Free The Golden Prince by Rebecca Dean Page A

rabbits are totally spoiled, and be warned that one of them—the big black one—bites.”
    “No, he doesn’t.” Lily had put leftover salad and fruit into one of the otherwise now-empty picnic baskets and risen to her feet. “Nibbles just has bad eyesight and sometimes catches your fingers accidentally when you’re feeding him.”
    Rose and Iris had hooted with laughter.
    Grateful that Piers Cullen was with Lord May, admiring Lord May’s pride and joy, his Talbot motorcar, David had risen to his feet and, hardly able to believe his good fortune, had fallen into step beside Lily as she began walking toward a part of the garden he hadn’t yet been to.
    “Are you getting very excited about the coronation?” she’d asked as they walked down a shallow flight of stone steps into what he saw was a lower lawn on the west side of the house. “There was a piece in the newspaper this morning about all the magnificent street decorations that are being put up. It said that the twenty-third of June will be one of the most memorable days the country has ever seen.”
    She’d smiled across at him, expecting him to respond with enthusiasm. Instead, so suddenly reminded of the ordeal that lay before him, he’d blanched.
    Her expression had changed instantly. She’d come to a stop, saying in a stunned voice, “What on earth is the matter, David? Aren’t you looking forward to it?”
    With anyone else—other than Bertie—he would have lied and said that of course he was. Instead he’d said unhappily, “No. I’m dreading it. The ceremony is hours and hours long, and there are so many things that could go wrong. At one part of the ceremony I have to pay homage to my father and I’m terrified of forgetting the words. Plus I shall be wearing heavy ornate robes and a coronet, and I hate being dressed like someone out of medieval times and being stared at.”
    At her look of horrified concern, he’d added miserably, “I’m not very good at being royal, Lily. I just don’t enjoy it.”
    She didn’t have to say how awful she thought that must be for him. He could see how awful she thought it was for him in her eyes.
    She’d said thickly, “But you
have
to enjoy it, David. It’s going to be your whole life.”
    “I know.” He’d given a helpless shrug of his shoulders and they’d started walking again.
    After a few moments she’d said, “Perhaps if you thought of how much pleasure royal ceremony gives to hundreds of thousands of people—and how much pleasure you give to people when they see you dressed in magnificent medieval robes—you wouldn’t mind wearing them quite so much?”
    It was a point of view he’d never thought of before and he’d found it interesting. She hadn’t, though, grasped the real crux of why his royal status filled him with such overwhelming despair.
    By now they had reached the grassy pen where half a dozen rabbits were happily hopping about. He’d watched her as she filled feeding bowls with the fruit and salad they had brought with them and then, as she lifted one of the rabbits out of the pen and knelt on the grass with it on her lap, he’d said:
    “It’s not having any choice about things that’s so difficult, Lily. I can’t choose what I want to do, or be. Unless I die before my father, nothing in the world can prevent me from becoming King. My father didn’t want to become King. He was in the navy and he wanted to stay in the navy, but once his father died he had no choice in the matter. Like it or not he’s the King of England and he’ll be the King of England—and of an empire that straddles the world—until the day he dies.”
    She’d had her head bent low over the rabbit. Then she’d raised it, her eyes meeting his, her hair tumbling in a riot of ringlets past her shoulders. “I think that when you become King you’ll be a very great king,” she’d said solemnly. “I think you should be proud of such a privilege. Think of all the good you will be able to do.