The American Heiress

by Daisy Goodwin

  Cora looked at Teddy and he stepped forward reluctantly.

  ‘Sir, may I present Mr Van Der Leyden, who is one of my childhood friends and is also a godfather to my son.’

  Teddy thought for a moment that he might stand his ground but as the Prince stood in front of him, he felt himself bowing as if pulled forward by the inexorable force of royal gravity.

  ‘Whereabouts in Amerrrica are you from, Mr Van Der Leyden?’

  ‘New York…sir.’ Teddy could not bring himself to say Your Highness.

  ‘Such an enerrrgetic city. I would like very much to go back but it is impossible these days for me to go so far away, I have too many responsibilities. Duty before pleasure, eh.’

  Teddy looked at the Prince’s rounded form and heavy-lidded eyes and wondered how much pleasure exactly the Prince had sacrificed for duty. It was not, he thought, a face that he wanted to paint.

  As the Prince moved sedately on, Teddy looked up and saw that the Duke was looking at him, and to Teddy’s surprise he gave him an imperceptible nod as if to say that he had read his thoughts and was in agreement.

  The Prince was being offered a glass of champagne but he waved it away and turned to Cora. ‘But my dear Amerrrican Duchess, may we not have a cocktail? I met a charming gentleman from Louisiana who showed me how to make a most splendid drink with whisky, marrraschino and champagne. I would so like to taste it again.’ The Prince looked wistful although fully aware that his every whim would of course be indulged. Cora signalled to Bugler. A few moments later two footmen entered carrying a tray with bottles, decanters and a large silver punchbowl.

  The Prince busied himself mixing the drink. ‘One part whisky to a measure of marrraschino and two parts of champagne. Now, Duchess Fanny, I want you to try this, and you too, Mrs Cash. You can tell me whether it tastes the way it should.’ Both women approached, the Double Duchess eagerly, Mrs Cash with due republican reticence. The Prince poured a bottle of Pol Roger into the mixture and then he dipped two glasses into the bowl and offered one to each lady. Duchess Fanny sipped hers and pronounced it, ‘Quite delicious, sir, although of course a little stronger than I am used to.’

  ‘Splendid,’ cried the Prince, his pendulous lower lip glistening. ‘And what do you think, Mrs Cash?’

  ‘I think it would benefit from the addition of some fresh mint.’ The Prince looked at her for a moment in surprise; he frequently asked for honest opinions but he was not in the habit of receiving them. There was a tiny pause while he wondered whether there had been any affront to his dignity and then he laughed and said, ‘Well now, I know why Amerrrican women make such good hostesses, Mrs Cash. Attention to detail. By all means, let us add mint.’

  Teddy tried not to smile. He was used to seeing Mrs Cash prevailing but the assembled company were not. He noticed the blonde woman, whom he now knew to be Duchess Fanny, looking at Mrs Cash warily, as if re-evaluating an opponent.

  The Prince was offering a glass to Cora when the footman announced, ‘Sir Odo and Lady Beauchamp.’ Teddy saw the Prince stiffen; and he remembered Cora’s instructions in her letter to him:

  ‘The Prince of Wales breaks all the rules, but he expects perfect behaviour from everyone else. He hates it if people are late, even though the Princess is notorious for her tardiness. So please hurry down to dinner the moment you are dressed. We Americans have to have the best manners of all, of course, as we can get away with nothing.’

  The couple that came in, however, did not look at all abashed. The man was flushed, his protruding blue eyes glittering, his lips slightly parted, showing his small white teeth. He bowed gracefully before the Prince, displaying his extravagant profusion of yellow curls.

  ‘You must forgive me, sir, but my wife could not decide between the chartreuse and the mauve. She would not budge until I had advised her, and do you know I just could not make a decision. She looked simply ravishing in both, so in the end she had to wear red, as you see.’ He gestured towards his wife who sank into a curtsy that did much to display her décolletage.

  ‘Highness,’ she murmured and she raised her shining blond head to look at the Prince with a smile that was quite unrepentant.

  ‘It is your hostess who must forgive you, of course, though I am inclined to agree with you, Sir Odo, that the result was worth the wait.’ The Prince gestured towards Lady Beauchamp. Her dress was crimson satin embroidered in black in a repeating motif of bees, ants and scorpions. The neckline and hem were edged with jet beads that shook slightly as she moved. It was a theatrical dress, preposterous even, but Lady Beauchamp was equal to it, Teddy thought. She held her head high, and Teddy could see the strong lines of her neck as it met the collarbone below. She looked beautiful and terrible in equal measure. Teddy thought of Salome holding up the head of John the Baptist. But it wasn’t just her perfect, implacable profile that made him stare at her, transfixed. He had seen this woman before, a year ago, standing on the platform of Euston Station with the Duke. He had never forgotten the way she had pulled the Duke’s hand into her muff – such ferocious intimacy in that public place. He could still remember the gorgeous curve of her cheek, and the way her eyes were fixed on the Duke’s face. It was an image that had never left him, because he knew he had seen the face of a woman saying farewell to the man she loved.

  Chapter 25

  Eros and Psyche

  THE DINING ROOM AT LULWORTH WAS IN THE oldest part of the house. The entrance to the room was down a shallow flight of steps and even on a summer’s evening the stone walls and floors meant that the room felt a few degrees colder than the rest of the house. Tonight, however, the faintly crypt-like atmosphere was dispelled by the heat from the twelve silver gilt candelabra on the table and the sweet smell coming from banks of jasmine in the window bays. The room glittered as the candlelight hit the crystal glasses, the brilliants dangling from the chandeliers and the diamonds around the women’s necks. But the warmth and light were only on the surface, every so often there would be a chill current of air that brushed a bare shoulder or a naked neck and made its owner shiver. Comfort was not the natural order of things here, this room had been built to contain the violent carousing of medieval barons fighting for the favours of the King, not the powdered politenesses of fin de siècle aristocrats. The floor was mainly covered by an Aubusson carpet but underneath lay cold hard stone. The footmen who lined the room knew this, they stood on the cold perimeter waiting to pull out chairs, fill glasses and serve food to guests who gave no more thought to their existence than they did to the larks whose tongues lay in aspic before them.

  Teddy emptied his glass. He knew that he was drinking too fast. The reappearance of the woman he had seen on the station platform had shaken him. It had taken every scrap of his Knickerbocker composure not to flinch when Cora had beckoned to him to take Lady Beauchamp in to dinner. Charlotte had sensed his confusion but had misattributed the cause, saying, ‘Don’t worry, Mr Van Der Leyden, the dress is just for show. I won’t bite,’ and had placed one black-gloved hand on his arm with a great play of docility. At the table, he won a temporary respite as she turned away to talk to the man on her right. Teddy busied himself making agreeable conversation to Lady Tavistock who sat on his left, but he knew that when the mock turtle soup was finished, there would be no escape from Charlotte Beauchamp.

  Lady Tavistock was not much interested in him once she had ascertained that Teddy was not a rich American. When he told her that he was an artist, she put on the brightly curious expression that she might have worn on visiting an institute for the blind.

  ‘Oh, how fascinating. You know I have never actually met an artist before, not socially, I mean. Of course dear Duchess Cora has such a fondness for painters. I was at Bridgewater House when Louvain showed the portrait. Such a sensation.’ She glanced to the end of the table where Cora was listening to the Prince of Wales and nodded. ‘I am so glad to see her back again.’

  Teddy did not fully understand the substance of her remarks but he guessed he
did not need to. Lady Tavistock was much like one of his mother’s cronies: women trained from birth to calibrate social standing. They would follow success like sunflowers tracing the arc of the day, but once the light and heat had gone, they were merciless. He felt a kind of guilty relief. In Paris he had imagined Cora to be invincible, and yet here she was subject to the scrutiny of women like Lady Tavistock.

  He was still trying to make sense of the presence of Lady Beauchamp here at Lulworth. Did Cora know about her connection with her husband? He knew that liaisons with married women were commonplace in Paris and he supposed here too, but he could not imagine Cora complacently entertaining her husband’s mistress. The idea of a rival would be quite foreign to her – she had been raised to be the prize, not the woman who pretended not to see.

  He noticed that Odo Beauchamp, sitting opposite him, was drinking even faster than he was. Teddy wondered how much he knew about his wife and the Duke. From the way his eyes kept flicking between them, Teddy thought that he definitely had suspicions.

  A footman came in carrying a silver contraption with a large screw at the side – Teddy thought it looked like a cider press – but from the excited murmurs around him he gathered that this was a meat press and that they were to be given caneton à la Rouennaise, a great delicacy much appreciated by the Prince. Teddy watched as the butler turned the screw of the device and collected the blood in a silver jug.

  He heard Odo Beauchamp saying, ‘The ducks are smothered, you know, so that none of the blood is lost.’

  Teddy wondered if Cora, who had always mocked her mother’s elaborate dinners, enjoyed all this pomp and spectacle. He remembered the phrase in her letter, ‘I am still an American girl who sometimes misses the country of her birth.’ He wondered again how much she knew about the currents of deception coursing around the table. She looked so radiant sitting there next to the Prince, yet Teddy felt a certain low satisfaction in knowing that Cora’s life was not as perfect as the fabulous jewel that hung around her neck.

  The footman was offering him a dish of the pressed duck in its bloody sauce. Teddy looked at the red liquid pooling on his plate and realised that Charlotte Beauchamp was speaking to him.

  ‘So, Mr Van Der Leyden, Cora tells me you have known each other since childhood.’ Her voice was low and she turned to look at him as if her entire future depended on his answer.

  ‘New York is a great city but it can be quite small all the same. Cora and I have attended the same parties, picnics and dancing lessons since we were very young. I taught Cora how to ride a bicycle, she stopped me embarrassing myself at the Governor’s Cotillion. We were partners in crime.’

  ‘Indeed? Then I am surprised that you let her go so easily. It can be hard to give up your first accomplice.’ She half lowered her eyelids and Teddy felt for a moment the intensity of the woman he had seen saying goodbye to her lover.

  ‘Oh, Cora was always destined for greater things,’ he said as lightly as he could. ‘We always knew that her time with us mere mortals would be limited.’ He let his eyes flicker towards the gauzy profile of Mrs Cash.

  Charlotte understood him at once and leant over to murmur, ‘She is quite regal, isn’t she? I think the poor Prince feels quite upstaged.’

  ‘Believe me, in New York Mrs Cash is considered a lightweight.’ Charlotte laughed at this and the moment of intensity was gone.

  Teddy had no doubt about the intimacy that had existed between this woman and the Duke. The question in his mind now was whether it still continued. He was used to interpreting people through their body and the mass they displaced around them; there was a certain deliberateness to Charlotte’s movements, from the way she picked up her wine glass to the graceful swerve of her shoulder that brought her round to face him, that made him think that she was not a woman who wavered in her feelings.

  ‘I hope you are not tantalising my wife with an ocean-going steam yacht, Mr Van Der Leyden.’ Teddy looked across the table at Odo Beauchamp whose shining rosy cheeks were at odds with the set of his narrow lips. ‘You Americans with your extravagant toys make it very difficult for humdrum Englishmen like myself.’ He lifted his glass and drained it, and Teddy noticed that his hand shook slightly as he put it down.

  Teddy laughed. ‘I am sorry to disappoint you, sir, but I have no steam yacht, railway line or even a motor car. I have nothing to tantalise your wife with beyond my limited powers of conversation.’

  Odo subsided into his seat and Charlotte said, ‘Besides, Odo, no one could describe you as humdrum.’

  This remark evidently pleased her husband who shook his yellow curls as if to acknowledge the truth of her remark. But Teddy had seen the flash of jealousy and again he wondered about the woman sitting next to him. He could make out a scorpion embroidered on the red puff of her sleeve. He could not decide whether it was a warning or a mark of how often she herself had been stung.

  Exactly one hour and fifteen minutes after they had sat down to dinner, Cora was preparing herself to catch her mother’s good eye and give the signal that it was time for the ladies to withdraw, when she saw the Double Duchess rising in her seat, her eyes sweeping the room. Cora clenched her teeth; she could hardly believe that even her mother-in-law would make such a brazen play for power. But she knew that she must not let herself be provoked, so she said as sweetly as she could, ‘Oh, Duchess Fanny, thank you so much for taking the lead. I was enjoying my conversation with His Royal Highness so much that I declare I would have sat here all night.’ She stood up and was grateful for the good two inches she had over her mother-in-law. ‘Ladies, shall we?’

  The footmen stepped forward and the women got to their feet in a murmur of silk. The men stood. It fell to the Prince to escort Cora to the door as he was sitting on her right hand. As she went past he murmured, ‘Are you waging another Amerrrican war of independence, Duchess?’

  Cora looked at the fat old man whose eyes were lit up with malice.

  ‘That depends, sir, on whether I have royal approval.’

  The Prince swept his eyes over Cora and nodded imperceptibly. ‘I have always thought that the New World would one day prevail.’

  The men did not linger in the dining room but soon joined the ladies in the long gallery. Ivo came in last and Cora could tell from the stiff set of his shoulders and the lines around his mouth that her husband was not happy. She wondered what had happened when the ladies had retired.

  After she had settled the Prince with a game of baccarat, she sought him out.

  ‘I thought you might like to play the piano, Ivo,’ and then lowering her voice she said, ‘that way you won’t have to talk to anyone.’

  He nodded. ‘Is it that obvious? I’m not sure I can stand Odo Beauchamp a moment longer. I don’t care for him when he’s sober, but when he’s drunk, he’s unspeakable. You’re right, I shall play for a while until I can bring myself to look at him again.’ He walked through the door into the music room.

  Cora surveyed the room like a scout on a reconnaissance patrol, looking for signs of trouble. The Prince was happily playing baccarat with Mr Cash, his equerry Ferrers and the Double Duchess. Cora hoped that her father would realise that the point of the game was to put up a gallant fight before losing to the Prince. Teddy was looking at a portrait of the Fourth Duke with Father Oliver; her mother was sitting in another group with Charlotte, Odo and Lady Tavistock, and Reggie and Sybil were sitting in a corner pretending to play chess.

  Cora went over to where her mother was sitting. Odo was talking about a play he had seen in London. With his bright red cheeks and round blue eyes, Cora thought that he looked rather like a doll she had once been fond of. He paused for a second and at that moment the piano started in the music room – a Chopin nocturne, Cora thought.

  Odo turned towards the music, listening with his head to one side. ‘Really, I had no idea that Maltravers was such a romantic, did you, Charlotte?’ As he turned to his wife, Cora saw that he was swaying slightly and she realised that he was as d
runk as her husband had said.

  ‘He plays with expression, certainly.’ Charlotte’s tone was neutral.

  ‘Oh, it’s more than just expression, Charlotte. To hear him you would think he was a soul in torment.’

  There was something in Odo’s tone that Cora found unsettling.

  ‘Oh, I hope not, Sir Odo,’ she said. ‘What kind of wife would that make me?’ She laughed and turned to Charlotte. ‘Charlotte, I am trying to get a bicycling party together for tomorrow. If it’s fine I thought we might have lunch by the folly and those who were so minded could cycle there. What do you think?’

  Charlotte shook her head. ‘I must be the only woman in England who hasn’t yet learnt how to ride a bicycle. Besides, I don’t have suitable clothes.’

  Cora was about to offer to lend her something when Odo said, ‘But what about that charming costume you had as Joan of Arc? Just the thing for cycling. Such a shame that it was never revealed at Lady Salisbury’s pageant. Everyone was so disappointed. Remind me again, Charlotte, why you didn’t appear that day. What was it now – a headache? It was so bad you wouldn’t even let me see you. And yet look at you now, radiant with health.’ He took his wife’s hand and raised it to his lips. ‘There must be something in the Lulworth air that agrees with you.’

  Cora saw Charlotte pull her hand away and brush it on her skirt to remove the imprint of his lips. She turned to Cora as if her husband had not spoken.

  ‘If you can lend me something to wear, I will certainly try to conquer the bicycle. What about you, Lady Tavistock, Mrs Cash? Will you join me in my humiliation?’

  Mrs Cash said, ‘Oh, I learnt to ride a few years ago, but I think I shall leave it to you young people. There are too many hills around here for my liking.’ Lady Tavistock nodded in agreement.