The Golden Prince (8 page)

Four days later, David had made up his mind that although his visits to Snowberry had to be kept secret, he couldn’t possibly keep them secret from Bertie, so he arranged a meeting with his brother on the far edge of Dartmouth’s playing fields.

Bertie was the brother nearest in age to him and being brought up totally isolated from other boys until Naval College, apart from seldom-seen royal cousins, meant there was a very close bond between them.

As Bertie came trotting across the field toward him, the expression on his face was anxious. It was an expression that was almost permanent, for if David had found much of his time at Dartmouth difficult, Bertie, far more introverted and even shyer, was finding it a nightmare.

“W-what is it, David?” he panted, floundering to a breathless stop. “D-did the K-k-King ask about my class p-p-position?”

“Yes, he did, old chap. I told him you were sixty-first and that that was quite good where you were concerned and that you were working very hard.”

When he saw the still-agonized expression on Bertie’s face, he added a comforting fib: “He said he was pleased about the way you were trying.”

Bertie’s face lit up. “D-did he?”

“Yes. That wasn’t why I wanted to see you, though. I wanted to see you because the most extraordinary,
wonderful
thing has happened to me.”

Bertie couldn’t imagine anything wonderful happening to either of them with the coronation hanging over their heads like the sword of Damocles.

“W-what is it, David? Have you been m-made a cadet c-captain?”

David grinned. “It’s something far more wonderful than that, Bertie. If I tell you, you have to promise
on your life
that you won’t tell anyone. Not even Mary.”

Bertie looked bewildered. Though Mary was three years younger than David and over a year younger than himself, they’d always treated her as an equal and had never had any secrets from her.

“Now, d’you promise me, Bertie?” David said, eyeballing him fiercely. “Not a word to anyone.
Ever
.”

David was Bertie’s hero and though it seemed a bit of a bad show that Mary wasn’t to be in on David’s secret, he didn’t have the slightest doubt about doing as David asked.

“N-n-not a word, old chap.”

David flashed him his uniquely charming grin and offered him a cigarette. Since Bertie was only fifteen and a half, it was against the rules for him to smoke, but he took the Capstan gratefully.

When both their cigarettes were alight, David said, “I’ve met the most amazing family—and the most angelic girl.”

Girls were foreign territory to Bertie, but he knew that David, as Prince of Wales, would have to marry young because their father, when he had been Prince of Wales, had married young, as had their grandfather, when he had been Prince of Wales.

If their father and mother were already bringing suitable girls to David’s attention, it didn’t surprise him in the slightest. All suitable girls had, of course, to be princesses of royal blood, and since Germany had the largest clutch of royal princesses—nearly all of them cousins or second cousins once removed or third cousins—he naturally assumed that David’s most angelic girl was a distant German relation.

“I say, it isn’t V-Victoria L-Louise, is it?”

Princess Victoria Louise was their uncle Willy’s daughter and both he and David liked her enormously because although she wasn’t very pretty, she was very easy to get on with. A match between the emperor of Germany’s daughter and the heir to the British throne would be a dynastic masterstroke.

“No. She isn’t one of the Schleswig-Holstein mob either. Her name is Lily. Her father was Viscount Houghton. He died when
she was a baby. She and her older sisters live with their grandfather, the Earl of May. Their home is called Snowberry and it’s in Hampshire.”

Bertie blinked. If the Earl of May was a friend of their father, he would have heard of him. But he hadn’t. He knew their father certainly wouldn’t want David becoming acquainted with the daughter of a mere viscount.

“B-but h-how did you m-meet her?” he asked, stumbling for clarification. “W-where did you m-meet her?”

“I was en route to Windsor and I took a corner criminally wide and knocked Lily’s sister, Rose, off her bicycle. She wasn’t seriously hurt, but I couldn’t just say sorry and drive on.”

“So you took her h-home?”

“Yes. Then I met her sisters Iris and Marigold—and Lily. Yesterday I went there again and met Lord May. He’s just as nice as his granddaughters. They really are the most spiffing family, Bertie. I wish you could meet them, but I don’t suppose you can. If two of us began going to Snowberry, the secret couldn’t possibly stay a secret—and I have to be able to keep going there and being friends with the Houghtons, Bertie. I
have
to.”

“C-Cullen will find out.”

“Captain Cullen was with me. I think he’s fallen for one of Lily’s sisters. We all played tennis that first afternoon and he partnered with Marigold in a game of mixed doubles. She’s a redhead and a demon of a player. He won’t say anything because he wants to keep going back there—I can tell—and if he did say anything, it would come out that he hadn’t done so when the first visit took place. Then the King would dismiss him.”

Bertie didn’t think it odd that David often referred to their father as “the King.” It came more naturally to both of them than the word
father
did.

“L-lady Houghton will t-talk. She’s b-bound to. She’ll want everyone to know that the P-Prince of W-Wales is a family f-friend.”

“No, she won’t, Bertie. She’s remarried and lives in Paris. Lily and her sisters won’t talk either, because we’re friends and they understand
how very difficult it is for me to have a private life and how much I enjoy visiting Snowberry. They won’t do anything to spoil the fun we all have.”

“F-fun?”

Bertie looked even more bewildered. Since their grandfather King Edward VII had died, fun wasn’t something either of them had had much experience of.

“Yes. Just being at Snowberry is fun. There’s a lake, and when I visited on my way back here, we all swam—or at least everyone but Marigold swam. She was in London, staying with her great-aunt, Lady Harland, who has a house on St. James’s Street.

“Marigold,” he added, “likes parties and dancing. Unlike Rose and Iris and Lily, she spends a lot of time in London.”

“She sounds pretty r-r-racy.”

David flashed him the smile that so totally transformed his face. “I think she is. I also think Piers Cullen is pretty besotted with her. He was terribly moody yesterday. Just kept staring at Lily and barely speaking to anyone. He didn’t make any objections to being there, though. I expect he was hoping Marigold would turn up.”

“After the s-swimming? W-what did you do then?”

“We had tea, picnic-style on the lawn. Lily’s pet goat launched itself into the chocolate cake Millie had made, but it was so very funny it didn’t matter.”

“M-Millie? Is she another s-sister?”

David dropped his cigarette stub to the grass. “No. Millie is the cook. There is also a butler, William, who has been in service with Lord May since the two of them were young men, and though there are parlor maids and kitchen maids, there is no housekeeper. Rose acts as the housekeeper. She doesn’t seem to mind. She’s frighteningly capable and sensible and she doesn’t let anyone get away with any nonsense—me included.”

“G-Golly.” To Bertie it seemed a very strange setup, and he didn’t know whether to be impressed by it, or alarmed.

“The Harland side of the family also have a home on the Isle of Islay. It’s where Lily’s cousin Rory lives. He often visits Snowberry
for a week or so at a time—it was his swimming gear Cullen and I borrowed—and so he’ll probably have to be let in on my visits there. But no one else is to know, Bertie.”

“N-No. Of course not.” Bertie tried to imagine what would happen if their father discovered David’s secret. The thought of a rage that would be nothing less than apocalyptic made him feel giddy. He took a deep, steadying draw on his cigarette, waiting for David to tell him some more.

David didn’t do so. He was staring dreamy-eyed into the middle distance, reliving the magical moment when he and Lily had left the picnic together.

“I’m going to take all the fruit and salad we haven’t eaten down to the buns,” she’d said. “Would you like to come with me?”

“The buns?” He’d wondered if she’d meant to say “bins” and if clearing up in such a way after a picnic was a strange Snowberry custom.

“Buns is short for bunnies,” Rose had said, seeing his confusion. “Lily’s rabbits are totally spoiled, and be warned that one of them—the big black one—bites.”

“No, he doesn’t.” Lily had put leftover salad and fruit into one of the otherwise now-empty picnic baskets and risen to her feet. “Nibbles just has bad eyesight and sometimes catches your fingers accidentally when you’re feeding him.”

Rose and Iris had hooted with laughter.

Grateful that Piers Cullen was with Lord May, admiring Lord May’s pride and joy, his Talbot motorcar, David had risen to his feet and, hardly able to believe his good fortune, had fallen into step beside Lily as she began walking toward a part of the garden he hadn’t yet been to.

“Are you getting very excited about the coronation?” she’d asked as they walked down a shallow flight of stone steps into what he saw was a lower lawn on the west side of the house. “There was a piece in the newspaper this morning about all the magnificent street decorations that are being put up. It said that the twenty-third of June will be one of the most memorable days the country has ever seen.”

She’d smiled across at him, expecting him to respond with enthusiasm. Instead, so suddenly reminded of the ordeal that lay before him, he’d blanched.

Her expression had changed instantly. She’d come to a stop, saying in a stunned voice, “What on earth is the matter, David? Aren’t you looking forward to it?”

With anyone else—other than Bertie—he would have lied and said that of course he was. Instead he’d said unhappily, “No. I’m dreading it. The ceremony is hours and hours long, and there are so many things that could go wrong. At one part of the ceremony I have to pay homage to my father and I’m terrified of forgetting the words. Plus I shall be wearing heavy ornate robes and a coronet, and I hate being dressed like someone out of medieval times and being stared at.”

At her look of horrified concern, he’d added miserably, “I’m not very good at being royal, Lily. I just don’t enjoy it.”

She didn’t have to say how awful she thought that must be for him. He could see how awful she thought it was for him in her eyes.

She’d said thickly, “But you
have
to enjoy it, David. It’s going to be your whole life.”

“I know.” He’d given a helpless shrug of his shoulders and they’d started walking again.

After a few moments she’d said, “Perhaps if you thought of how much pleasure royal ceremony gives to hundreds of thousands of people—and how much pleasure you give to people when they see you dressed in magnificent medieval robes—you wouldn’t mind wearing them quite so much?”

It was a point of view he’d never thought of before and he’d found it interesting. She hadn’t, though, grasped the real crux of why his royal status filled him with such overwhelming despair.

By now they had reached the grassy pen where half a dozen rabbits were happily hopping about. He’d watched her as she filled feeding bowls with the fruit and salad they had brought with them and then, as she lifted one of the rabbits out of the pen and knelt on the grass with it on her lap, he’d said:

“It’s not having any choice about things that’s so difficult, Lily. I can’t choose what I want to do, or be. Unless I die before my father, nothing in the world can prevent me from becoming King. My father didn’t want to become King. He was in the navy and he wanted to stay in the navy, but once his father died he had no choice in the matter. Like it or not he’s the King of England and he’ll be the King of England—and of an empire that straddles the world—until the day he dies.”

She’d had her head bent low over the rabbit. Then she’d raised it, her eyes meeting his, her hair tumbling in a riot of ringlets past her shoulders. “I think that when you become King you’ll be a very great king,” she’d said solemnly. “I think you should be proud of such a privilege. Think of all the good you will be able to do. Think of being loved by so many hundreds of thousands—
millions
—of people. And all they will be wanting from you is that you do your best for them.”

As their eyes held, his breath caught in his throat. He didn’t know about doing his best for millions of people, but he did know that he wanted to do his best for Lily. He wanted to make her proud of him. He wanted her to love him, because he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he loved her.

The rabbit had hopped free of her lap and, sitting on the grass beside her, he’d taken hold of her hand.

Her fingers had curled around his.

And at that moment, Snowberry’s lower lawn had become, for Edward, Prince of Wales, the Garden of Eden.

The London home
of Sibyl, Lady Harland, was en fête. It wasn’t an unusual occurrence. Though she was seventy-two years old, Sibyl still loved a party. “We’ll be fourteen for dinner, with sixty more people invited to my little precoronation party afterward,” she said in high satisfaction to Marigold as she inspected the flower arrangements for the evening with an eagle eye. “You know I’ve scored quite a coup. The prime minister and the Marquess of Lansdowne.”

The Marquess of Lansdowne was the leader of the opposition in the House of Lords and, politically, he and Mr. Asquith did not see eye to eye.

“It means,” she said as Marigold looked a little mystified, “that with luck there will be lively verbal fireworks at the dinner table. That means a memorable dinner party, and a memorable dinner party, dearest Marigold, is a successful dinner party.”

“Who else will be here?” Marigold asked, mentally filing Sibyl’s advice away for future use, thrilled that the prime minister was to be the guest of honor at dinner. “Will anyone close to King George be among the guests?”