Queen in Waiting: (Georgian Series) Read Online Free PDF Page B

rest. Go now.’
    Caroline laid the pamphlet on the table and went out.
    They thought she understood nothing; they thought she was a child still.
    Magdalen told all her friends that very soon she would be theElectress. The Elector was going to marry her. He had a wife already? Oh, but the Elector believed that in certain circumstances a man should have two wives.
    Madam von Röohlitz had discreetly let it be known that anyone seeking honours should come to her. Magdalen would be able to arrange anything with the Elector she considered desirable, but as she would be very busily occupied her mother would shoulder some of her daughter’s responsibilities.
    Madam von Röohlitz was almost delirious with the new sense of power.
    Her suggestion of another marriage had worked very well. Magdalen had learned her part adequately; she had told her lover how much she desired to be his wife and he yearned to grant her wish.
    She assured herself that the plot was succeeding far better than at first she had thought possible. The fact was that the Electress was such a spineless creature that no one cared to defend her. Her only friends, the Brandenburgs, were far away; but she must impress on Magdalen the need to get this matter settled as quickly as possible.
    However, she was soon disappointed for although the Elector would willingly have married Magdalen, his ministers had refused to consider the question.
    ‘It strikes at the very tenets of our Faith,’ they declared. ‘It is quite impossible.’
    ‘Nothing is impossible if I decide it shall be done,’ shouted John George.
    ‘Your Highness,’ he was told, ‘a man who has one wife in the eyes of God cannot have another until her death. That is the law of the Church and the State.’
    ‘I will be my own law!’ he cried.
    But he knew they would not allow Magdalen to be his wife and he would remain married to that woman whom he had come to loathe… until death parted them.
    He was angry but not so deeply as Madam von Röohlitz. He still had his mistress even though he could not make her his wife. As for Madam von Röohlitz, what had become of the lucrative business she was going to build up by selling honours to those who could pay well enough for them?
    She shut herself in her apartments and would see no one… not even Magdalen.
    Till death parts them! she murmured and seemed to derive a little comfort from the thought.
    Someone was standing by Caroline’s bed.
    ‘Wake up! Your mother has sent for you.’
    Caroline scrambled up. It was dark and the candle threw the long shadow of her nurse on the wall.
    ‘What is it?’ she asked, her teeth beginning to chatter because she was conscious of a sense of doom.
    ‘Your mother has been taken ill and is asking for you.’
    ‘How… ill?’
    ‘Don’t talk so much. She’s waiting.’
    As she was hurried into her robe she was thinking: She is going to die. She will tell me what I have to do when I am alone.
    Then a feeling of desolation struck her and she knew that she had rarely been so frightened. She was so lonely. She had no friends in this alien court. Because she was her mother’s daughter nobody wanted her.
    ‘Hurry!’
    ‘I’m ready,’ she said.
    She was taken to her mother’s bedchamber where Eleanor lay in her bed looking exhausted, her skin yellow, her eyes glassy.
    ‘My child…’ she began and Caroline ran to the bed and kneeling took her hand.
    ‘Mamma, what has happened? You are ill.’
    ‘I have been very ill, daughter. I think I am going to die.’
    ‘No… no… you must not.’
    ‘I have no place in this world, child. Life has not been very kind to me. I trust it will be kinder to you.’
    Caroline gripped the bedclothes and thought: I will never let people treat me as they have treated you! But how prevent it? There must be a way. She was sure of it and she was going to find it.
    ‘Mamma, you are not going to die.’
    ‘If this attempt has failed, there will be others.’
    ‘Attempt…