The Shadow Queen (33 page)

Pamela flung her arms around his neck and gave him an unrestrained kiss on the cheek. “Thank you, dearest Tarquin! You really are the most wonderful stepfather!”

“I’m the most appalling stepfather. The only person I know who has less morals than myself is you.”

She giggled, well aware he was speaking the truth. “That’s why we’ve always got on so well,” she said, removing her arms from around his neck. “My naughtiness amuses you.”

She picked up the fox fur she had carelessly dropped on a sofa when entering the room. “The one thing I don’t understand is why someone as puritanical as King George regards you as a friend.”

“He wasn’t always so puritanical, and I remind him of his Navy days when he was able to kick up his heels. He’s become a bore, I agree, but he is a king and the glamour of kingship is very alluring, Pamela. I like being in its presence. Which is why I’m quite happy to help you further your romance with Prince Edward. For a man of twenty-three I suspect he’s relatively inexperienced. Handle him with care and don’t frighten him off. This is a chance that won’t come again.”

E
dith’s next letter came so hard on the heels of her last one that Pamela’s first thought was that someone must have died. Without taking it to her bedroom to read, she opened it immediately, seeing with alarm that Edith’s pin-neat handwriting had degenerated into a hasty scrawl.

Dearest Pamela
,

You will never ever guess the news I have just received from Humphrey! He says the entire air station at North Island is agog with it! Apparently the reason Wallis’s husband wasn’t sent on active service overseas is that his superior officers have known for a long time that he has a DRINK PROBLEM!

Humphrey says Lieutenant Spencer’s alcoholism has never been a secret on the base, but that as he is such a popular character and, despite his drinking, such a good administrator, it has been something overlooked until now, when the truth about a far worse vice has been revealed
.

Dear Pamela, my hand is shaking as I write this. Lieutenant Earl Winfield Spencer is a WIFE-BEATER!!! Wallis and Win were due to attend a dinner at Commander L. E. Summers’ home and when they didn’t arrive for it, the commander sent an officer to the Spencers’ home. Mrs. Summers, who had a headache, accompanied him in order to get a breath of fresh evening air. When they arrived they could hear Wallis sobbing and had to force a way in. She was alone in the house and TIED TO THE BED!!!

Humphrey says that if it hadn’t been for Mrs. Summers seeing Wallis’s condition—her monster of a husband had beaten her black and blue before leaving her in such a helpless state—the incident would have been hushed up, but Mrs. Summers was so incandescent with rage that now everyone knows about it. Mrs. Summers says there was old bruising as well as new and that this HIDEOUS INCIDENT was not an ISOLATED ONE!

No one now believes Wallis was telling the truth about her black eye. It is quite obvious she received it at the hands of her husband. However, Humphrey says Wallis is being tight-lipped and he thinks she is probably FURIOUS that everyone now knows about her husband’s treatment of her. Wallis always did have a lot of pride, and it isn’t as if she can leave her husband, for where would she go? I feel desperately sorry for her, but can’t write and tell her so because I know she would HATE it that I know how VILE her husband is to her. You were always her very closest friend and I do so wish you still were, for she obviously has absolutely no one to confide in and no one from whom she is willing to accept sympathy
.

Yours in haste, Edith

Pamela sat down on the nearest chair, anger at Wallis’s plight pulsing through every vein in her body. She knew, even better than Edith, that Wallis had no family who either could, or would, help her. Certainly Wallis’s Uncle Sol wouldn’t do so. He would simply view a broken marriage as being a slur on his fine family name. As for Wallis’s mother and her aunt, if her mother was working as a paid hostess in a Washington club, then she certainly wasn’t in a position to help her, and, as Bessie Merryman had given up her Baltimore home in order to become a rich widow’s companion, she couldn’t provide an escape for her either.

If she had still been in America and if they had still been best friends, then she most certainly would have been able to help. She would have taken the train to San Diego and, if Wallis hadn’t been willing to pack her own bags, would have packed them for her. Then she would have taken Wallis back to Baltimore—or Washington or New York—and funded her and stood by her while she got a divorce and rebuilt her life.

But she wasn’t still in America, and they weren’t still best friends.

The siren signaling a Zeppelin raid wailed ominously into life, and as members of her household staff scurried toward the kitchen in order to take shelter under its massive scoured work-table, she made her way into the dining room to take a similar precaution, though under polished mahogany and in dignified isolation.

“
…  
A
nd so I’m going to squire you to Maud Kerr-Smiley’s party tomorrow night, and then afterward, darling Pamela, we will finally have some time on our own together.”

F
or the first time since their last meeting, Edward’s contact with her wasn’t by letter, but by telephone. Even more thrillingly, he was less than a quarter of a mile away, at Buckingham Palace.

Maud Kerr-Smiley was the wife of an MP, Peter Kerr-Smiley, and someone she knew socially, though not very well. That Edward had chosen to spend the early part of their reunion evening at a party given by Maud surprised but didn’t faze her. It didn’t really matter where the early part of the evening was spent. It was their dinner à deux later—and what would happen after it—that was important.

She spent the entire day preparing for the evening with the single-mindedness of a soldier preparing for battle. She was lavish with the perfumed oil she poured into her bathwater. When she patted herself dry, she smoothed a mixture of glycerin oil and rose water over every inch of her body. The silk, lace-trimmed lingerie she chose to wear was the most exquisite she possessed, and the gown her maid helped her step into was a Poiret-inspired creation of flame-colored chiffon embroidered with crystals.

Her hair had always been her crowning glory and was the reason that, though it was now fashionable to do so, she hadn’t yet had it bobbed. Carefully her maid combed the torrent of golden waves softly back over her ears and into a heavy knot at the nape of her neck. Pamela clipped pearl drop earrings to her ears, surveyed herself in the mirror, and liked what she saw.

Her cat-green eyes were emphasized by beautifully arched eyebrows. She had lightly smeared Vaseline on her eyelids, and her eyelashes were enhanced by the latest cosmetic: cake mascara. She wore a light dusting of powder on her flawless pale skin, and her lipstick was the exact flame color of her gown.

As she sprayed herself lightly with a perfume perfect for the mood she hoped to invoke in Edward, she sensed, rather than heard, his chauffeur-driven car arrive.

Putting down her perfume spray, she pressed a hand hard against her stomach to still the butterflies fluttering there.

A few moments later the front doorbell rang.

Her butler, who had been primed to expect a royal guest, answered it and, moments later, was announcing, “His Royal Highness, Prince Edward.”

It was then Pamela realized that after their long correspondence, she hadn’t a clue as to how she should address him. Normal etiquette was to address a royal prince initially as “Your Royal Highness” and then afterward as “sir.”

In their letters she had, at his request, addressed him as Edward and he had addressed her as “My Angel,” “My Darling Angel,” or “Darling Pamela,” which would make now addressing him formally seem very odd.

Nevertheless, “Your Royal Highness” was what she decided was her safest bet.

He corrected her instantly. “Edward,” he said, taking her into his arms before she even had the chance to curtsey, and giving her a deep passionate kiss.

She had forgotten how slightly built he was and that in height he was only five feet five, or, at most, five feet six. While responding to him with ardor, she was conscious of only two things. One was that she should have worn shoes with much lower heels, and the second was that despite being his “Angel,” she still wasn’t being invited to call him David.

The Kerr-Smileys lived in nearby Belgrave Square, and when they arrived Peter Kerr-Smiley was at the front door to receive his royal guest, while his wife was at the foot of the staircase, ready to lead Prince Edward into the drawing room where all her other guests were awaiting his arrival.

That Prince Edward had brought a guest of his own with him was unsurprising to the Kerr-Smileys, but that his guest was Mrs. John Jasper Bachman, not Marian, Lady Coke, was a surprise so huge that both of them had to struggle hard to hide it.

It was a moment Pamela reveled in. Even better was the moment when she and Edward stepped into the drawing room together and an entire roomful of high society’s finest instantly registered the nature of her relationship with him.

Edward hated formality, and the party soon became quite riotous. Lots of champagne was being drunk—though not by Edward, who, Pamela had long ago realized, was surprisingly abstemious. There was, however, lots of laughter and lots of dancing. Edward was a very good dancer—and so was she. His good manners decreed that he also took care to dance with his hostess, but immediately afterward he returned to her side, whispering in her ear: “Let’s show everyone how to do a proper tango, Pamela darling.”

To a storm of applause they did so, and it was then that the Zeppelin-raid sirens sounded.

The room immediately fell silent, with no one knowing quite how to react and no one wanting to show nervousness in Edward’s presence.

“Trust a bloody Zep to try and spoil my first night home,” Edward said lightly, breaking the tension. “As I’m sure Maud doesn’t have enough tables to shelter us all, I vote we just carry on enjoying ourselves.”

The tension eased. Another record was put on the gramophone. Dancing began again, albeit a little nervously, and as it did, there came the sound of urgent knocking on the front door.

“Someone’s looking for shelter,” Peter Kerr-Smiley said, heading out of the room to find out to whom his butler was about to open the door.

“Considering the number our fighter planes have brought down, I’m surprised the Germans are still persisting with Zeppelin raids,” Edward said confidentially to Pamela as they took a rest after their energetic tango. “They cause panic, of course, and that’s where they score as a weapon of war, but they are very unstable. Once an incendiary bullet, fired from either a fighter plane or ground-based antiaircraft gun, pierces a Zep, it ignites the hydrogen gas it’s filled with and it immediately becomes a giant ball of fire. I’ve never seen one crash to the ground in flames, but it must be a spectacular sight.”

Pamela was too busy thinking of where the present Zep, if ignited into a ball of flame, might land, to make a reply to him.

It was then that Peter Kerr-Smiley reentered the drawing room with an olive-skinned, well-dressed man, and a petite, very pretty woman swathed in fur.

“Orphans seeking shelter,” Peter Kerr-Smiley said to the room in general as he led his two uninvited and very unexpected guests across the room in order to introduce them to his royal guest of honor.

By the time they reached Edward, the woman had shed both her hat and her coat. Without the coat she looked even more petite and delicately boned. She also looked to be no more than twenty-two or twenty-three, and whatever fright she had felt at finding herself in an exposed position in Belgrave Square with a Zeppelin raid in the offing, she had quickly recovered from it. She had bright, dark, laughing eyes. Her bobbed hair was dark, too—so dark that beneath the light of the chandeliers it shone blue-black.

“May I introduce Mrs. Dudley Ward, sir?” Peter Kerr-Smiley said to Edward.

Mrs. Dudley Ward dipped a charming curtsey, and Pamela sensed Edward’s body stiffen. It was as if he had been struck by an unseen physical force.

She looked swiftly toward him, but even as Peter Kerr-Smiley was introducing Mr. Buster Domingues, Mrs. Dudley Ward’s escort, to him, Edward’s entire attention was rooted on Mrs. Dudley Ward, whose laughter-filled eyes were holding his without the least trace of shyness or awe.

“Would you do me the honor of dancing a quickstep with me?” she heard Edward say to her and registered that when Mrs. Dudley Ward replied to him, her voice was as husky and as fragile-sounding as her looks.

As Edward danced away from her, Mrs. Dudley Ward in his arms, Pamela was sickeningly aware of three things.