The Golden Prince (30 page)

He demolished the crumpet and pushed his chair a little away from the table so that he could stretch out his legs and cross them at the ankles.

She wondered if he was again wearing purple sock suspenders, but she couldn’t see because the gingham-clothed table hid his feet.

His grin deepened. He had attractive laugh lines at the outer corners of his black-lashed eyes and a cleft in his chin that, though she tried hard not to let it, always riveted her attention.

“Perhaps not. But then I’ve never had one turn up in my office the way that you did.”

Rose brushed a crumb from her skirt. She was dressed in suffragette colors—something she always did when meeting with him in London.

He was beginning to find the constant green, purple, and white theme a little tedious.

“Don’t you ever wear any other colors?” he asked, changing the subject.

“No. I regard wearing the colors of the WSPU equivalent to the wearing of a military uniform.”

He cracked with laughter.

That he was running a national campaign demanding that imprisoned suffragettes be given the status of political prisoners and yet privately still thought the suffragette movement a joke enraged her. The urge to kick him was so strong she could hardly contain it.

Her bag was on the table and she reached out for it, about to snatch it up and storm off in high dudgeon. He covered her hand with his.

The effect was like a bolt of electricity shooting through her.

“I’m sorry for laughing.” His gray eyes darkened with sincerity—and with something much deeper. “I think suffragettes like Lady Harbury are just as brave as soldiers who wear the uniform of their country.”

In turmoil with emotions she had never experienced before, she released her hold of her handbag. He removed his hand from hers.

“What did you think of the
Daily Despatch
’s royal correspondent’s coronation coverage?” he asked, as if he hadn’t touched her, as if nothing extraordinary between them had happened. “It was a bit flat, wasn’t it? Competent, but didn’t convey to the reader the exhilarating sense of being there. I think if I’d let you run loose with it, you would have done much better.”

It was such a compliment she didn’t know how to respond.

He cocked his head to one side, looking at her measuringly, a lock of straight black hair falling low over his brow. “I could ask you to cover the Prince of Wales’s investiture,” he said musingly. “Since you are not the
Despatch
’s official royal correspondent, though, I wouldn’t be able to get you into Caernarvon Castle, of course. Still, if you did your homework, had all the details of the ceremony to hand, and were at Caernarvon itself to soak up the atmosphere on the streets, I think you would turn in something that would be a welcome addition to the royal correspondent’s piece. What do you think? Do you think you could do justice to Prince Edward’s big day?”

“Yes.” She was so overwhelmed by the thought of being able to report on the investiture, she forgot all about being angry with him.

He took a pocket watch out of his waistcoat pocket and clicked it open. “Time to be going, I’m afraid.”

She thought of his reaction if she was to tell him of her close friendship with Prince Edward, and as Hal paid the bill, giggles were fizzing in her throat.

“I’m still curious about your finishing school, Rose,” he said, as they stepped out onto the pavement. “Was it in France, or was it in Germany?”

“Neither.” She smiled sunnily. “It was in Oxford—and it wasn’t a finishing school. It was St. Hilda’s.”

The elation she felt as his eyebrows shot high was an elation that sustained her as she journeyed by train back to Hampshire.

Rose was traveling alone on her trip home. Since Marigold had returned from her weekend at Belden Castle she had been seeing Prince Maxim Yurenev every day. Great-Aunt Sibyl approved highly of Prince Yurenev and was sure their mother would approve
highly of him as well, so Rose hadn’t interfered. Marigold was so sexy that someone was always going to be in love with her, and, unlike Lord Jethney, Maxim Yurenev was a bachelor who was not only handsome, but a Russian royal rich as Croesus.

As the train rattled through Berkshire it occurred to Rose that her title-loving mother could very well end up with two daughters bearing royal titles. Lily as the Princess of Wales, and Marigold as Princess Yurenev. Since Iris would one day be Viscountess Mulholland, the only person letting the side down was herself, and she had no intention of marrying anyone.

Unbidden, Hal Green’s image blazed into her mind’s eye. She banished it. She was a militant suffragette, and militant suffragettes did not embroil themselves in romantic relationships. Her reaction when his hand had covered hers had been a freakish aberration. Even if it hadn’t been, not in a million years could she imagine her mother accepting as a son-in-law a very common-sounding plain Mr. Green.

Nor in a million years could she imagine Hal Green putting himself in the position of being anyone’s son-in-law, for if any man was blatantly not the marrying kind, that man was Hal.

When Rose arrived back at Snowberry, it was to find that Lord Jethney was to dine with them.

“It’s been weeks and weeks since he was here,” her grandfather said in high satisfaction. “He asked if all you girls were now at home and I told him that you and Marigold were in London, staying with Sibyl. He’ll be very pleased to find that I was wrong about one of you.”

Another guest expected at dinner that evening was Toby. Rose suppressed slight irritation. Now that he and Iris were engaged, she was going to have to get used to Toby being always at Snowberry. The snag was that she and Lily wouldn’t be able to talk about David in front of him.

“Where is Lily, Grandpa?”

The investiture was on Saturday and it was now Wednesday. If
she was to gather unique background information before leaving for Caernarvon, she was going to have to do so fast.

“In her studio.”

Without even pausing to remove her hat, she set off for the top of the house.

“Sorry to interrupt you, Lily,” she said breathlessly five minutes later. “But Mr. Green has asked me to go to Caernarvon to report on David’s investiture. The
Despatch
’s royal correspondent—who has a press pass—will be doing the main piece. Since I don’t have a press pass and won’t be inside the castle, I’m to report on the atmosphere on the streets. I want to do much more, though, and wondered if you would be speaking to David before Saturday? He does telephone you, doesn’t he?”

Lily flushed rosily. “Every evening at six. How wonderful that you will be writing about David for the
Daily Despatch
. It will amuse him no end. He’s dreadfully nervous about it all. He hates wearing ceremonial robes, and apparently the robes he will be wearing on Saturday are just the product of someone’s imagination—not historically traditional robes. David says they are quite ghastly.”

She put the loop tool she had been working with down on her work table and wiped the clay from her hands with a cloth.

“Do you want to speak to him? What sort of thing is it you want to know?”

“I’d love to speak to him and I want to know anything he can tell me. The information about the robes is interesting. I bet the
Despatch
’s royal correspondent doesn’t know David’s robes aren’t historically traditional. When I hand my piece in, Hal Green’s eyes are going to pop.”

Now that her hands were free of clay, Lily gave her a welcome-home hug. “Do you always use Mr. Green’s Christian name as well as his last name when speaking about him? It seems an odd thing to do. It makes it sound as if he’s a friend as well as an employer.”

“He isn’t a friend—though we do have a quite friendly relationship. He just always calls me—and probably everyone else—by
their first name. Very properly I always call him Mr. Green, but because he calls me Rose, I don’t actually
think
of him as Mr. Green.”

Lily gave a gurgling laugh. “How do you think of him, Rose? You’re not a little in love with him, are you?”

“Most certainly not!”

Her denial was so vehement it only confirmed Lily’s suspicions.

As they left the studio and walked downstairs Lily hugged her sister’s arm. Rose had always been the academic in the family and had never shown interest in the opposite sex. It had been Iris’s dour prediction that, like a lot of her fellow members in the WSPU, she never would. That the interesting-sounding Mr. Hal Green was changing Rose’s attitude toward men was, as far as Lily was concerned, a very good thing.

For Rose, Iris, and Lily there was underlying tension at dinner as they all strove to keep the conversation away from the subject of the Prince of Wales. Because of the investiture, it was an impossibility.

“Hal tells me you are going to be in Caernarvon in three days’ time,” Theo Jethney said, smiling across the table at Rose. “I never thought, when I suggested you meet with him, that this kind of thing would be the result.

“I’ll be present at the ceremony,” Theo continued. “As will Jerusha.” His smile died. “That is, she will be if she is well enough.”

Rose’s eyes widened.

Iris laid down her knife and fork.

Lily gave a small sound of concern.

They were all so accustomed to Theo dining informally at Snowberry unaccompanied by Jerusha it hadn’t occurred to any of them that her present absence was caused by illness.

Aware of their alarm, Theo said quickly, “It’s nothing serious. Just headaches. She’s been getting them for a while now and when
she has them, they lay her low for a day or so at a time. The doctor says they are nothing to worry about.”

Rose frowned, not liking the sound of headaches that lasted a whole day at a time. She was about to suggest that perhaps a second opinion should be sought, but Theo was asking Iris and Toby if they intended marrying locally or if they were going to have a London society wedding.

“To please my mother—and to please Toby’s mother—it’s to be a society wedding at St. Margaret’s.” Iris’s nut-brown eyes glowed with happiness. “Grandfather is to give me away and Rose, Marigold, and Lily are to be my bridesmaids.”

“Splendid.” Theo cleared his throat, and for a second Rose thought he was going to ask after Marigold.

He didn’t do so, but looking across the table at him, Rose knew that he wanted to. And she knew that if Marigold had been home, Theo would not have been dining with them.

As the conversation continued to revolve around Iris and Toby’s wedding plans, she wondered what Theo Jethney’s reaction would be when he learned of Prince Maxim Yurenev’s interest in Marigold.

She wondered what the chances were of Marigold marrying in St. Petersburg’s great Kazan Cathedral with the tsar and tsarina of Russia heading a roll call of royal guests.

The day was
stiflingly hot. As David stepped from the royal train into the horse-drawn open carriage that was to take him through the thronged, spectator-filled streets of Caernarvon to the castle the heat rose from the ground in suffocating waves. He wasn’t as yet wearing his velvet, ermine-caped cloak, but he would be wearing it on his return journey, and he wondered how he was going to survive beneath it without melting away.

Minutes earlier, before Bertie had stepped into the carriage that was to follow his and which Bertie would be traveling in with their mother and their sister, Bertie had said with deep feeling, “R-r-rather you than m-m-me, David.”

It had been sympathy he’d appreciated.

His mother, ramrod straight and magnificently regal in a floor-sweeping gown of silver brocade, her matching hat piled high with fluttering ostrich feathers, had given him a brief encouraging nod.

His sister, Mary, had whispered, “Jolly good luck when you speak in Welsh, David.”

As he seated himself in the landau, next to his father, David wished she hadn’t mentioned it. He was feeling nervous enough as it was without being reminded of all the luck he was going to need when the time came for him to launch into his “All Wales is a sea of song” piece.

His father, wearing the tricorn hat and gold-epauletted and
gold-adorned uniform of an Admiral of the Fleet, made a noise in his throat that could have meant anything.