The Golden Prince (28 page)

“I don’t want that painting to be shown, Strickland.” She remembered how paganly beautiful she looked in it and added, “Or at least not until a family matter has been resolved.”

More intrigued than ever, he stubbed his cigarette out. “Unless you tell me why you’ve got cold feet, that painting is going to be publicly exhibited within weeks.”

“You’re a bastard, Strickland. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“Plenty of people, but none of them of your age, sex, or upbringing. Now why don’t you tell me what is behind all this? You love feeling wicked, so why this sudden loss of nerve?”

Accepting defeat, aware that he knew her far too well to be fobbed off without being told at least a smidgeon of the truth, she sank down onto the studio chaise longue and said, “It’s because one of my sisters has the chance of marrying someone really, really distinguished and as a family we can’t risk the slightest whiff of scandal. Otherwise it will all be off and her life will be ruined.”

She didn’t add that if scandal robbed her of the chance of living within the palace circle, her life would be ruined also.

He regarded her thoughtfully. Marigold was the granddaughter of an earl. Her great-aunt, Lady Sibyl Harland, was a countess and a hostess in the grand manner. The prime minister often dined at her home on St. James’s Street, as did the leader of the opposition, the Marquess of Lansdowne. Prince Louis of Battenberg was another regular guest. King Edward VII had been, in Sibyl’s words, “a very dear and close friend.” Rumor had it that in their younger days, her friendship with the late King had been so close as to be best described as intimate. Under the present reign, even Queen Mary was known to have visited her for afternoon tea.

With such a family background he couldn’t imagine Marigold referring to anyone as “really, really distinguished” unless they were a duke, or the heir to a dukedom. Or unless they were royalty.

His sludge-colored eyes gleamed as he considered which
member of the royal family could possibly fill the bill. There weren’t many to choose from. The Prince of Wales was surely too young to be contemplating marriage. Prince Albert, being even younger, could also be discounted; and the three other princes were mere children. And, besides, the person would have to be a more minor royal.

One name immediately came to mind. His Serene Highness Prince George of Battenberg. George’s mother, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, had married into the German House of Hesse, but she and her husband, Prince Louis, lived in England.

Georgie was the right age, in his early twenties, and with his royal background he could certainly be classed as being “really, really distinguished.”

Strickland grinned to himself. If the suitor in question was Georgie Battenberg, Marigold had nothing to worry about. The Battenbergs were a very flamboyant family. Marrying a bride whose sister had posed as Persephone wouldn’t worry Georgie a bit.

Still deep in thought he reached into his smock pocket for his packet of cigarettes, wondering whether, if the mysterious suitor wasn’t Georgie, it was a foreign royal. There were plenty to choose from, especially at the moment when so many royal visitors, in London for the coronation, hadn’t yet returned home.

Of the plentiful Russian contingent, Prince Maxim Yurenev, who had lifted Marigold from the pony’s back when she had arrived at the ball as the Queen of Sheba, was by far the handsomest and most glamorous.

“Your sister’s distinguished lover wouldn’t be Prince Maxim Yurenev, would he?” he asked, making a stab in the dark.

“No.” Though it would have been sensible to have led him up the garden path, Marigold didn’t. “Prince Yurenev is in love with me,” she said.

Strickland nodded, well able to believe that having once had his arms around a near naked Marigold, Maxim Yurenev was eager to repeat the experience. Also, as Marigold had so obviously entered a Russian phase, it explained why she was dressed as she was.

“A Russian husband would suit you,” he said, deciding the subject of the “really, really distinguished person” had run its course. “And Yurenev is a Romanov. He must have palaces galore in Russia.”

While in banishment at Snowberry Marigold had received lots of long telephone calls from Maxim, all urging her to return to London at the soonest possible moment. She said carelessly, “He’s heir to one of the greatest fortunes in Russia. His family has a huge palace in St. Petersburg and has other palaces on its vast estates in Central Asia.”

“So trying to persuade me not to exhibit Persephone isn’t the only reason you are back in London. You’re here to indulge in a Cossack-style love affair as well?”

Laughter bubbled up in her throat and she forgot all about being cross with him for not promising to keep Persephone under wraps.

“I’m going to do what I damn well please, Strickland. May I have a cigarette?” As they settled back into their habitual easy camaraderie she said, as if talking to a best girlfriend, “Now tell me all the gossip. What happened at the ball after Rose hustled me home? Was I the talk of the evening?”

The next day, in the company of her great-aunt, Marigold left for a Saturday-to-Monday at Belden Castle, the principal seat of the Duke and Duchess of Stainford. The weekend was one she was intensely looking forward to.

Strickland, who had been at Belden several times, had told her that the footmen were as splendidly liveried as those at Windsor and that the vast rooms and endlessly long corridors were studded with paintings by Gainsborough, Reynolds, and Holbein. “Don’t be a philistine about the tapestries,” he had said warningly. “They are Gobelin and priceless.”

Despite Strickland’s attempts to educate her in art history, it wasn’t Belden’s glut of artistic treasures she was looking forward
to seeing. Maxim was a close friend of the family and had told her that he, too, would be one of the guests.

What she hadn’t expected when she went downstairs with Sibyl for predinner cocktails, looking sensationally eye-catching in a searing pink beaded gown that clashed spectacularly—and purposely—with her hair, was that Lord and Lady Jethney would be at Belden as well.

Theo, looking splendid in full evening dress, visibly tensed with shock at the sight of her. Jerusha’s eyes widened in happy surprise.

“Marigold! How wonderful!” Leaving her husband’s side, she crossed the room and, taking Marigold’s hands in hers, she kissed her affectionately on both cheeks. “Are Rose and Iris guests as well?”

“No. Rose is in town, doing some suffragette-type journalist thing, and Iris is at Snowberry. She’s just become officially engaged to Toby Mulholland.”

All the time she was speaking, she was looking over Jerusha’s shoulder at Theo. A shutter had come down over his eyes, leaving them expressionless, but his mouth gave away his inner feelings. It had narrowed into a tight line of pain. Seeing it gave her intense satisfaction. She wanted him to hurt. She wanted him to hurt just as much as he had hurt her.

“How lovely,” Jerusha said, speaking of Toby and Iris. “They’ve always been sweethearts, haven’t they? Will it be an autumn wedding, or are they going to wait until the spring?”

Marigold neither knew, nor cared. Maxim Yurenev was walking toward them, a cocktail glass in either hand. “I’ve got something rather fun for you to try,” he said, handing her one of the glasses. “It’s called a gimlet. Tell me what you think of it.”

To Jerusha he said courteously, “Would you like to try one, Lady Jethney?”

Jerusha, who seldom even drank champagne, smiled gently and shook her head. “No, I don’t think so, Prince Yurenev.”

Sensing that the extraordinarily handsome young Russian wanted Marigold to himself and that there was possibly a burgeoning
romance in the air, she excused herself. In a gown of midnight-blue taffeta, Jerusha, tall, thin, and elegant, returned to where her husband was still looking across at Marigold, his broad-shouldered, deep-chested body as taut as stretched wire.

“I’ve bribed a footman to change the place-setting names at table, and so we will be seated next to each other.”

Maxim had been educated at Oxford and his accent was very faint and more French—the language all the Russian aristocracy spoke fluently—than Russian. “It wasn’t an easy task,” he continued, acutely aware of the way Marigold’s shimmering evening gown was clinging to her hourglass curves. “The dinner table seats eighty and is set for at least forty.”

Like every other man present, Maxim was impeccable in white tie and tails, though where several other stiff shirt-fronts were fastened with mother-of-pearl or gold studs, his shirt was fastened with exquisite diamonds, as was his white pique waistcoat.

Marigold, sensing that Theo’s eyes were still on her, took a sip of her gimlet—which she liked very much indeed—and turned the full force of her attention on Maxim. “How wonderfully clever of you,” she said in her bewitchingly husky voice. “I’d much rather be seated next to you than next to one of the Duke’s elderly friends. As it is my first time at Belden, d’you think there is time, before dinner, for you to show me the gardens?”

Maxim, well aware of Marigold’s reputation for being fast, felt a rising in his crotch. “I think there is time for me to show you the Italian terrace garden.” His eyes, as they held hers, were very narrow, very bright, very dark.

He took the glass from her hand and deposited it, with his own glass, on the tray of a nearby footman. When they stepped into the garden, he wanted his hands free … and hers.

Fifteen minutes later, as the guests began making their way into a state dining room so majestic it rivaled the state dining room at Buckingham Palace, Maxim and Marigold were still in the garden, deep in a passionate embrace.

Neither of them was aware of being watched.

Theo, with the excuse of wanting a last puff on his cigar before escorting Jerusha in to dinner, was standing on the terrace, jealousy and self-hatred raging through his massive frame like a roaring fire.

He had to get over her. He had to stop caring.

He ground his cigar stub beneath his heel and with his hands bunched into fists headed back into the castle, knowing that if he didn’t get over her, he would never have peace of mind again.

Queen Mary was
enjoying a few moments of blessed solitude. She had had a restless night, her mind teeming with the challenges she was facing in her new position as a crowned Queen-Consort.

It was early dawn and she had opened the drapes so that pale yellow light spilled into the room. Seated at an Empire writing table that had once been Queen Victoria’s, she pondered the next two hurdles to be overcome.

First was the investiture of David as Prince of Wales at Caernarvon; it was an occasion she had very mixed feelings about, for it hadn’t been George’s, or even the prime minister’s idea, but that of Mr. Lloyd George, the Welsh chancellor of the exchequer, who happened to also be constable of Caernarvon Castle.

There had been no formal investiture of a Prince of Wales for centuries, and her great regard for historical accuracy balked at the staging of a royal and religious ceremony that gave the false impression of a long unbroken tradition. As there was little historical regalia in existence, new regalia—a coronet, a rod, a ring, a sword, a mantle with doublet and sash—had had to be made.

The rod, ring, and sword had been made of Welsh gold and featured the traditional symbol of Wales—the red dragon. This pleased her sense of what was appropriate, but it didn’t ease her reservations about presenting as time-honored tradition something that was, for the most part, newly invented.

George, however, had had no reservations about holding the
investiture at Caernarvon, and she had kept her feelings of disquiet to herself. She never, ever, disputed with George. Not about anything.

The sunrise was now the color of ripe apricots. Enjoying its beauty, she thought about the second, far greater hurdle, that lay ahead.

In four months’ time she and George were to leave for India to receive the homage of their Indian subjects.

Unlike the investiture at Caernarvon, the coronation durbar to be held in Delhi was George’s idea. The grandeur and splendor would, she knew, be colossal. No other king-emperor and queen-empress had ever stepped foot on India’s great subcontinent. She and George would be the first to do so. Even thinking about the magnitude of the occasion took her breath away.

A satisfied smile touched her mouth as she reflected how extraordinary it was that having been born a very minor, semi-royal princess, she had reached such dizzying heights. It was certainly something that couldn’t have been predicted. The morganatic-tainted blood she had inherited from her father, whose own father had forfeited the throne of Württemberg by marrying a nonroyal countess, had debarred any reigning German prince from asking for her hand. As for the other royal houses of Europe, there had been very little hope of her marrying into one of them. As a Serene Highness, not a Royal Highness, she hadn’t been royal enough to marry a royal prince—and yet was considered to be too royal to marry someone who wasn’t.

It had been her mother’s cousin, Queen Victoria, who, to resolve a sticky problem of her own, had been her salvation. Aunt Queen’s sticky problem had been her grandson, twenty-eight-year-old Prince Albert-Victor. Prince Eddy, as he was known within the family, had been George’s elder brother. Second in line to the throne, he’d been sadly lacking in the qualities desirable in a future king. He could no more concentrate than fly to the moon. Nothing caught his interest. He was indifferent about everything except indulging in hopeless love affairs.