Long Live the King Read Online Free PDF Page A

after thirty years of marriage I can still make him smile like that.
    ‘Minnie and I will be processing behind the Queen and Arthur and you behind the King,’ she said, ‘which uses up our four allocated seats, so we have three over. It would be natural to ask our daughter Rosina, but she will wear strange clothes and like as not alarm other guests by haranguing them about the iniquities of royal ritual in the modern age.’
    ‘But she will be hurt and offended if she knows there is a spare ticket and she is not asked; she is quite capable of behaving if she wishes.’
    ‘But she may very well not wish,’ said Isobel, ‘and she is quite happy to be hurt and offended. Let it occupy her all next year. Better a real grudge than an invented one. She is quite likely to take her parrot with her to glorify some avian deity, or go without a hat, or let off fireworks. I most strenuously advise against one.’
    ‘I will abide by your judgement, my dear,’ said her husband, pacifically. ‘But do remember she is your daughter too. I see your father Silas in her. He did what he wanted, said what he wanted, and took no notice of what people thought of him. They are traits better suited to a man than a woman, it is true, but at least she is not dull .’
    Isobel kept her composure and said that if dullness was a qualification for attendance it might be seemly to invite his brother Edwin and his wife and daughter. Edwin was a Dilberne, and, heaven forbid, in the line of succession to the earldom. She should not have said it, but did so to annoy, and as soon as she had, regretted it.
    Robert said, over his dead body, that his brother was a scurrilous rat. And his sister-in-law a pious vengeful little thing, not only dull but plain, and the jubilant crowds who gathered in such number to enjoy the pageantry and fine dresses of the notables who descended from their coaches at the Abbey gates expected to see tall beautiful people not hunchbacks. They would disappoint by coming by hansom cab or even by District line with its fetid smells and grimy walls.
    ‘Then whom shall we ask?’ asked Isobel. Better that Robert had disdained Consuelo’s offer, but what man would refuse so generous a gift from someone so charming, pretty and young? And why had Consuelo chosen Robert for her favours? He was twice the girl’s age, surely, possessed a tenth of her wealth, and held a title a good notch or so below her own. On the other hand Robert was good-looking, sociable and probably, most importantly in the Duchess’s eyes, as cheerful as Sunny was not. If she wanted to curry favour with anyone, why did she not set her sights on Arthur Balfour, who was so absurdly clever, kind, unmarried and available? But there were some young wives, the kind really close to their fathers while disliking their mothers, who enjoyed nothing better than to steal other women’s husbands, simply because that was what they were. Perhaps Consuleo was such a one? No, Isobel did not like it one bit.
    ‘We could ask the d’Astis,’ said Isobel. ‘She would give her eye teeth for such an invitation.’
    ‘Too vulgar,’ said Robert. ‘Too foreign. Lion hunters. All those greenery-yallery people. But we could invite the Baums.’ Eric Baum was Robert’s financial adviser, thanks to whose backing of Robert’s gold and mineral mines Robert was quickly becoming very rich indeed. ‘That would at least be useful.’
    ‘So others might observe,’ said Isobel. ‘Such an odious little man. And what a little social climber she is.’
    At which Robert rose to his feet, and said she must do as she thought fit, these were domestic matters, he must be getting back to the House, old Salisbury was dragging himself to his feet to speak on land reform though heaven knew that after his wife’s death the poor old man, once such a fighter, could scarcely speak sense any more. The sooner Arthur Balfour was in place the better.
    ‘Of course,’ said Isobel sweetly, ‘I shall see