The Golden Prince (42 page)

Cycling along the busy boulevards of Neuilly was very different from cycling down the country lanes around Snowberry,
and Lily was relieved her mother lived so close to the park. She whizzed between the open gates of the side entrance, grateful to see that unlike the boulevards, the pathway leading to the Jardin d’Acclimatation was near deserted. There was a boy bowling a hoop, two girls roller-skating, and, in the distance, a cyclist racing toward her as if his life depended on it.

Even though he was dressed for the weather as she was, in an overcoat and with a cap pulled low over his forehead and a scarf wrapped so high around his neck that half his face was hidden, she knew who it was.

“David!” she shouted. “
David!
”

Taking a hand off the handlebars, he waved furiously.

A smile of blazing joy split her face. After all the months of painful separation, they were about to be together again. Her happiness was so deep she thought she was going to die of it.

They raced toward each other and then, just when it seemed they were going to collide headlong, David swerved to a halt and Lily slammed on her brakes. Ecstatically they let their bicycles fall to the ground and hurtled toward each other, catapulting into each other’s arms.

“Lily! Oh, God! Lily, darling Lily!” He yanked his scarf away from his face. “Darling girl, there were times when I thought this moment was never going to come!”

She clung to him as though she were drowning, unable to even begin expressing how deep her own fears had been. Then there was no time to even think of speech.

His mouth crushed hers, and he was kissing her as though he would never stop.

The girls on roller skates had headed back to the park gates when snow had begun falling, but the little boy with the hoop watched them wide-eyed.

David and Lily were as oblivious of him as they were of the snow. All that mattered to them was each other. When David finally lifted his head from hers, he said thickly, “I love you, Lily. I love you more than anything in the world.”

“I know.” Her voice was husky with emotion. “I love you the same way, darling David. I love you with all my heart—and I always will. Always and forever.”

The snow was falling fast now, flakes settling on their eyelashes and cheeks.

“There’s a small café in the Jardin d’Acclimatation.” He was still hugging her tight. “We’ll be able to get hot chocolate there. Maybe hot chocolate with a shot of almond liqueur.”

“It sounds wonderful.” She smiled sunnily at him, all the love she felt for him shining in her eyes.

He didn’t want to take his arms from around her, but if they were to go to the café, he had no choice. “To the bicycles then,” he said, releasing his hold of her with the deepest reluctance. Flashing her the grin that had won the hearts of the public in hundreds of thousands on Coronation Day and at Caernarvon, he added, “I’ll race you, sweetheart.”

Later, as they sat at a small zinc-topped table in the otherwise deserted café, he said, “As your stepfather and my host are bosom pals we’re going to have no problems seeing each other. It’s all the greatest possible good luck.”

“It’s beyond good luck. It’s unbelievable.” She giggled. “My mother has already taken it for granted that you will be dining with us in the very near future, and she and her chef have the menu planned down to the smallest detail.”

Her hands were clasped on the tabletop, and he covered them lovingly with his. “If I tell Luc that my sightseeing of places like Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre would be more enjoyable if you came with us, I don’t think his father would object. In fact, I rather suspect Guy de Valmy would quite like to foster a close relationship between the future King of England and the stepdaughter of his closest friend.”

It was a thought that hadn’t occurred to Lily. Her eyes rounded. “You mean we may even find ourselves
encouraged
to spend time together and to flirt with each other?”

He grinned roguishly. “If you think about it, it would be a pretty
reasonable reaction on Guy’s part—and on your mother’s. No mother would object to her daughter spending time in the company of the Prince of Wales—and having high hopes as to where that might lead. Although Guy has to let my father know where I go, and who I see, dining and spending time with the family of his friend, the Marquis of Villoutrey, will ring no alarm bells.”

She, too, appreciated the naughtily amusing side of the situation, but David’s mention of King George reminded her that it was seven months since he had first told the King he was in love with someone nonroyal and since then, when the King had refused to give permission for such a marriage, no headway at all had been made.

She said pensively, “Do you think your father has forgotten all about you falling in love with someone and wanting to marry her? It seems such a long time since you were last able to talk to him.”

“I doubt
he’s
forgotten about it—though he may hope
I
have. I think that’s what his strategy in avoiding meeting with me is all about, because it
is
a strategy. By his reckoning, I won’t have seen you since I went on my tour of duty aboard the
Hindustan
. He’s banking on the fact that by the time we do have another private conversation together, I won’t even bring up the subject of wanting to marry—or at least, wanting to marry someone of my own choice.”

“So when he finds out differently, when he finds out you still feel the same about me after all this time, do you think that will make him realize that you are truly in love and not just infatuated, and that he will then give us his blessing?”

He looked down at their clasped hands, avoiding her eyes. He’d never been frank with her about how adamant his father’s objections to his marriage to a nonroyal were—objections that had the whole weight of English history behind them—in case, once she realized, she felt things were hopeless. Instead, he had always been at pains to assure her that once his father got used to the idea, everything would be all right.

He said now, passionately hoping it would prove to be true, “I’m
sure he will give us his blessing, angel. Especially so once he knows your identity and has met you. The only reason that hasn’t happened already is that I wanted us to enjoy Paris together. We wouldn’t have been able to—not in the way we are now doing—if it was public knowledge that you were soon to become the Princess of Wales.”

At the thought of how her life would change when that day came, a little shiver ran down her spine. How on earth would she cope with all the formality and stiff etiquette and being watched all the time? How would she cope with not being able to paint or sculpt whenever she wanted to?

When she looked across at David and at the happiness on his face, simply because they were together, she knew that she would cope because he needed her to do so. Overcome with love for him, she unclasped her hands and squeezed his tightly. “I’ve never visited the zoo here, David. Have we time to take a look around?”

“I think most of the animals will be in their sleeping quarters keeping out of the snow. We could cycle down to the lake, though. It will look pretty smashing with the snow falling on it.”

It did look pretty smashing. With the trees around the edge of the lake laced with white, and ice on the water glimmering and shimmering, it looked ethereal.

Leaving their bicycles at the edge of the pathway so that they could walk along the lakeside with their arms around each other, David said with a catch in his voice, “I never knew people could be this happy, Lily. It’s like living in a fairy tale. A fairy tale that is going to have a very happy ending.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder, not caring about the snow that had settled on his coat. There was something on her mind, something she needed to ask him.

She hugged his arm. “When we were in the café, you said you thought your father was banking on the fact that when you next spoke together, you wouldn’t even bring up the subject of wanting to marry—or at least, of wanting to marry someone of your own choice …”

“And?” He shot her a loving smile.

“And I wondered what you meant by ‘saying you want to marry someone of your own choice.’ ”

He gave a rueful shrug. “He wants me to marry my uncle Nicky’s daughter, Olga. Nicky isn’t my actual uncle, of course. He’s my father’s cousin, which I suppose makes him my first cousin once removed, or my second cousin. I don’t know which. I’ve been brought up to refer to him simply as uncle, just as I always refer to the kaiser, another cousin of my father’s, as Uncle Willy.”

Lily stopped walking, bewildered. “If your uncle Willy is Kaiser Wilhelm, who is your uncle Nicky?’

“Uncle Nicky is the tsar.” At the incredulity on her face he burst out laughing. “When we’re betrothed you’re going to have to get used to hearing kings and queens, and even emperors and empresses, being referred to as uncle, aunt, or cousin, because in one way or another I’m related to nearly every crowned head there is.”

“So Olga—who your father wants you to marry—is a princess?”

“Yes, though in Russia, princesses are referred to as grand duchesses.”

He could see that she was still struggling to take in what he was saying.

On the left-hand side of the path was a large cedar, the branches so thick and heavy the ground beneath was still clear of snow. He led her over to it and as she leaned against the tree’s great trunk he took off his gloves and shoved them into his coat pockets, and then took off her gloves and did the same thing with them.

“This bee my father has got in his bonnet about my marrying Grand Duchess Olga is nothing for you to worry about, sweetheart. If it wasn’t her he had in mind for me, it would be someone else. Probably Uncle Willy’s daughter, Victoria Louise. If it wasn’t for the fact that I’m headlong, hopelessly,
passionately
in love with you, darling Lily, then I’d probably let such arrangements go ahead, if only because that’s the way things have always been done in royal circles. But I
am
headlong, hopelessly, and passionately in love with you, and that is
not
how it is going to be. Not for this
prince. So don’t look so concerned. I love you, darling Lily, and I’m going to love you until the day I die.”

His words were so reassuring all her fears fled. She slid her arm up and around his neck, and he gave a moan of desire, unbuttoning his coat and then hers and pulling her close against him.

His kisses were passionate and urgent, and the blood surged through her body like a hot tide. When his hands slid up from her waist to her breasts, she didn’t pull away from him. She was his without reservation and, sensing it, he fumbled in desperate need with the long line of pearl buttons running down the bodice of her dress.

With one hand around his neck, with the other she helped him free her breasts from her corset top and her chemise.

His fingers touched her soft warm flesh, his thumbs brushing her pale pink nipples, and as delicious sensations she’d never dreamed of pulsed through her body, she knew that if they had been in another place—somewhere warm and private—she would have been unable to refuse him anything he asked of her.

“You are so beautiful, Lily,” he whispered, looking down at her body in awe. “You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”

A flurry of snow blew in over the lake, sending swirls of it beneath the cedar tree. She shivered, and though it was the hardest thing in the world he’d ever done, he pulled her coat around her once again.

“We have to go, darling,” he said, knowing that if they didn’t, they would die of pneumonia. “Next time when we meet alone, it has to be indoors. The Louvre or Notre Dame.”

She giggled, knowing the lovemaking they were now enjoying would be impossible in the Louvre, and more than impossible—sacrilegious—in Notre Dame.

Something else occurred to her as well. Everyone who met David described him as being shy, but she knew differently. When it came to loving her, David wasn’t shy at all.

She returned to Neuilly filled with a happiness so deep it almost hurt.

It lasted only a few precious minutes.

Hearing her enter the house, Louise, pale from her morning of torture at the dentist, hurried downstairs to meet her.

Ignoring the snow coating Lily’s beret and the shoulders of her coat, she said, “I’ve just had dreadful news from your grandfather, Lily. Jerusha Jethney died early this morning.”

The minute Edward
left for France, Piers raced down to Snowberry to see Lily.

“She isn’t here,” Iris said to him politely as they stood facing each other in the drawing room.

“Where is she?” His manner was as abrupt and taciturn as always. “When will she be back?”

“She won’t be back for several weeks.” Iris ran the tip of her tongue nervously over her bottom lip, grateful for Homer’s presence as he sat beside her and eyed Piers watchfully, sensing the strained atmosphere.

Piers blanched. He’d been counting on the fact that with Edward away in Paris he would have a clear field in persuading Lily to see how senseless Edward’s proposal to her had been.

He slammed a clenched hand into his fist. Homer gave a low, warning growl.

Iris put a hand down to the top of his head to reassure him that things were still all right.

“Where has she gone? It’s imperative I see her. Absolutely urgent.”

She looked into his thin, tense face, wondering how it was someone could let their manner make them so unlikable.

“The last few months have put quite a strain on Lily and she’s gone to stay with relatives,” she said pleasantly, knowing very well what Piers Cullen’s feelings for Lily were, and why he wanted to see her, and having no intention of telling him that Lily was in Paris.

“An address, Iris,” he snapped, as if he were a policeman speaking to a suspect.

Iris, who heartily wished Toby was with her instead of being at his barracks in London, stood her ground.

“I’m not going to give you her address, Piers, because I know she wouldn’t want me to.”

He breathed in hard, his nostrils whitening. “You don’t like me, do you? Just like everyone else, you’re polite on the surface, but you don’t like me one little bit.”