A Season of Secrets (45 page)

The little three-wheeled Morgan went like a rocket and Thea, suitably dressed in warm tweeds, headscarf, goggles and gauntleted leather gloves, liked driving fast.

As she left London behind her and began speeding through countryside full of the autumn tints of red and gold, she wondered who, apart from Wallis and Ernest, her fellow guests would be this
time. Edward hadn’t mentioned Kyle, but she wouldn’t put it past him to have invited Kyle, even though he knew they hadn’t been seeing each other for several months and that Kyle
was presently squiring a blonde debutante around town.

For a fleeting moment she wondered if Edward might have invited Kyle
and
his blonde. She dismissed the idea as soon as it entered her head. Edward wasn’t mischievous and, when he
thought of Kyle, she knew he only did so in relation to herself – as did all her friends.

It was her fault, of course. If, when she and Kyle had been going through a period of not seeing each other, she had taken up with someone else, her friends would long ago have stopped thinking
of them as a long-term couple.

Her problem was that although she had a lot of male friends, with none of them had she ever wanted to change friendship into romance. If she couldn’t have Hal, then she only wanted Kyle.
And Kyle wanted marriage, and she simply couldn’t make that commitment; not when she still loved Hal so deeply that it was like a stab to her heart whenever she saw him.

She changed gear, wondering if things would have been different if, over the last ten years, Hal had married. Would she then have been able to draw a line under her love for him and move on with
her life? Was it because he was still very firmly a bachelor that she still lived in a world of hope?

There were woods on either side of the road and she slowed down, eased the Morgan off the road and came to a halt. Taking off her gloves, she lit a cigarette, aware that if Hal had married
Carrie, no line would ever have been drawn; instead, things would have been much worse.

But Hal hadn’t married Carrie. He hadn’t married anybody.

From a nearby tree a scattering of bronze leaves fell into her lap. Automatically she brushed them away. Was the reason Hal never formed a serious relationship with any of his long line of
girlfriends because, deep down, he was still in love with her? Or was it because he wasn’t capable of long-term emotional attachment to anyone, including her? It was a conundrum she had no
answer for.

She glanced down at her watch. She was only fifteen minutes away from the Fort and, not knowing if Kyle would be waiting for her when she got there and not knowing how she felt about that, she
was in no hurry to arrive.

Still with a cigarette in her hand, she stepped out of the Morgan. A short trudge in Gorton’s woodland nearly always cleared her head. Hopefully a short trudge in the Surrey woodland would
be no different.

She was wearing the sensible brogues she always wore for driving, and leaves crunched thickly beneath her feet as she wondered in all seriousness if, in affairs of the heart, she was suffering
from some kind of genetic flaw and, if she was, if Roz suffered from it as well.

It was little over a year ago now since Roz had ended her affair with Max, and although Barty Luddesdon was often Roz’s escort when she was in London, there was no hint that wedding bells
would ever ring for them.

Just as she couldn’t get over Hal and put him firmly in her past, so Roz was clearly incapable of doing the same thing where Max was concerned. In society’s eyes, both of them were
on the shelf – and needlessly so, for Barty would, she was sure, have happily married Roz, just as Kyle would, given the chance, happily marry her.

Of their childhood circle of five, only Olivia was married, and her marriage was flawed by her unhappiness at still being childless.

She dropped her cigarette to the ground and crushed it beneath her foot. Plunging her hands deep in the pockets of her coat, she began making her way back to her car, wondering what Blanche
would have thought of their lives. Would the relationships between herself, Olivia and Violet have been smoother if Blanche were still alive? Her mother had always kept the peace between them and
would, she was sure, have still been doing so. She wondered what her mother’s advice would have been where Kyle was concerned. Would she have advised Thea to marry him? And what would Blanche
have thought of her beloved husband’s marriage to Zephiniah?

Knowing her mother as she had, Thea knew she would have wanted Gilbert to marry again and to be happy. A foreknowledge that his second marriage would bring him deep unhappiness –
unhappiness that he so unsuccessfully tried to hide – would have broken her mother’s heart.

What had gone wrong within her father’s marriage to Zephiniah she didn’t know. In the early days Zephiniah had clearly relished her title of Viscountess Fenton and had seemed as
eager as Gilbert that they would have a son who would carry on the Fenton family name and title. Then had come her long – and frequent – solo trips to European health spas.

That she, Olivia and Roz suspected Zephiniah of having a lover – or even several lovers – when she was not in London or at Gorton was something they hadn’t spoken of to Carrie.
Carrie was deeply fond of their father and they had known how the thought of his unhappiness would distress her. Carrie, though, had come to the same suspicion via servant gossip at Monkswood.

‘I’m not sure how to say this,’ she had said when, on one of Olivia’s trips home from Berlin, the three of them had met up on the banks of the river, by the vole place,
‘but there’s unkind gossip at Monkswood about your stepmother.’

‘There’s unkind gossip about our very own wicked witch all over the place,’ Olivia had said dismissively. ‘Unfortunately, I think most of it is true.’

‘Is it about men, Carrie?’ Thea had asked bluntly.

Carrie had nodded, her eyes deeply troubled. ‘The sister of one of Monkswood’s footmen is Gorton’s parlourmaid. She’s told him Lady Fenton often holds house-parties at
Gorton when Parliament is sitting and your father is in London.’

Olivia had rolled over onto her back in the deep grass. ‘Well, there’s nothing too dreadful about that,’ she had said fairly.

‘Though other guests vary, there is one gentleman who is invited to every house-party,’ Carrie had continued unhappily. ‘He’s a friend of your stepmother’s from her
days in Argentina. His name is Mr Di Stéfano.’

‘If Monkswood’s servants are only linking her name to one man, it’s probably something to be grateful for.’ Thea had known she was being nasty, but had been unable to
help it.

Carrie had bitten her lip. ‘It’s not only the servants who are talking, Thea. Lady Markham likes gossip, and when her lady’s maid told her how Lady Fenton’s name was
being linked to that of Mr Di Stéfano, she said she’d heard similar gossip when she’d last been in Aix-les-Bains. Of course,’ she added hastily, ‘that doesn’t
mean the gossip is true. Lady Markham was such a close friend of your mother that, in her eyes, no one could be good enough to fill her place and so she’s always been willing to believe the
worst about your stepmother.’

‘The worst is probably true,’ Olivia had said, her eyes filling with sudden tears. ‘But whether Zephiniah is being unfaithful to Papa or she isn’t, and whether he knows
about it or he doesn’t, there’s nothing we can do about it. Can you imagine his dear, kind face if we told him of what was being said?’

All three of them had been able to imagine all too well.

It had been Carrie who had ended their conversation. With her face set and pale, she had said fiercely, ‘I hope you’re wrong, Olivia. I hope everyone is wrong, because if anyone
deserves to be happy it’s your father.’ And she had turned away quickly before they should see the expression in her eyes and correctly read the reason for the searing depth of her
feelings.

Thea opened the Morgan’s low-slung door and slid behind the wheel. Brooding over things she had no control over was of no use whatsoever. Her life was as full as she
could possibly make it without Hal being in it, or, at the moment, Kyle.

For the past few months she had been heavily involved in the running of the Feathers Clubs, a project close to Prince Edward’s heart. With his sincere and deep concern for his
father’s unemployed subjects, he had suggested the setting up of clubs that would offer men on the dole some kind of social life. The name of the clubs came from the three feathers on his
heraldic badge as heir apparent, and the person who had put his scheme into action was the woman who had been his first long-term mistress, Freda Dudley Ward.

Thea, always looking for active ways to put her socialism into practice, had become Freda’s right-hand helper. Her long-term ambition, though, was to stand as a Labour Party parliamentary
candidate. One thing in her favour was that she was a fiery and fearless public speaker. The things not in her favour were legion. Top of the list – apart from the fact that she was a woman
– was that she wasn’t, and never had been, a trade-union leader; she had never chaired her local Labour Party; she wasn’t a local Labour Party councillor; she didn’t come
from a working-class background; she didn’t have a university degree. The list of reasons why her standing for Parliament was a pipe-dream was endless. Thea didn’t care. In her mindset,
obstacles were there to be overcome – and, one by one, she was determined to overcome them.

She put the Morgan into gear and spun back out onto the road. Very soon she was in Windsor Great Park and Fort Belvedere’s turrets peeped above the trees. All she had to think about now
was Kyle. Would he be there, or would he not? And if he was there, was she going to maintain the standoff of the last few months?

Kyle stood back from the bonfire of burning leaves, his eyes smarting. Edward was well known for being able to find things to do in the Fort’s gardens at any time of
year, but he’d thought that on a late afternoon in October even Edward would have given his gardening passion a rest. Unwisely he had arrived at the Fort a little early, rather than a little
late, and Edward had immediately pounced on him.

‘Jolly good show. An extra pair of hands is just what I need,’ he had said cheerily. ‘I’m just about to do a bit of leaf-burning. Change into something suitable and join
me. There’s a good chap.’

A royal command – even a royal command coming from a boyishly slight figure dressed in well-worn tweeds and with a pitchfork in one hand – was not to be ignored. Kyle had done as
he’d been bidden and now the two of them were taking it in turns to fork piled-up dead leaves onto a slow-burning, pungent-smelling fire.

‘George and Marina are going to be with us this weekend,’ Edward said. ‘Dickie and Edwina, Fruity and Baba, Chips. Have you met Chips?’

There was only one Chips in British high society, and that was a fellow American, Chips Channon. Though they had never met before at the Fort, Kyle knew him well. He had also met Edward’s
younger brother, Prince George, though not George’s recently acquired fiancée, Princess Marina of Greece. Neither had he met Fruity Metcalfe and his wife, though he knew of them by
reputation, and everything he had heard indicated they would be easy, amusing company. Dickie and Edwina Mountbatten he had met previously, though never when they had been together. Ernest
Simpson’s name was conspicuously absent from the guest list, and Wallis was more the Fort’s permanent hostess than she was a guest.

The other name missing from the list, and the one that was causing Kyle crushing disappointment, was Thea’s. Just as he was wondering why he had been invited, if Thea hadn’t, Edward
closed a fair-lashed eye in a naughty wink. ‘Forgot to mention that Thea should be arriving at any time. Wallis likes her.’ He forked more leaves onto the fire. ‘She says Thea is
the only blunt-talking, non-prevaricating, straight-to-the-point Englishwoman she’s yet met.’

Kyle laughed. Where Wallis and Thea were concerned it was, he felt, a question of like being attracted to like. They both possessed the same kind of vitality, forthrightness and frankness of
speech.

One of Edward’s two small terriers came trotting up to join them and Edward bent down and scratched the back of its head, saying as he did so, ‘Like Wallis, you’re an American.
What d’you think your government would make of it if, when I become King, I make Wallis my queen?’

Kyle was about to laugh at what he thought was a joke, but something in the tone of Edward’s voice stopped him.

He said, uncertain as to whether or not he was going to make a fool of himself by having taken the question seriously, ‘But that couldn’t happen, sir. Could it?’

Edward stared broodingly into the bonfire of dead leaves. ‘I love Wallis,’ he said. ‘I’m going to marry her – and in English law a wife takes the title of her
husband.’

Kyle stared at him. As an American, his knowledge of British constitutional law was sketchy, but he knew enough to know that no divorced woman had ever been Queen of England – or was ever
likely to become a Queen of England.

As if reading Kyle’s mind, Edward said, ‘Nothing can happen – except perhaps Wallis’s divorce from Ernest – until my father dies. Under the provisions of the Royal
Marriages Act, marriages of Princes of the Blood Royal are under the Sovereign’s control and – ultimately – Parliament’s. So you see, a veto power over my choice of a wife
rests with my father. And because of the divorce thing – and perhaps also because of her being American – my father will never give his consent.’

Kyle wondered if he should point out to Edward that where the ‘divorce thing’ was concerned, Wallis would – if she and Ernest divorced – have been twice divorced, for in
order to marry Ernest, Wallis had had to divorce an American naval pilot, E. Winfield Spencer.

As Edward made no attempt to put further leaves on the smouldering, charred pile in front of them, Kyle thought of another major barrier to Edward’s dream of marital bliss with Wallis.
When he became King, Edward would also become titular Head of the Church of England. And the Church of England didn’t recognize divorce. With such an obstacle in his path, even his
father’s death wouldn’t be enough to enable Edward to marry Wallis. He was simply never going to be able to marry her. Not ever.