Read Online The Queen and Lord M by Jean Plaidy - Free Book Online Page A

had been only thirteen when he had first seen her – a strange elf-like creature, wild eyed and fey. She had looked like a slim young boy with her short hair and those enormous brilliant eyes.
    ‘William Lamb,’ she had said to him, ‘I have heard of you. Your mother talks a great deal of her brilliant son. He is good as well as being brilliant.’ She had laughed; he would never forget her laughter which had so often ended in hysterical tears. ‘Good people fascinate me,’ she had gone on. ‘Because you see I am far from good.’
    She had been thirteen and he twenty. She had mocked him for his virtuous way of life even then. Good William Lamb, she called him and the adjective was disparaging.
    ‘I fell in love with you before I met you,’ she told him once. ‘You were so good … and I was bad … so that made an attraction of opposites.’
    Looking back he wondered how he had allowed himself to become her victim, for that was what he had been. He should have been wiser but if he had been, what an experience he would have missed.
    She had been strange from her childhood. Her grandmother, Lady Spencer, had feared that her eccentricities amounted to madness and had consulted a doctor about her. That was when she was a child. So he should have been warned.
    His feelings for her were known. Caroline talked constantly and freely about her emotions and her experiences. She made no secret of the fact that she was in love with and intended to marry good William Lamb.
    The Bessboroughs, Caroline’s parents, were not very pleased. Who were the Lambs? demanded Lady Bessborough and her husband, the third Earl, echoed her words. Their origin was wrapped in obscurity but there was money there; and Lady Melbourne had a place in high society. She was the only daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke and came from Yorkshire. But who were the Lambs ? They had somehow acquired a fortune, but one could not see very far back into their ancestry and Caroline was the daughter of Frederick Ponsonby, third Earl of Bessborough, and his wife had been Lady Henrietta Spencer, daughter of an Earl. No, the Bessboroughs were not exactly delighted with the possibility of a match with a second son.
    Caroline was not one to take heed of parents; she was in love; she was reckless. It was William who had been the cautious one.
    ‘I would marry you tomorrow, Caroline, if I could afford it,’ he had told her. ‘But as a second son …’
    She had laughed at him, mocked him in that wildly passionate and disturbing way, so that in his wiser moments he had reasoned that it was just as well that he was not in a position to marry; but again and again he had gone back to her.
    In the year 1805 his future had been decided for him, for his eldest brother, Peniston, had died. Lady Melbourne, though devoted to her other children – Frederick, George and Emily – and eager to see them all well placed in the world – more than that, determined that they should be – could not be completely bowed down with sorrow because the removal of poor Pen, who was so much like his father, made the way clear for her favourite second son, William. He would now inherit title, wealth and what was more important, the power to do without a lucrative career, which would make life so much more interesting for him. William could do what she had always hoped he would, and what she was well aware he wanted himself, for no doubt with his personality and fluency he had an aptitude for the life – he could go into politics.
    So she drowned her sorrow in poor Pen’s death by making plans for William.
    As for William, now that he was no longer a second son he would inherit Lord Melbourne’s title and most of his wealth; he would doubtless make a brilliant career in Parliament. He would also marry, he told his mother, and his chosen bride was Lady Caroline Ponsonby, the daughter of the Earl of Bessborough.
    Lady Melbourne was not displeased. In fact, apart from the fact that Lady Caroline was