The Ambassador by Susan Ronald

Author:Susan Ronald [Ronald, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub

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WHILE JOE ENTERTAINED and enjoyed this most spectacular of Seasons, Kick and Billy had fallen more deeply in love than either imagined possible, given her Catholicism. Kick was known personally to the pope. Billy and his family were pillars of Anglicanism. Billy turned twenty-one in December 1938 and had a celebration to commemorate the actual date, which Kick attended as his companion, but his “coming-of-age” party was reserved for that August. Kick suspected that Billy might ask her to marry him beforehand, so Joe and Rose ensured that she would be at Cap d’Antibes with the family instead.

But Lady Sarah Churchill’s most resplendent ball of the Season at Blenheim Palace opened Kick’s eyes to how difficult obtaining approval for marriage to Billy would be.* Virtually all of the aristocracy and ruling elite were guests, waited upon by bewigged and liveried footmen dressed in eighteenth-century costumes. “I had never seen anything like it,” diarist Chips Channon wrote. “The palace was floodlit, and its grand baroque beauty could be seen for miles. The lakes were floodlit too and, better still, the famous terraces.… It was gay, young, brilliant, in short, perfection.… Shall we ever see the like again?”20 Eunice Kennedy was elated at taking part in the most amazing weekend of the Season, and wrote a short piece entitled “A Weekend at Blenheim Palace” for the family.

But Eunice’s impressions were lost on Kick. That sultry July evening, the Catholic Veronica Fraser (sister of Hugh) appeared on the arm of Julian Amery, and not with the man she loved, Robert Cecil. Robert’s father, Lord Salisbury, had ordered them to see less of each other. That evening, too, Billy told his father, Edward Duke of Devonshire, that he wanted to marry Kick. The duke forbade it, reminding his son and heir that he could not pick and choose his duty to King and country. Kick’s hopes of remaining in England in the event of war were dashed.21

How Rose and Joe became aware of the “danger” lurking in Kick’s love affair with Billy has gone unnoted. More than likely, it slowly dawned on them from Billy’s birthday in December 1938 and the “threat” of his coming-of-age party in August 1939. Joe wrote to Boake Carter that he “had hoped to get back after the end of July and possibly spend some part of the vacation at Cape Cod,” and this was undoubtedly true. But the threat of war meant he would have to stay in Europe, while physically distancing Kick from Billy. Joe could not send his daughter home on her own as war loomed. To send his entire family home before war had been declared would tar him with the brush of “coward.” And so it was decided to rent a house at Cap d’Antibes again, and indirectly forbid Kick from going to Billy’s coming-of-age party.

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