The Shadow Queen

by Rebecca Dean

  “Such a shame Pamela Bachman couldn’t attend,” Edith’s mother whispered to her confidentially at the reception. “She is a great friend of the Prince of Wales, and Edith would have so liked her to be here. Unfortunately the Bachmans aren’t arriving home until next month. Such a pity.”

  Wallis sucked in her breath. “Pamela and John Jasper are coming back to Baltimore to live?”

  “No. I don’t believe John Jasper would be comfortable in Baltimore, not since his mother died and his father remarried.” Mrs. Miller’s finely sculpted nostrils flared in distaste. “Such a foolish thing for a man to do—taking as his second wife a woman young enough to be his daughter.”

  Wallis wasn’t remotely interested in John Jasper’s father’s marital arrangements. “Then if Pamela and John Jasper aren’t going to be living in Baltimore, where are they going to live?”

  “Washington.” Mrs. Miller’s attention was already focused elsewhere. “So nice speaking to you, Wallis. Please give my best regards to your uncle when you next see him.”

  As she glided away Wallis stared after her, poleaxed. High society in Washington was a small, elite circle. There would be no way she and Pamela and John Jasper would be able to avoid meeting each other, and when they did, how was she going to feel?

  The high spot of the reception—the cutting of the cake—was about to take place. Wallis was oblivious. Her question to herself was one she couldn’t answer. She wasn’t still in love with John Jasper. Over the last few years she had barely given him a thought. Would she feel differently, though, when she saw him again? And what about his feelings for her? He had still been in love with her when he’d had no alternative but to marry Pamela. Would he still be carrying a torch for her, and if he was, how was Pamela going to feel about it?

  A storm of applause and cheers went up as Edith and her bridegroom cut the bottom layer of a towering twelve-tier cake.

  Wallis’s thoughts were still centered on Pamela and John Jasper.

  Why had they settled on Washington as a place to live? Why not New York? Washington was a city of diplomats, journalists, politicians, lawyers, and highly placed Army and Navy officials. Was John Jasper perhaps a lawyer now? Or a journalist? If he was, it was something Edith, in her letters, had never mentioned.

  Five weeks after Edith’s wedding, at a party at the Argentinean embassy, she looked across a crowded chandelier-lit room and saw Pamela and John Jasper enter it. John Jasper was looking down at Pamela, laughing at something she had said. Her elbow-length-gloved hand was tucked lightly in the crook of his arm. It was rare for married couples to show such pleasure in each other’s company when out in public, and Wallis felt as if a bolt of electricity had hit her.

  There was no jealousy in her shock, only a stunned surprise she hadn’t been anticipating. What wasn’t a surprise was what a breathtakingly good-looking couple they made. John Jasper’s hair was still as night-black and thickly curly as it had been when she had last seen him, and Pamela had had her mane of buttercup-blond hair cut into a sleek, fashionable bob. Her silver-satin evening gown was halter-necked, the narrow bias-cut skirt skimming a figure of serpentine slimness.

  A senior diplomat at the embassy had crossed the room to greet them, giving Wallis precious time in which to unravel her turbulent emotions and decide on how she was going to play this very difficult reunion.

  A few moments later, when she still hadn’t decided what course to take, Pamela decided it for her. As John Jasper engaged in conversation with the Argentinean, she looked around the room the way people do when hoping to see a familiar face.

  Her eyes met Wallis’s, then widened, and then, almost instantly, a huge smile nearly split her face in two.

  “Wally!” she cried out, immediately leaving John Jasper’s side and almost breaking into a run in her eagerness to reach Wallis’s side. “Wally! How wonderful! I didn’t know you were in Washington. Is your husband stationed here?”

  She hugged Wallis, uncaring of the startled looks from those standing nearest to them.

  As Wallis continued struggling as to how to react, Pamela stepped away from her in order to look into her face, her own face suddenly apprehensive. “You’re not still mad at me over John Jasper, are you, Wally? Neither of us meant to hurt you. John Jasper didn’t love me, and though I’d always had a secret crush on him, I didn’t think for a moment anything serious would come of it. I was just having fun. When I found out I was having a baby I thought the world had come to an end and I know it sounds crazy, but the one person I really needed then was you.”

  The familiar sea green eyes were urgent. Pleading.

  Wallis stood very still. Pamela had betrayed her in the worst way any woman could betray another. They had been best friends. Blood friends. She had trusted Pamela totally, and Pamela had broken her trust in a way she had believed was irrevocable.

  She opened her mouth to tell Pamela so, but the words wouldn’t come. The stark truth was that time had moved on. She had thought she would never get over the loss of John Jasper in her life, but even before she had married Win she had been able to think of John Jasper without pain.

  It was the loss of Pamela that had mattered to her the most, and now here Pamela was, pleading for the two of them to be friends once again. She tried to imagine what kind of friendship it might be, this second time around. On her part it would, she knew, be far more cautious. She bit her bottom lip, wondering if that mattered, and decided that it didn’t.

  With a shaky smile, she said, “I’ve needed you lots and lots of times, Pamela—and I’m not still mad at you, though I was at the time. I was so mad I would have torn your hair out given the chance.”

  Pamela laughed. “Since I had it bobbed there’s not much to pull out.” She tucked her arm companionably in Wallis’s. “Come and say hello to John Jasper. He’s going to find this difficult, but he’ll survive it, and after this party is over, we’ll go somewhere quiet where we can catch up on things. I expect Edith has written to you over the years. She’s certainly written to me and will probably never forgive me for missing her wedding by a mere month.”

  “It was at Edith’s wedding I learned that you and John Jasper were coming back to the States to live and were going to settle in Washington.” They were weaving their way through the throng of bejeweled and bemedaled guests. “What I want to know is why Washington, when New York is so much livelier?”

  “Because diplomats live in Washington, not New York, and John Jasper has been posted here after serving for five years as a junior-grade diplomat at the American embassy in London. Typical of Edith to have left that little bit of information out of her letters. What did she write about?”

  Laughter bubbled up in Wallis’s throat. It was just as though they were at Oldfields again; just as though the years of hurt silence between the two of them had never been. “She wrote mainly about your friendship with Prince Edward.”

  “Ah!” There was satisfaction in Pamela’s voice. “But she wouldn’t have told you everything, Wally, because she never knew everything.”

  They were within a couple of feet of John Jasper now, and at their approach the Argentinean who had been talking to him gave a polite nod in their direction and moved away, and John Jasper had no option but to turn and face them.

  He had changed in the nine years since she had last seen him. When they parted he had been a boy with an appealing good nature and the striking looks of a Roma Gypsy. Now he was twenty-six, and though the Gypsy-like handsomeness remained, it was overlaid with a patina of confidence and sophistication that was quite devastating.

  He said stiffly, “It’s good to see you again, Wallis.”

  Suddenly the muscles around Wallis’s mouth wouldn’t work. This was the man whom, if he had not gone on an extended European tour with his father, she would most certainly have married and, if she had done so, would have been happy with. It was impossible to think of anyone—even Pamela—not being happily married to him. She had thought she was over him, tha
t meeting him again wouldn’t matter to her. Now she knew that if the circumstances had been different he would matter to her just as much as he had done when she was a schoolgirl at Arundell.

  The circumstances that were different were not that he and Pamela were married, but that despite his not being in love with Pamela when he married her, he loved her now. His doing so was something she had known the instant she saw them enter the room together.

  From now on, she and John Jasper would be friends. Friends who had a shared history neither of them would ever quite forget.

  She flashed him a warm smile. “It’s good to see you again as well, John Jasper.”

  The relief in his gold-flecked eyes at the way the difficult moment had been overcome was intense.

  “Isn’t this nice?” Pamela slid a hand through the crook of Wallis’s arm and another through the crook of John Jasper’s. “Who would ever have thought that when we met up again it would be in the Argentinean embassy in Washington, and not in London or Baltimore? Who are you going to introduce us to, Wally? Not counting the ambassador, who is the most sought-after person here?”

  Wallis’s smile deepened. “Don Felipe Espil, the ambassador’s first secretary,” she said. “If you are going to be seeing a lot of me, you will also be seeing a lot of Felipe.”

  It wasn’t until the next morning that she and Pamela were able to exchange confidences in private. “We’re staying at the Crowne Plaza until we find somewhere suitable to live,” Pamela had said to her when they said their good-byes at the embassy. “Come round tomorrow and we can do some real catching up. John Jasper won’t be there. He’ll be too busy settling into his new posting.”

  When Wallis arrived at the Crowne Plaza, she wasn’t surprised to find that Pamela and John Jasper were occupying the best suite of rooms the hotel provided.

  “And we are still cramped for space,” Pamela said after Wallis had dutifully admired it. “That’s because John Jasper just won’t see sense where Oliver is concerned. Instead of leaving him at his prep school—where he was perfectly happy—he has insisted on disrupting his education by bringing him with us, which means, of course, we now have extra domestic staff to accommodate.”

  “Is he here now?”

  Wallis rarely took an interest in children, but this child was different; this child had disrupted the entire course of her life.

  “No. His tutor has taken him to view the city’s historical sites. They’ll be gone all day. Make yourself comfortable, Wally. This is going to be a very long session of catch-up. Top of my list of questions is, where is your husband? I take it he’s not in Washington, or you and the suavely charming Mr. Espil wouldn’t be on such obviously friendly terms.”

  Pamela was seated on a blue-and-gold brocaded chaise longue, her legs tucked beneath her in the way Wallis remembered her always sitting. Careless posture was something Wallis had never felt comfortable about. She’d been too drilled as a child by her grandmother to always sit with a ramrod straight back to be able to sit as casually as Pamela did.

  “Win is in China. He’s in the Navy. I expect Edith told you that.”

  “She did. She also said she didn’t think the two of you were very happy together.”

  Defensiveness about her marriage was too ingrained for Wallis to drop all attempts at it immediately. “Edith never visited us, so how could she possibly know whether we’re happy or unhappy?”

  “Gossip, I expect.” Pamela cocked her head to one side. “Come on, Wally. This is me you’re talking to—and Edith told me enough for me to know that it can’t possibly be a happy marriage.”

  The moment Wallis had waited so long for, the moment when she could speak truthfully about the horrors of her marriage to Pamela, was so momentous that a tremor ran through her.

  Seeing it, Pamela said swiftly, “Let me pour you a fresh coffee, Wally. Would you like a brandy with it? The Crowne Plaza isn’t mindful of Prohibition. The first thing the manager asked when we arrived was whether we’d like a brown-wrapped bottle of very good stuff.”

  “Thanks, Pamela.” Wallis’s gratitude was deep. “A glass of very good stuff is just what I need.”

  Pamela uncurled her legs and leaned forward in order to reach the coffee percolator standing on a low table between her chaise longue and Wallis’s easy chair. After pouring Wallis another cup of coffee, she left the room to go into a bedroom, coming back a few minutes later with two glasses of brandy.

  Only when the glass was in her hand did Wallis say, “I fell in love with Win for his rugged good looks and his courage as an aviator and married him without truly knowing him.”

  “And he has a temper?”

  Wallis nodded, aware now that gossip as to Win’s abusive behavior toward her had somehow reached Edith, and that Pamela already knew of it.

  She cupped the glass in her hand, warming the brandy. “His friends warned me about it beforehand, but being a fool I simply thought it enhanced his tough-guy image. I never thought he’d start using me as a punching bag.”

  “Bastard,” Pamela said succinctly.

  Wallis took a sip of her brandy and then said, “There were reasons, Pamela. There are things about me which would probably drive nine out of ten men into similar behavior.”

  Wallis took a deep breath, aware that the moment had come for her to divulge her biggest secret.

  “Rubbish. Nothing can excuse a man from lashing out at a woman. He’s manipulated your brain if that’s what you believe.”

  “I’m still a virgin, Pamela.”

  Pamela’s eyes widened and her jaw dropped. “But why? Do you mean Win is impotent?”

  “No, I wish he were, because if he were the situation wouldn’t matter to him so much.”

  Pamela stared at her blankly. “I’m sorry,” she said at last. “You’ve got me completely foxed.”

  Unsteadily Wallis put her brandy glass down on the low glass-topped table. “I have internal abnormalities that mean I can’t engage in normal intercourse. I’ve seen a gynecologist and nothing can be done. It’s just something I have to live with.”

  Pamela opened her mouth to speak, failed, and tried again. “Then how …? Forgive me, Wally. But what do you do?”

  Wallis gave a wry smile. “Other things. Use your imagination, Pamela. A climax doesn’t depend on penetration—and men can be given pleasure in other ways. Sometimes they actually prefer the other ways.”

  Pamela shook her head in disbelief. “I thought I was the one who was going to take you by surprise when I told you some of the things that have happened to me since we last met, but you beat the band, Wally. Wasn’t Queen Elizabeth Tudor supposed to have been a perpetual virgin? And aren’t you very distantly related to her? A quote from Ben Jonson said she ‘had a membrana on her, which made her incapable of men, though for her delight she tryed many.’ ”

  “If you’re going to begin quoting Elizabethan playwrights, I’m outta here, though if Elizabeth Tudor suffered from the same affliction she has my sympathy, and no, I don’t think I am very distantly related to her, not even via my Montague line. What are the things you are going to surprise me with? Don’t forget that thanks to Edith I already know how chummy you are with the Prince of Wales.”

  Pamela pulled a face. “Thanks to a certain Mrs. Dudley Ward I’m not as chummy as I once was. Let’s go for a walk and I’ll tell you all about how I nearly enslaved him and how Freda pipped me to the post.” She rose to her feet. “Do you know in all the time I lived in Baltimore I never visited Washington once? As we are only a mile away from the Washington Monument, what say we go and take a look at it?”

  Wallis never minded visiting historical sites, and there was nothing she wanted more than to hear inside gossip about the Prince of Wales.

  It was a typical hot and humid August day, but they were both wearing cool low-waisted dresses with calf-length floaty skirts and, once outside, straw cloche hats pulled forward far enough to shield their eyes from the worst of the sun’s glare.

&nb
sp; As they strolled down K Street in the direction of the National Mall, Wallis said, “I came within a hairsbreadth of being presented to the Prince of Wales when I was living in San Diego.”

  “What went wrong?”

  “Win.” She didn’t elaborate. Pamela had by now gotten the picture where Win was concerned, and Wallis didn’t want to talk about him more than was absolutely necessary.

  Pamela gave a throaty chuckle. “I came within a hairsbreadth of being much more than merely presented. At the time America entered the war, at a party given by my stepfather and at which he was a guest, Prince Edward fell for me hook, line, and sinker. The war was at its height and he was nearing the end of his Christmas leave. From then on, first from France and then from Italy, I received the most adoring letters imaginable and I knew, absolutely knew, that on his next leave home, when I became his mistress in the fullest sense of the word, he’d be mine for as long as I wanted him to be.”

  Wallis was now too worldly to be shocked at how easily Pamela would have been unfaithful to John Jasper—and she also sensed that adultery wasn’t going to be the outcome of the story.

  “And?” she prompted as they crossed a busy intersection.

  “And on the first evening of his next leave we went to a party in Belgrave Square. It was given by someone I didn’t know. Maud Kerr-Smiley, the wife of an MP. I didn’t mind, as I didn’t see how the early part of the evening could affect the later part of it—and it wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been for a Zeppelin raid.”

  Though she had been chuckling at the beginning of her story, there was now an edge of bitterness in her voice.

  “I don’t understand. Was the house bombed?”

  “No, but it might as well have been.”

  They turned right onto Constitution Avenue.

  As Pamela remained silent, Wallis didn’t prompt her again. She simply waited until Pamela felt like continuing with the story of how the Prince of Wales had fallen into another woman’s arms.