The Gentleman's Scandalous Bride

by Lauren Royal

  If you'd like to learn more about the real people, places, and events in The Gentleman’s Scandalous Bride, turn the page for Lauren’s Author's Note...

  BONUS MATERIAL

  Author’s Note

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  Excerpt from The Cavalier’s Christmas Bride

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  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  Dear Reader,

  Perhaps, like me, when you read a historical novel you wonder which characters besides the king and queen might actually have lived. I hope you won’t be disappointed to learn that all of Rose’s suitors were invented. All of King Charles’s mistresses, however, were real people.

  Charles II kept many mistresses throughout his life. Although some were disliked by his subjects while others were accepted, never in English history has another royal mistress been as popular as “pretty, witty” Nell Gwyn.

  Whether Nell was actually born in a brothel is open to question, but legend has it she came into the world in Covent Garden in February 1650. As a young girl, Nell sold oranges at the Theatre Royal and began as an actress there in 1665. Charles saw her on stage, and by 1668 she became his mistress. Nell bore the king two sons, Charles in 1670, later the Duke of St. Albans, and James in 1671. Charles never tired of Nell, and on his deathbed, his last request to his brother is said to have been “let not poor Nelly starve.”

  In opposition to Nell’s popularity, Louise de Kéroualle was universally disliked. Born in 1649 in France, Louise first came to England in 1670 as a maid of honor to Charles’s sister, Henrietta. Charles’s interest was apparent, and when Henrietta died later that year, Louise returned to London and was established as the king’s mistress, receiving Louis XIV’s congratulations on her success. After giving birth in 1672 to another of Charles’s sons named Charles, later the Duke of Richmond, she was created the Duchess of Portsmouth.

  Though Louise’s unpopularity was due mostly to her being French and Catholic, she was also known to be wildly extravagant with the king’s money. Her apartments at Whitehall were rebuilt three times, and John Evelyn said they had “ten times the richness and glory beyond the Queen’s.”

  Hortense Mancini, the Duchess Mazarin, was one of five Italian sisters all noted for their great beauty. Two of them became mistress to Louis XIV. Born in Rome in 1646, Hortense moved to France at an early age. Charles proposed to her while there, but her uncle, Cardinal Mazarin, didn’t think the exiled king’s prospects were good. She later married and then left her husband, arrived at Charles’s court in 1675, and became his mistress shortly thereafter. Considered an “adventuress,” she was known for her compulsive gambling, her great skill with swords and guns, and her inclination to wear men’s clothing.

  Christopher Wren was a real person, too. Best known for rebuilding London’s churches and St. Paul’s Cathedral after the Great Fire, he also designed the Royal Observatory and the Royal Hospital at Chelsea. In 1669, Charles II appointed him Surveyor General of the King’s Works, making him responsible for supervising all work on the royal palaces. Wren was knighted in 1673.

  Besides churches, palaces, and other famous buildings, Wren also built a family home for himself beside the Thames in Windsor—the house we used as Kit’s house in this book. Built in 1676, the home is now known as Sir Christopher Wren’s House Hotel. If you’re lucky enough to visit, ask to view the original “Oak Room” (Kit’s dining room), and see if you find it as impressive as Rose did. Wren’s original paneled master bedroom can be booked for an overnight stay. To find the hotel from the castle, just walk down the hill to the river, as Kit and Rose did in the story.

  Many other settings in The Gentleman’s Scandalous Bride are also real places you can visit, and although Kit is a fictional character, all the projects he worked on in the book were actually built for Charles II by different men.

  Thomas Wolsey, Cardinal and Lord Chancellor of England, began building Hampton Court Palace in 1514. The best surviving part of Wolsey’s palace is Base Court with its forty guest lodgings. By 1528, Wolsey had fallen from favor and was forced to relinquish Hampton Court to Henry VIII, who remodeled the palace to suit himself. Henry’s personal lodgings have since been demolished, but you can still see his kitchens, his great hall, and his astronomical clock in Clock Court.

  The later Tudors changed very little of the palace, and neither did the early Stuarts or Oliver Cromwell. So the next king to make a major mark on Hampton Court was Charles II. Among other projects, Charles completely redesigned the gardens and also commissioned a set of apartments for his mistress Barbara, the Duchess of Cleveland. This new building, which I have Kit building in The Gentleman’s Scandalous Bride, is said to have looked completely different from the Tudor gothic architecture of Henry VIII’s day.

  In 1689, soon after William and Mary took the throne, they followed Charles’s architectural lead and asked Christopher Wren to rebuild Hampton Court Palace in a more modern style, to compare with the likes of Versailles and the Louvre. The old Tudor buildings around Cloister Green Court were demolished and replaced by Wren’s elegant Fountain Court. The Duchess of Cleveland’s lodgings by the privy garden were destroyed at this time as well, and little is known of them now, as no building plans survived.

  As for Hampton Court’s maze, the one you can visit there now was designed in 1690 for William III, but it possibly replaced an earlier maze, perhaps laid out for Henry VIII. In an inventory of Cromwell’s goods at Hampton Court dated 1659, there is mention of a cistern that serves “the fountaine and Maze.” Since Charles II was restored to his throne the following year, perhaps the maze still survived at the time of Kit and Rose’s story. In any case, we had fun imagining them exploring it!

  Hampton Court Palace is open to the public seven days a week year-round. Just a thirty-minute train ride from Central London, it’s a perfect day trip back in time for anyone visiting the capital.

  The remodeled east end of the Royal Chapel at Whitehall Palace in London was indeed designed by Christopher Wren—the sketch he made that Kit showed Rose still survives. The actual work was carried out by Thomas Kinward, Robert Streater, and Henry Phillips, for a total cost of a little more than £71. The fire in The Gentleman’s Scandalous Bride was entirely our invention, but would surely have raised the price of construction.

  Sadly, Whitehall Palace was destroyed by fire in 1698. Although a few walls and other original bits of the palace survive as parts of the current government buildings, the only intact part of Whitehall today is Inigo Jones’s exquisite Banqueting House. Completed in 1622 and renowned for its architecture and magnificent ceiling painted by Sir Peter Paul Rubens, the building is also famous for being the scene of Charles I’s execution.

  In Charles II’s time, the Banqueting House was used as the ceremonial chamber of the court and the scene of grand receptions. Of the queen’s birthday celebration on the 15th of November in 1677, which Rose and Kit attend in the final chapter of their story, John Evelyn noted in his diary: “The Queene’s birth-day, a greate Ball at Court, where the Prince of Orange and his new Princesse daunced.”

  The Banqueting House is open to the public Monday through Saturday except for bank holidays, but it sometimes closes on short notice for government functions. This happened the first time we tried to visit, so do check ahead of time!

  Of all the projects we had Kit working on in this book, the only one that can be seen today is the King’s Dining Room at Windsor Castle. In real life it was designed by architect Hugh May, who did extensive renovations for King Charles between 1675 and 1678. We chose this particular room for Kit not only because it was actually completed in the year of our story, 1677, but also because it’s the most intact example remaining of Charles’s rooms, including the original wall carvings by Grinling Gibbons and Henry Phillips and the whimsical ceiling painted by Antonio Verrio.
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  Windsor Castle is the largest and oldest occupied castle in the world. It has stood for over 900 years, since William the Conqueror chose the site a day’s march from the Tower of London. The castle has been inhabited continuously and altered by each sovereign. Some concentrated on strengthening the site against attack, while others, living in more peaceful times, helped create the palatial royal residence you can visit today.

  Windsor Castle is open seven days a week year-round, but there are periods, especially in June and December, when the queen is in residence and the State Apartments are closed to visitors.

  Trentingham Manor was inspired by the Vyne, a National Trust property in Hampshire. Built in the early sixteenth century for Lord Sandys, Henry VIII’s Lord Chamberlain, the house acquired a classical portico in the mid-seventeenth century and contains a grand Palladian staircase, a wealth of old paneling and fine furniture, and a fascinating Tudor chapel with Renaissance glass. The Vyne and its extensive gardens are open for visits April through October.

  I hope you enjoyed The Gentleman’s Scandalous Bride! Next up in The Chase Brides series is Chrystabel and Joseph Ashcroft’s story in The Cavalier’s Christmas Bride, a special holiday prequel novel. Please read on for an excerpt as well as more bonus material!

  Always,

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  LAUREN AND DEVON’S NEXT BOOK IS…

  The Cavalier’s Christmas Bride

  The Chase Brides

  Book Eight

  Christmas has been outlawed by the new Commonwealth government—but that won’t stop Lady Chrystabel Trevor from embracing the holiday spirit. When she finds herself snowed in with handsome and intriguing Joseph Ashcroft, the Viscount Tremayne, merrymaking leads to mayhem. In a time of fear and oppression, can the magic of Christmas bring two hearts together?

  Read an excerpt…

  Grosmont Grange, England

  December, 1651

  LADY CHRYSTABEL Trevor adored Christmas.

  Or at least she had until this year.

  She frowned as her sap-sticky hands wove yet another wreath from the greenery she and her younger sister had collected. “Just five more days,” she said, thinking of all the decorating they still had to do.

  Arabel meticulously measured two loops of red ribbon. “But just four days until Christmas Eve.”

  “Yes, and we must be ready by Christmas Eve.” Chrystabel sighed as she eyed the enormous pile of boughs they’d cut and trimmed. “I cannot believe how long it took to make the garlands. This isn’t easy alone.”

  “You’re not alone, Chrys.” Arabel sounded sweetly sympathetic. “I’m still here. Matthew’s still here.”

  “Martha and Cecily aren’t here.” Martha and Cecily were their older sisters. “And neither is Mother.” Not that Mother had ever helped her girls prepare for Christmas, anyway. She’d been a rather uninvolved parent, leaving her children to be raised by nursemaids. But this was their first Christmas without her, and having her home and not participating had been better than not having her with them at all. “It makes me sad that we never see her.”

  “Just pretend she’s dead,” Arabel suggested airily.

  Arabel said everything airily. Pretty, fifteen-year-old Arabel was dark-haired and dark-eyed and statuesque—like Chrystabel and the rest of the Trevors—and she was the happiest person Chrystabel knew. Nothing ruffled her. She could find the good side of anything.

  Unabated cheerfulness like that set Chrystabel’s teeth on edge.

  “Mother is not dead,” she pointed out unnecessarily. “I could forgive her if she were dead.” Their father had died, after all—fighting for the king in the Civil War—and Chrystabel had never blamed him for leaving them. Death was sad but normal.

  But there was nothing normal about being alive and not even an hour’s ride away—and ignoring your own children.

  Especially at Christmas.

  Chrystabel set her jaw. “I will never forgive her for marrying that…that man.”

  That man was the Marquess of Bath, and he had no interest in the children of his second wife. The sorry and shocking thing was that Mother seemed similarly disinclined to spend time with her first family. She was too busy doting on her new husband and raising his children. Raising his children. Even though she’d barely deigned to notice Chrystabel and her brother and three sisters—the five children she’d given birth to—all the years they were growing up.

  “You cannot let Mother’s selfishness ruin our Christmas,” Arabel chided. “We’re not children anymore. Let it go. I have. Martha and Cecily have.”

  “Martha and Cecily are married with children of their own. They don’t need a mother anymore.”

  “And neither do you. You’re nearly seventeen and have been running this household for over a year—to perfection, I might add.” Arabel handed her a neat red bow. “Here. Attach it, and that’s one more wreath finished.”

  “Still twelve more to make,” Chrystabel said with a sigh.

  Arabel’s laugh sounded suspiciously like a snort. “You’re the one who insists upon decorating this entire, huge house.”

  Arabel was right about that—and more. Chrystabel knew she needed to dispense with the anger she felt toward their mother. It served no purpose. She would take a lesson from her less-than-ideal childhood: When she had her own family, she would do better.

  Right then and there, she determined to do better.

  “Look.” For once, Arabel wore a frown. She motioned out the window. “Soldiers. Parliamentarian soldiers.”

  Hearing hoofbeats approach down Grosmont Grange’s long, icy, hard-packed drive, Chrystabel dragged her thoughts from her mother to follow her sister’s gaze. Sure enough, the horsemen wore breastplates over buff leather coats, with lobster-tailed pot helmets on their heads. Oliver Cromwell’s Dragoons.

  They couldn’t be bringing good news to a Royalist family.

  Since the war had ended in September, the formerly fighting Dragoons were now roaming the countryside, enforcing Cromwell’s strict Puritanical laws: no music, no dancing, no theater, no sports, no swearing, no drinking, no gaming…no Christmas.

  No Christmas!

  “They mean to catch us preparing for Christmas!” Chrystabel ran from the chamber and down the corridor to her brother’s study. “Matthew, open up!” Without waiting, she pushed open the door and burst inside. “Dragoons! Here to catch us celebrating Christmas!”

  Arabel had already scooped up as much greenery as she could carry and was racing past the open door. “Where should we put it?” she called.

  “Under your bed, then go back for more—we’ll put it under mine!” Chrystabel turned back to Matthew. “We’ll hide everything. You answer the door when they arrive.”

  It took three trips to and from the drawing room to hide all the Christmas evidence beneath their two beds. Once the sisters were finished, they shut the door to Chrystabel’s room and plopped onto the mattress side by side, pretending to be reading books.

  “Surely they won’t look under our beds,” Arabel whispered in her usual optimistic manner.

  “We can hope not,” Chrystabel muttered back.

  Time passed while she listened to her own heartbeat and reread the same paragraph thirteen times.

  “I don’t hear anyone searching the house,” Arabel said. “And they were wearing heavy boots.”

  Chrystabel shrugged. “As you recently pointed out, it�
��s a big house. They’ll get here.”

  They both jumped when a sharp knock came at the door.

  Chrystabel steeled herself. “Enter if you must.”

  “I must,” their brother said as the door swung open.

  “Matthew! Are they gone?”

  “They are.” He suddenly looked older than his twenty-one years. His handsome face appeared ashen. For the first time, he looked like the Earl of Grosmont to her, not just her big brother who unfortunately had inherited early.

  “Why did they not search my chamber?”

  “They didn’t search anything.” He held up a letter with a big, broken red seal hanging from it. A very official-looking letter. “They brought this.”

  “It wasn’t about Christmas, after all?” Chrystabel felt foolish for her earlier panic.

  “What does the letter say?” Arabel asked.

  Leaning against the doorpost as though he couldn’t quite hold himself up, Matthew cleared his throat and read. “‘I thought fit to send this trumpet to you, to let you know that, if you please to walk away with your family and staff, and deliver your estate to such as I shall send to receive it, you shall have liberty to take one day to gather and carry off your goods, and such other necessaries as you have. You have failed to pay the fine assessed by the Committee for Compounding; if you necessitate me to bend my cannon against you, you may expect what I doubt you will not be pleased with. I await your present answer, and rest your servant, O. Cromwell.’”

  “Good heavens.” Arabel’s big brown eyes had never looked wider. “Did you give the soldiers your answer?”

  “I had to. They wouldn’t leave without it.”

  “And what was your answer?” Chrystabel asked impatiently. “What did you say?”

  “That we’ll leave, of course. Tomorrow, as he ordered. What else could I say?” Matthew straightened up. Some color had returned to his face. “The fine is a third of the value of this estate. I don’t have that much money—Father spent all our savings on the war.”