Palace Circle Part 3

She remained where she was sitting.

The door opened and their eyes met in the mirror.

He smiled and closed the door behind him. "I take it you've recovered from your headache," he said, walking toward her, undoing his tie. "It was a great shame it attacked when it did. Sylvia was most concerned."

She didn't believe that for a moment, but she said, surprised at how steady her voice was, "I didn't have a headache, Ivor. I left the ball because I'd had a shock."

"A shock?" He tossed the bow tie onto her dressing table and said, intrigued, "What kind of a shock?"

"The other day when you left in a hurry for the palace, you forgot to take your appointments diary with you. I picked it up, intending to run after you to give you it, and a photograph fell from it. I thought it was a photograph of Olivia and that despite us being so happy together you were still grieving for her. But tonight... tonight I realized the photograph wasn't of Olivia. It was of Sylvia."

"I have photographs of lots of my close friends in and among my personal possessions, Delia. The photograph I have of Sylvia isn't one that need cause you concern."

Not rising from the vanity stool she turned around to face him. "There was a very personal message on the back of the photograph," she said, her voice no longer so steady. "It said, 'All my love, darling Ivor, is for you and you alone.'"

She waited.

A pulse began to throb at the corner of his jaw.

She licked lips that were suddenly dry and said, "And so ... and so I know that she was once your mistress and though I wish that you had told me so ... and that you hadn't arranged for her to present me at court... I do understand. Or at least I think I understand."

Despite his sophistication he had the look of a man who was cornered, who couldn't decide on what was the best course of action. With sudden certainty she knew she had to a.s.sure him she wasn't going to let Sylvia destroy their happiness. She had to let him know that she was mature enough to understand.

Speaking very fast, she said, "My uncle Ellis Chandler was widowed when in his early forties and he almost immediately began a most unsuitable relations.h.i.+p with a showgirl from White Sulphur Springs. One of my aunts was very angry but my mother told her that it was simply Ellis's way of coping with his grief. And so I know that unsuitable affairs are something newly widowed men often have."

Instead of being grateful for the allowances she was trying to make for him, he said explosively, "For G.o.d's sake, Delia! Sylvia isn't a White Sulphur Springs showgirl! And there is no similarity whatsoever between me and your uncle!"

It was so very much the opposite of what she had expected, that she gasped.

He rubbed the back of his neck in a sharp, convulsive movement and when he had regained control of himself, said tautly, "I'm sorry, Delia. I shouldn't have spoken like that. And I'm very, very sorry that I've been unfair to you."

"Unfair to me?" The conversation was veering so far from the course she had expected it to take, that she felt dizzy. "Unfair to me in what way, Ivor?"

"Unfair in that I married you without telling you of my commitment to Sylvia."

"Your past commitment," she said, her voice so strained she barely recognized it. "Surely you mean your past commitment, Ivor?"

He shook his head and panic bubbled in her throat. Vainly trying to see things from his point of view, she said, "I understand what a shock our marriage must have been to Sylvia, Ivor. And I understand that because of your friends.h.i.+p with her before your relations.h.i.+p changed, you feel that you still have some kind of commitment to her, but-"

"No, Delia." The expression in his eyes was one of deep regret for the hurt he was about to cause. "Sylvia and I were never merely friends."

She blinked, bewildered. "I don't understand."

"We were always lovers," he said and then, as if unable to bear the pain in Delia's eyes, he turned away from her and walked across to the window.

She didn't speak. Couldn't speak.

He lifted the curtain aside and looked out. "We've been lovers since before my marriage to Olivia. Since before Sylvia's marriage to Jerome." He let the curtain fall and turned toward her again. "I would have told you when we'd been married for a little longer, when you had gained a little sophistication and come to understand how things are in my world."

"You married me when you were in love with someone else?" She felt at the edge of a bottomless abyss. "You married me without loving me?"

"It's true I had an ulterior motive when I asked you to marry me, but that doesn't mean I don't love you, Delia. In my own way, I do. You're a joy to look at and a joy to be with-and you amuse me immeasurably."

She was falling now. "But I'm not your soul mate." Against her fiery hair her face was deathly white. "Sylvia is your soul mate. You love her more than you love me."

"I love her differently." He paused, seeking for words. "She's my intellectual equal," he said at last. "And for twenty years we've been bound together. It's a situation that has to be accepted, Delia."

Her heart drummed against her breastbone. Of all the seenarios she had imagined when on her way home with Jerome, none had been as terrible as this.

"And you won't give her up?"

He shook his head. "No. I'm sorry."

She wanted to fly at him, claw his face, scream at him that he had to give Sylvia up; but she didn't do so. She was too numb with shock-and besides, she knew it would be of no use. In the short time they had been married she had come to realize that beneath Ivor's suave charm there was a side to him that was absolutely implacable. Tears, scenes, and demands would always fail to move him.

She realized that he was giving her a choice. She could accept her position-a newly married woman whose husband had a long-standing mistress-or she could refuse. And refusing would mean eventual divorce.

With such a choice, there was no real choice at all.

She was going to have to make the best of the hand fate had dealt her, but it wouldn't be the Delia Ivor had married who would do so, the loving, trusting, carelessly happy, naive Delia. It would be a new Delia. A hardened Delia. A Delia well able to hold her own in the glittering, cynical, amoral world she had been plunged into.

"There are just two things I want to know," she said, as all her wonderful castles in the air tumbled to the ground. "If you have loved Sylvia since before your marriage to Olivia, and before her marriage to Jerome, why didn't you marry her?"

He took a silver cigar tube from the inside pocket of his black tailcoat and removed the cigar from it. "Olivia was the only daughter of the Duke of Rothenbury," he said, cutting the end off the cigar with the cigar cutter attached to his watch chain. "Sylvia's father, though a millionaire, was in commerce-not that many people now remember that. The distinction was one that mattered to me at the time. What is the second thing you would like to know?"

She began to shake, not knowing how it was possible to feel such pain and live. "You said you had an ulterior motive in marrying me." It was all she could do to force the words past her lips. "What was it?"

He lit his cigar and blew a plume of blue smoke upward.

"I wanted an heir," he said simply. "And I still do."

Time wavered and halted and would, she knew, never be the same again.

She remembered the time at Sans Souci when her father had said of her aunt Rose's hopes of catching Ivor, "When Conisborough marries again it will be to a woman much younger than Rose. He'll want an heir and, because of his age, he'll want one fast."

She thought of all the times he had made love to her so pa.s.sionately. Had it always been only because of his need of an heir? She knew that she would never know-and that she would never know in the future, either.

The one thing she could be certain of was that he didn't love her in the way she deserved to be loved-and that her heart was broken.

FOUR.

"I think I'll wear the Poiret embroidered gold silk tonight, El-lie. It's only four weeks until Christmas and it will make me feel suitably festive."

"s.h.i.+bden will soon be looking suitably festive as well, my lady," Ellie said chattily as she opened the doors of Delia's vast armoire to take out the evening gown. "The head gardener always sees to it that there's an enormous fir tree in the hall and when Lady Olivia was alive, all the staff were allowed to help decorate it."

"Were they?" Delia continued opening an array of jewelry boxes. "That's interesting. I didn't know that."

"I don't suppose his lords.h.i.+p thought to mention it, my lady." Ellie laid the gown on the bed. "Everyone always enjoyed it very much, though."

Her meaning was clear and Delia didn't disappoint her. "If it has become a tradition it is one I shall keep," she said, trying to decide between an emerald necklace and a diamond one. "Do you know if the prime minister has arrived yet?"

"He arrived about fifteen minutes ago, my lady." Ellie helped her into the dress. "Mrs. Asquith is in her room, attended by her maid. His lords.h.i.+p and the prime minister are having a private conversation in the Blue Room."

Delia breathed in as Ellie fastened the gown's tiny hooks and eyes, not remotely surprised that Ellie knew the exact whereabouts of the evening's most important guests. "And Sir Cuthbert and Lady Digby?"

"Still in their room. Parkinson said that when he arrived Sir Cuthbert looked a little tired."

Parkinson was s.h.i.+bden Hall's butler and, like Ellie, missed nothing.

"And most of the other guests?" Though Delia had hosted weekend house parties before at s.h.i.+bden Hall, this was the first the prime minister had attended and she was anxious that everything run smoothly. The last thing she wanted was for someone to cancel.

"Yes, my lady."

"And the d.a.m.nyankee?"

Ellie grinned, knowing that though Delia often used the expression in a derogatory way, in this case she was using it with deep affection. "No. The d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough has a reputation for lateness."

"Ah, well. There ain't n.o.body like her for niceness and so her faults can be easily overlooked." It wasn't often now that Delia's speech lapsed into a Virginian drawl, but when it did it always made Ellie laugh.

She giggled as Delia handed her the emerald necklace.

"And Sir Jerome and Lady Bazeljette?" she asked as Ellie fastened the necklace around her throat, not betraying by a flicker what it cost her to utter Lady Bazeljette's name.

"Not yet, my lady."

Delia fastened her emerald pendant earrings, knowing there was not the slightest chance of Sylvia forgoing a weekend at s.h.i.+bden.

It was an issue she and Ivor had fought about. "She didn't visit s.h.i.+bden when Olivia was alive," she had said furiously. "I know, because Jerome mentioned to me that he was never invited here, and though he fudged the reason, it can only have been because Olivia put her foot down."

"And she could get away with it because she was a duke's daughter," said Ivor. "You, sweetheart, can't pull the same rank. And if she isn't invited here by you, it will cause just the kind of gossip you are so anxious to avoid."

No longer in awe of him, she had thrown a book at his head.

Such scenes were blessedly rare, partly because they were together far less than she had imagined. This was not because his time was spent with Sylvia but because as financial adviser to the King his workload was a heavy one.

The necessity of having to adjust with great rapidity to a life centered at court and among the royal set had given Delia little time to brood. First there had been her presentation. She had insisted Ivor make known to Sylvia her awareness that she was his mistress and that, though she realized she had no option but to be presented at court by her, she had no intention of speaking to her on the subject, then or ever.

This he had done and, from then on, whenever they met there was no trace of condescending amus.e.m.e.nt in Sylvia's violet-dark eyes. Instead, beneath a veneer of exquisite politeness, there was a frosty hauteur which Delia returned in full measure.

The presentation had been her baptism by fire, but she had survived it magnificently. After that, nothing held any terrors, not even the awesome coronation. In her crimson and ermine robe she had looked-and felt-so grand, she had doubted if anyone in Virginia would be able to recognize her. The length of the gown's train and the width of the ermine on it denoted rank and, as a viscountess, her train was one-and-a-quarter yards long, the ermine two inches wide. That Sylvia Bazeljette's train was far shorter and the ermine trim far narrower gave her a stab of satisfaction.

Three weeks after the coronation, she and Ivor had been in attendance at the invest.i.ture of Edward, Prince of Wales, at Caernarfon Castle. It had been another occasion of medieval ceremony with the seventeen-year-old golden-haired prince looking almost like a child beneath the weight of his robes and fleur-de-lis-decorated crown.

She had been so enraptured by the spectacle she had clutched Ivor's arm, saying breathlessly, "Oh, isn't it a cracking occasion, Ivor! I'm so glad I'm here!"

He had patted her hand and smiled down at her and it was almost as it had been before she had known of his infidelity. Almost, but-to her continuing distress-not quite.

She now took a last look at herself in the three-way mirror and liked what she saw. Emeralds were perfect with her flame-red hair and the gold silk was so seductive on her youthful body she couldn't imagine anyone, even Sylvia, outs.h.i.+ning her.

There was a knock at the door and Ellie opened it to Gwen.

"Darling, nearly everyone is gathered in the drawing room and it's time for you to make an appearance," she said as she swept in, her angular frame resplendent in an evening gown of beaded gray silk, a pearl-and-diamond necklace hanging to her waist. "I've just seen Margot Asquith and she's looking very dramatic, but then she always does. She was wearing a full-length scarlet cloak when she arrived. You will remember that her Christian name is p.r.o.nounced without the t, won't you? I only mention it because I'm sure you are nervous and Americans do have such trouble with English names. Pugh once had his name p.r.o.nounced Pug by the American amba.s.sador. I believe he quite lost control, thundering, 'Pew! Pew!' until someone brought him a very large brandy."

Delia chuckled. "I'm not surprised my countryman was stumped. The difference between the spelling and p.r.o.nunciation of some names is enough to give anyone a headache. Unless you heard Cholmondeley and Dalziel and Geoghegan spoken, you'd never know how to say them. And I'm not nervous, Gwen. Truly."

Gwen c.o.c.ked her head to one side. "No, you're not, are you? For a girl so young you really do have the most enormous self-composure as well as the most delightful vivacity. You are becoming a great social a.s.set to Ivor-and he knows it."

"Does he?" Delia quirked an eyebrow and then, arm in arm with her sister-in-law, she walked downstairs to meet her guests.

There were twenty at dinner. The prime minister and Mrs. Asquith. The Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Girlington. Consuelo, d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough. The Earl and Countess of Denby. Gwen and her husband. Sir Cuthbert and Lady Digby. Lord Curzon. Mrs. Marie Belloc Lowndes, a renowned novelist and a close friend of Margot Asquith's. Winston Churchill, first lord of the admiralty, and his wife, Clementine. Sir John Simon, solicitor-general. And Sir Jerome and Lady Bazeljette.

As Delia took her place opposite Ivor at the head of the table, he flashed her one of his rare smiles and she knew he was pleased with the way she looked and at her social confidence.

Within minutes, Sylvia began an argument. Well aware that Marie Belloc Lowndes was a committed supporter of the suffragettes and that Ivor and the majority of the other guests, particularly the prime minister, Lord Curzon, and Mr. Churchill were against the movement, Sylvia said sweetly, "I understand you took part in the last Votes for Women march dressed as Queen Boadicea. Was it not rather chilly for you, Marie?"

"I wasn't bare-breasted, Sylvia." Marie took a sip of her wine. "And if you are hoping to embarra.s.s me, you've failed."

Mr. Asquith, whose government was refusing to give way to suffragette pressure, cleared his throat.

His wife, who was tired of having the windows at 10 Downing Street smashed, and certain the suffragettes meant to cause her husband bodily harm, intervened raspingly. "Really, Sylvia. Isn't it enough that we have to contend with suffragette nonsense in our public lives without having it made an issue at house parties as well?"

Sylvia, wearing a glittering black off-the-shoulder gown, shrugged carelessly and Delia saw her eyes meet Ivor's.

She felt a rush of anger, certain the remark had been said not in order to embarra.s.s Marie but to lure Delia into making comments that would infuriate Ivor and distance her from the Asquiths.

She admired the suffragettes hugely and avoiding Sylvia's trap was an agony; but just when she thought she couldn't bear it for another minute, the first lord of the admiralty ignored the very broad hint that the subject should be dropped, by saying pugnaciously, "Women don't need the vote. Not when their fathers, husbands, and brothers can represent their views."

"But do they?" Viola Girlington lifted her naked shoulder expressively from a sea of indigo tulle. "Girlington doesn't represent my views." She looked across the table to where her husband was seated between Consuelo Marlborough and Clementine Churchill. "In fact, I'm not sure he knows them," she said, the amus.e.m.e.nt in her voice taking the sting from her words. "As for dearest Marie dressing as Queen Boadicea, the image is one I would love to sculpt."

"And I'd love for you to do so," Jerome said, "especially if the representation was bare-breasted."

There was general laughter and, as Viola was a serious artist of exceptional talent, the conversation veered away from women's suffrage and toward the arts.

Jerome caught Delia's eye and he gave her a discreet wink, indicating he well knew that she had exercised restraint only to avoid giving Sylvia satisfaction.

As the footmen cleared away the first course, she determined to join the Women's Social and Political Union as soon as she could. If Ivor didn't like it-which he wouldn't-then he could just go whistle.

Consuelo changed the subject by saying in her gentle voice, "Do you know that Lord Croomb's bride-to-be is an American?" She smiled at Delia. "We Americans are no longer going to be a minority on this side of the Atlantic."

"I understand the bride is worth millions and the groom is land-rich and cash-strapped," Sylvia said with a throaty laugh, turning toward George Curzon, who was seated on her right. "Which surely makes the arrangement more of a business merger than a marriage."

There was more laughter, but Consuelo didn't laugh and, knowing that her mother had forced her into her marriage purely for the t.i.tle and that on the marriage the duke had collected millions of dollars in railroad stock from Consuelo's father, Delia didn't laugh either. She was fond of Consuelo and knew that she was desperately unhappy.