The Golden Prince (38 page)

Paris. Whenever she thought of the two of them being there together her heart sang for joy.

As they entered the drawing-room, Rory, splendid in Highland dress, strode to meet them, his eyes lighting up with pleasure at the unexpected sight of Theo. They shook hands warmly, and then Rory’s eyes turned to Lily.

It was then that Theo received yet another shock in what was turning out to be a very surprising afternoon, for there was no mistaking the expression in Rory’s eyes. He not only loved his cousin Lily but, whether he knew it or not, he was
in love
with her.

Theo wondered if the emotion was reciprocated. If it was, it was a future wedding that would please Herbert just as much as Iris and Toby’s wedding was pleasing him. Although Rory and Lily’s family relationship was a little close, it wasn’t too close. English law permitted cousins to marry and Rory and Lily weren’t first cousins, which might have caused a little comment, but second cousins.

He found himself hoping very much that there would be a happy outcome for the two of them, and then he excused himself and headed out of the house to where his chauffeured Lanchester was waiting.

Seconds later he was heading back where he belonged. At Jerusha’s side.

A small village
wedding would have made Iris just as happy as a smart, high-society wedding, but she didn’t have a small village wedding. Thanks to her mother’s insistence, and Toby’s family’s insistence, she had a glorious, over-the-top high-society wedding.

It took place, as did all high-society weddings, at St. Margaret’s, Westminster. St. Margaret’s stood between Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, and all direct descendants of peers had the right to marry there. Both Iris’s parents and Toby’s parents had done so, as had a great number of their guests.

Though it was a Christmas wedding, the sky was a piercing clear blue, a perfect backdrop to the ancient white stone of the church’s elegant Perpendicular Gothic façade.

Crowds of sightseers and well-wishers thronged the grassy square in front of the church, as guests continued to arrive. There was a murmur of recognition as Lord Jethney and his wife stepped down from their carriage, Lady Jethney heavily swathed in furs.

Next to arrive were the prime minister and his wife. Neither Iris nor Toby had ever met Mr. Asquith, but his long-standing friendship with Iris’s great-aunt had ensured his presence, which was adding immeasurably to the grandness of the occasion.

Great-Aunt Sibyl had also insisted that several other notable members of the Houses of Parliament were invited to her great-niece’s wedding and, with the exception of a minister who had already left for a long Christmas break in Switzerland, all had graciously accepted.

Winston Churchill and his wife, Clementine, were already seated inside the church, deep in happy memories of their own wedding, which had taken place at St. Margaret’s three years earlier.

Despite it being midwinter, the church was a bower of greenery. Red-berried sprays of holly twined around glistening white Portland stone pillars; hothouse Christmas roses scented the air; silver-ribboned poinsettias clustered at the foot of each and every ancient pew.

By the time Toby and his best man arrived, the pews were full and stately organ music was playing. Toby looked remarkably relaxed. As he walked down the aisle he acknowledged several people with a slight inclination of his head and a swift confident smile.

Rory shot him a smile back. They’d never been close friends, but because of his close associations with Snowberry he, like Iris, had known Toby forever and he couldn’t have been happier that Toby and Iris were now marrying.

The atmosphere within the church became expectant as Iris’s mother, the Marquise de Villoutrey, arrived and, accompanied by her French husband, was led by the head usher to the front pew on the left side of the church. Moments later the groom’s immediate family arrived and were conducted to the front pew on the right-hand side of the church, Viscount Mulholland cutting far less of a dash than his suave and handsome counterpart and Lady Mulholland, despite being clothed from head to foot by Lucile, looking positively dowdy in comparison to the bride’s mother, who, dark-haired and dark-eyed, was dazzling in sable and black pearls.

From outside the church came the sound of shouted good wishes and cheers. At the realization that his bride had arrived at the door of the church, Toby flexed his shoulders. The organist began to play the opening bars of the wedding march from
Lohengrin
, and all heads turned in readiness to catch a first glimpse of the bride.

In the vestibule there was a flurry of last-minute activity. Iris’s coronet of fresh orange blossoms and her voluminous tulle veil—the veil her mother had worn when she had first married—were carefully adjusted. Her wedding gown of shimmering white satin fell into a long train behind her, and Rose and Lily carefully spread it to its fullest so that it would follow Iris in a ripple of perfection as she walked down the aisle.

Marigold was attending to her own needs. The bridesmaids’ wide-brimmed straw hats were violet, to complement the color of their lilac satin dresses. Shallow crowned, they were wreathed with white tuberoses and ivory camellias, and Marigold tilted hers so that it dipped flatteringly low over her eyes.

“You look beautiful, tootsums,” Herbert said to Iris, so emotional at the prospect of giving her away there were tears in his eyes.

“You can’t cry, Grandpapa,” Lily chided. “Not in front of the prime minister.”

Rose, who was chief bridesmaid, handed Iris the small white-parchment prayer book she had chosen to carry instead of a bouquet. It was a gift that had been delivered to Snowberry a week earlier. Inside it was written:

“Are you ready, sweetheart?” Rose asked.

Eyes glowing, face radiant, Iris slipped a hand through the crook of her grandfather’s arm and nodded.

With her sisters walking behind her and a gloriously robed St. Margaret’s clergy and choir processing in front of her, Iris stepped from the vestibule into the nave of the church and began walking down the aisle to where Toby was waiting for her.

As beautiful and historically ancient as St. Margaret’s was,
Marigold couldn’t help reflecting how much more magnificent and awe-inspiring a Russian Orthodox wedding in Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg would be, especially since she would be able to count on having the tsar and tsarina in attendance.

As she walked down the aisle, hating the color of her dress and looking forward to the moment when she would be able to change into something more flattering to a redhead, her eyes flicked along the packed pews, seeking for a glimpse of Maxim.

He was seated two rows farther back than Great-Aunt Sibyl, near enough to close members of the family for the deduction to be drawn that he would, very soon, be a part of it.

As her eyes lingered on the back of his head and his distinctively broad shoulders, she experienced a sexual, spiraling sense of excitement.

A week ago, and after rapturous lovemaking when they were both guests at Marchemont, Maxim had stroked a finger down the naked length of her spine and said with postcoital reverence that he would give a fortune to have a painting of her looking as she did.

She had chuckled throatily and told him that if he really wanted that, she could make all his wishes come true.

The next day, when the two of them were back in London, she had taken him to Strickland’s Chelsea studio and Strickland had unveiled his painting of her as Persephone.

Maxim’s jaw had dropped.

Strickland hadn’t blamed him.

For one thing it was a magnificent example of a romantic mythological subject—the kind of thing that had made the reputations of Sir Frederick Leighton and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Unlike Sir Frederick, however, Strickland hadn’t depicted Persephone in Hades, or, like Rossetti, broodingly caressing the pomegranate that symbolized her captivity.

Apart from a storm cloud looming in an upper corner of the painting—a dark cloud in which Pluto could just be discerned in a chariot drawn by four jet-black horses—there was nothing dark or sinister about his depiction of the goddess.

Lying naked in a grassy meadow, as if blown lightly there by the wind, his Persephone was still joyously unaware of the fate about to befall her. Her chin rested on the back of her hand, her head at a pert angle; her warm wide mouth was curved in a beguiling smile; a careless torrent of Titian-red waves and curls was decorated with flowers; her legs were kicked up behind her in joyous abandon, the ankles crossed. As a painting in the classical style it was imbued with gaiety and was lyrically lovely.

As a painting that could be recognized as a portrait of one of Lord May’s granddaughters, it was also breathtakingly scandalous.

For a long moment Maxim had been too dumbstruck to speak, and then, beneath his immaculately clipped mustache, a slow smile had split his face.

“It is magnificent,” he had said. “Wonderful. On the walls of my palace in the Crimea are paintings by some of the most famous artists in history. A Rubens, a Botticelli, two Rembrandts—even a Caravaggio. Now they will be joined by something much more modern—a Strickland. And the Strickland will always mean much more to me—far more than I can ever express.”

Etiquette had demanded that in Marigold’s presence money was not discussed. Marigold hadn’t minded. She had known Strickland wouldn’t sell the painting for anything less than a breathtaking sum, and all that mattered to her was that Maxim was as uncaring of her having posed in the nude as she herself was and that, though the painting would not be on public display, it would be on private display—and would become a Yurenev family heirloom.

As she drew level to the row of pews in which he was seated, she looked toward him so that their eyes could meet. He didn’t respond but kept looking straight ahead to where the clergy and choir were now taking up their positions.

She knew why, of course. If their eyes had met in such a way, everyone in the rows behind him would have seen and would have considered it to be not at all the proper thing. That he could be so conventional irritated her, but something else was irritating her far more.

He was seated next to twenty-two-year-old Lady Anne Greveney, eldest daughter of the Duke of Culmnor. Anne was an unexpected friend for Iris to have, being a beauty who had appeared on the front cover of
Tatler
. The friendship had begun when Iris had been unwillingly launched on her debutante season and, in an anteroom full of hundreds of other debutantes, had found herself seated next to Anne prior to their presentation to their majesties.

Marigold didn’t care for Anne—and she particularly didn’t care for the way Anne was sitting so intimately shoulder to shoulder with Maxim.

Another couple of steps and they were out of her field of vision. Ahead, she could see Toby turn, and as Iris approached, Marigold saw him flash her a confidence-boosting smile. That wasn’t what was making her heart beat erratically high in her throat; Theo was seated at the end of the pew she was about to walk past. Next to him was Jerusha. Marigold could only see a glimpse of Jerusha’s face, but against the rich luxuriance of her furs, it was shockingly pale.

She felt a surge of concern. Lily had told her that Jerusha hadn’t been very well of late—something to do with having become prone to headaches—but it hadn’t occurred to her that Jerusha was actually
ill
.

Theo’s elbow was resting on the edge of the pew. If she widened the distance between herself and Rose and walked a little farther to the left of the aisle, the skirt of her bridesmaid’s dress would brush the sleeve of his astrakhan-collared coat.

The urge to do so was overpowering.

Though he didn’t turn his head by even a millimeter, she could sense his tension as she drew alongside his pew.

Why, when she was on the point of accepting a proposal of marriage from Maxim—who was younger, handsomer, far more glamorous, far richer, and royal into the bargain—did Theo still have such a profound effect on her? It was exceedingly annoying.

Her skirt brushed his arm, and crossly she hoped it would fill
him with a million regrets for the way he had ended their relationship.

A couple of steps later and their bridal procession came to a halt. With her grandfather standing to her left, Iris took her place next to Toby. Toby’s best man stood to Toby’s right and Rose, Marigold, and Lily stood a little behind the bridal couple.

Iris turned, handing her prayer book and net gloves to Rose, and the ceremony, conducted by the rector of St. Margaret’s, began.

Rose tried to give it all her concentration, but it was hard. Just when life was, in many ways, better than she’d ever dared to hope it could be, a whole raft of new concerns had replaced old ones. True, she was now living the kind of independent lifestyle she had only been able to dream about a year ago, when she had still been tied to Snowberry; but because of the unresolved issue of David and Lily’s romance, though she was able to give wholehearted commitment to her suffragette activities, they were curtailed to backroom work and planning. Planning that did not always come to fruition.

The rector said, “Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?” and when her grandfather stepped forward, Rose’s attention began to wander, as she reflected that there were some occasions when plans not coming to fruition were a relief.

Christabel’s pet project, the storming of Buckingham Palace, for instance, had still not taken place. “But it will,” Christabel had said determinedly, “and in the not too distant future.”

When it did, Rose knew that Hal would expect her to take part in it and to write a firsthand account for the
Daily Despatch
.

Hal.

No one and nothing—not even Lily’s romance with the Prince of Wales—was disturbing her peace of mind quite so much as Hal Green. Try as she might, she just couldn’t banish his image from her mind. He intrigued and aroused her. And because she was so unfamiliar with it, it was the last effect that disturbed her the most.