The Protection of Love Read online

  The expression in the Prince’s eyes was very soft and gentle as he looked down at her.

  “I want your protection, my lovely one,” he said, “but I still want to go ahead alone. The moment you join me we will be married and then this particular world will never hear of us again.”

  “I am quite content for that if I can be with you,” Meta insisted.

  She had forgotten for a moment everything that had mattered so much to her in the past, the house, memories of her childhood, her beloved parents and even Richard.

  Her whole being was concentrated on the Prince.

  She wanted, as if he was a child, to keep him from being hurt and to prevent him from being unhappy or threatened in any way.

  She would protect him every hour of every day with the protection of love.

  He knew what she was thinking.

  Putting his hand under her chin, he turned her face up to his.

  “You are a very unusual and wonderful woman,” he said, “and, as I have told you in my music, I have been searching for you all my life and could not believe that you existed.”

  “Now that you have – found me – you are going away,” Meta complained.

  “Only for a little while,” he answered. “I think, even though it is unlikely, that Shakovski might be watching the ships leaving England. If there was a man answering my description with a young woman who he would think was Nathlia, he might once again be on my trail.”

  “It is – frightening – far too frightening,” Nathlia said, “Oh, Richard – just how can we – help him?”

  Her voice broke and she put her head against Richard’s shoulder as she spoke.

  “We shall just have to trust in God,” Richard said quietly, “and I think, my darling, He is on our side already. Otherwise your brother would not have been told of Shakovski’s arrival so quickly as to give him a chance to get away.”

  “We have – been so happy here – with you,” Nathlia said in a broken voice.

  “And we have been very happy to have you,” Richard answered.

  Meta was thinking that there was one blessing amongst all this unhappiness.

  It was that the Prince would not have to kill anyone English as she had been so afraid of.

  If a man like Shakovski died, it would be good riddance to someone who was bad, cruel and evil.

  He was a man who she was sure was loathed and detested by the majority of Russians and she had always known how much the Third Section was feared.

  Her father and Richard had not told her of the many atrocities that they inflicted on their long-suffering people.

  She had, however, read about them in books and in the European newspapers when he had brought them home from his travels and she was well aware that they were much worse than anything that was printed about them.

  The tortures they inflicted on their prisoners was just appalling and these had increased, as Richard knew, enormously during the reign of Czar Alexander III.

  They were even taking place in the Balkan States as well where the Russians had gained supremacy.

  It was men like Shakovski who exceeded their orders and who actually enjoyed being cruel to defenceless people who could no longer defend themselves.

  Richard well knew that if Shakovski was able capture the Prince, he would not have the least compunction in torturing Nathlia as well, nor for that matter anyone who aided them.

  There was no need to say this in front of the women but, as he met the Prince’s eyes, he knew what he was thinking.

  “When do you intend to leave?” he asked.

  “Tomorrow morning,” the Prince answered. “Boris will come with me and then I will tell Serge and Feodor to stay here with you. If Shakovski comes anywhere near this house, they will be aware of it and on my instructions they will kill him.”

  “I shall be most grateful for the protection,” Richard replied, “and Nathlia and I will be married as quickly as possible.”

  Both men knew that if Nathlia was married to an Englishman, it would make things more difficult for Shakovski than if she remained a Russian.

  Almost as if he had asked the question, Richard said,

  “She can use my title in the future and not her own.”

  The Prince smiled.

  “It is helpful, Richard, to have someone who knows the ropes.”

  What Richard thought extraordinary was that he and Meta had been so certain that the Prince and Nathlia had no idea that they were in any way involved in a secret commission.

  Yet the Prince knew of it before he had come to The Manor.

  He then thought that, if the Prince was leaving in the morning, he would want to be alone with Meta.

  He rose from his chair and, holding out his hand, said,

  “I think, Alexis, you are very brave. Let me welcome you to my family and say that I am proud to be connected with a man who is brave enough to stand up to the Devil himself, Czar Alexander III.”

  The Prince smiled somewhat wryly.

  “I can only apologise for any trouble it might cause you. At the same time I am deeply grateful that it has given me Meta. We were meant by God to belong to each other.”

  Nathlia kissed her brother.

  When they were alone, the Prince took Meta into his arms.

  “I love you, my darling,” he said. “It will be agony to go away but I have to protect you in every way I can.”

  “I want to be with – you,” Meta answered. “Please, please don’t keep me – waiting for too long – before you send – for me.”

  “Do you think that I want to wait?” the Prince asked. “I want you with me, my glorious darling, both day and night. I swear that we shall not be parted for one unnecessary minute.”

  Each minute will seem – to me to be like – a century,” Meta sighed.

  Then the Prince was kissing her and it was impossible to say anything more.

  It was an hour later before he took her upstairs and made her go to bed.

  “We are leaving,” he said, “very early in the morning. And I am going to catch a train in London, which will take me to Liverpool.”

  “From there I suppose you will take a ship to New York,” Meta replied.

  “I believe one leaves almost every day,” the Prince answered. “The quicker I am out of this country the better.”

  Meta shivered.

  She felt almost as if Shakovski were menacing them like a dark cloud that drew nearer and nearer.

  “I tell you what I will do,” she said. “I will come with you to London and we can have a carriage to ourselves. We shall be alone and I shall feel that, if you are in the Northern train, it will be safer than the branch line that we have in Leicester.”

  The Prince smiled.

  “Are you still protecting me with love?”

  “I shall always want to protect you,” Meta answered.

  “I have never until now thought that I should ever want to be protected by a woman,” the Prince said. “But I want your protection, my darling, just as when I was a child I wanted the protection of my mother. I know in the same way that you will look after and protect our son when we have one.”

  “I want to have lots of sons,” Meta said. “I want them to be just like you, very handsome and wonderful riders.”

  The Prince laughed.

  Then, as he had no words to reply to her, he kissed her.

  “Go to bed,” he said. “I will tell Boris to see that you are called in plenty of time for us to catch what they inform me is called the ‘milk train’.”

  He kissed her again with a hint of passion before he went to his own room.

  And Meta went to hers.

  She felt as if the sky had opened above her and she had stepped into a special Paradise that she never expected to find in this world or in any other.

  At the same time it was an agony to know that the Prince must leave her.

  She knew that he was being sensible and that Richard approved of his intentions.


  Yet it was impossible for her to sleep.

  She lay awake, thinking of the music that the Prince had played for her, the emotions it had aroused in her and the ecstasy that she had felt when he kissed her.

  *

  When Boris knocked on her door, Meta was already half-dressed.

  She was downstairs in the breakfast room when the Prince joined her.

  Feodor and Serge waited on them and she knew that the two men were aware of what had happened and were determined to carry out their Master’s orders.

  They were driven to the Station by Forster with Boris up on the box, while Feodor and Serge followed in the brake with the luggage.

  Meta and the Prince climbed into the milk train and there were no other passengers.

  The three Russians travelled in the compartment next to theirs.

  “I shall certainly have an escort to take me home safely,” Meta pointed out.

  “I am taking Boris with me,” the Prince said, “but Feodor and Serge will look after you until you bring them with you when you come to join me in America.”

  “You think of everything,” Meta said as she smiled.

  “I think of you,” the Prince answered. “All I ever want is your happiness, my precious one, and as much comfort as I can give you.”

  Meta looked at him a little anxiously.

  “You have enough money in America?”

  “Fortunately my father invested quite a lot in an oil field. The money has doubled and trebled and, as I have never touched it, I shall be quite a rich man.”

  “I am glad,” Meta said. “Not because we shall have a lovely house or anything like that, but simply because money is very necessary for someone like you.”

  She was thinking of his horses and all the things he enjoyed.

  “There will always be enough,” the Prince said, “to make you look more beautiful than you are already. How can anyone be so lovely?”

  He kissed her so that there was no need to answer the question.

  The train took only a short time to reach London and there was then over half an hour’s wait for the Express that would carry the Prince to the Port of Liverpool.

  He had quite a large amount of luggage with him and the porter, on Boris’s instructions, piled it all onto a truck.

  He took it onto one of the platforms and stopped outside a waiting room.

  “Your Master’ll be comfortable in there,” the porter said, “and I’ll keep an eye on the luggage.”

  The Russian thanked him and then walked along the platform to join Feodor and Serge.

  Meta had heard the Prince telling them to make themselves inconspicuous. It had rather surprised her until she thought that he was sensible in not wishing to attract attention.

  Four large tall and rather good-looking Russians were obviously not usually seen at this hour in the morning in any English Railway Station.

  The waiting room, which had windows looking onto the Station, was fortunately empty.

  The Prince closed the door firmly, hoping that other people would not come in.

  Now that the moment was near when they had to say ‘goodbye’ to each other, Meta felt the misery of separation sweeping away her happiness.

  “I cannot bear – you to go away – like this,” she said. “I know it is sensible. I know how awful it would be to wait day after day that this terrible man ‒ might appear. But I shall feel lost without you and I am afraid – desperately afraid that I might – never see you again.”

  The Prince made her sit down on the leather-covered seat and then sat down beside her.

  He took her hand in his.

  “I know just what you are feeling, my precious one,” he said, “and I am feeling the same. But I cannot help knowing that God has been guiding us and looking after us since Nathlia and I left Russia.”

  “I prayed last night that He would take – good care of you,” Meta murmured.

  “And I was praying that we will not have to wait long,” the Prince said. “I want you, my darling. I want you as I have never wanted anyone in the whole of my life.”

  He drew in his breath before he went on,

  “You are everything that is perfect in a woman. And, because I well know that no other man has kissed or touched you, I realise how extremely lucky I am.”

  “I have always wanted to love someone like I love you,” Meta replied. “When you kiss me, it is like flying up into the sky and I hear the angels singing a song of joy ‒ and rapture.”

  The Prince put his arms round her and looked down into her eyes, but he did not kiss her.

  “How can you be so perfect,” he asked, “and equally be so clever? You have a very acute and clever little brain.”

  “Why should you think that?” Meta asked.

  She had pretended to be stupid and a not very well-educated débutante.

  The Prince smiled.

  “I knew at once that you and Richard were acting,” he said. “You did it very cleverly but not cleverly enough to deceive me.”

  “I never thought for a moment that you would be suspicious of us,” Meta said, “although we were told to be suspicious of you.”

  The Prince laughed.

  “It sounds very much like a Russian drama to me.”

  Meta was still and then she said,

  “I think now we should have no secrets from each other. I must tell you that I can speak Russian.”

  The Prince gave a little laugh.

  “I suppose I should be surprised,” he said. “But what did surprise me was that Richard never admitted that he could speak Russian, although I was certain that he could do so.”

  “Why were you so certain?” Meta asked.

  “Because he had been to so many countries of which he admitted he knew the language and he had been to Russia, just as your father had. I was sure that was not the only one that was left out of his language repertoire.”

  Meta laughed.

  “You are too clever. I am sure that I should never be able to deceive you for long.”

  “You are never going to deceive me at all,” the Prince affirmed. “You are mine, Meta. I want everything about you to belong to me too. Your brain, the different things you know that interest you and, of course, everything you feel about me.”

  “Oh, darling, darling,” Meta exclaimed, “please be very careful and do not ‒ do anything dangerous. We must both pray as we have never prayed before that Shakovski will not find you.”

  Her voice trembled on the words and she turned to hide her face against his shoulder.

  “It is all right, my darling Meta,” the Prince said. “I cannot allow you to upset yourself or worry about me unnecessarily. I swear to you I will be very very careful and you know that all I will be dreaming of is the moment when we are together again.”

  With an almost superhuman effort Meta kept back her tears.

  There was the sound of an engine outside and she left the Prince’s arms to walk across the waiting room to the window.

  There was no train on the platform where they were.

  However, on the other side of the Station a train had just come in.

  She was about to turn around to go back to the Prince, when she found him beside her.

  “I don’t have to leave just yet,” he said. “I expect the porter or Boris will come and fetch us when the train does arrive.”

  As he spoke, he looked at his luggage, which was a short distance away from the waiting room.

  It was piled up onto a trunk and each of the trunks was labelled with the name ‘Andrew Clyde’.

  It was then that Meta suddenly felt the Prince stiffen.

  Because he was looking out of the window, she looked in the same direction.

  There was a man inspecting his luggage. From his back view he did not seem to be very tall, but he was heavily built.

  Without seeing his face she guessed that he was middle-aged.

  Then she heard the Prince say almost beneath his breath,

&nbs
p; “God in Heaven! It cannot be true! It just cannot be.”

  “What is ‒ it?” she asked him.

  She saw then that the Prince was staring at the man beside his luggage.

  She knew before he uttered the fateful word that it was Shakovski.

  Now he was touching one of the labels on the Prince’s trunk as if he was puzzling over the name.

  The Prince put his hand up to his forehead as if he was thinking what he should do.

  Even as he did so, Meta knew the answer.

  “Stay here,” she said to him in a whisper, “and don’t follow me.”

  She moved swiftly towards the door.

  As she reached it, the Prince was suddenly aware of what she was about to do and took a step forward.

  Before he could speak or stop her, she had stepped out of the waiting room and closed the door behind her.

  She walked across towards the luggage.

  As she did so, she opened her handbag and took out of its box the coin-like object that Richard had given her.

  Holding it in her right hand, she went up to Shakovski.

  And standing close beside him, she said in a young girlish voice,

  “Could you, sir, be very kind and please tell me ‒ the time?”

  As he turned round to look at her, dropping the label as he did so, she thought how evil and cruel he looked.

  She had never known a man’s face that portrayed his character so clearly and she could almost see in his eyes how much he would enjoy humiliating and torturing his victims.

  She managed to look at him almost pleadingly and she was aware that he was impressed by her beauty.

  “The time?” he questioned in a voice that haelda definite Russian accent.

  He took a gold watch from his waistcoat pocket and scrutinised it.

  “It is a quarter to nine,” he then told her.

  “Thank you, sir, thank you very much,” Meta said in a baby-like voice.

  Then, just as she was about to turn round, she dropped her handbag.

  “Oh, dear!” she exclaimed. “How clumsy of me!”

  Shakovski automatically bent down to pick it up.

  As he did so, his thick neck moved out of his shirt collar and his jacket.

  “Keep still!” Meta exclaimed. “You have a wasp on your neck.”