The King’s passion

She could not believe what she was hearing. She stared at her gloved hands, on the knee still covered with her outside coat.

“It’s all arranged,” Ernest told her. “Mary is coming over.”

“You’ve arranged it?” she gasped. “Without even talking to me?”

“The king has arranged it.”

Her thoughts jumped about her brain. “What has he done?”

“He’s attended to everything. Mary and I are to go to the Hotel de Paris in Bray and have a maid bring us breakfast in bed.”

Her panic was rising. Perhaps, she thought wildly, this was just a nightmare. David would never be so devious in real life. He would never encourage her to go away just so he could work on Ernest. And even had this happened, Ernest would never have capitulated, as he seemed to have done so easily here. He was telling her that the hotel maid would testify at the divorce hearing.

“You are to divorce me for adultery,” Ernest went on. “The king has arranged for his solicitor, a Mr Allen, to represent you. He has even decided the assumed name that Mary should use at the hotel. He wants her to call herself Buttercup Kennedy.”

“Buttercup Kennedy?” A wild urge to laugh possessed her, followed by a wave of complete despair. She thought of the years she had known Mary. How on earth had it come to this?

“The maid will discover us in an adulterous situation and after that I’ll move out of Bryanston Court and into the Guards Club.”

It was all real. She could never have dreamed this. “No!”

Ernest sighed. “There’s no point fighting it, Wallis.”

She looked about the sitting room, where the king had come so many times. She felt, now, that she regretted every single