The Golden Prince

by Rebecca Dean

  Ignoring Iris and Marigold, he walked away from them and out onto the lake’s small jetty.

  Seated in the stern of the rowboat, Lily looked as enchanting as ever. Her hair was held away from her face by two tortoiseshell combs, and the lilac tea gown she was wearing was embroidered with flowers the exact violet shade of her eyes.

  Her face shone with happiness as, brief minutes later, he helped her from the boat. At the thought that whenever she saw him he would, for the rest of his life, see that kind of joy, Piers felt himself to be the luckiest man alive.

  “HRH is having a few words with your grandfather,” he said, before he could be asked about the prince’s whereabouts. “Probably something to do with the investiture. I imagine he is inviting him to be present at it.”

  It was a possibility that had only just occurred to him, but expressing it enabled him to appear very much in the know.

  Lily stumbled, and his arm flew around her, steadying her. “David is speaking with Grandpapa?” she asked, and he could feel her tension. It was almost as extreme as David’s tension had been.

  “It won’t be anything you need worry about,” he said reassuringly, the blood surging through his body in a hot tide as he reluctantly removed his arm from her waist. “All HRH has on his mind at the moment is his investiture at Caernarvon.”

  Lily didn’t look at all convinced, and her pale-cream skin was paler than he’d ever seen it. He wondered if she thought Edward was telling her grandfather that after his investiture he would no longer be able to visit Snowberry as often as he had been doing and if she thought it meant that he also would not be visiting as often.

  “Shall we stay down here and wait for David to join us?” Iris asked. “Or should we stroll back to the house and wait for him on the terrace?”

  “The terrace, I think.” Rose began placing the remains of their picnic into a large picnic hamper. “There’s something you should know, Piers,” she added as Marigold and Iris each took hold of one of the hamper’s wicker handles and began walking toward the terrace with it. “Our cousin, Rory Sinclair, is staying with us. At the moment he’s over at Norbury, taking part in a steeplechase. I don’t think he’ll be back until early evening, but you never know.”

  Piers’s look of alarm was immediate. The possibility of visitors turning up at Snowberry while the prince was also there had always been his deepest nightmare, for then there would be no way of keeping Edward’s visits secret. Once the gossip reached the palace—which it would do in double-quick time—his days as an equerry would be over faster than lightning.

  He steadied his rising panic by remembering that steeplechases were daylong affairs and that Rose was probably right in thinking Rory Sinclair wouldn’t be back at Snowberry until the evening. Just as he was beginning to breathe a little more easily, another thought hit him.

  Instead of walking after Iris and Marigold, he said sharply, “This Sinclair cousin of yours. He doesn’t know about Prince Edward’s visits, does he?”

  Rose brushed her skirt free of grass. “Yes,” she said, unruffled. “I know we all promised to tell no one, but Rory is very close family, more like a brother than a cousin. We knew that he’d be visiting Snowberry and so, just in case David visited while Rory was here, we thought it best to put him in the picture. He won’t gossip. Getting gossip from Rory would be like getting blood from a stone.”

  Her certainty and her self-composure were so total he wanted to lay violent hands on her. She, God damn her, had nothing to lose if there was gossip. He had everything to lose. The mere thought made him break out in goose bumps.

  As if what she’d said was of no consequence, she turned away from him and began walking after Lily, who was now hard on Iris’s and Marigold’s heels.

  He glared after her, fuming silently. His only comfort was the knowledge that Prince Edward’s visits to Snowberry were soon going to be seriously curtailed—and might perhaps come to an end altogether.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “You want to marry Lily?” Herbert Houghton swayed on his feet, wondering if he was hallucinating. “But, my dear boy …” He remembered to whom he was speaking. “Your Royal Highness …” he said, desperately trying to gather his scattered wits. This, too, didn’t sound right. Not when Prince Edward had specifically requested that he wasn’t to be addressed formally when at Snowberry.

  Aware, all too late, of the deep pit he had dug for himself by allowing the heir to the throne to visit Snowberry in the same free and easy manner that Toby Mulholland and other friends of his granddaughters visited, he tried again. “Prince Edward … David … you cannot possibly want to marry anyone unknown to your family.”

  His breathing, which had been terrifyingly erratic over the last few seconds, began to steady. It was a joke. A prank. Any minute now Rose, Iris, Marigold, and Lily would come tumbling into the room, laughing fit to bust at the way Prince Edward had taken him in.

  He was going to be very, very cross with them. Extremely cross. It was the kind of joke that could have resulted in him having a heart attack. He couldn’t, of course, be cross with Prince Edward. That would be taking familiarity too far. With great effort he managed an indulgent smile, to show that he knew he was the victim of a prank and that he was taking it in good stride.

  The Prince didn’t burst into chuckles, and the girls didn’t burst into the room.

  Instead Prince Edward said with terrifying seriousness, “It’s quite usual for someone of my position to have plans for their future bride put in place when they are only seventeen, or perhaps eighteen. The only difference in this instance is that I am choosing my future bride for myself. The girl I want to marry—the girl I will marry—is Lily.”

  Herbert Houghton put his hand out to the nearest object to steady himself. It met with the corner of the ornate William and Mary mantel shelf. He gripped hold of it, hard.

  “But Your Royal Highness … David … Lily isn’t royal. She may come from a well-connected family, but she isn’t even closely royal. If the King were to know that you were even considering a commoner as a future bride.…” The scenario he envisaged was so horrific words failed him.

  “I know all these problems, sir. Truly I do.” David ran a hand over his glassily smooth hair. “But they are problems I intend overcoming. Now that I have spoken to you and put you completely in the picture, I will be asking for the King’s consent at the earliest, most suitable moment.”

  “Oh, dear God!” The mantel shelf was no longer support enough for him, and Herbert groped his way to a wing chair. What on earth was going to happen once the palace learned of the prince’s illicit visits to Snowberry and that he, Lord May, had known of them and had turned a blind eye? His own disgrace would be total, but what of Sibyl? Would his disgrace, and the social ostracism that would undoubtedly follow, extend to her? Would it extend to Rory?

  It would certainly extend to his granddaughters. Rose, of course, would take it in her stride, but then Rose didn’t give a fig for high society, and to be ostracized by it wouldn’t trouble her at all.

  Not to be invited to parties and balls would hit Marigold hard, though, and Iris’s long-understood unofficial engagement to Toby Mulholland—of whom not much had been seen lately—might also be affected. Viscountess Mulholland was a snob. She wouldn’t want as a daughter-in-law a girl whose family had offended the King. As for Lily … A thought that hadn’t occurred to him before, now did.

  “Lily,” he said with what breath he could summon. “Does Lily know you want to marry her? Does she know you are now asking me for my permission?”

  “Lily and I are in love, sir.”

  The pride in David’s voice, and his naïveté as to who he would and would not be allowed to marry, smote Herbert’s heart.

  “She has probably guessed why I am speaking to you alone,” David added as Herbert struggled to think of words that would bring a return to sanity.

  From outside there came the sound of Marigold’s laughter, and David broke eye con
tact with him as, beyond the French doors, Marigold and Iris came into view, walking up the steps to the terrace.

  Hard on their heels was Lily, and one look at her taut, tense face told Herbert she knew exactly what David had been telling—and asking—him.

  At the sight of her, David strode toward the French doors, all nervous tension gone.

  Herbert summoned up the strength to totter after him, seeing with vast relief that Rose was also mounting the steps to the terrace and that Captain Cullen was only a yard or so behind her.

  Rose’s hardheaded common sense and Captain Cullen’s pragmatism would, surely, put an end to David’s nonsensical daydream before he brought disaster down on all their heads by speaking of it to King George.

  He envisaged talking to them without Marigold’s and Iris’s—and possibly Lily’s—knowledge. But as the scene unfolded he saw how euphorically Prince Edward was heading toward Lily, and with total helplessness he knew exactly what was going to happen next.

  “Lily!” David strode past Marigold and Iris and made a beeline for Lily. Then, rooting everyone to the spot in thunderstruck incredulity, he seized both of her hands in his and, with his face ablaze with happiness, said, “I’ve spoken to your grandfather, Lily darling. He’s given us his blessing. All that remains is for me to speak to the King at the earliest opportunity.”

  Herbert made a choking sound, for he most certainly had not given the proposed marriage his blessing. Marigold and Iris dropped the picnic hamper they were carrying so abruptly there came the sound of a wineglass shattering. Rose sucked in her breath.

  None of them looked toward Piers Cullen.

  If they had, they would have been given far more to think about than David’s desire to make Lily Princess of Wales and, in due time, Queen Consort and Empress of India.

  Piers Cullen was a man in extremis. Just as in one blinding, illuminating moment he had realized he had, for the first time in his life, fallen in love, so in an equal split second, he now realized that his love was hopeless. Prince Edward, able to offer Lily vast wealth and a lifetime of royal privilege and glamour, had stolen her from him.

  It was unbelievable. Incredible. But it had happened. And it had happened—had been happening—right under his very nose. His rage was absolute, his boiling hatred total.

  None of it was directed against Lily. What innocent young girl would be able to withstand a proposal of marriage from a prince? That Lily had been unable to withstand it was obvious from the way she hadn’t turned to him for help in getting out of the situation. That was all she’d had to do. Turn from Edward, to him. Slip her hand in his. Yet she hadn’t. Instead she had clutched Edward’s hands just as fervently as he was clutching hers.

  All his life people had turned their backs on him. His mother had done so by dying when he was still a child. His father had done so by being such a rigid disciplinarian he’d grown up always expecting criticism and never praise. When, at thirteen, he’d been sent to Eton, he’d never fitted in; he’d never made friends. The army had been his lifesaver, but even then he had remained a loner. Girls had never been attracted to him, and he’d had such low self-esteem that he hadn’t blamed them. Then the miracle had happened, when, via his father’s friendship with Lord Esher, he had been appointed as equerry to the Prince of Wales.

  His hopes of becoming invaluable to the prince, of being treated by him as a friend, had swiftly been dashed to pieces. Edward, he had quickly come to realize, resented his constant presence. He, in turn, had come to resent Edward’s scrupulously polite but offhand treatment of him.

  Then Edward had knocked Rose Houghton from her bicycle and afterward, at Snowberry, when Edward had invited the Houghtons to dispense with all formality and to call him David—something he had never invited him to do—his resentment had rocketed sky-high.

  He had coped with it because, for the first time in his life, he had found someone who made him feel good about himself, someone who didn’t make him feel unattractive, someone he could at last open his heart to and love.

  Now his rare and precious happiness was at an end.

  Vaguely he heard Iris say in a stunned voice, “Have I completely misunderstood, or has David just asked Grandfather for Lily’s hand in marriage?”

  Marigold was clapping her hands and behaving like a child at Christmas, saying, “Oh, but of course he has! Isn’t it marvelous? Isn’t it just too spiffingly wonderful?”

  Only Rose was firmly keeping her thoughts to herself, and there were white lines of tension at either side of her mouth as she crossed the terrace and stepped into the house.

  Piers fought down wave after wave of nausea as everyone else, Lily’s grandfather and Edward included, followed her.

  No one turned to look toward him. He might just as well have not been there.

  Struggling for self-control, he bit his lower lip so hard he tasted blood.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Iris had never previously been glad to see the Austro-Daimler disappearing down Snowberry’s drive, but she was glad now, for the drama of the past hour had been all too much for her to take. David, explaining that he had to get back to Buckingham Place before his absence was realized, had just left for London as happy as a lark.

  Whatever happened in the future, Iris knew that she and Rose would no longer be able to regard David as a kind of adopted nephew whose visits to Snowberry were innocently pleasurable to him and harmless to them. The shock of knowing that he and Lily had fallen in love had brought home a truth all of them had been avoiding.

  David wasn’t an adopted nephew, or a younger version of Rory. He was a royal prince. Not any old royal prince either, but the Prince of Wales, a prince who was the heir to the throne.

  “As heir to the throne, sweetheart,” her grandfather was now saying gently to Lily, “much as he may want to marry you, he can’t marry you. I’m sorry, tootsums, but there it is.”

  Lily regarded him lovingly, and without the least distress. “Both David and I know that gaining King George’s permission isn’t going to be easy, Grandpapa.”

  She was kneeling by the side of his chair, sitting back on her heels. “David knows he is expected to marry a foreign princess, just as his father and grandfather did,” she said matter-of-factly. “But he doesn’t want that kind of an arranged marriage—and he wants his father to be aware that he doesn’t want it, before he begins arranging one.”

  She turned her head to include the rest of them in what she was saying. “Things are always being arranged for him without his being told about them. He didn’t know about his investiture until he was told Mr. Lloyd George would be giving him lessons in the Welsh language.”

  Their grandfather, realizing he was being totally ineffective, looked toward Rose for help. She didn’t let him down.

  “Neither you nor David is facing up to reality, Lily,” she said briskly. “It isn’t that it’s not going to be easy for David to gain King George’s permission for you to marry, it’s that it’s going to be impossible. It isn’t just a tradition for the heir to the throne to marry foreign royalty; it is something that is set in stone. You are a commoner. A commoner has never married the heir to the British throne.”

  “That’s not strictly true,” their grandfather said unhelpfully. “Elizabeth Woodville, Edward IV’s queen, was a commoner. As was Jane Seymour, when she married Henry VIII.”

  None of them ever lost their patience with their vague, mild-mannered grandfather, but Iris was aware that Rose was close to doing so.

  “That was a long time ago, Grandfather,” she said through gritted teeth. “A long, long time ago!”

  “Oh! For goodness’ sake!” Marigold erupted out of the chair she’d been sitting in and threw her hands up in the air. “What is the matter with you all?” Her green cat-eyes flashed fire. “You should be overjoyed that David is in love with Lily and wants to marry her. It means she will become a princess! Think of what that will mean. Think of the jewels she will be given! Think of all the elig
ible foreign royal bachelors Rose, Iris, and I will be introduced to!”

  They were all quite used to Marigold being appalling, but from the agonized expression on their grandfather’s face, even he knew she had just surpassed herself. Before he, or Rose, could give her a piece of their minds, Lily took them all by surprise.

  Rising to her feet, she said quietly, but with underlying steel in her voice none of them had ever heard before, “You are quite wrong, Marigold, if you think I’ve told David I will marry him because I want to become a princess. It’s the very last thing on earth I want to be. David has told me all about being royal and it’s not at all what it seems.”

  Showing maturity Iris hadn’t been aware of before—and that she knew Rose hadn’t been aware of either—Lily said, “It’s a life of unremitting duty and David is dreading it. He hates being dressed up in ceremonial finery and having people deferring to him. That is why Snowberry is so important to him. He can be himself here. That is why he needs me to marry him. He simply can’t face the thought of his future without me there to help him.”

  Iris realized then that they must all begin thinking of Lily in quite a different way.

  “And I’m not going to let him down,” she continued as they all, even Marigold, listened to her in respectful silence. “Too many people have let him down. He had a nanny who was so sadistic she eventually ended up in a mental home. He has a mother who didn’t even notice how physically he was being abused. King George has always been absolutely beastly toward him. His tutor didn’t teach him any of the things he needed for his entry to Naval College and so he’s always had to struggle like mad not to be bottom of the class. No one but me has ever loved him. I do love him. I am not going to let him down. I don’t want to be Princess of Wales, but if I have to be in order for David to face a future he can never escape, then I shall be.”