The Woman Before Wallis

by Bryn Turnbull

  Gloria sank into an empty armchair. “Well done, Nathan,” she said. “That will give them something to chew on.”

  “Too right,” said Burkan. “We’ve started the rumor mill turning before we’ve even begun our defense. Whitney’s lawyers may still have the stand, but the media will be looking into her connections by the end of the day.”

  “What happens now?” asked Thelma.

  Burkan settled onto the sofa and opened his briefcase to file the statement away. “I’ve arranged to meet with the rest of your legal team tonight, Mrs. Vanderbilt, to discuss our next steps. Mr. Mathew—Lady Milford Haven’s lawyer—has asked to join us. He’s petitioned Justice Carew for a copy of the testimony to determine whether Lady Milford Haven should press libel charges. I’m hoping he might have some insights to share.” He snapped the clasps of his briefcase shut. “We’ll iron out the particulars of how we’ll proceed, finalize our list of character witnesses. All those actors and models, coming in and out of her studio—can’t all be innocent. Not from what they’ve told me.”

  He turned to leave, but Consuelo spoke up.

  “Is it true?”

  Burkan paused. “I beg your pardon?”

  Consuelo stepped forward. “Is it true?” she repeated. “About Gertrude Whitney. This whole—character assassination. It makes us no better than they are.”

  “Of course, it’s true,” said Burkan, frowning. “No respectable woman turns a child against its mother. It’s not the conduct of a reasonable person—”

  “I’m not asking about reasonable,” Consuelo said. “I’m asking about the truth. Did she have affairs with these—these artists—”

  “Does it matter?”

  Consuelo didn’t answer.

  Burkan sighed and set down his briefcase. “Let me tell you something about Gertrude Whitney,” he said. “She’s no angel. She gets drunk like the rest of us, sleeps around like the rest of us. She’s human.”

  From her armchair, Gloria huffed.

  “People like her—it’s not about the truth to them. If the truth is inconvenient, they pay to push it out of the way. That’s the problem—money blinds. Gertrude Whitney seems to think that because she has a pot of it she’s more qualified to raise a child than its own mother, that she’s more honorable because she has a big bank account.” Burkan looked at Gloria. “There’s nothing honorable about what she’s doing to that little girl. Or to you. There’s nothing fancy about hypocrisy.”

  Forty-Four

  Friedel Hohenlohe stood in the front hall, inconspicuously elegant in a black suit. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, inspecting the silver glint of his wristwatch; as Thelma came down the stairs he looked up, his expression changing from hope to polite welcome as she descended.

  “You look lovely,” he said.

  Thelma looked into the sitting room but no one else had come down for cocktails. She lingered on the bottommost step, more to keep Friedel company than out of any real sense of companionship.

  “The princess must be looking forward to an evening out,” she said. “The Plaza, is it?”

  “Yes,” said Friedel. He smiled, a hint of apology on his long face. “I can’t pretend I’m not looking forward to a little time alone.”

  “I don’t blame you,” said Thelma. She wondered, briefly, if Friedel and Margarita would return—or whether they would cut and run, the pair of them, acting on the same impulse of self-preservation that had led them to New York in the first place.

  “Margarita likes to take her time dressing,” said Friedel. “She was nearly late for our wedding.”

  “Gloria’s the same—well, you’d know,” said Thelma. She crossed her arms, and before she could help herself she spoke once more. “Is it difficult for her?”

  Friedel considered. “It’s not been pleasant,” he said, with a candor that Thelma hadn’t really expected to receive. “Margarita knows I’ve got a past. But I don’t think she ever expected it would confront her quite so directly.”

  Thelma leaned against the newel post, glancing upward once more for signs of life. She and Friedel had never been close, not even when he was engaged to Gloria. She’d visited his family home once, Schloss Langenburg, and marveled at the crumbling luxury—the castle in need of repairs that, perhaps, Little Gloria’s money would have provided. “She’s not like Gloria at all,” said Thelma, returning Friedel’s honesty with her own. “She’s stronger. I shouldn’t say that, it’s not fair to Gloria—”

  “No, it isn’t,” Friedel replied, without heat. “Gloria’s had a remarkably difficult go of things these past few years, and she wasn’t prepared for any of it. Not by her parents, nor by her late husband.” He adjusted one of his cuff links. “My wife has had her own challenges, but she was raised in entirely different circumstances. As a royal, one expects some measure of adversity,” he continued, smiling. “I find it difficult to pass judgment on Gloria for the choices she had never dreamed she would have to make. That Gloria’s the person she is, is a testament to her determination. I wonder if you would have reacted any differently.”

  Thelma stepped aside as Margarita reached the bottom step and Friedel pulled her into a gentle embrace. As one, they turned, and together they walked out into the blue night.

  * * *

  With Friedel and Margarita gone there was space enough for all of them in the sitting room for drinks after dinner. Even with fewer bodies, the room was still unbearably warm, the fire having been overburdened earlier in the evening with letters Gloria had received from anonymous, angry people, condemning her in acid black. The flames roared with brief triumph, paper curling to ash beneath the wood.

  Thelma was quiet as Harry poured drinks, letting Consuelo and Edith pick up the threads of conversation as she reflected on her conversation with Friedel. She’d been wrong, to allow Mamma’s suspicions to color her opinion of him. He’d acted honorably in his defense of Gloria and devotion to his wife. If self-preservation was a by-product of those actions, was he not entitled to it?

  Friedel was right, too, about Gloria: it was a mark of her strength that she’d inspired such loyalty. It was a mark of her good heart, too, that her former fiancé would, even now, not hear a word against her. Would Duke do the same? Would David? She reflected once more on his silence. Would he have come, if it had been Thelma on trial?

  The doorbell rang. They heard the butler open the door and the low rumble of Burkan’s voice.

  “So soon?” said Gloria. She finished the last of her cigarette as Burkan entered the room, the ashtray sliding across the coffee table as she stubbed it out.

  “Well?” she said.

  Burkan sank onto a footstool, dropping his briefcase at his side. He leaned forward, planting his elbows on his knees.

  “When you first asked me to represent you, Mrs. Vanderbilt,” he said, “I asked you for honesty. I thought you’d given it to me, when you told me you’d never taken any lovers aside from Hohenlohe. Made for a rather unpleasant surprise when your association with Lady Milford Haven came out. Frankly, it was embarrassing to be caught so off guard.” He straightened and accepted a glass of sherry from Edith with a curt nod. “After that day, I asked you for honesty once more, and you told me your affair with Lady Milford Haven was short-lived. Just the one affair. Just the one time.”

  Thelma looked at Gloria, who was staring, stone-faced, into the fire.

  “I could have worked with once. I could have won the case with once,” said Burkan, and Thelma’s heart slipped into her stomach. “You’ve been untruthful, Mrs. Vanderbilt. And I don’t see how you expect me to do my job when you withhold relevant facts.”

  Gloria paled. Thelma let out a breath, but Harry spoke first. “What happened?”

  Burkan sighed. “Theobald Mathew.” He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out an envelope. He handed it to Gloria. “It seems you have a few more skeleton
s in your closet than you let on, Mrs. Vanderbilt.”

  Gloria opened the envelope, her lips moving soundlessly as her eyes slid down the page.

  “It wouldn’t serve Mathew’s purposes to divulge the extent of your relationship with Lady Milford Haven,” Burkan said, “but he did provide pertinent information about a few of your other conquests, Mrs. Vanderbilt.”

  Gloria turned the paper over and continued to read. Thelma could feel her sister’s panic rising in her own throat, the frenzied grappling for reason—she wanted to snatch the paper from Gloria’s hands and throw it into the fire along with all the other meaningless vitriol.

  “Mr. Mathew was quite clear,” Burkan continued. “He wants the trial wrapped up, civilly, as quickly as possible.” He nodded at the sheet of paper. “He’s happy to provide that list of names to Whitney’s lawyers, if it’s the quickest way to settle it. Smyth’s already seen it.”

  “Why?” Consuelo whispered. “What purpose could this possibly—”

  “I’ve been offered a deal,” said Burkan. “Through Mathew, from Smyth. We say nothing about Mrs. Whitney’s friends, and they’ll call no further witnesses against Mrs. Vanderbilt. They’ll cross-examine, of course, but the case will proceed based on what’s already been said.” He sighed. “Of course, should we accept—”

  “Gloria loses,” said Thelma. She recalled her conversation with Mathew on board the Empress, her panic turning into dread.

  “We should reject it,” said Consuelo. “Gloria’s reputation is already ruined. Our only chance for success is retribution, discrediting Gertrude—”

  “Don’t be stupid,” snapped Burkan. “You think Gloria would stand any chance at recovering her daughter if we gave Smyth further ammunition?”

  “They hold all the cards,” said Edith. “If we subject Gertrude to scandal, we both lose—if we don’t, she’s spared scrutiny and we lose regardless.”

  Burkan finished his drink and rose to pour another. “Only one lamb to the slaughter.”

  “And how does this slaughter serve us?” said Consuelo. “The only ones who stand to gain from this arrangement are Gertrude and Nada Mountbatten.”

  Burkan poured the last of the bottle of sherry into his glass without turning around. “Who do you think gave Mathew that list of names?”

  Gloria closed her eyes, her trembling hands coming to a rest in her lap.

  “She needs this ended as quietly as possible,” said Burkan. “Not for her sake—she could sleep with the entire Russian army and still come out smelling like an English rose. Mathew didn’t come for Nada. Think about who else could be implicated if this trial drags on further.”

  Thelma’s voice sounded too loud, too final, in the dismal silence.

  “It’s because of me,” she said. “Because of David.”

  Burkan nodded heavily. “If we call a halt to this mud-slinging, Smyth’s agreed to not bring the Prince of Wales into it all. It’s his most effective weapon—one he’d hoped not to use, I think, but now that Mathew’s agreed to play by his terms...” Burkan trailed off. “Mathew’s only motive is to keep the Prince of Wales out of this, and it’s come too close as it is. His relation to Lady Milford Haven, his friendship with you, Lady Furness...if Smyth makes these ties known, it would be a disaster for the Royal Family. American newspapers don’t have the same sort of deference as British ones.”

  He rubbed a hand across his jaw, gray with a shadow that would be stubble by morning.

  “We’re fighting on two fronts now, Mrs. Vanderbilt,” he said. “We can’t win against the Vanderbilts and the Royal Family combined.”

  Gloria closed her eyes, shielding her face with a shaking hand.

  No one stopped Thelma as she walked out of the room. She opened the front door, following Friedel and Margarita’s path into the night.

  Forty-Five

  She stepped onto the pavement. There was the promise of winter beneath the red-sweet smell of autumn—had she really been here long enough for the seasons to turn, in futile defense of her sister’s reputation? She looked back at the house, lamp-lit in the twilight. Thankfully, there weren’t any reporters lingering outside. Burkan’s morning announcement had given them enough to write about: they would be home now, in their grimy apartment blocks with wives and colicky children, blowing the ink dry on their stories for the morning edition.

  She could only imagine the frenzy if they’d been privy to the revelations in the sitting room.

  It was cowardly to run, but there was nothing else she could do—Mathew’s intervention had seen to that. She’d never been blind to the fact that Mathew was working for Nada, nor that he would work against Gloria if it was in Nada’s best interests. Hadn’t he said so? But Thelma had deceived herself into thinking that Gloria’s and Nada’s interests were one and the same. It was Nada’s scandals—Nada’s alone—that Mathew sought to bury. If Gloria’s reputation was the price of silence, Mathew would pay it. He’d paid it already, with a list of names written in Nada’s elegant script.

  The night had gotten colder, but Thelma wasn’t ready to go back. Half a block away, the gilded marquee of the Carlyle Hotel shone in the dark. She quickened her pace and slipped inside.

  The lobby was monolithically elegant in black and white, shocks of mint and peach on velvet couches and silk chairs. Aside from hotel staff, it was nearly empty and Thelma thought, once more, of Friedel and Margarita at the Plaza. The Persian Room would be humming. Any other evening, Thelma would have preferred to be part of that scene, but tonight she welcomed solitude.

  Her feet whispered over pools of glossy black marble, so polished it looked like water moments away from being upset by a breath. She followed neatly lettered signs through to the hotel bar—quiet, too, tonight, but for the pianist playing lingering notes of a song Thelma would have known, if she could recall the words. Three men sat at the curved bar, their backs to Thelma, and a closely entwined couple was in the far corner, their caned-back chairs touching. Thelma ordered a martini and went to an empty booth, with enough space to spread her scattered thoughts across the table.

  She could blame Nada for the whole mess, were she so inclined: point fingers at the woman who’d pulled Gloria out of the wreckage of her engagement to Friedel and into a new, dangerous sphere, but to do so would be a convenient way to assuage her own guilt. She, Thelma, was the link between David and Gloria—more so than Nada, who could hide behind her title and brazen out scandal. Thelma, twin sister to the Vanderbilt widow, mistress of the Prince of Wales, had no such refuge. Like Gloria, she was now a liability. How long before Mathew sought to cut her from David’s side? Had it already started?

  She traced her finger down the side of her glass, leaving a trail through the condensation. Her relationship with David was an open secret—all of David’s relationships had been, the king and queen turning a blind eye to their eldest son’s affairs. The Royal Family—David’s generation, at least—even accepted Thelma as part of David’s life.

  The public was a different matter. David relied on the discretion of the British press to keep his dalliances secret, and his position kept him safe from scandal: the newspapers had no desire to embarrass their future sovereign. But Burkan had been right when he said that American papers didn’t have the same deference as their British counterparts. Many would relish the opportunity to cut the Prince of Wales down to size. Reporters might overlook David’s affair—but his twice-over connection to the Vanderbilt widow? It was a story too sensational to ignore.

  The pianist finished his song with a flourish and stood, setting a small sign on his bench—Intermission—and went to the bar.

  “If you wait any longer that drink will be spoiled.”

  Thelma looked up; Aly Khan stood before her, his hand curled around the back of an empty chair. “A martini’s no good unless it’s cold.”

  “Aly,” said Thelma. He sat without asking,
signaling to the bartender for a new round of drinks. “I’ve not seen you since—”

  “Lending you a jacket outside your apartment. I remember.” Aly hadn’t lost the habit of staring: he watched her intently, half-smiling, as though recalling a private joke. “I hope you don’t mind the intrusion. You looked so serious, I thought I might try to lift your spirits.”

  Thelma wasn’t up to the task of flirting. “In that case, a fresh drink might be a good place to start. What brings you here?”

  Aly leaned back in his chair as the waiter set down two martinis. “Business. Pleasure. I’m stopping in New York on my way back to London. I spent the past month in Florida, purchasing horses for my father’s stables.”

  “Of course. Are you staying long?”

  “Tell me when you’re leaving and I’ll book my ticket on the same ship. The berth next to yours. Whatever it takes to have ten uninterrupted days in your company.”

  Thelma smiled wryly. “I’m afraid you might be waiting some time, if you plan to leave when I do,” she said. “I assume you’ve been following it all?”

  Aly pulled a cigarette case from his pocket and slid it across the table. “I have. Your sister has my sympathies. It can’t be easy for her. Or you.”

  Thelma let out a long-held breath. “It isn’t.” She passed the case back to Aly, drumming the base of an unlit cigarette on the tabletop. The pianist resumed playing and Thelma lowered her voice, grateful for the music that shielded their conversation from the rest of the room. “I don’t think I realized just how difficult it’s all been for her. Not just the trial. Losing Reggie. Losing Friedel. Raising a baby while Mamma constantly undermines her...” She sipped her drink, not caring whether Aly followed her train of thought. He knew about Gloria and Nada, of course, but she doubted he knew about the rest, beyond what had been reported in the newspapers. “I was too busy with my own life to ask—really ask—how she was doing. No wonder she’s in trouble.”