The Golden Prince (26 page)

It was unbelievable. Incredible. But it had happened. And it had happened—had been happening—right under his very nose. His rage was absolute, his boiling hatred total.

None of it was directed against Lily. What innocent young girl would be able to withstand a proposal of marriage from a prince? That Lily
had
been unable to withstand it was obvious from the way she hadn’t turned to him for help in getting out of the situation. That was all she’d had to do. Turn from Edward, to him. Slip her hand in his. Yet she hadn’t. Instead she had clutched Edward’s hands just as fervently as he was clutching hers.

All his life people had turned their backs on him. His mother had done so by dying when he was still a child. His father had done so by being such a rigid disciplinarian he’d grown up always expecting criticism and never praise. When, at thirteen, he’d been sent to Eton, he’d never fitted in; he’d never made friends. The army had been his lifesaver, but even then he had remained a
loner. Girls had never been attracted to him, and he’d had such low self-esteem that he hadn’t blamed them. Then the miracle had happened, when, via his father’s friendship with Lord Esher, he had been appointed as equerry to the Prince of Wales.

His hopes of becoming invaluable to the prince, of being treated by him as a friend, had swiftly been dashed to pieces. Edward, he had quickly come to realize, resented his constant presence. He, in turn, had come to resent Edward’s scrupulously polite but offhand treatment of him.

Then Edward had knocked Rose Houghton from her bicycle and afterward, at Snowberry, when Edward had invited the Houghtons to dispense with all formality and to call him David—something he had never invited
him
to do—his resentment had rocketed sky-high.

He had coped with it because, for the first time in his life, he had found someone who made him feel good about himself, someone who didn’t make him feel unattractive, someone he could at last open his heart to and love.

Now his rare and precious happiness was at an end.

Vaguely he heard Iris say in a stunned voice, “Have I completely misunderstood, or has David just asked Grandfather for Lily’s hand in marriage?”

Marigold was clapping her hands and behaving like a child at Christmas, saying, “Oh, but of course he has! Isn’t it marvelous? Isn’t it just too spiffingly
wonderful
?”

Only Rose was firmly keeping her thoughts to herself, and there were white lines of tension at either side of her mouth as she crossed the terrace and stepped into the house.

Piers fought down wave after wave of nausea as everyone else, Lily’s grandfather and Edward included, followed her.

No one turned to look toward him. He might just as well have not been there.

Struggling for self-control, he bit his lower lip so hard he tasted blood.

Iris had never
previously been glad to see the Austro-Daimler disappearing down Snowberry’s drive, but she was glad now, for the drama of the past hour had been all too much for her to take. David, explaining that he had to get back to Buckingham Place before his absence was realized, had just left for London as happy as a lark.

Whatever happened in the future, Iris knew that she and Rose would no longer be able to regard David as a kind of adopted nephew whose visits to Snowberry were innocently pleasurable to him and harmless to them. The shock of knowing that he and Lily had fallen in love had brought home a truth all of them had been avoiding.

David wasn’t an adopted nephew, or a younger version of Rory. He was a royal prince. Not any old royal prince either, but the Prince of Wales, a prince who was the heir to the throne.

“As heir to the throne, sweetheart,” her grandfather was now saying gently to Lily, “much as he may want to marry you, he can’t marry you. I’m sorry, tootsums, but there it is.”

Lily regarded him lovingly, and without the least distress. “Both David and I know that gaining King George’s permission isn’t going to be easy, Grandpapa.”

She was kneeling by the side of his chair, sitting back on her heels. “David knows he is expected to marry a foreign princess, just as his father and grandfather did,” she said matter-of-factly.
“But he doesn’t want that kind of an arranged marriage—and he wants his father to be aware that he doesn’t want it, before he begins arranging one.”

She turned her head to include the rest of them in what she was saying. “Things are always being arranged for him without his being told about them. He didn’t know about his investiture until he was told Mr. Lloyd George would be giving him lessons in the Welsh language.”

Their grandfather, realizing he was being totally ineffective, looked toward Rose for help. She didn’t let him down.

“Neither you nor David is facing up to reality, Lily,” she said briskly. “It isn’t that it’s not going to be
easy
for David to gain King George’s permission for you to marry, it’s that it’s going to be impossible. It isn’t just a tradition for the heir to the throne to marry foreign royalty; it is something that is set in stone. You are a commoner. A commoner has
never
married the heir to the British throne.”

“That’s not strictly true,” their grandfather said unhelpfully. “Elizabeth Woodville, Edward IV’s queen, was a commoner. As was Jane Seymour, when she married Henry VIII.”

None of them ever lost their patience with their vague, mild-mannered grandfather, but Iris was aware that Rose was close to doing so.

“That was a long time ago, Grandfather,” she said through gritted teeth. “A long,
long
time ago!”

“Oh! For goodness’ sake!” Marigold erupted out of the chair she’d been sitting in and threw her hands up in the air. “What is the matter with you all?” Her green cat-eyes flashed fire. “You should be overjoyed that David is in love with Lily and wants to marry her. It means she will become a
princess
! Think of what that will mean. Think of the jewels she will be given! Think of all the eligible foreign royal bachelors Rose, Iris, and I will be introduced to!”

They were all quite used to Marigold being appalling, but from the agonized expression on their grandfather’s face, even he knew
she had just surpassed herself. Before he, or Rose, could give her a piece of their minds, Lily took them all by surprise.

Rising to her feet, she said quietly, but with underlying steel in her voice none of them had ever heard before, “You are quite wrong, Marigold, if you think I’ve told David I will marry him because I want to become a princess. It’s the very last thing on earth I want to be. David has told me all about being royal and it’s not at all what it seems.”

Showing maturity Iris hadn’t been aware of before—and that she knew Rose hadn’t been aware of either—Lily said, “It’s a life of unremitting duty and David is dreading it. He hates being dressed up in ceremonial finery and having people deferring to him. That is why Snowberry is so important to him. He can be himself here. That is why he needs me to marry him. He simply can’t face the thought of his future without me there to help him.”

Iris realized then that they must all begin thinking of Lily in quite a different way.

“And I’m not going to let him down,” she continued as they all, even Marigold, listened to her in respectful silence. “Too many people have let him down. He had a nanny who was so sadistic she eventually ended up in a mental home. He has a mother who didn’t even
notice
how physically he was being abused. King George has always been absolutely beastly toward him. His tutor didn’t teach him any of the things he needed for his entry to Naval College and so he’s always had to struggle like mad not to be bottom of the class. No one but me has ever loved him. I
do
love him. I am
not
going to let him down. I don’t want to be Princess of Wales, but if I have to be in order for David to face a future he can never escape, then I shall be.”

“If King George gives his consent,” their grandfather said gruffly.

“Yes.” She reached down to where he was seated, squeezed his hand, and left the room, saying she was going to feed her rabbits.

When the door closed behind her, Rose said, “We are just going
to have to wait on events now, aren’t we? We have to hope that Marigold’s shameless Queen of Sheba exhibitionism the other evening doesn’t make gaining royal consent even more of a problem—which it will if word of it reaches the palace.”

“Shameless exhibitionism?” Their grandfather looked bewildered. “But I thought Marigold went as an eastern queen? Surely she looked delightful?”

“I did, Grandfather,” Marigold said provocatively.

Rose eyeballed her and, ignoring their grandfather’s remarks, said, “If there is to be the faintest of faint hopes for David and Lily, there have to be no more scandalous escapades,
of any kind
, Marigold. Is that understood?”

“Of course.” Her agreement had been given easily, but as she turned away from Rose a look of panic darted through her eyes, confirming Iris’s suspicions that on her recent visits to London, Marigold had, once again, been behaving in a way that would ruin David and Lily’s hopes utterly, if it became pubic knowledge.

“I’m going back to St. James’s Street,” Rose said, bringing their family conclave to an end. “Hal Green wants to meet with me to discuss doing some journalism pieces. It’s an enormous opportunity. No one else is ever likely to ask me.”

Marigold said that she was going to change into riding clothes and ride over to see Tessa Reighton.

Their grandfather said he was going to put a newspaper over his head and have a snooze in order to soothe his shattered nerves.

Iris didn’t mind being left on her own. Not when she had so much to think about. She went into the kitchen to make sure Millie knew that David and Piers were no longer at Snowberry and that she needn’t take them into account when she made afternoon tea, and then she rounded up Homer, Fizz, and Florin and set off for a long, thoughtful walk.

Now, with Homer plodding on beside her and Fizz and Florin skittering about in the undergrowth, chasing rabbits, she was in
the woods at the far side of the lake. Out of sight of the house, she neither heard the little two-seater roar up Snowberry’s elm-lined drive, nor saw, as he stepped from the motorcar minutes later, that the driver was Toby.

“Miss Houghton, Miss Iris, and Miss Marigold are not at home,” William said to Toby helpfully. “Miss Lily is in the west garden.”

“No problem, William. I’ve come to visit Lord May.”

“Lord May is, I believe, in the drawing room.”

Informality at Snowberry was such that Toby merely said it was good to see William looking so well, then he set off for the drawing room unannounced.

Herbert was so deeply asleep he nearly jumped out of his skin when Toby woke him.

“What the deuce!” he spluttered, sending the
Times
flying in all directions. “Oh, it’s you, young Mulholland. What the devil do you mean giving me a start like that? I’ve had enough shocks for one day without having to suffer any more.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, sir.” Toby was uninterested in what kind of day Lord May had had. “But I think I’m probably about to give you one more.”

“Then sit down. If you want a drink, please help yourself.”

“I don’t, thank you—not this minute. As for what I’ve come to say I rather think we should be standing. It’s a little formal, you see, sir.”

Herbert didn’t see, but if rising to his feet was the only way of sending Toby on his way and once again having peace and quiet, then it was a price he was prepared to pay.

He hauled himself out of his comfy wing chair. “Right,” he said with unusual grumpiness. “Spit it out, young man.”

It wasn’t quite the intro Toby had been hoping for, but as it was obviously the best he was going to get, he straightened his shoulders, took a deep breath, and plunged straight in.

“I wish to marry Iris and before I pop the question to her, I would like to make sure you have no objections.”

“Objections?” It was the second time in a little less than three hours that Herbert had been asked the same question—though the first time round it had concerned a different granddaughter and been phrased a little differently. This time, however, there were no insuperable difficulties to take into account. This time he could give his answer without fear of the consequences.

“No, young man. I have no objections whatsoever—though I must say I think it has taken you a long time to come up to scratch. However, better late than never. Iris is a grand girl. I just hope for your sake that she’s still interested in you.”

“Yes, sir.” As he thought of all that was at stake, there was deep feeling in Toby’s voice. “So do I.”