The Golden Prince (16 page)

She didn’t ask her grandfather if she could be driven to Sissbury in the Talbot. Instead she took the pony and trap. She enjoyed the sound of the pony’s rhythmic trot and the feel of the reins in her hands, and by the time she turned into Sissbury Castle’s long drive she had recovered a lot of her equanimity. It was understandable
that Toby was unable to spend much time at Sissbury since joining the Guards, and thinking he would do so without bothering to see her was likely idiocy on her part. As she left the pony in the care of one of Sissbury’s stable boys, she convinced herself she was making a mountain out of a molehill.

It wasn’t a conviction that lasted for long.

“Master Toby and his guests are on the terrace,” the butler said, as if her arrival was expected.

Iris sucked in her breath. That Toby was home and hadn’t let her know was a hurt so deep it threw her completely off balance. If she went out to the terrace—as the butler was waiting for her to do—she would have to survive the excruciating embarrassment of having shown up uninvited. But if she left straightaway—as she was desperate to do—Toby would know of her reaction, because the butler would, as a matter of course, tell him of her visit and abrupt departure.

When she had set off, her intention had been to spend half an hour or so with Toby’s mother. If she was to retain any dignity at all, it was what she had to do.

“I’ve come to see Lady Mulholland,” she said, struggling not to let her distress show.

“Her Ladyship is not at home.”

“Then please tell her that I called.” She was just about to make a quick, vastly relieved escape when Tessa Reighton burst out from the drawing room into the marble-floored hall, shrieking, “Iris! How super to see you! We’re having a swimming party in the ornamental pool. It’s the most terrific fun. Some of the girls have changed into bathing costumes. It’s all very risqué and a good thing Toby’s ma and pa are in London, otherwise the poor dears would have heart failure.”

She tucked Iris’s arm in hers and began steering her into the drawing room. “Such ages since I’ve see you. Most of the girls here are this year’s debutantes—terribly young. We twenty-one-year-olds are getting to be quite old maids, aren’t we?”

She laughed merrily, as well she might considering that she was a natural blonde with stunning blue eyes and a head-turning figure. If Tessa was still an old maid, she was so only out of choice.

“I actually came to see Lady Mulholland.” Iris vainly tried to extricate herself from Tessa’s hold and stop the swift progress toward the open French doors. “But as she isn’t here …”

It was too late.

The large ornamental pool, with its three-tiered central fountain, was situated on the terrace, and once they had reached the French doors they were in full sight of it—and everyone was in full sight of them.

A swift glance told Iris that even if Toby had invited her, it was not at all her sort of party.

Glasses and bottles of champagne stood on the terrace’s wrought-iron tables. Three men, barefoot and with their trouser legs rolled to the knee, were in the pool, chasing and splashing half a dozen squealing girls. Three of the girls had their floaty summer dresses caught up to their knees, the others were in red-and-white-striped bathing costumes that ended at midthigh to reveal a dizzying expanse of naked leg. They weren’t much different from the flannel bathing suits she, Rose, Marigold, and Lily wore when swimming at Snowberry, but in the vast tranquillity of Snowberry’s tree-shaded lake their costumes had always seemed the essence of respectability.

This display, in the shallow water of the ornamental pool, was anything but respectable and Iris wanted nothing to do with it.

“Look who’s here, everyone!” Tessa called out gaily. “It’s Iris! Isn’t it a pity Marigold isn’t here as well?”

Girls she didn’t know called out for her to join in the fun.

Not only did Iris not know the girls, she didn’t know the young men either. They all looked to be typical Hooray Henrys—brainless young men who brayed with laughter at the slightest thing. What Toby was doing surrounding himself with them she couldn’t imagine.

She looked around for him, knowing she had no option but to explain why she was there and why, as his mother was not at home, she was now about to leave.

“Has anyone a spare bathing cossie for Iris?” Tessa trilled in a manner that indicated she was more than slightly tipsy. “A good-sized one. She’s not a nymph, more a Venus.”

As someone snorted with laughter Iris’s cheeks flamed scarlet.

“I’m not staying, Tessa,” she said, struggling to sound pleasant and reasonable. “I’m just going to say hello to Toby and then I’m leaving.”

She didn’t want to say hello to Toby, but good manners left her with no choice. The problem was that she couldn’t see him anywhere.

“Toby!” Tessa waved furiously and a little unsteadily in the direction of the center of the pool. “Toby! Do stop horsing around. Come out from behind the fountain and say hello to Iris.”

Toby, saturated with spray from the fountain, reluctantly did as he was bid. He didn’t do so alone. With him was a girl Iris recognized as being
Tatler
’s debutante of the year.

Until now she had believed he was keeping a low profile because he was as appalled by the wildness of the party as she was, and shocked that his fellow Guards officers had simply taken it over and that he’d lost all control of it.

Now she knew she’d been wrong.

“I’m glad you’re here, Iris,” he said unconvincingly, letting go of the girl he had been holding. “I did try to phone you to tell you I’d come down here, but the operator couldn’t make a connection. It’s Rupert’s birthday tomorrow”—he gave a wave of his hand toward one of the young men in the pool—“and we’re all getting in trim for it by letting off a little steam.”

“Yes,” she said unhappily, not knowing what else to say. “I can see that.”

He walked up to her. “I’m sorry if your feelings are hurt, Iris. The whole thing was pretty spontaneous. If I’d known in advance I was going to be down here, I would have let you know.”

“Yes,” she said again, knowing that he wouldn’t have. “Thank you for asking me to stay, Toby, but I won’t, if you don’t mind.”

Though she couldn’t swear to it, she was sure his reaction was one of relief.

She turned away from him swiftly, and he said, falling into step beside her, “Did you come in the pony trap or the Talbot?”

“The pony trap. There’s no need to walk me back to it, Toby. I’m fine, truly I am.”

He didn’t protest, and he didn’t continue walking along beside her.

She stumbled back to the pony trap and then, with a hurting heart, made her way back to Snowberry, certain that whatever the future held for her, it no longer held the person she’d so long thought would be her future husband.

David’s stomach was
a knot of nerves. It was Coronation Day, and he was dreading every minute of what lay ahead. He knew his father would never forgive him if he was to make an error of any kind—and once the service was under way, an error would be only too easy to make. All he would have to do was to move when he should be standing still, or stand still when he should be moving. As for the possibility of his forgetting any part of his homage speech—the very thought made him break out in a cold sweat.

“I’m afraid Garter robes are uncomfortably hot, sir.” One of the courtiers fussing around commiserated with him, mistaking the cause of the perspiration that had broken out on his forehead. “It will be cooler in the abbey.”

David said nothing, but privately he didn’t see how it could possibly be cooler in the abbey when the abbey would be packed to the rafters with thousands of guests invited from all over the world.

He stared at his reflection in a full-length mirror, not at all liking what he saw. He simply didn’t have the physique to carry off robes so ornately grandiose as the Order of the Garter. Over a cloth-of-silver suit, worn with white stockings and white satin slippers with red heels, he was wearing a flowing cloak of blue velvet lined with white taffeta, and at his side was a sword in a red velvet scabbard.

Even now his ensemble wasn’t quite complete, for the finishing touch was a medieval Tudor “bonnet,” a floppy black velvet hat adorned with white ostrich feathers.

At the thought of it, his jaw tightened. Like all his family, he wasn’t tall and was certain the flamboyantly plumed hat did him no favors.

He remembered what Lily had said to him about the amount of pleasure given to the public by medieval ceremony and ceremonial robes and he took a deep, steadying breath. If he was to survive the role in life into which he’d been born, he had to begin cultivating positive mental attitudes toward the aspects of prince-ing he found so embarrassing—and Lily was showing him the way to do so.

“Prince Albert, Princess Mary, Prince Henry, and Prince George are already in the state carriage, sir,” a senior courtier said respectfully. “It’s time for you to join them.”

David nodded, suddenly feeling much better about everything. The processional route on the return from Westminster Abbey was a circuitous one to give the maximum number of people the opportunity to be able to see it. Lily would be watching it pass by from an upper balcony at her great-aunt Sibyl’s home in St. James’s Street. From there she would have a grandstand view. He was hoping that he would also have a view of her. Two nights earlier he had driven past the house so that he would be able to recognize it despite the crowds that, today, would be thronging the pavement in front of it.

“Sir?” the elderly courtier at his side prompted, an edge of anxiety now in his voice. “The departure of carriages from the Palace is timed to the second and …”

“I’m coming.” David took one last look at his reflection and picked up his Tudor bonnet. On this day his father was to be crowned King of Britain and Ireland and Ruler of the British Dominions beyond the Seas. It was going to be one of the most memorable days of David’s life—perhaps the most memorable until the day when he would make the exact same journey to his own coronation.

Sharply, he pushed the thought aside. His father was only forty-six and with luck, if his father lived as long as had his grandmother, Queen Victoria, it would be another thirty-six years before his own coronation would take place.

He had seen his father earlier in the morning, but only briefly. Now, as he walked past his father’s suite, his father came out into the broad, crimson-carpeted corridor to speak with him again.

Brusque as always, King George’s remarks were not about anything of deep significance. They were about the weather.

“The barometer shows it’s going to be overcast and cloudy with some showers and a strongish cool breeze, which will be better for the people lining the streets than hot sun,” he said, adding as an afterthought, “Please make sure, David, that Harry and Georgie don’t fidget in the carriage. There will be no one else riding in it but yourself—and Bertie and Mary, of course. The eyes of the world will be upon you and you must make sure that the young ones behave well.”

“Yes, sir. I will, sir.” He waited for his father to add something more fatherly and personal. His father didn’t and, fighting disappointment, David continued on his way to where all his siblings, apart from John, were waiting for him.

“G-g-goodness but I’m nervous,” Bertie said as he joined him in a gold carriage drawn by eight white stallions. Bertie was dressed in his cadet uniform and looked as ashen as if he were about to sit a naval exam. “W-what time w-will Papa and Mama be s-setting off?”

“Ten-thirty. Harry and Georgie, you have to sit still.”

Harry and Georgie were in Highland costume, and David, who always felt comfortably at home in Highland costume, envied them. “We want to wave,” nine-year-old George said defiantly. “Mama said we
had
to wave.”

“You can wave. But you have to wave while sitting still.”

The horses moved forward and the carriage lurched into movement.

“Oh g-g-goodness,” Bertie said again, a sheen of perspiration on his upper lip. “This is it, David. W-We’re off.”

As they crossed Buckingham Palace’s courtyard the procession stretched ahead of them down the Mall as far as they could see.

“Look at the soldiers, Harry! Look at the soldiers!” Georgie squealed as a band of the Brigade of Guards swung into position
behind them; following the band came marching members of the Highland Infantry.

Immediately in front of the carriage rode four troopers of the Household Cavalry, the pale sun glinting on the silver of their white-plumed helmets. Somewhere ahead of them in the 250-strong procession were the prime minister, the heads of foreign governments, church leaders, and a whole cavalcade of foreign royalty—nearly all of whom were his relatives.

Troops in brilliant red ceremonial dress lined the route, standing shoulder to shoulder. Beyond them, the stands that had been set up in the Mall were so densely packed David didn’t know how people were still able to breathe. With patriotic fervor, the crowds were waving thousands of flags.

He waved back, enjoying the sensation of making personal contact with such a vast throng. At the end of the Mall the procession streamed through Admiralty Arch and into Trafalgar Square where tier upon tier of seating had been erected. David could scarcely see Landseer’s bronze lions for the flag-waving well-wishers clinging to them for a better view.

“I wish I was on a lion and waving a flag,” Georgie shouted across to him as amid a storm of cheers their carriage rattled on toward Westminster, Big Ben, and the Houses of Parliament.

“You’re not sitting still enough, Georgie.” Mary’s coronet and ermine-lined robe of state made her look far older than thirteen, but not so old that she intimidated young Georgie.

“Phooey!” he yelled, launching himself on her and tickling her in the ribs.

David seized him by the scruff of the neck. “One more
whisper
out of you, young Georgie, and I’ll deck you!”

Like David, Georgie had charm that the rest of their family lacked, and it came to his rescue. “Sorry, David.” He shot David an apologetic grin and changed the subject. “Just
look
at those decorations strung across the street! Aren’t they whiz?”