By now the small band belonging to the inn were back in their places and, because for anybody to dance would be an anti-climax, they were all grouped together around the piano playing a waltz tune.
The music was soft and deliberately not obtrusive and, as Tora sat listening, somehow she was not surprised when she found Mikloš beside her.
“May I have the honour of this dance, fraulein?”
It was something Tora had never expected to happen and for the moment she looked at him wide-eyed.
Then she glanced at the Professor as if for approval, but realised that, surrounded by his admirers, he appeared to have forgotten her very existence and Kliment and Andrea were equally engaged.
Something irrepressible rose in her to ask herself why she should not behave as any other woman would do in the same circumstances.
Tonight she was not Princess Viktorina Jasmina but an insignificant young woman who was fortunate enough to be able to take part in a famous quartet.
And yet she knew that it was something she should not do, something that would horrify her father and mother.
As if he sensed the conflict that was taking place in her mind, Mikloš said again very quietly,
“Please, I wish to dance with you more than I can ever express in words.”
Slowly, almost as if she was stepping into a dream, Tora rose to her feet.
“I hope you will not be disappointed,” she heard herself saying.
“That would be impossible!” he replied.
He took her onto the dance floor, put his arm around her waist and, even as he did so, she realised that he had changed from his riding breeches and the highly polished boots she had last seen him in.
Now he was wearing close-fitting long black trousers with a tunic that looked like the type an Army Officer would wear when he was off duty.
It was very smart and very becoming and she had the strange feeling that it should have a lot of medals and decorations on it, although it was in fact completely plain.
Then he drew her a little closer to him and his hand was holding hers.
As they were neither of them wearing gloves she felt him giving her the same vibrations that she had felt when he had held her hand in the woods.
Without thinking she raised her eyes to his and knew that, just as something strange and rather thrilling was rippling through her, he felt the same.
There was an expression in his grey eyes that made her feel shy.
Then, as they moved slowly and rhythmically to the romantic melody that seemed to echo in their hearts, he said very quietly,
“How can we not believe that this was meant since the very beginning of time?”
CHAPTER FOUR
They danced two more dances and then, as the floor became crowded Mikloš, said quietly,
“I think you that should go to bed as you have such an important engagement tomorrow evening.”
Because she felt happier than she had ever been in her whole life, Tora gave an exclamation of horror and cried,
“No! No! Please, I want to go on dancing!”
As she spoke, she thought that never again would she be able to dance in such circumstances and enjoy herself as an ordinary girl rather than a Royal Princess.
She looked up at him as she spoke and she thought that his eyes were very understanding before he said as if she had not protested,
“Say goodnight to the Professor and go into the inn. Then I have something to say to you before you go upstairs.”
He spoke very quietly, but there was an authoritative note in his voice that made the arguments and protests that were hovering on Tora’s lips fade into silence.
He drew her to the edge of the wooden floor.
She stepped off it and walked to where the Professor, a little flushed with excitement, was obviously still enjoying the adulation of his admirers.
They were not only sitting beside him at the table, but as Tora saw there were other people coming towards him from all over the gardens.
Some of them had pieces of paper or small books in their hands and she knew that they were going to ask the Professor for his autograph.
This was the adulation he had missed these past few years and she was so happy for him and thought that nothing, not even a revolution, would stop him from being at the Palace tomorrow night.
She reached his side by pushing through the people surrounding him and bent down to whisper in his ear,
“Don’t get up, Professor, but I am going to bed.”
He nodded to show that he understood and then he took her hand from where it was resting on his shoulder and lifted it to his lips.
It was a gesture that any man or any artiste might have made. At the same time Tora was frightened for the moment that to those watching it might seem more significant.
She therefore turned quickly and hurried away towards the front door of the inn.
Mikloš seemed to have disappeared, but when she walked into the vestibule where there was the innkeeper’s counter and the keys of the rooms hanging up behind it, she saw him at the far end.
Because she was unable to prevent her heart leaping at the joy of knowing that she had not yet to leave him and they could be together a little longer, she ran towards him, her eyes shining, her long hair flowing out behind her.
He did not speak, but only took her hand in his and drew her along a passage that led to the back of the inn and out through a door that led into the small garden where she had been earlier in the day.
There were a few lighted windows on this side of the house.
But even without the Chinese lanterns and the candles on the tables, the stars overhead and the moon rising up the sky made it easy for them to see not only their surroundings but each other.
Mikloš, holding Tora’s hand, walked as far as the gate that led into the wood.
There he stopped, but did not open it.
Then, as he looked down at her and she looked up at him, she felt as if they were alone in an enchanted world where there was no one else.
There was just the music of the band playing very softly in the distance and she felt as if the Professor’s love song was still singing in her heart and that Mikloš could hear it.
“You are very lovely!” he said in a deep voice. “So lovely that I am afraid to let you go to Maglic tomorrow.”
“I shall be quite – safe,” Tora replied and wondered if that was true.
There was silence as Mikloš looked at her, while the light from the windows glinting on her hair made it appear as if little tongues of fire danced on her head.
The moonlight enveloped her while the stars glittered in her eyes.
“You must take care of yourself,” he said softly.
Then in a different tone she was not expecting he said,
“Now tell me what you overheard Prince Boris and his friends say that frightened you.”
Because the question was so unexpected and because she had forgotten her fear while they were dancing, Tora could only stare at him dumbly.
“Tell me what they said,” he insisted.
Because it was an order, she could only stammer,
“H-how did you – know that what they said – frightened me?”
His lips twisted faintly in a smile before he replied,
“You left your shawl on the bench beneath the window where they were meeting.”
“How – how can you – know that?”
“When you ran away from me,” he said quietly, “I followed in case you should be in any danger. I saw you greeting the Professor and I also saw where you had been before you hid in the wood.”
It flashed through Tora’s mind that it was very clever of him to have reasoned out what had occurred.
At the same time she was afraid to tell him the truth.
All her past fear of being questioned and having to reveal her identity flashed through her mind.
Once again her heart was pounding in her breast and her hands were trembling
. She took a step away from Mikloš as if she would run back to the inn.
He reached out and caught her by the wrist, his fingers almost, she thought, like iron bars that held her his prisoner.
Then when she would have struggled with him he said,
“Trust me! Oh, my sweet, trust me! You know I will help you, and you cannot cope with a man like Prince Boris alone.”
“How do you– know there is anything for me to – cope with?” Tora asked in a very small voice.
He drew her a little closer to him before he replied,
“You forget that I saw how frightened you were in the wood, when you heard him approach. I felt you tremble as he went by and I saw a terror in your eyes I have never seen in any other woman!”
Tora drew in her breath.
Then, as if it was impossible to go on fighting him, she put her head on his shoulder and hid her face against him.
She felt his arms go round her and then he said very softly,
“Tell me!”
“You will not – believe it!”
“I promise to believe anything that you tell me.”
“It might be – dangerous for you to – know!”
“I am not afraid and I will not allow you to be afraid either.”
There was a little pause.
Then Tora said,
“But – I am afraid – not only of what I – overheard but of – doing the – wrong thing about it.”
“That is something you must let me decide,” Mikloš said. “I think, as it obviously concerns my country and not yours, it is something I should deal with.”
It sounded reasonable enough, but Tora felt a little shiver run through her.
If Mikloš was involved, then he might be one of the people whom Prince Boris and his accomplices were prepared to shoot without giving them even a chance of escape.
Because she felt she could not bear the thought that he might be injured or killed, Tora made a last effort to save him from being involved.
“Please,” she begged, “don’t ask me any more – it is best for you not to know – and because the whole thing is – very dangerous – you too would be in danger – and I could not – bear to be responsible for that!”
She looked up at him pleadingly and now his face was very near to hers as he asked,
“Why should you mind? After all, you only met me a few hours ago.”
“I – know,” Tora whispered, “but because you are different from – anybody I have met before – and because you have been so – kind – I want you to go away and forget me.”
She knew as she spoke that it would be very hard to lose Mikloš.
Yet because she would lose him anyway when she returned home, it would make it harder to bear if she not only left him behind but felt that she had sent him to his death.
“You must realise that it was Fate that we should meet each other,” Mikloš said quietly, “and we are different, you and I.”
There was a note in his voice that made her feel as if he spoke to music
Tora looked up at him, vividly conscious of his closeness, of the strength of his arms that were around her and that his lips were very near to hers.
For a long moment they looked at each other and then slowly, as if it was part of a love song, part of the stars and the magic of the night and had been meant since the beginning of time, Mikloš’s lips touched hers.
It was a kiss that had something reverent about it and was as spiritual and ethereal as the moonlight that shone on their heads.
Then, as he felt the softness, sweetness and innocence of Tora’s lips, his mouth became more demanding, more possessive, and he drew her closer and still closer to him.
To Tora it was everything she had dreamt of, longed for, heard in the music she had created when she was alone and thought that she would never find.
For the moment she was not herself but part of one of her own fantasies, carried up into a starlit world where there was nothing but beauty that was in itself part of the Divine.
Only as Mikloš went on kissing her and she felt as if he drew her very heart from her body and made it his, did she feel a sensation she had never known existed rippling through her.
It moved through her breasts into her throat and from her throat into her lips so that it seemed as if all the vibrations she had felt from his hands tingled through her and were like little shafts of starlight invading her whole body.
Then she felt as if she was being carried up into the sky until she was one with the stars.
Only as the sensations deepened and became so intense that they were almost unbearable, and yet so ecstatic and rapturous that it was hard to believe that she was really feeling them, did she know that this was love.
This was the love she had thought about and longed for and now suddenly it was there and the whole world vibrated with it and she was no longer herself.
Mikloš raised his head and she looked up at him conscious that her whole body was pulsating to the rapture he had given her.
It was difficult to breathe and yet there was music singing all around them that was played not by human hands, but by the trees, the stars and the beat of their hearts.
“I – love you!”
Tora was not even aware that she had said the words and yet they came to her lips.
Mikloš drew in his breath.
Then he was kissing her again, kissing her with long, slow, passionate kisses that made her quiver in his arms and she knew it was the most perfect and wonderful thing that had ever happened.
Then, when she felt that he carried her into a celestial world where there was only the music of the spheres and the fragrance of the flowers did he say, and his voice was very low, deep and unsteady,
“How can you have done this to me? And yet I knew the moment I saw you that you were what I had been looking for all my life?”
“Is – that – true?”
“I have never seen anybody as beautiful as you sat in the wood with the sunshine glinting on your hair. I thought I must be dreaming! Then I knew that it was a dream come true.”
“That is – what I feel too,” Tora said, “and if I looked away you would not – be here.”
She thought she saw an expression of pain in his eyes and she said without thinking,
“I cannot lose you! How can I say goodbye and never see you again?”
“It is something that must not happen,” Mikloš replied.
She had the feeling as he spoke that he was as afraid as she was that they would be parted.
With a little cry, Tora said,
“Kiss me – please – kiss me again so that I will have – something to remember!”
His lips were on hers and he kissed her fiercely and almost violently as if he was about to lose her.
Only when they were both breathless did he say in a voice that sounded unsteady,
“I must let you rest. But tell me first what I want to know.”
Because she was too bemused by his kisses to argue any further or even to think that it might be a mistake to do as he asked, Tora said,
“I did not mean to listen – I – was waiting for the Professor – and was not aware that there was anybody at the inn.”
“Then, if you did not see who was talking, how did you know that it was Prince Boris in the room above you?”
“When they talked of their – revolutionary plans,” Tora replied, “his friends toasted him as – ‘King Boris’!”
She only whispered the words as if she felt afraid that even the trees and flowers were listening and constituted a danger to them both.
Mikloš did not smile at what she had said, but merely remarked,
“That is what I surmised. Now tell me, my darling, because it is very important, exactly what they said.”
Stumbling over her words and finding it somehow difficult because she was close to him to remember anything but him, Tora told him how somebody called Luka was to deal with the Army, Franz with the Polic
e, Zivko with the crowds, and there was another man called Titov, who had not turned up.
She knew Mikloš was listening intently to everything she told him and then, because there seemed no point in keeping back anything, she whispered,
“I-I think the Prince means to – kill the King himself.”
“Did he say so?” Mikloš asked sharply.
“He – he said he would – deal with him – and it was after that that they toasted him as ‘King Boris’.”
“And when will all this happen?”
“The Prince said as soon as possible, but then later he said he would see Titov this afternoon or tomorrow and they were to meet at the old Monastery. So I thought it would be after we have played at the Palace and – gone home.”
Mikloš nodded as if he agreed.
Then he said,
“Thank you for telling me, my precious. I understand now why you were so frightened, but, as the Prince had no idea you were there, you must forget everything you have heard. ”
“And what will – you do?”
“I will try to prevent my country from being wrecked in such a ghastly manner by a man who is not fit to reign over a collection of sewer rats, let alone the people of Salona!”
Mikloš still spoke quietly, but there was a note in his voice that made Tora say frantically,
“You must not fight him alone. He will kill you – just as he told those who follow him to – shoot if there was any – opposition.”
“I shall be all right,” Mikloš said, “and you are not to worry about me.”
“But – I shall worry – and if I have gone home I shall not know if anything has – happened to you.”
She made a sound that was almost a sob as she went on,
“Suppose you were wounded and I could – not come to you or you were – dead – and I did not know?”
“You must trust me and have faith.”
His arms tightened as he declared,
“I do not believe I am meant to die by the hand of anybody so despicable as Prince Boris.”
“B-but – he has so many people with him,” Tora said frantically, “and I forgot to tell you that Luka said there were at least – a dozen dissatisfied Officers in the Army who would – support him.”
Princes and Princesses: Favourite Royal Romances Page 112
