“I can give you a lot of sensible answers to that question,” he replied, “but instead I will spoil you by saying that I have never really been in love until I met you.”
“I can hardly believe that is true,” Angelina said.
She thought that it was impossible for such a handsome attractive man to go through the world for twenty-eight years without having hundreds of women in love with him.
But the Prince, knowing what she was thinking, as he always did, said,
“I am not straining your credulity. I have been attracted, amused and beguiled by quite a number of lovely ladies here, in Paris, and once in London. But, when I saw Persephone, she walked straight into my heart and I knew that I had never known love until that moment.”
“Oh, Xenos!” Angelina breathed. “You say such – wonderful things to me, I am beginning to think that every – Cephalonian man is a poet at heart.”
“If you mean that they will speak to you as I do,” the Prince said, “then I shall not only be extremely jealous, but will shut you up in the Palace and see that no one comes near you except myself!”
“That is a very Turkish way of thinking,” Angelina teased him.
The Prince pulled her into his arms and kissed her fiercely and passionately until she apologised.
“If you call me a Turk,” he threatened, “I shall behave like one!”
But she was pleased to find that he could be jealous, as she knew it would be impossible not to be jealous of him.
Everything about him and the island itself had a magic quality that made her thank God, not once but a thousand times a day, that she had been privileged to know such happiness.
The deep green valleys, the sides of the mountains covered with pines, myrtle, lavender and sage were more beautiful, the Prince told her, at this time of the year than at any other.
Today they had seen handsome mahogany-faced peasants carrying loads of wood or the last baskets of grapes from the vines.
It was very hot, even for September, and it had been a delight to move from the heat, down near the sea and up into the mountains to Metaxata.
Angelina had been shown where, standing at the window of his villa, her great-grandfather had written of ‘this beautiful village’ from which he could see in the ‘calm though cool serenity’ of ‘transparent moonlight’ the ‘distant outline of Morea between the double azure of the waves and the sky’.
Below his small villa Byron had seen the dark green of the orange and lemon trees, the yellowing pines, as Angelina saw them now, the grey olives and the blue water dotted with green or misty islands.
Having visited Metaxata, the Prince had told her that they must ride to the nearest village, Lakythra, and they had set off after a delicious luncheon of Greek dishes, escorted only by Captain Soutsos and Twi-Twi.
The Prince had not told Angelina what to expect, but she had read her great-grandfather’s journals and everything that had been written about him.
She was therefore not surprised when, at the end of the path, they climbed again to where on a hill there was a little white Chapel and a group of flat grey rocks lying on the green turf with a glorious view of the sea.
“Now I know why you brought me here,” Angelina cried as they reached the summit. “It was on these rocks with a breathtaking view below him, that Great-grandpapa sat writing.”
Holding the Prince’s hand, she looked out over the country below them and in the distance the vivid blue of the sea.
Very softly she quoted,
“‘If I am a poet I owe it to the air of Greece’.”
The Prince kissed her hand.
Then he took off his hat as if to feel the cool air with its strange light in it on his forehead.
There was an expression on his face which made Angelina think of the moment when they had been married in the Cathedral and he had repeated his vows in a voice that was so deep and so sincere with meaning that she had felt the tears come into her eyes.
She felt then as if her whole being rose in a paean of gratitude because she had been privileged to meet such a wonderful man.
She was deeply inexpressibly grateful because their love for each other had finally triumphed over what had first seemed insurmountable difficulties.
She knew in herself, and she told the Prince so, that she would have loved him whoever he had been and, if the choice had only been hers, nothing would have prevented her from marrying him.
“I know that, my precious,” he replied.
That night after the Wedding Ceremony, when he had come to her room, she had thought there was something God-like about him and he was really Apollo with whom she had always identified him.
She had been waiting for him, not in the big bed with its headboard carved like a silver shell from the sea, but standing at the window looking out onto the sea above which the stars were gradually filling the sable of the night with twinkling brilliance.
Already their reflection was glimmering on the soft-moving water and Angelina knew that soon there would be the silver rays of the rising moon and the pale limpid light of the Milky Way.
Everything was quiet and still and the very darkness had a mysterious magic in it, which was part of her love.
She heard the Prince come across the room behind her and she turned to smile at him, not realising that her fair hair was faintly lit by the stars so that it seemed to halo her head.
The Prince reached her, but he did not touch her, he only stood looking at her face and for Angelina there was no need for words.
The Ceremony, which had taken place in the Cathedral, the crowds at the Reception that had followed, the cheers from those who had watched them drive to the Palace in an open carriage, had all faded into oblivion.
Now the only thing that mattered was that they were alone, just she and the Prince.
This was the moment they had not only been waiting for but for which everything that had happened had been like the raising of a curtain on the drama of their souls.
“Are you real?” the Prince asked and his voice was deep.
“I – love you!” Angelina answered.
“That is what I wanted you to say,” he replied, “and yet I find it hard to believe that you are mine and that I need never again be afraid I might lose you.”
“It does not – seem as if it could have – happened – but it has!” Angelina said, “and I am here and – your wife!”
“Do you suppose I don’t realise that?” the Prince asked. “Because I have wanted you so intensely, Angelina, I feel as if I have moved the very Heavens to gain you and the Gods have given you to me.”
“How could we – feel anything else – when the Gods are so near?” Angelina asked. “I can feel them in the air – and see them everywhere I look.”
There was a note in her voice that made the Prince put out his arms and pull her against him, not roughly, not violently, but gently as if she was something infinitely precious that he treasured, so that he was touching it with tender fingers.
Angelina put her head against his shoulder and then looked out to sea.
She knew that even in the dark there was always a glimmer of light, the light that was Greece, the light that also came from the Prince, which was part of their love.
Just for a moment she felt as if they were one half of the celestial beauty of the world.
Then the Prince’s arms tightened around her and he turned her face up to his.
At the touch of his lips she could no longer think or see, but only feel that, as their love quivered around them with silver wings, they were both Divine.
*
Now looking, as her great-grandfather had looked, over the valley below, standing where he had stood and feeling he had played his part in bringing her such happiness, Angelina said,
“I think this place tells you, darling Xenos, as it tells me that we have to work not only for Cephalonia, but for the – whole of Greece.”
“That is what I hoped you would think,” t
he Prince said. “Greece needs us. There is still disunity, still dissension, still the Turks with a foothold in Crete.”
“And yet, since my great-grandfather died in Missolonghi, so much has been accomplished,” Angelina said with a little sigh of satisfaction.
She turned round after she had spoken and looked at the little white Chapel.
“Is it open?”
The Prince shook his head.
“They suggested that they should notify the Priests who only worship there on Sundays that we were coming,” he said, “but I wanted to be here with you alone.”
“That is what I would have wanted if you had asked me,” Angelina said. “Oh, Xenos, how can you plan so that everything we do is always so perfect?”
“It is quite simple,” the Prince replied. “I think of what you would want and strangely enough it is exactly what I want myself!”
Angelina laughed and then she said,
“Look at Twi-Twi. He has explored the flat rocks and now he is exploring the entrance to the Chapel.”
“There is a little exploring I want to do,” the Prince said.
He drew Angelina off the flat grey rocks to where beyond them, away from the Chapel, there were thick shrubs and twisted vines interspersed with other greenery.
Growing among them were some of the exquisitely beautiful flowers that had delighted Angelina ever since she had arrived on the island.
They moved amongst them and found another view, this time of the mountains and the tall cypress trees that stood like sentinels.
“It is – all so – lovely!”
Angelina breathed rather than spoke the words.
The Prince put his arms around her.
“And so are you, my beautiful wife!”
They were standing under the shade of a tree and he undid the ribbons that tied her wide-brimmed hat under her chin.
“I want to kiss you,” he said, “and make sure that you will not fly away into the air, leaving me merely dreaming and doubting that you ever existed.”
“I am very – real, my darling,” she replied.
He threw her hat on the soft grass where they were standing and pulled off his own coat.
Then he held out his arms and she melted against him.
It had been too hot to wear anything but her coolest muslin gown for the climb to the flat stones.
Now through the fineness of his white lawn shirt she could feel the Prince’s heart beating against hers.
“You are mine!” he said. “Mine, my precious little Persephone and every day I find myself falling more and more in love with you.”
“I find the same with you,” she replied. “I think it is impossible to love you more and yet at – night, when we are – alone together, I find there are new – depths to my love and new feelings that – at this moment I cannot imagine.”
“I make you happy?”
“Not only – happy – but wildly, thrillingly rapturous – like touching the tops of your marvellous mountains – and diving down into the depths of your blue, blue sea.”
“My sweet little Goddess, that is how I want you to feel.”
Angelina put her lips close to his ear.
“Making love – ” she whispered, “is the most – perfect, beautiful – thing I could ever imagine.”
The Prince bent his head to kiss her neck and she felt a streak of light flash through her, half-ecstasy, half-pain.
“Please – darling,” she pleaded. “Do – not – excite me like that until – tonight.”
The Prince’s arms tightened.
Then he asked,
“Why should we wait for tonight?”
He lifted her off her feet as he spoke and laid her down on the soft grasses in the shadow of the tree that loomed above them with her head on his coat.
Angelina gave a little cry.
“Xenos! Supposing somebody should see us?”
“If anyone should try to come near us,” the Prince replied, “our sentinel will not only warn us, but will see them off!”
For a moment Angelina did not know what he meant.
Then she saw that Twi-Twi was lying a little way from them, apparently looking out at the view, but she was quite certain, alert and watchful.
She gave a little laugh.
“Yes, Twi-Twi will warn us,” she said, “and I think he knows that the fact that I am here and we are married is all – due to him.”
“He was undoubtedly sent to us by the Gods,” the Prince said, “and who am I to refuse anything they should offer?”
But he was not speaking of Twi-Twi as his lips found Angelina’s and she felt his hand hard and insistent through the softness of her gown.
“You are not only the most beautiful woman I could ever imagine,” he said in his deep voice, “but you excite me as I have never been excited before.”
“Is that – really true?” Angelina asked. “I feel so ignorant about love – will you teach me – about it?”
The Prince smiled.
“What do you think I am doing now, my adorable, enticing little wife?”
As he spoke, he had undone the buttons that fastened the front of her dress and now his hand was on her heart.
“Oh, Xenos!”
She felt rising within her the fires that he had ignited in her the first night they were married and which had burned more fiercely and more irresistibly every night since.
Just for a moment her mind went back to the past and she thought that perhaps on this very spot Lord Byron had met Nonika and they had made love as she and Xenos were doing now.
Perhaps it was in this particular place that Athene had been conceived.
It was because Athene had married her grandfather that she had not only Greek but also Byron’s blood in her veins and now she was the wife of Xenos.
It was all such a marvellous incredible story that one day she would tell her own children.
She prayed now that Xenos might give her a baby who would be beautiful because it was part of the love that shimmered all around them – the love that Byron had given to Nonika.
“I want you,” Xenos was saying hoarsely. “My precious, I want you now, at this very moment.”
Then it was impossible to think of anything but him.
Angelina felt herself quiver against him and knew that a fire was rising like a flame up through her body into her lips.
The desire that vibrated between them made her feel that they burned with the light of the sun.
‘I love you – I love you!’ she cried.
She was not certain whether she spoke the words aloud, but they came spontaneously from the new sensations, the new wonder and a new ecstasy that she had never known before.
Then, as Xenos made her his, they were one with the shimmering crystallised light of their magical mountainous Paradise.
Author’s Note
To the reader,
This is at the end of the book but please do not read it until you have finished the story, as it will spoil the plot for you.
Barbara Cartland In 1973 the British Byron Society asked the Mayor of Missolonghi if the people of his town could join with them in celebrating the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the poet’s death.
“But he is not your Lord Byron, he is our Lord Byron,” the Mayor protested.
At Lakythra a glittering white marble slab on the largest grey stone rock bears the inscription in Greek capitals,
“If I am a poet, I owe it to the air of Greece – Byron.”
In Athens, where Byron’s monument stands in the corner of the Zappeion Gardens in direct line with the Parthenon, Hellas crowns him with laurels.
At Missolonghi in the ‘Garden of Heroes’ above his Coat of Arms is a Royal Crown.
In the light which permeates every rock and wave of Greece, Byron said on his deathbed, “My wealth, my abilities, I devoted to her cause – well, there is my life to her.”
But his death brought life to Greece and eventually freedom.
Everything I have written about Cephalonia is true except that I have given them a Royal Family. It is what I feel they deserve.
Twi-Twi is my own white Lion Pekingese. He is a descendant of the Alderbourne strain, the finest in the world, which started in 1904.
He is proud, intrepid, authoritative, imperious, in fact – Imperially Royal.
OTHER BOOKS IN THIS SERIES
The Barbara Cartland Eternal Collection is the unique opportunity to collect as ebooks all five hundred of the timeless beautiful romantic novels written by the world’s most celebrated and enduring romantic author.
Named the Eternal Collection because Barbara’s inspiring stories of pure love, just the same as love itself, the books will be published on the internet at the rate of four titles per month until all five hundred are available.
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Elizabethan Lover
The Little Pretender
A Ghost in Monte Carlo
A Duel of Hearts
The Saint and the Sinner
The Penniless Peer
The Proud Princess
The Dare-Devil Duke
Diona and a Dalmatian
A Shaft of Sunlight
Lies for Love
Love and Lucia
Love and the Loathsome Leopard
Beauty or Brains
The Temptation of Torilla
The Goddess and the Gaiety Girl
Fragrant Flower
Look Listen and Love
The Duke and the Preacher’s Daughter
A Kiss for the King
The Mysterious Maid-servant
Lucky Logan Finds Love
The Wings of Ecstacy
Mission to Monte Carlo
Revenge of the Heart
The Unbreakable Spell
Never Laugh at Love
Bride to a Brigand
Lucifer and the Angel
Journey to a Star
Solita and the Spies
The Chieftain Without a Heart
No Escape from Love
Dollars for the duke
Pure and Untouched
Secrets
Fire in the Blood
Love, Lies and Marriage
Princes and Princesses Page 16
