Free Palace Circle by Rebecca Dean Page B

his voice thick with emotion. “There is red in her hair.”
    She smiled up at him. “Would you like to hold her?”
    He nodded, tenderly taking the sleeping baby from her arms.
    When Ellie returned to the room five minutes later he was still holding her—and doing so not only with great competence but with almost fatherly care.

FIVE
    On the day Jerome and his regiment left for France, not even holding Petronella eased Delia's disquiet. Unlike the vast majority of the population she hadn't been euphoric at the outbreak of war. Now, even those who had been were anxious as it became increasingly obvious that the war was going to be a long, drawn-out affair. For Delia it was much worse. With a husband a member of the Privy Council and with one friend married to the prime minister and another to the first lord of the admiralty, she knew too much of the worries felt at the very highest levels to be comforted by the remorselessly upbeat propaganda being pumped out by national newspapers.
    “Please, God,” she prayed throughout the day, “please God, don't let Jerome be killed. Don't let him be injured. Please, God.
Please
.”
    She was soon beset by another grim anxiety for there were rumors of German submarine activity in the Atlantic.
    “They won't attack civilian shipping,” Gwen's husband said confidently. “Such a thing is unthinkable, Delia. Ivor will be home safe and sound within the next couple of weeks.”
    Despite his certainty she continued to worry, her only distraction the gossip of her visitors.
    “The Queen is visiting as many as four hospitals a day,”Gwen said, busily knitting a khaki sock as she sat at Delia's bedside. “Seeing such suffering must be a terrible ordeal for her. I remember she was once so overcome when a footman cut his finger that she nearly fainted.”
    “The Prince of Wales has been gazetted to the Grenadier Guards,” Clementine said when she visited, delving in her bag for the khaki shirt she was making. “He must look quite odd, for he's only five foot three and the guards are all six foot and over!”
    They giggled, but when Delia had tried to imagine the golden-haired prince in a guards uniform, she failed completely.
    Clara Digby visited and was appalled to find Delia out of bed and seated in a chair by the window. “Goodness gracious, when doctors decree that a new mother should remain in bed for ten days after giving birth, they mean ten days. And bed means bed, not a chair!”
    “I've been in bed for five days, Clara, and I'm bored to tears. What is Cuthie's latest news from the palace? Is it true the King has ordered that no more wine is to be served at mealtimes?”
    Clara seated herself and said, “Yes, he's decided that alcohol is not consistent with emergency measures. How deadly dull palace dinners are to be endured without the benefit of wine, I can't think. I don't envisage Ivor enjoying boiled water sweetened with sugar—which is, apparently, what was served yesterday evening—do you? And when do you expect him home?”
    Without waiting for an answer, she eased off her pale kid gloves. “He must be exceedingly impatient to see his daughter—and not, I hope, too disappointed about her sex. Cuthbert barely spoke to me for six months after Amelia was born.”
    She straightened the seam of her glove. “Has Sylvia been to visit? It will look very odd if she doesn't. I saw her at the Denbys’ a week or so ago—your name was mentioned and thetips of her claws showed. Muriel Denby put her in her place— as, of course, did I. Why men never see that side of Sylvia is quite beyond me. Young Maurice Denby is quite besotted with her. He's Muriel's youngest and due to leave for France this week.”
    Delia let Clara rattle on, wondering, as she always did, just how much of a true friend Clara was. Clementine and Margot sensitively never brought Sylvia's name into the conversation. She was curious just how Sylvia had shown her claws, but she had far too much pride to