by Rebecca Dean
“The only people close to King George are his courtiers, and sparkling dinner conversation is not their forte. They are all far too closemouthed. Even if they weren’t, what could they possibly have to gossip about that would be of interest? It isn’t as if King George has a mistress tucked away. All the man is interested in is stamp collecting and shooting. It’s a wonder there is any wildlife left at Sandringham.”
Laughter bubbled in Marigold’s throat. She adored her great-aunt Sibyl’s salty conversation. She also adored the kind of people who frequented her great-aunt’s town house on St. James’s Street, close to St. James’s Palace. Everyone who came was a somebody, because, like herself, Sibyl had no time for nonentities.
“The Stainfords will be here,” Sibyl continued, tweaking a petunia into a more pleasing position. “The Shaw-Stewarts; Strickland, the portrait painter; the Jethneys; young Mr. Churchill, though not his very delightful wife, Clementine. She is enceinte and the baby is expected any day. Lord Conisborough and his new bride. She’s an American and I’m told she is great fun.”
The news that Theo was to be one of the dinner guests sent adrenaline singing along Marigold’s veins. The fact that he would be there with his wife didn’t trouble her. She liked Jerusha. When, a few days ago, Rose had told her quite flatly that her flirtation with Theo was a cruelty to Jerusha, she had been exasperated beyond words. “I’m not trying to steal him from Jerusha, Rose. I don’t want him to leave her and to marry me. I just want to enjoy feeling extra alive when I’m with him. I can’t see what’s wrong with that.”
An aghast Rose had told her that there was plenty wrong with it and that she was amoral. Afterward, Marigold had looked the word up in a dictionary and thought Rose was probably right. For the life of her, though, she still couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. Fascinating, interesting older men were always married, and since it was fascinating, interesting older men she enjoyed being with—and as they so obviously enjoyed being with her—what was she supposed to do? Ignore them? Try as she might, she just couldn’t see the sense of doing that.
What she did see the sense of was living life as she wanted to lead it, and not as other people thought she should lead it. What would Rose think if she suddenly started lecturing her about her WSPU activities? Or if she started taking Iris to task for having no other interests but horses and dogs? They wouldn’t like it and—more to the point—they wouldn’t take any notice of what she said either.
Happy with the conclusion she had reached, she wasted no more time thinking about Rose’s disapproval. Instead she thought about the evening ahead and of how much fun being privy to the verbal sparring between the prime minister and her great-aunt’s close friend, the Marquess of Lansdowne, was going to be. Politics didn’t really interest her, but politicians—successful, powerful politicians—did. It was one of the reasons she found Theo Jethney so mesmerizingly attractive.
That evening Marigold wore long emerald earrings, an emerald necklace given to her by her mother, and an off-the-shoulder evening gown in shimmering black taffeta. Unless she was in mourning it was an unheard-of color for a nineteen-year-old girl to wear—which was why Marigold was wearing it. Against the drama of the dress her Titian hair blazed like a candle flame. To her chagrin she discovered that Viscount Conisborough’s bride was also a redhead and looked no older than she was.
Though they were seated at opposite ends of the table, it was obvious that they were each stealing the other’s thunder, and Marigold half expected Delia Conisborough to shoot her a look of aggrieved fury. Delia didn’t. She simply shot her a wide smile, her eyes showing nothing but friendly amusement.
There was no smile on Theo’s face. As he looked toward her down the length of the table, the expression in his eyes was one of grim urgency. Because she found teasing him great fun, she looked away, listening with rapt attention to what Mr. Asquith was saying in order that when the opportunity came for her to talk to him, she would be able to appear far more intelligent than she actually was—a ploy she had honed to perfection. All around her brilliant conversation ebbed and flowed, and she wondered what kind of an impression Rose and Iris made when visiting Sibyl. Rose was quite intelligent enough to hold her own no matter what the subject of conversation, but as her political views were diametrically opposed to many of their great-aunt’s regular guests, Marigold couldn’t quite imagine how Rose got on. If she had been here this evening, for instance, suffragette talk in front of the prime minister would not have gone down at all well. Apart from that, although Rose looked striking, she was incapable of flirting and, in Marigold’s experience, their great-aunt’s gentlemen guests—the prime minister included—adored it when she flirted with them.
As for Iris … The idea of Iris scintillating in a gathering such as the present one was impossible. Iris was not a sophisticate—and neither was she a beauty. The only person this evening who would have had time for Iris was Jerusha, for Jerusha’s interests, like Iris’s, centered almost entirely on domestic matters and country pursuits.
Lily, of course, didn’t count, for she hadn’t even been presented at court and wasn’t yet “out.”
As she heard Violet Rice, the Duchess of Stainford, say to Lawrence Strickland, “I quite agree with you about Matisse. There is something of the decorative effect of a child’s drawing about his work,” Marigold finally turned her head in Theo’s direction, her eyes meeting his.
With a stab of shock she saw that he was looking overwrought, and the silent message he flashed toward her, as the rest of the table erupted in laughter at one of Margot Asquith’s acidly sharp witticisms, was impossible to misunderstand. He wished to speak to her in private at the very earliest opportunity.
She hoped it wasn’t going to be about something stuffily boring.
“The person I would most love to capture in pastels is Lily Houghton,” the Duchess of Stainford was now saying. “She has a most extraordinary quality.”
Marigold was distinctly miffed. The duchess was an acclaimed artist who had exhibited at the Royal Academy and had been likened to Holbein. Her delicate sketches of her friends were famous. Margot Asquith had sat for her, as had Princess Beatrice of Battenberg and Arthur Balfour, who had been prime minister a few years ago. In fact, it was hard to think of anyone celebrated or beautiful who hadn’t sat for her.
When Marigold thought of how much she would like to see a portrait of herself hanging in the Royal Academy, as Margot Asquith’s had, she began to feel more than miffed. She began to feel very cross. Then she saw the way Lawrence Strickland was looking at her.
Strickland was a portrait artist, too, though in oils—and oils would, she knew, suit her flamboyant beauty far better than pastels or pencil would.
Her eyes told him exactly what she was thinking.
He tilted his head a little to one side, looking back at her in a way that sent a very odd emotion snaking down her spine.
Like Winston, who was now discussing the tricky subject of Home Rule for Ireland with Ivor Conisborough, Strickland was not a good-looking man, but he had undeniable presence. It was a presence not given to him by his tailoring, which was abysmal. The sleeves of his dinner jacket were a good inch too short, as if, like a lanky schoolboy, he had outgrown it. There were traces of cigarette ash on his waistcoat, a speck of yellow paint on one of his thumbs. His hair was worn too long; his eyes were the color of mud. His whole physique was awkward—too tall, too bony, too gangling.
She was riveted by him.
“We ladies will not be leaving you gentlemen to your port this evening,” her great-aunt said, rising to her feet. “Not when I believe some of my party guests have already arrived. Winston, would you be so gracious as to give me your arm?”
“It would be my honor, dear lady.”
As they left the table and made their way toward the ballroom, Violet Rice again commandeered Lawrence Strickland. Marigold didn’t mind. She knew she would be having a private word with him before the evening was over.
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For the moment, though, it was Theo who was trying to have a private word with her. As they stepped into the ballroom and Jerusha began happily greeting a sea of people she knew, he began walking in Marigold’s direction—and was waylaid by the Marquess of Lansdowne.
Marigold shrugged her shoulders philosophically and scanned the room to see whom she could most happily flirt with. There was no sign of Rory, which was a disappointment. Why her second cousin preferred the isolation of the Isle of Islay to the excitement of London she couldn’t imagine, especially when London meant the opportunity of meeting the most influential people of the day at his grandmother’s.
She weaved her way among the guests, all of whom she knew from her debutante season, and caught sight of the Honorable Toby Mulholland, Iris’s unofficial fiancé. Because his family home, Sissbury Castle, was so near to Snowberry, Marigold had known him ever since she could remember. Even when they had been children she had found him dull company and as he wasn’t startlingly handsome and certainly wasn’t imbued with the glamour of power, she didn’t particularly want to spend time with him.
He headed straight toward her and instead of asking if Iris was with her, as she had expected, he said, “You look wonderful, Marigold. Make me the envy of every man in the room and waltz with me?”
Without being offensively rude, she didn’t see how she could refuse.
As they took to the floor he said with a leer, “I understand from a friend that you’ve acquired a rather racy nickname, Marigold. Nell Gwynne.”
She had been expecting his sole subject of conversation to be Iris. What she hadn’t expected was for him to start flirting with her—and that, unless she was much mistaken, was what he was trying to do.
Instead of encouraging him—which she would have done with almost any other man—she said coolly, “Is it racy?” She knew very well that it was and wondered who the friend had been. “I thought I’d been given it because I have the same color hair Nell had, and because I like oranges—and when Nell first came to King Charles’s attention, she was selling oranges.”
Aware that his remark had annoyed her and that it wasn’t going to lead to the sexually provocative conversation he’d been hoping for, he said, holding her a little tighter, “Ah! I hadn’t realized that was the reason. Is anyone taking you in to supper, Marigold, or may I?”
No one had, as yet, asked if they could take her in to supper, but Marigold liked to keep her options open. “I don’t think that would be a very good idea, Toby,” she said as they rounded a corner of the ballroom and she saw that Jerusha was waltzing with Ivor Conisborough and Delia Conisborough was dancing with the prime minister. “Aren’t you curious as to where Iris is? You haven’t asked.”
He chuckled. “I’m assuming that since she isn’t with you, she’s at Snowberry.” And then, as she didn’t give a little laugh back, he said, “Confidentially, Marigold, Iris and I haven’t been seeing much of each other since I joined the Coldstream Guards.”
Marigold stopped dancing so suddenly that he stumbled over her feet. “Are you hinting that an engagement between you and Iris is no longer in the cards, Toby? Because if you are, the person you should be telling is Iris. It’s stretching it a bit to say she has already bought a wedding dress, but she certainly thinks she’ll be doing so soon.”
“Then she’s being too quick off the mark. To tell you the truth, Marigold, over the last few months I’ve realized that though Iris is wonderful, she is no longer quite in my league. Now can we continue dancing? We’re beginning to attract attention.”
“No, we can’t continue dancing! Reason one is because you are a terrible dancer, and reason two is because I don’t like the way you are talking about Iris!”
Leaving him flushed with embarrassment, she walked from the dance floor, making a beeline for Theo as fast as her narrow-skirted, beaded evening gown would allow.
In white tie and tails, his night-black mustache elegantly curled, his hair brilliantined to a glossy sheen, he looked splendid. He also looked to be under enormous strain.
She wondered if it was because of the brouhaha currently existing between the House of Commons and the House of Lords—he was, after all, a government minister—and she hoped very much that it wasn’t. She’d already suffered enough talk at the dinner table about the House of Lords’ imbalance of hereditary Conservative peers to Liberal peers and the way that, because of it, many of Mr. Asquith’s Liberal government policies were being blocked. She didn’t want to hear about it again.
“Step out on to the terrace,” he said in a low voice as she came within earshot, looking all the while toward Jerusha who, now the music had changed, was being whirled around the floor in a Viennese waltz by the Shaw-Stewarts’ son, Patrick. “But don’t draw attention to yourself.”
Marigold felt a flash of impatience. The evening was not turning out remotely as she had expected. Rory wasn’t around to laugh and joke with. Her only dance of the evening so far had been with Toby chinless-wonder Mulholland and now Theo was seriously out of sorts and speaking to her as if she was one of the underlings at his ministry.
Severely miffed, she headed toward the French doors leading to the terrace.
Two minutes later he joined her in the darkness. She slid her arms up and around his neck, not wanting to waste a second of their illicit time together in boring conversation.
His mouth came down on hers firm and sweet, but he didn’t prolong the kiss and caress her as he would normally have done. Instead, far too soon, he lifted his head from hers and held her a little away from him to look into her face.
“What I have to tell you is going to be very difficult for me, Marigold,” he said, praying to God that he would have the willpower to carry his decision through. “More difficult than you’ll ever know.”
Her pleasure at physical contact with him died. From his tortured expression it was obvious that what he had to say wasn’t anything to do with the lack of Liberal peers in the House of Lords, or Home Rule for Ireland. It was something to do with the two of them—something she wasn’t going to want to hear.
She stood very still, her hands pressed against his chest, waiting.
“We haven’t been as careful as we thought, Marigold.” The rich resonant voice that spoke so commandingly on national and international matters was bleak. “Your grandfather has given me a word of warning.”
She removed her hands from his chest. “And?” she said, knowing very well that it would have been Rose who was behind her grandfather’s cautionary words and not understanding what the fuss was about when with one smooth lie Theo could put all her grandfather’s fears to rest.
“And, since your grandfather is aware that you have, in his words, ‘a crush’ on me, it means a suspicion has been aroused. Our affair can’t continue, Marigold. Continuing with it would be suicidal.”
She stared at him, unable to believe what she was hearing. “I thought,” she said, when she could trust herself to speak, “that you were in love with me? That nothing like me had ever happened in your life before? That if necessary you would die for me?”
He groaned and, releasing his hold of her, passed a hand despairingly across his eyes. He’d never said anything to her that he didn’t mean. In twenty-five years of marriage he had rarely been unfaithful to Jerusha—and on the occasions he had been, it had been with married women who had known the rules of the sport being played.
Marigold was different. In being young, single, and virginal she had been off-limits and different right from the very beginning. But he’d been too intoxicated by her to care. So intoxicated he’d cast all reason and restraint to the wind.
Now the day of reckoning had come. Much as he wanted to, he couldn’t divorce Jerusha and marry Marigold—divorce for a man of his class and social position was unthinkable. As for Marigold, if word got out that she was no longer a virgin, her reputation would be ruined. No truly eligible young man would even consider marrying her. The life of the person he had come to
care passionately about would be ruined—and he would be the one who had ruined it.
Overcome with remorse, he said unsteadily, “I shouldn’t have started this, Marigold. I took advantage of you in a way that was quite despicable.”
That he thought he, or anyone else, was capable of taking advantage of her, filled Marigold with indignation so hot it swamped all her other feelings.
“No one,” she said fiercely, the tears she had been about to give way to now held in check, “has ever taken advantage of me. Not you, Theo. Not anyone.”
He mistook her meaning, believing she was trying to ease the guilt he felt. “You were a nineteen-year-old virgin, my darling,” he said thickly. “My seducing you was unforgivable.”
She gave him a long, long look. She had been mad for him for over a year, and she was mad for him no longer. Instead, she was infuriated with him. That he would end their steamy romance merely because her grandfather had warned him off was incomprehensible to her. Theo’s attraction had always been that he was such a powerful public figure. But a powerful public figure who couldn’t allay an elderly friend’s suspicions and fears wasn’t, in her book, a powerful figure at all.
Her disillusionment was deep—as was her desire to hit back at him.
“I’d never realized you thought you had seduced a virgin,” she said waspishly, “but it is at least one burden I can lift from your shoulders.”
Her reaction was so unexpected—so unlike the pleas and tears he had braced himself for—that he was totally thrown. Bewilderedly, he said, “I’m sorry, Marigold. I’m not following …”
“I wasn’t a virgin when we started our affair,” she said, hoping the lie wouldn’t show in her voice. “I’m sorry, Theo. When we first went to bed together, I thought you would be able to tell.” She gave a careless, expressive shrug of her shoulders. “When you said nothing, I thought it best for me to say nothing.”
Jethney couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t speak.
Seeing his reaction and satisfied with the body blow she had delivered, Marigold turned swiftly away from him and headed toward the French doors.