As he swung her round the room, they were together and all her misery and all her heart-burning was at an end.
Only after they had danced for three minutes did other guests join them on the dance floor.
Soon it was crowded and everybody seemed relieved of the constrictions that always affected Royal parties.
Mikloš stopped in front of one of the long windows that led into the garden and, taking Tora by the hand, drew her outside.
They went from the terrace down onto the green lawn.
She could not help remembering as they walked swiftly towards the flowering shrubs that the Crown Prince of Croatia in the same way had taken her into the garden in Salona.
Then she knew that this was very different. Now she was with Mikloš, Mikloš the man she loved, Mikloš the man she belonged to
It took them only a minute to move out of sight of the ballroom lights, then his arms were around her and as she lifted her face, his lips came down on hers.
He kissed her until the whole world vanished.
Once again he took her up into a special Heaven where there was only the rapture and ecstasy of his kisses and their bodies merged into each other’s to become one.
Only when the wonder and glory of it was almost too great to be borne, did Mikloš raise his head.
“I love you! I – love you!” Tora whispered. “But I thought I would – never see – you again.”
There was a break in her voice as she remembered what an agony it had been and Mikloš answered,
“How is it possible that you are the Princess Viktorina, daughter of the Grand Duke of Radoslav, who I thought was trying to marry my father?”
“I was trying to marry your father?” Tora exclaimed. “How could you think such a thing?”
Because it seemed so ridiculous, she laughed even though there were tears in her eyes.
“I was frantic – desperate,” she said, “thinking that perhaps you had been – killed or wounded – and now, when I believed that horrid old man was coming to ask me to marry him – and I was told I had to accept his proposal, you are here – oh – Mikloš – am I dreaming – or is this really true?”
“I am real, my darling.”
He pulled her back into his arms and kissed her until they were both breathless.
“We shall be causing a scandal if we stay here too long,” he said, “but I have to see you alone. How can I do that?”
Tora smiled.
“That is what the Crown Prince of Croatia – suggested.”
Mikloš’s arms tightened until they were painful.
“He was lucky I did not murder him, which was what he deserved,” he said angrily. “I have no intention, my darling one, of coming to your bedroom or asking you to come to mine, but I have to see you and talk to you. You must realise that.”
“I know,” Tora answered, “and I want it as much as you do. There is a staircase to the right of your room at the end of the corridor, which will take you down to a door that leads into the garden.”
She smiled before she went on,
“I expect I will go to bed before you, so I will leave it open and I will be waiting behind the trees on the other side of the lawn.”
“Thank you, my precious one,” Mikloš said. “Then you can tell me if you still love me and I will tell you how soon we will be married.”
Tora gave a little cry.
“C-can I – marry you?”
“Do you think I would allow you to marry anybody else?”
Then he was kissing her again.
Because he insisted, saying that he had no intention of ruining her reputation, they walked slowly back to the ballroom.
They stood for a few minutes outside on the terrace so that they could be seen by those dancing and making it appear as if that was where they had been the whole time.
Then, when they returned to the ballroom, Mikloš did his duty dances first with the Grand Duchess and the wife of the Prime Minister and then with the wives and daughters of other State Officials.
Tora danced too, but, because it was so difficult to look at anybody except Mikloš, it was a great relief when her father instructed the orchestra to play the National Anthem.
It was still earlier than everybody else wished the dancing to end, but there was nothing the guests could do but say goodnight and, as the last one left, the Grand Duke moaned,
“Thank goodness that is over! If you ask me it was quite unnecessary to have a State Banquet and a ball on the same night!”
“I am sure Prince Vulkan enjoyed the dancing,” the Grand Duchess pointed out.
She looked at the Prince as she spoke almost as if she pleaded with him to support her and Tora’s eyes twinkled as Mikloš replied,
“I enjoyed it enormously, ma’am. I only wish I could still go on dancing on such an excellent floor with such an outstanding orchestra.”
“I expect that is what you will want to arrange in Maglic,” the Grand Duke said, “but no doubt your father, like myself, will prefer to keep early hours.”
As if this reminded him that it was later than his usual bedtime, he said sharply,
“Come along. What are we all waiting for? We have a long day in front of us tomorrow.”
He walked towards the door as he spoke and everybody else had to follow him.
Tora said goodnight to Mikloš, dropping him a deep curtsey.
As her hand touched his, she felt the vibrations from him so strongly that she wanted to hold onto him and tell everybody how much she loved him.
Instead, demurely, she followed her mother up the wide Grand Staircase and only when she reached her own room did she twirl around in sheer delight.
Everything now was changed and she would no longer cry despairingly into her pillow as she had done every night since leaving Maglic.
Because she was used to looking after herself and her mother thought it a mistake for her to be spoilt, she did not have a lady’s maid waiting up for her as was usual in most Palaces.
Tonight she knew that this saved her a great problem and, waiting until she thought that the footmen would have extinguished most of the lights, she opened her bedroom door and tiptoed very quietly down the passage.
Mikloš was sleeping in a different part of the great building and had, of course, been given the magnificent and most important State room, which had been prepared for his father.
It was not difficult for Tora to wend her way down the passages, which were seldom used, to where there was a staircase leading to the ground floor.
There she could avoid the part patrolled by the nightwatchmen and reached the garden door that she had told Mikloš to use without being seen.
She turned the key, which was in the lock, pushed back two bolts and let herself out into the warm night air.
She moved over the grass towards the trees which hid the light of the moon and the stars, where under one of the largest trees there was a wooden seat.
She had only waited about five minutes before she saw Mikloš in the doorway.
Then he came towards her, very tall and broad-shouldered, and in his white tunic with his decorations looking exactly as she had thought he should look from the first moment she had seen him riding towards her in the wood.
Before he reached her, she jumped to her feet and sped into his arms.
He pulled her close against him and his lips were on hers.
He kissed her with an urgency and fierceness that told her that he had missed her as much as she had missed him and also been afraid that he would not find her again.
“I – love you,” Tora murmured when she could speak.
“And I adore you!” he said in his deep voice. “At the same time, my darling, how could you do anything so dangerous and so very reprehensible as to come to Salona disguised as a pianist and dressed as a peasant?”
Tora looked up at him in surprise before she asked,
“Surely you know now why I came?”
“I have no idea,” h
e replied, “unless you were rebelling against the protocol of Palaces, which I myself have found most restricting.”
“I was rebelling against having to marry your father!” Tora explained.
“I never thought of that,” Mikloš said simply. “Of course it must have seemed a horrifying idea.”
“I thought I would rather die!” Tora told him. “But because I wanted to be – fair, I thought I must see him without – his being – aware of who I – was.”
Mikloš did not speak for a moment.
Then he took her by the hand and drew her deeper into the shadow of the trees.
Further along from where they had been standing there was another seat in front of which there was a water garden with small cascades falling between rock plants and into fish-filled pools.
Here they could see each other clearly by the light from the Heavens.
Tora looked so lovely that Mikloš said,
“I can understand any man wishing to marry you. At the same time it must have been terrifying to be told that you must marry an old man who is very set in his ways.
Tora shuddered.
Then she said with a sudden note of fear in her voice,
“There is no chance – now of his still – wanting to marry – me?”
“Since I returned home,” Mikloš replied, “he has given up the idea and anyway his health will not allow it.”
“His health?” Tora repeated.
“When he heard what Boris had been planning, he had a heart attack! That is why I am here in his place.”
“What exactly – happened to Prince Boris?”
She felt as she spoke that now it was really immaterial.
Mikloš was unharmed, Mikloš was here beside her, but at the same time she had to know.
He smiled.
“Thanks to you telling me, my darling, that they were to meet in the old Monastery, I managed not only to forestall the very explosive revolution that Boris had planned in his attempt to steal the Throne, but also to make sure that such a thing will not happen again, at least not for a long time!”
Tora reached out to hold onto him.
“I was so desperately afraid there would be – fighting and you would be – killed!”
“I was safe,” Mikloš said, “but unfortunately three of my soldiers died and a dozen men wounded.
Tora drew in her breath.
“And was – Prince Boris injured?”
“He is in hospital together with a number of his supporters, but because I did not wish the people of Salona to be alarmed, everything has been hushed up and nothing of what occurred has been reported in the newspapers.”
Tora made a sound that was almost like a sob.
“That is – what I was sure would – happen,” she said. “But when I did not know whether you were alive – or dead – I did not think it possible to be more – unhappy or miserable than I have been this past week.”
At the pain in her voice Mikloš put his arms around her and drew her against him.
“I feared perhaps you would feel like that, my precious one,” he said, “but there was nothing I could do about it except come to Radoslav as quickly as I could to look for you.”
“Is that why you are here sooner than expected?”
“Of course,” he replied, “and, when my father was taken ill, it was easier than it might otherwise have been. His doctor has advised complete rest. So he has gone on a long cruise in the Mediterranean after which he intends to abdicate!”
Tora drew in her breath, but she did not speak and after a moment Mikloš said,
“I am afraid, my beautiful, you will find yourself after all, married to the King of Salona!”
Tora made a little murmur.
Then, because she felt that she had to ask the question, she said in a low voice,
“I cannot believe you – intended to make the – girl you met in the woods dressed as a – peasant your – wife.”
Mikloš smiled before he said,
“I intended to marry somebody called Tora whom I have been looking for all my life and who my heart and my very soul told me was the other part of myself.”
His arms tightened round her as he went on,
“If I married her before my father abdicated, whatever the rules and regulations might say about such things, I thought it would be very difficult later for her not to be crowned.”
“Did you really mean to – marry – me thinking I was just a relative of the Professor?” Tora asked incredulously.
“If Ministers did not make it too hard for me and if they themselves did not threaten a revolution to equal Boris’s,” Mikloš said. “But if they did, I should have asked you to marry me, my darling, morganatically. What would you have replied?”
“Need you ask such a stupid question?” Tora answered. “I am yours, I belong to you and – whatever our marriage might be called, as long as I was your wife, nothing else would – matter!”
She spoke with a passion that made Mikloš seek her lips and kiss her until she felt as if she gave herself to him completely and absolutely.
“I belong to you,” she said, “and as long as I can be with you – nothing matters – and nothing – that anybody could do or – say.”
“That is what I feel,” Mikloš said, “that was why, my darling, until I could come to find you, every day has been an agony for me too.”
He pulled her closer as he added,
“Now I have everything I want and exactly the right person to help me in the enormous amount of work I have to do in Salona.”
Tora looked at him in surprise and he asked,
“Where do you think I have been all these years since I left home?”
“I imagined you were in Paris – enjoying yourself.”
Mikloš laughed.
“I certainly went to Paris first, not only to ‘enjoy’ myself, I know exactly what you mean by that, but to do a lot of other things besides.”
“What sort of things?”
“I went to see what new inventions the French have, besides listening to their entrancing music and dancing with their very attractive women.”
He saw the expression in Tora’s eyes and laughed softly.
“There is no need to be jealous, my darling! Not one of them was as beautiful as you and, when I touched them, there were no vibrations as there are between us and have been ever since we first met.”
Tora gave a little sigh of relief and he kissed her forehead before he went on,
“As it happens, I did not stay long in Paris. I went on from there to England and then to America.”
“America!” Tora exclaimed.
“It is a young country,” he said, “full of people with ideas and ideas were what I was looking for.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he replied, “Salona, like your own country, is old-fashioned and out of date and now I have returned my father’s illness has given me what I want, a free hand.”
He paused before he said with a note of triumph in his voice,
“I shall be able to build railways, factories, introduce electric light and a thousand new projects that are springing up like mushrooms in other countries. For I do not intend that mine shall be behind everybody else’s.”
Tora clasped her hands together.
“It sounds so very exciting! And – I can help – you?”
“You are not only going to help me,” Mikloš replied, “but to inspire me to do more and still more until our country is acclaimed as one of the most progressive in the whole of Europe.”
“Oh, Mikloš, that is a marvellous idea!” Tora cried. “But you are – quite certain that Salona is – safe and Prince Boris will not when he gets better – threaten you again?”
“When he comes out of hospital, which will not be for a long time,” Mikloš said, “I intend to exile him from Salona for the rest of his life and the same applies to those who intrigued with him, when they come out of prison.”
“
How can you have been so clever as to defeat them with hardly any bloodshed?” Tora asked, “And without sacrificing the lives of many innocent people?”
It was an idea that had haunted her from the beginning.
But she knew now that she had been right in knowing from the first moment she had seen Mikloš that he had an air of authority about him.
“I came home,” he said, “because those who were loyal to my father were suspicious of what was occurring. They sent me an urgent message to return, but I was not certain what my reception would be. I therefore went first to a castle which is my own and is not far from The Three Bells.”
He smiled as he spoke and Tora exclaimed,
“So that was why you were riding through the woods!”
“I had just had a long conference with those I could trust who told me they were sure that Boris was planning a revolution, but they were not quite certain exactly who was involved and, most importantly, who was undermining the loyalty of the Army.”
“That was the man called Luka!” Tora exclaimed.
“Exactly! But I did not know that until you told me.”
Tora raised her head from his shoulder.
“Oh, Mikloš, then I really did help you?”
“You gave me the key to the whole operation when you told me the names of the men who were Boris’s trusted Lieutenants,” he replied. “My whole plan then fell into place and best of all you told me where they were meeting.”
“So you were able to surround them and take them by surprise?” Tora asked.
“That is just what we did!” Mikloš agreed. “Another thing I adore about you, my darling, is your quick little brain.”
He would have kissed her again, but she put her fingers against his lips.
“First,” she said, “I must know why you were in the Palace that night.”
“I had a feeling,” he said, “and my sixth sense has never failed me, that you were in trouble. I had already arranged that you should leave immediately after the concert and then I went into the garden so as to be near you and also to make sure that everything was going according to my plan.”
He put out his hand and lifted her chin up to look at her before he added,
“How dare you do anything so improper as to go into the garden with the Crown Prince!
“I-I did not – mean to,” Tora said. “It was just that – he took me out of the garden room and down the steps almost before I realised what was happening.”
Princes and Princesses: Favourite Royal Romances Page 118
