The Woman Before Wallis

by Bryn Turnbull

  “C-come now, darling.” The Duke of York, taller than David by several inches, tucked his hands in the pockets of his overcoat as he came round the front of the motorcar. “You move so s-slow, you’ll be the l-last one left on Judgment Day.”

  The duchess smirked. “You’re impossible,” she said warmly, before turning her blue gaze onto Thelma.

  “Elizabeth, I’d like you to meet Thelma, Lady Furness,” said David.

  Though Thelma knew she was only three or four years older than herself, there was something matronly about the Duchess of York: she was short, with plain features and heavy eyebrows, her hair bound up in a diamond headpiece.

  She inclined her head. “I’m delighted to meet you,” she said. “David tells me you’re the one to thank for organizing this little get-together.”

  “Oh, we’ll see,” said Thelma. “Thank me once the weekend is over.”

  The duchess laughed. “I’m sure it will all be perfectly lovely,” she said. With one arm on each of the princes, she moved toward the front door, leaving Thelma in her wake.

  Perhaps to make up for their tardiness, the Duke and Duchess of York had come dressed for dinner: once indoors, the duchess removed her cape to reveal a loose-fitting periwinkle evening gown. When she turned, Thelma saw that the dated cut was intended to hide the duchess’s advanced pregnancy.

  “Look at you—Lilibet must be getting excited for a little brother or sister,” said David, with genuine fondness.

  The duchess wrinkled her nose. “Isn’t it dreadful? I try to keep to myself this far along, but I wanted to see you.” She handed her cape to Osborne, taking in the entrance hall. “Why, David, it’s charming!” she said. “Bertie, isn’t it lovely? And to think you’re just across the Park...if we could convince Papa to give us Royal Lodge, we would be neighbors.” Her voice was high and bright, ringing off the marble as David led her in. “Now, I’m sure you had something to do with the chandeliers, Lady Furness,” she said. “They’re far too pretty to have been chosen by David.”

  David looked over his shoulder at Thelma, who, given Freddie’s outsize influence on the house, had limited her decorative contributions to her bedroom. “She’s got an eye for this sort of thing,” he said, gallantly allowing the duchess’s misconception to stand. “If it had been left to me, all the furniture would still be in boxes.”

  “I f-find that rather hard to believe,” said the duke. David had warned her about his brother’s speech impediment, but Thelma was surprised by how pronounced it was—his sentence stalled midway through, but David and the duchess, no doubt used to the duke’s peculiar cadence, didn’t attempt to finish it. “For a man as f-f-fastidious—” he caught the word on the edge of his teeth before tugging it loose in a rush “—as you, I’d expect you to w-worry over each d-d-decorative pillow.”

  David shrugged, conceding the point. Thelma was used to seeing David charm people, but his easy manner with the duke and duchess was something new: he was relaxed, the nervous energy that had propelled him all day finally at rest.

  They entered the drawing room, interrupting George and Piers Legh mid-conversation. The duchess released David to pull George into a tight embrace.

  “How are you? How goes the conquest?” the duchess asked George in a low voice. George grinned, pressing a finger to his lips; with a pointed glance at Thelma, the duchess pulled George close to continue their conversation in whispers.

  Thelma broke away from the huddle and moved toward David, feeling out of place amid Elizabeth’s easy camaraderie with the men.

  “Bertie—Elizabeth? A drink?” said David.

  “Nothing for me, thank you, but Bertie will have a cigarette. Doctor’s orders,” said the duchess, and David pulled a case from his sporran. “We’re told it helps relax the vocal chords.”

  “I like the sound of that doctor,” said Legh, letting a plume of smoke escape from his mouth. He was tall, with receding dark hair and heavy eyebrows, his prominent features out of place compared to the handsome Windsor brothers. He sat backward on the piano bench, the key guard turned down to use as an armrest. “Is he taking patients?”

  The Duke of York lit a cigarette, chuckling. Like his eldest brother, the duke was fit and handsome, with aquiline good looks and an intensity that David, with his easy charm and mournful smile, lacked. He sat down and David perched on the armrest: side by side, they looked like a photo and its negative. The duke was dark where David was light, tall where David was short; staid, in his black tie, while David was flamboyant in plaid.

  Thelma sat next to the fireplace, watching David’s smile broaden as he surveyed his family.

  * * *

  Over dinner, Thelma gained a new appreciation for David’s relationship with his brothers. She felt as though she’d walked into the midst of a conversation started years ago, listening to jokes half explained, stories recounted in fits and starts, interrupted by irresistible tangents, raised arms and shouts of laughter, hands loosely clasped around the stems of wineglasses.

  David, without question, was the ringleader, goading George and Bertie—and Legh, who had known them all so long he was practically a brother himself—with boyhood insults. There was something gleeful in his conduct: an uncomplicated loosening, children liberated from their parents’ gaze.

  George, unsurprisingly, was equally exuberant: the handsomest and most outgoing of the brothers, he didn’t seem to begrudge David the accident of birth that put him next to the throne and first in the minds of the women who followed their antics in the society pages. No, Thelma suspected that George was content to follow David’s lead, enjoying the benefits afforded by a royal title without the accompanying responsibility.

  Of the three brothers present, though, Thelma was most intrigued by the Duke of York. In Bertie, David’s constant restlessness was transformed into a nervous rigidity. He seemed to have his mind on everyone’s comfort but his own, deferring to his wife and briefing Thelma on George and David’s long-winded reminiscences. Thelma thought back to the first time she met David at Lady Londonderry’s ball, recalling her overwhelming impulse to care for him, to smooth out the troubles in his face. She felt the same solicitousness toward Bertie, wanting to will the tension out of his shoulders, his clenched jaw. With his stammer, it would be easy to dismiss Bertie as a slouch—a slow mouth attached to a slow mind—but he was sly and witty, responding to David’s humor with subtle asides, a wry smile on his lined face.

  As they finished dessert, David set down his spoon and glanced at Thelma. Recognizing the unspoken gesture, Thelma made to rise from her chair but the Duchess of York stood first.

  “Well, gentlemen, I think we shall leave you to your brandy,” she said. “Lady Furness, perhaps you’d be so kind as to join me in a game of cards?”

  “Of course,” said Thelma, putting a gentle hand on David’s shoulder. The duchess narrowed her eyes as David patted Thelma’s hand.

  It was petty, perhaps, to have goaded her, but it irked Thelma, the way the duchess had come into the Fort and treated it as her own. She had all but ignored Thelma throughout dinner, telling lively stories that had the men in an uproar while blithely deflecting Thelma’s attempts to pull her into conversation. Had she been so lofty with Freddie, when David had first brought her to a family dinner?

  The drawing room was warm. In their absence, someone had stoked the fire to a merry roar, and it cast flickering light up the walls to animate the portrait hanging above the mantel—some relative of David’s, Thelma assumed, with a heavy periwig and ornate robes. He sneered at Thelma as she sat down, and she turned on a nearby table-lamp to dispel the flicker of flames from his face.

  The duchess sank into the chair opposite Thelma with a sigh, her merry face slack with exhaustion. She seemed to have left all her energy in the dining room, the sparkling wit she had shown in front of the men replaced by a fatigue that seemed to reach for Thelma across the
room. Thelma’s frustration rose again: Would she even make an effort, now that she and Thelma were alone?

  As though recalling she was in company, the duchess looked at Thelma with a half-hearted smile.

  “Bertie’s so been looking forward to an opportunity to see David,” she said.

  “And David,” said Thelma. “He’s talked of nothing else for days.”

  The duchess blinked heavily. “Isn’t that sweet,” she said.

  “May I offer you a drink?”

  The duchess opened her eyes. “No, thank you,” she said, resting a hand on her swollen stomach. “But don’t abstain on my account.”

  They lapsed into silence once again, and Thelma fancied she could hear laughter from the other room. She wasn’t entirely sure what to do: whether she, as hostess, was responsible for starting a conversation or whether the duchess should be allowed to sit in silence if she felt like it. With David, Thelma had thrown protocol entirely out the window, but with the duchess questions of propriety seemed so much more demanding.

  She was on the verge of ringing Osborne for tea when the duchess shifted in her chair, wincing as she tightened her hand over her belly.

  Thelma’s irritation faded. “Is it kicking?” she asked.

  The duchess looked up. “Oh? Yes. I don’t know why he’s so upset. The drive must have jostled him out of sorts. He’s been shifting about all evening.”

  Thelma smiled. “I remember that feeling,” she said. “When they decide to do the Charleston. Can I get you anything for it?”

  She pursed her lips. “I would say a glass of champagne, but the pregnancy has put me off cocktails entirely. It’s making for a very long nine months.” She looked at Thelma with renewed interest. “You’ve one of your own, then?”

  “I do. A little boy. He’s just over a year.”

  Elizabeth smiled. “They’re lovely at that age. My Lilibet just turned four. It’s remarkable how much they change.” She caressed the rise of her stomach, a slow, circular motion. “This one though—I’ve a feeling it’s a boy. Bertie thinks so, too.”

  “And I thought my Tony would be a girl.” Thelma recalled the sheer terror of her own pregnancy. “Will you have more?”

  Elizabeth glanced at Thelma, who worried she’d gotten too familiar.

  “I don’t think so,” she said, after a moment’s excruciating silence. “The toll it takes...no, I’ve done my duty by Bertie, I think. Will you?”

  Thelma deserved the question after asking it herself. She’d never really considered whether she wanted another child—she wasn’t entirely sure she was capable of it. David never seemed particularly concerned about the possibility of a pregnancy, which led Thelma to believe that, perhaps, he was incapable, too—but she’d never asked, and David had never explained.

  But if circumstances were different?

  “I don’t know...the toll it takes,” she echoed. She recalled standing over Tony’s crib, watching him sleep with the same detached interest she would have shown to one of Averill’s foals. “It took time for me to love him, after he was born. I didn’t know what to do. How to talk to him. I suppose you think that’s monstrous—a mother’s supposed to love their child—but it didn’t happen. Not right away.”

  The duchess was looking at Thelma with the most curious expression. “No,” she replied. “I don’t think that’s monstrous at all.”

  Thelma sniffed, wishing she’d poured herself that drink after all. “Well, it all came right in the end,” she said. “He’s a lovely little boy—I adore him. But to your question: I don’t know whether I would have another child. Not unless I knew I was ready to be a mother again. I suppose I would, if the stars aligned.”

  The duchess shifted forward and patted Thelma’s hand. “You’re young—there’s time,” she said, and Thelma felt as though something hopeful had fallen into place.

  Thirty-One

  The next morning Thelma was jarred out of sleep by the sound of bagpipes. She turned over in bed, feeling for David, then shifted the tangle of bedsheets and walked to the window.

  It was a cool day, with heavy clouds hanging low over the forest and the smell of rain in the air. The bagpipes grew louder as the player reached a crescendo and she pushed the window open, letting the noise force itself into the room.

  David was standing to attention on the terrace below, the offending instrument slung over his shoulder. He took a breath, his fingers running up and down the pipe as he played a tune that jumped from high to low. He took the finale at a run, then lifted his fingers; the bag ran out of air in a dissonant squeal and Thelma leaned out the window, feeling the first few droplets of rain on her face.

  “Is this your way of telling us we’ve slept too long?” she said.

  David looked up. “Good morning! I hope you don’t mind—have I woken the others?”

  Thelma squinted along the row of second-story windows. “I would say so. Is it meant to rain all day?”

  “Wireless says it will stop this afternoon. I’ve made some progress on a path through the wood.”

  “Already? What time is it? I’m coming down now.” She pushed the button on the wall to call for Elise, hoping she hadn’t been the only one to sleep the morning away.

  * * *

  She hadn’t—David, it transpired, had been up since daybreak. It was a change from his habits in London: at York House, David never woke before ten.

  As promised, the rain stopped midafternoon, leaving a pearl sky. After luncheon, they went out on the terrace for fresh air, David’s terriers leading the way.

  “Shall I show you how to hit a hole in one?” David asked Thelma, picking up a golf club as they trooped outdoors. He set up a tee by the lawn chairs while George and Piers pegged croquet wickets in the green.

  “Careful now,” said George, driving the last wicket into place with the heel of his shoe. “You don’t want to go telling her all your secrets—you’ll never win a game again. Ten pounds on the outcome, Legh?”

  David handed Thelma the club. “I don’t know about secrets—skill’s what makes it. Now, if you hold it like so...” He wrapped his arms around her to illustrate the proper stance, and she swung the club, sending the ball soaring past the cannon-lined rampart.

  “Well done! Did you see that, Bertie? She’s a natural!” He lowered his voice and dug another ball out of the basket. “What do you think of them?” he whispered.

  “They’re lovely,” said Thelma. David snorted, glancing at lawn chairs where Bertie and Elizabeth were seated side by side, reading. Bertie, a cigarette clamped between his lips, reached absently for Elizabeth’s hand; she took it, resting the book on the rise of her stomach as she turned a page.

  “Even Elizabeth? I’m impressed. She generally spits people out before deciding they’re friends.”

  “I can’t believe it of her.”

  “You should. She comes across as sweetness and light, but she’s a core of steel.”

  As if on cue, Elizabeth called out, “What are you two whispering about?”

  David grinned. “We’re putting money on that belly of yours.” He stood behind Thelma once more to help her line up the club and ball. “Two pounds to me if it’s a girl, three to Thelma if it’s a boy.”

  “You w-w-wouldn’t,” said Bertie. He smiled at Elizabeth, her hand still in his. “Not without my—” He paused, exhaling as he forced out the next few words, “my fiver on a boy. Lilibet wants a b-brother.”

  Though his stance didn’t change, David stiffened, watching Bertie and Elizabeth through narrowed eyes.

  “Looking to secure the bloodline are you?” he said. His fingers, still wrapped around Thelma’s on the golf club, began to dance, drumming a restless, unceasing rhythm. “The heir and the spare?”

  Bertie’s ears reddened. “D-d-don’t be—” he said, dropping Elizabeth’s hand. “Stupid.”


  David held his silence, a thin smile curling on his lips; from the croquet wickets, George looked up.

  Thelma stepped out of David’s grasp and swung her club; she missed, and the ball rolled limply along the grass.

  Elizabeth closed her book. “Well, someone has to work on the next generation,” she said, attempting to steer the conversation back to the playful tone it had begun with. “In any case, David, you ought to thank us—Papa’s so taken with Lilibet that he’s stopped hounding you.”

  Thelma handed the golf club back to David. “How about you show me how it’s done?” she said.

  “No, I’d rather a game of croquet,” he said. “Shall we make it a foursome? Bertie’s looking like he could use some sport.”

  Bertie glanced at Elizabeth, then stubbed out his cigarette.

  “All right,” he said. He stood and David handed him a mallet as Piers and George returned their balls to the starting wicket. Thelma took Bertie’s vacant seat next to Elizabeth, who was watching the brothers with an expression that told Thelma the storm had not yet passed.

  Piers struck first, his ball rolling through the first hoop and coming to rest slightly off course. His second shot came short; he moved aside to let David strike next, but David deferred.

  “Let Bertie go,” he said.

  Bertie came forward, lining up his shot with careful precision. He looked down at the wicket, swinging the mallet experimentally.

  “Come now, Bertie,” said David. He raised his voice so that it carried across the lawn with cutting clarity. “If you play as slowly as you speak, we’ll b-b-be here all d-d-day.”

  Thelma’s heart dropped and she willed herself not to look at Elizabeth as the idyllic quiet of the day congealed. Still bent over his mallet, Bertie tensed; he struck the ball and it hit the side of the wicket, rolling off into the sloping grass.

  He straightened. Without looking at anyone, he set his mallet back on the croquet rack and walked off.

  “Oh, don’t be like that,” called David. He lifted his mallet to his shoulder and looked at George with a smirk.