CHAPTER ONE Honeymoon in Paris 1928 The hotel room was dingy and had an odd smell. There was a brass double bed whose counterpane sagged in the middle. The floral wallpaper was faded, with rust-edged stains. Two long windows looked out into the street. Wallis went across to them. The window opposite had dried-up plants and dirty curtains. She had not expected Paris to look like this. All the way over on the boat from Dover she had imagined views of the Eiffel Tower.
But Wallis was an optimist, and never more so than now. This was her wedding day. A fresh start. A new life. There was a mirror on the wall by the window, positioned to throw light on the face. Critically, she examined hers. She was no longer young-thirty-four at her last birthday-but she looked pretty good, she thought. Poised, sleek, fashionable.
And hopeful, most of all. Her wedding outfit-primrose-yellow dress, sky-blue coat-made a colorful contrast to the glossy black hair center-parted and curled in two "earphones." In her pale face her lips were a bold slash of red. If, in her dark-blue eyes, there was still something sad behind the sparkle, that would not stay long. Everything would be fine from now on. They had married that morning in London. At the Chelsea Register Office, as both had been divorced. But Wallis did not regret being unable to wed in a church.
She had done that the first time around, and to a cad. Ernest could not be more different. He was a fine, kind, honorable man, and she was a lucky woman. A movement in the mirror caught her eye. She saw that the bellhop who had brought their bags up was still standing in the doorway, scratching himself. "Ernest," she prompted, smiling. "I think he expects a tip." Her new husband rummaged in his overcoat pocket and handed over a small coin.
The boy looked at it, raised his eyebrows and disappeared. Wallis heaved her suitcase onto her bed and snapped the locks open. In the dingy surroundings, her dresses, new for the honeymoon, bolstered her feelings of optimism. She had bought them all for a song and altered them herself. She was clever with her needle and had once thought of a career in fashion. After the divorce, the idea of supporting herself, of becoming an independent woman, had strongly appealed. But her shattered self-confidence and her lack of practical skills had made this more difficult than she expected. And once she met Ernest, she had abandoned the effort altogether.
He had been a port in a storm, quite literally, as his family owned a shipping firm. When he announced he was leaving America for the London office, and asked her to marry him and come too, she had seized the chance to begin again. She shook out a dress and thought about the great Paris fashion houses. She was keen to see them even if there was no chance of buying anything. Money was tight, hence the shabby hotel room. Hence the tiny stone in the ring on her finger, so small it struggled to catch the limited light. The family firm was in trouble, although Ernest was determined to turn it round. There were also the alimony payments to his first wife and young daughter.
He had thought that would annoy her, but it didn''t. On the contrary, she was pleased that he already had a child. She was in her early thirties and the prospect was fading, but after her own miserable childhood, she had no wish for one anyway. She felt sorry for her little stepdaughter, whose life had been upended by her parents'' divorce. When Audrey came to stay with them in London, Wallis would give her a good time. They would be friends. She felt Ernest''s solid, reassuring presence behind her. He came close and put his large hands over hers.
She leaned her head back, into his chest, and relished, for a few moments, his tall broadness, the feeling of utter safety, of being cherished and protected. "Don''t do that now," he murmured into her shoulder. He meant the open case before her. "But I have to unpack. My things will be so creased." The cheap material needed to be hung to look good. He pulled her closer. His mustache was tickling her neck.
"Who cares if your things are creased? I''d like to crease them some more!" Her reaction was as instant as it was unexpected. Panic swept through her like a tidal wave. An alarm bell shrilled loudly in her head, and her heart rose in her throat, banging violently. The urge to wrench herself away was overwhelming, and only by inhaling slowly, shudderingly, could she gain any control. Ernest had not noticed. He was sliding his arms round, pressing his body into her back. Through his coat and jacket she could feel how aroused he was. "Wallis," he murmured into her ear.
"I''ve wanted you for so long." As his hand explored her breast, her whole body screamed silently. Her teeth began to chatter. She clamped them hard together so he would not hear. He pushed her gently forward, onto the bed. She fell like a stone, hands by her sides, and lay rigid, face pressed in the cover. Its sour smell filled her nostrils. She braced herself, as if against some expected blow or other act of violence.
Great waves of heat followed by sickening swirls of cold were chasing each other round her stomach. She could not breathe. She turned her head, gasped. He seemed to take this as encouragement, perhaps as a pant of desire. His hand was on her thigh now. It was pulling up her dress; she could feel his fingers on her stocking top. She was going to be sick; she pressed her mouth and body hard into the bed. If those fingers got through, if they touched her .
Oh God, no. Please, no. She must have spoken aloud. The fingers stopped. The hand pulled away. Beneath her ear, there was a grate and groan of bedsprings as he sat down. "Wallis, whatever''s the matter?" She raised her head. He sat at the other side of her case, his overcoat still on.
His basset hound face with its round brown eyes registered absolute bewilderment. She could not blame him. Throughout their short courtship, kissing was as far as he had gone. He was the very pattern of chivalry and had treated her with the utmost respect. But on their wedding night he was naturally hoping for more. She was a divorcZe, after all, a woman of experience. That he had absolutely no idea what her experience had been was not his fault. Perhaps she should have told him, but what could she have said? That she had, for nine years, been married to someone who had beaten and abused her, who drank himself senseless, who had not only forced himself upon her but made her watch him with other women? How could she have told him? Ernest would have been appalled; it would have lessened her in his eyes.
It lessened her in her own. She had pushed her first husband into the depths of the farthest cupboard at the back of her mind, the one marked "The Past," and done her level best to forget. It had worked, or appeared to. After the divorce, as she recovered and looked to the future, her time as Mrs. Earl Winfield Spencer Jr. seemed increasingly like a bad dream. She had thought she could move on, but that Win-as he was known-had destroyed her ability to enjoy physical intimacy, even to take part in it, was something she had not suspected. Until now.
Now-on her wedding night. She hung her head. What could she say? That she was damaged goods, in every sense? Would he even believe her? He might think she had known, that she had trapped him. Her panic had drained away to leave a sense of utter hopelessness. She had no idea what to do. She could feel his eyes on her and tried to guess their expression. Accusing? Angry? She could not blame him. But when, eventually, she screwed up the courage to look at him, the basset hound eyes were gentle.
"We''re married now," Ernest said softly. "I love you. Talk to me." Wallis stared at him for a moment. Then she looked down at her hands, at the ring, took a breath, and talked to him. CHAPTER TWO Win had burst into her life in 1916. Her grandmother had recently died, and after the required period of mourning, her mother decided that Wallis needed a little fun. She sent her to stay in Florida with her cousin Corinne, who was married to an air base commandant.
Fun it certainly was. Wallis had never seen an airplane before, let alone a pilot as dashing as young Lieutenant Spencer with his close-clipped mustache and worldly air. They met on her first morning and saw each other every day. When, with bewildering speed, Win proposed, she accepted. She was nineteen years old. "Mother adored him," Wallis said ruefully now to Ernest. "Which should have been a sign. She has terrible taste in men.
She married twice more after my father died and chose someone worse every time." "Alice didn''t like me, for sure." Ernest shrugged his wide shoulders. It was true that Alice had admired Win''s charm and derring-do. Her new son-in-law, she considered, fell far short of this dashing ideal. "That bowler hat and mustache! He''s like an American actor playing an Englishman!" "But he is English, Mother. Well, half." The connection was on his father''s side.
Ernest felt it stro.