Chapter One
The Lord Chamberlain is commanded
by Their Majesties to summon
Mrs. Neville Chamberlain
Miss Valerie de Vere Cole
To a Court at Buckingham Palace
On Wednesday the 15th March 1939 at 9:30 o’clock P.M.
Miss Valerie de Vere Cole presented by Mrs. Neville Chamberlain,” Lord Clarendon, the Lord Chamberlain, announced in his baritone voice. The Life Guards Band continued playing in the Buckingham Palace ballroom but the conversation beneath the music stilled. Hundreds of debutantes in their white court dresses with the required eighteen-inch train watched from the red velvet benches against the gilded walls. Their matron sponsors were perched beside them in a cluster of family tiaras and Molyneux dresses waiting for Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s niece to curtsey to the monarchs.
After four weeks of curtsey lessons and dress fittings, the moment was finally here, and Valerie couldn’t move.
Lord Clarendon cleared his throat, the gold oak leaf embroidery on his blue coat as crisp as his glare when Valerie didn’t step forward. Gentlemen in military uniforms mingled behind the line of Gentlemen at Arms standing guard in the center of the room and whispered to one another about the pause. Valerie had interrupted the seamless procession of debutantes and everyone had noticed. She still couldn’t make her feet move.
Why the devil did I decide to do this? I don’t belong here. She wore the required Prince of Wales ostrich-feather headdress and a demure strand of pearls like the other girls but she wasn’t one of them. Her late father, Horace de Vere Cole, had seen to that. If she stepped in front of this crowd someone was sure to announce that she didn’t belong. Behind her, the court page in his red and gold Buckingham Palace livery fussed with Valerie’s train, kind enough to pretend it was the dress, and not Valerie’s nerves, failing her. She gave the page a wan smile of appreciation. This was no time to fall to pieces, but still she couldn’t do anything except wonder how fast she could run from this deep in the palace to the car. She’d be the talk of the town then. The debutante who fled. Good heavens.
The flick of a green-feathered fan on the far side of the red carpet caught her attention. Her aunt, Anne Chamberlain, stood beside a gaudy Victorian candelabra, the light from it shimmering in the gold brocade of her gown and the facets of her emerald necklace. Even while Mary, Princess Royal, in her fringe tiara scowled to shriveled old Princess Louise, Queen Victoria’s aged daughter, Aunt Anne remained as unruffled by the hiccup as she had been by the long wait in the Rolls-Royce in the Mall. She simply smiled and with a serene nod motioned Valerie forward.
Valerie eased her tight grip on her rose bouquet. She couldn’t embarrass the one person who’d done so much for her, not in front of all these titled ladies and cabinet ministers’ wives.
Valerie took a deep breath and, with the graceful stride she’d practiced in the corridors of No. 10 Downing Street, glided toward the monarchs. If anyone booed or hissed, she’d endure it as she had every insult and depredation flung at her during her eighteen years. She had no choice.
The satin skirt beneath her white tulle-and-silver-trimmed dress swayed with her stride as she crossed the red carpet. Above her, the crystal chandeliers illuminated the massive tapestries set into the walls and the statues in the arch above the royal canopy. The carpet seemed to go on forever until Valerie finally reached the gold crown embroidered in it, her cue to stop and face the sovereigns.
King George VI and Queen Elizabeth sat on high-backed thrones set out from the crimson canopy of state. They were surrounded by the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, the Duke and Duchess of Kent, and various other royals and court officials in military uniforms and court dress. The King wore a gray-blue RAF uniform with a large gold braid across one side of his slender chest and a line of medals on the other that barely moved when he nodded for Valerie to continue. She imagined his neck would be quite stiff tomorrow from so much motioning. It didn’t matter. Reaching Their Majesties was the first part of the ritual. The most difficult maneuver was yet to come.
With the subtle flourish instilled in her during curtsey lessons at Miss Vacani’s dance school, Valerie swept one leg behind her and lowered herself into the required pose. She held it for three beats, back straight, head down, legs shaking with the strain of staying steady. She’d thought bobbing up and down with an old curtain for a train ridiculous but she thanked heaven tonight for the tutoring. Stumbling through dance steps at a ball was one thing. Falling on her face in front of the throne was quite another. She had enough to contend with without having to recover from that sort of humiliation.
She straightened and raised her face to meet the King’s. He smiled warmly, making the shadows beneath his sharp cheeks and the lines at the corners of his tired blue eyes deepen. Valerie’s chest tightened. His Majesty resembled her father the last time she’d seen him.
I can’t think of that now. Her moment before the throne was only halfway through.
Valerie gracefully kicked her train out of the way and took three steps sideways to place herself in front of the Queen. Queen Elizabeth sat resplendent in a white duchess satin gown dusted with diamantés that sparkled as bright as her diamond-and-ruby parure. A massive red train trimmed in ermine cascaded from her shoulders and pooled at her feet. Her presence was as magical as the King’s was regal, and when she smiled, her expression softened the way Aunt Anne’s did whenever the two of them sat for a good chat.
Down Valerie went again, legs bent, head tilted, before she rose and took three careful steps backward to avoid catching her heel on the hem. She turned and walked to Aunt Anne while the Lord Chamberlain called out, “Lady Harlech presenting the Honorable Katherine Ormsby-Gore.”
“Well done, my dear.” Aunt Anne enveloped her in a congratulatory hug, surrounding her with the heady scent of Shocking by Schiaparelli. The perfume was the single shocking thing about Aunt Anne, and Valerie inhaled the bracing notes of jasmine and clove before they faded.
THE MASS OF debutantes and their sponsors crowded down the long Picture Gallery toward the State Rooms, passing the stern-faced Yeomen of the Guard stationed along the walls. The second court presentation of 1939 was over, and the girls would spend the first hours of their debutante Season enjoying a champagne supper.
“It’s all so grand,” Valerie gushed as she and Aunt Anne passed the massive Van Dyck portrait of King Charles I astride his white horse. Most of the girls walked together in small groups, their ostrich feathers fluttering as they turned to take in the palace. They’d met during the many preseason winter teas and lunches, renewing acquaintanceships and forging friendships as the matrons had compared calendars and claimed dates for balls, cocktail parties, and dinners. A nasty bout of flu had kept Valerie from participating in those social events, leaving Aunt Anne the only person she knew here.
“It is impressive.” Aunt Anne didn’t seem quite as awed by their surroundings, perhaps because she’d been to the palace many times with Uncle Neville.
They followed the flow of guests into the State Rooms, where large tables were laid out with sandwiches and tarts from Lyon’s Tea Shop. Beneath paintings of King George IV and other Hanoverians, Valerie stepped into line behind Aunt Anne and selected one of the gold-rimmed plates emblazoned with the King’s coat of arms. It’d been hours since she’d last eaten, too distracted by the manicurist, the hairdresser, and the makeup woman to think about food. She helped herself to the treats arranged on elaborate Victorian silver platters and sighed at the rich butter and fresh cucumbers between the fine white bread. It was hard to believe the girl who’d once endured stale baguettes at a French convent school was eating off of Buckingham Palace china.
When they’d had their fill, Aunt Anne handed their plates to a footman and surveyed the room. “Are you ready to make some new acquaintances?”
No, but she couldn’t very well slip home either. She was the Prime Minister’s niece, not some obscure country girl, and she was expected to do the rounds. It was what she anticipated from others that made her hesitate, but she had to trust Aunt Anne. If she thought Valerie would be a dismal social failure, she’d have left her at West Woodhay House with Great-Aunt Lillian instead of spending hours and pounds training her up in London. Heaven help her, if she wanted to make friends and have a successful Season, she must meet people. “I’m ready.”
“Come along, then.”
Valerie followed Aunt Anne into the adjoining Blue Drawing Room, careful not to collide with anyone while marveling at the tall pillars reaching up to the gilded ceiling. Large pier glasses caught the light of the crystal chandeliers and made the gold-framed portraits and wall fixtures shine. She couldn’t see the sides of the room through the crush and she wasn’t about to jump up and down like a rabbit to get a better view. She’d made enough of a spectacle of herself in the throne room without bouncing around like a country rube.
She nearly bumped into her aunt when she stopped before a stout matron and her dark-haired daughter. They stood at one of the massive windows overlooking the dark palace garden, the lights of London visible beyond the thick line of trees at the far end.
“Good evening, Lady Ashcombe,” Aunt Anne greeted. “May I introduce my niece, Miss Valerie de Vere Cole?”
Valerie smiled, determined to make a go of her first introduction.
“Your brother’s daughter, I presume?” Lady Ashcombe looked down over her prominent cheekbones at Valerie. “I hope you don’t intend to follow in his outlandish footsteps.”
Valerie wanted to melt into the floor, but all she could do was keep smiling like a brainless china doll. She’d hoped that after all these years no one would remember Father and all his ridiculous hoaxes. She was wrong. “No, Lady Ashcombe, I don’t.”
“Good. A young woman must guard herself and her future from the more disreputable aspects of her family tree.” She glared at her dark-haired daughter, who turned away to roll her eyes. Then Lady Ashcombe fixed on Aunt Anne. “How is your dear brother these days? Still up to his old antics?”
“Horace died a year ago in France. He’s buried at West Woodhay House,” Aunt Anne stated with more grace than Valerie could’ve mustered after that thoughtless comment.
“My condolences, of course.” Lady Ashcombe had the good sense to blush beneath her makeup, laying one hand on her crystal-beaded blue silk bust. “After everything he’d done, I thought his obituary another of his practical jokes.”
“It was quite serious, especially to him.”
“Of course.” Her tiara, in desperate need of a polish, struggled to catch the light as she motioned to her daughter. “Allow me to present the Honorable Miss Rosalind Cubitt.”
“A pleasure, I’m sure.” Rosalind was more engrossed in the doings of the other debutantes than in Valerie. She was thin but not slender and shared her mother’s high cheekbones and soft, rounded chin. She wore a full-skirted dress with a wide neckline that displayed her shoulders, which slumped in boredom. Then something caught her eye and she jerked up straight. “Mother, there’s Priscilla and the others. Let’s do go visit them.”
“Of course. I must cajole Lady Esher into sharing her list of gentlemen. It’s so hard to come by suitable young men these days, especially with all this nasty business in Europe, but we must do our best. Can’t have our protégés sitting out dances, can we?”
“Not at all. Good evening to you both.” Aunt Anne drew the dyed green feathers of her fan through her fingers as the ladies left to join the birdlike Lady Esher and her rail-thin daughter. “Perhaps that explains why so few people attended Horace’s funeral.”
“They’d given up on him long before that.” Valerie sighed. His stories of digging up Piccadilly, dumping manure in the Piazza San Marco in Venice, or posing with his Bloomsbury Circle friends as the Emperor of Abyssinia to receive honors aboard the HMS Dreadnought had once made her laugh. They hadn’t been so amusing when the bills had outgrown his dwindling income and he’d fled to France. Not one of his old friends, not even Virginia Woolf, who’d been involved in many of the pranks along with her brother Adrian, had bothered to write. They’d distanced themselves from Father. With Father’s last name firmly affixed to her, Valerie didn’t enjoy that luxury.
“There’s Lady Fallington and her daughter, Lady Windon.” Aunt Anne waved to two women, who offered limp waves in return. “Her daughter married the Earl of Windon last winter and was presented to announce her new title. Lady Fallington’s son is a few years older than you and someone you’d do well to know. You’re sure to see him at dances.”
Valerie doubted the ladies were interested in making her acquaintance but she dutifully followed Aunt Anne to the tall woman with the curving tiara artfully set in her blond curls. Lady Fallington wore a slimming dress of rose silk with voile sleeves, a blush to her daughter’s white silk court dress. A stunning set of pink tourmalines encircled her wrist and neck, their color perfectly complementing her gown.
“Lady Fallington, Lady Windon, what a pleasure to see you tonight,” Aunt Anne greeted, then introduced Valerie.
“A pleasure,” Lady Fallington drawled, as stiff as a Greek marble statue in her draping silk gown. “Your father was the one who humiliated my cousin, the mayor of Cambridge, by pretending to be the Emperor of something or other and tricking him into very publicly feting him, wasn’t he?”
Father had pretended to be the Sultan of Zanzibar’s uncle and his friends his official retinue, but that little detail hardly mattered. “Yes, that was my father.” The thoughtless fool.
“I see. Congratulations on your presentation. If you’ll excuse us.” Lady Fallington turned to reveal the scooped back of her dress as she and the newly minted Countess of Windon strolled away.
If every introduction went like the last two, it was going to be a long and lonely Season. “Perhaps it’s time to go home.”
“A bit of a stumble at the start, but that’s no reason to give up. There are many others to meet.”
“Most of whom think I shouldn’t be here.”
“Nonsense, you have more reason to be in society than any of those jumped-up girls Lady Clancarty is paid to sponsor. You’re the granddaughter of a baronet, the great-grandniece of the Earl of Oxford. It’s an Irish title but an old and impressive one all the same. That’s no shabby pedigree.”
“I’m also the daughter of the Sultan of Zanzibar and the Emperor of Abyssinia.” Curse Father for those two ridiculous hoaxes and their awful legacy. They’d been fodder for the newspapers and society back before the Great War but they’d left a taint on her, and a few out-of-joint noses. Even after he was gone, it was still her having to pay for his failings. “That’s nothing to brag about, as Lady Aschombe and Lady Fallington were polite enough to remind me.”
“Chin up, my dear. Lineage trumps everything. Lady Ashcombe and Miss Cubitt are proof of that.” Aunt Anne straightened Valerie’s pearl necklace. “If the daughter and granddaughter of Mrs. Keppell can find a place in society, then so can you.”
“Mrs. Keppell? King Edward VII’s mistress!” People turned to look at Valerie as if she’d broken one of the royal plates. Her cheeks burned at having been so indelicate, and in Buckingham Palace, of all places.
“The very one. There’s Lady Astor and her niece. I’m sure they’ll adore you.”
Valerie had her doubts but once again followed her aunt, bracing for another scolding about Father, followed by a view of a peeress’s backside.
“Anne, I hope you don’t intend to barrage me with your husband’s plans for handling this latest debacle in Europe.” Lady Astor’s English accent was tainted by the faint twang of her Virginia roots. She stood erect, twisting the long strand of pearls draping the front of her pale peach gown around her slender fingers. She was tall, with a long face made more pronounced by the high peaks of the Astor tiara with the large Sancy diamond set in the center. Beside her stood a dark-blond-haired girl with a sleek pageboy that curled in toward her similarly long face.
“That’s not for me to say, but I’m sure you’ll hear about it after the cabinet meeting tomorrow. I’d like to introduce you to my niece, and for her to meet yours. Miss Valerie de Vere Cole.”
“My niece, the Honorable Dinah Brand.”
Valerie waited for one of them to mention her father. Fish it. I’ll do it for them. “I’m the Emperor of Abyssinia’s daughter.”
She waited for the pearl-clutching to commence. Dinah’s eyes lit up instead. “Smashing! I absolutely must introduce you to the others.”
That was certainly a change from the last two introductions.
“How good of you to amuse her. Anne, we must discuss this cabinet meeting. I hate to walk into a room cold.” Lady Astor drew Aunt Anne aside, barely pausing between words as she told Aunt Anne exactly what she thought Uncle Neville should do about the German invasion of Czechoslovakia that had dominated every newspaper headline this morning.
“So you’re the debutante in Downing Street. Awfully grand to be in the middle of things, isn’t it?” Dinah took Valerie by the elbow and pulled her through the throng of women. “Aunt Nancy’s house is always full of government types but the papers can be so beastly, writing all sorts of nasty things about them. The palace is marvelous, it makes you really want something special to remember it by, doesn’t it?”
“We’re visiting Lenare’s Photography Studio afterward to take my picture.” All the fashionable portrait studios remained open late on presentation nights to accommodate the extra demand for photographs. “There wasn’t time for a sitting this afternoon.”
“I’m having mine done at Wrightson’s later, but I want something more than a boring old photo.” She stopped near a Georgian table loaded with discarded plates and slid a dessert fork off the top one. A wicked smile turned up the corners of her lips, which were tinted with a faint sweep of pale pink lipstick. “A more unique souvenir.”
“You can’t!”
“Why not? Unity Mitford stole a heap of palace stationery at her presentation and then sent letters on it to everyone.”
“Before she ran off to worship Herr Hitler.”
“My point exactly. A fork is far more patriotic.” She opened the bodice of her dress, ready to drop the fork down it, when Valerie grabbed her hand.
“You can’t. The Yeomen of the Guard are watching.” They stood around the perimeter of the room, their scarlet coats a stark contrast to the pale evening gowns and pastel palace decor.
“They’re so bored they’re practically asleep. They won’t notice a thing.”
They probably wouldn’t. Their eyes were glazed over and it was a wonder they hadn’t slumped to the floor to nap. Valerie let go of Dinah’s hand and Dinah shoved the fork down the front of her bodice so fast, Valerie might have blinked and missed it. She hoped no one else had seen it. She didn’t want to be escorted out of the palace for abetting a thief. People would certainly comment then that the apple hadn’t fallen far from her father’s tree.
“You should get one too,” Dinah said.
“No.”
“Come off it, with a father like yours you can’t be against a touch of harmless fun.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“My cousin Phyllis says the only way to truly enjoy the Season is to be a little daring. Otherwise it’s simply dancing and teas and no chance to stand out at all. Go on. I won’t tell a soul.”
Dinah pushed her toward the pile of abandoned plates and forks and Valerie stared at the mound of half-eaten tarts and scattered cutlery. She shouldn’t risk her already precarious reputation for a bit of royal tat, but Dinah hadn’t turned up her nose at Valerie. She wasn’t about to thank her by landing her in a heap of trouble or acting the prude. She’d had enough of being snubbed. If the cost of acceptance was a dessert fork, then so be it.
Glancing around to make sure no one was watching, Valerie snatched up a fork and stuffed it in her purse. Dinah’s smile of triumph was worth the weight of the flatware sitting on her conscience.
“Did you do it? Did you get some paper?” A dark-haired girl with round cheeks and a slight Scottish burr rushed up to Dinah’s side.
“We nicked something better. Show them, Valerie.”
“I thought you weren’t going to tell a soul.”
“This is Christian Grant, you can trust her, and I’d show her mine but I can hardly reach it.” Dinah patted the silk bodice of her dress. “Go on. She won’t rat us out.”
“I won’t.” Anticipation brightened Christian’s dark brown eyes.
Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound. Valerie opened her purse wide enough to give Christian a peek inside.
“How marvelous. I wish I’d thought of that. Where’s Katherine?”
“Here I am.” A girl with round cheeks and prominent teeth pushed in between Dinah and Christian. “What did I miss?”
“Dinah and the PM’s niece stole some dessert forks,” Christian whispered.
“Well done. Katherine Ormsby-Gore.” The new girl held out a gloved hand to Valerie, her throaty voice muted by a very proper accent that pulled down the end of every word. “What else do you think we can get?”
“My purse is big enough to fit a teacup.” Christian held up a drawstring bag made from the same embroidered brocade as her gown.
“Then let’s try for one of those.” Katherine adjusted the ostrich feathers set at a tilt in her caramel-colored hair.
“What do you say, Valerie? Should we do it?” Dinah asked.
The girls turned to Valerie as if this escapade were her idea. How she’d become the ringleader she didn’t know, but it was preferable to being an outcast. “Definitely, and by the end of tonight maybe we’ll have an entire tea set.”
This was the most fun she’d had since coming to London.
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