She doesn’t want safe, but she’s not sure she is brave enough for danger either.
Philip isn’t safe.
He’s not doing anything threatening. He’s just standing there with a glass of whisky in his hand but still she feels as if she is teetering on the edge of some precipice, half fearful, half tempted to step out into the unknown.
It’s not like her to be fanciful, but something about Philip leaves her feeling spooked, edgy as a young colt, beneath that icy blue gaze.
And more alive than she has ever felt before.
‘Have you known Porchey a long time?’ he asks and she could almost swear that he is jealous.
‘Since we were children. We both love riding, and racing. We can talk about bloodstock lines for hours. We’d both rather be in the stables than at a party.’
‘Maybe the parties you’ve been to haven’t been enough fun.’
Elizabeth’s eyes slide from his. ‘Maybe.’
‘I was glad of your letters,’ Philip says abruptly.
‘Oh … good. I’m afraid they must have been very boring.’
‘Not at all.’
He’s being polite, Elizabeth thinks and when she risks a glance at his face again, she is sure of it. His expression is carefully neutral. What else can he say, after all? How could he possibly have been interested in anything she had to say?
‘We don’t have a very exciting life here so there’s not much to talk about,’ she says to show him that she understands. ‘Lessons. Riding. Walking the dogs. Sometimes we invite the officers to lunch, and Papa and Mummy come back at weekends, which is nice but … well, it’s very tame compared to what you’ve been doing.’
Chapter 6
Tame? It sounds unbelievably tedious to Philip. Her letters have indeed been very bland, but for the first time he thinks about what life must be like for her, trapped in the castle for the duration of the war, surrounded by over-protective servants determined to keep her safe and stop her from having any fun at all. Entertaining officers for lunch seems to be the social highlight. If they are all as stuffy as the young Lord Porchester, it must be deadly, Philip thinks.
He hasn’t taken to Porchey. There was something damned proprietorial about the way the younger man had been standing next to Elizabeth. Philip doesn’t care for the easy way she and Porchey were talking when he came in. The first thing he saw was her unshadowed smile and it gave him, not a shock exactly … Philip struggles to explain it to himself. It had been the tiniest of checks, an unexpected jump in his breath, that was all.
Her smile dropped when she saw him. He didn’t like that either.
He wants Elizabeth to smile at him the way she smiles at Porchey.
It occurs to Philip that he may have to work a little harder than he thought. ‘I was very glad to hear from you, whatever you wrote about,’ he says. ‘And your parcels were always welcome.’
‘I hoped it would be nice for you to have a word from home,’ Elizabeth says.
Home. That word always settles like a stone in the pit of Philip’s stomach. Everyone uses it so easily. Home. It has so many connotations of comfort and security, of familiarity and belonging. Somewhere you can be yourself, where you do not have to sing for your supper or watch what you say. At least, that is how Philip imagines a home. He hasn’t had one since he was a small boy in Paris.
Not that he will tell Elizabeth that. He wants her to think of him as strong and steadfast, not as a little boy longing for somewhere to belong.
‘It was indeed,’ he says instead, and she flushes a little with pleasure.
‘I’m glad. It’s good to feel that something I can do makes a difference. I feel so frustrated sometimes that I’m not allowed to do more for the war effort. I’ve asked Papa if I can volunteer for the ATS, but he thinks it’s safer for me to stay here, where all I can do is knit for the Wool Fund.’ She makes a face. ‘And I hate knitting! I do try, but I am very bad at it.’
Philip laughs. ‘All I can say is that the comforts we get – the socks and scarves and things – are all very welcome.’
‘Still, I wish I could do more. Other girls my age are out there, doing their bit.’
Philip thinks of the ruined streets, the houses where wallpaper flutters sadly from exposed walls. Of the grime and the grind of daily life and the looters lurking in the shadows. Of groping through the dark or tensing at the stutter of sirens breaking into their inhuman wail. Listening to the desperate fire of the anti-aircraft guns as the searchlights rake across the night sky. Worse, hearing the fiendish whistle of bombs falling and the eerie second of silence before the air explodes.
Once, he and his cousin David were weaving their way carelessly back from a nightclub when they came across a house that had suffered a direct hit only minutes before. They had gone to help but they had been drinking and had probably got in the way. Philip doesn’t remember much about it, only the sight of a disembodied hand lying as if discarded in the smoking rubble. One finger pointed right at him as if accusing him, though of what Philip couldn’t tell. For a moment he can almost smell the stink of smoke and terror.
He is not stumbling around a bombsite now, Philip reminds himself. He blinks himself back to the present – Windsor Castle, a drink in his hand, a princess to court – to find Elizabeth looking at him. Her eyes are very clear, very blue. They seem to see far more than they should.
He musters a smile. ‘Don’t wish to be out there. It isn’t safe.’
‘You’re out there.’
‘I’m not as precious as you.’
Elizabeth sighs and pushes a wisp of hair away from her face. ‘I just wish I could do something.’
‘You are doing something,’ Philip surprises himself by saying. ‘You’re representing hope for the future. We all need you more than you know.’
‘Thank you,’ she says softly after a moment. ‘That makes me feel less useless.’
‘Besides, it’s not as if you’re completely out of danger here, are you? I was given my instructions on how to find the bomb shelter. Although I doubt I’d be able to find it again – it was hard enough finding my bedroom,’ he goes on, coaxing a smile out of her at last.
‘It’s not an easy place to find your way around, is it? Especially not in the blackout. In the early years of the war we used to practise what would happen if there was an invasion and we had to escape,’ she tells him. ‘We had to run down to the armoured cars in the darkness. There’s only enough room for Margaret and me and Crawfie and some luggage. They told us we’d only be allowed to take one corgi.’
‘It must have been a dilemma wondering which dog to take.’ Philip tries to lighten the conversation, and Elizabeth smiles back at him.
‘Well, it was!’
He feels like punching the air. Her smiles are rare, but worth waiting for.
By unspoken consent, they turn the conversation away from the war.
‘Where are the dogs, anyway?’ Philip asks. ‘You talk about them so much in your letters, I was expecting to have to fight my way through them to get at you.’
Get at you. That wasn’t the right way to talk to Princess Elizabeth, Philip berates himself mentally. Uncle Dickie would have his hide if he could hear him!