The Peril and the Prince Read online

  Vida gave a little laugh.

  “How often are you disappointed?”

  “Very often,” he answered, “especially where women are concerned.”

  She looked at him enquiringly and he put his hand over hers.

  “Don’t disappoint me,” he said softly. “I find everything about you almost too perfect to be real and as yet there are no flaws.”

  “You are asking too much.”

  “Am I?”

  She had no answer to this and she looked away from him at the fertile countryside they were passing through and an hour later they arrived at Kishineu.

  The Prince’s train was everything she might have expected.

  It was painted white and red and displayed the Prince’s Coat of Arms just as on the doors of his horse-drawn carriages.

  The attendants wore his claret and gold livery.

  The dining room car was magnificently furnished and the bedroom that Vida was to sleep in, because they would not arrive in Kiev until the next day was, although small, very luxurious.

  The coachwork consisted of a blending of woods of local trees, painted and decorated in an unusual and attractive manner. And the upholstery of the chairs and the curtains that hung at the sides of the windows were of velvet.

  “It is so lovely,” Vida exclaimed, “that I feel you could live in it!”

  The Prince smiled.

  “I have too many houses to make that requirement necessary.”

  “The trouble with you,” she said provocatively, “is that you are spoilt! Your Highness has everything you could possibly ask for. I thought just now that you are like a genie to whom one has only to make a wish for it to be granted.”

  “That is what I feel about you,” he replied. “I have wished for you for a long time. Now, when I had almost given up hope, you are here.”

  It was a very pretty speech, but Vida felt that she was not to take it seriously.

  At the same time again her heart was turning over, but she was saved from making a reply because, as the train started to move, the servants brought in caviar and champagne, even though it was not long since they had had luncheon.

  There was much of interest to see from the windows as they steamed towards Kiev.

  But Vida found it hard to look at anything except the Prince’s handsome face or to hear anything but the music of his deep voice.

  They changed for dinner just as they would have done if they had been staying in his castle.

  Margit would have taken one of Vida’s elaborate and sensational gowns from her trunk, but she shook her head.

  “Give me one of my own,” she said. “A white one!”

  Margit looked at her in surprise and she added,

  “Tonight I want to be myself. Tomorrow when we arrive at Kiev I will be the Countess Kărólski.”

  “I don’t know what your mother would say about these goin’s-on!” Margit remarked. “The Prince is a fine gentleman and I’m not sayin’ any different, and it’s a miracle the way he saved the Master. But you know as well as I do, Miss Vida, that you should have a chaperone with you!”

  “I daresay when we arrive in Kiev His Majesty the Czar will prove a very effective one,” Vida answered lightly.

  “Now, you listen to me, Miss Vida,” Margit said in the tone of a scolding Nanny. “You watch your step where His Highness be concerned. He can account for more broken hearts than most sportsmen can tot up their pheasants and I’ve no wish for you to be one of them!”

  Vida felt a pang of jealousy at what Margit had said and wanted to reply that it was too late! For the Prince had already captured her heart as he had captured so many others.

  At the same time she was still fighting to keep control of her own feelings.

  She was trying with an almost superhuman effort not to be mesmerised by his charm, the compliments he paid her and the fire in his dark eyes.

  ‘I have to remember,’ she warned herself when she was dressed, ‘that when this dream world comes to an end, I shall have to go back to the reality of a normal life and never see the Prince again.’

  When she went into the drawing room car, where he was waiting for her, she knew by his expression when he saw her that all she wanted was to please him.

  `No amount of common sense could prevent her from feeling as if he lifted her into the sky.

  In her white gown, with only a touch of powder on her flawless skin and her only ornamentation a white rose from the flowers arranged in her sleeping car, she looked very young and very lovely.

  The Prince rose as she walked towards him and, when she reached him, he said in a low voice,

  “Now you have stepped straight out of my dreams. This is how I have seen you in my heart for many years.”

  Vida wanted to reply that she too had dreamt of him! But he was so much more wonderful than any ‘dream lover’ she could have ever imagined, that she could only look at him wide-eyed.

  She thought that no man could be so handsome, so incredibly attractive.

  They sat down side by side on a sofa, were served with the usual glass of champagne and delicious canapés.

  Dinner was brought to them and presented with a style and expertise that was part of his insistence on perfection.

  Afterwards Vida found it impossible to remember what she had eaten or drunk or even what they had talked about.

  She was only conscious that the Prince was close to her and his vibrations were so strong that she felt as if she could not only feel them but positively see them.

  When after the meal was over, the table in front of them had been cleared away and they were alone, the Prince suggested,

  “You have had a long day, my dearest heart, and I am going to send you to bed early because I want you to look very beautiful when we arrive at Kiev tomorrow.”

  “At what time – do we arrive?” Vida asked, a little tremor in her voice.

  She was afraid that he would reply first thing in the morning, but instead with a smile he answered,

  “I do not think that either of us wants to spend more time than is necessary with His Imperial Majesty and, as the food at his Palaces is always indescribably unpleasant, I have arranged for us to take an early luncheon here before we see the Royal Presence.”

  Because Vida was curious, she asked why the food at the Palaces was so unpleasant.

  “The Czar is frugal to the point of miserliness,” the Prince explained. “Since his accession he has cut down on entertaining and made stringent economies on food and wine. He has issued orders that soap and candles must be used as fully as possible before they are thrown away and the table linen is not to be changed every day.”

  Vida laughed.

  “It does not seem possible.”

  “It’s true,” the Prince said, “and the Czar’s favourite food is cabbage and gruel! Although he does not inflict these dishes on his guests, anybody who stays at the Gatshina Palace always complains that the food is inedible.”

  “It is unbelievable!” Vida said, thinking of the enormous wealth of the Russian Grand Dukes and their wild extravagance when they travelled around Europe.

  “The best thing we can do,” the Prince continued, “is to eat all we need before we join the Czar and expect a dinner that is best left alone.”

  “Surely it is not in one of his own Palaces that His Imperial Majesty is staying in Kiev?” Vida asked.

  “No, it belongs to the Prince of Kiev. He is a generous man, but like any other subject who entertains the Emperor of all the Russias, he is not so foolish as to flaunt his wealth.”

  Vida gave a little laugh.

  “What you are saying is that if he did, he might be taxed even more heavily than he is already!”

  It was the Prince’s turn to laugh.

  “I can see not only do you understand what is happening in Russia but you realise that things are different in every way from when Alexander II, who was a kindly man, was on the throne.”

  Vida was going to ask him to tel
l her about Alexander II, when he added,

  “He was both human and understanding because he was in love. He loved someone very dearly and their romance was like something out of a novel.”

  “Papa told me about it once,” Vida answered.

  She longed to ask the Prince if that was the sort of love he was looking for in his life.

  Then she remembered that Czar Alexander II had had a wife who was jealous and miserable because of his love for his mistress.

  It was something Vida did not wish to discuss at the moment and so she said quickly,

  “Tell me more about the Czar I am to meet tomorrow. Will he frighten me?”

  “He frightens most people,” the Prince said wryly, “including me!”

  “I thought that you were frightened of nothing and nobody!” Vida teased.

  “I am when it concerns the Czar,” the Prince said seriously, “because he is very unpredictable.”

  He was silent for a moment.

  Then he said,

  “I have painted a gloomy picture which is perhaps a little biased. Like his grandfather, the Czar is devoted to his wife and children, five of them, and is unfailingly kind to all the members of his family.”

  Vida thought that this was cold comfort when one remembered the horrors the Czar had perpetrated on the Jews and on any other of his subjects who had incurred his displeasure.

  She did not, however, feel it was safe to say so and instead she asked the Prince to tell her about her relatives, the Rákŏczis, whom he knew far better than she did.

  “I know they will be delighted to see your father,” the Prince said.

  Then with perception that was characteristic of him, he added,

  “I know you are tired, even though you are pretending otherwise. You have had a difficult day, but by this time your father is safe and you can sleep peacefully and no longer be afraid.”

  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 sai
d, 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.

  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,