Because Aline was outstandingly beautiful, her parents had hoped that she would make a good marriage.

They had therefore made tremendous sacrifices so that they could take her to London for the Season and she could make her curtsey to King William IV and Queen Adelaide.

There was no doubt that the moment she appeared in the ballroom at Buckingham Palace, positively outshining the other debutantes and drawing the eyes of every man in the room, she had been a sensation.

The invitations had poured into the house that her parents had managed to rent cheaply for three months and from which she had been married, as if to a fanfare of trumpets.

It had been, Aline had thought later, astounding good luck that the Earl of Langstone had been on duty as Lord Steward on the night of her presentation and was actually standing behind the King when she made her curtsey.

William IV was famous for the remarks he made in what he thought was a sotto voce aside, but which were usually very audible.

As Aline swept gracefully down in front of him, he had said in what was meant to be beneath his breath,

“A pretty girl – very pretty!”

The Earl had replied somewhat pompously,

“Your Majesty’s taste is always impeccable.”

Aline had heard what they both said and, as she rose, had given a flashing smile that had illuminated her face and had captured the heart of the Earl of Langstone.

He was acquainted with her father and there was great excitement when an invitation arrived the following day asking them all to dinner at Langstone House in Grosvenor Square.

Aline knew, as her mother accepted, that this was the chance she had been waiting for.

In three weeks the Earl had proposed and she had accepted him. From that moment her future was golden in a way that she had never dared to hope it might be.

Aline had actually been shrewd, calculating and supremely confident of her own attractions from the time she was fifteen.

She had discovered then that men of every age were attracted to her and, when she smiled at her father’s contemporaries there was a ‘swimmy’ look in their eyes as they would humbly suggest that they should kiss her in a ‘fatherly fashion’.

She soon learnt that the word ‘fatherly’ meant something quite different from the way her own father interpreted it.

But it gave her confidence in herself and she was the most sophisticated and confident debutante who ever wore the three Prince of Wales’s feathers on her shining head.

The Earl was besotted with her and everything she did from making him the most envied man at Court to the father of two sons made him more and more proud.

He was at the same time extremely jealous.

But, as Aline showed in their intimate moments together none of the fiery passion he had known with his mistresses before marriage, he decided that as was only proper and to be expected of a lady, she had a cold temperament.