Prince Of Secrets. Paula Marshall
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do you?’ asked Dinah, smiling and bowing at those whom she knew as they moved through the press of people.
‘Who?’ he asked, although he knew whom she meant, and was surprised by her acute understanding. He thought that, like himself, she probably possessed the uncomfortable gift of reading people accurately.
‘Sir Ratcliffe. I don’t like him. I didn’t like the way he looked at me.’
‘I didn’t like the way he looked at you, either,’ he told her frankly. ‘A man to avoid, my dear.’
Dinah was equally frank. ‘He gives me goose-pimples. Oh, hello, Violet. How odd and time-wasting that we have to go through all this polite palaver with people with whom we have already spent the day, just as though we were meeting them for the first time after years apart.’
Violet said briskly and nastily, ‘Don’t waste your clever remarks on me, Dinah. Save them for others. Not the Prince, he doesn’t like clever women.’
‘Fortunately I like clever women,’ Cobie murmured in Dinah’s ear, in case she was overset, which she wasn’t. He was bowing to Violet now, and saying all the right things. Reluctantly, Violet approved of him. He seemed to have an instinct which allowed him to be as exactly proper as the occasion demanded.
Kenilworth had once said that Grant was almost too good to be true. No one, and particularly no American, ought to be so civilised, so well seen, so athletic, so exactly everything a man ought to be. It was perhaps as well, Violet thought, that he couldn’t know what a tiger Cobie Grant was in bed—and now Dinah was getting the benefit of that. But she didn’t look particularly mauled, so perhaps she wasn’t.
Then, as they moved away from her, to do their duty to the other guests, before sitting down before one of the tea trolleys, Violet saw Cobie bend his head to say something to his wife. She saw Dinah turn to look up at him and give him such a smile that sexual jealousy had Violet in its thrall. Oh, yes, Dinah was getting the benefit, all right—and the parlour maid’s language which Violet used to herself was symbolic of the shock she was feeling.
Cobie had earlier told Dinah that she would have few rivals among the women present. She had teased him gently, saying that he thought so because she was his wife, and must therefore automatically be a nonpareil—as he was. Had she known of both Susanna’s and Violet’s reaction to her appearance and her manner, she would have known that he was speaking the truth.
They had barely sat down before the Prince and his wife arrived, and they all jumped to their feet to acknowledge the Royal presence.
Dinah was to discover that this strange mixture of Royal protocol and informality was typical of their Sandringham visit.
Later, after they had spent a leisurely hour over tea, she and Cobie retired to their rooms.
‘Now what do we do?’ she asked him comically, once they were alone together.
‘Well,’ he told her gravely, ‘I understand that if you are to be absolutely comme il faut in the drawing room by half past eight, you must immediately send for Hortense and Pearson and set them to dressing you. Whilst Giles and I must attend to the business of making me look suitable to honour the Prince’s dinner table.’
Dinah stared at him in disbelief. ‘Who told you that? It can’t possibly take us the next two hours—that must be nonsense.’
‘Violet did me the honour of putting me in the know, as she called it. She and Kenilworth come to Sandringham at least twice each autumn and winter for the shooting. We are a little early for that, so we must find other means of entertainment. The Prince, as you know, occasionally takes his with Violet. At the court of eighteenth-century France she would probably have been known as “la maitresse en titre”.’
Dinah smiled. ‘I suppose that translates as the King’s Prime Mistress, rather along the lines of a female Prime Minister. Do you really wish to live this idle life, Cobie?’
Her question was a serious one this time, and he answered her equally seriously. ‘Not really as a permanent thing, but, for the moment, it is a new experience. I have other major interests, and in time you will share them with me. But, for the moment, we are engaged in experiencing high society and Royal favour. Oh, and by the by, I ought to warn you that the Prince’s dinner-party usually consists of twelve courses, so don’t eat too much of the earlier ones.’
‘Violet being your informant again, I suppose. I must say, she does have her uses.’
‘True, and the dining table is arranged strictly according to precedence so I am hoping that you and I don’t end up having to eat our meal in the kitchen, seeing that we are an American peasant and his wife.’
He said this gravely, but, as usual, she took his comic meaning.
Later he came into her room where Hortense and Pearson had just finished dressing her. He was already immaculately turned out—a tribute to Giles’s art. He had difficulty in not laughing out aloud when he saw her evening gown. It was a dream of a thing in white, cut with artful simplicity to improve her figure and decorated only—in a saucy reference to her nickname as The English Snowdrop—with tiny silk flowers. The largest bunch of them was on the green sash which circled her narrow waist.
She had ordered it in secret and Cobie had not seen it until he had walked in a few minutes ago. Her reward was to be favoured with one of his wicked grins, rarely offered to anyone.
‘If you are trying to make Violet jealous, you could hardly have done better,’ was his comment. This, plus a careful kiss on the cheek, designed not to disturb her fashionable splendour, was sufficient reward for her. After that, once she had entered the drawing room, the admiration on the faces of the men, and the annoyance on the women’s, were merely icing on her cake. To have pleased and surprised her unflappable husband was, she considered, an achievement in itself!
They sat apart at dinner, but he could see her down the table smiling and talking to her companions, and thought what a long way she had come in such a short time. She was obviously enjoying herself, and had taken his hint about not eating too much to begin with.
He watched her again, when she left with the ladies, and then his attention was drawn by the Prince, who, having lighted his cigar, was demanding that when they returned to the ladies, Cobie would play for them on his guitar.
‘You have brought it with you, eh, Grant?’
It was remarkable how charming this fat and middle-aged man could be when he chose. He was neither clever, nor learned, but he understood men and women. He knew what motivated them, he liked the things they liked, and his popularity stemmed from that. The crowds who gathered round his carriage shouting ‘Good old Teddy’ did so because they could see that he shared a common humanity with them. Cobie felt himself responding to it.
‘Sir, you commanded, and I had but to obey.’
The Prince’s glance at him was sharp and shrewd. ‘I should make you one of my courtiers, Grant. You are so much the master of the done thing.’
Cobie smiled, ‘My pleasure, sir.’
He could see his unacknowledged uncle, Sir Alan Dilhorne, smiling at him, and Van Deusen, well fed and rubicund, was winking at him over his cigar.
‘Don’t smoke, do you, Grant? These cigars are excellent. You should try one.’
‘Smoking spoils the voice, sir. I wish to do you—and myself—justice, later, so you will excuse me, I hope.’
Later turned out to be some time later. By the time they joined the women, who were sitting like so many swans, their arms so long and lovely, their heads so proud, many of the men had already over-indulged, Sir Ratcliffe among them.
Cobie called to him the hovering footman who was holding his guitar and retrieved it. The Prince was standing, so everyone else stood. He waved a hand, said, ‘Sit, sit,’ and then sat himself, so that everyone else could.
‘Mr Grant is to entertain us,’ he announced. ‘A Royal Command