The meal, as far as he was concerned, was therefore drawn-out and dreary and things were not helped by the fact that the Empress of Russia chose, after dinner, to engage him in conversation.
Richard had tried to be sorry for the Empress Elizabeth, knowing that she was neglected by the Czar, but he found himself, instead, sympathising with her unfaithful husband.
She had not, even in her youth, been as alluring as Marie Narischkin and now she had lost even the attractions she had possessed when she first married.
She had let herself grow fat and her face was covered with blotches and pimples. She was not a clever woman and did little to uphold the dignity of her position.
She might be lonely and she undoubtedly was, but she made no effort to gain popularity and generally avoided all ceremonies and public appearances, however beholden she might be to appear at them.
It was therefore in quite a wrong spirit that Richard, wearing the Czar’s clothes and his black and silver cloak, came downstairs to the ballroom.
He was amused to note, as he left the royal bedroom, that the sentries at the door presented arms without a second glance at him and that, as he moved down the corridors, those who met him bowed or curtseyed and no pretence was made not to recognise him because his face was masked.
As he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirrors, he had to admit that the Czar’s barber had done his work well. He undoubtedly looked extremely like the Emperor ineffectively disguised by a mask and patterned cloak.
‘I wonder how many hours I shall have to endure this.’ Richard asked himself as he walked into the ballroom. He knew that he could not go to bed before the Czar and he half-hoped that the truth, when he heard it, would not be so alluring as the Emperor anticipated.
He decided not to dance but to go and find himself a drink. He turned to walk towards one of the refreshment rooms, when suddenly there was a hand on his arm and a little voice said breathlessly,
“Please, you will break my fan! Oh! You’ve stood on it!”
He felt something beneath his feet and, looking down perceived that the stick of mother of pearl belonging to a painted fan was snapped in two.
He bent to pick it up and rising saw a little heart-shaped face with very clear blue eyes shining through the black velvet of a tiny mask.
Her hair was the colour of chestnuts and he wondered if he had seen her before and decided that he had not.
“I am afraid your fan is broken.”
“Alas! And I was so fond of it.”
“I will have it mended for you.”
“It is too much damaged for that.”
“On the contrary. There is a man somewhere in this City who can mend anything – except hearts, of course.”
She smiled and he saw that there was a tiny dimple on the left hand side of her mouth.
“Let’s move out of this crowd and talk about it,” he suggested, “or would you rather dance?”
“Could we – could we dance?”
“But, of course.”
He put his arm round her.
He had not imagined that anyone could be so light. The orchestra was playing a waltz and Richard remembered that he had once found waltzing quite enjoyable before he had decided that dancing with the young ladies who frequented Almack’s bored him.
They swept round and round. She did not talk and he liked her for that and, when at length the music stopped, they found themselves opposite an anteroom decorated with banks of flowers and great ferns and it seemed almost as if they had moved into a fragrant garden.
It was dimly lit and they found two seats set discreetly behind a floral screen.
“Shall we sit down,” Richard suggested.
She obeyed and then, as he turned to look at her, her eyes fell before his and he realised that she was shy.
“Tell me about yourself,” he said gently. “Who are you?”
“My name is Wanda,” she answered. “I believe it is not correct to give one’s whole name at a masked ball.”
“No, of course not,” he agreed, remembering that his name too must remain secret.
“Tell me instead why I have not seen you before.”
“That question is easy to answer. I only arrived in Vienna this evening.”
“This evening! Then this is your first sight of Congress at play?”
“My very first.”
“And what do you think of it?” he asked.
“Isn’t it presumptuous to think anything on so short an acquaintance?”
“It depends on whether you make up your mind about things quickly or slowly. Personally, I always find my first impressions are the correct ones.”
“I only hope mine are.”
“Now, you must tell me what your first impression is.”
“Tonight the Congress seems to me like – an enchanted waltz,” she answered slowly.
“A very lovely description,” he answered.
She was looking up at him and their eyes met. For a moment there seemed nothing more to say.
Perhaps that waltz they had danced together had been enchanted.
“Wanda! I like that name,” Richard said ruminatively. “I don’t think I have ever known anyone called that before.”
“I have always wondered what one’s name means to other people,” Wanda said. “To oneself it is so commonplace because one is so used to it. Names to me have a very special meaning.”
“I wish I could tell you mine,” Richard said, “but not tonight.”
“No, not tonight,” she answered and he saw her glance down at the sparkle of diamonds that showed beneath the folds of his cloak.
He remembered suddenly that she had guessed him to be the Czar and a sudden devil within him prompted him to behave as he thought all young women would expect an Emperor to behave.
He reached out and took her hand in his.
“You are very lovely, little Wanda. Am I the first person in Vienna to tell you that?”
He felt her fingers tremble.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Don’t you think we ought to do something to celebrate this evening of your arrival?” he asked.
“What – what do you mean?”
How young she was, he thought.
She made him think of spring, of the daffodils in the Park at home and of birds singing in the rhododendron bushes.
He had a sudden vision of Katharina, of her face looking down at him as he lay on her bed. He had not realised until this moment how old she was.
He hesitated before he answered and then, prompted by some feeling he did not understand, he said,
“Shall we slip away from this crowd and go and have supper somewhere alone?”
He saw her hesitate and knew, by the sudden tenseness of her body and the fluttering of her fingers beneath his, that she was frightened.
“I will bring you back safely, I promise you that.”
“You promise?”
It was the question of a child wishing to be reassured of its fears of the dark.
“I promise,” he repeated.
Chapter 4
Richard hired a carriage at the door of the Palace and he and Wanda drove to one of the small restaurants off the Prater.
He had been there several times before, found it quiet and attractive and thought it would be the place where they would see no one who would be particularly interested in their appearance. Not that anything one did in Vienna these days was likely to be surprising.
He was well aware, however, that there were other factors to be considered and, while Wanda was seeking her cloak, he had taken the opportunity of changing the star spangled disguise he wore for something quite different.
In one of the corridors near the entrance he saw a man asleep. He had obviously indulged too freely in the good wine and was sleeping off the effects on one of the gilt and brocade couches placed in uniform rows along the corridor beneath the Imperial portraits.
Swiftly Richard untied the dark blue cloak th
e reveller wore and took too his wide-brimmed satin hat trimmed with cock’s feathers.
It was but a matter of seconds to slip off the cloak given to him by the Czar and place it beneath the cushion of an empty armchair.
The cloak he had purloined was more voluminous than his own and could be tied with ribbons down to the waist. This effectively concealed his uniform and beneath it he undid the sparkling L’Épee de Sweden and put it in his pocket.
When Wanda reappeared and he went towards her, she looked a little startled for a moment at his changed appearance.
Then she smiled.
“We don’t want anyone to know that we have left the ball,” Richard explained in a low voice.
“No, of course not,” she answered, thinking of the Baroness and wondering what she would say when she realised that her charge was nowhere to be seen.
“We won’t be long, will we?” she asked a little apprehensively.
“You can trust yourself to me,” he replied and, slipping his hand beneath her arm, he led her down the corridor and into the entrance hall where guests were still arriving.
As Richard had anticipated, there were only half a dozen other people in the restaurant and they were not easy to distinguish, for the tables were arranged in small alcoves decorated with imitation vines.
One could dine and drink in almost complete isolation. There was an orchestra composed of half a dozen men in national costume and there was an atmosphere of warmth and welcome that made Wanda exclaim as she sat down at the table allotted to them,
“I like this place. What is it called?”
“The Golden Vine,” Richard told her, “and now I am going to order you something to eat and some special wine for which this place is famous.”
He liked the way she accepted his decisions without argument and without comment and, when the waiter had withdrawn, he said,
“Take off your mask. I want to look at you.”
She raised her hands obediently to the little strip of black velvet that lay across her eyes, then, in the light of the candles that stood on the table, she turned her face towards him.
He had expected her to be pretty, but not as lovely as she was.
Her eyes, seeming almost too large for her small face, were like an English sky in summer and the unusual combination of the red-gold hair, blue eyes and dark lashes left him for the moment speechless as he sat looking at her, wondering if ever before he had seen anything quite so young, so fresh and so entrancing.
Under his scrutiny she grew shy and her fingers went to her cheeks.
“Why – why do you look at me – like that?” she faltered.
“I was thinking how different you are from anyone I have ever seen before.”
“Is – is that a compliment?”
“Of course. Don’t you want to be different?”
“I have never thought about it. I am afraid that I know very little about the world or other people. I told you I only arrived in Vienna tonight.”
“And why have you come?”
“My mother, before she died, wanted me to go to balls, masques and receptions like other girls.”
“And now you have been to one, what do you think of it?”
“Could they all be as wonderful?”
He laughed at the artlessness of her question.
“I wish I could answer ‘yes’ to that, but you will grow satiated with them. You will find them dull simply because today’s rout is horribly similar to yesterday’s and tomorrow’s will be no different. It is sad, but everything palls when it becomes too familiar.”
“Everything?” she asked.
“Everything,” he repeated firmly, “even people.”
“No, no, that’s not true. The people one loves grow dearer and more precious. One’s appreciation of them grows, it doesn’t diminish.”
“You must have been fortunate in your choice of friends, or should I say, lovers?”
There was a sudden harshness in his voice. She laughed at that, easily and spontaneously.
“I have no lovers. You are the first man I have ever been alone with, except my father and some of his elderly Army friends who used to come and stay at the schloss from time to time.”
“Is that really true?” Richard asked, thinking of the women he had known, the gay, fashionable young ladies of St. James’s, who always seemed to have started flirtations in their cradles and to have had beaux waiting for them at the schoolroom door.
“You can believe me,” Wanda assured him, “because you see, I always tell the truth.”
“Always?”
“But of course. It is wrong to lie and very uncomfortable.”
“Perhaps you have never had any secrets?”
She flushed a little and looked away from him.
She had suddenly remembered that for the first time in her life she had a secret, a secret so huge and so terrifying that she felt it must be written on her face in letters of fire.
But when the food and wine arrived, she forgot everything but her pleasure in being in new surroundings and she found it too increasingly easy to talk to the man who sat at her side.
Had she ever really believed, she asked herself, that Emperors were different from ordinary human beings?
There was something strong and protective about him, she felt safe and secure in his company and in her innocence she did not ask herself what would have happened had she felt otherwise.
He had not removed his mask and she knew that he would not wish to be recognised in such a place and therefore she made no comment on the fact.
She was unimportant, a nobody and so it did not matter what she did, but she could see his eyes watching her and for the first time in her life she was very conscious of being a woman.
The wine was delicious and, although she was not hungry after her dinner, she forced herself to eat a little of the excellent dishes he had ordered.
“Tell me more about yourself,” he asked her.
There was a deep note in his voice and she thought suddenly that his slight accent when he spoke German was one of the most attractive things she had ever heard.
“There is so little to tell,” she answered. “I wish you would tell me about yourself. You asked me what I think of the Congress – what do you think about it?”
His answer to that sort of question, she thought to herself, was perhaps the sort of information that the Prince would want to hear.
Her companion only laughed.
“To talk of the Congress in Vienna is as banal as talking about the weather in England,” he said.
“Do people talk about it all the time?”
“All the time!” he assured her solemnly, “when they are not speculating as to who is making love to whom!”
“Is there time for love-making when everyone is so busy?”
“What are they busy at except making love?” Richard enquired. “Oh, I am not talking about the Ministers, they do a certain amount of work, it is true, although they have time for their recreations as well, but the rest of the people, the Sovereigns and their suites are here for amusement and what could be more amusing than love?”
He spoke cynically, almost bitterly and then looked down to see a troubled expression on the little face beside him.
“What is the matter?” he asked.
“I was trying to understand,” Wanda answered. “You see, love has never seemed to me something to play with or think about frivolously. It has always seemed – sort of – sacred.”
Richard was silent.
He thought of the affaires de coeur being carried on, schemed and indulged in by every section of the social throng gathered in Vienna, secularisers and secularised, mediatisers and mediatised, poets, gamesters, bankers and delegates, they all seemed to be playing the same game with the same greed and yearning for emotional excitement.
He was no different from the rest of them. His affaire with Princess Katharina was a mere gratification of his senses, nothing more and nothing less
. It took this simple child to show him the truth and for a moment he was ashamed.
Then he laughed at himself.
Was he becoming maudlin that he could believe there was anything else in life but the seeking of pleasure wherever one might find it?
This love Wanda spoke about existed only in the Fairytale books. As for being sacred, he had known a great number of women in his life and there had been nothing sacred about any of them.
All the same it would be a shame to disillusion her.
“Tell me more about your kind of love,” he said. “I am afraid I am as ignorant on the subject as you are about the social exercises of Vienna.”
She guessed that he was mocking her and he felt as if she withdrew into some inner fastness of herself where he could not reach her.
“I must not bore you with my chatter,” she said with a dignity that he had not expected. “As I have already told you, I am very ignorant.”
He found himself capitulating to her sweetness.
“Forgive me,” he said humbly. “I am not laughing at you. It is just that I too am ignorant. We have lived in different worlds and perhaps your values are truer than mine.”
He felt her soften and remembered that she thought of him as an Emperor, divorced from the human problems and the ordinary simple things of life.
“Tell me your thoughts,” he pleaded.
“It is hard to put it into words,” she answered slowly, “but I have always dreamed that perhaps one day I should fall in love with a man, who would love me in return and then I could dedicate my life to making him happy. Surely, if one loved someone enough, it would not be difficult to forget oneself completely and think only of him?”
“Do you think any man is worthy of such unselfishness?”
“The man I loved would have to be or I should not love him,” she answered and her smile was the loveliest sight he had ever seen.
“You are making me almost believe that dreams might come true,” he remarked.
“It cannot be hard to believe that here,” she said softly.
She raised her eyes to his and he held his breath for a moment.
The Enchanted Waltz Page 5
