The Golden Prince

by Rebecca Dean

  ALSO BY REBECCA DEAN

  Palace Circle

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2010 by Rebecca Dean

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Broadway Paperbacks, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.crownpublishing.com

  BROADWAY PAPERBACKS and its logo, a letter B bisected on the diagonal, are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Dean, Rebecca, 1943–

  The golden prince / by Rebecca Dean.

  1. Windsor, Edward, Duke of, 1894–1972—Fiction. 2. Great Britain—History—Edward VIII, 1936—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3604.E1537G65 2011

  813′.6—dc22 2010016784

  eISBN: 978-0-307-72075-7

  v3.1

  This book is dedicated to my grandson,

  Jacob George Grumbridge,

  with love.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Rebecca Dean

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The Golden Prince is a work of fiction. While many of the characters in it are historical figures, many others, including the Houghton family, are fictitious. Unlike the royal palaces mentioned, both Snowberry and Castle Dounreay are also fictitious.

  In The Golden Prince, Edward’s love affair with Lily Houghton is fictional. What is fact, however, is that in the summer of 1917, when Edward was twenty-three, he fell in love with the unmarried youngest daughter of the Duke of Sutherland, Rosemary Leveson-Gower. They met during the war in France when she was a Red Cross nurse. In Michael Thornton’s book, Royal Feud, he cites the Dowager Lady Hardinge of Penshurst, whose husband was at that time assistant private secretary to George V, and subsequently private secretary to both Edward VIII and George VI, as writing of Edward and Rosemary, “… he wished to marry … but there was opposition to the match.… One can wonder forever how the history of our Monarchy in the twentieth century and after would have turned out, if the Prince of Wales had had his way in those early days.”

  He also quotes Lady Victor Paget, one of Rosemary’s closest friends, as saying of Rosemary, “One day she came to see me and told me that the Prince had asked her to marry him.” When King George refused to countenance the match, because Rosemary, though a duke’s daughter, was nonroyal, Lady Paget ventured this opinion to Michael Thornton, “The Prince was bitter and furious. I don’t think he ever forgave his father. I also felt that from that time on, he had made up his mind that he would never make what might be called a suitable marriage to please his family.”

  I believe Lady Paget’s surmise to be correct, for after his love affair with Rosemary he never again fell in love with anyone single and suitable. All his subsequent affairs were with married women.

  In March 1919, Rosemary married Eric, Viscount Ednam. In July 1930, she died in a plane crash over Meopham, in Kent. A year later, Prince Edward opened, in her memory, the Rosemary Ednam Memorial Extension at the Royal Northern Hospital at Stoke-On-Trent.

  Chapter One

  MAY 1911

  A slightly built, blond young man stood beneath Dartmouth Naval College’s flamboyantly splendid portico. With his hands deep in his pockets, he stared glumly across a broad terrace to where twin flights of steps led down to manicured gardens and beyond the gardens to a steeply sloping, tree-studded hillside.

  At the foot of the hill lay the river Dart, clogged with college boats of all shapes and sizes. More than anything in the world he wished that, like many of the other cadets in his group, he were aboard one of them. Although he hated the academic side of his training, he loved being out of doors and active. Spending time aboard a sailing cutter, with the wind of the estuary blowing against his face, was the only thing that made life at Dartmouth bearable.

  His cadet captain strolled from the shaded recesses of the grand entrance hall and drew to a halt alongside him. “Off on a weekend’s leave?” he asked affably.

  David nodded, making an effort to look happier about it than he felt.

  His captain hesitated slightly, as if about to say more. Then, thinking better of it, he merely nodded and, with one hand hooked in the pocket of his naval uniform, he strolled on his way.

  David watched him, his eyes bleak. He knew very well that his captain had been about to offer his usual good-bye to cadets going home on leave. “Give my best to your parents.” Given David’s unique circumstances, this would have been a familiarity not at all appropriate.

  Besides, he simply had too many names. Seven, to be exact. Edward, after both his grandfather and an uncle who had died as a young man. Albert, after his great-grandfather. Christian, after one of his godfathers. George, after his father, or was it because George was the patron saint of England? He wasn’t quite sure. Certainly Andrew was after the patron saint of Scotland, Patrick after the patron saint of Ireland, and David after the patron saint of Wales. With that little lot to choose from it was no wonder people paused before addressing him.

  Within his family circle he was known as David—and David was how he always thought of himself. If he’d had any close friends, it was the name he would have liked them to use—only he didn’t have any close friends.

  “It wouldn’t be wise,” his father had said grimly, hands clasped behind his back, legs astride. “Not in your position. That’s why you’re at Dartmouth and not Eton or Harrow. When you leave Dartmouth, your former classmates will be pursuing careers at sea and you will rarely, if ever, see them. That wouldn’t be the case at Eton or Harrow. Any friendships formed there would run the danger of continuing after your education and would become a burden to you. You don’t want that, David, do you?”

  “No, sir,” he’d replied dutifully, thinking there was nothing he’d like better than to have a couple of lifelong friends.

  As if he had read David’s thoughts, his father’s protuberant blue eyes had narrowed.

  “If that is all, sir … ?” David had said, eager to be free now that the familiar knot of fear was forming in the pit of his stomac
h; eager to be on the other side of the library door once again.

  Beneath his trim beard and waxed mustache his father’s mouth had tightened, but the expected explosion of temper hadn’t come. He had merely made a sound in his throat that could have meant anything and given a curt nod of dismissal.

  As his cadet captain disappeared from view, David gave a heavy sigh, knowing all too well that in a few hours’ time there would be a similar interview at the castle and that this time his father’s ferocious temper might very well not be held in check.

  He stepped from beneath the portico and began walking along the terrace fronting the college. Weekends at home were definitely not weekends he looked forward to, but they did have one redeeming feature. They enabled him to practice his driving. Slightly cheered, he rounded the building and strolled across the broad graveled drive to his Austro-Daimler.

  As expected, Captain Piers Cullen was seated behind the wheel.

  “No, Captain Cullen,” he said pleasantly. “I’m doing the driving—at least until we’re in sight of Windsor. Crank-start her up for me, there’s a good chap.”

  Reluctantly, Piers Cullen stepped out of the open-topped car and, with even deeper reluctance, began cranking the engine.

  David put on motoring goggles and a pair of driving gauntlets. The car had been a birthday present from Willy, his German first cousin once removed, and was the best present he could ever remember receiving. It had, of course, annoyed his father, who believed it had been chosen purely for that purpose. “Damn Willy’s impudent cheek!” he had said explosively. “He’s only sent it because the model is named Prinz Heinrich!”

  David hadn’t cared that the car had been named after Willy’s younger brother. It went faster than he’d ever hoped a car could go, and though his father had been led to believe that on public roads Captain Cullen acted as his chauffeur, in reality David drove it at every opportunity he got.

  As he drove out of Dartmouth and into the rolling green countryside he saw with pleasure that Devon was looking its best. Even though it was nearly the end of May primroses still massed on the grassy shoulders of the country lanes, and bluebells carpeted the floor of every wooded valley they passed.

  He neared the market town of Totnes, wondering just what the weekend ahead held. His father would probably want to engage in what was commonly referred to as a “small shoot” and, as far as exercise was concerned, that would be it. For someone like David, whose sense of well-being depended on a lot of physical activity, it wasn’t going to be enough.

  He thought again of the inevitable interview in the library and grimaced. His marks during the year had been nowhere near what his father expected of him, though God knows he had tried hard enough and had even come top out of fifty-nine in German and English. In history he had come second and in French third. It was maths—any form of maths—that let him down. “Forty-eighth in geometry and forty-fifth in trigonometry?” he could just hear his father bellowing. “Forty-eighth and forty-fifth?”

  “Steady on the speed, sir,” Piers warned when they were out in open country again. “That last corner was taken very wide …”

  David made a noncommittal sound not very different from the one his father often made. Cullen was a humorless killjoy and having him alongside for a two-hundred-mile journey was tiresome, if unavoidable.

  His low spirits fell further as they crossed the county border into Dorset. His younger brother, Bertie, wouldn’t be home as Bertie’s leave from Dartmouth came much nearer the end of term. Since Harry, Georgie, and John were too young to count, this meant there would only be his fourteen-year-old sister, Mary, for company and finding something fun they could do together wouldn’t be easy. Though his younger brothers’ nursery could be raided for board games, his father always insisted such games be played with no uproarious laughter, which, to David, defeated their point; and they wouldn’t be able to play cards, because there wouldn’t be a pack to be found.

  As Dorset merged into the airy uplands of Hampshire the loneliness he always fought to keep at bay swept over him with such force he could hardly breathe. He had no one he could truly call a friend. Piers Cullen was too dour a Scotsman to be someone whose companionship he would voluntarily seek. As far as Dartmouth was concerned, his father had never had to worry about friendships, for the boys he would have liked to make friends with kept their distance and the others toadied up to him—and he hated toadies.

  He was so deep in thought he didn’t see the blind bend ahead until it was too late for him to slow down. As Piers Cullen gave a shout of alarm, he took it far too wide and far too fast.

  Too late he saw what was in front of him. Too late he saw that short of a miracle, there was going to be an accident of tragic proportions.

  He slammed his foot on the brake. Slewed the wheel to the left. Then, with a girl’s screams, Cullen’s desperate “Jesus God!” and horrendous barking ringing in his ears, he plummeted into a future beyond all his imaginings.

  Chapter Two

  Wearing a straw boater with a scarlet ribbon around its shallow crown, a high-necked white blouse, and an ankle-length navy skirt, Rose Houghton ran down the last few steps of the sturdy oak staircase and headed in the direction of Snowberry’s kitchen.

  Built as an extension to the main building, the kitchen incorporated sixteenth-century timber posts and beams from the framed house that had originally stood on the site. It was a gigantic room lit by long bands of windows, and the marble-topped pastry table where Millie, Snowberry’s cook, was busy rolling dough was at the very far end of it.

  Rose was accustomed to walking long distances at Snowberry—and to having dogs at her heels. As her high-button boots rang out on the stone-flagged floor a chocolate-brown Labrador sprang up from where he had been lying beneath the table and bounded to greet her.

  “Yes, I’m going into the village, Homer, and yes, you can come with me.” She fondled his ears, saying to Millie, “Has Grandpa told you that when he comes back from the dentist he’s bringing Lord Jethney with him? That means meringues for pudding tonight. Perhaps you could top them with stewed apples and cream like last time?”

  “Perhaps I could, and perhaps I couldn’t,” Millie said, not troubling to look up from what she was doing, “and if you’re taking that silly dog out from under my feet, take Fizz and Florin as well. This is a kitchen, not a kennel.”

  The cocker spaniels in question were already at Rose’s feet, tails wagging in eager anticipation.

  “The reason the dogs are always in here is because you’re always giving them tidbits.”

  She spoke with loving affection. Millie had been in service at Snowberry since before Rose was born, having entered into Lord May’s service when his only child, Rose’s father, had married. She had baked Rose’s christening cake and the christening cakes for all three of Rose’s younger sisters. She had prepared the funeral meats when Rose’s father had died at the shockingly young age of thirty-six, and two years later, on Rose’s mother’s remarriage to a French nobleman, she had baked the wedding cake.

  “Though I wouldn’t have done,” she’d often said afterward. “Not if I’d known she was going to leave the children behind her when she went off to live in France.”

  She was the only person indignant at the arrangement. Lord May had been delighted that his four granddaughters were to remain beneath his roof. Nine-year-old Rose, seven-year-old Iris, and five-year-old Marigold hadn’t had the slightest desire to leave Snowberry—not once it had been explained to them that their army of much-loved pets wouldn’t be allowed to accompany them if they did so. As for three-year-old Lily—she’d been too young to have any opinion.

  None of them had missed their mother as much as Millie had thought they would—or should. Their day-to-day care had always been in the hands of nannies and nursery maids, and when their father died, their mother sought comfort by plunging into a hectic London social life. From then on she became only a visitor to Snowberry. That she now lived in Paris,
instead of London, made very little difference to her daughters, who thought of her more as a much-loved aunt than a mother.

  With the dogs close behind her, Rose left Millie to her pastry making and walked out of the kitchen and out of the house. From the distant tennis court she could hear Marigold shouting, “The ball was out, Lily. You can’t continue being umpire if you don’t umpire properly!”

  What Lily’s response was, she couldn’t hear. Nor could she hear if Iris was also protesting. One thing, however, was certain. No matter how much fuss Marigold and Iris made, Lily would remain sweet tempered.

  Fizz and Florin, easily diverted, raced off to see what the fuss was about. Rose walked around the corner of the house to the stables where, as well as three horses and a pony, bicycles and—when not in use—her grandfather’s stately Talbot motorcar were kept.

  She had two letters to post for her grandfather, letters that she had written for him earlier that morning.

  “Because of my failing eyesight you’re going to have to deal with all my correspondence, Rose,” he had said to her when she had returned to Snowberry after three years at St. Hilda’s, Oxford. “Also, because I can no longer do as much as I used to, I’m going to need your help in managing the estate.”

  It had been a bolt from the blue. One she had been totally unprepared for.

  While at St. Hilda’s she had joined the Women’s Social and Political Union, putting her organizational skills to very good use. Now what she wanted most in the world was to live an independent life in London, forge a career for herself, and, until that aim was achieved, meet regularly with her suffragette friends and work alongside Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter, Christabel, at the WSPU head office.

  That she wasn’t going to be able to was a fierce disappointment. It was one she had overcome. She loved her grandfather far too much to ever let him down.

  As she wheeled the bicycle out of the stables she reflected how supportive he had been when she had said she wanted to try for a place at St. Hilda’s. For a man born the year before Victoria became Queen, he was wonderfully progressive in his thinking when it came to the education of women.