The Golden Prince (55 page)

If the heir to the throne was going to have a complete nervous breakdown, she didn’t want anyone but her witnessing it.

When the doorbell jangled, she took a deep steadying breath.

“I don’t believe it!” were his first frenzied words when she opened the door. “I won’t believe it! You’re going to have to prove it to me, Rose. Where is Lily? I have to see her! I
must
see her!”

She led the way into the drawing room. “Lily is in Scotland. She and Rory have decided to live at his family home on the Isle of Islay.”

She crossed to a drinks tray, poured him a large brandy, and pressed it into his unresisting hand.

When he had taken a great gulp of it, she said, “The proof you want is on the small table by the sofa.”

He thrust the glass of brandy back at her and covered the distance to the sofa in two swift strides.

Her heart ached for him as he picked up the wedding certificate, looking at it in dizzying disbelief.

Crushing it into a ball, he turned round to her. “But we love each other,” he said, his face as white as parchment. “Why has she done this? How can she not love me anymore?”

“She does love you, David.” Her voice was full of compassion. He looked so young, so vulnerable, so lost and alone that it was all she could do not to put her arms around him. “But once you told her that you were going to abandon all your royal duties—that you were going to step down from the line of succession in order to marry her—she knew that she was going to have to be the strong one of the two of you. It’s because she loves you that she has done what she has. She wants you to fulfill your birthright—and if you love her, that is exactly what you will do.”

He stared at her in torment—blind, deaf, and dumb with pain.

“Rory will make her happy, David. He cares about her very much.”

“But Lily loves
me
, Rose! If my father had given his consent for us to marry, we would have been betrothed now! There would never have been any question of her marrying anyone other than me!”

It was so terribly true, Rose couldn’t speak.

He ran his fingers distractedly through his hair. “And now I’m going to be imprisoned forever without having anyone at my side that I truly love. How am I to survive without her?”

The cry came from his heart, and, to her despair, she had no answer for him.

For a horrendous moment, she thought he was going to burst into tears.

She said gently, “Lily gave me something to give to you, David.”

She held out the letter Lily had written with such anguish.

He took it from her, his hand unsteady. Making no attempt to open it, he said, “Would you leave me on my own for a little while, Rose?”

“Of course I will. I’ll be in the hall.”

When the door had closed behind her, he stood for a long time without moving, remembering the first time he had entered Snowberry, remembering the first time he had been in this wonderfully comfortable drawing room where, uniquely, he had been treated as if he was just an ordinary young man.

It was an experience that would never happen to him again.

He walked to the French doors, and as he stepped out onto the terrace he was overcome by a sense of déjà vu. It was a beautiful May morning. Small white clouds were drifting across an azure sky. The air was heavy with fragrance, the scent of carnations as thick as smoke in the sun.

On just such a day, a year ago, he had stood on Dartmouth Naval College’s terrace, staring across it to manicured gardens and beyond the gardens to a steeply sloping, tree-studded hillside. He had been intensely unhappy, not knowing that within an hour, his
life would change. Not knowing that because of Lily, he would, for a year, be the happiest young man on earth.

As he looked across Snowberry’s lawns to the lake and the hillside rising on the far side of it, he knew no such miracle was about to happen now. He had had his slice of happiness, and it would not come again.

Rage for the person who had robbed him of it crashed over him in thunderous waves. It was a rage that was going to last a lifetime and the object of it wasn’t Rory; it was his father, King George.

His father had denied him Lily as a wife because, even though Lily would have made the most wonderful Princess of Wales Britain had ever had, he had been set on having a foreign princess as a daughter-in-law.

It was a desire David was determined to cheat him of.

They could parade princesses in front of him until they were blue in the face, but he would never marry one of them. As he now couldn’t have Lily, he would have no one. When he was crowned as King Edward VIII, he would be crowned without a royal Queen Consort at his side.

With tears welling in his eyes, he looked down at the letter in his hand and, at long last and with a breaking heart, opened it.

She had written,

Nestling in a corner of the envelope was a glossily silky, blue-black curl. Reverently he laid it in the palm of one hand. With the other hand he took out his gold pocket watch, and turning it face downward, he clicked the back of it open. Then he laid the curl inside, snapped the watch shut, and replaced it in the waistcoat pocket closest to his heart.

From now on, wherever he went, whatever he wore, the curl she had cut from her hair would go with him. It would be with him when he was crowned King. It would be with him when he died.

Inner strength and determination flooded through him.

He couldn’t allow Lily’s sacrifice of their happiness to be in vain. For her sake he had to become the kind of Prince of Wales—and later King—that she wanted him to be.

For Lily—and for Lily alone—he would become a spectacular Prince of Wales. A golden prince. A prince the world would never forget.

Fiercely resolute, he turned and began walking back toward the house.

Ten minutes later he was at the wheel of his Austro-Daimler, heading once again toward Windsor and the royal life he had been born into.

The royal life that was his inescapable destiny.

My gratitude and thanks are due to Phyllis Grann of Random House, for introducing me to the idea of the young Edward. I’ve found him fascinating company. Thanks also to my editor, Christine Pride, for always being understanding, for keeping me focused, and for invaluable creative input. Thanks to Annie Chagnot for all her timely reminders and to my copy editor, Laurie McGee, for her attention to detail. My agent, Sheila Crowley, has, as always, been unstintingly supportive and encouraging. Of many excellent biographies of Edward, Frances Donaldson’s
Edward VIII
and Philip Ziegler’s
King Edward VIII
were of most help in illuminating the character of Edward when a young man.

ALSO BY REBECCA DEAN

Palace intrigue, romance—
and illicit affairs

Eighteen-year-old Delia Chandler marries Viscount Ivor Conisborough just before World War II, becoming part of the Windsor court. It’s every girl’s dream come true. But Delia is soon jolted from her pleasant life …

Rebecca Dean’s irresistible combination of real events and masterful storytelling will keep readers fascinated until the very last page.

Palace Circle

A Novel

$14.00 paper

978-0-7679-3055-0

Available wherever books are sold