The Golden Prince (27 page)

Iris walked free of the woods and onto the rising meadowland lying beyond them. The heat, which hadn’t relented over the last few days, was intense. There were articles in the newspapers saying that temperatures were at record heights and that weather forecasters were predicting they would continue to rise. How much further they could rise Iris couldn’t even begin to imagine.

While she had been in the woodland the heat hadn’t disturbed Fizz and Florin, but now, out on the hillside, even they were flagging. Knowing it would be unfair to them to go any farther, she came to a halt and, sitting on buttercup-thick grass, she hugged her knees and looked toward Snowberry.

There were so many things making her heavyhearted. Worst of all, of course, was Toby no longer loving her—and not only no longer loving her, but no longer wanting to even spend time with her as a friend.

The moment at the Coronation Day ball, when he had entered the ballroom and then, on seeing her, had turned away, had been as agonizing as a knife wound. She knew she would have to get over
her searing sense of loss, but she had no idea of how to set about it. Toby had been too central to her life for her to draw a line under things as Rose and Marigold would do if they were in the same situation.

As for the future … She couldn’t imagine anyone else falling in love with her. She simply wasn’t the kind of girl men lost their hearts to. Her year as a debutante had shown her that.

A future without a husband and babies was too bleak to contemplate, so she forced herself to think of the other things causing her anxiety. Lily having fallen in love with David—and David wanting to marry her—was top of the list. Since it was obvious to everyone but David and Lily that, short of a miracle, such a marriage would never be allowed, both of them were plummeting headlong toward heartbreak. Lily had a heart that, like her own, wouldn’t easily mend. Once given, it would, Iris was sure, be given for life.

As to what the repercussions were going to be once David had spoken to King George, they were anyone’s guess. They wouldn’t be good, though. Especially not for her grandfather.

It was another prospect so bleak she didn’t want to dwell on it.

Her final anxiety was Marigold, for she was quite sure that Marigold was involved in something that, if it became public knowledge, would prove so scandalous it would end Lily and David’s relationship even before King George ended it.

Was it another married man? According to Rose, Marigold had come to her senses just in time where Lord Jethney was concerned. But what if she hadn’t?

Whereas Lord Jethney used to visit their grandfather on an almost weekly basis, now they never saw him at all. Was that because he and Marigold had begun meeting in London, whenever Marigold was staying with Sibyl? When Rose had stressed how important it now was for Marigold to remain scandal-free, if her look of panic
hadn’t
been because she was still seeing Lord Jethney, who had it been over?

From where she was sitting Iris could see Snowberry’s gabled roofs and upper mullioned windows, but the lower part of the rear of the house and the terrace and terrace steps were obscured by the trees. A small portion of the lawn, just before it reached the lake, was visible, and as she pondered whether or not she should share her concerns over Marigold with Rose, she saw someone striding purposefully across it.

Apart from the fact that it was male, the figure was too indistinct for her to recognize. It wasn’t her grandfather, though, because he couldn’t walk that fast. David and Piers Cullen had left a good hour earlier for Buckingham Palace, so it wasn’t likely to be either of them. Which meant it must be Rory.

She wondered if he was walking so fast toward the lake because he was desperate for a swim in order to cool off. In retrospect, it was what she should have done, instead of walking in heat that was close to being unbearable.

Homer, who had been lying at her feet, now flopped down by her side. Grateful for his company, she gave him a loving pat. There was no sound, apart from a couple of finches squabbling in a nearby clump of gorse.

She was once more worrying about what it was Marigold so clearly had on her mind when Fizz pricked up her ears and looked expectantly down to where the woods gave way to the hillside. Seconds later Florin was all attention, her stubby tail wagging in delighted anticipation.

Certain the person they had heard approaching was Rory, Iris remained where she was, her arms around her knees. Rory would have to know about David’s proposal of marriage to Lily sometime, but she thought it best that she didn’t tell him. Rory and Lily were very close. It was something Lily would want to tell him herself.

A figure emerged from the woodland. Barking welcomes, Fizz and Florin raced toward him. Preparing to give an equally warm welcome, Homer ambled off in their wake. Iris, almost frozen with shock, rose slowly to her feet.

Toby waved, and Iris, not waving back, a pulse beating fast in her throat, waited for him to cover the distance between them.

“Your grandfather told me you were walking the dogs,” he said, coming to a halt a foot or so away from her. “I guessed you might have come up here.”

Toby was behaving as if nothing had gone wrong between them simply because he didn’t know any other way to begin saying what he had come to say. But that was lost on Iris. Her memory of him emerging from behind Snowberry’s fountain with his arm around the debutante of the year, and the even ghastlier memory of the Coronation Day ball, were too vivid and too recent.

Aware of how deep her hurt was, he abandoned the “here-we-are-back-to-normal” approach he’d hoped would act as an icebreaker.

Plunging straight in, as he had with her grandfather, he took both her hands in his. “Please forgive me for my stupidity of the last couple of weeks, Iris. I don’t know what got into me. Whatever it was, I’m now free of it—and it won’t come back. I promise.”

There was an expression in his eyes she had never seen before, an expression that sent the blood surging through her body in a hot, dizzying tide.

“I want us to be friends again.” His hands tightened on hers. “I want us to be more than friends, Iris. I’ve done quite a bit of thinking and I now know what it is I want in life. It’s not what I previously thought. It isn’t a career in the Guards, and running with a fast set and having lots of different girlfriends. The doctor has given my father only another few months to live, and when he dies I don’t want Sissbury to be run by anyone else but me. It’s what I’ve been brought up to do. It’s what my father has trained me to do.”

He put his arms around her, drawing her close. “And I want to do it with someone who loves the things I love.”

His eyes, usually so light, were dark with passionate intensity.

“The things I love are Sissbury—and Snowberry. Horses. Dogs. A country life. What I’m trying to say, dearest Iris—what I’m trying to ask—is, will you marry me?”

“Oh! Yes, Toby!” Her plain face was so radiant it was beautiful. “I’ve always wanted to marry you! I’ve never wanted anything else!”

Vastly relieved, he lowered his head to hers, kissing her in a way she had only previously dreamed of.

Half an hour later as they walked back down the hill, the dogs at their heels and their arms around each other’s waists, he complimented himself on a good afternoon’s work.

He had healed his friend’s heartbreak. He had resolved his future. Buying himself out of the Guards would be no problem. And when he began managing Sissbury, he would begin managing Snowberry for Lord May, running the two vast estates in tandem. He could foresee no difficulty about doing so. May, increasingly infirm and mentally vague, would be deeply grateful to him for his help.

He stepped from the woods with Iris, full of joie de vivre, certain that with such a setup in place, the chances of his and Iris’s firstborn son inheriting Snowberry were high, so high as to be almost a certainty.

Marigold didn’t enjoy
her afternoon tea with Tessa Reighton. All she could think about was how, if it was shown publicly, Strickland’s depiction of her as Persephone would end any hopes, however faint, of Lily one day becoming the Princess of Wales. Not in a million years would the stuffed shirt who was King George permit even a platonic relationship between his son and the sister of a girl who had so scandalously posed naked. Where David and Lily were concerned, the notoriety she had been so looking forward to would be a death knell.

Which meant there would never be even the faintest hope of her one day becoming the sister-in-law of the Prince of Wales. Even worse, it meant she wouldn’t be his sister-in-law when, after his father’s death, he became King. Placed on the scales against a season’s notoriety, it was an awful lot to lose—and she most definitely didn’t want to lose it.

It meant she had to speak to Strickland—a near impossibility when Strickland never answered his telephone and when she was confined at Snowberry after her Queen of Sheba escapade.

“I’ve had a spiffing time, but I must go,” she said to Tessa, while Tessa was still in the middle of telling her about her latest romantic conquest. “Hope everything turns out brilliantly for the two of you.”

Forty-five minutes later she was back at Snowberry, where, instead of immediately having a private chat with her grandfather,
wheedling out of him permission to return to her aunt’s, she found herself standing next to him with a champagne flute in her hand as he toasted Iris and Toby on the announcement of their engagement.

Remembering how iffy Toby had been about his feelings for Iris only a few short days ago, his proposal was a surprise, to say the least. It wasn’t, though, a surprise she intended brooding over. Not when she had so much else on her mind.

“I need to have a word with you, Grandfather,” she said when the toasts were over and Toby and Iris were looking deep into each other’s eyes and drinking from each other’s champagne flute. “I want your permission to go back to Great-Aunt Sibyl’s for a little while. It’s very important that I do so. For my classes.”

“Classes?” Her grandfather stared at her, mystified.

“Classes,” she said firmly. “I’m taking art classes with Mr. Strickland—who I know you will have heard of, because he is one of the most famous artists in the country. Also I’m taking … I’m taking …” She thought furiously, desperately searching her mind for something that sounded remotely possible. “I’m taking Italian classes at the Berlitz.”

“Are you, my dear?
Are
you?” Herbert was fascinated. His brow wrinkled in a frown. “But didn’t Sibyl send you back here to Snowberry because you’d misbehaved? Something about not being appropriately dressed at a fancy dress ball? If that is the case, she may think it a little soon for you to be returning to St. James’s Street.”

Marigold slid her arm through his and gave it a hug. “Dearest Grandpa, I went to the ball as the Queen of Sheba and so I was
very
appropriately dressed. The Queen of Sheba would hardly have gone to a ball dressed like Rose, would she? Anyway, it wasn’t Aunt Sibyl who insisted I came back to Snowberry. It was Rose.
Please
telephone Aunt Sibyl and tell her that I’ve served my penance.”

He patted her hand. “If it means that much to you, my dear,
sono molto contento
.”

He smiled.

Not having a clue as to what he had just said, she smiled back.

Inwardly, though, she wasn’t smiling at all. When had her grandfather learned Italian? If he was going to start speaking it to her, she was going to have to learn it in earnest—or tell him she was dropping Italian in order to study German. But as she was living in the hope of soon having a whole raft of royal German relations by marriage, perhaps German wasn’t such a bad idea.

“So you are once more in town for an indefinite period?” Strickland said, blowing a plume of Turkish cigarette smoke into the air.

Though they were in his studio and though he was wearing a paint-spattered smock, he wasn’t working. He was perched on the corner of a table that was crowded with brushes, palettes, and tubs of paint, one long-limbed leg swinging free.

“I’m here for as long as it takes me to convince you not to go ahead with the painting. Or at least not with the Persephone/Pluto painting. I’m simply not going to sit for it anymore. A portrait of me in my presentation gown would be all right. But I’ve decided that being painted without even a wisp of chiffon is just too vulgar for words.”

She was wearing a tawny-colored narrow skirt topped by a diaphanous yellow-bronze tunic pulled in at the waist and tightly belted by a broad snakeskin belt, her only jewelry a heavy amber necklace. He couldn’t decide whether she was trying to look Russian, or to look Romany. She certainly looked distinctive and, as always, provocatively voluptuous.

He grinned. He could believe a lot of things about Marigold, but not that she had been overcome by a sudden attack of quiet good taste.

“What if I told you I no longer needed you to sit for the painting in order to finish it?”

Though she was doing her best to try to appear unperturbed, he could see that she was seriously concerned.