The Protection of Love Read online

  “I want – to say – here,” she cried frantically. “I love you – you don’t understand – I love – you.”

  Because she was holding onto him, instinctively Richard put his arms around her.

  Then, as he looked down at her beautiful face with its frightened eyes, something seemed to snap inside him.

  “Oh, my God,” he murmured.

  Then his lips were on hers.

  He kissed her because he could not help it.

  As he did so, her whole body seemed to melt into his.

  Then he was kissing her again wildly, frantically and passionately as he had wanted to do for a long time.

  He had fought as best he could against the feelings that she had evoked in him.

  At nights when he could not sleep he had told himself over and over again that she was only a child.

  He knew now as he kissed her that she was very much a woman.

  He was aware that the ecstasy she was arousing in him was seeping through her whole body.

  He kissed her and went on kissing her until they were both breathless.

  Then in a voice that seemed like a cry of the birds, Nathlia said,

  “I love you – I love you – and I will never – leave you.”

  “My darling, this is madness,” Richard managed to say.

  “Wonderful – glorious – perfect madness,” Nathlia said. “But you have – kissed me and that is – what I have – wanted you to do ever since I – first saw you.”

  “I have tried to tell you that I am too old for you,” Richard told her again.

  “If you were Methuselah, I should still – want you,” Nathlia replied. “But as it is – please – please, Richard – will you marry me?”

  He laughed, but it was a somewhat shaky sound.

  His arms tightened round her.

  “That is what I should say to you,” he replied.

  “But I cannot – wait,” Nathlia quavered, “because I am so – afraid you will – leave me or send me away and all I – want, darling, wonderful – Richard is to be with you for – ever and ever.”

  Richard knew as she spoke that it was what he wanted too.

  He had tried not to love this adorable beautiful creature who had seemed to incorporate all his dreams from the very moment he had first seen her.

  He knew now that there was simply no escape for either of them.

  What they felt for each other was the love that he had always thought had been invented by poets and novelists and did not really exist. He loved Nathlia not only because he desired her but because she seemed in a way that he could not explain the other part of himself.

  He thought anyone would scoff at a man of his age who believed that anyone so young could give him mentally everything he desired.

  Yet, because Nathlia was so completely different, she might in many ways have been the same age as himself.

  He knew it was her Russian blood that had given her that depth of loving which came from the soil and was an intrinsic part of every Russian.

  To them love was so much a part of their whole being that it was so very different from what was thought of as love in other countries.

  Now Nathlia hid her head against his shoulder and whispered,

  “You have not answered ‒ my question.”

  He looked down at her with a very tender expression in his eyes.

  “How could I refuse you?” he asked. “I will tie you to me with every promise and vow that exists. I swear to you, my darling one, that I will never let you leave me. If any other man looks at you, I will kill him.”

  Nathlia gave a little laugh.

  “That is what I want you to say. Oh, darling Richard, we will be very happy and I will be very good and do exactly what you tell me just as long as you ‒ go on kissing me.”

  She lifted her lips as she spoke.

  Then Richard was kissing her again, kissing her so demandingly and at the same time he knew that he would protect this exquisite creature from everything in the world that might harm her.

  He would fight in every way he could to keep their love from being hurt or spoilt.

  It was a long time before Richard and Nathlia went back to the house.

  When they did appear, Meta, who was writing a letter at the desk at the far end of the drawing room, looked up.

  “Where have you two been?” she asked. “I looked in the garden, but then I could not see you anywhere.”

  She was well aware of the radiance on both their faces.

  Her eyes widened as she went on,

  “What has happened? You both look different somehow.”

  Nathlia ran to her.

  “Oh, Meta, I am so so happy,” she cried. “Richard is going to marry me and it is the most wonderful glorious thing that has ever happened to me.”

  Meta gave a gasp.

  “To ‒ marry you,” she repeated as if she could not believe it.

  “You must congratulate me, Meta,” Richard urged her.

  “I told you I did not intend to get married until I was much older, but I found Nathlia and she is everything I ever wanted as my wife.”

  Meta gave a cry of delight.

  “It is the most marvellous thing ever,” she said. “I know you will both be very happy and that Richard will look after and protect you.”

  She kissed Nathlia and her brother.

  Then, because she obviously thought that it would be tactful, she said she had something to do upstairs in another room and left them alone.

  Only as she walked away down the passage did it occur to her that, if Richard did marry, then neither he nor Nathlia would really want someone extra in the house.

  Of course, like every married couple, they would want The Manor to themselves.

  Therefore both she and the Prince would have to find somewhere else to live.

  As she thought of the Prince, a little shiver went through her.

  If he had received bad news, and she knew a little of what the news was, would it make him insist on leaving and taking Nathlia with him?

  She thought, even in the short moment that she had seen Richard, he somehow seemed to be transformed.

  That she told herself was love.

  It was very obvious in his eyes and in the vibrations coming from him and in the almost celestial happiness that seemed to envelop them both.

  ‘They are happy,’ Meta thought. ‘But it is something that will never happen to me.’

  She knew with despair that the Prince would never ask her to marry him if he was under a cloud.

  Anyway he had not done so before last night when he had been told that he had to be a murderer or at least some part of the crime.

  It was so frightening that she found, without even thinking what she was doing, she had walked down the passage to the music room.

  She opened the door.

  Then, as she did so, she thought that perhaps by some miracle she would find the Prince sitting by the piano

  But there was no one there.

  The room seemed so large and empty and there was only the faint sound of a bee buzzing against a window.

  She began to think of the weapons that Richard had put into her hand because she might need them.

  She wondered if it was something that she should give the Prince so that he could use it against the person he had to destroy.

  Then she was horrified at her own thoughts.

  How could she think of anything so wicked as killing another person, however bad they may have been?

  At the same time she just knew that she wanted to help the Prince.

  The only question was help him to do what?

  If it was what Russia desired him to do, how would it possible as an Englishwoman that she could do it?

  Because she felt that she could hardly breathe, she opened one of the large windows and as she did so, the bee which had been buzzing against the glass flew out.

  She felt as it winged its way towards the flowers that it was something
that she would like to do herself.

  But instead she was right in the centre of a terrifying and what she was quite certain was a criminal plot.

  She had no idea who it might be against.

  Yet she was herself involved and she was frightened, desperately frightened, that it might incriminate or even destroy the Prince.

  It could also sweep away the happiness that she had just seen in the eyes of Nathlia and Richard.

  How could her brother, the twelfth Baronet of one of the ancient families of England, marry the sister of a man who would betray his country?

  Everything seemed to whirl round and round in her head until she felt as if she was going mad.

  Then she found herself praying, not to her mother, as she usually did, but to her father,

  ‘Help me, Papa,’ she prayed, ‘things cannot be as bad as they seem. But I am frightened, very frightened. You know how terrible these intrigues can be, as you yourself were once part of them. Please, please, save the Prince ‒ because I love him.”

  Even as she prayed, she wondered if perhaps her father would look on the Prince as an enemy.

  She knew, if what she suspected was correct, Richard would have to do the same.

  Because it was so appalling to think of their whole happiness falling to pieces, she found herself walking up and down the polished floor of the ballroom where they had danced.

  Meta could not keep still because she was feeling too agitated.

  So backwards and forwards she went, hardly aware of what she was doing, only deep in her thoughts.

  Finding no answers to her questions and for the moment no reply to all her prayers, she went back to the drawing room.

  It was Richard who said that it was time to dress for dinner.

  “This is ridiculous. Wherever the Prince went, he should be back here by now unless, of course, he has had an accident.”

  “You cannot suggest,” Nathlia said, “that Alexis would have an accident when he was riding.”

  “He could have taken too high a fence and fallen and hurt himself or the horse,” Richard said.

  “I have never known Alexis do anything so silly as to put a horse at a jump he would not take or fall off when he should be sitting in the saddle.”

  Nathlia spoke defiantly.

  At the same time Richard saw the depth of anxiety in her eyes.

  He put his arm round her.

  “You are not to worry, my darling,” he insisted. “If he does not come in the next half an hour, I will go and search for him.”

  “How will you do that?” Meta asked.

  “We will all go,” Richard replied. “Forster, the stable boys and anyone who can ride a horse. In that way we can cover most of the estate before it is dark,”

  Nathlia looked up at him.

  “I knew you would know what to do,” she sighed. “You are so clever.”

  Richard smiled at her and for the moment they had forgotten everything they had been talking about except for themselves.

  ‘How could the Prince spoil all this?’ Meta asked silently.

  She found herself moved by the love that Nathlia showed to Richard and he to her.

  It was obvious that they were not for the moment living in a world that was familiar, they were in a little Heaven of their own.

  It was difficult when anyone spoke to them for them to understand what was being said.

  Now Meta walked to the window as she had done a thousand times already.

  She gazed out over the garden.

  Then, because she knew it was very unlikely that she would see him in that direction, she went out of the room without saying anything and crossed the hall to the front door.

  She was aware as she did so that Richard and Nathlia had hardly noticed that she was leaving and would certainly not try to follow her.

  ‘That sort of wonderful love will never come to me,’ she told herself miserably.

  Then she opened the front door to stand on the steps looking out over the Park.

  Where was the Prince?

  Where could he possibly be?

  Had he had anything to eat since breakfast?

  Had he just ridden and ridden as if he could escape from what was troubling him?

  They were questions that there was no answer to.

  Then, as if to make quite sure that she had not made a mistake, she walked from the front of the house round to the stables.

  Forster had obviously gone to his cottage which was on the other side of The Manor.

  There were two stable boys sitting on the mounting block and rolling a couple of marbles backwards and forwards between them.

  As they saw Meta, they jumped down as if they were afraid that she would be annoyed with them for not being busy with the horses.

  “I expect you are waiting for His Highness, who has not come back yet,” she asked the boys.

  “No, miss,” the older boy said, “we be ’ere to see to ’is ’orse when ’e does arrive back.”

  “I cannot think what has happened to him,” Meta said. “I do hope there has not been an accident.”

  “Not with ’Is ’Ighness, miss,” the other boy replied, “’e be so good on an ’orse, ’e never does ’ave a fall like us does.”

  The other boy giggled at that and Meta remembered that he had had a bad fall two weeks before, which Forster had said was entirely his own fault.

  “I agree with you,” she said to the other boy. “The Prince is an excellent rider. What I suspect has happened is that, being stranger, he had lost his way.”

  “That be quite easy to do in the woods round ’ere, miss.”

  Slowly Meta went back to the house.

  She walked up the steps, then, as she reached the front door, she turned back for a last look.

  It was then that she saw the Prince in the distance coming slowly towards her.

  Her heart gave a leap of joy.

  She knew then that there had not been an accident and he was not as she had half-feared, lying with a broken leg in a ditch.

  He was still on his stallion’s back and, riding as only he could ride, looking as if he had come straight down from Mount Olympus.

  Then she knew that she must wait for him, not as she was doing now on the steps, until he should come to tell her, although it seemed unlikely, all that was worrying him.

  She slipped into the house and told the footman on duty in the hall to tell His Highness’s valet that he was on his way back.

  She felt sure that the man would then have the Prince’s bath, which he would need after having been riding all day, ready for him.

  There would also be a drink poured out, which again would be what he would require.

  She then ran up the stairs to her own bedroom.

  As she did so, she was thanking God and her father that the Prince was safe, safe from the difficulties and trials of a long ride.

  But there was still the reason that had driven him away in the first place, the reason she had heard whispered when she had listened at the door of the anteroom.

  There was no one in her bedroom and before she rang for the maid she went over to the window.

  The sun was sinking in the sky in a blaze of glory.

  She thought in some way that it seemed to resemble the music that the Prince had played for her which had spoken to her heart.

  ‘Did he still feel like that towards me?’ she wondered now.

  It seemed as she listened that he was telling her that he loved her.

  Then he had walked away and declared that he would never play it again.

  After that it had been almost impossible to have a word with him in private or for them to be alone.

  It was what she wanted above all else, but it had been denied her.

  She knew the reason, although she could not put it into words.

  If the Prince did care for her and he had come to England to destroy someone, how could he let her be involved in anything so horrible, so degrading and so wicked?
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  When it was done, if it was, what would he feel then?

  She knew only too well that, he would somehow contrive to walk out of her life.

  How could they possibly go on as they had been enjoying themselves just like ordinary people and filling the air with laughter?

  It seemed to her now as if a great pit yawned between today and yesterday.

  So much had happened that a century might be between them.

  ‘I love him as I shall never love anyone again,’ Meta thought. ‘But I have lost him just because one strange man came into the house for ten minutes.’

  She wanted to scream out at the total injustice of it.

  But she knew that it would do no good.

  When the Prince had ridden away early that morning, he was riding away not only from his troubles but also from her.

  Chapter Seven

  Meta stayed in her bedroom.

  She had no desire at the moment to talk to Richard or Nathlia.

  She wanted to think only of the Prince.

  She wondered if the horse he had been riding was very tired. She was sure that he was exhausted.

  The housemaids then brought up her bath.

  When she was dressed, she sat for some time at the dressing table, afraid to go down the stairs and afraid of what she might hear.

  She was even more concerned that the Prince might have left without speaking to her or without even saying ‘goodbye’.

  The last thought was so agonising that she jumped to her feet, crossed the room and went into the passage.

  It was then that she saw his valet coming out from the Prince’s room and knew that her fears were unfounded.

  Because they had been so intense, for a moment she felt weak and almost as if her feet would not carry her downstairs. |

  Finally she forced herself to go slowly down to the drawing room.

  Nathlia and Richard were both there.

  Before Meta could say anything, the door opened and the Prince came in.

  One look at him told Meta that he had changed from the mood of despair he had been in during yesterday morning.

  Now he seemed calm and at ease as he moved towards them.

  “I am sorry if I worried you because I was away for such a long time,” he said, speaking to Richard, “but I had so many things to sort out in my own mind that I just rode and rode!”