The Shadow Queen (37 page)

With her mind racing she tried to think of her best plan of action.

“We’ve had an emergency at March Field and I’ve had no proper sleep for twenty-four hours,” he said, striding away from her in the direction of the bedroom. “Don’t wake me. Especially don’t wake me in order for us to go to the del Coronado.”

The bedroom door slammed shut after him.

Slowly she let the breath ease from her body.

Win might feel very differently about going to the del Coronado when he woke, but it wasn’t something she could depend on. Her best plan of action was to now make alternative arrangements for getting herself there. She would beg a lift from Corinne and Henry. Arriving with the commander of the Air Detachment, Pacific Fleet, would put her in an excellent position when it came to contriving an introduction to the Prince of Wales.

When it came time for her to dress for the ball she entered the bedroom on tiptoe, no longer eager for Win to wake. Going to the ball without him would be far preferable than going to it with him. By deciding that the ball in Prince Edward’s honor was “bullshit” and that he wasn’t going to attend it, he had unintentionally done her the biggest possible favor.

Hardly daring to breathe, she carried her evening gown, gloves, shoes, and jewelry out of the room and dressed in the sitting room.

When the Mustins’ car drew up outside the house, she didn’t wait for anyone to knock on the door. She simply opened it and closed it behind her as quietly as a burglar leaving the scene of a crime.

“Skinny, you look sensational,” Corinne said as Henry’s driver opened the rear passenger-side door for Wallis and she slid into the car next to her. “I’ve told Henry that Win will be joining us later.” She squeezed Wallis’s hand tightly to indicate that this was the story she had given Henry and that it was a story Wallis should stick to. “Wouldn’t it be just swell if Prince Edward fell in love with an American girl tonight? Can you imagine it? An American future queen of England? Wouldn’t it just be the most sensational thing you could possibly imagine?”

As the car sped off in the direction of the Hotel del Coronado, Wallis was immediately reminded of Pamela and of the way Pamela had daydreamed for years of winning Prince Edward’s heart and of becoming the Princess of Wales and, one day, queen.

As she looked out of the car window at the dusky light now clouding the sky, turning the water of San Diego’s magnificent bay from blue into deep indigo, she wondered what Pamela’s relationship with the prince now was. Edith’s latest letters hadn’t mentioned her. They had been too full of the fact that she was now finally engaged.

“Let me tell you how splendid the lunch was aboard the
New Mexico
,” Corinne said as the twinkling lights of the Hotel del Coronado came into view. “Prince Edward was charm personified. He went out of his way to speak to every single person who was there. I dipped the curtsey I’d been practicing ever since we received our invitation and he smiled
right at me
. He’s unbelievably handsome, Skinny. Every inch a fairy-tale Prince Charming.”

As they neared the creamy white Victorian chocolate-box confection that was the hotel, it seemed to Wallis that it, too, had come from the pages of a child’s fairy story. The rose-tinted roofs of its turrets and cupolas were a deep wine red against the smoky light of the early evening sky. Its sea of verandahs had gingerbread trims that were straight out of something by Hans Christian Anderson. It was the perfect venue in which to meet a prince who would one day rule an empire.

She had been to the del Coronado many times but never on an occasion so splendid. Chandeliers blazed with light. Jewels glittered on evening gowns so fabulous they made Wallis’s mouth water. Dress uniforms sported magnificent displays of medals. Wallis had never before seen so many gold stars. In the ballroom the orchestra was playing Irving Berlin’s “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody,” and when Fidelia Rainey’s husband asked her if she would like to dance, she accepted unhesitatingly.

Several dances—and several partners—later, she caught sight of Rhoda Fullam. Rhoda, resplendent in purple taffeta, weaved a way toward her.

“What time is Prince Edward due to arrive, Rhoda?” she asked.

“Nine. Isn’t this just too magical for words? Papa is hoping very much that the prince will dance both with me and with Marianna.”

Wallis caught her breath. The prospect of actually
dancing
with Prince Edward hadn’t even occurred to her. All she was struggling to do was to be presented to him.

“For some reason Win’s name and mine haven’t been included on the official presentation list,” she said, trying to sound as if it were an oversight that could have happened to anyone. “I wondered if your father could have a word with whoever is in charge of the presentations? Win isn’t here, as yet, and may not be able to get here, but I would hate to miss out on such an opportunity just because of a silly error.”

Rhoda’s eyebrows pulled together. “But why would there have been such an error, Wallis? I don’t think Papa could do as you ask, because I’m sure the names of everyone who is to be presented were submitted and approved weeks ago.”

Wallis was sure they had been as well, but she wasn’t going to let such a detail stand in her way.

“Please, Rhoda. A word from your father to whoever is in charge of presentations would do the trick, I’m sure of it.”

As they were talking, Rear Admiral Fullam was standing only a few yards away from them, and with a slightly irritated shrug of her shoulders, Rhoda walked over to him. Wallis, not wanting to look too pathetically eager to hear what the result of Rhoda’s request was going to be, moved away.

She didn’t move too far away, though. She didn’t want Rhoda to be unable to find her again.

Suddenly a ripple of tension ran through the ballroom.

“He’s here!” The whisper ran from mouth to mouth like wildfire. “The prince has arrived!”

There was such a crush in the vast room that Wallis didn’t see his entrance. As she stood on tiptoe, straining for a glimpse of him, Rhoda squeezed a way toward her, saying, when she reached her, “My father obviously has a soft spot for you, Wallis. He says he’ll make sure you’re included in the list of those to be presented.”

With great difficulty Wallis resisted the urge to punch the air in glee. Instead she said warmly, “That’s swell, Rhoda. It’s a favor I won’t forget.”

The band, which had stopped playing as Prince Edward had entered the room, picked up their instruments again and began a foxtrot. As people again took to the dance floor, their necks craning in their efforts to keep the prince in their line of sight, Wallis saw him in the flesh for the first time.

It was a moment she was never to forget.

Though he was twenty-six years old, he looked younger. There was a boyishness about him that made it hard to believe he had spent the four nightmare years of the Great War as an army officer, always seeking to be where the greatest danger was. Everything else about him was just as his photographs had led her to believe, and as the people who had met him had described.

He wasn’t very tall. His cousin, Lord Louis Mountbatten, who had accompanied him into the room and was standing beside him, was far taller and, being broad-shouldered, far more imposing.

But he didn’t have Prince Edward’s charisma, nor did he remind her of medieval drawings of St. George, about to slay the dragon.

Physically he was the absolute, utter antithesis of Win. His masculinity had nothing bullishly threatening or aggressive about it. It was impossible to imagine him giving vent to senseless rages or coarse, offensive behavior. As she watched him in conversation with Governor Stephens and Rear Admiral Fullam, she noticed how he gave each man his full, undivided attention, even though she was quite sure he was impatient to take to the dance floor.

She drew as near to where he was standing as she possibly could, watching with a fast-beating heart as senior officers and their wives began to be invited to step forward to be presented to him.

He spoke a few words to each person he shook hands with. Every one of them received a smile of immense charm.

Among the long line of those being singled out to be presented was Fidelia Rainey and her husband. Then it was Marianna Fullam’s turn to dip a deep royal curtsey.

Wallis dragged her eyes away from the prince and toward Rear Admiral Fullam, willing him to look in her direction.

He did so, giving her an infinitesimal nod of the head to indicate that she should join the next group of naval wives waiting to be presented.

Wallis drew in a deep steadying breath.

As she did so, Corinne came up behind her like a whirlwind, seizing hold of her arm.

“Come with me
now
!” she hissed, her face bloodless. “Win is here and about to create a scene that will ruin his career in five seconds flat!”

“I can’t, Corinne,” she hissed back. “Rear Admiral Fullam has arranged for me to presented to the prince. I have to join the next group and—”

“And nothing!” Uncaring of the attention they were beginning to attract, Corinne spun her around. “Win is here, looking for you. He’s falling-down drunk and spoiling for a fight, and if he sees you being presented to Prince Edward he’s in bad enough shape to try landing a punch on the royal jaw. Now behave like a sane woman and come with me
now
. With a bit of luck he’ll then be satisfied with dragging you off home and no great harm will be done.”

Wallis looked once more toward Prince Edward, knowing that a moment she would have treasured for the rest of her life was now not going to happen. Win had ruined it, as he had ruined so many other things in the life they shared.

With a heart feeling as if it had turned to ice, she allowed herself to be hurried out of the ballroom by Corinne. There had been many moments when she had vowed that her marriage to Win was over and that she was going to leave him—and she had never done so.

Now, though, was different.

Now it really was the end between them, and she was going to allow nothing and no one to persuade her otherwise.

Chapter Twenty-Two

S
he didn’t act precipitately. She had done so too often in the past and always it had been to her disadvantage. Win was living in expectation of a new posting, and, when it came and if it was somewhere far distant, a decision by her not to accompany him would cause no raised, scandalized eyebrows. Lots of Navy wives didn’t accompany their husbands on their postings, especially if the posting was abroad.

Six months after Prince Edward’s visit to San Diego, Win was detailed to return to Pensacola as senior flight instructor. It wasn’t abroad, but it was the other side of the country, and when she told Win she wouldn’t be going back to Pensacola with him, he seemed almost as relieved as she was at the prospect of a separation that, in Navy terms, wouldn’t seem odd to anyone.

The following spring he was appointed as assistant to Rear Admiral William A. Moffett in the U.S. Department of the Navy in Washington, D.C. It was the kind of posting that, in social terms, required him to have a wife at his side, and he was brutally blunt in his demand that she join him there.

For Wallis, Washington was a very different prospect than Pensacola had been. Both her mother and her Aunt Bessie were living in Washington and, once there, she would have family nearby when the breach between herself and Win was made public.

Their married quarters were a small flat in a residential hotel called the Brighton. It wasn’t somewhere Wallis intended to stay.

“I know you don’t approve, Mama,” she said to Alice, perfectly composed about the decision she had made in the ballroom of the Hotel del Coronado and which she was now about to put into action, “but I can’t live with Win another single day. His posting here in Washington isn’t the kind of posting that suits him. It isn’t active enough for him, and, because he’s bored pushing a pen all day long, his rages when he’s at home are even worse than they were in San Diego.”

She wasn’t embroidering the truth. Win’s rages had become the talk of the Brighton as he screamed invectives at her, lashing out at her with his fists, and then, as a coup de grâce, smashing up whatever furniture first came to hand.

“There have been so many complaints by other residents that we’ve been asked to leave, but I’m not leaving with Win, Mama. Every minute with him is a minute when my life is at risk. Can I come here and live with you, Mama? Please?”

Alice wrung her hands despairingly. “If you do, honey, word will get back to Baltimore, and what will people say when they know you’ve left your husband? Your reputation will be ruined, and I have so little room here and …”

Silently Wallis unbuttoned her dress and stepped out of it.

At the sight of the bruises and weals that the dress had been hiding, Alice gasped, her eyes wide with horror.

“Now will you let me come and live with you, Mama?”

With a choked sob Alice threw her arms around her. “Of course I will, Wallis darling. Why didn’t you tell me how cruelly you were being treated? If I were a man I’d punch Win Spencer’s lights out and make sure all his superior officers knew exactly what kind of a beast he really is.”