The Golden Prince (44 page)

“Then perhaps tomorrow night?”

“No.” Her throat had been tight and dry, and for a dizzying second she’d thought she was going to be unable to continue, and then, standing by her belief that romance had no part to play in the life of someone as militant as she had determined to be, she’d risen to her feet and said, “Please don’t ask me again because the answer will always be the same.”

As if she had slapped him, a shutter had come down over his face. Then, his eyes unreadable, he’d stepped away from her, saying as if the scene between them had never taken place, “The luxury liners piece. You’ll do it?”

“Of course.” And with the press pass clutched in her hand she’d left the office, trying not to think of how wonderful an evening it would have been, dining and dancing with Hal.

“She turned me down flat.”

Hal was having his usual weekly lunch at the Savoy with his uncle, Lord Westcliff. Quite often the lunches were 90 percent business. Lord Westcliff was a press baron who, even with someone he was as fond of as he was of Hal, didn’t indulge much in small talk. Hal, however, had never before discussed his love life with him. That he was doing so now showed how deep his feelings for the girl in question were and how much her rejection of him had hurt.

“If she’s a suffragette, as you say she is, maybe she would have turned any man down flat.”

Hal knew very well what his uncle was insinuating. He shook
his head. “No, she isn’t a lesbian. If she was, I’d have sensed it long ago.”

Lord Westcliff took a drink of excellent Margaux and speared a mushroom. “Then maybe there’s a man in her life already.”

Hal, uninterested in eating, pushed his barely touched plate of beef bourguignon to one side. “No, I don’t think that’s it either.”

“Then what the devil do you think?”

Hal said ruefully, “I think she doesn’t find me at all appealing—and that wild horses wouldn’t tempt her to spend time with me over a candlelit dinner table.”

The chill of February had turned into a very mild March, and Marigold had persuaded Maxim to take her out in a rowboat on the Serpentine. Hyde Park was her favorite London park and though it was as full as usual with nannies pushing prams, apart from their own rowboat, the lake was deserted.

Marigold, in a caramel-colored coat with a fox collar and wearing a fox fur hat, was reclining on a seat at one end of the boat as Maxim, just as elegantly and inappropriately dressed for boating, was manning the oars at the other end of it.

It was very peaceful, with no sound but the rhythmic splash of the oars. It was, Marigold felt, the perfect setting for a proposal of marriage and as Maxim rested the oars in the oarlocks and said, “Marigold, my sweet, there’s something very important I have to say to you,” she was almost certain that the moment she had been waiting for had, at last, come.

“Yes?” She smiled across at him expectantly, the fox fur emphasizing the color of her hair and her flawless cream and apricot complexion.

He tilted his head a little to one side as if wondering how to begin, and then he leaned toward her a little, his hands clasped between his knees, a ruby ring glittering on the little finger of his left hand. He said: “In two days’ time my engagement to Lady Anne
Greveney will be announced in the
Times
. Obviously I want you to be the first to know.”

She blinked, wondering if she had heard correctly and then, satisfied that she had, she said crossly, “I don’t like being teased, Maxim—and with a tease that isn’t even funny.”

“It wasn’t meant to be funny, and it wasn’t a tease.”

For a second she was too taken aback to move, and then she sat bolt upright, the color vanishing from her face. “But you can’t marry Anne Greveney!” The idea was so preposterous she felt as if she were going to faint. “You’re in love with me! It’s me you’re going to marry!”

He shook his head, the spring sun highlighting the Slavic lines of his face, the faint hollow under the high cheekbones, the sensual mouth. “No,” he said. “I’m not, Marigold. I’m going to marry Anne. But that doesn’t mean anything need change between us. There’ll be a month or two when we won’t be able to see each other—I’m taking Anne to St. Petersburg and the Crimea for our honeymoon—but once we return to England the two of us can continue nearly exactly as we have been doing.”

It was how a man would speak to a paid mistress—to a prostitute—and with a searing flash of insight, she realized that was exactly how he regarded her, only she hadn’t been paid with money, but with gifts. She also knew, without even being told, that Anne Greveney hadn’t slept with Maxim and wouldn’t until their wedding night, and that the day she, Marigold, had tumbled with such abandon into his bed was the day she’d ensured she would never become Princess Yurenev.

She sprang to her feet, oblivious of the violent rocking of the boat, oblivious of anything but her rage at his unfairness in regarding her as being unmarriageable simply because she’d allowed him to become her lover.

“Sit back down,” he said sharply. “You’re going to tip the boat over.”

“You’re a bastard, Maxim Yurenev!” The boat rocked more wildly than ever.

Recklessly she launched herself at him with her fists, and he went flying backward. The boat tilted down to the waterline. Marigold fell to her knees and grabbed hold of one of the oarlocks. Maxim had no such luck, and with nothing to seize hold of, he slithered into the lake.

Water slopped into the boat, which then righted itself. Marigold hauled herself onto the seat she had knocked Maxim from and freed one of the oars from its oarlock.

Maxim floundered to his feet and, waist-deep in the water, lunged for the boat.

Marigold didn’t hesitate. She plunged the oar into the water and used it like the pole of a punt to push the boat away from him.

Russian expletives poured from his mouth.

Marigold was uncaring.

She slammed the oar back in the oarlock and with enough room now between them for her to do so, she began rowing toward the boathouse.

Beside himself with rage, still swearing like a Russian peasant, Maxim waded after her.

The boat nudged the jetty and came to a halt. Marigold stepped from it, adjusted her hat, and, without even looking over her shoulder at Maxim, who still had a good distance to cover, she marched away from the lake and out of the park.

Once back at St. James’s Street, she told Sibyl that she had chucked Prince Yurenev and that if she heard stories that it had been the other way around, she wasn’t to believe them. Then, not wanting to be in town when his engagement to Anne Greveney appeared in the
Times
and she became the object of pity or, worse, derision, she left for Snowberry.

A week later, while Marigold was glumly sitting in the kitchen talking to Millie, Toby walked in on them, Fizz and Florin at his heels.

“Iris is in the estate room,” she said to him, “getting this month’s accounts in order.”

“I wasn’t looking for Iris.” He was dressed for a morning’s shooting in a Norfolk jacket, breeches, and a pair of sturdy shoes with leather gaiters.

“Are you on leave?” she asked unnecessarily.

He nodded. “A long weekend. I wondered if I could have a word with you.”

Marigold, who had always been sure that Toby wouldn’t prove to be a faithful husband, and remembering how he had once flirted with her, frowned.

Millie, who was creaming butter and sugar for a cake and who could read her like a book, shot her a quick glance.

“It’s important, Marigold.”

Hoping he wasn’t going to be embarrassingly predictable, she rose reluctantly to her feet and led the way out of the kitchen.

Once in the passageway beyond, and out of hearing of Millie, he said, “I don’t know how to go about telling you this, Marigold, but some friends of mine were at a party at Marchemont over the weekend, guests of Maxim Yurenev.”

Relieved that he hadn’t wanted to speak with her in order to make a pass, but furious that he thought she’d want to hear about Maxim, she said swiftly, “I’m not interested.”

“I think you will be.” He ran a hand over his straight hair. “He was showing off a painting to them—and to his other male guests. It was of the goddess Persephone, and, like most paintings of classical goddesses, she was completely starkers. My friends said they’d have known you had posed for the painting even if Yurenev hadn’t told them you had. Apparently there was a lot of laughter and some very lewd comments.”

Marigold put a hand to the wall to steady herself. No matter how ignominiously Maxim had jilted her, no matter how humiliating his soaking in the Serpentine, it had never occurred to her that he would seek revenge in such a despicable way.

She thought of how fast news of the painting would spread. She
thought of what Rose’s and Iris’s feelings would be when they heard about it, of how it would doom any hopes of Lily ever becoming the Princess of Wales. She thought of how bewildered her grandfather would be. Last, but by no means least, she grieved for the lovely, lovely painting. It hadn’t been painted for men to laugh at and make lewd remarks about. It had been painted to be admired. That Maxim was now making such a travesty of it hurt her to the very depths of her being.

She said unsteadily, “Please don’t worry about anyone else seeing it, Toby. I’ll get it back. Iris and Rose and Grandfather need never know about it.”

His relief was colossal. The idea of such a scandal coming within even a mile of Iris was what had prompted him to ask for emergency weekend leave. He didn’t ask how she was going to get it back. All he wanted was to be able to call those who had seen the painting liars, and for no one to be able to refute his allegation.

“Thank you for telling me, Toby,” she said, her thoughts already on Strickland. If anyone could get the painting back from Maxim, Strickland could. All Strickland had to do was return the money Maxim had paid for it.

Not even bothering to say good-bye to Toby, she ran along the passage and up the stairs to her bedroom. There was a London train leaving from Winchester in forty minutes. If she didn’t bother packing a bag and if her grandfather’s chauffeur took her to the station, she would be able to catch it.

Strickland wouldn’t let her down. He’d become too good a friend for that. If he acted as fast as she was acting, the painting could be in his hands before nightfall.