A Season of Secrets (13 page)

Rozalind tucked a straying strand of blue-black hair back into her glossy chignon. ‘I mean royally rich. Prince Edward is expected to make an appearance tonight, isn’t he?’

‘He’s proposed himself.’

Rozalind looked mystified, and Thea reached for her other glove.

‘The Prince of Wales is never directly invited to these kinds of social functions.’ She smoothed the glove and reached for its partner. ‘If he wishes to attend a particular
ball or party, he proposes himself – and he’s proposed himself this evening, probably because his brother Bertie and his wife will be here.’

‘That’s the Duke and Duchess of York, right?’

‘Right.’

The correct names and titles of Britain’s royal family had never been Rozalind’s strong point. Bertie’s Christian name, for instance, was actually Albert and, until he’d
married Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon a little over a year ago, he had been known as Prince Albert. The title of Duke of York had been given to him on his marriage, and Rozalind couldn’t understand
why. Being addressed as a prince seemed, to her, far superior to being addressed as a duke. Similarly confusing was that Prince Edward was known to family and close friends as David.

Thea turned away from the cheval-glass. ‘There are thirty people invited to the pre-ball dinner, Roz, and it’s time to show our faces.’

Violet burst into the room, saying as if on cue, ‘Papa wants to know what on earth is keeping you!’ Her cream lace and satin dress was tied with a childish sash around the waist, had
no lavish ornamentation and, because she was still young, she wore no jewellery and her fiery red hair, crowned by a wreath of green leaves, streamed down her back in an unrestrained torrent of
waves and curls. ‘There are relatives in the dining room I’ve never even seen before – and most of them don’t look to be any fun – plus you never told me your
godfather was Chancellor of the Exchequer.’

‘Is he? I didn’t know. The last time I met him was when I was christened.’

As they all left the room Thea turned her attention back to Rozalind. ‘I think you’re in for a crashing disappointment where Prince Edward is concerned, Roz. He’s
head-over-heels in love with Freda Dudley Ward.’

‘And she is?’

‘The very pretty and petite wife of William Dudley Ward, a Liberal MP.’

‘Well, if she’s married, she’s not going to become Princess of Wales. When it comes to a wife, Prince Edward is going to have to look elsewhere – and so why not in my
direction? I think it’s about time the royal family stretched its wings and included an American.’

‘You’re too tall,’ Violet said from behind them. ‘You’re at least five foot eight and the Prince is only five foot four. I heard Olivia say so. I’m never
going to be too tall, though.’ She skipped past them towards the dining room, saying as she did so, ‘And when I become Princess Violet, you’ll have to curtsey to me
all the
time
!’

The obligatory pre-ball family dinner was just as boring as Thea had anticipated. Her late mother’s cousins lived on the Welsh Borders and she barely knew them. Her
godfather shook her hand, said it was a long time since they had last met, that it was very nice seeing her again and then turned his attention elsewhere.

Thea’s attention had long been elsewhere. It was focused on Hal. When the dinner was over there would be a very small hiatus and then the guests to her coming-out ball would begin
arriving, which meant Hal was in all probability somewhere in the house, ready to take note of distinguished arrivals. But whereabouts in the house?

Her father would know. Seated on her left, he was deep in conversation with the person across from him at the table. She toyed with her chicken fricassee, waiting for a lull in their
conversation. When it finally came she said, ‘Has Hal arrived, Papa?’

‘Most probably.’ He turned towards her, a lump rising in his throat. She looked so very beautiful in her shimmering white ballgown and with her mother’s pearls around her
throat. With every atom of his being he wished Blanche was at his side, sharing in his joy and pride.

‘Where will he be?’

He patted her hand. ‘Don’t worry about Hal, Thea. Broadbent has made sure he’ll be looked after.’

Thea looked towards their butler, who was supervising the waiting at table, wondering just what arrangements he had made for Hal. Presumably, as he was there to report on the ball, Hall would be
in the ballroom once the ball began, but what would he be wearing? He didn’t possess a formal suit, and certainly didn’t possess evening clothes. If the evening was going to be ghastly
for her, it was going to be even more so for Hal. She dug her nails deep into her palms. Royalty was going to be present, and Hal would not have the slightest idea of the protocol this entailed
and, even if he did know of it, would very likely ignore it.

She abandoned all pretence of eating and drinking. She had to find him. She had to ensure he didn’t enter the ballroom, for all she could see ahead, if he did, were disasters of the most
horrific proportions.

Abruptly – and before a footman could do so for her – she pushed her chair away from the table.

‘I’m sorry, Papa. Please make my excuses. I’ll be back in a few minutes, I promise.’

He shot out a hand to restrain her, but she was too quick for him. Aware of her guests’ startled bewilderment, she left the dining room as fast as her floor-length ballgown would allow,
followed, as she had known she would be, by Broadbent.

As he closed the dining room’s double doors behind him, and before he’d had time to ask how he could assist her, she said urgently: ‘Papa has arranged for Mr Crosby of the
Richmond Times
to be in attendance this evening. Has he arrived yet? And if so, where can I find him?’

‘If Mr Crosby has arrived in the last half-hour he will either be in the servants’ hall, where a cold collation has been left in readiness for him, or in one of the attic rooms set
aside for visiting valets.’

Broadbent’s voice was as impassive as his face – and would be when, on his return to the dining room, he gave an account of their conversation to her father.

Thea, aware that he would be doing so and that though her father would be justifiably cross with her, he would at least be relieved she hadn’t been taken ill, headed straight towards the
nearest green baize door and the back stairs leading down to the basement and the servants’ hall.

It was the room where the servants both ate and relaxed, but with a dinner for thirty now well under way and 300 guests about to arrive for the ball, no one was relaxing in it now. There was,
though, on the long deal table in the centre of the room, a covered plate and a place setting for one.

She paused in the doorway, her heart hammering. Did the untouched plate mean Hal hadn’t arrived yet? Or had he arrived and gone straight to the room set aside for him? She bit her lip.
Being found looking for Hal in the servants’ hall was one thing. Looking for him in a part of the house where the footmen and other male servants slept was quite another.

Her hesitation lasted barely a second. She had to find him. She had to tell him he needn’t suffer the embarrassment of the ball in order to write about it – she could give him all
the information he’d need. That way, although he would still see her in her dress (there was absolutely no way of avoiding that now), he wouldn’t see her in a setting that might well
convince him that the class gulf between them was unbridgeable.

It didn’t seem unbridgeable to her, because she wasn’t going to allow it to be so. Politically she thought of herself as just as much a socialist as Hal was. He had taken her to
Labour Party meetings in Richmond and, unknown to her father, she had continued attending them by herself in London. To her surprise she’d discovered that she wasn’t the only
upper-class girl with socialist sympathies.

‘We’re known as ballroom pinks,’ a girl who recognized her as a social equal had said when she had attended a meeting in Farringdon Street’s Memorial Hall. ‘Quite a
hoot, don’t you think?’

Thea hadn’t thought it a hoot. She’d thought the term both derisive and condescending and was certain that whoever had coined it had done so believing that girls of her class
couldn’t possibly be seriously committed to Labour Party principles.

As she ran once again in the direction of the back stairs she wondered if the expression was one Hal was familiar with. If it was, she was certain he would never apply it to her. He knew her too
well to imagine that she would play-act about something so important.

She ran up the first two flights of stairs, remembering the world of working-class poverty to which Hal had opened her eyes. There had been the Tetley family in Richmond. Their oldest son,
Wilfred, had been knocked down by a horse and cart. One of his legs had got stuck in the wheel spokes and, as the cart had moved forward, the rotation had twisted his leg so badly that it had had
to be amputated.

‘And now the lad’s stump is festering, and Joe Tetley is unemployed and they can’t afford the doctor,’ Hal had told her, flinty-eyed. ‘If you want to see real
poverty, Thea, come wi’ me and see what happens when folk like the Tetleys are still paying off the last doctor’s bill and he won’t come to ’em again before it’s been
paid – not even for a little lad who’s lost his leg.’

She had gone. In a house with no sanitation and no running water she had seen Wilfred’s father apply live maggots to his sobbing son’s putrid stump. She had been there when the
doctor’s debt collector had made his weekly visit to collect payment off the bill they had incurred at the time of the amputation. And she was there when, with tears streaming down her face,
Wilfred’s mother had pleaded with the debt collector that he put in a word for them with the doctor, and he had curtly told her that he could do no such thing.

Halfway up the third flight of narrow stairs she paused to let a startled housemaid who was coming down them squeeze past her. Thanks to her father – who, when Thea had told him of the
Tetleys’ ghastly situation, had promptly paid off the doctor’s previous bill and paid him for future visits – Wilfred had survived.

‘But he can’t do that for all the hundreds and thousands of other Wilfreds,’ Hal had said grimly. ‘Families like the Tetleys are caught in a trap of poverty they
can’t break free of. Things you take for granted – a doctor coming when you’re ill – can’t be taken for granted when you haven’t the money to pay for one.
That’s why we need a Labour government. So that things will change. So that provision for the sick and infirm can be put in place, and the vileness of the workhouse can be done away with
forever.’

She paused to get her breath on the small landing before the fifth and last flight of stairs. That conversation with Hal, and the incident with the Tetley family, had taken place three years
ago. Just over four months ago King George had appointed James Ramsay MacDonald as Britain’s first Labour prime minister. It was a minority government, reliant on Liberal goodwill for its
survival, but already it had passed legislation on housing, education and social insurance.

She hurried up the stairs leading to the topmost floor. Set aside for male servants, it was somewhere Thea had absolutely no right to be. There weren’t many bedrooms. Though extra footmen
had been drafted in for the evening, only two footmen were Fenton regulars, and as they were at present in attendance in the dining room she knew she ran no risk of running into them.

Panting from her long, hurried climb up the stairs, and knowing that she had very little time – when her guests began arriving, she absolutely had to be standing next to her father in
order to greet them – she hurried down the short corridor, giving an urgent rap on each door she passed. No one called out. No door opened. At the last door she didn’t bother knocking;
she simply yanked down on the handle and burst into the room. ‘
Hellfire!’

With water dripping from his hair, Hal spun round. He had been standing at the washbasin, bare-chested and with the braces of his trousers hanging loose.

As shocked by the sight of him semi-naked as he was by the sight of her in a ballgown, tiara and pearls, Thea fell back against the door.

‘I had to find you.’ She gasped the words, the breath tight in her chest as the door slammed shut.

She was aware of a small skylight window. And a bed, narrow and functional with a sheet and blanket tightly tucked in and clothes she recognized – a jacket and a waistcoat – flung
down on top of it. She was vaguely aware that she was leaning against other items of clothing: clothing that had been hung on the back of the door. Whoever it belonged to, she neither knew nor
cared.

The last time she had seen Hal in nothing but his breeches had been when they had been children, playing in the river. She, Olivia and Carrie would scream and splash in the shallows, their
skirts hitched high into their bloomers, while Hal would tear off his shirt and cavort in the deepest part of the river like a sea lion.

Seeing him in a state of undress then hadn’t had the same effect as it was having on her now. Her knees were so weak that she put her hands behind her, digging her fingers into what felt
like a gentleman’s tailcoat, in an attempt to stay upright.

‘Why did you need to find me?’ he demanded explosively, his body taut with tension. ‘This is a valet’s bedroom, Thea! You can’t be found in here!’

She wanted to say that she wasn’t going to be found; that every servant in the house was on duty floors below them, but her mouth was too dry, her throat too tight. She couldn’t even
remember why she had needed to see him. She was too overcome with desire; so confounded by it that she was speechless.

He had been watering his hair, trying to tame his tight black curls into some kind of submission. Droplets of water dripped onto a chest that was olive-skinned, wide and firmly muscled.

She wanted to be crushed against it. She wanted to sink her teeth into the strong curve of his shoulder; to lick the drops of water away, to taste every part of him. So overcome with longing
that she didn’t know how she was remaining upright, she finally found herself capable of speech, but not in order to tell him why she was there.