Paula Marshall - Prince Of Secrets

‘Could we drop this as a subject for discussion, Violet?’ Dinah was proud of the steadiness of her voice. ‘Since it is mere speculation on both our parts, it is all rather pointless.’

‘Well, if you wish, but you did say that you wanted me to speak plainly—which I have done.’

‘And I have listened to you. Now, would you like some more tea, and perhaps you could advise me on what to take to Yorkshire. I am afraid my Parisian teacher didn’t include that in her training.’

‘The Marquise de Cheverney, wasn’t it?’ Violet seemed determined to be as poisonous as she could. ‘Another of his mistresses, one supposes. Really darling, you were hardly the person to be plunged headfirst into such a galère!’

‘Perhaps you might like to describe the kind of person who would be fit for it,’ retorted Dinah glacially, ‘I doubt whether Cobie would have wished to marry her!’

Violet inclined her head graciously. ‘There is that. I suppose that naïveté would be more his style. No competition for him, no need to worry that you are erring off the straight and narrow. Not yet, any way.’

Dinah would have liked to throw her tea straight into Violet’s smiling face. Her new self-control precluded any such thing. ‘Are you suggesting that I follow your way of life, Violet? Would you care for me to compete with you for the Prince’s favours? You once hinted that he might like charming innocence. Shall I try to find out?’

This was all delivered in a tone of cool self-control, nothing shrill about it.

‘Oh, we have grown up, haven’t we?’ Violet murmured. ‘His doing, no doubt. Now I wonder how Apollo would react to an unfaithful wife? It might be rather dangerous to find out. On the other hand…’

‘On the other hand, let us discuss my wardrobe for Markendale,’ returned Dinah implacably, ‘and soon. Cobie has promised to drive me to the Park this afternoon, and it is almost time for me to go and change.’

She rose. ‘Perhaps you could write me a letter of advice about what to wear—that is, if you can find time to do so in the intervals of discussing the state of my marriage.’

Violet picked up her parasol, and said, ‘I’ll do that, my dear. I wonder if Apollo knows what a stalwart defender he has in you. He really doesn’t deserve you, you know.’

‘Not what you thought when he married me,’ Dinah muttered mutinously to herself: but she saw Violet to the door as pleasantly as though Violet had not exploded a bomb in her quiet drawing room.

She would say nothing to Cobie of this and would try to forget it. She had always found Susanna to be quiet and reserved, but pleasant: the notion that she and Cobie could be lovers made her feel a little sick. Nevertheless when they were out that night at a reception and Cobie and Susanna met and spoke to one another, rather distantly, she couldn’t help wondering if it were not all a game—like the one which Rainey played with Lord Brandon’s wife to try to persuade the world that they were not having an affaire.

There were times over the years when Susanna Winthrop bitterly regretted having rejected her foster-brother’s offer of marriage, made to her years earlier in a storm of passion. She had refused him because of the great difference in their ages, and had told herself that she would be able to live with that decision, be able to meet him and not feel the pangs of frustrated desire—after all, she was a rational person, wasn’t she?

Yet after his marriage to Dinah, when Cobie had refused to become her lover once she had discovered her husband’s true nature, and the evidence of his perversion, she had felt for Cobie something very like hate. She had taken up with Sir Ratcliffe because her foster-brother so plainly disliked him, just as she had married Arthur for the same reason. She could hardly bear to see Cobie and Dinah together.

Dinah’s patent happiness mocked her own misery, and although Sir Ratcliffe went warily with her, appearing to be both kind and gentle—bearing in mind who her foster-brother was—her heart remained where it had always been, with him, even if it were her hate she offered him, not her love.

On one of the last big events of the season, she met Dinah in the long corridor at the top of the stairs in Kenilworth House. It was soon after Violet had poured her poison into Dinah’s ear.

They bowed at one another. Some devil inside her, a devil which she did not know she possessed—or did it possess her?—made Susanna detain the girl she thought of as her rival.

‘We have not met lately,’ she said gently. It was true. Each, for their own different reasons, had been avoiding the other.

Madame’s training took over. Dinah said coolly, ‘We shall be meeting shortly, I understand, at Markendale.’

She was ready to move on, but Susanna prevented her.

‘It does not trouble you? That you will spend so much time with possible…rivals?’

What to say to that? She must mean Violet, or herself.

‘On the contrary…” and Dinah was still cool, though inwardly trembling, for she had never before realised how beautiful Susanna was, and that her as yet unacknowledged pregnancy had made her even more so ‘…I think that they have to worry about me, don’t you?’

She knew that Susanna disliked her, and saw at once that, by refusing to be ruffled, she had made an enemy. Susanna said, her voice a trifle shrill, ‘True, but he’s so attractive, isn’t he? Irresistible—as I still know, to my cost.’

Moved by the devil, Susanna had told Violet that Sir Ratcliffe’s child was Cobie’s. Sir Ratcliffe had laughed about the notion. He had, indeed, put the idea in her head. His own wife, that plain neglected woman, was present at this very reception.

She was wearing the last piece of jewellery left unsold to pay her husband’s debts, a diamond parure which had been a Heneage family heirloom for two hundred years. He was sure that she would never have the spirit to be jealous even if she learned that he was fathering a child on Susanna, but best to take no chances.

Susanna saw that her wicked dart had pierced Dinah’s heart. For a moment the true Susanna almost emerged, to say, ‘No, child, I’m lying, forgive me. Far from becoming my lover, he expressly refused—because of loyalty to you,’ but at that very moment she saw Cobie emerge from a door down the corridor. She also saw his face light up, not at the sight of her, but of his young wife—and virtue and pity fled from her together.

She said nothing to Dinah, but came out from the shadow which had been hiding her from her foster brother, and murmured sweetly, ‘So, there you are, Cobie. May I remind you that you are engaged to visit me tomorrow afternoon?’

The engagement was innocent enough. She had asked him round to pass on to him a letter from his mother in which she had enquired after him and his bride. A previous letter had gone astray.

Cobie’s answer, designed to be kind to Susanna, whom he profoundly pitied, and truly loved as a sister, was ‘No need ever to remind me, Susanna, I am always at your service,’ was so couched that it only served to add to Dinah’s misery.

She tried to forget, to persuade herself that Susanna’s words had borne an innocent meaning, but all that she could think of was how little she truly knew of her husband and his doings.

Unknown to her, or to anyone else, Cobie had gone to the Salvation Army home in Sea Coal Street which he was funding in his disguise as Mr Dilley, and there he had performed at a summer garden fête designed to raise money to help poor children.

He had paid for Mr Punch to visit the fête, and had staged his own small show of magic tricks to entertain the children but, however much they had enjoyed it, the shadow of Lizzie had been constantly before him, reminding him that her murderer still walked the earth, secure among the mighty…