Chapter 7
I suppose it doesn’t matter what the palm reader would have told me, does it? I looked at George, and he looked at me, and that was that, as they say.
You asked that night if I was smitten. Such a small, trifling word for how it all turned out.
NORFOLK, ENGLAND
Inez had been a guest at Sandringham House exactly twice before, both times with her parents when she had been a girl.
The royal residence reminded her a little of Winter Queen, albeit on a much more colossal scale.
Like her childhood home, the original manor house had been turned into a fairy-tale fantasy, wings added, stone trim added, parapets and gables, but also formal gardens and lakes and rockeries and cupolas.
It lacked the mild, misted wilderness that hugged Winter Queen, true, but Sandringham was said to be the king’s favorite place to hide from public view, and it was easy to see why.
It was a brick-and-limestone palace on nearly eight thousand sculpted acres.
Far from London, far from the smoke and fumes and constant, clanging commotion of city life, it afforded the monarch and his family a rare privacy that they occasionally shared with friends or allies.
Or people who hoped they might become friends or allies.
Pauline and Charles had been invited more than twice, of course.
But twice was all that Inez had been afforded, until that crisp autumn of 1902.
By then, she had graduated from the music lessons her mother had imposed upon her and had begun to enjoy a measure of independence.
Which could have explained why she’d been summoned, all by herself, to visit the king and queen.
Fr?ulein Wietrowetz had returned home a month past. She’d claimed she’d taught Inez all that she could, and it was time for her to attend to her teaching post back in Berlin.
Until that moment, suspended in the hazy hush of the drawing room of the Bloomsbury apartment, the city alive outside the windows but the rooms inside so quiet and still, Inez hadn’t fully realized how bound she was to this other woman. How desperate she was for her approval.
Miss Wietrowetz had ended their final lesson with a firm handshake and a wish for her pupil to keep practicing five hours a day. That was it, that was all. No comments on Inez’s talent, or lack of it. No promises of future visits. She seemed almost desperate to leave.
On her way to Victoria station, however, the Fr?ulein had unexpectedly stopped by the apartment one last time, her bags stacked on the hansom that waited at the curb.
She’d rung the bell and embraced Inez on the front steps, whispering in German, Never accept less than you deserve.
You are a prodigy, a gift from God. Walk the path He has given you.
Inez had been so startled she’d only tightened her grip around her teacher’s sturdy middle. Never once, in all her months of tutelage, had she suspected that the Fr?ulein thought her anything more than a dilettante.
“Wirklich?” she’d asked, because Inez knew German, at least a schoolgirl’s version of it, and thought that maybe she’d misunderstood.
“Yes,” Gabriele Wietrowetz had replied in English. And then she’d smiled. “You have the capacity for greatness, Inez Jolivet, such a rare thing. Use it well. I’m happy to have known you.” Her gloved fingers clenched over Inez’s own. “No doubt I’ll read about you in the periodicals soon. God bless.”
A flustered ma’am! was all Inez was able to manage in response, but it was enough.
Her teacher turned and descended the steps back to her carriage, bombazine skirts in hand.
Inez watched the cab driver flick his whip, the poor horse clattering into action, and the hansom wheeled down the lane, gone forevermore.
Her last tutor—as it turned out, the very last tutor of her life—gone forevermore.
So perhaps she was ready for her recital at Sandringham that bright honied autumn. Perhaps not. Either way, it didn’t matter, as Edward himself had summoned her to his weekend house party, her gift, her violin, her music to transport his guests.
The invitation had arrived on a stiff ivory card etched in silver. The dates, the place, and that her presence was cordially requested, along with perhaps a small, informal solo recital to be performed at the pleasure of their majesties.
Both Maman and Papa were in Provence, tending to society there, and their vines. Inez had wired them at once in a panic, asking what to do. The reply had come barely an hour later: DONT BE ABSURD YOU MUST GO STOP TAKE THE ROSE SATIN FROM WORTH STOP YOU WILL DAZZLE STOP BULLESY EXCLAMATION MARK
Rita was caught up in her excellent world of Shakespeare, and Alfred was away at Eton. It would be just Inez performing alone in Sandringham’s conservatory, or some drawing room, or a grandiose parlor, hoping to impress the king and queen and all their friends.
From London all the way to Wolferton station, a pampered guest aboard the royal train, she was afraid she might vomit.
She refused all offers of wine or biscuits or tea from the steward and distracted herself by gazing fiercely out the windows, at the rushing of meadows and downs, blocky orchards of apple trees stippled with red fruit.
Birches and spindles and chestnuts sped by, their leaves waving goodbye in a blaze of scarlet and orange.
The October sky spread to infinity above it all, blue as the ocean.
It helped a little, at least until the train pulled into the station.
Then she and Della, the maid, were bundled into a glossy black Daimler, Inez in the back, Della in the front, the chauffer promising Miss Jolivet that her luggage would follow.
Her violin, in its case, remained with her.
She never surrendered her instrument, not to anyone.
The auto’s door closed with a solid thunk, heavy and slightly ominous.
She was cushioned in tufted leather, surrounded by smoked glass and polished walnut trim.
When the chauffer climbed into the front beside the maid, Inez leaned forward a bit, hoping to glimpse the road ahead between their shoulders.
The darkened glass of the back windows dulled the world to gray, like an eclipse.
But the front of the Daimler was mostly open, so she was able to breathe in the fresh country air, tinged very faintly with salt from the cold North Sea. The auto rumbled to life, a low growly purr. They angled out the station and down a paved lane that soon turned to dirt.
Norfolk was still wildly green, even so late in the season, although the changing trees lent a shimmer of gold along the fields.
At one point, they passed a long hawthorn hedge and a bouquet of pheasants burst free from it, a flash of autumn colors lifting up to the sky.
Inez followed them as long as she could, twisting in her seat to keep them in view until the road rolled on and she lost them.
The estate was only a few miles from the train station; she would have appreciated a bit more time in the motorcar to compose her nerves, but almost before she knew it, they were approaching the graceful limestone arches of the porte cochère.
The Daimler slowed, stopped, and Inez had to remind herself to wait for the approaching footman to open the door for her.
She took her case in her right hand and accepted his proffered arm with her left, stepping onto meticulously raked gravel.
A giant, unlit glass lantern hung just inside the porte cochère, round as a globe and supported by heavy iron braces. In the shaded gloom of the entranceway, it seemed to shift between cloudy and clear, like an uncertain crystal ball.
“Miss Jolivet,” said a new man in black tie, standing beneath the lantern. The butler, she assumed, although he didn’t look familiar. “Welcome to Sandringham House.”
“Thank you,” she said, and then cleared her throat because her voice sounded so thin. “How kind,” she said, more firm.
“This way, please.”
Inez threw a look over her shoulder in time to see the footman leading Della away, presumably toward the servants’ entrance.
She tightened her grip on her case and followed the butler into the saloon.
The chill of it hit her first, that distinctive, minerally wall of air that still lingered in her memory, the scent of atoms encased in old brick and wood and stone.
The saloon itself stretched almost large as a yacht.
It served as the reception room and main living room, covered in plasterwork and paintings and antique Spanish tapestries.
Clusters of chairs and tables stood in lonely isolation, islands of polished stone and gilt floating amid the crimson-and-sage rugs that spread from wall to wall.
She recalled it vaguely from her girlhood.
She thought the chamber would have seemed a little smaller to her now, now that she was grown, but it didn’t.
The ceiling, with its engravings and elaborate Jacobean fretwork, loomed so high above her it might have been real angels in the fresco of cherubim and pastel clouds above her head.
A woman in jet silk appeared, utterly unadorned, her hair slicked into a hard bun.
“Miss Jolivet. I’m Mrs. Matthews, the chatelaine.
Their majesties regret that they are unable to welcome you in person, but most of the weekend guests arrived yesterday for the first shoot this morning.
They won’t be back until later this afternoon.
If you like, I can show you to your room for a rest before supper. ”
“Yes, thank you.”
“This way, please,” the woman said, in cadence and tone sounding exactly like the butler.
Inez had no hope of memorizing the way to her room; she only followed silently down corridors decorated with sprays of axes and swords and spears and—more distressingly—the decapitated heads of animals, rams and boars and stags.
It was like the gun shop in Piccadilly, only if Mr. Christian had decorated a palace instead of a cramped store.