Prince of Secrets

by Paula Marshall

  Then, as they moved away from her, to do their duty to the other guests, before sitting down before one of the tea trolleys, Violet saw Cobie bend his head to say something to his wife. She saw Dinah turn to look up at him and give him such a smile that sexual jealousy had Violet in its thrall. Oh, yes, Dinah was getting the benefit, all right—and the parlour maid’s language which Violet used to herself was symbolic of the shock she was feeling.

  Cobie had earlier told Dinah that she would have few rivals among the women present. She had teased him gently, saying that he thought so because she was his wife, and must therefore automatically be a nonpareil—as he was. Had she known of both Susanna’s and Violet’s reaction to her appearance and her manner, she would have known that he was speaking the truth.

  They had barely sat down before the Prince and his wife arrived, and they all jumped to their feet to acknowledge the Royal presence.

  Dinah was to discover that this strange mixture of Royal protocol and informality was typical of their Sandringham visit.

  Later, after they had spent a leisurely hour over tea, she and Cobie retired to their rooms.

  ‘Now what do we do?’ she asked him comically, once they were alone together.

  ‘Well,’ he told her gravely, ‘I understand that if you are to be absolutely comme il faut in the drawing room by half past eight, you must immediately send for Hortense and Pearson and set them to dressing you. Whilst Giles and I must attend to the business of making me look suitable to honour the Prince’s dinner table.’

  Dinah stared at him in disbelief. ‘Who told you that? It can’t possibly take us the next two hours—that must be nonsense.’

  ‘Violet did me the honour of putting me in the know, as she called it. She and Kenilworth come to Sandringham at least twice each autumn and winter for the shooting. We are a little early for that, so we must find other means of entertainment. The Prince, as you know, occasionally takes his with Violet. At the court of eighteenth-century France she would probably have been known as “la maitresse en titre”.’

  Dinah smiled. ‘I suppose that translates as the King’s Prime Mistress, rather along the lines of a female Prime Minister. Do you really wish to live this idle life, Cobie?’

  Her question was a serious one this time, and he answered her equally seriously. ‘Not really as a permanent thing, but, for the moment, it is a new experience. I have other major interests, and in time you will share them with me. But, for the moment, we are engaged in experiencing high society and Royal favour. Oh, and by the by, I ought to warn you that the Prince’s dinner-party usually consists of twelve courses, so don’t eat too much of the earlier ones.’

  ‘Violet being your informant again, I suppose. I must say, she does have her uses.’

  ‘True, and the dining table is arranged strictly according to precedence so I am hoping that you and I don’t end up having to eat our meal in the kitchen, seeing that we are an American peasant and his wife.’

  He said this gravely, but, as usual, she took his comic meaning.

  Later he came into her room where Hortense and Pearson had just finished dressing her. He was already immaculately turned out—a tribute to Giles’s art. He had difficulty in not laughing out aloud when he saw her evening gown. It was a dream of a thing in white, cut with artful simplicity to improve her figure and decorated only—in a saucy reference to her nickname as The English Snowdrop—with tiny silk flowers. The largest bunch of them was on the green sash which circled her narrow waist.

  She had ordered it in secret and Cobie had not seen it until he had walked in a few minutes ago. Her reward was to be favoured with one of his wicked grins, rarely offered to anyone.

  ‘If you are trying to make Violet jealous, you could hardly have done better,’ was his comment. This, plus a careful kiss on the cheek, designed not to disturb her fashionable splendour, was sufficient reward for her. After that, once she had entered the drawing room, the admiration on the faces of the men, and the annoyance on the women’s, were merely icing on her cake. To have pleased and surprised her unflappable husband was, she considered, an achievement in itself!

  They sat apart at dinner, but he could see her down the table smiling and talking to her companions, and thought what a long way she had come in such a short time. She was obviously enjoying herself, and had taken his hint about not eating too much to begin with.

  He watched her again, when she left with the ladies, and then his attention was drawn by the Prince, who, having lighted his cigar, was demanding that when they returned to the ladies, Cobie would play for them on his guitar.

  ‘You have brought it with you, eh, Grant?’

  It was remarkable how charming this fat and middle-aged man could be when he chose. He was neither clever, nor learned, but he understood men and women. He knew what motivated them, he liked the things they liked, and his popularity stemmed from that. The crowds who gathered round his carriage shouting ‘Good old Teddy’ did so because they could see that he shared a common humanity with them. Cobie felt himself responding to it.

  ‘Sir, you commanded, and I had but to obey.’

  The Prince’s glance at him was sharp and shrewd. ‘I should make you one of my courtiers, Grant. You are so much the master of the done thing.’

  Cobie smiled, ‘My pleasure, sir.’

  He could see his unacknowledged uncle, Sir Alan Dilhorne, smiling at him, and Van Deusen, well fed and rubicund, was winking at him over his cigar.

  ‘Don’t smoke, do you, Grant? These cigars are excellent. You should try one.’

  ‘Smoking spoils the voice, sir. I wish to do you—and myself—justice, later, so you will excuse me, I hope.’

  Later turned out to be some time later. By the time they joined the women, who were sitting like so many swans, their arms so long and lovely, their heads so proud, many of the men had already over-indulged, Sir Ratcliffe among them.

  Cobie called to him the hovering footman who was holding his guitar and retrieved it. The Prince was standing, so everyone else stood. He waved a hand, said, ‘Sit, sit,’ and then sat himself, so that everyone else could.

  ‘Mr Grant is to entertain us,’ he announced. ‘A Royal Command Performance, you understand. No gossiping.’

  Violet made a moue, and Sir Ratcliffe looked displeased as the damned mountebank opened the case in which his guitar was kept and began to tune it.

  ‘Do you have any particular piece in mind, sir?’ Cobie asked, playing a series of quiet chords.

  The Prince shook his head. ‘Nothing dismal, that’s all. I’m in no mind to be bored.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  He thought a moment, then began to play, gently at first as his total recall brought back both words and music, the Lord High Executioner’s song from The Mikado.

  I’ve got a little list, I’ve got a little list

  Of society offenders who might well be underground,

  And who never would be missed—who never would be missed!

  The bored expressions on everyone’s faces vanished as his pleasant baritone wound its way to the end of the song. He finished with a flourish, bowing his head over his guitar. The Prince immediately began to applaud his virtuosity.

  ‘Oh, bravo, Grant, bravo. Better than all that stuff I have to endure with a straight face at the opera. Where did you learn to play and sing like that?’

  Cobie bowed, amused that his talent with the guitar, although quite differently expressed, was entertaining the massed ranks of the British aristocracy and gentry as it had amused the outlaws at San Miguel so long ago.

  ‘At the Yale Glee Club, sir.’

  ‘It is to be congratulated—as are you. More, please.’

  Cobie decided to offer something different.

  He said, ‘This has to be done standing up,’ and began to play a Mexican love song, ‘La Paloma’, his guitar high on his shoulder. It was full of wild riffs, and he sang it first in Spanish, rolling the vowels liquidly on his tongue, and then in English.
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  The applause which followed was genuine. The Prince led it, then spoke to his wife, before turning to Cobie to say, ‘The Princess asks if you have a love song you would care to sing.’

  He considered and, moved by something—perhaps it was Susanna’s face, sad in repose, reproaching him for having deserted her—said, ‘Yes, I think you would like this.’

  So saying he sat down again and began to sing ‘Plaisir d’amour’, one of the most haunting and sad of ballads telling of love’s pleasures being short, but its pains, alas, being long and lasting a lifetime. His voice had changed again to match the music, and he sang it with all the feeling he could muster. It was almost as though he could feel Susanna’s pain, as though she had laid it on his back as a burden to be carried.

  Perhaps, also, he thought, he was trying to tell Dinah something. He looked up once, to see her face, rapt, her eyes only for him. Slowly, slowly, as the song reached its sad end, he was suddenly in another room, far away in space and time, a room which knew nothing of kings and princes and nobility. In that room he had thought that in playing yet another elegiac tune he had finally said farewell to Susanna, but he might have known that their star-crossed love was not so easily renounced, and that Susanna’s pain still being with her, he was to be compelled to share it, even to the end.

  The last notes died on the air. There was silence for a brief moment, before the Princess said, ‘Thank you, Mr Grant, that was beautiful,’ and began to clap, the rest of the audience following suit.

  ‘And that,’ said the Prince, ‘must be that. We thank the singer for his song,’

  Only, a little later, he came up to Cobie, winked and smiled, murmuring, ‘When we go to the smoking room, shortly, bring your guitar with you. I have a bet that you have other songs to sing, even more entertaining.’

  Which was a royal command. Sir Ratcliffe came up, flushed with drink, Susanna by him, and a few of his boon companions at his elbow.

  ‘Eh, well, Grant,’ he said, winking at his friends, ‘if all else fails, and the Stock Market falls through the floor, you can always earn a living on the pier at Brighton, what!’

  ‘I can think of worse ways of earning one,’ said Cobie coolly, refusing to return the insult, although Susanna’s mocking smile of pleasure at it cut him to the heart. He thought that drink was making Sir Ratcliffe unwary, besides ruining his complexion.

  Susanna stayed behind for a moment, to whisper reproachfully, “‘Plaisir d’amour” was a most suitable song for you to sing, Cobie—except for one thing. You are highly qualified to speak of the shortness of love’s pleasure. The pains, however, you hardly seem to be acquainted with. You should leave singing of them to others.’

  Cobie had a brief flash of total recall. He saw a lovely face, the face of a girl long dead, half-Yankee, half-Mexican, and thought that the pains of that lost love might be with him always. He said, quickly and urgently, ‘Susanna, I would like to speak to you about a serious matter.’

  She looked at him, her face stone. ‘If it is about Sir Ratcliffe and me, you may spare yourself. Once and for all, we have done with one another. Let that be it. I want no sermons from the cheat and womaniser which you have become.’

  It was useless. He bowed to her before she swept away. He saw Dinah coming, and thought bitterly, What damage am I doing to her, that she will end up by either reproaching me or hating me? I never thought that Susanna and I would come to this.

  Dinah, her intuition working again, knew at once that, although his face was impassive, he was distressed. She said, ‘You sang beautifully, Cobie, but are you sure you wouldn’t like to leave early?’

  He replied, almost roughly for him, ‘No, Dinah. And I have yet another royal command to obey. I am not ill.’

  ‘No,’ she answered him quietly. ‘And you don’t look ill. But remember what you once told me, “Appearances often deceive.” I think yours deceive me and everyone else tonight.’

  ‘Not you,’ he said, still rough. ‘You are learning from the book of life so rapidly, Dinah, that you will shortly be leaving me behind. For tonight accept that however I feel, I must do what I have to do, and that is obey the Prince’s orders. Something tells me that I have not finished this night’s work yet.’

  Nor had he.

  Some time later, walking into the smoking room, full of tobacco fumes, where the Prince, seated among his little court, was drawing gratefully on his cigar, after half an evening’s abstinence, he was greeted by men who were demanding to be entertained without the restraining presence of women.

  Sir Ratcliffe, by now almost unbuttoned—Susanna and her husband had already retired—sprawled in a great armchair, a tot of whiskey in his hand while he watched Cobie play and sing ‘The Old Chisholm Trail’—in the half-expurgated version.

  ‘Bravo,’ he said languidly. ‘It seems I underrated you. The Music Hall in Brixton is your proper métier, my friend. Why not take yourself there?’

  Before anyone could expostulate at such gross discourtesy, the red rage had Cobie by the throat. Not the complete thing, but something near. Regardless of whether Sir Ratcliffe might know of his secret plans to bring him to justice, he said rapidly, ‘I don’t underrate you, sir, and it occurs to me that I could sing a song about your spiritual home, your métier, which the company might enjoy.’

  Without a pause he segued into ‘The House of the Rising Sun’, that notable folk ballad of a very young girl ruined in a brothel.

  He sang it in the throaty, broken voice of the black American singer which he had heard on his one visit to the South, and which Dinah would have recognized because he had often used it when singing to her before or after lovemaking.

  There was dead silence when he ended. Everyone present, including the Prince, knew of Sir Ratcliffe’s reputation with women; some even knew of his relationship with Madame Louise and Hoskyns, and his proclivity for girl children.

  His face black with rage, he rose and, regardless of the presence of the Prince, exclaimed, ‘Damn you, Grant, I’ll not be insulted by upstart Yankees who have only their money to recommend them…’

  His voice ran out as the man he was threatening, for he had raised his fist, remained impassive, eyes hooded, staring coldly at him.

  Worse, he saw the expression of disapproval on the face of his master, his social arbiter, who ruled the world in which he lived and breathed, and which to be banished from meant in his present position not only social, but financial, ruin, for only Sir Ratcliffe’s friendship with the Prince kept the moneylenders at bay. If that went…if he strained the hold he had on him too far…everything would go…

  The Prince was saying, in a freezing voice, ‘Be quiet, sir. You put an insult on Mr Grant. It is true that he returned the favour, but you were the provoker, he the provoked. We all thank Mr Grant for his playing tonight, and regret the discourtesy offered to him. Sir Ratcliffe, you will join me in this, I trust, and you, Mr Grant, we will forgive. We cannot rebuke the provider of such innocent pleasure.’

  Sir Ratcliffe said sullenly—in the face of ruin he could do no else—‘I had not meant to annoy, a joke merely, sir.’

  The Prince was severe. ‘In poor taste, your joke. You accept the apology, Mr Grant?’

  Cobie said lightly, bowing his head. ‘Oh, I always accept apologies, sir. One of my few good habits.’ Which drew, as he had hoped and intended, a relieved general laugh.

  The Prince spoke to him for a few moments about his singing and playing. Cobie told him, truthfully, that his best instrument was the piano. The Prince, his prominent blue eyes hard on him, said, ‘It seems that you are a man of many talents, Grant. Lady Kenilworth tells me that you sketch well. I know for myself that you are superb on a horse and, to cap it all, you have a gift for making money. You should come and instruct some of my subjects—we seem to be losing the talent.’

  Cobie saw jealousy written plain on some of the faces around the Prince. He bowed, and murmured in his best and most innocent manner, ‘You know what they say, si
r, Jack of all trades, master of none.’

  The Prince’s gaze on him remained hard and shrewd, ‘Oh, I doubt that, Grant, I really doubt that. No matter. You have provided enough entertainment for one night. When we are at Markendale you must play the piano for us, and Lady Kenilworth will sing—her voice is lovely.’

  It was his dismissal for the evening; pondering on the number of times Violet had walked into the conversation, he decided that the Prince probably knew of their brief liaison—and did not resent it.

  His guitar in his hand, he wandered out of the smoking room and down a long corridor lined with the portraits of the great and mighty from a forgotten past. For some reason he did not want company—something which came over him at times. He wished to be alone, even if only for a little while, but his wish was not to be granted.

  A voice behind him said in the drawl of the upper-class Englishman, ‘Your performance tonight was a polished one on both occasions, Mr Grant. I am not surprised that the Prince praised you for it. A man of many talents, he called you. I don’t think that he is aware of them all, do you?’

  The speaker was the grey man, Hervey Beauchamp, who always stood at the Prince’s elbow. His tone to Cobie had a subtle ring of familiarity in it, as though he were speaking of things which they knew, and no one else did.

  Cobie put on his most charmingly innocent face, and said, with no double meaning in his voice, ‘I thank you for the compliment, sir—but for the rest…’ and he raised his eyebrows slightly ‘…you have the better of me. I don’t think we’ve ever been formally introduced…although you once waited on my wife…’ He let his voice trail off.

  ‘Masterly, sir, masterly,’ said the other approvingly—but did not say what was masterly. They were standing before a portrait of Prince Rupert of the Rhine, painted by some unknown artist.

  ‘My name—not that it is of the slightest importance—is, as you know, Beauchamp. One of my ancestors came over with the Conqueror and ever since we like to think that we serve our sovereign as faithfully as he did.’

  He waved a hand at the portrait so that Cobie wasn’t sure whether he meant Prince Rupert, the loyal supporter of two Stuart Kings, or his own distant progenitor.