The Golden Prince (11 page)

It was after that that the fibbing had started—something he thought Marigold still did—and that her urgent need for attention
first appeared. She was forever putting on impromptu theatricals, singing and dancing for anyone she could persuade to sit down and watch her. Even now if she could capture an audience she would put on a
tableau vivant
, transforming herself into Hiawatha with the aid of a magnificent feather, or Joan of Arc, eyes raised up to heaven, one of her grandfather’s antique swords clasped fervently in her hands. Another favorite subject was the beheading of Mary, Queen of Scots. Kneeling with a scarf around her eyes, her arms stretched out behind her, she always attempted extra realism by persuading Fizz or Florin to hide under skirts as the Queen’s little dog had done.

Rose’s bafflement when she had first suspected Marigold of flirting with Lord Jethney—a man old enough to be her father—had not been shared by Rory. He found it perfectly plausible that when it came to falling in love, Marigold would seek a father figure.

He rose to his feet. “It’s time I was getting back to London. When Marigold is next staying at St. James’s Street, I’ll keep an eye on her for you—and I’ll let you know of any inside gossip I get about your friend, Daphne.”

Rose stared at him. “Daphne? Daphne Harbury? Why on earth should there be gossip about her? I don’t know what you’re talking about, Rory.”

“You didn’t read yesterday’s
Times
?” He frowned. “No, I can see you didn’t. Daphne Harbury was arrested after a suffragette demonstration. She’s to appear at Bow Street Court tomorrow and according to what was in the newspaper, it seems she’ll very probably receive a prison sentence.”

Rose paled. “Daphne is the daughter of an earl. Surely, considering who her father is, she’ll be let off with a fine?”

“I’d like to think so, Rose, but I very much doubt it. The demonstrations have become far too violent, and other aristocratic young women have been imprisoned—and are on hunger strike being forcibly fed.”

Rose sucked in her breath. She’d been isolated too long at
Snowberry, far from suffragette activity. It was time she went back into the fray—and the first thing she had to do was to give Daphne moral support by being at Bow Street tomorrow morning.

She said decisively, “I’m coming to London with you. Your grandmother won’t mind me arriving at St. James’s Street unexpectedly. Iris will have to look after things while I’m away.”

That afternoon, with Rose en route to London with Rory, Iris took the dogs for a walk around the lake. She had something on her mind, something that was causing her intense distress. She was beginning to think that Toby was no longer as interested in her as she had believed him to be. Ever since he had joined the Coldstream Guards a little over a year ago it was almost as if the unspoken understanding that had existed between them for as long as she could remember had come to an abrupt end.

She came to a halt, staring out over the shimmering surface of the lake. Toby had commandeered her as his best friend when, in the years before he had gone to prep school, there had been no one else near Sissbury for him to be friends with. She had always been the tomboy in the family and had enjoyed racing her pony against his, swimming with him in Snowberry’s lake, fishing with him in the river that ran through Sissbury’s estate, climbing trees and making secret dens with him in Sissbury’s woods. She had enjoyed all that far more than she had enjoyed playing the dressing-up games Marigold so boringly always wanted to play.

Even after he had gone to Eton, they had still been inseparable whenever he was at home, and, as they had both grown a little older, their friendship had made her feel special in a way that—being the plain Jane of the family—was very important to her. She might not be as academically clever as Rose, or as stunningly beautiful as Marigold, or as sweetly lovable as Lily, but Toby never spent time with Rose or Marigold or Lily. He spent time with her—and she had grown up hoping he would always do so.

Then he had joined the Coldstream Guards and had begun moving in a world far removed from the Sissbury/Snowberry one they had shared for so long. Instead of riding with the local hunt, he now played polo at matches in Surrey and Berkshire that she wasn’t invited to; they were matches she knew would be attended by the kind of girls men regarded as being “a catch.”

She bit her lip, well aware that she couldn’t be described by anyone as “a catch.” She hadn’t even been a catch the year she had been a debutante. That was the year when girls hoped for proposals, and it was certainly the year she had hoped for a proposal from Toby.

When she hadn’t received one, it had been a disappointment, but a disappointment she had understood, for his father, Viscount Mulholland, had been seriously ill that summer with typhoid fever. Though Toby had waltzed her around her great-aunt’s ballroom at her coming-out ball in a manner that had caused happy speculation about the two of them, for most of her season he had been at Sissbury where his father had hovered between life and death for many weeks.

No one else had shown any interest in her at all.

At other debutantes’ coming-out balls and parties she had been a wallflower, seated with the chaperones, an empty dance card in her hand. Or she had unless Rory had also been a guest; he had always come to her aid and ensured that, for a little while at least, she was the envy of a mass of other girls. Rory, though, was her second cousin and so didn’t really count.

She sighed, seeing spinsterhood ahead of her if Toby didn’t propose. That spinsterhood very probably lay ahead for Rose—who was now twenty-three and still not within a mile of becoming engaged—was no comfort. Like the vast majority of militant suffragettes, Rose believed that remaining single was all part of the battle; that to gain full equality with men, women had to be independent of them. It was an attitude that Iris, who longed for marriage and babies, found hard to understand.

As she continued to look out across the lake, she found herself wondering again about the weekend Marigold had spent at their
great-aunt’s. Rose had been so relieved about Marigold getting over her infatuation for Lord Jethney that for the moment she’d ceased worrying about Marigold. Iris hoped Rose wasn’t doing so prematurely. There had been an air of suppressed excitement about Marigold when she had returned from London—and if Lord Jethney wasn’t the cause, then knowing Marigold, another man was.

Feeling the need of Lily’s company, Iris began heading back toward the house. Lily, like herself, rarely left Snowberry. She was generally out of sight, though, in a large attic room that had been converted into a studio with huge skylights. There she spent hour after hour modeling busts and heads in clay. Rose had expressed the opinion that once her debutante year was over, Lily was talented enough to apply for a place at the Royal College of Art. It was a prospect that Iris knew both elated and terrified Lily. It was also a prospect Iris doubted Lily would ever have to face, for nothing was more certain than that Lily would be inundated with marriage proposals during her debutante year—and that all of them would be highly suitable.

Lily would, just by being herself, ease the hurt that was in her heart and would, for a little while at least, take her mind off the worrying anxiety as to when, if ever, Toby was going to pop the question.

Rory dropped Rose off at 4 Clement’s Inn, just off the Aldwych. The headquarters of the WSPU, it was, as always, a hive of frenzied activity.

“It’s good to see you again, Rose,” Christabel Pankhurst said to her as they squeezed into a comparatively quiet corner of the long inner office for a talk. “You can see how busy we are.”

All around them a score of women were working like beavers, addressing envelopes, making banners, printing leaflets, and manning phones.

“We intend stealing the show at the Coronation Procession of the Women of Britain on the seventeenth of June,” Christabel said explanatorily. “We don’t want the Women’s Freedom League outdoing us, do we? You will be there, Rose, won’t you?”

“I’ll be there. As for tomorrow morning, I shall be at Bow Street.”

Hearing the steel in her voice, Christabel narrowed her eyes. “Don’t do anything that might get you arrested, Rose. Not when there’s so little time before the suffragette coronation procession—and when five days later it’s the coronation itself. There’ll be plenty of time for heroics afterward.”

“If Daphne is given a prison sentence—and is sentenced to serve it as a common criminal and not as a political prisoner—then even if it means missing the procession and the coronation, I shall protest, Christabel.”

For a second she thought Christabel, who was the WSPU’s chief strategist and whose word was law, was going to forbid her to. Then Christabel flashed the wide, vibrant grin for which she was famous. “Quite right, Rose. If you can bring attention to the great indignity done to our members by being brought before ordinary courts when their offenses are political, then do so.”

Her grin widened. “Be sure to make it known that you are the great-niece of Lady Harland, who is a friend to both the prime minister
and
his odious home secretary, Churchill,” she added wickedly. “That will make the press really sit up and take notice!”

“
That detestable man
, Churchill, was here again this morning with the prime minister,” King George said, stamping fretfully from the dining room, David at his side. “He takes far too much on himself. Do you know what the damned scoundrel wrote to me in his account of a Commons debate on the relief of unemployment? ‘
As for tramps and wastrels there ought to be proper Labour Colonies where they could be sent for considerable periods and made to realize their duty to the state.
’ Well, that bit was all right, but then he had the damned impertinence to add, ‘
It must not, however be forgotten that there are idlers and wastrels at both ends of the social scale.
’ ”

As he bore down on his study two footmen in blue and gold sprang into action, hastily flinging open the double doors. The King stormed through them, David in his wake. “His views are those of a damned socialist, not a liberal!” he fumed, heading straight for the glass cabinets where his beloved Purdey shotguns were kept. “What he advocates is nothing more than workshops, which have been tried in France and have turned out a complete failure.”

He lifted down one of the two shotguns that the people of King’s Lynn had presented to him and took it over to his desk. Then he slammed open the drawer that held his brass-cornered oak-cleaning case. David was relieved. For an insane moment he’d thought the King was about to hunt down his perfidious home secretary and teach him a violent lesson.

“After I had written back to him, remonstrating with him, then d’you know what the bloody fellow did?”

The King took an ebony cleaning rod from the case, a square bottle of oil, and a Selvyt cleaning cloth. “He wrote to me
again
, and in the most insolent manner.”

He pushed a piece of House of Commons letterhead across the desk to David.

Wishing he possessed just an eighth of Winston Churchill’s nerve, David read:

David thought the defiance of the reply, the way it succeeded in being both deferential and yet annoyingly mocking, very clever. It was the sort of letter he wished he was able to write. Aware, however, that this was not what his father would want to hear from him, he said, “The man is a cad, sir. He’s more belligerent now the Liberals are in government than he was when they were in opposition.”