The Golden Prince (45 page)

Strickland put down his brush, took the cigarette out of his mouth, and said with utter certainty, “Yurenev won’t sell it back to me, Marigold. From the sound of it, he’s getting too much pleasure out of ruining your reputation with it.”

So agitated she was on the verge of hysterics, Marigold flung herself down onto the chaise longue. “But you’ve got to try!” Her green-gold eyes were desperate. “What’s going to happen to Lily and David if you don’t? There won’t be the slightest hope left for them!”

“David?” It was the first time she’d put a name to her younger sister’s secret romantic attachment. “I always thought your sister’s romance was with Georgie Battenberg?”

“It isn’t. It’s with Prince Edward. Don’t change the subject, Strickland. You’ve
got
to get the painting back from Maxim. You’ve
got
to.”

Strickland, who hardly ever showed emotion of any kind, was still reeling from the idea that for nearly a year Marigold’s younger sister had been involved in a secret liaison with the Prince of Wales.

“I’ll try,” he said reluctantly, knowing it was the least he could do in the circumstances, but not believing for one moment that he would be successful. “Where shall I contact you? St. James’s Street or Snowberry?”

“St. James’s Street—and don’t let the bastard run rings round you, Strickland. You didn’t paint Persephone to be sniggered at. You painted her to be adored.”

Not knowing whether Prince Yurenev was in London or at Marchemont, Strickland phoned the prince’s London home first.

“His Highness is not in residence,” a butler said primly.

“Is His Highness at Marchemont?”

“I’m not at liberty to say, sir. Good-bye, sir,” was the stuffy response.

He rang Marigold and got Marchemont’s telephone number from her. Five minutes later Princess Zasulich’s butler was informing Maxim that there was a telephone call for him.

“Strickland? If you’re touting for work and want to paint a portrait of my fiancée, you’re out of luck. She’s already sitting for Sir John Singer Sargent.”

Strickland gritted his teeth. Singer Sargent was always stealing
possible clients from him, and he couldn’t stand the man. Not congratulating Maxim on having obtained Singer Sargent’s services, he said bluntly, “I’d like to buy Persephone back from you. I imagine it’s an embarrassment to you now that you’ve become engaged to someone other than Marigold, and I’d like to include it in an exhibition of my paintings to be held in Paris in the autumn.”

“You’re a liar, Strickland.” Maxim’s voice was as hard as nails. “You’re acting as an errand boy for Marigold. Well, you’re wasting your time. She’s as mad as a hatter, a bitch, and a trollop; and I’m going to make sure everyone who is anyone knows it. She damned near drowned me, and she’s lucky not to be facing an attempted murder charge!”

He slammed the receiver down so hard Strickland winced.

For several minutes he pondered on whether or not to make the journey to Marchemont and attempt to speak to Maxim face-to-face. Common sense told him he would be wasting his time.

He lit a cigarette and pondered some more. It was quite obvious Maxim wasn’t going to return the painting to him, no matter how much he might offer for it. Even though he was the artist, in Prince Maxim Yurenev’s eyes he simply didn’t have enough clout.

Who, then, caring for Marigold enough to involve themselves in such a task, did have the clout?

The answer came instantly. Lord Jethney.

Jethney had once been passionately in love with Marigold. He was a government minister. He had the ear of the prime minister and, more important, would have the ear of the Russian ambassador to Great Britain and the English ambassador in St. Petersburg. If anyone would be able to twist Maxim Yurenev’s arm, that man was Theo.

With hope beating high in his breast he lifted the telephone receiver again from its cradle, wondering just how he was going to open such a tricky conversation.

“
Could you ever
imagine we would be as lucky as this?”

Holding hands, David and Lily walked along the banks of the Seine, as carefree and unnoticed by anyone as other young lovers who were doing exactly the same thing.

“No.” She gave a loving laugh. “But you are supposed to be in the Louvre with Mr. Hansell, listening to a lecture on seventeenth-century French painting.”

“Not on a spring day as warm as this, sweetheart.”

He stopped walking and turned her toward him. “The best thing about our playing hooky is that even if it’s discovered there won’t be a row about it. Both Guy de Valmy and your mother are intent on fostering a love affair between the two of us. Everything is so perfect I sometimes think I’ve died and gone to heaven.”

She put a hand up to his face, touching it gently. “Everything is always going to be perfect between us, David. Even being royal won’t spoil things for us—not when we have each other. We’ll be different.”

He drew her close, kissing her deeply, so grateful for her love he didn’t know how he could even go about expressing it. What he had said about thinking he had died and gone to heaven had been no exaggeration. The last few weeks had been sheer bliss. The de Valmy family were absolutely ace. Luc de Valmy was a good sport and though as his equerry he was supposed to accompany him at all times, he happily took himself off whenever David gave
him the nod that he’d like him to do so. Combined with Guy de Valmy’s desire for a permanent relationship between the future King of England and the stepdaughter of his closest friend, it had made spending time alone with Lily as easy as falling off a log.

David said now, as they strolled past a flower stall massed with sharply yellow daffodils and vivid-eyed polyanthus, “Guy wants to take me to the races at Longchamps. He’s planning on turning it into quite an occasion. You and your mother and stepfather are to be invited as well as many of his other friends.”

He shot her a wry smile. “It’s an opportunity for him to let people know that I’m his house guest. It will be rather fun, though. I love horse racing. It’s in my blood. My grandfather, King Edward, absolutely lived for it. Just before he died he received news that his horse Witch of Air had won the four-fifteen at Kempton Park. He puffed on a cigar to celebrate and died a happy man.”

He interlaced his fingers with hers. “Do you know what I’ve always wanted to do, Lily darling? I’ve always wanted to ride in steeplechases. I’m light enough—you have to be as light in weight as a professional jockey to be a successful steeplechaser—and I’m not scared of risking a few broken bones. When our time in Paris is over, and we’re back in England, it’s what I’m going to do.”

Lily didn’t at all like the sound of broken bones, but she didn’t try to dissuade him. She had learned long ago that when David decided upon something, nothing in the world would make him change his mind.

It was the same when he wanted something—as he wanted her. Ever since their snowy February walk in the Bois de Boulogne their lovemaking had become more and more daring. In the de Valmys’ large secluded rear garden was a summerhouse and David had brought cushions and travel rugs from the house for its cane furniture. It had become a secret place of retreat for the two of them—and it was where she had given herself to him as if they were already married.

She’d had no regrets. That they now belonged to each other in the most complete way possible filled her with indescribable happiness.

She wasn’t frightened of becoming pregnant, because even if she did become pregnant, all it would mean is that they would be married as soon as possible instead of waiting for Christmas, which was when David anticipated their wedding would be.

“My parents were married at St. James’s Palace, in the Chapel Royal,” he said to her. “It was where my great-grandmother Queen Victoria was married, and I expect it will be where we will be married.”

“What about your grandfather? Where did King Edward marry Queen Alexandra?”

“They were married in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor. But they weren’t King and Queen when they married. Like me, my grandfather was Prince of Wales—and he wasn’t that much older than me. Twenty, or twenty-one.”

She didn’t say that the big difference between his grandfather’s wedding and his would be that his grandfather’s bride had been a royal princess.

Whenever the subject of her being nonroyal came up, he always said urgently, “Please don’t worry about the King not giving his permission, Lily. When I first broached the subject with him, he was utterly unprepared for it—and he would have thought that I was just temporarily infatuated with you. Now, after all this time, he’ll know differently. The instant I’m back in England I’ll speak to him. If our betrothal is announced straightaway, it will leave plenty of time for arrangements to be put in place for a Christmas wedding.”

She looked away from him and across the steel gray river to the Isle de la Cité.

Notre Dame was looking poetically grand, its towers and spire heartachingly beautiful against the pale spring sky. If they wanted, they could cross the river and explore it, just as they could go, and do, anything else they wanted. Once they returned to England all such freedom would be at an end. David would no longer be the “Earl of Chester” and would again be locked into his royal role.

His entry to Oxford, in September, would be hanging over him
and, while he continued to prepare for it, he would also be continuing with what he always called his “prince-ing” life and carrying out whatever public engagements King George required of him.

Much as he would hate once again being on the royal roundabout, he was at least familiar with it. It was a way of life he had been brought up with. It was very different for her, and once they were married her life would be as circumscribed as his. She would be constantly in the public eye and even when in relative privacy, at Buckingham Palace or wherever else they might find themselves living, she would still have the eyes of the royal household on her, not to mention being under the terrifying scrutiny of King George and Queen Mary and other royals.

As always, the thought sent a shiver of apprehension down her spine. She said impulsively, trying to banish it, “Let’s walk over the next bridge and have a look inside Notre Dame. It will make up for not attending the lecture at the Louvre. You can study the cathedral’s great medieval rose windows instead. Mr. Hansell will be impressed.”

There was loving amusement in her voice, for David’s interest in art was slight. She didn’t mind. She was going to teach him. Just as, when it came to being royal, he was going to teach her.

Within days of their visit to Notre Dame, David found his social calendar becoming alarmingly full.

“I want you to meet the most stimulating minds in France,” Guy de Valmy said to him, resplendent in a pearl gray suit and waistcoat, a white gardenia in his lapel. “Politicians, artists, writers, financiers.” With a wave of his hand he made a Gallic, all-encompassing gesture. “Everyone who is anyone in French society. From now on I shall host a weekly lunch party at which you will be the guest of honor—and at which French, of course, will always be spoken.”

“So there it is,” David said later to Lily. “Every week, two or three hours of absolute torture. What on earth am I going to talk about to these people?”

“Let them talk to you. Whenever the marquis holds a salon, he always invites my mother and stepfather. Knowing his private agenda where you and I are concerned, I’d lay odds that I shall be invited as well.”

She was—and just knowing she was in the same room helped him to conduct himself in what Guy de Valmy later told him was an exceptionally agreeable
belle et franche
manner.

“You have the same great gift of charm as your grandfather, King Edward,” he had said to him. “And your French is nearly as good as his was.”

“Which is utter bosh,” David said later to Lily, “because my grandfather spoke French like a Frenchman—and I’m never going to be able to do that. Do you know what the next stunt is that’s been dreamed up for me? I’m to spend a week with the French Mediterranean fleet off the Côte d’Azur. And not even Guy is going to be able to arrange for you to be with me aboard a French battleship!”