The Golden Prince (6 page)

“I think David will visit us again,” Lily said, “because he told me that this afternoon was the happiest afternoon he’s ever had. Which is sad, isn’t it? Because all we did was play tennis and drink lemonade.”

Rose was in agreement that it was sad, but didn’t want to talk about their afternoon with Prince Edward any longer. What she wanted was to talk with Iris about Marigold while Lily was safely out of earshot.

“It’s time the rabbits were fed,” she said, knowing that now she had been reminded, Lily wouldn’t waste a second in rushing off to feed them. “Iris, I’d like you to look at this graze again, please. It feels as if there is still dirt in it.” As Lily hurried off to the large grassy pen where her pet rabbits were corralled, Rose led the way up the stairs to the room she and Iris shared.

Once there, she flung herself down on her bed and said, “Don’t bother about my face, Iris. It feels fine. I want to talk to you about Marigold.”

“Marigold?” Iris seated herself on a Victorian button-backed chair near one of the windows.

“Unless I’m very much mistaken she’s making a set for Theo Jethney.”

Iris’s eyebrows rose nearly into her hair. “You can’t mean it. He’s old enough to be her father.”

“Marigold likes older men.”

“An older man to a girl of nineteen is someone who is twenty-seven or twenty-eight. Lord Jethney is in his forties!”

Rose chewed the corner of her lip. The trouble with Iris was that she wasn’t intuitive; she never had a sixth sense about things. She didn’t believe anyone capable of a dishonorable action—and especially not someone she loved. Rose, who had intuition in abundance, could have written the script for Iris’s next reaction.

“Besides,” Iris said flatly, “Theo Jethney is a married man.”

The tone of her voice made it clear that that settled the matter completely.

Rose shifted position on the bed, propping herself up on one arm. “This may come as a shock to you, Iris, but sometimes single young women aren’t too fussed about whether a man is married or not.”

“Respectable well-brought-up single young women are!” There were spots of angry color in Iris’s cheeks. “Honestly, Rose! Your experiences with some of the young women in the WSPU is showing!”

Rose felt an answering spurt of anger and suppressed it. Now was no time to be having a row with Iris over her membership of the WSPU. What she needed in the situation she foresaw with Marigold was Iris’s understanding and support. The remark was, however, one she wasn’t going to let pass.

“If you would come to a WSPU meeting, you would see how wrong your assumptions are about those members who are working class. But it’s Marigold’s morals I’m worried about, not anyone else’s.”

She sat up, swinging her legs to the floor. “The trouble is, Marigold simply doesn’t care about the consequences of any of her actions. If she wants something, she sees no reason why she shouldn’t have it. Coupled with her sexiness it makes for dangerous situations.”

“Marigold can’t help having red hair and being bosomy and sexy. She just
is
. That’s why her debutante friends nicknamed her Nell Gwynne.”

Rose, realizing Iris thought the nickname had been given for no other reason than Marigold’s looks, regarded her with something close to despair. The temptation to point out that as the mistress of Charles II, Nell had been a young woman of notoriously easy virtue—and that that was the reason behind the nickname—was strong, but she resisted it.

She’d gone as far as was necessary in persuading Iris that she needed her support when she spoke to Marigold about Lord Jethney, without forcing Iris to face the fact that Marigold’s friends had nicknamed her after one of the most famous and popular whores in English history.

“If Marigold
is
flirting with Lord Jethney—and if you think there is a chance he may be tempted to take advantage of it—wouldn’t it be best to speak to Grandfather so that he can have a friendly word with him? If Grandfather said something on the lines of ‘Marigold has developed a crush on you, Jethney. Let her down kindly, old chap,’ it would mean Lord Jethney knew an eye was being kept on the two of them and then nothing further would come of things, would it? You must also speak to Marigold. You must tell her that she’s not only putting her reputation at risk, she’s putting Grandfather’s friendship with Lord Jethney at risk as well.”

Rose nodded, rising to her feet, wondering why it was that when she’d got the outcome she’d hoped for—which was Iris’s support—she felt so depressed and irritated. Was it because Iris had, as always, left it to her to take care of things? Ever since their mother had remarried and gone to live in France, Rose had been the one who kept everyone in order, ensuring that family life ran smoothly. If there was a problem, it was to her that it was brought. Everything, it seemed, was down to her and always had been.

Before she went to Oxford she had never minded, but Oxford
had changed her and she wanted more out of life now than simply being a mother as well as a sister to her younger siblings.

“I’m going to take the dogs for a walk,” she said, aware that the situation couldn’t change while her grandfather was so dependent on her—or that it couldn’t change until one of her sisters stepped into her shoes where Snowberry was concerned. And as Lily was still too young, and Marigold entirely too selfish, that left Iris.

Iris was ideally suited to the role, because all she wanted out of life was to marry Toby Mulholland, the only son of Viscount Mulholland whose family home, Sissbury Castle, was a mere ten miles from Snowberry. The two of them had been inseparable since childhood and though Rose couldn’t for the life of her understand what Iris saw in Toby—who was pleasant, but vacuous—Iris adored him.

Rose walked down the broad staircase into the entrance hall, her thoughts still on Iris. Sometime in the not-too-distant future Iris would be mistress of Sissbury and since Sissbury’s estate was even larger than Snowberry’s, it made sense that Iris should become familiar with estate account books and estate correspondence.

With Fizz and Florin at her heels, Rose left the house, heading toward the belt of woodland closest to the house. If Iris could be persuaded to take over from her, she would be able to combine her life at Snowberry with a life lived in London—and then she could once more become fully active in the WSPU’s struggle for equality with men.

It wasn’t an ambition Iris would understand. All Iris wanted was a country life of children, horses, and dogs—something that was easily achievable and that marriage to Toby would bring. Whereas Rose’s own ambition—to be part of a force for change in the world—was well-nigh impossible when women weren’t even able to vote and a political life of any kind was closed to them.

She dug her hands deep in the pockets of her gored skirt, well aware that all that was expected of her was that, like Iris, she married
well; but, since marriage would mean surrendering all independence, it was something she most definitely did not want.

The minute Iris heard the sound of the Talbot approaching the house she hurried downstairs and outside to welcome her grandfather home. To her surprise, Lord Jethney wasn’t with him, which meant she could immediately tell him of how Snowberry had been graced all afternoon by the presence of Prince Edward.

“You will never, in a hundred years, guess who has been playing tennis at Snowberry this afternoon, Grandfather.” She slid her hand into the crook of his arm. “Prince Edward! Oh, he was so nice! I thought him a little young for his age, but that may be because he’s so angelic looking. Buttercup-blond hair and the sweetest smile imaginable. He
loved
Snowberry. He told Rose he thought it was a cracking house!”

“By that I take it he meant he thought it was first-rate.”

Herbert Houghton was dressed for the glorious weather in a lightweight flannel suit and a jaunty panama hat. He patted her hand affectionately.

“But why was he here? Was he visiting Chanbury Hall or Sissbury Castle and did Lord Reighton or Toby’s father bring him?”

“No. Let’s have tea on the lawn and then I’ll tell you everything. It’s all very exciting, because it began with him almost
killing
Rose.”

Having so intrigued him, she refused to say another word until she’d asked for tea to be brought out to them on the lawn. Soon the two of them were seated comfortably in cane chairs at either side of a small white-naperied table on which stood bone-china cups and saucers, a sugar bowl and milk jug, a Georgian silver teapot and silver tea strainer.

The earl, a man of equable temperament who was seldom ruffled, waited patiently for the granddaughter who was most like him to spill the beans.

Iris poured the tea and said, “The prince was driving from Dartmouth to Windsor and Rose was cycling down to the village to post letters when the prince took a corner very badly and as Rose veered out of his way he clipped her back wheel.”

“Dear Lord!” Her grandfather’s geniality vanished at a stroke. “Was she hurt?” He rose to his feet, full of anxiety. “Where is she now? You should have told me this straightaway, Iris.”

“Please sit down, Grandfather. Rose wasn’t hurt—at least not seriously. She was winded and she’s grazed her face and at the moment she’s gone for one of her trudges and has taken the dogs with her.”

Vastly relieved, her grandfather sat down again, but he was still slightly alarmed. “Who was with the prince?” he asked, thinking of possible repercussions. “Did he have an aide-de-camp with him?”

“He had an equerry. Captain Cullen. David brought Rose back to Snowberry in his car and Captain Cullen walked back with the damaged bicycle.”

Her grandfather stared at her, confused. “David? Did Prince Edward have two equerries with him?”

“No. The prince asked us if we would call him David. It’s a name he prefers.”

Her grandfather had just taken a sip of tea.

He choked on it.

When he could speak, he said, “I think you’re teasing me, Iris. I do hope the rest of your story isn’t a tease as well, because if it is, it’s very naughty of you.”

“Of course it isn’t a tease!” Iris’s nut-brown eyes were indignant. “I think Captain Cullen was rather shocked by the prince asking us to call him David, but he did, and it made things so much friendlier. I partnered David and Marigold partnered Captain Cullen in a game of doubles. Rose umpired and Lily was ball boy. It was tremendous fun.”

“It may have been tremendous fun, Iris, but as I wasn’t here to act as his host, it was also highly irregular.” He frowned, deeply
worried. “If it should become known that the Prince, his equerry, and four single young women had spent the afternoon playing tennis with no one else present, it would cause uproar at the palace. I can’t imagine what his equerry was thinking of to have allowed it.”

Iris’s elation ebbed a little. Her grandfather seldom worried about anything, and she didn’t want him worrying now.

“It won’t become known, Grandfather, because none of us—not even Marigold—is going to say a word about it to anyone. And Captain Cullen won’t say anything to anyone because if he did he might lose his position as equerry.”

“Oh, he would. There’s no doubt about that. One hint of this afternoon’s escapade to King George and heads—including Prince Edward’s—would roll. The King is a martinet—even his most intimate friends are terrified of him. I suspect that’s why Prince Edward so enjoyed his afternoon at Snowberry. His tennis match with the four of you would have been a delightful novelty after the rigidly correct behavior demanded of him at Windsor and Buckingham Palace. I remember Jethney telling me what a great pity it is that the princes aren’t allowed to form friendships with other boys their age. It must make for very lonely lives.”

Iris, remembering the expression in David’s eyes as he said good-bye to them, and then the sudden hope that had flooded them when he asked if he could visit again, was quite certain that her grandfather was right and that, as heir to the throne, David carried a heavy burden of loneliness.

She was trying to imagine how it must be, holding a position so exalted that normal relationships were all but impossible, when Lily came running across the lawn toward them, a flaming smile of delight on her face.

“Grandpapa, you’re home!” she gasped, as if he’d just returned from a round-the-world voyage.

She kissed his cheek and knelt down on the grass beside his chair. “Has Iris told you about Prince Edward’s visit? It was so nice his being here. Just as nice as when Rory is here.”

Her grandfather chuckled. “I’m sure Rory will be pleased to hear that. What have you been doing, sweetheart? You’ve got straw in your hair.”

“I’ve been feeding the rabbits and cleaning out the hutches. Where is Lord Jethney? Rose said he was coming for dinner and that you were bringing him home with you.”

“He is coming to dinner and I was going to bring him home with me, only he’s been delayed. The coronation seems to have thrown the normal running of government into chaos—and there is still nearly a month before it takes place.”

Iris sucked in her breath. “You’re going to find this unbelievable, Grandfather, but I’d forgotten all about the coronation. It’s going to be very weird seeing David in his ceremonial robes. Will he wear a coronet?”