The Shadow Queen (29 page)

Her interest had been immediate. Since the war, chances to socialize informally with Edward didn’t happen often enough, and she had been determined to make the most of what was a very unexpected opportunity.

“Is Portia here?” she’d asked as John Jasper headed for the drawing room.

Some months ago there had been rumors that Prince Edward was romantically interested in Portia Cadogan, one of Earl Cadogan’s daughters.

“No.” Knowing she would want to refresh her makeup in the bedroom she and John Jasper always stayed in, Tarquin had walked her to the foot of the central staircase. “The party only came into being when Edward drove up an hour or so ago and asked if I could throw one together. It’s not been easy, and you and John Jasper couldn’t have arrived at a more opportune moment.” He’d hesitated, then added, “And as I know you’re interested, Portia Cadogan is now being squired around by Edward Stanley, a friend of Edward’s from his days at Oxford.”

Pamela had pressed her fingers to her mouth and had then pressed them against his. “You’re a wonderful bearer of good news, Tarquin.” Her eyes had danced with elation. “I’ll be down in five minutes’ time to make an impression on him.”

The luggage she and John Jasper had brought with them was in her bedroom almost as soon as she and her maid were.

Swiftly, knowing she had no time to lose if she was to capture Edward’s attention before some other scheming little minx did so, she’d had the quickest bath of her life and had her maid remove the most daring of the evening gowns she had brought with her.

It was made of crystal beaded sea green chiffon; the color echoed the mesmerizing color of her eyes. The neckline plunged both front and back, fitted like a second skin over her hips, and then fell into a narrow swirl of panels that floated around her legs as she walked. She’d added pearl earrings and a waist-length rope of pearls, sprayed herself with L’Heure Bleue, and had made her way to the drawing room, pondering what she knew of Edward’s recent personal life.

Now that he was twenty-three, the only female his name had been linked with—apart from Portia Cadogan—had been Lady Coke, who was at least twelve years his senior.

“It can’t be a love affair,” she had said to John Jasper when gossip about Edward and Lady Coke had first been whispered to her. “She may be lively company, but she’s ancient. Nearly old enough to be his mother.”

“Perhaps a bit of mothering is what he wants,” John Jasper had said. “From what I’ve heard, he never received much as a child. It’s my guess that’s all there is to his relationship with Marian Coke. She’s far too smart to make Tommy look ridiculous by having an affair with someone so much younger than herself—even if the someone in question is heir to the throne.”

It was one of those moments when John Jasper surprised her. She hadn’t realized he was on such friendly terms with Thomas, Viscount Leicester.

When they first married she had imagined that his being an American would put him at a disadvantage socially, but that hadn’t proved to be the case. John Jasper exuded good breeding and was immediately well liked by everyone she introduced him to. He was also usually right about things, too, and she very much hoped he was right in believing that Prince Edward’s relationship with Marian Coke stopped at the bedroom door, for it meant that where romance and Edward were concerned, she was still in with a chance.

At her stepfather’s opulent country house, that chance had finally arrived.

She’d walked into the drawing room to find fifteen or so people gathered there, all friends of Tarquin’s and all people already known to the prince. “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” had been playing on the gramophone, the carpet had been rolled back for dancing, and champagne had been flowing.

To her startled surprise, she had seen that Edward was in uniform. It had been a stark reminder that next morning he was to return to the front and a world of horrors so far removed from the evening now being enjoyed as to be unimaginable.

“Not that he’s often near enemy shellfire,” she’d heard someone say to Tarquin under cover of the music. “He tries hard enough, poor bugger, but the king insists on his only doing staff work. He must be the only sod out there disobeying his remit by going up to the front line every chance he gets.”

The poor sod in question had been talking to her mother when she had walked up to him and dipped a curtsey.

That he’d been absolutely delighted to see someone of his own age, rather than his host’s age, and someone he had been meeting intermittently ever since he’d been a child, had been thrillingly obvious to her.

“Pamela,” he said, startlingly blue eyes lighting up. “How splendid. Now I have someone to dance with!”

Though she had been calling him Edward to his face ever since childhood, she now, whenever they met, always very correctly waited for him to invite her to do so.

“It’s ragtime, sir,” she’d said, laughter fizzing in her throat. “Are you sure we shouldn’t wait for something a little more respectable to be on the gramophone?”

“Bosh!” The lines of strain on his fine-featured face had been unmistakable. He might be restricted to staff work, but the nightmare of the bloodbath he was so shortly returning to had imprinted itself on him as clearly as it had every other serving officer she had met. “Tarquin won’t object if we dance to ragtime.” He put a hand beneath her elbow. “Can you do the Turkey Trot? Don’t you love all these American dances? They’re so outrageously hectic that when you’re dancing them you forget everything.”

She’d known from past experience that at any occasion where there was dancing, Prince Edward always courteously danced at least once with every woman present, no matter what her age or looks. A quick glance around the room had shown her that age- and looks-wise she had no competition and that, having arrived at the party late, she was fortunate in that all Edward’s duty dances had already been danced.

“Another ragtime number!” he’d shouted across to the friend of her mother’s who was tending the gramophone.

The sound of Irving Berlin’s “Everybody’s Doing It Now” filled the room.

For the next forty minutes the two of them had danced almost unceasingly, following the Turkey Trot with the Bunny Hug, the Grizzly Bear, the cakewalk and then, finally, a foxtrot.

Perspiration had been beading his brow when at last he had come to a stop. “Champagne for you, and a pint of lemon barley water for me, I think,” he had said breathlessly. “Then, as I need to cool down, how about we take a turn around the garden?”

That their doing so would be noted by everyone and commented upon endlessly afterward because the occasion was so informal, because so few people were in attendance, because the party was one he had instigated, and because his nerves were fraught at the thought of his imminent return to the front had been something he had been uncaring about.

Pamela had been more than uncaring. She had been ecstatic.

With a glass of champagne in her hand and not even glancing in John Jasper’s direction, she had allowed Edward to escort her from the room.

The night had been pleasantly mild, the moon high.

Immediately as they were free of the house, his buoyant mood had collapsed as if pricked by a pin.

“You’ve been a lifesaver tonight, Pamela,” he’d said bleakly, putting his half-empty glass of barley water down on one of the terrace’s glass-topped tables.

“Because of tomorrow? Because of going back to France?” Insensitive as she normally was to what was going on in other people’s heads, she had known that on this occasion it was vitally important that she successfully do so.

“No, and if that sounds bizarre it’s because ghastly though it is out there—so unspeakably ghastly I don’t have words to describe it—I want to be there with my fellow officers, doing my bit. Or as much of my bit as the powers that be are allowing me to do.”

In the moonlight his hair had been the sleekest, palest blond imaginable, the despair in his eyes, as they had met with hers, absolute.

Swiftly she had laid her champagne glass down on the table and lightly touched his arm with her hand.

“Tell me,” she had said tenderly, certain she was living through her finest moment.

He had taken hold of her hand, grasping it tightly. “I’m just not my own man, Pamela.” His voice had been full of the plea to be understood. “As heir to the throne I never will be. There isn’t one major decision in life I can make for myself. Everything is laid down for me for years and years ahead. When the war ends—and it will end with Britain and her allies being victorious and the Hun pounded to a pulp—it’s set in concrete that I will have to marry, whether I want to or not. Then there will be an endless treadmill of the kind of royal duties that would send any sane man screamingly off his head. The terrible truth, Pamela, is that I’m not cut out to be royal. I hate all the endless dressing up. All the fussy ceremonials.”

It had been a confession Pamela had been totally unable to deal with.

She had thought of how she always took all her worries to Tarquin and had said hesitatingly, “What about your father? Does he understand how you feel?”

He’d given a humorless laugh. “My father is a bully who has never understood how
anyone
feels. He even shouts at my mother—and before you ask me if I’ve spoken to the queen about the way I feel, I haven’t. Attempting to talk to my mother would be like attempting to talk to an iceberg.”

That King George and Queen Mary’s relationships with their children left a lot to be desired was something she had understood from Tarquin a long time ago.

She had moved comfortingly closer to him and he had drawn her into his arms, burying his face in her neck.

“Pamela, darling!” His voice had been choked with need. “You’ve no idea how wonderful it was to see you enter the room this evening and for me to know I had someone to be with who would understand me and make me feel better.”

Remembering that he was reputed to be cripplingly shy with women, she had moved her head fractionally, making it easier for him to kiss her.

He had done so with hungry passion, and when he had moved a hand so that it slid inside her plunging neckline and cupped her breast, she had given a small triumphant sigh and had inwardly cursed that he was to leave for London within an hour or two and then—for who knew how long?—for France.

As if reading her thoughts and with his hand still on her breast, he had said urgently, “It’s nearly eleven and I have to leave for London. You will write to me, Pamela, won’t you? And you will be waiting for me when I return?”

It had been like asking the pope if he were a Catholic.

“Yes,” she’d said, keeping glee out of her voice only with the greatest difficulty. “Of course I’ll write to you, and of course I will be waiting for you when you next have leave.”

With her head resting on his shoulder, they had walked back to the house hand in hand and hip to hip.

Within minutes of their reentering the drawing room, Edward had thanked Tarquin and her mother for their hospitality and with a last longing look in her direction had bidden everyone farewell. Then, seated at the back of a big black car, his aide at the wheel, he had disappeared into the night en route for Buckingham Palace.

J
ohn Jasper said again, “How will I ever explain to Oliver—when he is older—if I
don’t
enlist, Pammie?”

She blinked, bringing her thoughts back to the present with difficulty.

“I don’t know, John Jasper.” Any other answer was impossible when it was so obvious that if he was given an opportunity to fight for his country, he would do so.

Later, when he had left the house for the American embassy, she had continued with her own plans for the day in the hope that they would help her forget the monumental step John Jasper was now taking.

At lunchtime she was at the Ritz, meeting up with Cynthia Asquith, whose father, until a few short months ago, had been prime minister. Cynthia knew everything about everyone, and Pamela wanted to know more about Edward’s long-standing friendship with Lady Coke.

“Marian Coke?” Cynthia had adjusted the fox fur around her shoulders and arched an eyebrow that had been plucked almost into extinction. “What is it you want to know about her, Pamela?”

Pamela had taken a sip of deliciously ice-cold Chablis and said, trying to sound as if her interest were only casual, “I know her name has been linked with Prince Edward’s for quite a time now, but it seems so unlikely I did wonder if the rumors were true.”

“That they are lovers?” Cynthia had flashed her a malicious little smile. “It is hard to imagine Marian Coke in the role of an experienced instructor in the art of love, isn’t it? And besides, I always thought ladies of the night were roped in to give that kind of
éducation sentimentale
. Marian, however, certainly used to be Edward’s closest confidante, though whether she still is I really don’t know. Have you heard that Henry Daventry died in Gallipoli? And that Charles Lister, after many woundings, has died in Egypt?”

From then on the conversation had become a depressing roll call of friends, and friends of friends, who had died, and Pamela had been relieved when their lunch together had come to an end.