The Shadow Queen (40 page)

Pamela opened her mouth to speak, failed, and tried again. “Then how …? Forgive me, Wally. But what do you
do
?”

Wallis gave a wry smile. “Other things. Use your imagination, Pamela. A climax doesn’t depend on penetration—and men can be given pleasure in other ways. Sometimes they actually prefer the other ways.”

Pamela shook her head in disbelief. “I thought I was the one who was going to take you by surprise when I told you some of the things that have happened to me since we last met, but you beat the band, Wally. Wasn’t Queen Elizabeth Tudor supposed to have been a perpetual virgin? And aren’t you very distantly related to her? A quote from Ben Jonson said she ‘had a membrana on her, which made her incapable of men, though for her delight she tryed many.’ ”

“If you’re going to begin quoting Elizabethan playwrights, I’m outta here, though if Elizabeth Tudor suffered from the same affliction she has my sympathy, and no, I don’t think I am very distantly related to her, not even via my Montague line. What are the things you are going to surprise me with? Don’t forget that thanks to Edith I already know how chummy you are with the Prince of Wales.”

Pamela pulled a face. “Thanks to a certain Mrs. Dudley Ward I’m not as chummy as I once was. Let’s go for a walk and I’ll tell you all about how I nearly enslaved him and how Freda pipped me to the post.” She rose to her feet. “Do you know in all the time I lived in Baltimore I never visited Washington once? As we are only a mile away from the Washington Monument, what say we go and take a look at it?”

Wallis never minded visiting historical sites, and there was nothing she wanted more than to hear inside gossip about the Prince of Wales.

It was a typical hot and humid August day, but they were both wearing cool low-waisted dresses with calf-length floaty skirts and, once outside, straw cloche hats pulled forward far enough to shield their eyes from the worst of the sun’s glare.

As they strolled down K Street in the direction of the National Mall, Wallis said, “I came within a hairsbreadth of being presented to the Prince of Wales when I was living in San Diego.”

“What went wrong?”

“Win.” She didn’t elaborate. Pamela had by now gotten the picture where Win was concerned, and Wallis didn’t want to talk about him more than was absolutely necessary.

Pamela gave a throaty chuckle. “I came within a hairsbreadth of being much more than merely presented. At the time America entered the war, at a party given by my stepfather and at which he was a guest, Prince Edward fell for me hook, line, and sinker. The war was at its height and he was nearing the end of his Christmas leave. From then on, first from France and then from Italy, I received the most adoring letters imaginable and I knew, absolutely
knew
, that on his next leave home, when I became his mistress in the fullest sense of the word, he’d be mine for as long as I wanted him to be.”

Wallis was now too worldly to be shocked at how easily Pamela would have been unfaithful to John Jasper—and she also sensed that adultery wasn’t going to be the outcome of the story.

“And?” she prompted as they crossed a busy intersection.

“And on the first evening of his next leave we went to a party in Belgrave Square. It was given by someone I didn’t know. Maud Kerr-Smiley, the wife of an MP. I didn’t mind, as I didn’t see how the early part of the evening could affect the later part of it—and it wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been for a Zeppelin raid.”

Though she had been chuckling at the beginning of her story, there was now an edge of bitterness in her voice.

“I don’t understand. Was the house bombed?”

“No, but it might as well have been.”

They turned right onto Constitution Avenue.

As Pamela remained silent, Wallis didn’t prompt her again. She simply waited until Pamela felt like continuing with the story of how the Prince of Wales had fallen into another woman’s arms.

At last Pamela said, “Everyone was dancing when the maroons went off …”

“Maroons?”

“Big guns that signaled a Zeppelin raid was imminent. Freda Dudley Ward and the gentleman friend who was escorting her were crossing Belgrave Square and sought shelter at the nearest house, which, fate being what it is, just happened to be the Kerr-Smileys’ house.”

They sidestepped a woman walking two poodles.

“Maud’s husband introduced Freda and her companion to the prince, and the instant he set eyes on Freda he was a lost soul.”

“But why?” Once again Wallis was bewildered. “Is she stunningly beautiful?”

“No, though she’s pretty enough. The advantage Freda has over me is that she’s dark-haired—Edward nearly always goes for women who are dark-haired—and even in high heels she’s
tiny
.”

Wallis blinked.

Pamela laughed and gave a shrug of a silk-clad shoulder. “If you’ve seen him in the flesh, then you’ll know how slightly built he is and that he’s no more than five feet five—if that. I’m five feet six and that evening I was wearing heels. If anything was the nail in my coffin where Edward was concerned, it was those high heels. He immediately asked Freda to dance—she barely reaches his shoulder—and he’s been dancing with her ever since. Tarquin says he’s absolutely besotted by her and now he never looks at another woman.”

“What about you? Does he still speak to you?”

“Whenever we meet at parties or dinners he simply behaves as if all his adoring letter writing to me had never happened. Which is, I suppose, something to be grateful for, because if he had begun ignoring me completely, John Jasper would have wanted to know why. Have you been following his tours of the empire? In Buenos Aires a choir of fifty thousand children greeted him with ‘God Bless the Prince of Wales,’ all of which they had laboriously memorized in English, and in Delhi he made a speech in Hindustani that
he
had laboriously memorized, and in South Africa he shook so many hands that his right hand swelled to the size of a balloon and he had to shake hands with his left.”

“I read about his ticker-tape reception in New York and that the running boards of his car were trampled away by crowds determined to get nearer to him.”

“It’s the same wherever he goes, Wallis. He is without doubt the most eligible man on the planet.” She gave a wry laugh. “And I let him slip through my fingers. Anyway, that’s enough about Edward. I want to know all about Felipe. You’re obviously going to get a divorce from Win, and when you do, do you think Felipe will step up to the plate and propose?”

As they neared the green open spaces of the National Mall, Wallis told her that where Felipe was concerned, she certainly had hopes.

“Though he’s a Roman Catholic and I’m an Episcopalian, which makes things a bit tricky.”

“You could always convert.”

Wallis shot her a wry grin. “For a man who looks like Rudolph Valentino, it’s something I’ll certainly consider.”

They both cracked with laughter—laughter that filled the entire day along with secrets and confidences.

Pamela told Wallis that before his infatuation with her, the only person publicly known to have been important in Prince Edward’s life was Lady Coke. “Who is nearly old enough to be his mother,” she had added. “And knowing Marian Coke—as I now do—I’d be surprised if there was any bedroom hanky-panky in their relationship. However, I do have a very strong suspicion that there was someone else in his life before Marian.”

She told Wallis about the Houghton family and of the bust Lily Houghton had sculpted of Prince Edward when he was seventeen and a cadet at Dartmouth Naval College.

“The thing is, Wally,” she had said as they had stepped out of the elevator at the top of the monument, “according to Lord May, the Houghton girls’ grandfather, who is slightly gaga and probably told me a great deal more than he should have, not only did Edward visit them every time he traveled between Dartmouth and Windsor Castle, but there was no ‘Your Royal Highness’ or ‘Sir’ business with them. To them he was David, the name by which he’s known within his family, and that, Wally, is
extraordinary
. Even when Edward was writing to me as his ‘Dearest Angel’ he never invited me to call him David—and Marian Coke says she was never given that privilege either.”

“So which of the Houghton sisters do you think he was romantically involved with?”

Pamela had looked out at the dizzying view and said without a shadow of doubt: “Lily, the youngest. The one who sculpted his image and whom I’ve never met. Rose is far too schoolmistressy for someone as unacademically minded as Edward, and of her two other sisters, the one who is now the film star Marietta des Vaux would have scared him to death, and the other is far too plain.”

E
ver after that conversation, whenever Wallis saw a movie featuring Marietta des Vaux, she thought of the Houghton family and wondered if Lily Houghton really had been the first love in Prince Edward’s life.

Felipe had chided her for listening to gossip he doubted could possibly be true.

It was John Jasper who convinced her that it was. “Mention Prince Edward in front of Rose and she not only goes very silent, she also goes very still. It’s a most odd reaction in a woman as straight-talking as Rose. Of all the friends Pamela made in England, Rose Houghton was the one I liked the best.”

He also said to her one day when they found themselves alone together for a few moments at a party, “I never meant to hurt you, Wallis. I behaved very dishonorably. The devil of it is, I can’t regret doing so because though Pamela can be exasperating and self-absorbed to the point where I want to shake her till her teeth rattle, there’s something very special between the two of us.”

“I know.” She had touched his hand with deep affection. “I was hurt. It would be a lie if I said I wasn’t. I got over it, though. Now all I want is for us to be friends.”

“We’ll always be friends, Wallis.” There was a throb of deep sincerity in his voice, and then he lightened the moment by adding wryly, “That is, of course, unless you hit me over the head with a pencil box again!”

Chapter Twenty-Four

W
ith Pamela and John Jasper in Washington and with an ever-widening social circle, Wallis had never been happier. Everything, especially her love life, was perfect. Felipe was a tender and imaginative lover, and, in a city where such things mattered, as first secretary to the Argentinean ambassador he had entrée to Washington’s most glamorous receptions and balls.

Always, when he attended such events, she was by his side. Coupled with the high-society parties Pamela and John Jasper gave—and at which she was always a guest—it was a heady mixture, and Wallis loved every minute of it.

When Henry Mustin was also posted to Washington, bringing Corinne with him, the only thing marring what would have been utter perfection was that she was no nearer to obtaining a divorce. There were two reasons. The first was that in far-off Hong Kong, Win was being mean-mindedly uncooperative about a divorce, and the second was that she simply didn’t have the kind of money that a divorce would cost.

As she laughed and, with Felipe, loved her way through 1923, her lack of a divorce didn’t seem to matter much. Washington wasn’t hidebound Baltimore. That she was a married woman enjoying a blatant affair outraged some society matrons, but as no one wished to ostracize Felipe or the Bachmans, no one ostracized her. Standards that had been set in concrete before the war were set in concrete no longer. It was now the Roaring Twenties. Pleasure was everyone’s first priority, and it was a priority that suited Wallis perfectly.

A
t the end of the year, just as she was making plans for a family Christmas with her mother and Aunt Bessie and a party-filled New Year with Felipe and Pamela and John Jasper, she received a telephone call asking her if she would meet with Harry W. Smith, a chief clerk at naval headquarters. Though she asked for more information, no further information was forthcoming.

“So, who
is
Harry W. Smith?” she asked Corinne. “I can’t not go in case it’s something to do with the allowance I’m still given as a Navy wife.”

Corinne raised her hands expressively to show that she hadn’t a clue.

Henry said he hadn’t a clue either, but when Wallis told him of just whereabouts at naval headquarters the meeting was to take place, he said, “Whatever his reason for seeing you, it isn’t going to be about your allowance, Wallis. The address you’ve been given is that of naval intelligence headquarters.”

Sure that some kind of farcical error had been made, Wallis set off for her appointment a few days later, more amused than anxious.

It was an amusement that soon turned into incredulity.

Harry W. Smith didn’t beat about the bush as to why he wished to see her. Steepling his fingers together, he said, “It is naval custom to occasionally use trusted Navy wives as unofficial couriers, Mrs. Spencer. You would, of course, have to be given intelligence clearing, but a highly placed officer has indicated you are suited for such a task and, as your husband is at present stationed in Hong Kong, you are also ideally placed.”

Wallis’s head whirled. Was Henry the “highly placed officer,” and what did he mean about her being “ideally placed”?