Queen Charlotte by Julia Quinn EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
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- Author: Julia Quinn
- Language: English
- Genre: Regency Historical Romance
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- Size: 2 MB
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Essex, England
The London Road
8 September 1761
Like all members of the German aristocracy, Princess Sophia Charlotte of
Mecklenburg-Strelitz was in possession of a great many names. Sophia for
her maternal grandmother, Sophia Albertine of Erbach-Erbach, a countess
by birth and a duchess by marriage. Charlotte for her father, Charles Louis
Frederick of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, who was born a second son and had died
before he could assume the position of head of the family. Then there were
the many and sundry double-barreled lands and properties that made up her
heritage. Mecklenburg-Strelitz and Erbach-Erbach, of course, but also
Saxe-Hildburghausen, Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, and, if one wanted to
go back far enough, Waldeck-Eisenberg.
She enjoyed all of her names, and she was proud of every last one, but
the one she liked best was Lottie.
Lottie. It was the simplest of the bunch, but that wasn’t why she liked it.
Her tastes rarely ran to the simple, after all. She liked her wigs tall and her
dresses grand and she was quite certain no one in her household appreciated
the complexities of music or art as keenly as she did.
She was not a simple creature.
She was not.
But she liked being called Lottie. She liked it because hardly anyone ever
used it. You had to know her to call her Lottie.
You had to know, for example, that in spring her favorite dessert was
raspberry-apricot torte and in winter it was apple strudel, but the truth was
she had a taste for fruit, and for sweets, and any sweet made of fruit was her
absolute favorite.
People who called her Lottie also knew that when she was a young girl
she’d loved to swim in the lake by her home (when it was warm enough,
which it rarely was). They also knew that when her mother had banned the
practice (stating that Charlotte was too old for such frivolity), Charlotte had
not spoken to her for three weeks. Peace was reestablished only after
Charlotte had written a surprisingly thorough legal document outlining the
rights and responsibilities of all involved parties. Her mother was not
immediately persuaded by Charlotte’s arguments, but her older brother
Adolphus had intervened. Charlotte had made a good case, he’d said. She’d
shown logic and intelligence, and surely that should be rewarded.
Adolphus was the one who’d coined the pet name Lottie. And that was
the true reason it was her favorite name. It had been bestowed upon her by
her favorite brother.
Pardon, her former favorite brother.
“You give the appearance of a statue,” Adolphus said, smiling as if she
had not spent the last three weeks begging him not to marry her off to a
stranger.
Charlotte wanted to ignore him. She’d have liked nothing better than to
never utter a word in his direction for the remainder of both of their lives,
but even she recognized the futility of such stubbornness. And besides, they
were in a carriage in the southeast of England, and they had a long ride both
ahead and behind them.
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