The Golden Prince (34 page)

Marchemont was more a faux French chateau than an English country house. Against a wooded hillside, fairy-tale turrets and steeples pierced the skyline. The vast parkland ran down to the sea and nearer to the house, on terraces and amid flower-filled parterres, peacocks strolled and white doves fluttered.

Marigold’s hostess, Princess Zasulich, wizened and weighed down by twelve ropes of perfectly matched pearls reaching down to her knees, greeted her warmly without having the slightest idea as to whom she was, apart from the fact that her favorite nephew had wished her to be invited. As the princess continued greeting some of her other thirty guests it was her private opinion that Maxim’s bohemian-looking
chère amie
was probably an actress. She didn’t mind. The girl would add a little spice to the weekend. And in Princess Zasulich’s opinion, a little spice was always welcome.

Though it was customary for the bedroom of a married lady, if unaccompanied by her husband, to be sited conveniently close to the bedroom of her lover, such considerations were never shown to single young women of class. Actresses, however, were a different matter, and because Princess Zasulich was convinced Marigold was a member of the demimonde, Marigold was delighted to discover that Maxim would have very little distance to cover when he left his room for hers.

Until he did so, there was an afternoon and an evening to get through and she knew none of the other guests, all of whom were either Russian or French. Maxim, a regular guest at Marchemont, offered to walk her around the grounds.

“If we were in Russia, we wouldn’t consider Marchemont’s parkland very large,” he said, as they unobtrusively slid away from a game of croquet that was engaging everyone else’s attention. “But everything is vaster in Russia. The parkland at Verechenko, my family’s country home on the edge of the Black Sea, is as large as an English county.”

“Is Verechenko as superbly landscaped as Marchemont?” she asked, her hand tucked intimately in the crook of his arm as they walked so close together their hips almost touched.

“There are lakes, grottoes, fountains, panoramas. Perhaps one day you will see it for yourself.”

Marigold made no response. Maxim in London—or in Paris, Berlin, or even St. Petersburg—was one thing. Maxim on the shores of the Black Sea—somewhere so distant she wasn’t even sure where it was—was entirely another.

A little later, as they wandered through Marchemont’s magnificent orangery with small, brilliantly colored tropical birds flying above their heads, he again began rhapsodizing about Verechenko. She wondered if he was doing so because he had an ulterior motive; if he wanted to gauge her reactions to his descriptions of Verechenko because he was considering proposing to her and because, if she accepted him, he intended Verechenko to be their principal home.

Mentally, she tried out what her new name and title would then be. Princess Marigold Yurenev. It sent a thrill through her so urgent she didn’t see how she would be able to refuse him. To be known as Princess Marigold in London society would be wonderful. She wondered if people would curtsy to her.

Then she thought of having to leave England for Russia. From all she’d previously heard about Russia, that wasn’t an enticing prospect. Also, though Maxim could give her a title and a magnificently wealthy lifestyle, he didn’t have the added frisson of being politically powerful—and that frisson was one that meant an awful lot to her.

She thought of Theo and dug her nails into her palms.

At her great-aunt Sibyl’s dinner table, influential people such as Lord Lansdowne had spoken quite openly of Theo one day becoming prime minister. No Russian prince was likely to become the Russian prime minister. Even if such a thing were to happen, the real power would always be in the hands of the tsar who ruled as an autocrat. In Britain it was different. Britain was a constitutional monarchy, and the prime minister held far more real power than did the King.

The thought of never again sitting in on the kind of political conversations she so frequently sat in on at her great-aunt’s—together with the thought of living thousands of miles away on the shores of the Black Sea—made the prospect of becoming Princess Marigold a tad less appealing.

Maxim as a prospective lover was, though, very appealing.

She came to a halt beneath an orange tree. “I’m not in a hurry to return to the croquet match,” she said huskily, turning to face him.

Her mouth was ripe, her lips parted, her invitation blatant.

An expression flashed through his eyes that she couldn’t read, to be followed by one she read very clearly.

“Neither,” he said in a low taut voice as he pressed her back against the tree, “am I.”

His mouth came down swift and hard on hers. His knee pressed
against the silk of her skirt, forcing its way between her legs, and his hand cupped her breast, his thumb moving over the thin material covering her hard, erect nipple.

It was as if a mask—there because polite society required it to be there—had slipped and something very primitive—something very Russian—had been unleashed.

It wasn’t the kind of lovemaking she had experienced with Theo, who had always been tender and considerate, but as every nerve ending she possessed screamed out for him to finish what he had begun, Marigold knew it was the kind of lovemaking she was more than ready for.

It was the
second week of September and Lily was in her habitual place of retreat—her studio. Her bust of David stood on a black-slate plinth beneath the huge skylight, and her eyes turned to it frequently as she began work on a new sculpture—a tern in flight.

David hadn’t yet seen her finished bust of him and she wasn’t sure how he would feel about it when he did, for the mood she had struggled hard to convey was one of boyish wistfulness—the weltschmerz in his eyes that both Rose and her grandfather had been so aware of when first meeting him.

It was an expression that was seen only now when he was leaving Snowberry—and not always then, for when he took his leave he did so in the certainty of returning. She knew, though, that his underlying wistfulness at never being treated the same as other young men—at always having homage paid to him—would never leave him, that it had become an intrinsic part of his personality.

She was still at an early stage with her tern-in-flight sculpture and because she was finding it impossible to block David from her thoughts, it wasn’t going well. Fretfully, she laid down the tool she was working with.

For David, once it was publicly acknowledged that they were a couple, life would be easier. The things he found intolerable in royal life would no longer be intolerable to him when he had her by his side. For her, though, life wouldn’t be easier at all. Instead it would become difficult on a scale impossible to even imagine.

For a start, all privacy would be gone. Like David, she, too, would be on constant, lifelong public display. The prospect filled her with a horror so deep she felt physically sick. David had told her that his mother was seldom without a lady-in-waiting in attendance on her. Would she be expected to have a lady-in-waiting? If that was expected, how would she suffer someone’s constant company, unless the someone in question was one of her sisters?

She picked up a damp towel from her work top and wiped clay-sticky hands on it. Even for love of her sister, Rose would never give up her suffragette activities and her exciting burgeoning journalistic career to be a lady-in-waiting. Court life would hold no charms for Rose at all.

Marigold would adore the glamour of being a lady-in-waiting, but when the initial novelty wore off, she would resent the fact that she wasn’t the center of attention. Playing second fiddle to anyone—and especially to her baby sister—simply wasn’t in her nature. There was also the troubling question of Marigold’s naughtiness with men. How could she hope to have a moment’s peace of mind if she was constantly worrying about whether Marigold was behaving herself or not?

The sister most suitable for court life was Iris, who was always dignified and who never, under any circumstances, behaved badly. Iris, however, was marrying Toby at Christmas, and she didn’t think he would be pleased at the prospect of Iris regularly disappearing for three-month stints as a lady-in-waiting.

Homer, who had been lying at her feet as she worked, sensed her inner turmoil and hauled himself to a stand in order to offer what comfort he could. She stroked his silky head. Not in any way at all was she looking forward to the kind of future that would come with marriage to David, but loving him as she did, neither could she bear the thought of his lonely misery if she wasn’t with him.

She spoke her thoughts out loud to Homer. “To be able to survive his royal burden, he needs to be able to share it,” she said to
him. “And so if King George consents to our becoming betrothed, my future will be just as mapped out as David’s future is.”

Homer licked her hand encouragingly. As no one else seemed to understand, it was encouragement she was grateful for. Rose hadn’t actually
said
she disapproved, but Lily sensed she was appalled at the thought of becoming so closely connected to royalty and was fervently hoping that the King would withhold his consent and that no official announcement of an engagement would ever take place. If it did take place, she was certain Rose would think her entirely unprepared for the catastrophic changes that would follow.

Marigold, of course, was feverishly hoping that King George would give his blessing and that an announcement would be made as soon as possible, but Lily knew it hadn’t even crossed Marigold’s mind to sympathize with her over the loss of freedom that would then follow. All Marigold would ever see was the glitter that came with the title Princess of Wales. The burdens that also came with that title would completely pass her by.

Iris only saw that if King George gave his assent, Lily and David would be able to marry and be together for the rest of their lives. The idea that Lily was going to find it crucifyingly difficult to live the rest of her life in the public eye was not something that had yet occurred to her favorite sister.

There came the sound of the speaking tube being cleared and then Millie shouted into it: “I’ve just baked a Victoria sponge cake, Lily. Would you like me to bring a slice up to you, along with a cup of tea?”

“That would be smashing, Millie,” she shouted back down in response. “Homer is with me, so will you cut a slice for him, too?”

Millie gave an ungracious reply and despite all her anxieties, Lily’s generous mouth curved in a smile. Millie didn’t, as yet, know of David’s marriage proposal and when the time came to tell her of it, Lily was fiercely hoping Millie’s free and easy attitude toward her would remain unchanged. The prospect of Millie bobbing a curtsy to her was simply too bizarre.

The skylights reached down to the floor and she walked over
to the window seat fronting one of them, sitting down on it with her arms circling her knees. Homer, who always sat wherever he wanted, eased himself up on the padded seat and lay facing her, his big brown eyes intently holding hers.

“If David were a younger brother, my life would still change but not so catastrophically,” she said to him, her lovely face grave. “It is the fact that one day he will become King that brings all the problems. Yet David doesn’t want to be King any more than I want to be a queen. He says his sister, Mary, is the one who should be inheriting the throne. He says that Mary is far cleverer than him—and far cleverer than any of his brothers.”

Homer made a noise she took as indicating sympathy, and then Millie entered the studio carrying a tea tray.

“There’s some post as well,” she said, nudging the tray on to Lily’s cluttered work bench.

She handed over a distinctive cream envelope embossed with the Prince of Wales’s cipher. “It’s from Prince Edward,” she said unnecessarily. “That’s the second letter this week.”

“That’s because the
Hindustan
is in port at the moment.”

“How long will it be until he’s visiting Snowberry again?”

“Not until the end of October, when his tour of duty is over.”

“Well, it will be nice to see him again.” Millie spoke as if she was speaking of Rory, and Lily felt a stab of amusement at how unnecessary her worry had been that Millie’s attitude might change if she became a royal.

When Millie had left the studio and while Homer was demolishing a very generous slice of cake, Lily opened David’s letter.

She sat for a long time on the window seat, her work forgotten, the letter in her hand. There was something ineffably boyish about his letters to her—a boyishness she was certain he would retain no matter how old he became. And his vulnerability—his need of her—shone through every line. Love for him flooded through her. Other people might let him down, but she would never let him down. Never, ever. She would ensure he became the most popular Prince of Wales the country had ever known—and that one day he would become England’s greatest king.