The Princess of Celle: (Georgian Series) by Jean Plaidy Page A

go away with her lover.
    Sophia helped a great deal during those days, often inviting Eléonore to her chamber for coffee and salt biscuits when she made her talk of France and her childhood and she herself talked of England … the country which she had never visited but to which, she assured Eléonore, she belonged more than to any other. She spoke fluent English. Her French was good but her English better. ‘My mother was English … an English Princess before she became Queen of Bohemia. It is in my blood … this affinity with England. And when the blood is royal …’ There were times when Eléonore suspected that Sophia was trying to underline the difference between them. Then she thought she was mistaken and George William’s devotion would make her forget everything else.
    Ernest Augustus insisted on studying the marriage documents with his lawyer.
    ‘No loopholes mind,’ he cried. ‘His renunciation stands.’
    ‘There is no intention to evade it, your Highness,’ he was told.
    ‘Make sure there is none … make doubly sure. My brother has always kept his word, but he was never before devoted to a woman as he is to that one. He’s capable of anything for her sake.’
    Sophia joined him. She was of his opinion. Carefully she studied the papers.
    ‘Well, my dear,’ she confided to Ernest Augustus, ‘I would call this in the language of the lady herself an anti- contract de mariage !’
    Ernest Augustus laughed with her. They saw eye to eye over this matter as naturally they should. George William was not going to be allowed to evade his agreement by one line; and George Lewis was destined to be the heir of Brunswick-Lüneberg.
    And so the morganatic marriage took place and the married pair continued at Osnabrück.
    ‘It is as well,’ said George William, ‘to do so for a while. It will stabilize your position.’
    Eléonore agreed.
    ‘Madame von Harburg!’ said Sophia. ‘Well, it is as good a name as any for a woman who, call herself what she will, is still not his wife.’
    ‘He wants her to have a title and he has an estate of that name,’ pointed out Ernest Augustus.
    ‘I am aware of that. But it makes no difference to me. She is Mademoiselle d’Olbreuse.’
    ‘I hope you will not call her by that name. It would cause trouble with George William if you did.’
    ‘My dear husband, I have no wish to let George William know my true feelings. That would indeed put him on his guard. We have to be careful.’
    ‘And he is as much in love with her as he ever was.’
    ‘Give him time to fall out of love!’ said Sophia with a snort of laughter.
    ‘Sometimes I wonder whether he ever will. He is not the man he once was. I scarcely recognize him as the carefree fellow who used to accompany me on my journeyings.’
    ‘You’ve both changed,’ Sophia reminded him.
    It was true. George William had once been the leader, now he was proving himself a man with a soft and sentimental streak in his nature. Ernest Augustus had changed too. The young man who had adored his brother and was eager to follow him in every way was learning to despise the one-time hero. Ernest Augustus would never love anyone to such an extent that he was ready to sacrifice everything. Sophia suspected that George William would do just that for his Eléonore and, illogically, while she applauded the growing shrewdness of Ernest Augustus, she longed for the devotion of which George William was capable.
    When George William presented his wife with a carriage drawn by six horses, Sophia declared that she must take firm action.
    ‘Why,’ she complained to Ernest Augustus, ‘when she rides out she appears to be finer than we are.’
    ‘It is George William’s wish.’
    ‘I can see that, and we shall have to show people that whatever fine jewels she wears, even if she has a carriage drawn by twelve horses she is not royal – nor can we treat her as such.’
    When Sophia drove out she never allowed Eléonore to ride in her