They had been rewarded with a single frame that they intended to sell for a tidy sum to as many European newspapers as possible.
The Nahlin was moored in the harbour at Sibenik on the Dalmatian Coast, with the pleasing simplicity of the vessel’s three-hundred-foot outline reflected in the clear mirror of the Adriatic waters. The ship that was to be home to the royal party for the next four weeks gleamed white against a backdrop of tree-covered mountains, and the first sight of her took away the collective breath of her distinguished passengers.
“Oh my!” Evangeline exclaimed, overcome by a rare move to literary eloquence. “What happiness it will be to bask in the sunshine of eternal bliss!”
She had a feeling this might have been a quote from William Shakespeare, because it sure sounded like one. She wished Julian could be there to hear her say it instead of indulging himself in the hedonistic playgrounds of Berlin. She comforted herself by thinking how tired he would become of the empty-headed Lottie, and at the same time how relieved he would be to escape May’s persistent proposals for bicycle rides.
Finding themselves torn between the beauty of the ship and the unexpected sight of crowds of strangers gathered on the opposite side of the port, the king’s guests could not disguise their anxiety at what they had let themselves in for. The captain of the Nahlin estimated twenty thousand Yugoslavs—splendid in their national costume and alerted by the latest newspaper stories, complete with photographs—had come out to look. It was immediately evident that the Sibenik crowds were interested less in the figure of the king than in his female companion.
After a few days spent in absolute privacy cruising the sparkling waters, the holidaymakers docked at a small harbour off one of the Greek islands where it was confirmed that the pseudonymous cover of the Duke of Lancaster (in truth, one of the king’s own subsidiary titles) had been blown. With a look of doom mingled with disapproval, the king’s equerry, Sir John Aird, informed his employer that an everincreasing number of publications in America and Europe were covering the royal cruise and that interest in the king’s personal relationship with Mrs. Simpson was mounting by the day. As well as revealing the basic itinerary the newspapers had announced the names of “Britain’s king’s guests,” including “a divorced woman from Baltimore.”
The couple around whom so much speculation fizzed were sharing one end of the yacht, while the guests were marshalled in the state rooms at the other. Evangeline comforted herself that although the former library was indeed rather musty, she supposed she should count her lucky stars that she was on board at all. All her early hopes that the romantic focus of the cruise might be expanded were soon dashed. The guest list comprised the King’s various equerries as well as several safely married couples, including the formidable Lady Diana Cooper and her parliamentary husband Duff. Sadly Mrs. Merryman had decided to stay put for the summer on the other side of the Atlantic, as her presence would have made the ignominy of being an unmatched woman more bearable. There were of course several singletons among the crew, but even Evangeline had to concede that there wasn’t much chance of a middle-aged dame from Baltimore finding a non-English-speaking deckhand from Greece to be a suitable beau, in order to teach Julian a lesson in what he might be missing.
The guests settled into a routine of want-for-nothing indulgence. With staff at the ready to satisfy every whim, much of the time was spent doing nothing much at all. Lazing in the luxurious state rooms, stretching out on soft-cushioned and deep-mattressed chaise longues, eating fish that had been swimming in the warm waters beneath the boat only an hour earlier, puzzling over jigsaws, playing cards, reading, dozing, flirting and chatting of inconsequences all amounted to justifiable activity of a holiday nature. The king was certainly in a holiday mood. He had acquired a shrimping net that he would dangle in the water, while floating around the Nahlin in a small dingy. His cooperative subjects would lean over the side of the ship encouraging him.
“There’s a big one, sir,” they would say, pointing helpfully, while the king whooped like a schoolboy each time he trapped so much as a jellyfish. Around his neck two crosses on a silver chain glinted in the Mediterranean sun, matching the answering glint of those on the bracelet around Wallis’s wrist.