Because she felt that she must do as he proposed, Vida rose to her feet and the Prince rose too and said,
“Good night, my ‘Dream-Come-True’. When we are travelling in a different direction from where we are going now, I shall have a great deal to say to you. But let’s take our fences one at a time.”
Vida smiled at him, then his arms were round her and he pulled her close against him.
For a moment he looked down at her face as if he was engraving it on his memory.
Then he asked,
“How can you be so beautiful with at the same time so much more to you than the beauty that lies on the surface? It is as if your heart speaks to my heart, your soul to my soul and I know that I can never lose you.”
He did not wait for an answer, but his lips were on hers.
As the rapture and ecstasy of his kisses carried Vida up into the stars, she knew that nothing anybody could say could prevent her from loving the Prince.
However foolish it might be, her heart was at his feet.
*
he Prince’s train was shunted into a siding outside the station at Kiev just before noon and they lunched on sturgeon that had been caught in the Dnieper River that morning.
There were also other dishes that were different from anything they had been served before.
When she asked how this was possible, the Prince said that the chef he kept on the train had been to the market to purchase anything that he thought would please them.
“I am enjoying every mouthful,” Vida enthused.
“I think what I adore about you more than anything else,” the Prince replied, “is that, so unlike me, you are completely unspoilt.”
She gave a little laugh and he added,
“How could you suppose that anybody would take you for a sophisticated woman of twenty-three, when you enjoy everything like a schoolgirl? When your laughter is as young as the song of the birds when dawn breaks?”
“You say such lovely and poetical words to me!’ Vida said. “I want to write them down and keep them, so that when I am old I shall be able to read them and remember this moment.”
“There will be other moments for you to remember, my precious,” the Prince replied. “But now the carriage is waiting and we had better make our way to the Palace and hope that His Imperial Majesty is in a good temper!”
The way the Prince spoke made Vida feel a little apprehensive.
Then she told herself that it was not important whether she liked or disliked the Czar.
He would mean nothing in her life, however much the Prince, being a Russian, had to kowtow to him.
She remembered how her father had said that the Prince was the Czar’s pet and she thought that it was extremely clever of him to have managed to now pull the wool over His Imperial Majesty’s eyes.
The Czar could have no suspicion that the Prince was helping people like her father and, she suspected, many of the Jews who had been driven so cruelly and despicably from Russia without being allowed to take their own possessions with them.
The Palace was old and had been partly rebuilt by every new Prince of Kiev, who had inherited it since the Kievian period of Russian history.
As they drove towards it, Vida realised that the town lay on both sides of the Dnieper River, where on the left bank the ground was hilly while on the right was an extensive flat plain.
“Kiev is one of the most interesting cities in our country,” the Prince said as they drove along. “In the chronicles it is described as the ‘Mother of Russian Cities’.”
“It is certainly very attractive,” Vida commented.
When they reached the Palace, it was impossible to think of anything but what lay ahead.
Soon they were walking along corridors with walls that might have stood there since the twelfth century, until they reached the door of a very impressive room.
It was flung open by a flunkey who intoned in a stentorian voice,
“His Highness Prince Ivan Pavolivski and the Countess Vida Kărólski!”
It was then, as the Prince of Kiev advanced to greet them from the far end of the room, that she had her first glimpse of His Imperial Majesty, Emperor of all the Russias, Alexander III.
Her father had told her that Alexander was a giant of a man and very proud of his physical strength.
“He can tear a pack of cards in half,” Sir Harvey had said, “bend an iron poker over his knees and crush a silver rouble with his bare hands.”
Vida laughed and said,
“Not very useful attributes in an Emperor!”
Yet now as they looked at him she realised that they were symbolic of the strength and cruelty of a man who terrorised the country he ruled over.
He was only forty-two, but he was already growing bald, his eyes were expressionless and he moved in a particularly ungainly fashion.
Although almost every drop of blood in his veins was German, Alexander had the stubborn and enigmatic look of a Russian peasant.
But now as he greeted Prince Ivan he was smiling and only when the Prince presented Vida and she sank down in a very low curtsey did his expression change and she felt that there was a cruel twist to his lips that she did not understand.
The Prince of Kiev, a youngish man who was obviously very eager to be pleasant, asked Prince Ivan about their journey.
“I came as soon as I received His Imperial Majesty’s command,” the Prince said.
He looked at the Czar as if for approval and as he did so somebody came into the room behind them. Vida immediately realised that it was the Princess Eudoxia, whom she had met at The Castle.
She was looking very beautiful, even more beautiful, Vida thought, than when she had last seen her.
She was dressed not only very elegantly in a French gown but there were several ropes of large pearls around her neck and pearls hanging from her ears. It was almost as if she were deliberately proclaiming herself of high rank.
First she curtseyed to the Czar, kissed his hand, and then his cheek, before she greeted the Prince.
“It is delightful to see you again, Ivan,” she said, holding out her hand, “and I am so happy that you were able to come here so quickly.”
The way she spoke made Prince Ivan look at her questioningly.
Then the Czar said,
“Eudoxia, who as well as being a Romanov, is also my God-daughter, has told me how much you two mean to each other.”
As Vida, listening, drew in her breath, the Prince stiffened and the Czar continued.
“I therefore, with much pleasure, give my consent and unqualified approval to your marriage!”
He spoke in a way that sounded sincere.
As he did so, for one second the Princess’s eyes met Vida’s and she knew that this was the way that she had very effectively taken her revenge.
After the Czar had spoken, there was silence until the Prince of Kiev said,
“My dear fellow, I had no idea that this was intended! My congratulations and, of course, my very best wishes to you both!”
He turned to the Czar and added,
“You have certainly contrived, Your Majesty, to join together two of the most remarkably handsome people who ever existed! At their wedding it will be difficult to know who the congregation will admire the most – the bride or the bridegroom!”
He laughed at his own joke and the Czar laughed too.
Then, with an unmistakably spiteful look in her eyes, the Princess Eudoxia moved towards Vida and held out her hand.
As Vida curtseyed, Eudoxia said,
“I am sure, Countess, that you will offer me your good wishes. It is so nice to see you again after meeting you at dear Ivan’s castle.”
Vida knew then who had planned this whole scene and had to admit it had been very cleverly thought out.
Furious because the Prince had been so engrossed with Vida at The Castle, the Princess must have left immediately and, having found the Czar, asked for his permission for them to be married.
<
br /> Yet for the Princess, womanlike, that had not been enough.
She was determined in addition to gloat over Vida personally, assuming her to be the Prince’s newest interest. And doubtless, his mistress.
Forcing herself to smile, even while she felt as if a thousand knives were being driven into her heart, Vida said,
“It is true, Your Highness, that you will be the most beautiful bride Russia or any other country for that matter, has ever seen and – of course I wish you the greatest happiness – now and for – ever!”
She could not control a little tremor in her voice as she said the last words.
But the Princess only gave her the triumphant smile of a woman who has got her revenge and turned what had seemed to be a defeat into a stunning victory.
Prince Ivan had not yet spoken and, as if he sensed that something was wrong, the Czar said somewhat heavily,
“I have always been fond of you, dear boy, and it is time you settled down and had a family. I was already married by the time I was your age.”
Still the Prince did not speak and the Czar went on.
“You will, of course, be married in the Cathedral of St. Petersburg and hold your Reception at the Winter Palace.”
“That is extremely generous of Your Majesty,” the Prince said at last.
Vida thought his voice to anybody except herself would have sounded calm and normal.
Only she was aware with her sixth sense, which they had talked about together, that he was angry, almost uncontrollably angry at being tricked.
But he knew, as she did, that there was nothing he could do about it.
The Emperor of all the Russias had issued a decree and there was nothing the Prince could do but obey.
Only when Vida had gone up to her room where Margit was waiting for her, did she allow the smile she felt was fixed on her face as if it were glued there, to fade.
As soon as the housekeeper had escorted her into her bedroom and had closed the door behind her, her whole body seemed to sag as if the life in it were ebbing away from her.
As she moved forward, almost groping her way, to sit down on a chaise longue that stood at the foot of the bed, Margit gave a cry of concern.
“What’s happened, Miss Vida? Are you ill?”
It was impossible for Vida to reply and Margit said again,
“If you feel faint, I will fetch you some brandy.”
“No, no, I am – all right,” Vida managed to respond.
She pulled her bonnet from her head and put it down beside her, then said in a voice that did not sound like her own,
“The Czar has just – arranged that the – Prince shall – marry the Princess Eudoxia!”
Margit stared at her for a moment as if she had not understood. Then, as she picked up Vida’s bonnet, she remarked,
“That’s certainly a surprise, but there’s no reason why it should concern you.”
“Of course it concerns me!” Vida said. “He has no wish to – marry her!”
‘Then he should not have played about with the girl,” Margit retorted. “I heard when we were in The Castle that one of the Prince’s lady guests had left in a precipitate way the morning after we arrived. The housekeeper kept sayin’ how strange it was when she had come intendin’ to stay for at least a week! And her chaperone, who I believe was also her Lady-in-Waiting, had to leave too and was ever so cross about it!”
“The Princess was jealous because the Prince was paying too much attention to me!” Vida said.
“Well, it’s no use cryin’ over spilt milk,” Margit said, “and if you asks me, the sooner we get away from here and back to normality, the better!”
“I agree with you,” Vida replied. “The Princess obviously asked for me to accompany Prince Ivan here simply so that she could gloat over me.”
“You can’t trust them Russians!” Margit exclaimed.
They were talking in English and Vida suddenly was frightened in case anybody listening to the way Margit spoke would suspect that she was not Russian.
She put her fingers to her lips to warn Margit that she was being indiscreet and the old maid, taking the hint, said in French,
“I shouldn’t say rude things about your countrywomen, should I, my Lady? But I hope you haven’t forgotten that you promised to stay with your relatives in Hungary as soon as we can get back.”
“I have not forgotten,” Vida said, “and all I want is to see my friends again.”
She was, of course, thinking of her father and that when she told him the whole story he would understand and would not find fault with her.
Then, as she thought of him and his warning, she told herself that if she had any pride at all she would not let the Princess, or for that matter, the Prince, realise what she was feeling.
In any case, it was absurd that she should have believed all that he had said to her on the train, because even then there had been no future for them together.
She was quite certain that the idea of marriage had never crossed his mind and just as he had tried to make love to her before in The Castle, she suspected that when they returned there he would have attempted once again to make her his.
It would have been very difficult to withstand him, she thought, and then was ashamed that she should be so weak as to contemplate for one moment forsaking the principles that had been hers since she was a young girl.
She had been taught that it would be wrong to allow a man to kiss her unless she was to marry him.
Yet when the Prince had kissed her and brought her a rapture that was different from anything she had ever imagined in her dreams, it had not seemed wrong, but so right and so perfect that it had been Divine.
‘How can I question anything that seemed to come from God?’ she asked herself now.
Yet she knew that she was now being punished for what she had done and there was no point in complaining about it.
She put her feet up on the chaise longue, lay back against the cushions and closed her eyes.
Without realising it, she was calling on the Power that had sustained both her father and herself ever since she had worked with him.
When they had found themselves in difficult situations from which she had thought it would be absolutely impossible for him to extricate them without his identity being discovered, they had used the Power.
But what had happened in Russia was far more dangerous, far more frightening, than anything she had ever experienced before.
It was stupid to pretend that if the Secret Police had actually caught him as they intended he would not have been tortured until he divulged all the information they required.
After which he would certainly have been exterminated.
But he was safe and the price she had to pay for his safety was that she was hopelessly in love with a man who had attracted dozens of women before her and would doubtless attract dozens more in the future.
Now he was being compelled to pay the penalty, not for a criminal offence, but for his philandering.
The Princess Eudoxia had turned the tables on him and in such a clever way that he was now a prisoner for the rest of his life.
Vida knew enough about Russia to be aware that not only was the Czar’s word law, but also that anybody who offended him in the slightest degree could find themselves on the gallows or at the very least being sent to Siberia.
She had heard so many tales of the terrible sufferings of even Noblemen who had upset the Czar in one way or another.
They were marched off in chains to the salt mines, their possessions confiscated and their families left to starve.
There was no question of that happening to Prince Ivan Pavolivski.
He would marry the beautiful Princess Eudoxia and become through her even closer to the Czar than he was already.
As far as she herself was concerned, Vida was certain that he had always been a man who was out of reach and he would be crying for himself and his freedom that had meant so much to him.
&nbs
p; There would always be other women in his life, but she was sure that Princess Eudoxia would be possessive and very jealous.
He would not be able to flaunt his love affairs openly as he had been able to do until now.
‘I suppose it is poetic justice,’ Vida said to herself.
But that thought did not help to cure the ache in her heart that was like a physical wound or the feeling that an icy hand, when she least expected it, had clutched her round the neck, choking the very breath out of her body.
By the time she had had a bath and changed into one of the exotic gowns she had brought to wear at The Castle, she told herself that she was British and must not appear overwhelmed or even disconcerted by what had occurred.
Yet because she really felt ill, she made Margit give her a spoonful of brandy, which they always carried for medicinal reasons when they were travelling.
When she had done so, she thought that her eyes looked brighter and less stricken.
She applied a little rouge to her cheeks, darkened her eyelashes with mascara and, wearing a tiara which had belonged to her mother and which she thought would compare favourably with any of the Princess Eudoxia’s jewels, she slowly descended the staircase.
A flunkey was waiting in the large hall to lead her to the room where everybody was to meet before dinner.
As she entered it, Vida was glad to see that it was quite a large party.
Some of the guests, she had learnt from Margit, were staying in the house and others had been invited in specifically to meet the Czar.
The men looked resplendent, wearing their decorations on their evening coats or uniforms.
But the Prince stood out, wearing the ribbon of St. Michael across his chest and innumerable diamond decorations on his evening coat.
The women glittered like Christmas trees, but Vida felt that she could hold her own amongst them.
When her host introduced her, she took pains to make herself pleasant, paying the women compliments and smiling invitingly at the men.
Everybody was chattering gaily until, as they lined up formally before the Czar entered the room, a sudden hush fell like fog over the assembled company.
Princes and Princesses Page 43
