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acquiring various other estates, and he was fully aware that aristocratic lifestyles frequently needed injections of new money to maintain them.
    The first clause stipulated that Alfred de Rothschild would pay
£
12,000 yearly to Lady Carnarvon, or Lord Carnarvon if she died before him, throughout his life. A Highclere footman was paid
£
22 a year at that time, so the multiplier would put the value of this annual income at
£
6.5 million in today’s terms. This in addition to the fact that LordCarnarvon had asked Alfred to clear his substantial debts before the wedding took place so he could start married life with a clean sheet. Provision was also made for any children born to the couple. Alfred readily agreed to everything and the way was eased for these two young people to live in their gilded world, with every sort of extravagance and delight to amuse them.

4
A Triumph for Her Ladyship
    Almina arrived at Highclere as an outsider, but with an enormous sense of excitement and self-confidence. How could she not, when recent events suggested that she had finally managed to combine the social prestige brought by her marriage with the fabulous wealth of her father? Now she was sure of her place and her role, for the first time in her life. She had a title that told her who she was: as of now, Almina Wombwell was the 5th Countess of Carnarvon.
    But she was only nineteen and this role, this title, was so much bigger than she was. She was the Countess, but she was also a teenager, a high-spirited girl sure of herself one moment, nervy the next. Moving into Highclere was, if not humbling (Almina was never in her life humbled), definitelyoverwhelming. Relics of Almina’s desire to impress herself upon the place – literally – are still visible all over the Castle. She engraved and stamped her new initials and the Carnarvon coronet on innumerable household accessories, from visitor books and notebooks, to stationery, travelling trunks, linens, menu cards and calling cards.
    She brought trunks full of clothes and set about installing her belongings in the bureaus and cupboards of Highclere. She also brought with her one trusted personal servant, Miss Mary Adams, her lady’s maid, who helped her to unpack and to settle in. She, alone of all the servants, was allowed to sleep on the same storey as her mistress. Mary was an ally and a friend, the other stranger at Highclere who was her eyes and ears in the servants’ hall, a bridge between the staff and their new mistress. In those first few weeks after her marriage, whilst touring the estate, meeting the local gentry and the tenants, finding her feet, Almina grew to rely completely on Mary.
    Almina had always been the special child, doted upon; lavished with love by her mother and with money by her father. Her wedding had enshrined her own sense of her importance. But actually, now she had signed up for life as the Countess of Carnarvon, she had to adjust to living in a world in which she was not the centre of the universe. The furniture and the superb paintings didn’t really belong to her, or even to her husband, but to the house, to Highclere as a presence in its own right. The Castle, layered with decorations reflecting the taste of its inhabitants over the years, had to be sustained across the generations. When Almina arrived, the Drawing Room was in need of refurbishment. Alfred de Rothschild had givenher bolts of green silk as part of his wedding present and she used them to cover the walls. Following his taste, she redecorated in the style of the
ancien régime
, with gilded ceilings and doors. The green silk damask had been inspired by Marie Antoinette’s sitting room at Versailles. Meissen porcelain was displayed on the eighteenth-century furniture that Almina loved.
    Six weeks after their wedding, Lord Carnarvon left Highclere to go to Scotland to shoot, as was his custom once the grouse season opened on 12 August. Given his newly improved bank balance, he decided