“A pathetic woman afraid of failure, anonymity, poverty, so desperate to be someone, you’d sell your soul to the Germans, and your life to the Duke, the Nazis, or anyone who’d offer it to you. But you won’t get it because there’s nothing behind your carefully constructed façade except selfishness and fear.”
“I’m not afraid of anything.”
“Except everyone seeing the weakness hidden by your clothes, manners, and money. I assure you, they see it, the way Mary Raffray, Mr. Metcalf, Her Majesty, and I do, and they see the grasping woman it’s made you, but you’ll never get what you want because you’ve shown your true colors, your lack of loyalty to anyone but yourself and your interests, and you’ll pay for it. His Majesty’s Government will not grant you another official position once your tenure in The Bahamas is over, and you won’t be allowed to return to Britain. You’ll be stuck forever in this false and meaningless life you’ve created.”
Wallis said nothing, more truth in those few words than she’d heard in a lifetime.
“And the press, the British people?” the Duke asked, tugging at his tie.
“In deference to Their Majesties and the reputation of the royal family, no one outside this room and the intelligence community will ever know the truth about your attempt to help the Nazis defeat Britain and install you on the throne.”
The Duke and Duchess stared at the table, taking in what Amelia had said and everything it meant for their lives, future, and all their ambitions. They’d been defeated and they knew it.
With nothing more to say, Amelia set down her napkin and stood, forcing the Duke to rise in respect. Wallis grabbed his arm and pulled him into his chair then glared at Amelia.
Amelia gathered up her purse and gloves and settled her hat over her perfectly coiffed hair. Robert offered her his arm and they walked out of the room.
“No one will ever know what happened in there,” Robert said as they waited for the elevator.
“Wallis knows and I know. That’s all that matters.”
Washington, D.C., January 1953
“Dad, here’s the newspaper. Mom, the postman brought you a letter.” William, Amelia’s son, tossed the items on the kitchen table as he raced through the kitchen to the living room, where his sister, Anne, sat coloring.
Amelia tore open the letter. “It’s from Eugenie.”
“How’s she enjoying Hollywood?” Robert poured a glass of orange juice from the bottle in the Frigidaire and sat down to his usual breakfast of toast and eggs. He always ate with Amelia before catching the train to the Office of Naval Intelligence.
“She loves the weather and being at the center of gossip. She says Marlene Dietrich is as interesting in real life as she is on the screen.” Marlene’s maid had left her around the same time Lady Williams-Taylor had passed away and Amelia had arranged the employment. “She and Barin are tearing up the town. Between them, they know more gossip than Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper combined.”
After the war, Barin had come to America and been one of the first women Amelia had trained and placed through her new agency. Barin had been in Hollywood for years and currently worked for Lauren Bacall. Amelia had placed secretaries all over New York, Hollywood, and Paris. After the war, all the socialites, aristocrats, and celebrities she’d known in France before the war had resumed their old lives as if nothing had happened, and clamored for personal secretaries to manage their revived social calendars.
“Have you seen this?” Robert handed her the newspaper, folded back to reveal a photo of Wallis and the Duke sitting together on a couch wearing paper crowns. According to the caption, Jimmy Donahue had thrown a New Year’s Eve party and the Windsors had been the guests of honor. He’d staged a mock coronation, and while the Windsors smiled a good game, Amelia recognized the strain along the edges of Wallis’s lips, the lack of fire or joy in her eyes. She despised being made fun of and this ridicule cut to the core.
“She’s been crowned at last.” Amelia didn’t feel sorry for her. She hadn’t consciously followed the Windsors since walking away from them at the Biltmore in ’44, but there was no avoiding news of the world’s most famous socialites.
According to her intelligence sources, the Windsors had returned to France after the war and the Duke’s tenure in The Bahamas. Their precious houses, linens, china, and antiques had miraculously survived. While Amelia had left the FBI to build her secretarial placement agency, helping the many women whose careers had ended with the peace, Wallis and the Duke had spent the postwar years as aimless, wandering aristocrats with no real friends or purpose.
In true Windsor fashion, Wallis and the Duke had run to the worst people they could find, Mrs. Woolworth Donahue and her playboy son, Jimmy. Mrs. Donahue had the money to court the notorious couple, paying their jeweler and clothing bills and foisting her son off on Wallis, who spent too much time with Jimmy, who was half her age. Judging by the picture, all Wallis needed to do in return was sacrifice what remained of her dignity, another in a lifetime of Wallis’s poor decisions.
“I never thought I’d be grateful for Wallis but I am.” Amelia turned the picture of her cousin facedown on the table. “If it hadn’t been for her, I wouldn’t have everything I have today, including you.”
He took her hand and raised it to his lips and Amelia smiled.
Wallis had said the best revenge was a life well lived. She’d been right.
Acknowledgments
Amelia Montague is a fictional character, but I drew on accounts from various Windsor secretaries to help flesh out her story. Those memoirs and recollections paint an overly rosy picture of what it was like to work for the Windsors. However, flashes of the truth can be found in other sources. Letitia Baldrige, social secretary to the American Ambassador to France and later to Jackie Kennedy, mentioned in her memoirs an encounter with the Duchess of Windsor’s personal secretary. Mrs. Baldrige related how the woman cried because she hadn’t enjoyed a day off in a year, and the Duchess had canceled her one day off for a trivial reason. Other servants give hints here and there that Wallis was a difficult and exacting boss who also didn’t pay well.
Amelia might be fictional, but much of the Windsors’ desire to regain the British throne and the events of 1937 through 1944 are taken from reality. You can read more about the Windsors’ alleged treasonous activities in many Windsor biographies. The biographies also discuss how free the Windsors were with their admiration of Germany and their belief that England would lose the war. Wallis’s dislike of Queen Elizabeth and her lifelong grudge against England were well known, as was her overbearing and insulting manner with the Duke, often in front of others, especially in later years. Most of the FBI documents that Robert shows Amelia are amalgamations of actual FBI documents on the Windsors, and they are available to read on archive.org and various other websites. Some of the letters from German officials that Robert shows her are from the Marburg File, a German Foreign Ministry file found after the war that detailed much of the Windsors’ dealings with the Germans. The Marburg File was kept secret for years but was published in the 1950s in German Documents on Foreign Policy, where it can still be read. Most of Mr. Metcalf’s telegram to Amelia saying that he is through with the Windsors comes from his letter to his wife after the Duke abandoned him in Paris. Eugenie is a fictional character, but Lady Williams-Taylor is real and she did spy on the Windsors in Paris and The Bahamas. Mademoiselle Moulichon is real and she was the person that Wallis sent to occupied Paris to retrieve a number of their things. She had a harrowing three-month journey trying to rejoin them in The Bahamas and was briefly arrested. Sadly, she never wrote a memoir of her experience. Whenever possible in the novel, I used real quotes or turns of phrase from Wallis and the Duke or those who knew them.
I hope you enjoyed reading the novel as much as I did researching and writing it. A special thanks to my editors Lucia Macro
and Asanté Simons, and my agent, Kevan Lyon, for their help in bringing this interesting story to life.
About the Author
GEORGIE BLALOCK is a history lover and movie buff who loves combining her different passions through historical fiction and a healthy dose of period piece films. When not writing, she can be found prowling the nonfiction history section of the library or the British film listings on Netflix or in the dojo training for her next black belt rank. Her novels include The Other Windsor Girl, The Last Debutantes, and An Indiscreet Princess.
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Praise for The Windsor Conspiracy
“Brimming with drama, deceit and betrayal, The Windsor Conspiracy is a fascinating story of a young woman torn between loyalty to family and love of country and the immense courage it takes to accept the challenge of a lifetime. Compelling to the last page.”
—Shelley Noble, New York Times bestselling author of The Tiffany Girls
“The Windsor Conspiracy offers a complex and compelling portrait of Wallis Simpson following the abdication, as told through the eyes of her trusted cousin and confidante. From Parisian chateaux to Bahamian estates, Blalock has weaved a chilling narrative about the lengths to which the embittered and myopic Duke and Duchess were willing to go to restore their grip on power.”
—Bryn Turnbull, internationally bestselling author of The Paris Deception
“Georgie Blalock pens a vivid portrait of the lives of disgraced Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson through the downstairs viewpoint of Wallis’s personal secretary in this glittering parade of European high society. The Windsor Conspiracy is the next best thing to being on the set of The Crown!”
—Stephanie Marie Thornton, USA Today bestselling author of Her Lost Words
“Georgie Blalock returns to the Windsors, this time taking sharp aim at the Duke and Duchess as they stand on the brink of World War II. Through the fresh eyes of Wallis Simpson’s cousin and personal secretary, we get a unique and intimate portrait of this couple in all their entitlements as well as their alliance with Hitler and the Third Reich. Spellbinding tale, impeccably researched, The Windsor Conspiracy is a must-read for fans of the royals and historical fiction alike.”
—Renée Rosen, USA Today bestselling author of Fifth Avenue Glamour Girl
“A fascinating deep dive into the turbulent waters of one of history’s most controversial couples, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, through the eyes of Wallis Simpson’s cousin and companion, The Windsor Conspiracy is historical fiction at its best!”
—Christine Wells, internationally bestselling author of The Royal Windsor Secret
“A fascinating look behind the scandalous curtain of the life of Wallis Simpson in the early years of her marriage to the Duke of Windsor, who abdicated the throne of England to be with her, from the viewpoint of her cousin turned private secretary. Carefully researched and expertly woven into the sweeping pages of a novel, Georgie Blalock takes us back to mid–World War II, and a tense time for the royal family, where conspiracies and betrayal thrive. Intrigue abounds in this page-turner. Highly recommended for fans of the royal family and the drama of the century!”
—Eliza Knight, USA Today and internationally bestselling author of The Queen’s Faithful Companion
Also by Georgie Blalock
The Other Windsor Girl
The Last Debutantes
