The Golden Prince (46 page)

The person who went aboard with David was Luc, who treated him with easy familiarity.

“Tell me, David,” he said in English that was much better than David’s French, “what ees it like to be ’eir to a throne? What ees it a king does all day?”

They were leaning on the rails of the French flagship as, at the front of the fleet, it steamed its way from Marseille in the direction of Toulon.

David took a deep drag of his cigarette. “What my father does is read and sign endless state papers that arrive in a constant flow of red dispatch boxes. He spends time with his secretaries and other officials. He receives ministers and ambassadors and visiting heads
of state. He appoints bishops and archbishops. He conducts investitures. He launches ships and opens buildings. He lays foundation stones. He presides at state banquets. He holds a weekly audience with the prime minister.”

“Eet sounds very boring.”

David tossed the butt of his cigarette into the sea. “It is,” he said. “So is prince-ing.”

“Prince-ing?” Luc looked across at him quizzically.

David ran a hand through his hair. “Prince-ing is my department. It means a lot of artificial nonsense. Being dressed up in all kinds of fanciful medieval costumes and enduring banquets that go on for hours and never being able to choose what to do, but always being told—even being told who I will marry.”

“
Merde!
” Luc was horror-struck. “No one would tell me who I was to marry!”

“No one is going to tell me either.” David’s almost effeminately handsome face was grim. “When I’m King, I won’t do things the same way my father has always done them. I shall be far more modern and up to date. My father’s social circle is very restricted, and he simply accepts whatever he’s told about things.”

He turned around, resting his elbows on the deck rails, his back to the sea. “Take the suffragettes for instance. No one is allowed to speak the word
suffragette
in the King’s presence. It’s a subject he won’t even discuss. Which means he’s never ever heard their side of things. If he had, he might not be so opposed to them.”

Luc grinned. “And you, David? Do you sympathize with these wild, wild women who chain themselves to the railings of Ten Downing Street?”

He knew Luc expected him to grin back in amusement, but he didn’t. Instead he said with feeling, “Lily’s eldest sister is a suffragette and I admire her enormously. The wild, wild women, as you call them, are fighting a war for justice. I’m on their side, Luc. Whatever kind of king I turn out to be, I won’t be a king in the same Victorian-style mold as my father. My father has never stepped
out of line, but I think it’s safe to say I shall. Some courtiers—the fuddy-duddies who now serve my father—won’t like it, but whatever the opposition, I’m determined that as King, I shall be my own man.”

“Will you also be your own man as Prince of Wales?”

This time it was David who grinned. “I already am. As a lot of people at court are about to find out.”

Shortly after David’s return from the Mediterranean, the Marquis and Marquise de Valmy held a ball at their mansion in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne. Compared with the ballrooms David was accustomed to, at Buckingham Palace and at Windsor, the de Valmy ballroom was small. Mirror lined and flower filled, it was also very beautiful.

Minutes before the first guests arrived, Guy de Valmy very respectfully reminded him that his first dance must be with his hostess and that his next dance should be with Lady Bertie, the wife of the British ambassador.

“Although I know you will want very much to dance with Lily, comment would be caused if you did so before dancing with the other ladies in the order demanded by protocol. It is necessary, for instance, that before dancing with Lily, you dance with her mother.”

David took the reminder in good part, well aware that in his eagerness to dance with Lily in public, he might well have thrown to the winds the etiquette he was steeped in.

In white tie and tails, his hair the color of pale barley beneath the light of magnificent chandeliers, he stood next to his host and hostess at the head of their grand staircase as they received their guests.

With his Earl of Chester incognito now completely blown, he accepted endless bows and curtsies. When the Marquis and Marquise
de Villoutrey and Miss Lily Houghton were announced, a smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. His relationship with Lily had been such that at their first meeting curtsying had never occurred to her, and afterward it had been something he hadn’t wanted, not from her or from anyone else at Snowberry.

This, however, was the very first time she had come into his company in a formal and public situation. Etiquette was etiquette, and her curtsying to him was going to be a novel experience for both of them.

As she began walking up the curving sweep of the staircase in the wake of her mother and stepfather she looked so beautiful he could hardly breathe. Her gown was a dusky shade of pink that perfectly complemented her night-black hair and dark violet eyes. The narrow chiffon skirt fell to her ankles in rivulets of tiny, floating pleats, and she was wearing long glittering earrings and a matching bracelet that he suspected had been lent to her by her mother.

Her stepfather made his bow. Her mother—in a haze of Guerlain’s L’Heure Bleue perfume and wearing a sizzling Poiret gown of black and gold, diamonds dancing against her neck—dipped an elegant curtsy.

Then Lily was standing before him.

Her eyes met his, bright with amusement, and then she sank into a curtsy that couldn’t have been deeper if she had been curtsying to his father.

His face was as expressionless as he could make it, but there was laughter bubbling in his throat as he inclined his head. After that, as she shook hands with the de Valmys and then followed her mother and Henri into the ballroom, he continued greeting the guests, impatient to have the task over and done with.

He had never before been so keen to enter a ballroom. He waltzed with the Marquise de Valmy. He waltzed with Lady Bertie. He waltzed with countless other ladies of mature age who would have felt themselves snubbed if he had not. Then at last, ignoring
the scores of debutante-aged French girls all desperate to catch his eyes, he danced with Lily.

She stepped into the circle of his arms, knowing that she belonged there, looking every inch the princess he was determined she soon would be.

The orchestra launched into the opening strains of “The Blue Danube.” From now on he knew that Strauss would always be his favorite composer, “The Blue Danube” his favorite waltz.

“I love you,” he said as he swept her out into the middle of the floor.

“I know.” Her lips curved in a deep smile of contentment. “I love you, too. Isn’t it wonderful? Isn’t it just too magical for words?”

The blatant love in his eyes was her answer, and as they whirled round and round the room she knew that no matter how old they became the evening was one neither of them would forget; it was a treasured memory that would last forever.

King George stomped
down a Buckingham Palace red-carpeted corridor, heading toward his library. David had arrived back from France late the previous evening and he’d requested an early morning meeting with him to review the months David had spent as a guest of the Marquis de Valmy and to inform him of how he would be spending the next few months.

The King rounded a corner, bypassed a giant marble statue by Canova, and saw with satisfaction that David was already approaching the library from the opposite direction.

“Nice to have you home, my boy,” he said as David walked up to him and gave him the bow all his children gave when meeting with him.

“It’s nice to be home, sir.” It wasn’t true. What David wanted, more than anything else in the world, was to be back in Paris with Lily.

Scarlet-liveried footmen with powdered hair and white-gloved hands closed the library’s double doors behind them. David licked his dry lips, his heart pumping like a piston. All his life he had lived in fear of his father’s one-to-one interviews, and this interview, when he was determined that the subject of his marriage to Lily was going to be settled once and for all, was going to need all the stamina he could muster.

King George settled himself behind his massive Biedermeier desk.

David stood in front of it, legs apart midshipman fashion, just as he had done ever since he was twelve years old and had first gone to Naval College.

The King came straight to the point. “It would seem you made a very good impression in France, David. Guy de Valmy tells me you impressed everyone you met.”

“That was very kind of him, sir.”

“And Mr. Hansell tells me you’ve learned quite a lot about French history and French political structure.”

“Yes, sir. Though Mr. Hansell didn’t take me in those subjects himself, sir. Monsieur Escoffier supervised my education in French history and politics.”

“Yes, indeed. I have his report here.” The King drew a folder from the middle desk drawer. Inside it were several letters. Looking at the top letter, he said, “Monsieur Escoffier has reported that your progress in all things French has been truly amazing.”

David had the grace to blush, well aware that in saying so the kindly Monsieur Escoffier had been exceedingly generous.

The blush went unnoticed by his father, who was already referring to a second letter. “The British ambassador, Sir Francis Bertie, has written that nothing could have been more self-possessed and tactful than your manner when, in his company, you visited the studio of the painter Monsieur Gillot. He says that in conversation with Monsieur Gillot, you did not hesitate at all in your French.”

He looked up from the letter. “By that, David, I take it to mean that you have finally lost your John Bull accent?”

“Yes, sir. I think so, sir.”

King George, whose own French was execrable, didn’t try to test him.

“Then that is all very satisfactory, David. So now we come to the plans made for you in the interim before you go to Oxford.”

“Sir, if I could just interrupt you for a moment. There’s something very urgent I must …”

“Germany,” King George said as if David hadn’t spoken. “Your
German is very good, of course. Far better than your French ever was, but there is always room for improvement. On this trip abroad you will be staying with relations. First at the Württemberg court with King Wilhelm and Queen Charlotte and then at Neustrelitz with the Dowager Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.”

David gritted his teeth. Württemberg, with Uncle Willie and Aunt Charlotte, wouldn’t be too much of an ordeal, but Neustrelitz, with his mother’s great-aunt Augusta and her son, Grand Duke Adolph Friedrich, would be deathly boring.

The arrangements had, however, been put in place and so there was no point in protesting about them, especially not when he wanted to keep his father in a good mood.

“Captain Cullen will not accompany you. He has proved an excellent equerry, but it is time he now gave his attention to his army career. Several names as to your future equerry are under consideration.”

If David hadn’t been about to bring Lily’s name into the conversation, he would have felt vast relief at the thought of never again having to endure Piers Cullen’s humorless company. As it was, struggling to keep his voice steady, he said, “You may remember, Papa, that early last summer I expressed the wish to become betrothed to the dearest girl in the whole world …”

King George’s rare good humor vanished. He jumped to his feet, his froglike eyes bulging. “Not another word!” There was spittle at the corners of his mouth. “You’re going to marry who I damn well say you’re going to marry! And you’ll marry when I say so, and not a day before!”

David flinched, but stood his ground. “With all due respect, sir, I am not going to marry Grand Duchess Olga. I’m going to marry a girl of my own choosing. A girl I love with all my heart.”

His father picked up a paperweight and hurled it in the direction of David’s head.

Sheet white, David ducked.

The paperweight smashed into the wall.

“You won’t be marrying Olga, because the offer that you do so has been rejected!” That it had been—on the grounds that Olga was still too young for such a decision to be taken—was only compounding King George’s current fury. “What you will be doing, David, is spending the summer in Germany and then the next three years at Oxford. While you are there you will form no unsavory relationships with housemaids, waitresses, or any other kind of scheming adventuress.”

Hearing his father describe the girl he loved so dearly as an adventuress was more than David could bear. “Lily is neither a housemaid, a waitress, nor an adventuress,” he said tightly. “She is the daughter of the late Viscount Houghton and the granddaughter of the Earl of May. As far as I am concerned that makes her quite wellborn enough to be my wife.”

“You’re an insolent, stupid young fool!” The veins at King George’s temples stood out ugly and purple. “You are heir to the greatest throne in the world. The girl you marry
has
to be royal. Surely you have the sense to see that?”