Princes and Princesses

by Cartland, Barbara

  At first Vida thought that she must be mistaken.

  Then she saw that it was really her father.

  She jumped out of bed and flung her arms round his neck.

  “Oh, Papa. Papa!” she whispered. “It is you! It’s really you! Oh, thank God!”

  Tears were running down her cheeks and he held her close against him.

  Then crying and laughing at the same time, she said,

  “I cannot believe that you are here, and dearest Papa, I would never have recognised you with a beard!”

  Her father did not answer, but only kissed her.

  Then he said,

  “How could you think of anything so clever, so brilliant, as that I should be your Father Confessor?”

  “It was the Prince – ” Vida began.

  As she spoke, there was a very soft knock on the door and Margit drew back the bolt while her father glanced a little nervously over his shoulder and pulled the hood back over his head.

  It was the Prince and he came in to say,

  “Thank God we have you here, Sir Harvey. That at least is an excellent start.”

  “I might have guessed, Your Highness, that it would be you who would save me!” Sir Harvey said.

  “It was also your daughter,” the Prince replied.

  Even as he smiled at her, Vida realised that, when she had jumped out of bed, she was wearing only the diaphanous nightgown he had seen her in the night he had come to her room at The Castle.

  Quickly she slipped back under the bedclothes and as she did so the Prince said to her father,

  “Now, listen to me carefully, Sir Harvey, because we have very little time. We have to get you well away from Lvov before the Abbot realises that you will not be returning to the Monastery.”

  “Tell me what is in your mind,” Sir Harvey asked.

  He spoke quietly, but Vida knew that he was alert and watchful, fully aware of the danger they were in.

  At the same time he was facing it with that quiet confidence that came from the power within him, which assured him that he would be successful and survive, however intimidating his enemies might be.

  “What I have planned,” the Prince answered him, “and there is not a moment to be lost, is this – ”

  As he started to speak, he seemed to Vida to be enveloped with light and might in fact be St. Michael come down with his angels from Heaven to save them.

  Chapter Five

  Forty minutes later Vida walked out through a side door into a courtyard to see the Prince’s magnificent travelling carriage drawn by six horses waiting in the sunshine.

  She was dressed in the uniform of an outrider, her red hair covered by a white wig and a peaked velvet cap.

  She wore a short livery jacket of claret trimmed with gold braid, which was the same as was worn by the servants in The Castle and below it white buckskin breeches and highly polished boots.

  She would have felt embarrassed if any of the five other outriders had looked at her, but as soon as she appeared they mounted the horses that were brought from the stables one by one by the grooms.

  Vida was helped onto the saddle of a magnificent thoroughbred, which she knew was of Hungarian origin.

  As soon as they were all mounted, the carriage drove from the courtyard to the front of the hotel and the whole cavalcade waited.

  Vida held her breath, for she knew that this was the most dangerous moment of their deception and that somewhere, although she could not see them, they were being watched by men who would doubtless report to one of the Czar’s Head Agents what was going on.

  After several minutes, during which the horses fidgeted and the sun seemed unpleasantly hot on her face, through the door of the hotel came first a shrouded figure in blankets carried by two men, followed by Margit and Henri.

  Very carefully the men lifted the shrouded figure onto the back seat of the carriage while Margit, holding a handkerchief, a fan and various other items that might be required, sat on the seat opposite.

  The door of the carriage with its panel painted with the Prince’s Coat of Arms was closed and then he himself appeared through the doorway.

  Now his black stallion was brought to the mounting block by two grooms.

  The stallion was being extremely obstreperous, rearing and bucking and the grooms had difficulty in holding it.

  As soon as the Prince was in the saddle, the carriage moved away and the outriders rode three on either side of it.

  It was only when they passed down the main road of the town and were out into the countryside that Vida felt that she could give a sigh of relief.

  When the Prince had expounded his idea that her father should take her place as the woman who was ill and who had come to visit her Confessor, while she herself rode with the outriders, she could hardly believe what she was hearing.

  He had taken her agreement to his scheme for granted and without waiting for her to say anything had gone from the room.

  Then, almost before she realised what was happening, her father had left her and Margit was dressing her in the livery that had been brought in to them by the Prince’s valet.

  “I knew there’d be trouble if we came to Russia,” Margit was saying almost beneath her breath.

  “Be careful!” Vida begged her. “All that matters is that Papa should be safe.”

  After that they dressed in silence and only when she was ready did Margit, with a sob in her voice, say,

  “God go with you, Miss Vida! We need His protection!”

  Vida gave her a smile and, walking carefully in boots that were a little too big for her, she went down the stairs.

  Now, riding astride, she found it surprisingly easy, considering it was something she had not done since she was a child.

  The carriage was moving very quickly and causing a cloud of dust to rise behind it.

  The outriders therefore took to the fields on either side of the slightly raised road while the Prince rode on ahead of them.

  This was not so much by choice, but because his horse was determined to outstrip anything else on four legs.

  For the next three hours all Vida could think of was that her father was moving farther and farther away from the Monastery.

  Although there might be questions asked as to why he had not returned, they would not be particularly anxious as to his whereabouts until much later in the day.

  It was long after noon before they stopped in a clearing in the woods. As she might have expected, the Prince had had their luncheon brought with them.

  As Vida dismounted, she was wondering whether or not she should stay with the other outriders, when Henri came to her side to say in Russian so that the men would understand,

  “His Highness wishes to speak to you.”

  Vida gave him the reins of her horse, knowing that he would know what to do and walked through the trees to where she saw a table had been set up with some collapsible chairs and in one of them was seated her father.

  The Prince was beside him and Margit had withdrawn into the trees and was sitting alone and out of earshot.

  As she reached her father, Vida knew that the Prince was watching her and she felt shy that she was wearing breeches.

  At the same time she was well aware it was not a moment for acting modestly when her father’s life was at stake.

  He must have been wearing his own clothes under the blankets in which he had been carried into the carriage, for now he looked as he always did, very distinguished and, surprisingly, in view of the circumstances, very smart.

  His beard had been shaved off and Vida could see that he was much thinner than when she had last seen him.

  As this was the first thing that struck her, she said,

  “You are all right, Papa? Nothing has happened to you?”

  She was thinking as she spoke that he might have been tortured or injured in some way.

  But he smiled.

  “I am quite all right, my dearest. I found, however, that fish and black bread is not
a very sustaining fare for a hungry man.”

  “That is something I now intend to remedy,” the Prince remarked.

  As he spoke, Vida saw that the outriders who had tied the reins of their horses to the trees so that they could not stray were now bringing luncheon to set it out on the table in front of them.

  There was, of course caviar, sturgeon, cold chicken stuffed with pâté de foie gras and a number of other delicacies which she knew, even without having been half starved as a monk, her father would enjoy.

  Then, as she wondered if she was expected to stay or, because of the way she was dressed, to help the outriders, the Prince said,

  “Sit down, Vida! We have with us specially chosen men whom I can trust with my own life and that of my friends.”

  Vida gave a little sigh of sheer happiness and sat down beside her father.

  “Tell us, Papa, what has happened to you,” she asked.

  “Later, my dear. For the moment, all I can think of is that I am extremely hungry and I left the Monastery before breakfast, which anyway would have been a very meagre meal!”

  Because she knew him so well, she was aware that he was making light of his afflictions.

  At the same time she was terribly afraid because they were still on Russian soil.

  “Where are we going?” she asked the Prince.

  “We are making for the Hungarian border,” he replied, “and tonight we will stay with some friends whom I can trust at Pololia.”

  “And tomorrow?” Vida queried.

  “With luck, we should be in Hungary.”

  “How can we ever thank you?”

  “You can do that when your father is safe,” he replied, “but we must not linger. Every moment he is still in Russia constitutes a danger which we would be very foolish to ignore.”

  “I have been wondering ever since I reached the comparative safety of the Monastery,” Sir Harvey said, “how I could possibly let you know where I was hiding.”

  “You have given me many anxious nights and days of worry,” the Prince said quietly.

  “I did not dare to trust the Abbot,” Sir Harvey explained. “He had been personally appointed by the Czar and there were several monks who were unpleasantly curious about me.”

  “They will know that their curiosity was justified when you do not return,” the Prince remarked dryly, “so the sooner we are on our way the better!”

  Having drunk several glasses of golden wine, Sir Harvey looked more like his old self and Vida said,

  “I love you, Papa! I don’t think I could ever bear to go through this agony again.”

  “You are right, my dearest,” Sir Harvey agreed. “This has been my swansong as far as Russia is concerned, but I think the Marquis of Salisbury will be delighted by what I have to tell him.”

  There was no time to say anything more because the Prince, who had moved away to speak to his men, came back to say,

  “Vida will now travel inside the carriage and her horse will be ridden by the footman who was on the box.”

  He smiled at Vida and then he said,

  “When we arrive at Pololia, you will be not your father’s daughter, but I will introduce you by the name on your passport. We must not make any foolish mistakes, just in case we are interrogated.”

  “And Papa?” Vida asked.

  “Your father is an old Hungarian friend whom we are taking back to his own country and his passport is in the name of your mother’s family.”

  “The Rákŏczis!” Vida exclaimed.

  “Exactly!” the Prince agreed.

  The outriders had already whisked the table and chairs away and, as Margit re-joined them from beneath the trees, Vida, followed by her father, stepped inside the carriage.

  As soon as it moved, Margit produced Vida’s clothes from a sheet she had wrapped them in, explaining that Sir Harvey had carried them on his lap so that they would not be seen by anybody watching him being conveyed from the hotel into the carriage.

  “It was His Highness’s idea! He thinks of everything!” Margit said proudly.

  While Sir Harvey buried himself in a newspaper, Vida took off the clothes in which she had ridden as an outrider and dressed herself in a very pretty gown that Margit had chosen for her.

  There was a small travelling bonnet to put on her head, but she decided that it would be uncomfortable, as they still had a long way to go.

  Instead she merely let Margit arrange her red hair as she always wore it.

  Later, because the Prince had said that she was to appear as the Countess Kărólski, she made up her face and her father watched with amusement.

  “You certainly chose a very alluring disguise, my dearest,” he said. “I am not surprised the Prince finds you beautiful and pressed you to stay on as his guest.”

  “I stayed because I thought only by doing so would I find out whether or not he was to be trusted,” Vida said.

  “I was very remiss in not telling you before I went on this wild trip,” Sir Harvey said, “that the Prince is a very old friend and somebody with whom I have worked for many years.”

  “I wish I had known that before.”

  “I did not tell you,” her father explained, “simply because I never dreamt for one moment that you would come in search of me. And as you well know, in this game the less anyone else knows the better.”

  “I know that is right, Papa. At the same time, I was terribly afraid that if I trusted the Prince you might be in worse danger than you were already.”

  She told her father how Vladimir Demidovsky had spoken to her in Budapest, and then how after she had seen him going into the Prince’s bedroom she had been certain that His Highness was not to be trusted.

  She had therefore felt she must leave the castle immediately.

  “I quite understand how it happened,” her father said, “and it was very brave of you, my dearest. But I cannot bear to think of your being involved in a situation that might have turned out very differently.”

  “We are not safe yet,” Vida said with a little tremor in her voice.

  “I know,” Sir Harvey agreed. “At the same time Lady Luck has always been on my side, and I cannot believe she will fail me now.”

  “I am sure she will not!”

  Even so, Vida felt a little tremor go through her almost as if it were a warning not to be overconfident.

  She talked to her father during the afternoon while Margit slept peacefully opposite them.

  There was so much she wanted to tell him, so much she wanted to hear.

  While he was reticent about his adventures, she did learn that as soon as he entered Russia he had quickly become aware that he was being followed.

  After some close shaves when he was nearly captured by the Czar’s Secret Police, he had, in desperation, entered the Monastery as a travelling monk.

  He had told the Abbot he was on his way to Odessa, but felt too ill to go any farther.

  The Abbot had believed his story and after he had been nursed back to health had begged him not to hurry on his journey but to stay in the Monastery for as long as he wished.

  “That was fortunate for you, Papa.”

  “It was fortunate that I was still there when you and His Highness arrived,” Sir Harvey said, “but I was beginning to find an enclosed life of continual prayer very restricting.”

  Vida laughed.

  “I am sure you hated every moment of it.”

  “I missed my creature comforts,” Sir Harvey admitted, “and of course you, my beloved daughter.”

  “As I missed you, Papa.”

  One thing Vida had not told her father was how the Prince had come to her bedroom, believing her story that she was a widow and intending to make love to her.

  She felt it would upset him and make him angry, when she herself was so grateful to the Prince that she had no wish to do anything but praise him.

  She loved listening to Margit now extolling his virtues, when previously the old maid had been so suspicious.
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  She wondered what had happened to his other guests at the castle and thought it was something she must ask him when there was a chance of their being alone together and not in a hurry.

  They arrived at Pololia when the sun had lost its warmth and it was in fact growing late.

  The horses might not be very tired, but owing to the dust and the heat Vida was certain that they were thirsty as she was.

  She had hoped the Prince might stop for a little while during the afternoon, but she was sure that he had his own reasons to keep going and that they were good ones.

  Pololia was a small town, little larger than a village.

  Overlooking it on a low hill with trees protecting it from the North was a large house.

  It was not a castle, but it was certainly old and was sturdily built, as if at one time it had been a fortification of some sort.

  Vida realised that the Prince had sent one of his outriders ahead to alert the owner of their arrival.

  Because of the speed they had travelled at, however, he could not have been more than half an hour ahead of them.

  Nevertheless they received a very warm welcome from an elderly man with white hair and his wife, who was considerably younger than he was.

  It was quite obvious to Vida from the way she looked at the Prince and the way she talked to him that she found him extremely attractive.

  Vida therefore felt glad that she was dressed once again as a Countess and was wearing a gown that might have belonged to any of the beautiful women among the Prince’s guests at The Castle.

  She was given a large comfortable bedroom on the first floor with her father in the room next door.

  The Prince was on the other side of the corridor and, although the house was not in any way as grand as his castle, there were plenty of servants to wait on them.

  What Vida enjoyed more than anything else was that she could have a bath.

  After she had soaked in the scented water for some time, she exclaimed to Margit,

  “Now I feel better! This will be a very exciting adventure to tell my children someday, if I have any!”

  “We’re not out of the wood yet, Miss Vida,” Margit warned.