Princes and Princesses

by Cartland, Barbara

  First thing in the morning he would usually scamper about, excited to be free, but, as this was his fourth visit to the garden today, he took his time noting that nothing had been changed since he had been there before.

  After pretending to walk a little way towards the geranium beds in the centre of the garden, Angelina doubled back and moving amongst the thick shrubs that prevented the passers-by from looking into the garden, managed to secure a good view of the Ministry.

  She had seen the Prince accompanied by the Minister leaving before luncheon in an open carriage.

  There had been two men in uniform sitting opposite them whom Angelina guessed to be aides-de-camp.

  She thought that they were either going to luncheon at Buckingham Palace or with some of the many Royalties who were packed into every available house and hotel in London.

  The newspapers had said that there was not room for one more person to stay in the Capital, and Angelina had longed to offer them empty bedrooms in her grandmother’s house.

  She had known that such a thing would be impossible, although it was delightful to dream of some minor Royalty who might become their guest.

  The doors of the Ministry were open.

  As Angelina looked through the leaves, she guessed that by the number of footmen in attendance and the fact that the red carpet was waiting in a roll at the top of the steps, she would not have long to wait.

  The livery of the servants was very smart, green with a large amount of gold braid for the senior servants, and gold buttons engraved with the Cephalonian crest for the less important.

  Through the open door she could see the bottom half of a huge crystal chandelier and the turn of a marble staircase.

  The Cephalonian Ministry was much larger than her grandmother’s house. This was because two of the mansions in Belgrave Square had been converted into one and a double door had been built in the centre.

  It looked very impressive with the huge flag flying over the portico, the flag whose colours always made Angelina’s heart leap a little because it was so romantic.

  Sometimes she dreamt that she was sailing over the seas to Greece and that she would see for herself the land of Apollo, which, she had learnt from her books, had a strange light that was different from the light in any other part of the world.

  When she awoke, she always knew that it was very unlikely that her dreams would ever come true.

  Perhaps if her father relented and let her join him in India as she longed to do, she would, as the ship carried her down the Mediterranean towards the Suez Canal, pass Greece and perhaps have a glimpse of the islands that clustered round the South of that immortal country.

  There was still no sign of the Prince and Angelina waiting felt impatiently that, if he did not come soon, she would have to go back to the house.

  When her grandmother awoke, she would ring her bell and, when Hannah had shuffled in, her first demand would be for another hot water bottle, and her second for her granddaughter.

  “Send Miss Angelina to me, Hannah,” she would say. “There is still quite a lot in the newspapers that she has not read to me. But first give me my looking glass. I want to see if my cap is on straight.”

  Lady Medwin had, in her youth, been an acknowledged beauty and she was very particular that the elegant little lace caps trimmed with bows of blue ribbon that she wore on her thinning hair should be correctly adjusted.

  Once, after the Vicar had called, she had caught sight of herself in the mirror and realised that all the time she had been talking to him, her cap had been on her head at a very jaunty angle.

  She was horrified and after this always insisted at least a dozen times a day on looking to see if her cap was straight.

  ‘Where can he be?’ Angelina asked herself.

  She thought perhaps the party had not been as formal as she had expected and the Prince had found some charming and attractive lady he could not tear himself away from.

  Angelina had not listened to her grandmother’s conversation over the past two years without realising that Society ladies were very feminine and fascinating and they attracted the attention not only of their husbands but of other gentlemen as well.

  It was not only the King who had current favourites who were the envy of their contemporaries. There were, it appeared to Angelina, a number of affairs involving every lovely woman she had ever heard of.

  Lady Medwin, of course, talked mostly of the beauties she had known when she herself entertained interesting and famous people.

  But they had now grown old and there was a new generation of beauties who had followed Mrs. Langtry, Lady de Grey and the Regal Duchess of Sutherland.

  Angelina found that her grandmother knew very little about the younger women who were mentioned in the newspapers and whose gowns were illustrated in The Ladies Journal.

  She tried to imagine who had captured the Prince’s attention and she wondered what he would say to her and if in fact he spoke good English.

  Somewhere she had read that the top Society in Greece spoke mostly French amongst themselves, but that seemed to her almost a betrayal of their nationality.

  How could they not be proud, very proud, to be Greek? Just as she thought that her father and all his friends assumed that by being English they had inherited the earth.

  She could understand her father feeling like that because he was in India.

  After all the British had conquered India and the Queen had become Empress of India and the Viceroy was in rank the equal of any King in Europe.

  ‘Perhaps one day Papa will be made Viceroy,’ Angelina thought. ‘Then he could not refuse to let me stay with him.’

  But she knew that this was very unlikely. Peers of the Realm, who were very rich, became Viceroys not soldiers and she knew that if he was asked, her father would far sooner be with his Regiment and fighting on the North-West Frontier.

  “Men enjoy war,” her mother had once said bitterly. “It is only their wives left behind who hate it.”

  “Why should men like war, Mama?” Angelina asked.

  “Because it is an adventure, a challenge and I think that is what all men, if they are honest, want,” her mother said sadly. “They find it dull to sit at home and have nothing to occupy their time.”

  She had given a deep sigh.

  “Women lose their husbands to a war, to their Clubs or to another woman.”

  She then realised who she was speaking to and added quickly,

  “It is time for you to practise the piano, Angelina. You are not to waste your time talking to me.”

  Angelina had not forgotten what her mother had said and she wondered if one of her father’s reasons for not having her out in India was that he had found somebody, in a little way, to take her mother’s place.

  Nobody could do it completely, she thought, because her mother had been so sweet, so gentle and so very loving.

  Was that what a man wanted or was it something different?

  It was difficult for Angelina to answer questions about human feelings and relationships because she knew so few people.

  She had a Governess in the country when her mother was alive and, when she had come to live with her grandmother, she had completed her studies at a small very select school for young gentlewomen in Queen’s Gate.

  She found, to her surprise, that she knew a great deal more than most of the other girls of her own age and she was certainly more curious when it came to learning than they were.

  All they wanted to talk about was what would happen when they ‘came out’, whether their parents would give a big ball or a small ball for them, what men would ask them to dance and whether they would be taken to Ranelagh, Henley and Hurlingham.

  As her grandmother grew steadily weaker from what had at first seemed to be only a slight affliction, Angelina had seen her own hopes of ‘coming out’ fading slowly and relentlessly into the distance.

  Sometimes Lady Medwin would say,

  “I must get well and arrange
a party for you. I am really out of touch with the hostesses who have daughters of your age, but it will not be difficult to see that you are asked to the right balls.”

  But lately the only time she talked about balls was when they were reported in the newspapers and she recognised the names of some of the guests.

  ‘If only Papa would come home on leave again,’ Angelina thought to herself.

  At the same time she was sensible enough to know that there was little reason for him to make the long journey from India especially to see her.

  ‘If I had been a boy, it would have been quite different,’ she told herself.

  That was the whole truth.

  Her father had wanted a son and it had been a bitter disappointment that she was his only child.

  She supposed that he thought he had done his duty in leaving her with his mother, who, after all, had she been well, would have entertained for her in exactly the right manner.

  Angelina gave an exasperated little sigh.

  There was no sign of the Prince and she was quite certain that the time had been passing quickly since she had entered that garden and that her grandmother would be asking for her.

  ‘If I don’t wait for him,’ she told herself, ‘he will arrive.’

  She remembered her nurse saying often enough, ‘a watched pot never boils!’

  That was what she was doing now, watching the kettle, while the Prince was doubtless philandering with some beautiful seductive lady and could not force himself to return to the Ministry.

  ‘I wonder what it is like inside?’ Angelina asked herself.

  She was quite certain that it must be very impressive, but, as she had never been inside an Embassy or a Ministry and had only read about them in books, she had no picture in her mind of what to compare it with.

  Her father had told her once about the magnificent buildings that had been erected for the English in India.

  First the huge Viceroy’s Palace in Calcutta which had been modelled on Kedleston Hall, the most prestigious of Robert Adam’s Palladian houses in the whole of England.

  There was another Palace-like mansion outside Bombay.

  But that was not the same as an Embassy and she tried to remember what she had read about the inside of the British Embassy in Paris, which had once belonged to Princess Pauline Borghese.

  There was still no sign of the Prince and Angelina turned from where she had been standing for so long, to find just behind her that Twi-Twi was lying down on the grass, apparently quite content to be inactive.

  “Come along, you lazy boy!” Angelina said to him. “Run in the sunshine. It will do you good.”

  As if to show him how to do it, she ran across the lawn, seeming, because she was small and light, hardly to touch the ground with her feet.

  Only when she reached the shrubs on the other side of the gardens did she look back to find that Twi-Twi was not following her but merely sitting up watching her, a little patch of white on a carpet of emerald green.

  Angelina felt embarrassed at having run in such an unladylike manner, but she told herself that there was no one to see her and it really did not matter what she did.

  ‘I must remember to bring Twi-Twi a ball,’ she told herself. ‘I am certain that the servants overfeed him and, if I am not careful, he will get fat.’

  She loved Twi-Twi when he was playful, but even then he still seemed to have a dignity that other dogs did not possess.

  She walked back slowly towards him.

  “You are a lazy boy!” she said. “And now I am taking you home. And, when you are sitting sedately by Grandmama’s bed, you will be sorry you were not more adventurous.”

  Even as she spoke she heard the sound of horses’ hoofs and moving swiftly she was back at her lookout opposite the Ministry door.

  This time she was rewarded.

  Coming down the square from the West she saw the fine pair of black horses that pulled the Prince’s open carriage in which he had set out before luncheon.

  The coachman on the box with his cockaded top hat and the footman beside him looked very impressive and they pulled up at the front door with a flourish.

  By craning her neck a little and standing on tiptoe because she was so small, Angelina could see the occupants of the carriage very clearly.

  The Minister was a shorter man than the Prince, who seemed with his square shoulders and top hat on the side of his dark head, to be even more handsome and more attractive than she remembered.

  As soon as the footmen had rolled down the red carpet and opened the door of the carriage, one of the aides-de-camp stepped out first to stand at attention as the Prince alighted.

  He said something and, although Angelina could not hear what it was, she saw the smile on his lips as he finished speaking.

  Then he walked up the red carpet and in through the open door of the Ministry.

  She felt her heart beating because it had been so exciting to see him.

  Then, realising the pageant was over and the horses were beginning to move away, she knew that she must hurry home.

  She picked up Twi-Twi in her arms and, taking the key from her waistband where she had inserted it for safety, she ran towards the gate and opened it.

  As she did so, the carriage passed her, driving away to turn left at the corner of the square so as to enter the mews at the back of the houses on that side.

  Angelina locked the gate, then still carrying Twi-Twi, started to cross the road.

  Only as she had nearly reached the opposite pavement did something happen that, she thought afterwards, she might have anticipated.

  The Ministry cat, a rather ugly ginger, came up from the basement to peer through the railings.

  If there was one thing in the world Twi-Twi really disliked, it was the Ministry cat.

  Angelina had always been convinced that, being aware of the loathing in which it was held, the ginger cat would deliberately taunt Twi-Twi with words that only he could understand.

  Certainly strange sounds, which made Twi-Twi bark furiously, used to come from the other side of the high wall that divided the courtyards at the back of the adjacent buildings.

  Looking up and down the square and not realising that its enemy was held in Angelina’s arms, the ginger cat emerged from the railings and onto the pavement.

  As it did so, Twi-Twi with an unexpected show of strength leapt from Angelina’s arms onto the roadway.

  Too late the ginger cat realised its danger and having no time to retreat in the direction it had come, went off with the speed of a greyhound down the pavement, up the steps and in through the front door of the Ministry.

  If the ginger cat could move fast, so could Twi-Twi when he wished to.

  It seemed to Angelina that there was just a streak of orange followed by a shaft of white lightning as they swept past the footmen who were rolling up the red carpet and disappeared through the open door.

  There was nothing Angelina could do but run after them, hoping optimistically that she could catch Twi-Twi but knowing it was extremely unlikely.

  Without realising what she was doing, she ran up the steps of the Ministry and in through the open door.

  There were several men standing around, but her eyes were on the ground looking for Twi-Twi.

  She saw him at the far end of the very large hall where he had apparently cornered the ginger cat behind a huge china vase that contained an aspidistra.

  She rushed forward, thinking that at any moment there might be a massacre and called out,

  “Twi-Twi! Twi-Twi!”

  There was a shriek from the ginger cat, a ferocious growl from Twi-Twi and then the cat by some acrobatic feat leapt on top of the china case and from there onto the staircase.

  It slipped through the banisters and disappeared while Twi-Twi, defeated, could only gaze after it, growling.

  Angelina bent down and picked him up in her arms.

  “How could you be so naughty?” she asked.

  Then, as she t
urned round, she found herself confronted by the man she had just been watching – the Prince!

  He was looking without his tall hat even more attractive, she thought, than he had in the carriage and, as she stood in front of him, he seemed much taller than she had expected.

  For a moment her eyes met his and it seemed as if it was impossible to find anything to say.

  Then conscious that there were also other people in the hall staring at her, Angelina murmured,

  “I am – sorry – very sorry.”

  “Apparently your dog has an aversion to our cat,” the Prince commented.

  As he spoke, Angelina realised that one of her questions about him was answered.

  He spoke perfect English with just the faintest trace of an accent.

  “I-I am sorry,” she said again, “but they are – old enemies.”

  “Are you telling me that your dog and our cat are acquainted?” the Prince asked.

  Too late Angelina realised that she ought to have curtseyed.

  “I live next door – Your Royal Highness,” she said with an effort to retrieve her bad manners.

  “Then you have the advantage of me,” the Prince said, “for you know who I am, but I do not know your name.”

  “It is Angelina Medwin, sir.”

  “May I say that I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Medwin,” the Prince smiled, “and add that I am extremely curious about your dog.”

  He looked at Twi-Twi as he spoke, who was still trying to get a further glimpse of the ginger cat.

  “He is a rare breed, sir.” Angelina explained. “He is a Pekingese.”

  “But of course!” the Prince exclaimed. “I should have known that. I have heard about the dogs in China and read about them, but I have never actually seen one before.”

  “Very few people have,” Angelina said, “and the first one only came to England in 1860.”

  Even as she spoke, she thought it extraordinary that she should be giving what she thought of as ‘her lecture’ on Pekingeses to the one man she would like to have listened to.

  “That is what I read somewhere,” the Prince said. “They were acquired by the British when they burnt down the Summer Palace in Peking. Is that right?”