His Majesty's Marriage

steal.’

‘That’s not true,’ he said harshly. ‘I always meant to pay you for those letters, but I was afraid you might have copies, or keep some back.’

‘Oh, boy, you were really thorough, weren’t you? You even tried my bank. But I don’t have a safety deposit box, as I gather the manager told you. Of course, there are a lot more banks to try. Who knows what I might be hiding in some little out-of-the-way branch-?’

‘Stop!’ he said harshly. ‘I deserve all you say of me, but let me tell you the truth-’

‘You don’t deal in truth. You’re a king; you have other priorities. You as good as warned me about that, and I ignored it because-’ She choked suddenly. He reached for her but she turned away quickly, throwing up her hands. ‘Because I’m a fool.’

‘No, because you love me, as I love you.’

‘Oh, please!’ she cried. Then her manner changed, became formal. ‘Your Majesty can abandon those tactics now. They’ve served their purpose very nicely.’

‘That’s enough,’ he shouted, seizing her shoulders and giving her a little shake. She tried to pull away but he tightened his hands. ‘No, you’re going to listen to me. I may not deserve it, but you’re going to.’

She stood still in his hands, her eyes burning. ‘Get it over with, then. It’ll be a relief to us both to be done with this.’

‘Everything you say was true about me in the beginning. I didn’t treat you well. I mistrusted you, I deceived you, I lured you here and I had you burgled. I thought you were an adventuress and that was the only safe way to deal with you. I’m not proud of it, but I thought it was necessary.

‘I was wrong. I came to realise that you weren’t as I’d thought. I called my people in London and pulled them off the job.’

‘Except that they’d already been through my house by then.’

‘Unfortunately, yes. I did what I could. I was in love with you by that time. I tried to tell you about this the day you left, to prepare you. But I lost my nerve. I prayed that you’d never find out how I’d behaved, and that you and I could make a new and honest beginning.’

‘But you planned to hide the truth about what you’d done. How honest is that?’

‘Not very,’ he admitted. ‘But I was afraid. I couldn’t face the thought of losing you.’

She didn’t relent. ‘The King is never afraid,’ she said. ‘You should remember that.’

‘I’m afraid now,’ he said quietly. ‘More afraid than I’ve ever been in my life. At one time I couldn’t have admitted to fear, but now I can. You did that for me. Now I see us drawing further apart and I don’t know how to stop it.’

‘There is no way to stop it,’ she said wretchedly. ‘And I don’t want to.’

‘Don’t say that.’ In an instant his fingers were over her lips, trying to silence the terrible words. But she shook herself free.

‘It’s too late,’ she said fiercely. ‘And you don’t have to bother any more because I’ve got what you wanted. Here!’ Near her on the floor stood a large canvas bag with two leather handles. She dumped it on the table between them and pulled it open to reveal the contents. Daniel stared at the mountain of papers within. ‘There they are,’ Lizzie said. ‘Take them, and then we need never see each other again.’

‘What-are these?’

‘Alphonse’s letters.’

‘You had them all the time?’

‘No. Only since yesterday. “Liz” gave them to me.’

‘But she’s been dead for years.’

‘No. Dame Elizabeth has been dead for years, but she wasn’t “Liz”. We’ve all been barking up the wrong tree. It was Bess all the time.

‘Her name is Elizabeth too, and people used to call her Liz for short. But Auntie ordered her to change it, because it was confusing to have a Liz and a Lizzie. So she became Bess, and of course I never knew her as anything else. But your grandfather did. She was always “Liz” to him. Look.’

She opened her purse and took out a picture. It was about ten years old, an amateurish family shot, showing the teenage Lizzie with the actress, standing haughtily, every inch the grande dame. Standing just behind them was a thin little woman with slightly untidy hair. Her dress was nondescript, her face was bare, its only adornment a cheerful smile. Daniel stared at her in disbelief.

‘But she’s-’

‘Exactly,’ Lizzie said. ‘She’s nothing to look at. Not beautiful or glamorous, not a titled lady or a star, not at all the sort of woman you’d expect to be a king’s mistress. And she was his mistress. His letters leave no doubt of it.

‘She was a servant, illegitimate, and in his world she’d have been called a nobody. But she has a great, generous spirit, and she was the love of his life.

‘She’s kept her secret all these years. But now she’s dying, and when she had that attack she called me home so that she could give me these. She said I could do whatever I liked with them. So here they are. Take them, and forget I exist. You’ve got all you ever really wanted from me.’

In a daze Daniel began to draw the letters out, recognising his grandfather’s handwriting even though there was something subtly different about it. It was larger, freer, and Alphonse, a man of few words, had covered endless sheets of paper, as though pouring out a soul.

Daniel went through one letter after another, glancing at each briefly, just long enough to still the last of his doubts.

‘What did she say when she gave them to you?’ he asked.

When there was no reply he looked up and found himself alone. Lizzie had gone.

Hurriedly he went out into the corridor, but it too was empty. A dreadful suspicion sent him to the window. She must have had a cab waiting all the time, he realised. All that could be seen of it now was the rear vanishing down the long avenue, until it reached the huge wrought-iron gates.

There was still time to stop her. All he had to do was call the gatekeeper. He reached for the telephone, but then checked himself. The habit of command was strong, but right now a command would lose him everything. Whatever he might say, she did not want to hear.

He stayed motionless, undecided, and as he watched the iron gates opened, the car went through, turned and vanished from sight.

CHAPTER SIX

IT WAS very quiet in the King’s private rooms. The great clock in the corner silently proclaimed midnight, and the only sound was the rustling of paper on the big table that had been cleared of everything else. Outside the door Frederick sat with orders to permit nobody to disturb Daniel.

Nothing in his life had ever been so important as what he was doing now, fitting together the letters that had passed between two people for thirty years, until one of them had been cruelly struck down so that he could not even utter his beloved’s name. It was more than a correspondence. It was a testimony of powerful, enduring love that awed him as he read.

Lizzie had said there was no doubt that they had been lovers in every sense of the word, and Daniel had already discerned as much from the ‘Liz’ letters. Yet they were relatively restrained. Alphonse’s were totally frank. He had loved this woman with his heart, his soul and his great, vigorous body. He had loved her fiercely, sexually, without false modesty or pride, and she had stimulated him to ignore his advancing years and love her with the urgent desire of a much younger man. Daniel, no prude, found himself blushing at some passages.

Yet this in itself was not the greatest surprise. That had come with the discovery that his grandfather, a strictly traditional man where ‘a woman’s place’ was concerned, had turned to Liz for advice. As time passed she had become more than his lover. She had been his counsellor.

Suddenly Daniel grew still. His own name had leapt out at him from the paper.