A King In Love Page 13

  ‘I will not marry him – I will – not!’ Zita told herself.

  And yet she knew that already her body was aching for him and she had the frightening feeling that if he suddenly appeared she would want to throw herself into his arms as she had done when he came to her from between the trees.

  ‘I love him, I adore him!’ she cried in her heart.

  But there could be no solution and no happy ending and all she could do was to compel her father to understand that she had made up her mind and nothing he could say could change it.

  Through the open window with the curtains undrawn she could see the stars and, because they seemed to hurt her and somehow made the pain she was suffering more intense, she climbed out of bed and shut them out.

  She felt with only the candlelight in the pretty but austere bedroom it was easier to think calmly and quietly.

  Her bed was not the box-type she had slept in on previous nights. Instead the wooden back was carved by a local craftsman with a design of flowers and fruit and the base with various birds.

  The carving was painted in the traditional way of the hill craftsmen and the mattress was of goose feathers, very soft and comfortable.

  But Zita felt as if she was lying on stones, each one piercing her and making her feel that she was a martyr.

  “Which I am, to love,” she murmured bitterly.

  She got into bed again and decided that, because it would be impossible to sleep, she would not blow out the candles.

  She knew that in the darkness, she would yearn, dream and cry for the King.

  But it was impossible not to think of him and she now wondered where he could have gone.

  He was not staying at the inn, for Nevi had said definitely that they were the only guests.

  ‘Why should I worry about him?’ she asked herself defiantly. ‘The sooner he accepts what I have said, the better.’

  She was sure La Belle or somebody like her would be only too willing to console him, but to think of the beautiful dancer waiting at the Château made Zita feel as if she had thrust a dagger into her heart.

  But she was determined that she would not weaken.

  “I will not marry him – even if he begs me on his knees,” she muttered proudly.

  Even as her voice was little louder than a whisper and might have been that of a ghost in the small room, the door opened.

  Zita gave a gasp of surprise – it was the King!

  Chapter Seven

  The King closed the door behind him and walked slowly towards the bed.

  He had changed into a long dark robe that nearly touched the ground and he had a silk scarf round his neck.

  He looked strange and the robe made him seem taller and in a way more imposing than he did ordinarily.

  Zita stared at him wide-eyed until she found her voice,

  “W-why are you here? You have – no right – to come into – my room.”

  “I have to talk to you, Zita,” the King said quietly, “and, as you might run away, as you have done before, there is no other way I can be certain that you will listen to me.”

  “I don’t want to listen to you. We have – nothing to say to each – other.”

  “On the contrary, I have a great deal to say and frankly you have no alternative but to hear me out.”

  “It will do no good,” Zita said. “I have made up my mind – and – nothing will – change it.”

  As she spoke, she realised that the King, who was standing beside the bed, was looking down at her and that at the same time, in her surprise at seeing him, she had raised herself straight up against the pillows.

  In the candlelight her thin nightgown trimmed with lace was very revealing.

  Quickly and defensively she pulled the sheet up higher and she thought that the King’s lips twisted in a smile before he sat down on the mattress and faced her.

  The mere fact that he was near to her made her heart beat frantically and she could feel the vibrations from him so strongly that it was hard to think of anything else.

  But she then said aggressively,

  “You have no – right to be here. You know it is extremely – unconventional and Papa would be very – angry if he knew of it.”

  As she spoke, she thought that her father would find it hard to complain when he himself was behaving in an even more reprehensible manner.

  But, because the King agitated her, she found it impossible to look at him and she waited for his reply, feeling helplessly that whatever she said, he would pay no attention.

  “Ever since we have known each other, Zita,” the King said after a moment, “you have been unconventional and now it is my turn.”

  “That was – different.”

  “In what way?”

  “When I pretended to be a waitress at The Inn of the Golden Cross, I only wished to – look at you, because Mama had said I was to keep out of sight while you were at the Palace.”

  “Your behaviour was hardly what I might have expected from the Grand Duke’s daughter.”

  “All I wanted to do was to see you close to – and know if all the gossip I had – heard about you was true.”

  “So you were curious about me?”

  “Like everybody else in Aldross.”

  “I can only hope that I lived up to their expectations,” the King said sarcastically. “But when I saw you, Zita, something happened to me which has never happened before.”

  Because she could not help herself, Zita glanced quickly at him and thought irrepressibly that he looked very handsome in the candlelight.

  There was also an expression in his eyes which made her remember the way he had kissed her and the ecstasy she had felt as if he was carrying her over the peaks of the mountains and up into the sky.

  It had been more wonderful than anything she had ever dreamt of or imagined.

  Then, because she knew that he was waiting, she found herself asking in a rather small voice,

  “What did happen?”

  “I fell in love!”

  “That – is not – true!”

  “It is true and now I am going to tell you a story. I think because we are so closely attuned and can read each other’s thoughts, you will understand what I am trying to say.”

  Zita told herself that she should not listen, she should order him to leave her bedroom, but, before the words could leave her lips, the King continued,

  “My mother was Hungarian.”

  Whatever Zita had expected him to say, it was not this and her eyes widened as she exclaimed,

  “Hungarian? I had no idea!”

  “Very few people know of it, simply because my mother is very seldom mentioned even in Valdastien. The reason is that her marriage to my father was a morganatic one.”

  Because she was so surprised, Zita dropped her hands, which were holding the sheet against her breasts, to stare at him in astonishment.

  “Morganatic?” she questioned.

  “My father fell in love with my mother as soon as he saw her and, although she was of noble birth, she was not Royal. So they were married secretly in Hungary.”

  The King paused before he went on,

  “When they returned to Valdastien and to my grandfather, there was nothing he could do but accept that the marriage was valid.”

  “It must have been very – romantic,” Zita said beneath her breath.

  “It was,” the King agreed, “but my mother was not only beautiful, she was very Hungarian.”

  He smiled as he added,

  “ Impetuous, impulsive, wild, and emotional!”

  He paused before he added very quietly,

  “All the things my father found irresistible and which I find irresistible in you.”

  “But you said – ” Zita began.

  “I know what I said,” the King interrupted, “and that is something I have to explain to you.”

  He looked away from her as if he was delving back into the past.

  “When my mother died I was six at the ti
me and my father was so distraught, so utterly desolate, without her, that he did not care what happened in a future which did not contain the woman he loved, So he allowed himself to be pressured into a marriage which was politically advantageous for Valdastien.”

  His eyes came back to Zita.

  “I think you, of all people, are aware what an arranged marriage can mean to a man who knows what love is and finds that without it his marriage is empty and meaningless.”

  Zita knew that he was speaking of her father, but she did not say anything and the King then carried on,

  “The moment my stepmother came to the Palace she was determined to erase the memories of my mother from everybody’s mind as if she had never existed. She was helped in this by the Statesmen, who had always been somewhat ashamed that my father’s wife was not the Queen, but only allowed the title of ‘Her Serene Highness’.”

  The King’s voice sharpened as he said,

  “Every portrait of my mother was either destroyed or stored away where nobody could see it. She was never mentioned and I was not allowed to talk about her.”

  Zita made a little murmur of horror and the King went on,

  “I adored my mother. She was the most beautiful, warm, loving person in the whole of my small life and like my father I felt as if the world had come to an end and I was lonely in a way that I cannot describe to you.”

  Zita had the vision of a small boy lost in a large Palace with people round him, who were suddenly hostile to everything that had mattered to him.

  She made an impulsive little gesture as if to put out her hand, then checked herself because she was afraid that, if she touched him, she would no longer be able to maintain her resolve not to marry him.

  “It was not only that I was not allowed to talk about my mother, but the nurses she had chosen for me were changed and everybody round me spent their time in instilling into my mind that everything that was Hungarian about me must be suppressed and erased from my character.”

  The way the King spoke told Zita how terrifying it had been and how much he had suffered.

  “I was punished if I spoke a word in Hungarian,” he went on. “If I cried I was punished for being uncontrolled and over-dramatic. The Queen instructed my Tutors that the most important lesson I was to learn was that of self-control. By that she meant that I was never to show my emotions.”

  “How could anybody have been so unfeeling or so cruel to a child?” Zita cried.

  “The answer to that is quite simple,” the King said with a twist of his lips. “The Queen was jealous. She had fallen in love with my father after she married him, but she knew that never in a million years would he love her and his thoughts were always with the wife he had lost.”

  “I suppose that was – hard on her – too,” Zita murmured, thinking of her mother.

  “Very hard, but that is often the case where arranged marriages are concerned,” the King said, “and that is why I was determined I would never be forced into one.”

  “And yet – I thought that you came to Aldross – thinking that you might – marry Papa’s – daughter,” Zita said hesitatingly.

  “My Prime Minister told me that I must marry to save the succession, since if I died without an heir there was every likelihood that Germany, having established their Federation, might interfere in the affairs of Valdastien.”

  “That is what we are afraid of too,” Zita said, “and therefore, because it would be politically advantageous for both countries, Papa believed you would offer for Sophie.”

  “I suppose I might have done so,” the King admitted gravely, “though I would certainly have looked round the other nations first. But then I met you.”

  “Are you really – saying that I – changed your – mind?”

  “When I turned from the mirror,” the King replied, “the sun was on your hair and for one incredible moment I thought my mother had come back!”

  “Am I – like her?”

  “That is another thing I have to tell you,” the King said. “I had often heard stories of your grandmother and how beautiful she was and how very very Hungarian in temperament!”

  His eyes twinkled before he went on,

  “So before I came to Aldross, thinking it would interest your father, I looked up her family tree and found that there was one rather obscure branch of the Esterhazys who had married into the Razcozskis, who were my mother’s family.”

  He paused before he said with a smile that made Zita feel as if her heart turned over in her breast,

  “So you see, my darling, we are actually related to each other.”

  “But – you said you had no – wish to – marry a – Hungarian!” Zita protested.

  “It had been so drummed into me,” the King replied, “that the Hungarians were everything that was wrong from a Monarch’s point of view, that I had almost begun to believe it! So at that moment I was fighting against my love for you.”

  Zita looked surprised but she did not speak and he continued,

  “I was on the defensive, telling myself that, although I desired you, the only place you could hold in my life was a transitory one, because the fires that were consuming me would burn themselves out as they had done in the past.”

  “That is – what I have – heard,” Zita murmured, “and that is – why I will not – marry you.”

  “I knew that was the reason,” the King remarked.

  Again she looked surprised and he added,

  “Have you forgotten that I can read your thoughts as you can read mine? I knew, my precious, when you ran away this evening saying that you would not marry me, that you were afraid of the future and of the way you thought I might make you suffer.”

  Now Zita stared at him in astonishment.

  “How – could you have – known that?”

  The King made a gesture with his hands.

  “How can I explain what I feel for you?” he asked. “I can only say that I love you as I have never loved any woman in the whole of my life!”

  “How can you be – sure?”

  “I am sure, because you are everything I have ever wanted and thought I should never find.”

  His voice seemed to challenge her as he said,

  “Of course there have been women in my life and once I was free of the severity and restrictions of my stepmother, I enjoyed my freedom as I think most men would have done.”

  “You went to – Paris!”

  “Yes, Paris,” the King replied, “and I found there most of the joys that I had missed living in the dull depressing gloom of the Palace in Valdastien.”

  “I can – imagine what – those – were.”

  “Of course,” the King went on. “There were women to tell me I was attractive, women to make me laugh, women with whom I could dance and women who were only too eager to do anything I wanted as long as I gave them jewels, gowns and parties that had to be more extravagant and more outrageous than any that had taken place previously.”

  “It must have been – fun!”

  “I certainly enjoyed it,” the King said frankly, “but after a while I began to find that, like too much pâté de foie gras, it began to satiate me.”

  He smiled ruefully before he continued,

  “When my father died and I inherited, I came back almost thankfully to Valdastien, to my horses, my mountain climbing and the other sports I had always enjoyed when my stepmother did not prevent me from taking part in them.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She was German and I sent her home.”

  “German?”

  “She came from the Duchy of Mildensburg,” the King explained. “The people there are partly Prussian, which I think you will agree accounts for a great deal of what I suffered under her jurisdiction.”

  “And she was – prepared to leave – Valdastien?”

  “She had no choice!” the King said in a hard voice.

  Zita knew then that he had compelled his stepmother to go and she gave a little
sigh as he went on,

  “Then I was my own master and could do what I wanted.”

  “And that meant – bringing women to the – Château”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “I think everybody in Aldross knows why the Château – adjoins the – Palace.”

  The King looked at her for a long moment before he said,

  “So that is another reason why you are refusing to marry me!”

  Because he was so perceptive, Zita felt the colour come into her cheeks and she was unable to look at him.

  “Shall I tell you,” he said in a low voice, “that it is now empty and that is how it will remain.”

  “Until you – need it – again?”

  “If I need it again,” the King said, “it will be because you have either died or no longer love me.”

  “How can I be – sure of – that?”

  “By using your instinct,” he answered. “I think we are both aware that our instinct is something very Hungarian, which would be impossible to explain to other people, but which is so much a part of us that we cannot discount or ignore it.”

  “I-I still think it would be a – mistake to marry you,” Zita said. “I understand what you are – trying to tell me – of course I understand, but I really have – no wish to be a Queen, and – ”

  She was hesitating, trying to find the right words and the King asserted,

  “You are just trying to make out a case against me and I don’t intend to listen. I am going to marry you, Zita, either with or without your consent and I have no intention of allowing you to say, ‘no’.”

  Because he spoke in a low calm voice, it took Zita a moment to realise how determined he was.

  Then she felt that she was confronting a will of steel and she knew that he was prepared to fight for her.

  She also had the uncomfortable feeling that he would eventually be the victor.

  But she was still uncertain, still afraid of her own love for him, which seemed to invade her whole body so insistently that it was more a pain than a pleasure and she was frightened by it.

  “If you go away now,” she said quickly, “not only out of this room, but out of my life, we shall both – forget each other. You will find a suitable Queen who will not mind when you have other – interests and, if you think about it sensibly, since we are both Hungarian, our marriage could never be anything but tempestuous – and we might eventually – tear each other to – pieces.”