Read The Stuart Sapphire Online
Authors: Alanna Knight
The Stuart Sapphire (22 page)
The events portrayed in this book are entirely fictitious and I have taken certain liberties with the historical characters, based on biographical accounts of their lives.
The Prince Regent became George IV on the death of his father ‘mad’ King George III in 1821. His hedonistic lifestyle continued with overindulgence in food, wine and mistresses until his death in June 1830.
Maria Fitzherbert, abandoned by the prince, continued to live in Brighton until her death in 1837 and lies buried in St John the Baptist’s Catholic Church.
John Townsend, most celebrated of Bow Street officers, thief-taker for thirty-four years, continued his colourful career working for the Bank of England and for individual prosecutors.
Beau Brummell finally fell from royal favour and in 1813 fled to Calais to escape his creditors. Continuing a life of dissipation and gambling debts, he died in a pauper’s lunatic asylum in 1840.
Princess Charlotte found true love at last. In 1816, aged twenty, she married Prince Leopold of Saxe-
Coburg-Saalfeld
,
a brief happiness and romance which presaged that of Albert and Victoria, his nephew and niece, a generation later. In 1817 she sadly died after giving birth to a well-formed but stillborn son.
The Stuart Sapphire, to be viewed to this day in the Queen’s crown, was returned by Charlotte’s heartbroken husband to the Prince Regent, who, in company with the rest of Britain, mourned her with all the passion he had lacked in loving her during her short life.
Had Charlotte and her son survived, however, the Georgians would have continued to rule over us and we might never have known the Victorian age.
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Alanna Knight has written more than sixty novels, three non-fiction titles on R.L. Stevenson, two true crime books, numerous short stories and several plays since the publication of her first book in 1969. Born and educated in Tyneside, she now lives in Edinburgh. She is a member of the Scottish chapter of the Crime Writers’ Association, and a founder member and Honorary President of the Scottish Association of Writers and of the Edinburgh Writers’ Club.
T
HE
R
OSE
M
C
Q
UINN SERIES
The Inspector’s Daughter
Dangerous Pursuits
An Orkney Murder
Ghost Walk
Destroying Angel
Quest for a Killer
Deadly Legacy
T
HE
I
NSPECTOR
F
ARO SERIES
Murder in Paradise
The Seal King Murders
Murders Most Foul
T
HE
T
AM
E
ILDOR SERIES
The Gowrie Conspiracy
The Stuart Sapphire
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First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2005.
This ebook edition published by Allison & Busby in 2013.
Copyright © 2005 by A
LANNA
K
NIGHT
The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–0–7490–1447–6