The Golden Prince (14 page)

“Piers,” he reminded her.

“Piers,” she said with an apologetic smile. Then she waited for him to give her whatever message it was he had come to deliver.

He didn’t. Instead he said, “It’s a beautiful day, Miss Houghton—Lily. I wondered if you would like to go for a drive.”

She stared at him, wondering if she had heard correctly. “A drive? Is David with you? Is he outside, waiting for us?”

“No.” He tried not to let his disappointment at her reaction show. It was, after all, quite understandable that she should think he was, as usual, accompanying the prince. “His Royal Highness is in London.” No way could he bring himself to refer to Prince Edward as David when Prince Edward had infuriatingly never invited him to. “He will be there now until after the coronation.”

She nodded. David had told her that, in his letters.

As Piers Cullen said nothing further, she gave him a gentle prompt. “So are you here to deliver a message from him?”

“A message?” He looked baffled. “No. Prince Edward is in rehearsals at the abbey again today and since I was not needed, I thought … I thought perhaps you would like to go for a drive and that we could … could talk.”

The thought of being able to talk with him about David and about David’s prince-ing life was irresistible.

She smiled sunnily. “That would be lovely. Just give me ten minutes to change my dress and do my hair.”

As she left the room he could hardly believe his good fortune at having called at a time when there was no one at home from whom she’d had to ask permission. Of course, it would have been quite out of the question to have behaved as he’d just done—and as she had just done—if it had been any other girl of Lily’s class and age. Well-brought-up girls of seventeen did not go out with a young man unchaperoned—especially when the man in question was several years her senior.

From his very first contact with the Houghton sisters and with Snowberry, however, it had been very obvious that the normal rules governing society simply didn’t apply. It eased his conscience, as did the fact that his intentions were entirely honorable. Lily wasn’t remotely the kind of young woman he had envisaged falling in love
with, but her sweetness of spirit and joie de vivre were exactly the antidote his introverted, somber personality craved. His intentions were to court her, to become engaged to her as soon as possible, and to marry her when she was eighteen.

She was the daughter of a viscount, not the daughter of a marquess or a duke, so she wasn’t too far above him in the class hierarchy for it to be an unreasonable ambition. Though his family weren’t titled, they were ecclesiastically distinguished and, as an equerry to the Prince of Wales, he had status. Most important of all, she obviously liked him a great deal. No girl had ever been as pleased to see him as she had been when she so eagerly entered the room.

Now they were going to spend time together alone. He wondered where he should take her, where she would like to go.

He was still wondering when she came back into the room dressed in a raspberry-pink dress that had a nipped-in waist and a broderie-anglaise collar and carrying a straw hat that had a raspberry-colored silk ribbon around its brim. Her hair had been brushed and was once more worn down—which rather disconcerted him because it reminded him that she wasn’t yet “out.” He thrust the thought to one side, certain she would be presented before the summer was over.

“Goodness!” she said when she saw his car. “It’s even bigger than David’s motorcar!”

He was highly pleased by her reaction. “Prince Edward’s was a gift from his first cousin once removed, Kaiser Wilhelm. German cars are generally a little smaller than the ones being made in Britain.”

“Have you met Kaiser Wilhelm?” she asked as he opened the front passenger door for her. “It seems so funny David having so many German relations. Nearly every aunt, uncle, and cousin he mentions is German.”

“That’s because his paternal great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, was entirely German by blood, if not by birth, and she double-looped her German heritage by marrying a German, Prince Albert.”

He seated himself behind the wheel. “Though Queen Mary was born at Kensington Palace, her bloodline is almost entirely German, too. Her father, the Prince of Teck, was German and her maternal grandmother was German.”

As he drove down the drive he hoped that his knowledge of royal genealogy was impressing her. “It’s the reason Prince Edward is so blond and Teutonic-looking,” he added for good measure, turning into the road.

Lily thought of David’s pale gold, glassily smooth hair and of the startling blueness of his eyes. He
did
look German, though not a raw-boned, beefily muscular German. Instead he reminded her of pictures she had seen of medieval Teutonic knights, full of valor and honor, their white mantles bearing the scarlet cross of St. George.

She wondered if David spoke German, if the King and Queen sometimes spoke to each other in German.

“Good Lord, no!” Piers said, when she asked about the King and Queen. “The King doesn’t speak any foreign language.”

“Not even French?” Lily was shocked.

“Not even French.”

He began heading in the general direction of Winchester, happy that there was a subject that interested her and that he could talk about. More interested than he could even begin to imagine, she said, “What about Queen Mary? Does she speak German?”

“Fluently. As does Prince Edward.”

Lily was entranced. Why had it never occurred to her that Piers Cullen could tell her such interesting things about David?

“Is that why there’s sometimes the trace of an odd accent in his speech?”

“An odd accent in his speech?” He shot her a look of complete bewilderment.

“Yes. It was Rose who drew my attention to it. She thinks it sounds almost cockney.”

Comprehension dawned and he did something she hadn’t thought him capable of. He gave a bark of laughter.

“It
is
cockney. Lala Bill, who was his nanny, is a cockney. She’s still a royal nanny, only now she is nanny to Prince John.”

Prince John was the youngest of David’s four brothers and not someone David had spoken about when at Snowberry.

Later, when they were having tea and cakes in a very upmarket Winchester tearoom, she asked Piers about David’s other brothers, and his sister, Princess Mary.

Though he had no intention of admitting it, Piers had had very little contact with David’s siblings. The only royal personage he met with regularly was the King, who demanded constant reports about his son’s activities. Remembering the grave offense he was committing in not having told King George of Edward’s visits to Snowberry, he blanched. If the truth came out, his disgrace would be so enormous Lily’s grandfather would never give permission for them to marry. Beneath the table he clenched his hands tightly. The truth wasn’t going to come out. And he
was
going to marry Lily. His single-track mind ensured that any goal he set himself, he doggedly achieved.

Aware that she was still waiting for an answer to her question, he unclenched his fists. “Prince Albert is a shy boy. Very nervous. A very bad stammerer. He hero-worships …” He paused. The words
His Royal Highness
or
Prince Edward
stuck in his throat when Lily spoke so easily of Prince Edward as David. “He hero-worships HRH,” he said, feeling that HRH sounded informal enough to indicate close friendship.

“What about Princess Mary?” she asked, helping herself to an almond slice from the heavily loaded cake stand.

He knew less about Princess Mary than he did about Prince Albert, but it was common knowledge at Windsor and Buckingham Palace that she was a far better rider than either of her two older brothers.

“She rides very well. She is only three years younger than HRH, so she and Prince Albert and HRH are good chums.”

“And Prince Henry and Prince George and Prince John?”

“Prince Henry and Prince George are tutored by Mr. Hansell, who was HRH and Prince Albert’s tutor until they went to Naval College. As for Prince John …”

He came to a halt, wondering what the devil he could say about the youngest member of the royal family. There were so many wild rumors about John: that he was epileptic; that he was retarded. If he told her of them, she might let slip to Prince Edward that he had and then there would be a row of unholy proportions.

“Prince John is the extrovert of the family,” he said.

This was true. Though he was only six years old, Prince John quite often upset the royal applecart by escaping from Lala Bill and waylaying high-ranking courtiers and government ministers, greeting them in a way that was extremely disconcerting. “Haven’t you got a big, big nose?” he had shouted cheerily to the prime minister. To the prime minister’s wife, Margot Asquith, he had said, “You’re a funny-looking lady, aren’t you? Are you a witch?”

What made such remarks even worse was that they were always so apt. The prime minister
did
have a big nose and Mrs. Asquith, in the long, black, scarlet-lined cloaks she favored,
did
look like a witch.

Piers told Lily of how John had once got hold of Princess Mary’s paintbox and, after daubing himself like a red Indian, had run whooping into the dining room when the King and Queen were holding a dinner party. He told her how John was now kept out of sight as much as possible—and that he wouldn’t even be in Westminster Abbey with his brothers and his sister when the King was crowned.

Lily was appalled at the thought of John missing out on such a historic occasion and even more appalled when Piers told her of how Prince Albert had once been so terrified when told his father wished to speak with him in the library that he had fainted dead away, and of how the King had ordered that the pockets of Edward’s suits be sewn up after Edward had put his hand in his pocket when speaking to him.

“I’d no idea King George was such a bully,” she said as they drove back to Snowberry. “Poor Prince Albert. No wonder he stammers.”

Piers was rather taken aback. He had told the anecdotes because he had thought they were amusing. Compared with the Scottish Presbyterian strictness in which he had been brought up, Edward’s and Bertie’s lives were, he thought, a piece of cake. He didn’t say so, though. He said, “Prince Albert is left-handed and is required to write right-handed. HRH says it causes him a lot of stress.”

“I’m not surprised it causes him a lot of stress!” Lily was furiously indignant. “How would the person responsible for such a decision like it if someone forced them to write left-handed?”

The person responsible was King George, but Piers thought it best not to say so.

As they drew up outside Snowberry’s rose-covered frontage Lily’s grandfather stepped outside, his expression one of concern.

Piers sucked in his breath. Lord May had every reason to be displeased. Taking Lily out for a motor ride, when there had been no one to ask permission of, had been grossly out of order. Taking her out without anyone to chaperone her had been even more out of order. Fervently hoping he hadn’t spoiled his future chances, he stepped out of the car.

“William told me who you had gone out with, but not where you had gone to,” her grandfather said to Lily, and then to Piers, he said, “Your action was extraordinary, Captain Cullen. I appreciate that over the last weeks you have become something of a family friend, but Lily is seventeen and not yet ‘out.’ ”

As Piers flushed a deep red, her grandfather turned to Lily again. “You should have known better, sweetheart,” he said with loving reproach. “Another time—if there is another time—if I’m not here for you to ask permission, you must stay at home.”

“Oh, but I hope there will be another time, because I’ve had the most splendid afternoon, Grandpapa!” Lily’s eyes had stars in them.

She turned to Piers. “Thank you so much for such a
wonderful
afternoon, Piers. I enjoyed it hugely.”

Then, innocently leaving him under completely the wrong impression as to the reason for her enjoyment, she walked indoors, Fizz and Florin skittering around her in excited welcome.

For once when
staying at Sibyl’s at the same time as Marigold, Rose took very little notice of Marigold’s comings and goings. All her thoughts were centered on how she could secure Daphne’s release from prison. Her great-aunt had been as helpful as she could be.

“The first person to appeal to, of course, is Winston. As home secretary, he could order Daphne’s release immediately. Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely he will do so. He’s implacably opposed to the WSPU’s violent methods of demonstration. However, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and I will ask him if he will meet with you.”

“How about the prime minister?” Rose had asked, remembering how taken with her Mr. Asquith had seemed at one of her great-aunt’s dinner parties a few short weeks ago.

“I’ll do my best, but with the coronation only days away I doubt he will have time to be doing favors. If I were to tell him that you wanted to speak with him regarding Lady Daphne’s imprisonment, he most certainly wouldn’t find the time to meet with you.”

“But you will try, Aunt Sibyl?” she’d asked anxiously.

“I shall try.” Her aunt had pursed her lips. “Not all my influential friends are against Votes for Women, Rose. Let me make a list for you of those who will be only too happy to add their names to your campaign.”

The list had been impressive, and heading it had been the name of Lord Jethney.

Rose didn’t know quite how she felt about asking for Lord Jethney’s support, and she decided that though she would meet with him, she would do so only after meeting everyone else who was willing to see her. The first person with whom Sibyl secured a meeting for her was the home secretary, Winston Churchill. The meeting took place in the House of Commons, and though he was courteously civil to her, asking after both her grandfather and Sibyl, he was as immovable as a rock when it came to the question of an early release for Daphne.

“Absolutely impossible, Miss Houghton,” he’d said resolutely. “Lady Daphne was sentenced in a court of law and must serve her time.”