The Golden Prince (20 page)

Calling her by her Christian name, before they had even introduced themselves, had been a familiarity so astonishing it had taken her breath away.

“Miss Houghton,” she’d said crushingly and then, remembering why she was there and that he was the person with the power to carry the crusade for a change in the sentencing laws to untold millions of people, she’d added swiftly, “It’s very kind of you to meet with me, Mr. Green. I believe Lord Jethney has told you why I’m here?”

“Yes,” he’d said, and she’d seen that his gray eyes weren’t dark, as she had expected them to be, but extraordinarily light. “You want me to cut my readership figures to zilch by coming out in wholehearted support of a lot of foolish women.”

She had risen to her feet and said with ice in her voice, “Lord Jethney has obviously misjudged your character and sympathies. You are not the kind of man I thought I would be dealing with, Mr. Green.” She’d turned her back on him and walked toward the door.

He’d said with lazy amusement, “You’re not much of a fighter, are you, Miss Houghton?”

She’d whipped round, furious at having behaved in a way that justified his comment. “I haven’t come here to gain support in the battle for votes for women,” she’d said tightly. “I realize that’s a step too far for a national newspaper that panders to a predominantly
male readership. My crusade is to end the injustice of suffragettes being imprisoned in the third division when, as political prisoners, they should be being held in the first division. I want Rule 243A brought to public attention and revoked.”

“Rule 243A?” He’d looked interested despite the fact that he’d now stretched his legs out in front of him and crossed them negligently at the ankle, revealing a glimpse of purple sock suspenders.

Still standing, she’d glared down at him. “A year ago,” she’d said, “the home secretary, Mr. Churchill, introduced a ruling that denies suffragettes the official first-division status available to political prisoners.”

He’d tapped a pencil against his teeth and said, “Just why do you think suffragettes should be classified as political prisoners?”

“Because they are acting in the pursuit of a political cause—and that cause is to win for themselves the same lawful rights that men have.” She’d leaned forward aggressively, resting her hands flat on his untidy desk. “Have you any idea, Mr. Green, of the horrendous conditions that women and girls are being held in as third-division prisoners? Or of the treatment they are receiving?”

She’d proceeded to tell him of how Laura Ainsworth, because the feeding tube couldn’t be forced up her nostrils, had been held down by five wardresses while a two-foot-long tube was forced down her throat; of how Lady Constance Lytton, after being force-fed eight times, had suffered a heart attack and now her health was irreparably damaged; of how there were lots more instances of treatment so brutal it could only come under the heading of torture.

“Over and above such horrors,” she’d said, “are the petty humiliations. It wasn’t enough for the authorities that my friend Lady Daphne was held in solitary confinement and repeatedly force-fed, but she was provided with no water—apart from an enamel mug of drinking water—in which to wash.”

To her dismay she’d felt tears spring to her eyes.

Throwing his pencil onto the desk, he’d said, “All right, Rose. I’m
interested—and I think I can interest my chairman. It is controversial and controversy sells newspapers. Because it does, the
Daily Despatch
will launch a campaign rooting for first-division-political-prisoner status for suffragettes.”

She’d been so thankful she hadn’t even minded his use of her Christian name, though she had been furiously angry with herself for her last thought as she left his office.

That thought was that Hal Green’s gray eyes were fringed by the blackest, thickest eyelashes she had ever seen on a man.

She pulled her bedroom curtains back. A couple of hansom cabs were heading in the direction of Piccadilly. Two men in white tie and tails were strolling past Rumpelmeyers, the smart tea shop and confectioner’s on the far side of the street. Almost imperceptibly the night sky was lightening into dawn.

After such a long day, not being able to sleep was annoying, but not surprising after the evening she had endured. Their grandfather, exhausted after the long ceremonials in the abbey, had returned to Snowberry, taking Lily with him. Though Lily was not yet “out,” Rose had expected that under the very special circumstances of a coronation Lily would be staying in London and going with them to the many balls and parties arranged for the rest of the week, but she had been strangely out of sorts and had wanted to return to Snowberry.

So she hadn’t had to worry about Lily. Iris and Marigold, however, had both, for very different reasons, caused her anxiety, Marigold excessively so.

The ball she, Iris, and Marigold had been invited to that evening had been a fancy dress ball, its theme: royalty. She had gone as Eleanor of Provence, Henry III’s queen. Iris had gone as Queen Victoria. Marigold had refused to tell anyone what she was going as—which should have warned Rose that Marigold had every intention of being daring to the point of outrage. She’d had so much on her mind, though, with Daphne’s poor physical condition and her worry as to whether or not Hal Green was going to keep his word, that Marigold had barely entered her thoughts.

The three of them hadn’t left for the ball at the same time. She and Iris had left first, leaving Rory and Marigold to follow on after them. Needless to say, she hadn’t had a glimmer of what royal personage Marigold was to be, but had assumed that as Marigold was such a spectacular redhead she would be going as one of the Tudors—most probably Elizabeth.

The first indication that the evening wasn’t going to be a smoothly happy event was when Iris had emerged from her bedroom dressed as a young Queen Victoria. Queen Victoria had been short, dumpy, and more than a little plain. Iris looked so like her that it was eerie. Her gown was of shot silk in brown and green, the brown the exact color of her eyes and hair.

With its low, scooped neck and crinoline skirt it should have been immensely flattering. Instead it merely made her look years older than she was and, like Queen Victoria, not remotely glamorous or head-turning. Nearly every other young woman of her debutante year had chosen to dress in a costume that was flattering. There were scores of Queen Elizabeths, a regiment of Anne Boleyns, a whole shoal of Mary Stuarts, and a sprinkling of Lady Jane Greys. Delia Conisborough had come as Titania, Shakespeare’s Queen of the Fairies. Margot Asquith had come as Catherine the Great.

In contrast to them, Iris, wearing her hair as Victoria had worn hers, in a no-nonsense chignon in the nape of her neck, had looked like a brown mouse and Rose, fearful that Iris’s dance card was going to remain empty yet again, had been vastly relieved when she’d seen Toby enter the room, dressed rather improbably as Henry VIII.

“Oh look, Iris! There’s Toby!” she had said, grateful that Iris was now going to have a happy evening.

Iris had looked in the direction she was indicating, and Rose had seen the exact moment when Toby registered their presence.

Instead of walking immediately across to them, his face lighting up, he had given them an embarrassed nod and had turned to speak to the girl standing next to him.

“What on earth … ?” she had said, turning in amazement to Iris.

To her horror she had seen that Iris was fighting back tears. “Toby and I are no longer as … as close as we used to be,” she had said stiltedly, her face a picture of misery. “Please don’t make a big thing out of it, Rose.”

“But what has happened, Iris?” she’d said, totally bewildered.

“I don’t want to talk about it!” Iris had said fiercely.

Toby led the girl he had been speaking to out onto the dance floor, and Iris had turned on her heel and blundered her way toward the boudoir being used as a powder room.

While Rose had been debating whether or not to go after her, she became aware of a surge of excitement coming from the direction of the grand staircase. The bemedaled and bejeweled throng around her had begun moving toward it to see what the fuss was about and, as they did, Rory, appropriately kitted out as Bonnie Prince Charlie, strode up to her, his face grim.

“Marigold has arrived,” he’d said abruptly. “When it comes to being outrageous, she’s outdone herself. I tried to talk her out of it, believe me I did, but it was like talking into the wind.”

From the top of the broad shallow stairs of the grand staircase had come a storm of laughter and applause. A second later the reason became obvious.

Lawrence Strickland led a white pony into the ballroom. Perched seductively sidesaddle on its back was Marigold.

Her hair fell in a riot of fiery waves to her waist and was crowned by a majestic gold and pearl-encrusted headdress that looked as if it had been borrowed from a Covent Garden production of
Aida
. The upper part of her costume consisted of nothing but gold net, her nipples covered by strategically placed jeweled discs. Over a diaphanous, ankle-length, gold-colored chiffon skirt, a band of broad gold satin girdled her hips. Her feet, with toenails painted gold, were naked.

There had been one brief second when Rose was so appalled, so dizzy with horror, she’d been rooted to the spot. Prince Maxim Yurenev—who, being a Russian prince, had dispensed with fancy
dress and simply come as himself—had gallantly stepped forward to lift Marigold from the pony’s back.

It was then that Rose had moved—and moved fast. As Marigold had gaily announced to everyone that she was the Queen of Sheba, she had seized hold of her, sending half a dozen golden arm bracelets tinkling down to Marigold’s wrist.

“
Home!
” she had hissed between clenched teeth and Marigold, secure in the knowledge that she was the sensation of the evening, hadn’t argued.

Though the two of them had been in a hansom cab and en route to St. James’s Street within minutes, Rose had known the damage was done.

Marigold, totally heedless of her reputation, had ruined it. When Rose had thought of what such shamelessness might mean where Marigold’s relationships with men were concerned, she’d been cold with fear. Marigold’s flirtation with Lord Jethney had escaped catastrophic consequences only by a hairbreadth. But now she was quite obviously on close terms with the artist Strickland, who, if he wasn’t unsavory and dissolute, looked to be. How, and when, had she come to know him so well that he had agreed to be a part of her vulgarly sensational entrance? Or had it been Strickland who had suggested the idea to her? Then what of Prince Yurenev? Had it just been chance that he had been nearest to the pony when she had made her entrance? Or had he been expecting its arrival?

Over the rooftops the sky was the pale yellow of early dawn. Rose sighed heavily, not wanting to remember the hideous scene that had taken place between her and Marigold when they had reached home, quite certain that Marigold wasn’t lying awake thinking of it.

Marigold would, she knew, be sleeping deeply without a care in the world.

David didn’t have
a moment to himself. The day after the coronation, Buckingham Palace was still crowded with foreign royalty, nearly all of them relations of one kind or another. There was a huge celebration party for his birthday and he had received shoals of incredibly expensive—and largely useless—presents. His favorite gift had been the card Lily had given him when they had last been together and which she had made him promise he wouldn’t open until his birthday morning.

Home-made, it was a pencil drawing of the five of them picnicking on Snowberry’s lawn the day her pet goat had demolished an entire chocolate cake. Though her figures were little more than stick figures, each one was instantly recognizable. Rose, highly indignant, her hands on her hips like a schoolmistress. Iris, vainly trying to shoo the goat away. Marigold, a huge wide-brimmed straw hat shading her face but quite obviously laughing fit to bust. Lily, her eyes wide, her hands to her mouth as if inexpressibly shocked at the naughtiness of her pet. She had drawn him, too; his peaked white and navy naval hat pushed to the back of his head, his hands in fists on his waist as he surveyed the scene in delighted disbelief.

She had written on the inside of the card:

He wanted to place it in a prominent position in his room, but knew it was too risky to do so. Instead he had placed it in the
Book of Common Prayer
his mother had given him on his twelfth birthday. It was a book no one else was ever likely to open—and when he was seen opening it, he would be credited with only the highest of motives.

It was a day when every second had been filled with being polite to aunts, uncles, great-aunts, great-uncles, first cousins, second cousins, and third cousins—and having to do so often in German or, if not in German, then in French, the language that was the second language of everyone there—apart from his father, of course.

The vast profusion of imperial, royal, grand-ducal, and most serene highnesses (not to mention imperial
and
royal highnesses) made for endless complications of precedence, and by the time the grand banquet that evening had drawn to a close, his head was throbbing and he wanted only one thing in the world: to be away from chandeliers and champagne and at Snowberry with Lily.

With as much patience as he could muster, he listened to the luxuriantly mustachioed Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria telling him of how, when he and Franz Ferdinand had been traveling in private carriages aboard the Orient Express, the archduke had impertinently had his carriage placed immediately after the engine in a position of precedence.

“But I got the better of him!” Ferdinand chortled. “When he needed to pass through my carriage to reach the dining car, I refused him permission! The old fool had to wait until the train reached a station, then alight and hurry along the platform to the dining saloon. When he’d eaten, he had to wait until the train stopped at another station before he could make his way back to his carriage!” He laughed so hard at the memory he had to mop his rheumy eyes with his handkerchief.