“My apologies, sir, I didn’t mean to overstep. I’m merely trying to help.”

“The Duke knows and appreciates how much you’ve done for us in the past, Edward,” Wallis soothed. “Don’t you, darling?”

“Quite right.” The Duke picked up an asparagus spear with his fingers.

Wallis slapped the spear out of his hand. “Use your fork.”

Shock rippled down the table. Amelia expected the Duke to rebuke Wallis for embarrassing him but he wiped his fingers with his napkin and picked up his fork.

The eating and conversation slowly resumed as if nothing had happened.

“Is Sir Walter right about Germany’s ambition?” Amelia asked Mr. Churchill while they stood together by the fire in the library after dinner. Maurice Chevalier’s “Ma Pomme” played on the gramophone and settled beneath the low conversation of Wallis and the other women on the sofa. The clink of chips punctuated the French singing as the Duke, Sir Walter, Mr. Rogers, and Mr. Metcalf played cards at the table near the large Skinner organ, a showpiece of the library and château.

“He is. I saw their armament factories when I was in Germany reporting for the Daily Mail. They’re running at full speed, and every able-bodied man has joined an army the Treaty of Versailles says shouldn’t exist. I’ve told people there’s more to worry about than Germany overrunning the Rhineland but they listen to me as much as the Greeks listened to Cassandra. His Royal Highness is quite mistaken if he thinks Germany and Russia will simply fight it out while the rest of Europe watches and waits for a winner.”

“Unless the Duke knows something we don’t. He must have seen all sorts of state secrets when he was King.”

“None that he took seriously.” Mr. Churchill chuckled into his drink. “Statecraft was not his forte.”

“I tell you, Sir Walter, it isn’t right.” The Duke banged his fist on the gaming table, making the chips in front of him rattle in their stacks. “There’s no legal basis for denying my wife the right to be styled Her Royal Highness.”

“I’m merely His Majesty’s messenger, sir, not the decider of titles,” Sir Walter calmly replied.

Wallis watched the conversation, her hand tight on her highball glass, irritated at the Duke for bringing this up in front of Sir Walter and the other guests.

“Randolph, speak to Winston about it. He must have some pull,” the Duke commanded.

“I’ll see what I can do, sir,” Mr. Churchill assured with the same deference everyone showed the ex-king.

“There’s a good man.” The Duke returned to his card game and Wallis eased her tight grip on the glass and resumed her conversation.

“I don’t understand the Duke’s concern with Wallis’s title,” Amelia said to Mr. Churchill. She barely understood all the titles and royal protocol and why everyone was so enamored with it, almost to the point of obsession. “She’ll be a duchess when she marries him. What’s so special about ‘Her Royal Highness’?”

“It makes her a recognized member of the royal family, and the King and Queen don’t want a jumped-up adventurer on the same footing as them or His Royal Highness’s sisters-in-law, especially since they think the marriage won’t last.”

“She’s gone through too much to chuck him over.”

“Except he isn’t the catch he was when she met him, is he?” Mr. Churchill sipped his Scotch. “If she’d respected the monarchy, understood the Crown and everything it means and stands for instead of spitting in its face, she wouldn’t be in this predicament. Neither of them would be.”

“It wasn’t all her fault.” She understood Wallis’s position. Everyone had blamed Amelia for what Jackson had done, but until his arrest, she hadn’t known that every dime she’d spent on her house, clothes, and car had been stolen from someone else. Her entire life had been a lie.

“She didn’t help matters either. Who was she before she met him? Nobody. He made her someone but it wasn’t enough. Now she wants everyone to curtsey to her with the same respect as the royal women who’ve supported the family they chose to marry into. Fat chance, that. She wanted all of it and she’ll get none of it, except him. Good luck to them both.”

“Wallis, your shoe buckle has come undone. I’ll fix it for you.” The Duke dropped his cards and rushed to kneel in front of Wallis and fastened her shoe.

How sweet, Amelia thought before she caught the horrified looks exchanged between Mr. Churchill and Lady Metcalf. Suddenly, she understood Mr. Churchill’s irritation. The man who’d once represented everything they cherished about their country was kneeling at the feet of a commoner. Instead of demanding the Duke stand, Wallis let him buckle her shoe like a lowly footman. Mr. Churchill was right, she hadn’t respected the Crown, she still didn’t, and everyone knew it.

Chapter Four

June 1, 1937

Amelia stood in the salon de musique helping Wallis and Mrs. Bedaux with last-minute wedding preparations. The piano in the niche had been replaced with a large chest dragged in from the hallway to make a temporary altar. Its wooden sides were carved with naked Renaissance nymphs and the top supported a plain brass cross borrowed from a local Protestant church flanked by two tall candlesticks. Footmen dressed in the Bedaux’s gold and blue livery carried in hired gilt chairs and arranged them in rows for the ceremony.

“Whatever is he playing?” Mrs. Bedaux peered through the open library door at Marcel Dupré, the premier organist in Europe, according to Mrs. Bedaux’s newspapers, who sat at the Skinner organ practicing the ceremony selections. The music reverberated out of the large pipes concealed in the château’s first- and second-story walls.

“‘O Perfect Love,’” Wallis answered. “But it doesn’t sound right.”

“Because it isn’t. I’ll see to it.” Mrs. Bedaux walked into the library and the music ceased.

In the quiet, the voices of Constance Spry, the London florist, and her assistants carried in from the dining room. Bunches of Madonna lilies and roses rested on week-old copies of the London Times on the parquet floor, waiting to be arranged.

“I don’t know what I’d do without Charles and Fern,” Wallis said as Lady Bedaux’s pretty voice singing the proper version of “O Perfect Love” drifted in from the library. “They know how to treat royalty.”

“Everything going well, darling?” The Duke entered with a bright smile, forcing the footmen to bow to him before leaving to get more chairs.

“You’re as red as a beet and it’ll never fade in time for the wedding,” Wallis chided. “Wear a better hat when you golf or you’ll look like a ripe tomato in the wedding portraits.”

“Yes, darling.” His bright voice broke like fragile glass. He bent over to peer at the newspaper on the floor, pushing aside a few white peonies with his foot to get a better look.

“What in heaven’s name are you doing?”

“Trying to read the bloody London Times. I haven’t seen it in ages and they’re all damp.”

“Go read a French newspaper. Constance doesn’t need you interfering with her work.”

“Yes, darling,” he mumbled, and wandered off to find a dry newspaper.

Wallis examined the room, and Amelia waited for orders on what to change or arrange but all she heard was a deep sigh, and then: “Were you disappointed by your wedding ceremony?”

“Not at first,” Amelia answered honestly. “I thought eloping was romantic.”

“It was, and I was quite impressed with you when Aunt Bessie told me about it.”

“You were?” People had expressed a lot of opinions about her wedding. Impressed wasn’t one of them.

“Of course. I remember how spirited you were at Wakefield Manor, eating up everything I told you about China and London. I thought, Here’s a girl like me who doesn’t want to sit under the thumb of chaperones and rules, but wants to live, and you did. I was glad to see your father’s loss and that awful mother of yours hadn’t snuffed the life out of you.” Wallis’s proud smile faded as she surveyed the room. “My first wedding was in Christ Episcopal Church, if you can believe it. Mary Raffray was my maid of honor and there were six other debutantes as bridesmaids, a very proper Baltimore society wedding. It was the groom who wasn’t right. Win was an awful drunk and mean as a dog but I was too young and naive to see the warning signs. After Win, I thought I’d never remarry. Of course, I never thought I’d divorce and wed a second time but here I am, soggy newspapers in a salon de musique. If you ever get married again, I suggest another elopement.”

“If planning a proper wedding is this involved, I will,” Amelia joked before her stomach dropped in horror at having forgotten her place. She braced for a browbeating but Wallis laughed instead. It eased the fatigue and strain of the past year, and for a moment, she was the Wallis who’d sat on the back porch at Wakefield Manor, the Virginia estate of Cousin Lelia, Father’s sister, telling Amelia risqué stories about her time in China.

“Planning a wedding is only this bad when you’re marrying the ex-king of England.” Wallis laid a rare tender hand on Amelia’s arm, her skin cold but her touch firm. “Be glad Jackson took the coward’s way out. Life is easier for a widow than a divorcée. You’ll have the freedom to follow your heart when the time comes. It’s a rare gift.”

Following her heart had already landed her in a fool’s paradise. If she ever decided to marry again, she’d be far more practical about it, but she appreciated Wallis’s concern. She’d endured enough fake condolences after Father’s death, and even Jackson’s, to know when people were throwing out expected words and when they really meant them.

“What are you two discussing?” Mrs. Bedaux strode in and Wallis let go of Amelia.

“I’m advising Mrs. Bradford to change her name to her maiden Montague.”