The Shadow Queen (44 page)

As for Madam Xiuxiu’s next two sentences, she discounted them as she had discounted Madam Xiuxiu’s first sentence.
Kissed by the sun
was meaningless, unless Madam Xiuxiu meant he would be olive skinned, as Felipe had been. He certainly wouldn’t be a ruler of kingdoms. That expression was again the extravagant way the Chinese spoke, as was her being described as a
shadow queen
.

She loved the phrase about their love being one that would echo down the centuries, and as for there never being a child … Madam Xiuxiu had certainly been right on that score and, as she had been so right, perhaps she was right about other things as well.

Wallis set her now empty glass back down on the edge of the bath. Her immediate future was one that was already decided. She was going to Peking and, once there, was going to stay with the Rogerses. Then she was going to return to America, stay in Virginia, and apply for a divorce from Win on the grounds that they had been separated for three years. That this wasn’t the actual truth wouldn’t matter.

She would write to Win, asking him to write her a letter in which he would mention a false date on which their separation had started. As he was now emotionally involved elsewhere, it was something she was quite sure he’d be only too happy to do.

After that, according to Madam Xiuxiu, she was going to meet a man who would love her with every atom of his being and shower her with jewels beyond her wildest imaginings.

Her mouth curved in a deep smile.

It was a future so enticing, it couldn’t come quick enough.

Chapter Twenty-Six

“B
ut why Warrenton, Skinny?” Corinne said to her on a summer’s day in 1926 as they sat in the small garden of the Warren Green Hotel, Warrenton, Fauquier County, Virginia. “After the excitements of Peking I would have thought that on coming home you would have wanted to continue living somewhere there was a lot of action. There’s none at all here.”

“Too true.” Wallis’s voice was wry. “Until you visited today, the highlight of my week was a game of gin rummy with a fellow guest old enough to be my grandfather and a walk down the main street to buy a book.”

Corinne, who by now was wearing her widowhood lightly, cracked with laughter. “Then why? A whole clutch of the girls you were at Oldfields with live in New York. Your mother lives in Washington. If your heart was set on Virginia, you could have moved in with Cousin Lelia at Wakefield Manor.”

“A short visit with Lelia would be fine, but I’m here to get a divorce, and one of the requirements is for me to be resident in Virginia for a year—which would be to risk outstaying my welcome.”

Corinne quirked an immaculately plucked and penciled eyebrow. “Is that what happened with the Rogerses? You were their guest for over a year.”

Wallis raised her face to the hot afternoon sun. “No, I didn’t outstay my welcome with them. They were wonderful to me. I wanted to get on with my life, though, and that meant returning home and getting a divorce from Win.”

“And Warrenton, not New York or Washington, is the place to do it?”

“If I want it to be uncomplicated and cheap, yes. My mother’s new beau is a legal clerk at the Veterans’ Administration Building in Washington. He told my mother how I could get a divorce in Virginia on the grounds of Win’s desertion. That wouldn’t be possible in Washington, which only recognizes adultery as grounds for a divorce—and whereas the cost of getting a divorce nearly anywhere else is far more than I can afford, here it’s only going to cost me three hundred dollars.”

“And is Win goin’ to play ball?”

Wallis turned her head and shot her a wide grin. “He already has. He sent me a letter, which is now in the hands of my lawyer, in which he’s stated that he left me three years ago and has no intention of ever returning to me. All I have to do to be a free woman is to sit out a year of boredom here.”

“Well, Skinny, it is at least the right side of the Blue Ridge Mountains for easy trips to Washington—and the next few weeks won’t be boring. Not with a couple of weddings about to take place.”

She said the last sentence with a cat-that-got-the-cream expression on her face, and Wallis’s eyes widened.

“You don’t mean …?”

“I most certainly do.” Corinne’s smile was radiant. “In a couple of weeks’ time I shall be marrying Lieutenant Commander George Murray.”

Wallis’s eyes widened even further. “The George Murray who was at Pensacola when I first went there to stay with you and Henry?”

“The very one, and he’s even handsomer now than he was then.”

“Congratulations, you lucky girl.” There was a lump in Wallis’s throat. In finding another well-bred and very suitable man so soon after Henry’s death, Corinne really had been lucky. Though she had dated during her stay with Katherine and Herman, she had met no one who made her heart beat even a little faster and certainly wasn’t likely to do so in a backwater like Warrenton.

“You said a couple of weddings. Who else is about to make a trip down the aisle?”

This time it was Corinne’s turn to be wide-eyed. “Land sakes! You mean you don’t know?”

“No. Why should I? I’ve been away for over a year and haven’t touched base with old friends and family yet.”

“Maybe not, Skinny, but this is one bride you should have touched base with. It’s your mother.”

Wallis wasn’t at all surprised that her mother was marrying for a third time, but she was almost robbed of breath that Alice hadn’t yet told her of it when Corinne, and doubtless all the rest of their Montague relations, knew about it.

“Well, if that don’t beat the band!”

Her expression was so comical that Corinne burst into full-throated laughter. “Guess it must have slipped Alice’s mind,” she said when she was finally able to speak. “For your mother, getting married is beginning to become quite commonplace!”

Wallis hooted with laughter.

Some of the hotel’s elderly residents who were seated nearby gave them disapproving looks, but Wallis and Corinne didn’t care. They had missed each other’s company over the last year, and they were Montagues. Unrestrained laughter came as naturally to them as breathing.

“B
ut honey, I was just waiting for you to visit me. Telling you I was about to become a bride again just wouldn’t have been any fun in a letter.”

Wallis laughed and gave her mother a bear hug. “Tell me all about him,” she said when she finally released her. “All I know is that he’s a legal clerk at the Veterans’ Administration.”

Alice giggled. “Well, I guess that’s all there is to tell about Charlie. He’s not much of a live wire, but we’re very comfy together.”

“That’s swell, Mama. I hope you’ll be as happy with him as you were with Mr. Rasin.”

“I will,” Alice said placidly. “God willing.”

M
indful of her residency requirements, Wallis didn’t leave Warrenton too often. Most times when she ventured into what she was beginning to think of as the outside world, it was to go to Washington to visit her mother or her Aunt Bessie. Occasionally, though, she took the train to New York and visited friends from Oldfields with whom she had kept in irregular touch. When Christmas approached and she received an invitation from one of them to spend it in New York, it was an invitation she eagerly accepted.

Anywhere would be better than trying to be festive at the
Warren Green Hotel
,

she wrote to Pamela.

It’s the nearest thing to a morgue I ever hope to be in. Plus, I like New York, even when it’s feet deep in snow. If it weren’t for your suggestion that the minute my divorce is a done deal I come and stay with you and John Jasper in London, I’d be looking for a way of staying in New York permanently
.

That she wasn’t going to do so was because she knew how much more interesting life would be in London. Pamela and John Jasper mixed among the very highest of high society. There was even a chance Pamela would be able to introduce her to Prince Edward.

Who is beginning to cause anxiety in the British press
,

Pamela had written in her last letter.

After all, he is thirty-two, and the general opinion is that he should be married and providing the country with an heir presumptive. It is his becoming an uncle which has brought about this latest avalanche of concern. Have there been photographs of the Duke and Duchess of York’s baby girl in American newspapers? There’s nothing adventurous about the choice of name, Elizabeth Alexandra Mary. Elizabeth after her mother—and, at a stretch, Queen Elizabeth Tudor—Alexandra after her great-grandmother, and Mary after her grandmother. It’s easy to imagine Bertie a doting papa, but a little harder to imagine Edward in the same role
.

It was the kind of letter that made Wallis long to be in London, gossiping with Pamela about the royal family, and all she had to do until she was doing so was to endure Warrenton for a few more months. One blessing was that at least her Christmas wouldn’t be boring, for there was no telling whom she might meet at a Christmas dinner party in New York.

“Ernest Simpson,” the man seated next to her at dinner said, in an accent that sounded very English. “I arrived too late to be formally introduced to anyone. Do you like it that the drapes haven’t been drawn and we can see the snow falling in the moonlight? Christmas without snow would be a very poor affair, don’t you think?”

“Wallis Spencer—and yes, I do like seeing the snow fall.”

He was an attractive-looking man: square-jawed, dark-haired, and mustached. Superficially he looked very much like Win, but unlike Win his eyes weren’t arrogant and sexually appraising, and he didn’t possess Win’s air of barely suppressed violence.

He looked like a man perfectly at ease with himself, and she immediately felt perfectly at ease with him.

“Are you British?” she asked. “Your accent sounds very much like that of a friend of mine who lives in London.”

“Then I hope he, or she, isn’t a Cockney.” There was amusement in his voice. “I’m a former member of the Coldstream Guards. It’s the oldest regiment in continued existence in the British Army. I’m afraid a Cockney would have rather a hard time of it fitting in.”

“What is an Englishman doing in New York? Do you work here, or are you a tourist?”

“I work here. Though my father is English, my mother is American, and I was born in America and educated here. At Harvard.”

“Of course. Where else?” There was teasing laughter in her voice and, recognizing it, he chuckled.

“Sorry. That kind of thing matters to so many people, always mentioning it has become a habit.”

“As with the Coldstream Guards?”

His eyes crinkled at the corners. “As with the Coldstream Guards.”

She liked that he was able to take being teased so well and that he didn’t take himself too seriously.

The rest of the table were being noisily jovial, but Ernest Simpson showed no desire to join in the general hilarity, and she had no desire to, either. Talking to each other was proving to be far more enjoyable.

“What kind of work do you do in New York, Mr. Simpson?”

His eyes were dark blue. They didn’t have the same effect on her that John Jasper’s eyes once had, or that Win’s and Felipe’s eyes had had on her the first time she had looked into them. They were nice eyes, though, and, having once looked into them, she found herself happily continuing to do so.

He said, “I’m a partner in the family firm.”

“Which is?”

“Simpson, Spence and Young. We buy and sell ships—and do so on both sides of the Atlantic.”

Wallis’s interest quickened. “You have offices in London?”

He nodded. “Do you know London? Though I was born and brought up in New York, I’ve always far preferred it.”

“I’ve never been—but I’m going to go and stay with friends in London before next year is out.”

“I’m hoping to begin managing the London side of things before too very long, and so perhaps we’ll meet up there? I know the city very well and would enjoy showing you around it. As you’re a New Yorker, it would be presumptuous of me to offer to show you around New York.”

“Oh, I’m not a New Yorker, Mr. Simpson.” Wallis took a belated sip of her wine, already knowing she was going to see a great deal of him long before either of them should find themselves in London and deeming that it was time she laid her cards on the table. “I’m a Baltimorean, although no longer living there. At the moment I’m living in Warrenton, Virginia.”

Though he politely tried to hide it, he was surprised, as she had known he would be.

“I’m sitting out a year’s residency there in order to get a divorce.”

“How extraordinary.” Relief that she didn’t have a husband in tow showed in the dark blue eyes. “I’m in the throes of obtaining a divorce myself. I think you should call me Ernest, don’t you? I also think I should begin showing you round New York. As a New York–born Englishman it’s the least I can do for a girl from Baltimore.”