The Golden Prince

by Rebecca Dean

  As her hand touched the handle, he said, “Take a word of advice from someone who cares very deeply for you, Marigold. Accept the first marriage proposal made to you before gossip means there will be no suitable offers. Once you are safely married, you can discreetly indulge in as many love affairs as you please. As a single young woman you can’t. A ruined reputation would be disastrous for you, my darling.”

  Keeping her back toward him, she turned the handle downward and opened the door.

  He said quietly, “If you ever need help in any way, you know where you can come.”

  The tears she’d held at bay for so long threatened to choke her. Not turning toward him—knowing that if she did she would lose all dignity and precious self-control—she nodded her head to show she had heard, then she stepped into the brilliantly lit ballroom, leaving him alone in the darkness.

  As the sea of Sibyl’s guests surrounded her, the tears she hadn’t shed burned the backs of her eyes. Her affair with Theo had mattered far more to her than she’d allowed him to believe. Its necessary secrecy had been intoxicatingly exciting, and she didn’t know how she was going to endure the boredom of life without it. The way that he had ended such a blissful affair so—to her—unnecessarily was something she didn’t think she would ever get over.

  She caught the eye of Daphne Harbury, one of Rose’s WSPU friends, and vowed such a thing would never happen to her again. In the future, where men were concerned, she would be the one who ended things.

  “Marigold!” Daphne swooped down on her, angular and agonizingly plain. “I don’t suppose Rose is in London as well, is she?”

  Marigold shook her head, hoping no one would think that, like Rose, she was a bosom friend of Daphne’s and a fellow member of the WSPU.

  Daphne’s horsy face fell. “What a shame. There’s a terrific demonstration being planned for Sunday. I’m hoping to get myself arrested.”

  As Marigold said, deadpan, “I do hope you’re successful, Daphne,” she saw Lawrence Strickland. He was leaning against the jamb of the ballroom’s double entrance doors, his arms folded, one foot nonchalantly crossing the other at the ankle.

  He wasn’t watching the dancers.

  He was watching her.

  “Excuse me, Daphne,” she said, her stomach muscles contracting giddily. “There’s someone I simply must speak to.”

  Leaving Daphne once again standing on her own, she headed straight for the double doors.

  Strickland didn’t look remotely surprised that she was doing so.

  When she came to a halt in front of him, he didn’t stand up straight or unfold his arms. He simply said, “You want me to paint you.”

  It was a statement, not a question.

  “Yes.” Her mouth was dry, her heart hammering. “I want to see my portrait exhibited publicly, at the Royal Academy, as Margot Asquith’s was.”

  He cocked his head to one side. “I’ll do so, but only on one condition.”

  “What is that?”

  “That I also paint you as a goddess of Greek legend, because that is how I see you.”

  Marigold tried to remember the paintings she had seen in the National Gallery depicting ancient Greek nymphs and goddesses. As far as she could recall, the nymphs and goddesses in them had all been seminaked—sometimes even completely naked. She wondered if that was the way Strickland wanted to paint her. Looking into his mud-dark eyes, she rather thought it was.

  Common sense told her she should speedily walk away from him as, for entirely differing reasons, she had just walked away from Theo and, earlier, Toby.

  She didn’t.

  Strickland was an acclaimed artist. If he wanted to depict her as a Greek goddess, it was an opportunity too good to miss. Besides, she looked wonderful naked. Theo, who had never seen a natural redhead before, had been mesmerized.

  A slow smile split her face. Here was an adventure far more erotic and shocking than her adventure with Theo.

  Knowing how deep the waters were that she was plunging into—and not caring—she said, “I think that would be a splendid idea, Mr. Strickland.”

  Chapter Eight

  Rose and Iris were seated in cane chairs on the lawn, glasses of lemonade in their hands. Rory was on the grass beside them. “I’m sure the two of you are telling me the truth about Prince Edward’s visits to Snowberry,” he said, amusement in his voice, “but you have to admit it takes a lot of swallowing.”

  “He likes being here,” Rose said matter-of-factly. “I think he’s beginning to regard Snowberry as a refuge. It’s somewhere he can forget about being Prince Edward and can simply be a young man called David.”

  “And that’s really what you call him?” Rory ran a hand through hair that was as turbulently curly and as flame-red as Marigold’s. “You don’t call him Prince Edward, or sir, or Your Highness?”

  Iris giggled. “No. He’s David. And to him we are Rose, Iris, Marigold, and Lily.”

  “And what happens if anyone finds out about his visits? What if, when he’s here, Tessa Reighton rides over from Chanbury Hall to spend time with Marigold? There would be no more keeping things secret then.”

  Rose took a drink of her lemonade. “If that happened, and gossip got out and reached the palace, then his visits would come to a very swift end. King George would see to that. And if the visits mean as much to David as I think they do, it would be a great pity.”

  Rory quirked an eyebrow. “Especially if he’d fallen in love with one of you.”

  Rose tossed her lemonade straw at him. “Idiot,” she said affectionately. “There’s nothing like that about things at all—and besides, we’re too old for him.”

  “You, Iris, and Marigold may be. Lily isn’t.”

  Rose’s eyes widened, and Rory knew that Prince Edward falling for Lily was something that had never occurred to her.

  She said uncertainly, “I don’t think that’s something that is happening, Rory. David is very shy.”

  “Shy or not, I think it would be impossible for him—or anyone else—to spend time with Lily without falling in love with her. And they are the same age.”

  There was an odd inflection in his voice and Iris wondered, not for the first time, if perhaps Rory was a little in love with Lily. She knew no one else would think it likely. Rory was twenty-six and his taste in girlfriends was for the glamorous and sophisticated. They never remained long on his arm. Once they began thinking of engagement rings, they were smoothly dropped and speedily replaced.

  Rose said, “Even if he is taken with her, nothing will ever come of it. Royalty only ever marries royalty. When did you ever hear of the heir to the throne marrying anyone other than a royal princess? It’s never happened, and it isn’t going to start with the heir to the most prestigious throne in the world marrying a viscount’s daughter.”

  “Poor Marigold.” There was amusement back in Rory’s voice. “Can’t you just imagine how much she’d love to have a sister who was Princess of Wales?”

  “Dear Lord, yes!” Iris rose to her feet. “Whatever you do, Rory, don’t even put the idea of it in her head or she’ll be planning her outfit for the wedding! And while you two continue to sit out here, baking in the sun, I’m going inside where it’s cooler.”

  She walked away from them toward the house, Homer loping after her, and when she was out of earshot, Rory said, “How is Marigold these days, Rose? Do you still have anxieties where she and Theo Jethney are concerned?”

  “I did have until I spoke with Marigold earlier this morning.” With no father to turn to for advice, and with a grandfather who was very unworldly, Rory had always been Rose’s sounding board if she had any family worries. “She promised me she’ll never flirt with Lord Jethney again and she told me that at your grandmother’s party, she never even danced with him.”

  Rory moved from the grass to Iris’s vacated chair. “Whom did she dance with?” he asked, knowing that where Marigold was concerned it was always best to try and stay one step ahead of the game.
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br />   “Toby, Patrick Shaw-Stewart, the Duke of Stainford.”

  Since the Duke of Stainford was so elderly as to be doddery, Patrick Shaw-Stewart pallid-faced and freckled, and Toby uninteresting to anyone but Iris, it didn’t sound to Rory as if Marigold had had a very exciting time.

  He didn’t say so, though. It would only make Rose worry about what Marigold might next do that would be exciting, for with Marigold there always had to be something. Her need to be the center of attention was an annoyance to everyone in the family but him.

  He understood. Marigold had only been three when her father had died and five when her mother had remarried and gone to live in Paris. They were abandonments that Rose, four years older than Marigold, had toughly come to terms with and that Iris, always stoic and practical, had also come to accept. Lily had been saved from damaging grief by being so young. For Marigold, though, things had been very different.

  He could vividly remember her pathetic bewilderment when her father had died—and then the heartbroken crying, crying that hadn’t ceased when everyone else’s had. “The little mite sobbed herself to sleep for months,” Millie had once told him. “And when her mother upped and went off to Paris … well, that was terrible, truly terrible. She was so distraught, it made her ill.”

  It was after that that the fibbing had started—something he thought Marigold still did—and that her urgent need for attention first appeared. She was forever putting on impromptu theatricals, singing and dancing for anyone she could persuade to sit down and watch her. Even now if she could capture an audience she would put on a tableau vivant, transforming herself into Hiawatha with the aid of a magnificent feather, or Joan of Arc, eyes raised up to heaven, one of her grandfather’s antique swords clasped fervently in her hands. Another favorite subject was the beheading of Mary, Queen of Scots. Kneeling with a scarf around her eyes, her arms stretched out behind her, she always attempted extra realism by persuading Fizz or Florin to hide under skirts as the Queen’s little dog had done.

  Rose’s bafflement when she had first suspected Marigold of flirting with Lord Jethney—a man old enough to be her father—had not been shared by Rory. He found it perfectly plausible that when it came to falling in love, Marigold would seek a father figure.

  He rose to his feet. “It’s time I was getting back to London. When Marigold is next staying at St. James’s Street, I’ll keep an eye on her for you—and I’ll let you know of any inside gossip I get about your friend, Daphne.”

  Rose stared at him. “Daphne? Daphne Harbury? Why on earth should there be gossip about her? I don’t know what you’re talking about, Rory.”

  “You didn’t read yesterday’s Times?” He frowned. “No, I can see you didn’t. Daphne Harbury was arrested after a suffragette demonstration. She’s to appear at Bow Street Court tomorrow and according to what was in the newspaper, it seems she’ll very probably receive a prison sentence.”

  Rose paled. “Daphne is the daughter of an earl. Surely, considering who her father is, she’ll be let off with a fine?”

  “I’d like to think so, Rose, but I very much doubt it. The demonstrations have become far too violent, and other aristocratic young women have been imprisoned—and are on hunger strike being forcibly fed.”

  Rose sucked in her breath. She’d been isolated too long at Snowberry, far from suffragette activity. It was time she went back into the fray—and the first thing she had to do was to give Daphne moral support by being at Bow Street tomorrow morning.

  She said decisively, “I’m coming to London with you. Your grandmother won’t mind me arriving at St. James’s Street unexpectedly. Iris will have to look after things while I’m away.”

  That afternoon, with Rose en route to London with Rory, Iris took the dogs for a walk around the lake. She had something on her mind, something that was causing her intense distress. She was beginning to think that Toby was no longer as interested in her as she had believed him to be. Ever since he had joined the Coldstream Guards a little over a year ago it was almost as if the unspoken understanding that had existed between them for as long as she could remember had come to an abrupt end.

  She came to a halt, staring out over the shimmering surface of the lake. Toby had commandeered her as his best friend when, in the years before he had gone to prep school, there had been no one else near Sissbury for him to be friends with. She had always been the tomboy in the family and had enjoyed racing her pony against his, swimming with him in Snowberry’s lake, fishing with him in the river that ran through Sissbury’s estate, climbing trees and making secret dens with him in Sissbury’s woods. She had enjoyed all that far more than she had enjoyed playing the dressing-up games Marigold so boringly always wanted to play.

  Even after he had gone to Eton, they had still been inseparable whenever he was at home, and, as they had both grown a little older, their friendship had made her feel special in a way that—being the plain Jane of the family—was very important to her. She might not be as academically clever as Rose, or as stunningly beautiful as Marigold, or as sweetly lovable as Lily, but Toby never spent time with Rose or Marigold or Lily. He spent time with her—and she had grown up hoping he would always do so.

  Then he had joined the Coldstream Guards and had begun moving in a world far removed from the Sissbury/Snowberry one they had shared for so long. Instead of riding with the local hunt, he now played polo at matches in Surrey and Berkshire that she wasn’t invited to; they were matches she knew would be attended by the kind of girls men regarded as being “a catch.”

  She bit her lip, well aware that she couldn’t be described by anyone as “a catch.” She hadn’t even been a catch the year she had been a debutante. That was the year when girls hoped for proposals, and it was certainly the year she had hoped for a proposal from Toby.

  When she hadn’t received one, it had been a disappointment, but a disappointment she had understood, for his father, Viscount Mulholland, had been seriously ill that summer with typhoid fever. Though Toby had waltzed her around her great-aunt’s ballroom at her coming-out ball in a manner that had caused happy speculation about the two of them, for most of her season he had been at Sissbury where his father had hovered between life and death for many weeks.

  No one else had shown any interest in her at all.

  At other debutantes’ coming-out balls and parties she had been a wallflower, seated with the chaperones, an empty dance card in her hand. Or she had unless Rory had also been a guest; he had always come to her aid and ensured that, for a little while at least, she was the envy of a mass of other girls. Rory, though, was her second cousin and so didn’t really count.

  She sighed, seeing spinsterhood ahead of her if Toby didn’t propose. That spinsterhood very probably lay ahead for Rose—who was now twenty-three and still not within a mile of becoming engaged—was no comfort. Like the vast majority of militant suffragettes, Rose believed that remaining single was all part of the battle; that to gain full equality with men, women had to be independent of them. It was an attitude that Iris, who longed for marriage and babies, found hard to understand.

  As she continued to look out across the lake, she found herself wondering again about the weekend Marigold had spent at their great-aunt’s. Rose had been so relieved about Marigold getting over her infatuation for Lord Jethney that for the moment she’d ceased worrying about Marigold. Iris hoped Rose wasn’t doing so prematurely. There had been an air of suppressed excitement about Marigold when she had returned from London—and if Lord Jethney wasn’t the cause, then knowing Marigold, another man was.

  Feeling the need of Lily’s company, Iris began heading back toward the house. Lily, like herself, rarely left Snowberry. She was generally out of sight, though, in a large attic room that had been converted into a studio with huge skylights. There she spent hour after hour modeling busts and heads in clay. Rose had expressed the opinion that once her debutante year was over, Lily was talented enough to apply for a place at the Royal College of Art. It was
a prospect that Iris knew both elated and terrified Lily. It was also a prospect Iris doubted Lily would ever have to face, for nothing was more certain than that Lily would be inundated with marriage proposals during her debutante year—and that all of them would be highly suitable.

  Lily would, just by being herself, ease the hurt that was in her heart and would, for a little while at least, take her mind off the worrying anxiety as to when, if ever, Toby was going to pop the question.

  Rory dropped Rose off at 4 Clement’s Inn, just off the Aldwych. The headquarters of the WSPU, it was, as always, a hive of frenzied activity.

  “It’s good to see you again, Rose,” Christabel Pankhurst said to her as they squeezed into a comparatively quiet corner of the long inner office for a talk. “You can see how busy we are.”

  All around them a score of women were working like beavers, addressing envelopes, making banners, printing leaflets, and manning phones.

  “We intend stealing the show at the Coronation Procession of the Women of Britain on the seventeenth of June,” Christabel said explanatorily. “We don’t want the Women’s Freedom League outdoing us, do we? You will be there, Rose, won’t you?”

  “I’ll be there. As for tomorrow morning, I shall be at Bow Street.”

  Hearing the steel in her voice, Christabel narrowed her eyes. “Don’t do anything that might get you arrested, Rose. Not when there’s so little time before the suffragette coronation procession—and when five days later it’s the coronation itself. There’ll be plenty of time for heroics afterward.”

  “If Daphne is given a prison sentence—and is sentenced to serve it as a common criminal and not as a political prisoner—then even if it means missing the procession and the coronation, I shall protest, Christabel.”

  For a second she thought Christabel, who was the WSPU’s chief strategist and whose word was law, was going to forbid her to. Then Christabel flashed the wide, vibrant grin for which she was famous. “Quite right, Rose. If you can bring attention to the great indignity done to our members by being brought before ordinary courts when their offenses are political, then do so.”