Once the servants had all retired to the basement for their supper, it was doubtful if anyone except Hannah and the housemaids who slept on the top floor would come downstairs again.
It was not their job to check if the door that opened into the courtyard was locked and bolted and it was very unlikely that anyone, except Abbey, would be concerned with the second door, which opened from the courtyard into the mews.
Like Ruston, Abbey was very old, and it suited him that the carriage was very seldom required and never in the evenings.
While Angelina was thinking, the Prince was watching her face.
“You see how easy it can be?” he asked. “I know, because it was the way I left the Ministry just now.”
“But supposing – ?” Angelina began.
“Supposing someone finds out?” he finished. “But why should they? Even if they did, it could only be one of the servants and surely they are fond enough of you not to sneak to your grandmother?”
Angelina laughed because it was so like school.
“I have a feeling they might do it for my own good.”
“Then I will come and explain to your grandmother that it was all my fault,” the Prince said.
Angelina gave a little cry.
“That would make it worse – much – much worse! Grandmama would be – horrified that we had not been formally introduced and that I have met you without telling her about it.”
“Then we will just trust to our luck,” the Prince said, “which has been exceedingly good so far.”
That was true, Angelina thought.
What could be luckier than that Twi-Twi should have been incensed by the ginger cat and taken her right into the Ministry so that she could meet the Prince?
“Perhaps it is not luck,” he said in a low voice, “but that the Gods have smiled on us. They can be very kind when they wish to be and I am more grateful than I can say that I found Persephone when I least expected to.”
The deep note was back in his voice and it made Angelina feel very strange, almost as if there were little notes of music running up and down her spine.
“Will you come out to dinner with me tonight?” he asked.
Angelina did not speak and he went on,
“What we will do is to dine very quietly together somewhere where we can talk. Then, when it is dark, I will drive you around the decorated and illuminated streets, so that you shall have your own special little bit of the Coronation, not seeing me, but with me.”
Angelina felt her heart leap.
Could anything, she thought, be more wonderful than to see the decorations, which she had longed to see, with the Prince beside her?
“I think this is – one of my dreams,” she said, “and I am – afraid of – waking up.”
“I will not let you wake up,” the Prince said, “not until we have been together tonight and perhaps for a long time after that.”
Angelina thought that it could not be a very long time because he would be going away. But it would spoil the excitement that was rising in her and which she felt was rising in the Prince too, if she said anything so practical.
Why not pretend that all this thrilling wonder would go on forever and she would feel, as she did now, as if touched by a magic wand?
She was no longer Cinderella, but she could go to the Coronation with Prince Charming – at least to a little bit of it.
“You will come.”
The Prince made the words not a question but a statement and because it was impossible to say ‘no’ and because the idea of being with him was so irresistible, Angelina nodded her head.
“Thank you,” the Prince sighed.
“I am really coming because I want to hear your story and see if I can – help you,” Angelina said in a very low voice.
She knew as she spoke that she was salving her conscience, telling herself that, apart from being selfish and enjoying herself as she had never done before, she was also helping someone who really needed her.
“I will tell you everything you want to know,” the Prince promised. “Then you shall tell me how I can change the future, which, until now, has seemed exactly as I described it, like going down into Hades.”
“I don’t – want you to feel like that,” Angelina said. “Perhaps just by talking to me, it will – help you a little.”
She made a gesture with her hands as she added,
“After all, I am very ignorant and know very little of the world. It is very presumptuous of me to think that in any way I can find a solution to your problems.”
“You have already offered me one solution,” the Prince said, “but it is not enough. I want a great deal more, Angelina.”
His eyes met hers and for a moment it was impossible for either of them to move.
Then with a feeling of dismay, Angelina realised that the carriage had come to a standstill and there were the familiar white porticoed houses of Belgrave Square on one side and the green painted railings of the garden on the other.
“We are – home!” she said, a note of regret in her voice that she could not prevent.
“Yes, but only for a few hours,” the Prince said. “And let me tell you, Angelina, those hours will seem very long to me.”
The words were simple enough, but the way he said them made the colour come into Angelina’s cheeks.
“I will – come to the mews – if it is possible.”
“It has to be possible!” the Prince said fiercely. “Make no mistake, Angelina, I have to see you. If you fail me tonight, I shall come knocking at your front door tomorrow morning!”
She looked at him to see if he was teasing or meant what he said.
To her surprise she had the uncomfortable feeling that, if she failed him, he would, in fact, come to the front door of the house and demand to see her.
“I will come at – quarter-past-eight,” she said in a low voice, as the Prince helped her and Twi-Twi onto the pavement.
As he touched her arm, she felt again that strange lightning flash seep through her and, because it was so disconcerting, she found it hard to think.
Then, as neither of them moved, she said,
“If, by any chance, you have to do – something else, perhaps you would tell your coachman to let – me know if you – cannot come.”
“Do you think anything would stop me?” the Prince asked. “I swear to you, Angelina, if King Edward himself demanded my presence tonight, I would refuse him. I want to see you –I have to see you! It is going to be hard enough as it is, to wait until eight-fifteen.”
Again his voice disturbed her and, because she was shy, her eyes fell before his.
“I-I will be – there,” she whispered.
Then without looking at the Prince again, she ran towards the gate.
She opened it with her key and slipped into the garden without looking back.
Only as she hurried across the lawn towards the other gate did she remember that once again she had not curtseyed to the Prince and had forgotten for most of the time that they were talking to address him formally.
‘It’s no use,’ Angelina told herself. ‘We are past that.’
Then she questioned her own thoughts.
Past what? And where were they going? The Prince was to be married. That was what he wished to discuss with her this evening.
Whatever else she might forget, she had to remember that he was a Royal Highness and, as such, had to find a Royal bride.
As Angelina crossed the road on the other side of the garden and went up the steps of her grandmother’s house, she felt, as she waited for old Ruston to open the door, that she was really Persephone.
It was as if she was leaving the sunshine behind as she stepped into the darkness of the hall –
*
It was impossible for Angelina for the rest of the day to think of anything but the evening ahead.
Half-a-dozen times she slipped up to her bedroom to open the wardrobe and decide which of her many gowns she would wear
for dinner with the Prince.
Her grandmother had started at the end of last year to buy her pretty gowns to make her debut in and be presented at Court.
“I shall soon be perfectly well, dear child,” Lady Medwin had said, “but perhaps it would be wise to ask if we could go to the last Court rather than the first.”
It was only as the Season went by that Angelina realised it would not have mattered to which Court they were invited. Her grandmother would not be able to attend any sort of function that meant her leaving her bedroom.
But the gowns had been bought and, because clothes amused Lady Medwin, she kept buying more.
“I shall be well enough to present you,” her grandmother had said in January and again in February and in a little weaker voice in March.
The first ‘drawing rooms’ had taken place at the end of April and Angelina had read about them in the newspapers and Lady Medwin had taken a great interest in the gowns worn by her contemporaries.
“Elsie would wear grey! Most unbecoming with her skin,” she remarked, “but then she likes to think she resembles the new Queen. Such conceit! Alexandra of Denmark is a thousand times more beautiful than she could ever be!”
Lady Medwin had something rather caustic to say about all the other ladies presenting daughters.
“Green is an unflattering colour for Dora!”
“The Duchess must have looked ridiculous in pale pink!”
“Mutton dressed as lamb I should call it!”
Angelina thought a little wistfully that she wished she had the opportunity of seeing the debutantes who had been presented.
She had a feeling that a great number of them were overshadowed by their mothers.
After all being beautiful sophisticated women of the world, they could obviously outshine and out-glitter any young woman emerging straight from the schoolroom with no experience of men.
And yet men, as Angelina knew from the talk at school, were all that the girls thought about.
She had heard them chattering away, hoping that young ‘Lord So-and-So’ would not be married by the time they ‘came out’ or that the Duke’s son who rode so recklessly would not break his neck in the hunting field.
Her grandmother told her that the social Mamas drummed it into their daughters’ heads that they had to make a brilliant marriage.
There was no question of their entertaining romantic feelings for any nonentity or young man who had no money.
“And what happens if they fall in love, Grandmama?” Angelina had asked.
“Then they just have to forget it,” her grandmother had answered. “At least until after they are safely married.”
Angelina had thought this over when she was alone.
She decided that her grandmother had meant that, once they were married and had produced the essential heir for their distinguished husbands, then they could have flirtations.
It was undoubtedly something that was indulged in by all the dashing gentlemen about town, who, like the King, had their favourites.
But she told herself that was not what she wanted of her marriage!
She wanted to fall in love, just as in the fairy stories, with someone who did not care who she was but loved her for herself.
‘I am not rich and I am not important,’ she thought. ‘So I cannot expect to have what is called ‘a brilliant marriage’.’
However, she soon realised that her grandmother had very different ideas.
“You are very pretty, Angelina,” she had said this year when once again, she had been talking of taking her to a drawing room, “but it is a pity that you are not taller. Tall women are the fashion at the moment. However you will arouse a protective instinct in men as the Duchess of Manchester did when she was young.”
Lady Medwin laughed and went on,
“Louisa was actually as hard as nails and so tough that no one could ever get the better of her!”
“Did men find her attractive, Grandmama?” Angelina asked wide-eyed.
“They never got beyond her eyes, my dear,” Lady Medwin replied. “She caught the Marquis of Harrington and he was faithful to her, or very nearly, for thirty years!”
Angelina had looked puzzled, but her grandmother had not explained, but continued,
“You move gracefully and you have a soft melodious voice, which is very important. How I hate young women who speak in a strident manner!”
She paused to look Angelina over again and added,
“Your greatest asset is that you look so very young and, when someone talks to you, you appear attentive.”
“I am attentive!” Angelina said in surprise.
“There is nothing a man enjoys more,” Lady Medwin said. “He likes to be the teacher not the pupil.”
Angelina had not really understood what her grandmother was talking about, but she was glad that she had some assets, even though, when she compared herself with the descriptions of the great beauties who appeared in the newspapers and magazines, she thought that she was sadly deficient.
Now, unexpectedly, unbelievably, Prince Xenos of Cephalonia wanted to talk to her and to take her out to dinner!
She was well aware that she was doing something so outrageous and so disreputable that, if it was ever found out, her reputation would be ruined.
No nice girl would dine alone with a man! No nice girl would be seen in a restaurant!
What was more, no nice man would ask her to do so.
But if she behaved as she ought to, Angelina told herself, what would be the point of sitting alone with a book when there was a handsome attractive Prince wanting to talk to her?
‘It may be wrong for me to go with him,’ Angelina told her conscience, ‘but he really does need my help.’
‘And when you have given it – what then?’ her conscience enquired.
‘I shall perhaps have made him a little happier.’
‘And what will you gain from that? He will marry his Royal Princess and it will be cold comfort to think of them clasped in each other’s arms, blissfully happy in the mountainous Paradise that you cannot enter.’
Angelina faced her critical conscience defiantly.
‘I don’t care!’ she said. ‘It may be socially wrong, but it is morally right! Someone has appealed to me for help. It would not matter if it was a Prince or a pauper, a reigning Monarch or a crossing-sweeper. I am not a Pharisee who can ‘pass by on the other side’.’
Her conscience laughed rather rudely.
‘Would you be so keen on giving your help if he was in fact an old and unattractive, rather dirty crossing-sweeper? Surely you are not pretending that the fact he is a Prince has not a great deal to do with this sudden passion for being a Good Samaritan?’
‘Yes, he is a Prince,’ Angelina said bravely, ‘but it is the Coronation and I have been left out of everything this summer, even being presented.’
It was a rather weak reply, she thought to herself. At the same time it was true.
She never complained and never let her grandmother think how much she minded not going anywhere and not seeing anyone but her grandmother’s old friends and the doctors.
In her heart she had the inescapable feeling that time was running out. Soon she would no longer be a debutante. She would have missed everything that had seemed, when she was at school, to be the opening of the gates to a new world.
The girls had always talked as if their lives began from the moment they ceased doing any lessons and became young ladies rather than schoolgirls.
Angelina had been brought up in the same way to think that while she was a child everything of any importance, anything that was entertaining or happened outside her home, must wait until she was officially ‘grown up’.
Now she was grown up and her life had been more constricted than it had ever been in the past eighteen years.
She threw some last words of defiance at her conscience.
‘I am going with the Prince whatever the consequences” she asserted boldly, “a
nd nothing and nobody is going to stop me!’
*
The old housemaids had long given up helping Angelina to change in the evening from her day gown into the one she would wear to dine alone downstairs in the dining room.
It was as much as old Emily could do to tidy her room and turn down her bed without having to come up before dinner to fasten her gown.
“I will manage, Emily” Angelina had said, because she felt sorry for the old housemaid.
Emily had finally taken her at her word and, having tidied the room when Angelina had gone downstairs to the dining room, would not think of visiting it again until she called her in the morning.
It meant that Angelina could put on one of her best evening gowns without Emily being aware of it.
There was, of course, Ruston to worry about, but he was almost blind and she knew that if she put a scarf round her shoulders, he would not notice that her décolletage was lower than usual.
Also, instead of frilled sleeves on the gown she usually wore to dine alone, there was only puffed tulle over her bare arms, which made her look as if she was an angel encircled by a white cloud.
Nearly all her gowns were white as became a debutante, but there was one she liked better than all the rest.
Of satin, which moulded her slim figure, it was trimmed with flounced tulle round the skirt and caught with little bunches of pale pink roses.
There was a bunch of roses at her breast and a little cluster of them, which the dressmaker explained should be pinned in her hair.
Angelina had very little time to arrange these.
By the time she had said ‘goodnight’ to her grandmother, she had to collect her wrap, her evening handbag, her long white gloves and Twi-Twi from her bedroom before she went downstairs to let herself out into the courtyard.
Her grandmother was the only person in the house, Angelina thought, who would not be surprised at her being elegantly dressed for dinner.
Lady Medwin herself had always worn elaborate and very beautiful gowns and, of course her jewellery, even when she had dined alone with her husband when he was alive or with her family.
When Angelina’s father had last come back on leave from India he had remarked, as she came into the drawing room before dinner,
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