodora could look on Hohenlohe territory. Her husband