Chapter Thirty-Six May
Chapter Thirty-Six
May
May should have been wearing bridal white. Instead she was dressed in a high-necked black gown, a black veil covering her features, her hands—in their black gloves—clasped in her lap. She was inside St. George’s Chapel, at Windsor, but not for her wedding to Eddy. For his funeral.
Everything had happened so fast: his illness, his sudden death. The entire nation still felt thunderstruck by it all. The fact that Eddy had gotten engaged, and then died, in the span of a few months—it felt like a storyline from a novel, the sort of melodramatic thing that Alix would read.
Except that May was living it.
A winter sunbeam arced through the stained-glass windows, falling on the wooden floors of the chapel. May shivered. It was cold in here, and protocol didn’t allow heavy coats at a funeral.
Today had felt endless. The procession, with all those soldiers and drummers and gun salutes, and Eddy’s beloved horse—what was its name, again?
—walking in a black harness, with Eddy’s boots and spurs reversed in the stirrups.
May had ridden in a carriage after the coffin, behind George and Uncle Bertie, who walked the whole way.
May forced herself to swallow a yawn; she couldn’t let anyone see her disrespecting Eddy like that. But lately it had been impossible to sleep, her dreams full of shadows and accusations.
I didn’t kill him, May reminded herself yet again. Just because she’d sat in the church of St. Mary Magdalene and thought that things would be easier without Eddy…She hadn’t prayed for his death, not technically. She wasn’t some medieval witch cursing her enemies. It was coincidence.
Of course, everyone assumed she was devastated.
They were all watching her with furtive glances, wondering what she would do now.
May suspected that some of them—the ones who’d been slightly resentful of her rise, the ones who’d never thought she deserved to marry Eddy—were secretly glad to see her brought low.
Not that they were glad of Eddy’s death, but they were pleased that May would never be queen.
She was right back where she’d started: an unmarried woman, stuck under her father’s roof. Except that wasn’t quite true anymore. Now that Francis was gone, White Lodge was, unofficially speaking, Mary Adelaide’s house.
May kept worrying that her father might reappear.
What if he realized that Eddy’s death meant May’s political influence had dwindled, and he came back to torture her?
But so far, at least, he had stayed away.
She’d heard he was currently in Württemberg, pretending to lord it over his distant German cousins.
Without him, White Lodge felt almost cozy. May spent a lot of time with her mother now, quietly working through the mountain of condolence letters that had arrived, many from complete strangers.
And there was her trousseau to sort through.
So many beautiful things—tea dresses and garden dresses, evening gowns with crystal beading and rhinestone embroidery, all with handbags and shoes and gloves—meant for a honeymoon and national tour that she and Eddy would never take, for parties May would no longer attend.
May kept half expecting someone to show up and take it all back.
And who would pay for it? Eventually, there would be a bill, and May didn’t dare ask the Waleses.
It would have been the height of rudeness.
Now the organ music swelled to a crescendo, and the queen—stone-faced and stoic in her grief—started down the aisle.
May sank into a painfully deep curtsy. At last, the funeral was over.
She let the crowds sweep her out of the chapel and into one of Windsor’s reception halls, where everyone milled about, sipping on wine and exchanging whispers.
Alix of Hesse had come with her brother, May saw—and was that Hélène d’Orléans with her parents?
Surely she wouldn’t dare say anything to May, would she?
Then May caught sight of George, standing across the room with the Prince of Wales.
For a moment May forgot to hide her emotions. She let everything she felt for him, all the hope and yearning, run wild on her face.
All she needed was a few moments with George, just to make sure he was all right.
To tell him that she was here if he needed her.
May and George hadn’t truly spoken since their murmured conversation in the pew at St. Mary Magdalene.
She’d seen him often enough since then: at Sandringham after Eddy’s death, and then here at Windsor once the family had arrived for the funeral.
But she hadn’t exactly had an opportunity to find him alone.
May started across the room with purpose. A few people approached, but she put them off with gentle nods, murmuring that she needed to speak to her late fiancé’s family. She saw the moment George registered her approach, the way his expression softened at the sight of her, just a little—
“May! There you are!” The Princess of Wales stepped between them, holding a spray of flowers in one hand. “I have something for you. I had to special order it, but I told the gardeners to spare no expense.”
May realized that they weren’t just any flowers: they were the exact ones she had ordered for her wedding bouquet. Orange blossoms and camellias and white roses, tied with the signature white ribbon of a bride.
“I was thinking you could place it on Eddy’s coffin,” Alexandra sniffed. She was talking quite loudly but was clearly too distraught to realize. “Since you didn’t get to carry it on your wedding day…”
It was such a performative, dramatic gesture. The type of thing that May normally would have thought of herself, except that she no longer cared about putting on a show.
Actually, she was getting quite tired of pretending to mourn someone she had never loved.
More people were glancing over, their eyes bright with sympathy and curiosity. What other choice did May have? She nodded in agreement with her almost-mother-in-law. “What a lovely thought.”
The two of them drifted back toward the chapel, dreary and melancholy in their black gowns.
May dared a single glance at George over her shoulder, and saw that he was watching her leave.
Two days later, May was still at Windsor, and still hadn’t spoken to George alone.
There was always someone around—one of the Waleses, or some extended family member, or even the Archbishop of Canterbury. He had patted May on the head as if she were a stray puppy and murmured that she needed to resign herself to the will of God.
As if May had ever resigned herself to anything.
She had just spent hours with the Princess of Wales, answering the seemingly endless mountain of letters, writing on that awful black-edged stationery until her hand cramped. Now, as she headed through an upstairs hallway, May paused.
George was walking out in the frozen garden.
She hurried to her room and shrugged into her overcoat, then clattered down the stairs and outside. The winter air was bitter cold, but May forced herself to loop around the path in the opposite direction from George, so that they would run into each other by the marble fountains.
He didn’t look up, even as her footsteps crunched loudly over the gravel.
Finally, when they were only a few feet apart, May gasped in surprise. “Oh, George! I hadn’t expected to see anyone out here.”
“Nor did I.” He wasn’t making eye contact; his tone was distant, formal.
“I imagine you need to be alone right now, but if you’d like company…” May tipped her head toward the path.
“Very well.” Still not looking at her, George fell into step beside May, past the frozen parterres where roses would bloom come summer. The crenellated battlements of Windsor rose up against the slate-gray sky, reminding May of the castle’s original function—to keep enemies out.
“I’m so sorry.” The words felt useless, but she needed to say them. “I know you must be bewildered, and hurting, and in shock. If you need to talk, or…” May trailed off, suddenly uncertain.
George was silent for a moment, his breath puffing out little clouds of steam in the freezing air. “I do want to talk,” he agreed. “And we need to do it now, since I leave for Cap Martin tomorrow. Who knows when I’ll see you again.”
“Oh, I might go to the Riviera too!” The words tumbled out of May.
“Lady Wolverton offered Mother the use of her home at Cannes. It’s not so far from Cap Martin.
I have never seen the Riviera; I hear it is lovely, even if the orange and lemon trees are all dead this time of year…
.” She bit her lip, realizing she was babbling.
“What I mean to say is, you don’t have to carry this weight alone.
There are so many people who love you, who are here to help. ”
When he replied, George’s voice was tight with warning. “I think you and I should keep our distance from each other.”
“No.” The word came out as a reflex; she swallowed. “George, you must know by now Eddy never loved me. He never wanted to marry me. You heard him—he said Hélène’s name on his deathbed!”
May knew everyone in the room had heard him speak Hélène’s name, clear as day. No one mentioned it to her, of course, but she suspected they were all writing it in letters to various family members, wondering exactly what drama had played out behind closed doors.
“You shouldn’t feel guilty for being friendly with me,” she added. Though she hoped he would want to be more than friendly.
George’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t feel guilty. I blame you for manipulating me, just as you’ve done to everyone else.”
May was so startled that she tripped. George didn’t hold out a hand to help her.
When she righted herself, May looked him in the eye. “I never manipulated you. I meant every word I ever told you.”
“Of course you would say that. From what I’ve heard, you’re a liar—”
“I love you!”