by Rebecca Dean
He sighed. Escorting and chaperoning Iris and Lily would be a simple task. Accomplishing the same thing with Marigold was going to be a nightmare.
From where they were, on St. James’s Street, the only way to the front of Buckingham Palace was to walk down the length of St. James’s Street, make a very brief left into Pall Mall, and then, not following the route the procession was taking, take an abrupt right into Marlborough Road, skirting St. James’s Palace. From there they would be able to enter the Mall about a third of the way down from Buckingham Palace; though if the tail end of the procession had still not returned to the palace by the time they reached the Mall, they would then come to a complete halt, because it would be so jam-packed with spectators that walking up the Mall’s grassy shoulders would be impossible.
“Come along,” he said, wondering how he could have been so rash as to have agreed to something so reckless—and how someone as sensible as Rose could possibly have sanctioned it.
As they stepped out into the street they were deafened by hoarse cheers for the queen and king of Norway, the King’s sister and her husband. In their wake came the carriage of King Ferdinand of Rumania and his wife, Queen Marie, Queen Victoria’s granddaughter. They didn’t stand to watch it pass. Instead they began weaving their way through the crowds toward the bottom of the street.
For Iris and Lily, who seldom, if ever, journeyed any distance unless in a carriage or a hansom cab—and only then when suitably accompanied—the experience was exhilarating.
“No wonder Rose jaunts around London on her own by omnibus!” Iris shouted above the din to Marigold.
Marigold—who also jaunted around London unaccompanied, though nearly always by hansom cab—merely grinned. As far as she was concerned, the less Iris knew about her own adventurous activities when she stayed with Sibyl, the better.
Once in the Mall, even though the procession was still heading up it toward the palace, they managed to inch their way through the crush toward the spankingly new, glittering white marble monument to Queen Victoria that stood on an island in front of the palace gates.
“If we can get to the palace side of the monument, we’ll be in the best possible position to see the royal family when they step out on to the balcony,” Rory shouted as, with Iris and Lily’s arms firmly linked in his and Marigold hard on his heels, he continued to forge a way forward.
“There’s someone selling toffee apples!” Lily tugged Rory’s arm urgently. “I’ve never had a toffee apple, Rory. May I have one? Please?”
“Dear God!” Rory, as breezily unconventional as most of the rest of his family, was profoundly shocked. “I can’t have anyone seeing Lord May’s granddaughters eating in the street. It simply isn’t done, Lily. It’s an absolute no.”
“We’re not going to meet anyone we know in this crush.” Marigold held on to her hat as a couple of street sellers squeezed past them. “I quite fancy a toffee apple. What about you, Iris?”
Iris had never been faced with such a dilemma. As conventional as Rose and Marigold were unconventional, in the normal way of things she would never, in a million years, have even considered eating in public. But today wasn’t like any other day—and the toffee apples did look nice.
When Rory saw the expression on Iris’s face, knowing that it signified she was quite happy for them all to be seen behaving in just as plebeian a manner as the thousands of people thronging around them, he put his hand into his pocket.
Minutes later, toffee apples in hand, they were about twenty people deep from the front of the palace railings. Even though carriages and bands from the tail end of the procession were still rolling from the Mall into the palace courtyard, the crowd around them were lustily shouting for the King to make an appearance and the shouts of, “We want the King! We want the King! We want the King!” were deafening.
“And Queen Mary!” a woman near to them shouted, and the chant “Queen Mary! Queen Mary! Queen Mary!” was immediately taken up.
When the royal party finally stepped out on to the balcony from the grand gallery’s center room, the storm of cheers, whistles, and applause was like nothing any of them had ever heard before.
“Oh gosh, Rory!” Iris shouted. “I’m so glad we’re here!” She squeezed his arm so tightly she nearly stopped the flow of blood. “There’s David! Just stepping out behind his mother! Oh, doesn’t he look wonderful! Just like a prince from a fairy tale!”
Rory looked toward Lily to see how she was reacting to seeing her best friend the object of such slavish adoration and respect from so many hundreds of thousands of people.
As David stepped forward, into full view, the chants “Three cheers for the Prince of Wales” and “Hip, hip, hurrah!” were taken up.
Lily’s eyes were fixed on David, but she wasn’t joining in the chanting and she wasn’t laughing with delight. Instead, the expression on her delicately boned face was that of someone poleaxed, of someone stunned by a sudden, terrible realization.
Concerned, Rory bent his head to hers, his mouth close to her ear. “What’s the matter, Lily?” He cupped his mouth with his hand so that she would be able to hear him above the din all around them. “Is it all too much for you? Are you feeling dizzy?”
She shook her head, not taking her eyes from David, boyishly handsome in his Knight of the Garter robes and coronet, his blond hair gleaming as pale as barley beneath the sun that had, at last, made an appearance.
“No. It’s just … it’s just that for the first time I’ve realized just how far removed from our world David is. When I saw him in the procession, it was just as if he was in a pageant. Just something that was splendidly good fun. But now …” She turned her head away from his, looking around her at the vast throng that stretched in an unbroken sea all the way back down the Mall as far as Admiralty Arch. “But now I see that we’ll only ever be able to be friends at Snowberry. I’d never truly realized what being royal meant before.” She looked stricken and he thought he knew why.
If she, too, had been having stirrings of first love, seeing the prince in full royal regalia, instead of his naval cadet uniform, would have been quite an eye-opener. As would seeing him the object of adulation of hundreds of thousands of people—millions if British subjects overseas, listening in to accounts of the coronation on the wireless, were taken into account.
He said sympathetically, “Snowberry is just a novelty to him, Lily. As is his behaving as if he can be friends with you and your sisters just as if he were an ordinary young man. He isn’t an ordinary young man. He never can be. One day, like his father, he’ll be King. Queen Victoria has only been dead ten years, and she was ruler of a quarter of the human race—I don’t imagine the numbers have gone down much.”
He didn’t add that looking at Edward now it was impossible to believe he was destined for such a momentous place in the world’s history books. Young-looking for his age, without the Garter robes and coronet he could more easily be taken for a choirboy than heir to the greatest throne in the world.
Of all his cousins, Lily was Rory’s favorite. The place she held in his heart was of such complexity he had never trusted himself to examine it too closely. He didn’t now, but the look of devastation on her face turned his heart over and he said gently, “If you had any romantic notions about yourself and Prince Edward, it’s best you forget them, Lily love. Heirs to thrones marry where they are told to marry—and I rather think King George and Queen Mary will have already drawn up a short list of names for Edward to choose from.”
Chapter Fourteen
“So what it really comes down to, May,” an exhausted George said late that evening when he and his wife were, at last, blessedly alone, “is a Dane, a German, or a Russian. The others are all just too problematical.”
Queen Mary, for whom the day had been just as exhausting and just as emotionally draining as it had been for her husband, had not the least desire to embark on a conversation as to which court of Europe would be the best hunting ground for a bride fo
r their eldest son, but she didn’t say so. George was her king as well as her husband. It was something she never allowed herself to forget and she always subjugated her wishes to his, no matter how mundane those wishes might be—as now, when she simply wanted to go to bed.
“The Danes.” She kept her voice free of any inflection of disapproval, well aware that it was very difficult to be disapproving of the Danish royal house. That she was disapproving was only because they were such a happy-go-lucky, informal lot. In Queen Mary’s opinion, informality was a far from desirable requirement when it came to being royal. The difficulty in saying so was that George’s mother, Queen Alexandra—still alive and well and living at Sandringham—had been, prior to her marriage, a princess of Denmark, and the British royal family’s ties with the Danish royal house were close.
“Another Danish princess, as Princess of Wales, would be a very popular choice,” she said diplomatically. “The people took Motherdear to their hearts the instant she set foot on British soil.”
Despite all the problems Queen Mary had with her mother-in-law—her refusal, after King Edward’s death, to move out of Buckingham Palace and into Marlborough House, for instance, and her perpetual lateness for absolutely everything—she was fair enough to give credit where it was due. Her mother-in-law had been an exceedingly popular Queen Consort and, despite her deafness and increasing lack of mobility, was just as popular with the general public now that she was Dowager Queen Consort.
“However,” May went on, “there are things to take into consideration that didn’t have to be taken into consideration in 1863 when Motherdear’s marriage to your father was arranged. The political situation was far less complicated then. Willy is so belligerent and his navy is growing at such speed that Mr. Asquith thinks it will soon be comparable to ours.”
George made a noise in his throat that indicated just what he thought of his cousin’s efforts to bring the German navy into anything approaching parity with the British navy. Ever since he had become kaiser, Willy had been a thorn in everyone’s flesh, plunging his stubby finger into every diplomatic pie he could find.
“A marriage between David and his daughter will unite Germany and Great Britain in a way no amount of treaties will ever do. Princess Victoria Louise is just the right age,” May continued, “only a year older than David and I think David likes her. They got on very well together when she came with Willy and Dona to the unveiling of Grandmama’s memorial monument.”
They were in the small sitting room that linked their bedrooms. Irritably, George ran the tasseled end of his dressing-gown cord through his fingers. Princess Victoria Louise was a pleasant enough girl and there was a lot to be said for uniting Germany and Britain in such a way. Nicky wouldn’t like it, though. Nicky, tsar of Russia and his and Willy’s first cousin, had just as fretful a relationship with Willy as George had.
Between the three of them they ruled over half the population of the world. It was something that had to be taken into account when it came to deciding on a politically advantageous marriage for Great Britain. The question was: Which would be more advantageous? A marriage uniting Britain more closely with Germany—which at the moment was in close cahoots with Austria-Hungary and Italy—or a marriage drawing Britain even closer to Russia?
May, reading his thoughts, said, “You’re thinking of the Romanovs, aren’t you? You’re thinking of Nicky’s eldest daughter, Olga.”
He nodded. “She’s the right age, only a year younger than David, and if we want her as a future bride for him, we’ll have to act fast. Nicky has told me he is already considering Prince Carol as a future husband for her.”
Prince Carol’s mother was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria through the paternal side of her family, and on the maternal side she was a granddaughter of Tsar Alexander II. With such a strong Russian link, May could well understand why the eighteen-year-old prince had been singled out by Nicky as a suitable husband for Olga.
David, though, would be far more suitable, for there could be no comparison between the throne he would inherit and the throne Carol would one day inherit. As for family ties—always an important consideration in a royal marriage—Olga’s paternal grandmother and Queen Alexandra were sisters. It was the reason George and Nicky looked so alike.
A disadvantage, though, was Olga’s mother. German-born Alix would hate the thought of Olga ever leaving Russia. That any woman could be as possessive a mother as Alix was something May—who hadn’t a maternal bone in her body—failed to understand. She said doubtfully, “There’s always unrest in Russia, George. We don’t want to be linked to that unrest any more than we can help, and that might happen if the next Queen of England was Russian. That dear Olga has barely a drop of Russian blood in her veins is neither here nor there. She’s a Romanov and the public will always remember it.”
George, who didn’t like to be reminded, however obliquely, that his own blood was far more German than English, made another noncommittal sound in his throat.
Aware that she had inadvertently touched a sensitive nerve, May moved swiftly on. “What about the House of Mecklenburg-Strelitz?” She threw her personal preference into the ring as if it were an afterthought. “The small courts of Germany have never failed Britain when it has come to the question of future Queen Consorts.”
“Nor have they.” George stopped running tassels through his fingers and looked at her fondly. Though May had been brought up at Kensington Palace, by birth she was a member of the German House of Teck and her connections to Germany were strong.
“Too minor,” he said regretfully. “A minor royal house will no longer suffice, May. Not in this day and age. David will one day be a king-emperor, and his bride should be the daughter of one—and apart from myself there are only two king-emperors. Willy and Nicky.”
“So David’s future wife is to be either the kaiser’s daughter or the tsar’s?”
George nodded. Whether, when a decision was made, the girl in question would be happy about the future arranged for her wasn’t something that even crossed his mind. Royal marriages had always been arranged marriages. And what girl wouldn’t want to be the future Queen Consort of Great Britain and Ireland and of all her Dominions over the Seas?
“I think,” May said, abandoning all hope of a Mecklenburg-Strelitz marital match, “that when the choice is put to David, he may well consider dear Nicky a more agreeable father-in-law than Willy.”
“David’s preferences are immaterial, May. The question is: Will a marital alliance with Germany be more beneficial, or less beneficial, than a marital alliance with Russia? And it is the prime minister’s and the foreign secretary’s opinions that will have to be taken into consideration, not David’s.”
He walked away from her toward the door leading to his bedroom, saying, “David will do as he’s always done, May.”
“And that is?”
He paused, one hand on the doorknob. “He’ll do as he’s told,” he said. “Goodnight, dear May. God bless.”
In a separate wing of Buckingham Palace, David, like his father, was in his dressing gown. He wasn’t about to go to bed, though. He was at his desk, writing to Lily, a glass of whiskey and soda handily within reach.
Dearest Lily,
What a day today has been! I just wish you could have been sharing it with me, but as you couldn’t I want to share it with you by writing down all my thoughts and feelings before I turn in for bed. I saw my parents at 9 a.m. and the King showed me the Admiralty Order in the Times gazetting me a midshipman. I was frightfully bucked about it. Then I dressed in my Garter clothes and robe—and though I really do hate guying myself up as if I were living in the Middle Ages I remembered what you said about the pleasure it gives people and so I didn’t mind too much at all—and then at 10.00 a.m. I left the palace in a state carriage with my sister, Mary, and the brothers.
We arrived in the abbey at 10.30 and then I walked up the nave and choir to my seat in front of the peers. (I tried to single out your gr
andfather and give him a nod, but there were so many old gentlemen all dressed in peers’ robes that I couldn’t distinguish one from another.) All the relatives and people were most civil and bowed to me as I passed. Then Mama and Papa came in and the ceremony commenced. There was the recognition, the anointing, and then the crowning of Papa, and then I put on my coronet with the peers. Then I had to go and do homage to Papa at his throne, and I was very nervous … Then Mama was crowned.
After that we got into our carriage and had a long drive back. My coronet felt very heavy and we had to bow to the people as we went along, which made it even more uncomfortable. The highlight, dearest Lily, was seeing you waving to me from the balcony of your aunt’s house. It was so sweet of you to do so and I shall always remember it.
Afterward, I went out onto Buckingham Palace’s balcony with the rest of my family to wave to the crowds, and then later there was a most enormous banquet and it went on so long I thought it was never going to end.
Dearest Lily, I’m not very good at letter writing. I do hope you don’t think this the most awful drivel, but I’m dreadfully tired and I expect that doesn’t help. I thought about you all day today, and I can’t wait till I’m next back at Snowberry. It’s only been a few days since I was there, but already it feels like weeks and weeks.
He paused, his pen hovering over the paper. He wanted to sign off by writing, Tons and tons of my very best love, David, but knew he couldn’t. Not yet. But soon he would be able to do so. Soon he would let everyone know how he felt about Lily, for he had decided the last thing he wanted was for there to be anything furtive about his love for her. With his heart in every word, he wrote,