Before the Crown by Flora Harding

Author:Flora Harding [Harding, Flora]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020-06-15T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter 26

Philip doesn’t care. He is here because Elizabeth wants him here, and if the rest of them don’t like it, they can go hang. Standing next to her last night, he had met the assembled disapproval with a challenging gaze.

‘I keep expecting you to nip Lilibet’s neck,’ Margaret said to him at one point when they found themselves alone. She was sitting on the arm of a sofa; he was watching Elizabeth who was talking to a stout young man who doubtless had acres of grouse moor to his name.

Philip stared down at Margaret, unsure if he had heard correctly. ‘To do what?’

‘Nip her neck. You know, like a stallion.’ Margaret sipped at her glass before registering his blank expression. ‘Oh, I keep forgetting you’re not a horsey type. A stallion nips at a mare’s neck to cut her out of the herd. That’s exactly what you look like when you’re standing next to Lilibet, like you’ve cut her out and staked your claim and are daring anyone else to have her. It’s quite … arousing.’

Philip was betrayed into a laugh. ‘How old are you now, Margaret?’

‘Sixteen. Almost,’ she added.

‘Pretty and precocious, that’s a dangerous mixture. You’re going to be a handful.’

‘Oh, I do hope so,’ she said. There’s nothing else for me to be, is there?’

After breakfast, Philip finds himself with others milling around outside the entrance in the rain with dogs and lugubrious-looking ghillies while the King barks orders about who is to go where and with whom. It is the only time Philip has ever seen him look truly confident. Here, on this isolated estate, Bertie can be king indeed.

There is a near disaster when the King discovers that not only does Philip not own plus fours, he hasn’t brought his own gun.

‘He can borrow mine, Papa,’ Elizabeth says quickly, spotting that the King is on the verge of one of his notorious ‘gnashes’. ‘I’m riding today anyway.’

‘Thank you,’ Philip says sincerely as Elizabeth hands him her gun, and her quick smile warms him. He lowers his voice. ‘The King isn’t really planning to go out in this, is he?’ he says, turning his collar up against the rain. ‘I thought he would have cancelled by now’

Elizabeth looks surprised. ‘Why would he do that?’

‘It’s raining.’

‘This isn’t rain.’ She pats his arm and he observes darkly that there is a glint of amusement in her eyes. ‘This is just a bit of drizzle. It’ll clear up, don’t worry.’

The King is in such a bad mood by the time everyone is sorted out that Philip is glad to be sent off on his own for the day, accompanied by a monosyllabic ghillie introduced as Murdoch. It is apparently Murdoch’s task to find him a deer and show him how to kill it.

For miles and miles, Philip trudges behind Murdoch into the hills. He has had to borrow some boots until his shoes come back from the cobblers and as most of the time they seem to be walking through a bog, his socks are quickly sodden and a mammoth blister is developing on his heel.

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