The Golden Prince

by Rebecca Dean

“Yes. It was Rose who drew my attention to it. She thinks it sounds almost cockney.”

  Comprehension dawned and he did something she hadn’t thought him capable of. He gave a bark of laughter.

  “It is cockney. Lala Bill, who was his nanny, is a cockney. She’s still a royal nanny, only now she is nanny to Prince John.”

  Prince John was the youngest of David’s four brothers and not someone David had spoken about when at Snowberry.

  Later, when they were having tea and cakes in a very upmarket Winchester tearoom, she asked Piers about David’s other brothers, and his sister, Princess Mary.

  Though he had no intention of admitting it, Piers had had very little contact with David’s siblings. The only royal personage he met with regularly was the King, who demanded constant reports about his son’s activities. Remembering the grave offense he was committing in not having told King George of Edward’s visits to Snowberry, he blanched. If the truth came out, his disgrace would be so enormous Lily’s grandfather would never give permission for them to marry. Beneath the table he clenched his hands tightly. The truth wasn’t going to come out. And he was going to marry Lily. His single-track mind ensured that any goal he set himself, he doggedly achieved.

  Aware that she was still waiting for an answer to her question, he unclenched his fists. “Prince Albert is a shy boy. Very nervous. A very bad stammerer. He hero-worships …” He paused. The words His Royal Highness or Prince Edward stuck in his throat when Lily spoke so easily of Prince Edward as David. “He hero-worships HRH,” he said, feeling that HRH sounded informal enough to indicate close friendship.

  “What about Princess Mary?” she asked, helping herself to an almond slice from the heavily loaded cake stand.

  He knew less about Princess Mary than he did about Prince Albert, but it was common knowledge at Windsor and Buckingham Palace that she was a far better rider than either of her two older brothers.

  “She rides very well. She is only three years younger than HRH, so she and Prince Albert and HRH are good chums.”

  “And Prince Henry and Prince George and Prince John?”

  “Prince Henry and Prince George are tutored by Mr. Hansell, who was HRH and Prince Albert’s tutor until they went to Naval College. As for Prince John …”

  He came to a halt, wondering what the devil he could say about the youngest member of the royal family. There were so many wild rumors about John: that he was epileptic; that he was retarded. If he told her of them, she might let slip to Prince Edward that he had and then there would be a row of unholy proportions.

  “Prince John is the extrovert of the family,” he said.

  This was true. Though he was only six years old, Prince John quite often upset the royal applecart by escaping from Lala Bill and waylaying high-ranking courtiers and government ministers, greeting them in a way that was extremely disconcerting. “Haven’t you got a big, big nose?” he had shouted cheerily to the prime minister. To the prime minister’s wife, Margot Asquith, he had said, “You’re a funny-looking lady, aren’t you? Are you a witch?”

  What made such remarks even worse was that they were always so apt. The prime minister did have a big nose and Mrs. Asquith, in the long, black, scarlet-lined cloaks she favored, did look like a witch.

  Piers told Lily of how John had once got hold of Princess Mary’s paintbox and, after daubing himself like a red Indian, had run whooping into the dining room when the King and Queen were holding a dinner party. He told her how John was now kept out of sight as much as possible—and that he wouldn’t even be in Westminster Abbey with his brothers and his sister when the King was crowned.

  Lily was appalled at the thought of John missing out on such a historic occasion and even more appalled when Piers told her of how Prince Albert had once been so terrified when told his father wished to speak with him in the library that he had fainted dead away, and of how the King had ordered that the pockets of Edward’s suits be sewn up after Edward had put his hand in his pocket when speaking to him.

  “I’d no idea King George was such a bully,” she said as they drove back to Snowberry. “Poor Prince Albert. No wonder he stammers.”

  Piers was rather taken aback. He had told the anecdotes because he had thought they were amusing. Compared with the Scottish Presbyterian strictness in which he had been brought up, Edward’s and Bertie’s lives were, he thought, a piece of cake. He didn’t say so, though. He said, “Prince Albert is left-handed and is required to write right-handed. HRH says it causes him a lot of stress.”

  “I’m not surprised it causes him a lot of stress!” Lily was furiously indignant. “How would the person responsible for such a decision like it if someone forced them to write left-handed?”

  The person responsible was King George, but Piers thought it best not to say so.

  As they drew up outside Snowberry’s rose-covered frontage Lily’s grandfather stepped outside, his expression one of concern.

  Piers sucked in his breath. Lord May had every reason to be displeased. Taking Lily out for a motor ride, when there had been no one to ask permission of, had been grossly out of order. Taking her out without anyone to chaperone her had been even more out of order. Fervently hoping he hadn’t spoiled his future chances, he stepped out of the car.

  “William told me who you had gone out with, but not where you had gone to,” her grandfather said to Lily, and then to Piers, he said, “Your action was extraordinary, Captain Cullen. I appreciate that over the last weeks you have become something of a family friend, but Lily is seventeen and not yet ‘out.’ ”

  As Piers flushed a deep red, her grandfather turned to Lily again. “You should have known better, sweetheart,” he said with loving reproach. “Another time—if there is another time—if I’m not here for you to ask permission, you must stay at home.”

  “Oh, but I hope there will be another time, because I’ve had the most splendid afternoon, Grandpapa!” Lily’s eyes had stars in them.

  She turned to Piers. “Thank you so much for such a wonderful afternoon, Piers. I enjoyed it hugely.”

  Then, innocently leaving him under completely the wrong impression as to the reason for her enjoyment, she walked indoors, Fizz and Florin skittering around her in excited welcome.

  Chapter Eleven

  For once when staying at Sibyl’s at the same time as Marigold, Rose took very little notice of Marigold’s comings and goings. All her thoughts were centered on how she could secure Daphne’s release from prison. Her great-aunt had been as helpful as she could be.

  “The first person to appeal to, of course, is Winston. As home secretary, he could order Daphne’s release immediately. Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely he will do so. He’s implacably opposed to the WSPU’s violent methods of demonstration. However, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and I will ask him if he will meet with you.”

  “How about the prime minister?” Rose had asked, remembering how taken with her Mr. Asquith had seemed at one of her great-aunt’s dinner parties a few short weeks ago.

  “I’ll do my best, but with the coronation only days away I doubt he will have time to be doing favors. If I were to tell him that you wanted to speak with him regarding Lady Daphne’s imprisonment, he most certainly wouldn’t find the time to meet with you.”

  “But you will try, Aunt Sibyl?” she’d asked anxiously.

  “I shall try.” Her aunt had pursed her lips. “Not all my influential friends are against Votes for Women, Rose. Let me make a list for you of those who will be only too happy to add their names to your campaign.”

  The list had been impressive, and heading it had been the name of Lord Jethney.

  Rose didn’t know quite how she felt about asking for Lord Jethney’s support, and she decided that though she would meet with him, she would do so only after meeting everyone else who was willing to see her. The first person with whom Sibyl secured a meeting for her was the home secretary, Winston Churchill. The meeting took place in the House of Commons, and th
ough he was courteously civil to her, asking after both her grandfather and Sibyl, he was as immovable as a rock when it came to the question of an early release for Daphne.

  “Absolutely impossible, Miss Houghton,” he’d said resolutely. “Lady Daphne was sentenced in a court of law and must serve her time.”

  A five-minute meeting she had with the prime minister at Downing Street was equally unsuccessful.

  Mr. Asquith had been most affable, taking both her hands warmly in his and saying how much he had enjoyed their last meeting at one of her great-aunt’s dinner parties.

  “What can I do for you, my dear?” he had asked when she was comfortably seated on a chintz-covered sofa in Number 10’s drawing room.

  Rose had wasted no time in preliminaries. “A friend of mine, Lady Daphne Harbury, has been sentenced to three months’ imprisonment in Holloway for taking part in a suffragette demonstration, Prime Minister,” she’d said. “I’m here to plead that she be given an early release on the grounds that she should never have been sentenced as a common criminal. As a suffragette, she should be a political prisoner.”

  He had been as immovable on the subject as his home secretary. At last, when she had risen to her feet, knowing she had failed utterly in her mission, he had asked her if she would like to look at the roses in Number 10’s rear garden.

  Knowing very well that the invitation had been made in order that he could take hold of her arm as he escorted her, she had declined.

  In the end, the only person who was helpful to her was Theo Jethney.

  “My friend is not only on hunger strike and being forcibly fed, but she is in an underground cell so damp that if the forced feeding doesn’t kill her, pneumonia will!” she said to him in passionate outrage. “How can civilized men—men like King George and Mr. Asquith and Mr. Churchill—allow women to be kept in such appalling conditions?”

  “The King and the prime minister and the home secretary don’t make personal visits to Holloway,” Theo Jethney said drily. “And the governors of Holloway aren’t likely to enlighten them as to conditions there.”

  They were in his office at the House of Lords. Rose was wearing suffragette colors. Green for hope. Purple for dignity. White for purity. In her purple narrow skirt, with a spray of vivid myrtle leaves pinned to her jacket and a wide white picture hat on top of her thickly waving auburn hair, she looked enchanting.

  Partly because she did look so enchanting, partly because she was Marigold’s sister, and partly because he shared her outrage at the treatment being meted out to the suffragettes, Theo had set aside plenty of time for his meeting with her.

  “Then someone else must tell them,” she said vehemently. “That person must be someone they will listen to.”

  “Do you think I am that person?”

  “Yes. Neither Mr. Asquith nor Mr. Churchill will be as dismissive, or as patronizing, to you as they were to me. The general public also need to be made aware of the horrors taking place in Holloway. Force-feeding is a torture straight from the Middle Ages, yet newspapers treat it as a joke. Editors would soon change their tune if it was their daughters, or sisters, or mothers, who were being held down and violated in such an inhuman manner.”

  Theo stood up and walked across to a window that looked out over the Thames. “A year or so ago,” he said, looking not at her, but at the strongly moving river, “when force-feeding first became an issue, Kier Hardie raised a question in Parliament, objecting to it strenuously on moral grounds. His fellow members of Parliament roared with laughter. He said afterward that if he hadn’t heard that laughter for himself, he would never have believed that a body of gentlemen could have found reason for mirth and applause over such an issue.”

  He turned away from the window and walked back to his desk in deep thought. At last he said, “We cannot denounce torture in places like Russia and support it in England, but members of Parliament—as well as the general public—have to come to an understanding that it is torture, and far from being a joke. The only way to achieve that, Rose, is via a sympathetic press. It needs a national newspaper to wholeheartedly and unequivocally denounce the horrors of force-feeding—and I think I know the newspaper most likely to.”

  He seated himself once more behind his desk and drew out a small black notebook from its central drawer.

  “The man you need to speak to is Hal Green,” he said, flicking pages. “He’s editor of the Daily Despatch—and the most bohemian editor in Fleet Street. He likes a controversial cause.”

  “Would you arrange for me to see him?”

  Theo flashed her one of his rare smiles and, for the first time, Rose understood just why Marigold had been so dazzled by him.

  “Nothing easier. I’ll speak with him myself. Even hard-boiled Fleet Street editors like an invitation to the House of Lords every now and then.”

  From a page in his notebook he copied Hal Green’s telephone number onto a piece of paper and passed it across his desk toward her, saying, “Is everyone well at Snowberry? I haven’t visited recently and I’m rather missing Millie’s meringues.” Then, before she had the chance to respond, he said, “And Marigold? Is she in London in readiness for the coronation?”

  “Yes, she’s at Sibyl’s.” With great difficulty Rose kept her voice as nonchalant as his. “Her house is on the processional route. Lily and Iris are arriving tomorrow morning and I think Rory will be joining us there.”

  “Good. The five of you will have a grandstand view.”

  He walked her to the door. “I’ll tell Hal Green to expect a call from you, and I’ll speak to both Churchill and the prime minister.”

  “Thank you.” The words came out stiff and stilted. In the seconds before he turned his head away from hers, she had seen the expression in his eyes when he had spoken Marigold’s name, and her shock was so profound she didn’t know how she was still managing to behave normally.

  He was in love with Marigold. A public figure with a flawless reputation, sophisticated and long married, he was as dazzled by Marigold as Marigold, for a time, had been dazzled by him.

  She said good-bye to him. Never once had it occurred to her that Theo Jethney had already responded to Marigold’s shameless flirting. Her fear had simply been that he might be tempted to. Now she had the horror of wondering just how intimate their relationship had been.

  She walked down the Palace of Westminster’s marble-floored corridors to the St. Stephen’s entrance, clinging to the word had. Marigold was no longer infatuated with him. She had seen sense and the relationship was over. The bleak misery in Theo’s eyes at the mention of her name seemed to be a testimony of that. As she stepped out into brilliant sunshine she thanked her lucky stars that Marigold was not quite as foolhardy as she often seemed.

  Marigold was a mile away in Chelsea, lying on her tummy upon a silk-covered couch in Lawrence Strickland’s studio. With her weight on her elbows, her head at a coquettish tilt that ensured her mane of hair fell to one side in a riot of glorious golden-red waves, and with her ankles crossed blithely in the air, she was as naked as the day she was born.

  That she was didn’t faze her in the slightest. On her first visit to his studio, when Strickland had said he wanted to do the classical Greek painting first and had asked her to take off her clothes, she had done so with the casual nonchalance of a professional artist’s model. The only difference Strickland could see was that where professional models chatted to him about mundane things as he worked, most frequently their family and friends, Marigold was more interested in him.

  “What is your background, Strickland?” she had asked him as she settled into the pose. “Who are your family? Where are you from?”

  “My family is my own affair,” he had said, sketching her outline in broad, confident strokes. “As for where I’m from—I’m from Norfolk.”

  Later, when it had become obvious to her that the fact of being born in Norfolk was the full extent of the personal information he was prepared to give—and that he wasn’
t at all interested in her, or any other woman, sexually—she had asked him about his work. Much to his surprise, he’d answered her questions. Later still, she had talked to him about herself.

  “So you were how old when you lost your virginity?” he had asked, fascinated.

  “Nineteen. But I didn’t lose it, Strickland. I simply didn’t see the importance of keeping it.”

  He’d grinned. Her careless outspokenness about sexual matters was extraordinary coming from a girl of her age, class, and upbringing. Though he mixed with the aristocracy—accepted by them because of his very great talent—he privately had a great deal of contempt for them. He didn’t have contempt for Marigold, though. Marigold fascinated, amused, and intrigued him. Yet despite his private antipathy for peers, he couldn’t help feeling sorry for her grandfather. From all he’d heard about Lord May, he was a decent old cove. Not the kind of man to deserve a granddaughter who was undoubtedly destined to go through life leaving a trail of scandal behind her.

  “And who was the lucky man?” he asked as he captured the exact coquettish tilt of her head.

  “Lord Jethney. He was passionately in love with me.” She didn’t want to talk about Theo. She wanted to talk about the painting. “What will happen to this painting when it’s finished, Strickland? What will you do with it?”

  “I’ve no idea,” he said truthfully.

  “Couldn’t you forget about a Royal Academy showing for the other portrait you are going to do, and enter this one instead?”

  He cracked with laughter, thinking she was joking.

  Not at all put out, she said, “Why not? The academy is always exhibiting paintings of classical nudes.”

  “True,” he said, still chuckling. “But the models for such pictures are professional models—they aren’t members of the aristocracy. You would be instantly recognized and the furor would be enormous.”

  “The furor would be fun. Who are you depicting me as? Penelope?”

  “Persephone.”

  Marigold, whose knowledge of Greek mythology was hazy, looked blank.