She had thought of him so often, because she could not prevent herself from doing so, and that he was in her life and in her very breathing, although without substance or reality.
It was not only every night when she was alone that she thought of him and remembered the wonder of his kisses and the way that she had felt that she was part of him and he was part of her.
It also seemed during the daytime that he was beside her and she thought at times that it was as if she could speak to him and he could answer her.
Now, incredibly, so that she felt as if a meteor had fallen from the sky, he was there!
Ever since she had left Charl Castle, now nearly three weeks ago, she had longed irrepressibly for news of Charlotte and Shane and, although she tried not to admit it to herself, news of the Prince.
It was only yesterday that she had received a letter from the Viscount that she had almost despaired of getting.
When she saw that it was postmarked from Paris, she knew why it had been so long in coming and why too there had been no talk about him in the village.
It was a strange letter because he had not started it with her name but had plunged straight into what he had to say.
And she read,
“I know that you will be wanting to hear from me, but I have had little opportunity for writing and very little to tell you. My aunt, as we all anticipated, was furious when she learnt that Charlotte, you and Shane had left The Castle without her being informed.
I told her, as we arranged, that Shane had received a telegram saying that you and he must return to Ireland immediately and that Charlotte had decided to go with you. I think she was suspicious as to Charlotte’s real reason, although she thought it wiser not to say so.
I could see that she was doing very best to placate the Prince and to leave the relationship between them undamaged by such a precipitate departure.
I pretended that I saw nothing peculiar in this and I think on the whole she believed me. Anyway, as I did not wish to be embroiled in the row that would ensue when my father and mother learnt the truth, I decided to leave England for Paris, where I have been staying with some friends.
I therefore have very little to tell you and I am sure that you will know better than I do what has happened at Charl Castle.
I must see you as soon as I return. Don’t worry about gossip, I will think of a way that we can meet without anybody being aware of it and I have a great deal to say to you.
I cannot forget how splendid you were in what I know was a very difficult part to play, and that is something else we must discuss.
Take care of yourself,
R.”
Alana read the letter through several times and thought that it was disappointing.
There was so much more that she wanted to hear and so much more she wanted to know about Charlotte.
Strangely enough, although she expected the scandal to break every day, as yet the village knew nothing about Charlotte and Shane.
When Alana returned to the Vicarage, it was to learn that the Earl and Countess had gone North to stay with some friends in Northumberland.
They were not due back at The Castle for another two days.
It was almost an anti-climax to find that the people of the village were not whispering about what had happened at Charl Castle and Alana could only imagine that Charlotte’s lady’s maid had not been in touch with Charlotte’s parents.
Now, when she saw the Prince standing in the nursery, another idea came to her.
Perhaps something had gone wrong. Perhaps he had come to tell her that Charlotte was in difficulties.
She did not question how he should know or why.
She only looked at him as she knelt on the floor beside the bath, her eyes very large in a face that had gone suddenly pale.
“What – is wrong? Why are you – here?”
Her voice sounded strange and inarticulate even to herself and the Prince walked farther into the nursery and he then said,
“There is nothing wrong now that I have found you.”
“F-found – me?” Alana repeated.
Then, almost as if she felt Billy was some protection against her own feelings, she picked him up out of the bath, wrapped him in a big white Turkish towel that had been warming in front of the fire and sat down in a low chair with him on her knee.
He protested volubly at being taken out of the water and, by the time she had quieted him down and was drying him, she saw that the Prince had seated himself in an armchair on the other side of the hearthrug and was watching her.
She was suddenly aware of how very different she looked from when he had last seen her and it made her feel inexpressibly shy.
“I’m finished,” Eloise said from the table.
“Then say your grace,” Alana answered automatically.
Eloise was a pretty child with fair hair that complemented her fair skin.
With her small hands together, she closed her eyes.
“Thank you God for my good supper, please may I get down!” she parroted in one breath.
She did not wait for permission, but slithered from her chair and walked across the room to stand at the Prince’s side.
“You’re bigger than my Dadda,” she said conversationally.
“And you are smaller than Alana,” the Prince replied.
The way he spoke her name made Alana feel a little flame of excitement run through her.
Then she told herself that the mere fact that he no longer prefixed it with ‘Lady’ depicted all too clearly the gulf that lay between them.
Now she was no longer ‘Lady Alana’ or even ‘Miss’.
She was just a servant to be addressed by her Christian name and ordered to do the bidding of her betters.
“Have you come to see Alana?” Eloise asked curiously.
“Yes, I have,” the Prince replied, “and I have been looking for her for a long time.”
“Has she been hiding?”
“Yes, she has been hiding, but I have been very clever in being able to find her.”
“She’s here with us.”
“I know that now.”
Because Alana found his conversation with Eloise embarrassing, she ordered,
“Go and get into bed, Eloise, and I will come and hear your prayers in a moment.”
Eloise was looking at the Prince.
“You can kiss me goodnight,” she said invitingly.
Alana could not help a smile.
Whatever their age, she thought, they found him attractive.
It was like the stab of a dagger to realise how many women there were in his life. She was just one of them, only perhaps more foolish than the others.
The Prince now picked up Eloise and put her on his knee.
“You will be very pretty when you grow up,” he said, “and there will be no need then to offer your kisses to any young man. They will all be asking for them.”
Eloise was not listening, she was playing with the buttons on the Prince’s coat.
“Don’t encourage her,” Alana said in what she hoped was an ordinary voice. “I regret to say she is already an incorrigible flirt!”
“Why not?” the Prince asked. “It is a natural instinct in every woman to attract a man and to be glad when she is able to do so.”
“I think you are generalising – from your own experience,” Alana said sharply.
The Prince laughed.
“I might have guessed that such a statement would evoke an argument,” he said. “Put the children to bed and then we can talk.”
Alana wanted to reply that they had nothing to talk about and then she thought that it would sound foolish.
By now she had put Billy into his nightshirt and she picked him up in her arms, saying as she did so,
“Come along, Eloise.”
“Goodnight,” Eloise said to the Prince.
As she spoke, she raised her arms and put them round his neck.
He kissed her and then said,
“Would you like me to carry you to bed?”
“Yes, please. You are very tall and if you carry me I shall be very high off the ground.”
Alana had already reached the door of the room where she slept with Billy. Opening out of it there was a small room, little more than a cupboard, which Eloise, as the only girl, had to herself.
As she walked into the room with the Prince following, it flashed through her mind that they might be husband and wife putting their children to bed.
Then she told herself that she must be demented to imagine that the Prince would ever do such a thing even with his own children.
As Eloise told him where her bedroom was, she saw him carry the small girl through the doorway, her arms still round his neck and her fair hair brushing his chin.
‘I suppose this is a new experience for him,’ Alana thought almost savagely.
But it somehow hurt her to see him doing anything so simple when she knew how very different his life was in every way.
She put Billy into his cot, tucked him up warmly and kissed his cheek.
His eyelids were already beginning to close as she lifted up the side of the cot and pulled the curtains to shut out the dusk, which was rapidly turning into night.
Then, as she moved towards Eloise’s room, the Prince came from it closing the door behind him.
“I have heard her prayers,” he said, “so there is no need for you to trouble.”
“It is no trouble,” Alana replied.
She opened the door and looked into the room.
There were no candles but by the light from the outer room Alana could see that Eloise was tucked up in bed with her head turned on the pillow.
She closed the door again to find that the Prince was watching her with a smile on his lips as if he mocked at her efforts to find fault.
She blew out the two candles in the, bedroom and they went into the nursery, where the light came from an oil lamp standing on the table in the centre of the room.
Now that the children were no longer with them it swept over Alana even more forcibly than it had before how different she must appear to the Prince from the last time he had seen her.
He had kissed her when she was wearing Charlotte’s black evening gown decorated, as Lady Odele had said, theatrically with white orchids that had also haloed her head.
Now with the sleeves of her gown rolled up above her elbows, with her hair untidy from bathing the children and wearing a flannel apron that was the badge of office of every Nanny, Alana told herself that the Prince saw her as she really was.
Almost instinctively her chin went up a little and her eyes looked at him defiantly.
He walked automatically to the fireplace to stand with his back to the fire, which had a protective brass guard in front of it that was drying several pairs of socks that Alana had washed earlier in the day.
The bath was at his feet and the two towels that had dried the children lay beside it.
She wanted to pick them up and then refrained from doing so.
The sooner the Prince said what had to be said and left the better.
She had known an irrepressible joy and her heart had leapt at the sight of him, but she now felt an agony because this was how he would remember her and not as she had looked and been when he had kissed her in the Music Room at Charl Castle.
As he did not speak, she asked,
“Why – have you come – here?”
“To talk to you.”
Even as he spoke, she added in an agitated voice,
“How – can you have – found me? Who told you – where I was?”
“Charlotte, as it happens.”
Alana stared at him wide-eyed.
“Charlotte? I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true, although she was reluctant to do so until I blackmailed her into doing what I wanted.”
“Blackmailed?”
Alana spoke the word in horror, but the Prince was smiling.
“Come and sit down and I will tell you all about it. I am sure you are curious.”
She was curious, Alana admitted to herself. At the same time it was an order and she knew that she had to obey him.
Hardly thinking of what she was doing, she untied the tape that held the flannel apron round her waist and put it down on a chair. Then she pulled down the sleeves of her gown and fastened them neatly at the wrists.
She was uncomfortably aware that the Prince was watching her and with a nervous little gesture she put her hands up to her hair as she seated herself on a chair opposite the one he had sat in before.
Because he was still standing, she had to tip her head back to look up at him as she asked,
“You have – seen Charlotte?”
“Yes.”
“She is – married?”
It seemed for the moment the most important question of all and, as if the Prince understood her anxiety, he was smiling as he replied,
“Very much so. I have never seen two people so happy.”
“How did you – find them?”
“If I make up my mind to do something, I am invariably successful,” the Prince said. “I was sure that Charlotte and Shane had run away to get married.”
Alana gave a little gasp.
“You – knew that?”
“Shall I say that I not only have eyes in my head but, as you know better than anybody else, an instinct that cannot be denied and is invariably correct.”
“So you – guessed they – loved each other?”
“It was obvious to me as soon as I saw them together.”
“Then why – ?”
Alana stopped.
She felt that what she was going to say would be impertinent besides being too intimate, but there was really no need for words between them for the Prince said,
“That is just what I am going to explain to you. But what I had expected was to find you at Derryfield with Charlotte and your supposed cousin.”
Alana drew in her breath.
“How did Charlotte – explain my – absence?”
“She tried to convince me at first that you had left for your home, which was in another part of Ireland. But again that instinct, which you and I both have, told me that she was not speaking the truth.”
“You – you said you – blackmailed her into – telling the truth.”
“Perhaps ‘bribed’ would be a prettier word and indeed more accurate,” the Prince replied.
“Bribed?” Alana repeated. “Or did you threaten her?”
Her voice was accusing.
“No, I did not resort to anything so unpleasant. There was really no need. I merely made it clear, after the first shock of seeing me was over, that I was prepared to help Shane.”
Alana looked up at him.
“You would – really help him – you mean in breeding horses?”
“I have bought quite a number from him.”
“That was kind, really very kind of you,” Alana cried. “If he can support Charlotte, then I am sure that her father will forgive her for running away and everything will be – all right in the future.”
“That is what I thought,” the Prince agreed. “Equally I made your address a condition of sale!”
It flashed through Alana’s mind that in a way Charlotte had betrayed her trust and she might at least have warned her.
As if the Prince again was aware of what she was thinking, he said,
“You will understand better when I tell you why I wanted to see you.”
As he spoke, he sat down in the chair opposite her and it struck her that he seemed entirely at ease and at home even in such an unlikely place as an untidy nursery.
But, because she still felt shy, she said automatically,
“You should – not have – come here.”
“Why not?”
“The Vicar and Mrs. Bredon are – away and the village will – talk.”
“Do you really mind if they do?”
“Of cou
rse. I have to live here.”
It struck Alana what a great deal of gossip there would be if it was known that Prince Ivan Katinouski of Charl Castle had called to see her.
How could she explain his presence?
She could almost hear the news of his visit running like wildfire from cottage to cottage and from farm to farm and the whispered constructions that would be put on it.
“Please – say quickly what you have to say to me – and go,” she murmured in a low voice.
“If I do obey you,” the Prince replied, “without telling you why I have come, would you not wonder all your life what it was you had not heard?”
“Y-yes – of course,” Alana admitted. “But you have no – idea what it is like to – live in a small village.”
“You certainly don’t behave like a villager and you certainly did not look like one when I last saw you.”
“I was – acting a part,” Alana parried defiantly. “I was wearing Charlotte’s gowns and Your Highness’s orchids. Now you see me – as I really am.”
“I wonder,” the Prince said. “You would be the first to tell me that it is not what people look like but what they think that matters. It was with our brains that we talked when you were at The Castle and also with our instincts.”
He spoke the words very softly and, because Alana felt an irrepressible emotional reaction, she said quickly,
“Tell me why you have come.”
“It is rather a long story,” the Prince began, “and you must forgive me if I start in 1835.”
Alana looked at him in perplexity and he went on to explain,
“That was the year my father, having quarrelled with Czar Nicholas, left Russia.”
“I have heard that he hated the Czar,” Alana said in a low voice.
“It was not surprising. Nicholas was a monster, a tyrant, a man so cruel that the horrors of his reign are deeply ingrained in all those who endured it.”
“But your father escaped.”
“He left, claiming that he loathed Russia and everything to do with it,” the Prince replied. “He came to England and was clever enough to bring with him his huge fortune and many of his treasured possessions.”
He paused for a moment before he resumed,
The Power and the Prince Page 12
