“A thing of beauty,” she whispered, gazing up at him—and she didn’t mean the spectacular building.
He knew just how she felt.
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Next up, read Chrystabel and Joseph Ashcroft’s love story in A Secret Christmas, a special holiday prequel novel. Read on for an excerpt!
To learn more about the real people, places, and events in Rose, turn the page for my Author’s Note…
BONUS MATERIAL
Author’s Note
Explore the Chase Family World
Excerpt from A Secret Christmas
Books by Lauren Royal
A Dozen Free Books
Contest
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Jewels of Historical Romance
Contact Information
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 I 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 Rose 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 Rose, 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
