The Shadow Queen (28 page)

“There’s no point to it, Wallis,” he had said practically. “What’s the sense of you losing dough to me or me losing dough to you? This way we have a double chance of leaving the tables we’re at a darn sight better off than when we sat down at them.”

Over the months since they had been putting this game plan into action, Wallis had lost a lot of the popularity she had originally had with Win’s friends’ wives. They didn’t play poker and they didn’t like the fact that while they were in one room, embroidering or knitting and talking about domestic concerns, Wallis was in another room making their husbands roar with laughter at her sassy remarks and, more often than not, emptying their pockets for them.

That she wasn’t as popular as she had once been didn’t bother Wallis—not if the alternative was to sit talking about babies and recipes all evening. Men had always liked her and she, in turn, preferred men’s company to that of most women. Corinne was an exception, of course, as was Fidelia Rainey.

“It’s wonderful to see you, Wallis,” Fidelia said with genuine warmth as she and Win entered her home. “Archie is here. He wants to play at whatever table you’re at, and so you’d best look to your laurels. When it comes to poker, Archie is a hotshot, as you well know.”

It was a good evening. Interspersed with the seriousness of the game at hand, Wallis kept her fellow poker players entertained with her account of the movie she had seen that afternoon. Whereas the other two tables played in nearly complete silence, there were periodic gales of laughter from Wallis’s table, but then there always were, especially so when Archie was also seated at it.

As they said their good nights and began walking the short distance to their bungalow, she patted her purse in satisfaction. “I did very well tonight, darling. What sort of an evening did you have?”

“When we get home, I’m going to show you.” He spoke through gritted teeth, and her stomach tightened. Something—probably someone—had put him in a bad mood, and if she wasn’t very careful, she would be the one paying for it. At times like these she had discovered that silence was often the best method of keeping out of trouble, and so she merely gave his arm a loving squeeze and said nothing.

The second they stepped over the threshold of their bungalow he slammed the door behind him with such force the walls shook.

Seizing hold of her by her upper arms so hard she knew the imprint of his thumbs and fingers would be on her flesh for weeks, he dragged her in the direction of the bathroom.

“You think I don’t know what’s going on between you and Archie?” he yelled. “You think I’m stupid?”

He kicked the bathroom door open with his foot. “I bet it’s not so impossible for you to fuck when it’s Archie doing the fucking, is it?”

He kicked her legs away from beneath her, but not so that she was facing his crotch, but so that she had her head over the toilet bowl.

“No!” In terror she knew immediately what he was about to do. “No, Win! There’s nothing going on between Archie and me! Nothing! Noth—”

Seizing hold of her head, he thrust it down into the bowl so that her entire face was below the waterline.

She struggled against him with all her strength, certain he was going to drown her, certain her last moments had come. Just when she thought she couldn’t survive a moment longer, he released his hold of her.

Gasping for breath, her hair saturated, she collapsed on the floor by the side of the bath.

“And that’s where you’re going to stay!” he yelled down at her.

Swinging away from her, he took the key out of the bathroom door, yanked the door closed, and turned the key in the lock from the outside. Then, seconds later, Wallis heard the front door open and then slam shut.

It was after midnight, and where he had gone she neither knew nor cared.

She was alive. He hadn’t drowned her. For the moment, that was enough.

Juddering with shock, she struggled to her feet and reached for a towel. Then, as her legs still wouldn’t support her, she slid back down against the side of the bath and feebly began drying her face and toweling her hair.

Then, and only then, did she give way to dry, choking sobs. How had her life turned into this hideous nightmare? She needed to be able to talk to someone about it, but there wasn’t anyone. She certainly couldn’t distress her mother or her Aunt Bessie by telling them what a charade her marriage was, and if she told Corinne, Corinne would tell Henry and Win’s career would be over fast as light. If that happened, Win really would kill her.

As the hours ticked past, the bathroom grew colder and colder. She wrapped a dry towel around her shoulders, dreading what the next day would bring. What she needed was a girlfriend she could confide in, and she certainly couldn’t confide in anyone at Pensacola or any of her Baltimore friends.

There was only one person in the world she needed at a time like this, and that person was Pamela—and Pamela was thousands of miles away, married to John Jasper and very probably the mistress of Edward, Prince of Wales.

Chapter Seventeen

“A
t long last it’s official! President Wilson has seen sense and announced that America is at war with Germany!” It was April 2, 1917, and in great excitement John Jasper burst into the master bedroom of his and Pamela’s London home, copies of the
Times
and the
Daily Dispatch
in his hand.

Pamela was still in bed, a bank of lace-edged pillows behind her, a breakfast tray in front of her.

“About time,” she said cuttingly, spreading marmalade on a thin slice of toast. “Britain has been at war for two and a half long bloody years.”

“I shall join up, of course.” He tossed the newspapers onto her breakfast tray and strode across to the large windows that looked out over Green Park. “I’m going immediately to the American embassy—I imagine the queue of Americans volunteering for active service will stretch all the way outside the embassy and halfway, if not the whole way, down the street.”

Pamela ate her slice of toast and picked up the
Times
. The headline read:

U
SA
E
NTERS
W
AR TO
S
AVE
D
EMOCRACY

The article beneath it began with the words:

April 6. America is at war. At 1.18 this afternoon President Woodrow Wilson, sitting in a tiny room in the White House, signed the declaration of war passed by Congress this week. The war resolution went through the Senate by 90 votes to 6, and the House passed the same measure by 373–50, following an emotional debate that lasted 17 hours
.

It was a long article and Pamela, whose newspaper of choice was the
Daily Dispatch
, didn’t bother reading to the end of it. Lifting the breakfast tray to one side, she swung her legs from the bed.

“I’m not sure I want you to join up and go off to war.”

He turned away from the window to face her, his winged eyebrows raised. “What? After all the cracks you’ve made these last two and a half years about America not pitching in?”

“America not pitching in and
you
not pitching in are two very different things.”

She slid her arms around his waist, her head against his chest, not looking him in the eyes. “It’s professional soldiers America will be sending to Flanders—not volunteer conscripts—and I don’t want to be receiving a black-edged telegram telling me you’re dead.”

John Jasper closed his arms around her. Their marriage was such an odd assortment of highs and lows, turbulently passionate one moment, icily cold the next, that he never knew what emotion he was going to meet with from her, and this latest one—deep concern for his safety—came as a welcome surprise.

It wasn’t going to change his mind about joining up, though. If America was at war, he, as a young and fit American, was going to stand up and be counted, and he knew Pamela was wrong in assuming only professional soldiers would be being sent to Europe. The total strength of America’s regular army was only 5,000 officers and 123,000 men, plus the part-time soldiers in the National Guard. His country would need him, and he had no intention of letting his country down.

“I’m glad you feel that way about things, Pammie,” he said thickly, amazed at how much emotion she was now capable of arousing in him. “But I could never live with myself if I didn’t do my bit.”

Pamela kept her head on his chest. It was true that she didn’t particularly want John Jasper to die in a mud-filled trench—or anywhere else, for that matter—but it wasn’t the real reason she was trying to coax him out of volunteering for active service. The real reason was that in January, when the Prince of Wales had been home on leave and on the night before he had returned to France, she had finally achieved her ambition of becoming much more to him than just someone he was socially friendly with. Her new relationship with him was one she was hoping to solidify on his next leave and she knew that, as a soldier, the prince might have second thoughts about embarking on a full-blown affair with a woman whose husband was risking his life at the front.

“What about Oliver?” she said, contriving to sound as if she were on the verge of tears. “If you should be killed, how will I ever explain to him that his papa didn’t
have
to go to France—or wherever else you might be sent—but that you
chose
to go?”

He put a finger beneath her chin and tilted her head to his.

Swiftly Pamela banished the expression of frustrated crossness she knew was in her eyes, replacing it with one of loving, tear-filled concern.

He said tenderly, “How will I ever explain to Oliver—when he is older—if I
don’t
go?”

She knew by the determined set of his jaw that nothing she could say was going to make him change his mind. As far as John Jasper was concerned, his honor was at stake, and John Jasper, as she had come to know very well since even before their marriage, was an extremely honorable man.

That he was made living with him quite exasperating at times. It was an accepted code of conduct among British aristocracy that marriages were made for sensible reasons, such as allying one great family with another or combining one vast estate with another, and that after a son and heir had been born—and his paternity not doubted—not only could the husband seek excitement and romance elsewhere, but so also could the wife.

Discreet bed-hopping was an acknowledged pastime at all country house parties, and hostesses obligingly sited the rooms of guests in close proximity to the rooms of whomever they were known to be having an affair with. What was never done, of course, was to conduct an affair openly. Though the inner circle would gossip about who was currently sleeping with whom, for it to become public knowledge would be to court social death.

It was a game that everyone she and John Jasper mixed with knew the rules of—and that John Jasper adamantly refused to play. He might not have wanted to have had to marry her, but now that he was married, he was quite blunt about his intention of being a faithful husband—and of expecting her to be a faithful wife in return.

To her own very great surprise she had found being so no huge strain. There were very few men in society as handsome as John Jasper, and she knew from her premarital experience that as a lover, he rated very highly; so high, in fact, that she’d had no desire to look elsewhere for satisfaction in bed. And then, in January, had come a temptation she had found completely irresistible.

I
t had occurred when she and John Jasper had motored up to Norfolk to visit her mother and Tarquin at Tarquin’s country home near Sandringham and had arrived to find a party in progress.

“Prince Edward is here,” her stepfather had said, greeting her fondly. “Like you, he’s an unexpected guest, but he’s returning to London later tonight and off back to Flanders first thing in the morning. The poor boy wanted to spend the last few hours of his leave in a lively manner, not something achievable at Sandringham.”