Caspar sighed. ‘I hope you know what you are doing, Carlotta.’
‘He has chosen me, and I think we will be happy.’
‘And it’s not just because he likes you better than an empress?’
‘I loved him first.’
‘Then I surrender. And I wish you joy, I really do. I am sure you will take America by storm.’
‘You’re not coming?’
‘No, Carlotta, you no longer have any need for my services, and I have duchesses to photograph. I shall be irresistible when I return to London as the man with all the details of the Lennox heiress’s scandalous elopement. Don’t worry, I shall do my best to console Augusta for your absence.’
Charlotte laughed and kissed him on the cheek. Then she remembered something. ‘But what about your trunk? You must ask them to take it off the boat.’
Caspar winked at her. ‘Really, Carlotta, what do you take me for? My trunk never left the hotel.’
* * *
The sky was still pink as Charlotte and Bay stood on the deck of the Britannic waiting for the ship to sail.
They were standing on the promenade deck, looking back over the city.
Charlotte put her hand over Bay’s. ‘Now that we are about to be married, you have to tell me.’
‘Tell you what?’
‘How Chicken got his name.’
Bay laughed and kissed her. ‘Darling Charlotte, I am afraid I will have to disappoint you. You see, if it wasn’t for Chicken I would never have known that you weren’t going to marry your American. I owe him my happiness, so I can hardly betray him by telling you his deepest, darkest secret.’
Charlotte squeezed his hand.
‘Besides, if I tell you, what will you have to look forward to?’
Charlotte smiled.
‘Oh, I’ll think of something.’
Author’s Note
My interest in Sisi began when, as a little girl, I was given a jigsaw puzzle of the famous Winterhalter picture of the Empress with diamond stars in her hair. When, many years later I was casting around for a subject on which to base a novel, I remembered Sisi and the more I learnt about her extraordinary bittersweet life, the more I wanted to write about her. This novel is based on fact: the cast of characters: Sisi, Bay, Charlotte, Earl Spencer even Chicken Hartopp are all real, even if their thoughts and feelings have been supplied by me. Sisi did come to England to hunt in 1875/6 and Bay Middleton was her pilot. Her hair did reach to the ground, and she did use raw veal as a face pack. But although the Fortune Hunter is grounded in fact, it is a novel and I have departed from the strict chronology of Sis’s life when I felt my story demanded it.
* * *
Elizabeth of Austria was the Princess Diana of nineteenth-century Europe: famously beautiful but unfulfilled in her marriage to Franz Joseph, she spent most of her life trying to find the happiness that evaded her. Her early married life was dominated by her overbearing mother-in-law, who tried to mould Sisi (Elizabeth’s nickname) into a perfect Hapsburg queen. But Sisi hated the stifling formality of the Austrian court, where every courtier had to come from four generations of aristocrats. She was politically liberal and supported the political aspirations of the Hungarians, who had rebelled against Hapsburg rule in 1848. For these reasons, Franz Joseph was not altogether sorry that Sisi spent so much time abroad travelling though Europe in her private train, or visiting her villa in Corfu on her private yacht. Sisi loved to hunt – partly for the adrenalin rush and partly, of course, because she looked so magnificent in her riding habit.
The second half of Sisi’s life was marred by tragedy. Her only son Rudolph ended his life in a suicide/murder with his teenage mistress at his hunting lodge in Mayerling in 1889. Elizabeth wore black for the rest of her life, which came to an end in 1898 when she was stabbed to death by an Italian anarchist as she was boarding a steamer on Lake Geneva. The anarchist was hoping to assassinate a member of the Russian royal family. Franz Joseph lived on until 1916 – the assassination of his nephew and heir Archduke Ferdinand was the event that triggered the First World War.
Bay Middleton (a very distant relation of the future Queen of England) was famous for being the ‘hardest rider in England’. He got his nickname from a Derby winner. He spent five years with Sisi ‘piloting’ her through the hunting seasons in England and Ireland. Their relationship has been the source of speculation ever since. It certainly aroused her son’s Rudolph’s jealousy. According to the Kenneth McMillan ballet ‘Mayerling’ it precipitated Rudolph’s descent into madness and suicide.
Very little is known about Charlotte Baird apart from the fact that she and Bay did marry. I have given her an interest in photography, an art form which was popular with intelligent young women at that time.
Acknowledgements
I couldn’t have written this book without the help and support of some people:
My two outstanding editors, Imogen Taylor and Hope Dellon, my agent Caroline Michel, who is as good as she is beautiful, Georgina Moore and her team at Headline, Dori Weintraub and her team at SMP, Emma Holtz and Silissa Kennedy for expert fielding, Rachel Street who is a brilliant copyeditor as well as being a superlative assistant, Penny Mortimer for the hunting edit, Janet Reibstein for her ability to spot the most important thing, Sam Lawrence who kept me going in a difficult year, Andrea Wong for her enthusiasm and kindness, my friends Shane Watson and Emma Fearnhamm for their patience, Jason Goodwin for the rewrite, my sisters Tabitha, Chloe and Sabine for their support, Richard Goodwin for his excitement on reading the first draft, my daughters Ottilie and Lydia for being my keenest supporters and fiercest critics and my husband Marcus for being the rock on which my flimsy edifice is built.
Also by Daisy Goodwin
The American Heiress
THE FORTUNE HUNTER. Copyright © 2014 by Daisy Goodwin Productions. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
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First published in Great Britain by Headline Review, an imprint of Headline Publishing Group
First U.S. Edition: August 2014
eISBN 9781466842243
First eBook edition: June 2014
The Fortune Hunter Page 42
