Cranley Court, June 1914
Laura felt an icy rush of alarm and her heart seemed to miss a beat.
‘Oh my God,’ she murmured aloud as she gazed at the newspaper headline.
‘What is it?’ Diana asked as she came down the staircase. Every morning the butler arranged the newspapers with precision on the hall table as if they were ornamental and not to be touched.
Laura and Caroline were spending the weekend with Diana, where, as always, the atmosphere was serene and the setting luxurious.
‘Oh my God,’ Diana echoed her sister’s words as she saw the headline of the Daily Telegraph. ‘This will lead to trouble.’ The two women looked at each other as if they couldn’t believe their eyes.
‘Isn’t this terrible? This could lead to war.’ Laura’s gaze was glued to the headline.
‘“Crown Prince Franz-Ferdinand of Austria and his wife were assassinated yesterday as they watched a military parade in Sarajevo …”’ Diana read aloud. ‘This is what Robert feared at Christmas. Do you remember?’
‘I remember very well. I had a feeling the New Year was going to be troublesome,’ Laura said sadly.
‘Perhaps it will blow over. Foreigners are so excitable,’ Diana remarked as she led the way into the breakfast room. ‘But I’ve always said the Queen made a big mistake in getting each of her daughters married off to crown heads. Why didn’t she let them marry members of the British aristocracy? God knows, there are quite a few dukes and marquises who would have fitted the bill perfectly.’
Laura looked at Diana scornfully. ‘Would any of them want the job? I can’t think of anything worse. All that protocol and bowing and scraping.’
Later that day, as they walked in the vast grounds of Cranley Court accompanied by Bruno and Augustus, Diana’s two Labradors, she turned to Laura and asked, ‘Have you heard from Lizzie recently?’
Laura hesitated before answering and so Diana continued hurriedly, ‘I know about Justin.’
‘You do? Thank heaven’s for that. The last I heard was that Justin had joined up.’
Diana nodded. ‘Poor Lizzie. It must have been a terrible shock.’
‘Yes, but it was for the best. It wasn’t fair on Humphrey or their girls. And just think of the scandal. The tabloids would have gone to town about a middle-aged earl’s daughter running off with someone young enough to be her son. It would have ruined her daughters’ lives. I really don’t know what she was thinking to begin with.’
‘You’re not being very sympathetic, Laura,’ Diana said gently.
‘What do you mean? Why should Humphrey and those beautiful girls suffer so Lizzie can enjoy some brief fling? I think she was being terribly selfish. I told her she had to think about them and not just herself.’
Diana looked slightly shocked. ‘You sound like Mama,’ she observed. ‘Did you also refer to hellfire and all that?’
‘Don’t be silly, Di. This is no laughing matter.’
Diana was silent for a moment then looked straight into Laura face. Then she asked, ‘Have you ever been passionately in love?’
Laura’s pale skin flushed red and her hazel eyes brimmed with sudden tears. ‘Yes, I have,’ she shot back furiously. ‘You seem to forget that the love of my life was Rory Drummond, and he was killed before we were able to get married. But I don’t feel the need to bore everyone about it.’ Her voice broke.
Diana immediately put her arm around her sister’s shoulders. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you, dearest. Of course I remember that tragedy, but I was only twelve then and Beattie and Georgie and I were kept in the schoolroom most of the time. It was Lizzie who was there for you at that time. She even slept in your room.’
Laura took a lace-edged handkerchief out of her pocket. ‘You think I’m being too harsh with Lizzie?’
‘I know you too well to think that. I realized you’re trying to prevent Lizzie from ruining her life and bringing misery upon her family but when you fall desperately and madly in love with someone it’s the hardest thing in the world to give them up.’ Diana’s eyes were over-bright and her lips trembled.
Laura looked at her in astonishment. ‘You sound as if …?’
Diana nodded quickly and pulled herself together. ‘I fell in love three or four years ago. He lived very near here and he asked me to go to London with him. He was a lawyer and very ambitious. He had money, a wonderful sense of humour …’ Her voice trailed off.
‘Did Robert know what was going on?’
‘Absolutely not. We couldn’t see much of each other but when we did …’
‘Did you … you know?’
Diana nodded. ‘Yes, we did, and it was wonderful.’
‘My word! Aren’t you a dark horse!’ There was a note of admiration in Laura’s voice.
‘I had to be strong. I had Robert and the children to think about. I told Lizzie she had to be strong, too. I just hope that between us Lizzie will recover.’
Robert was very quiet at lunch that day.
‘Are you all right, darling?’ Diana inquired.
He looked back at her with tired eyes. ‘How can any of us be all right now that war looks inevitable?’ he replied. ‘The assassination of Franz-Ferdinand is just what I feared. What’s the date today?’
‘June the twenty-eighth,’ Laura replied promptly.
Robert nodded sombrely. ‘I’ll bet you anything you like that this will lead Great Britain into war by the beginning of August, or possibly even sooner.’
The serious tone in which he spoke startled both his wife and Laura.
‘What makes you say that?’ Diana said, looking shocked.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘To begin with, I wouldn’t be surprised if Germany sides with Austria and Hungary, who will soon have fallen out with Serbia. And then Russia will get involved, and so it goes on until we are forced into it with France, against Germany. It’s what is known as the Domino Effect.’
The two women looked at him in horror and Diana asked, ‘Why do you think this, Robert?’
‘My cousin, Mark Kelso, works in the Foreign Office. Whitehall has suspected for some months that something like this assassination would kick-off something that would be unstoppable. Before you know it Britain will succumb, and so will Australia and Canada, whether they want to or not.’
There was a stunned silence in the room.
‘I had no idea things were so serious,’ said Diana, looking stricken. The Boer War had been bad enough – their younger brother Henry had been tragically killed. This conflict however, sounded as if most of the world was going to be involved.
‘Nothing will ever be the same again,’ Robert warned them. ‘But Great Britain will survive. We always do.’