69 Love Leaves at Midnight Read online

  “You will not die but live,” the King insisted. “This is only the beginning. You are like a flower, my darling one, which is still in bud.”

  He kissed her forehead again and said,

  “I cannot believe anyone could be more lovely than you are at this moment and yet I have a feeling that our love will give you a new beauty because now, my wonderful little wife, you are a woman!”

  Xenia blushed and hid her face against him and he added,

  “My woman! Mine! Oh, my precious, if you only knew what it means to know that all those lies you told me were untrue!”

  He made a sound that was almost a laugh and said,

  “I am well aware why you told me them. You had heard about Elga and you felt that you must hold your own and also perhaps make me aware of what a fool I was.”

  “Did you – love her?” Xenia asked, remembering the abandoned posture on the poster.

  “No, of course not!” the King replied. “She was just a ‘passing fancy’ that was blown up out of all proportion by those who hated me and, I am quite sure, on the instigation of the Prime Minister.”

  His arms tightened around Xenia as he went on,

  “Because you had heard of the woman, it ruined our relationship from the moment we met, even allowing for the fact that we were both being pressurised into a marriage we neither of us wanted.”

  “Could we – forget it – just for – tonight?” Xenia asked.

  “We will forget it for ever!” the King answered. “You belong to me, my darling. I can still hardly believe, though my lips tell me that it is true, that you had never been kissed before that magical wonderful moment under the Falls.”

  “I did not know a – kiss could be so – ecstatic! Or – ”

  She paused.

  “Or?” the King prompted and she whispered,

  “ – making love could be so – perfect – so glorious – and a part of – God.”

  “That is how it is because we love each other. I promise you one thing, my darling, there will never be anyone else in either of our lives.”

  His lips sought hers as he added,

  “For one thing I shall be very jealous! You are far too beautiful for any man’s peace of mind.”

  Xenia wanted to say that, as far as she was concerned, she would never want any other man in her life, but the King’s lips were becoming more insistent, more passionate and his hands were touching her again.

  The little ripples of fire were running through her veins and her breath was coming quickly through her lips.

  All she could say not in words but with her mind, her body and her soul was,

  “I love – you! I adore – you!”

  *

  Xenia awoke to find the sun shining between the curtains.

  ‘I am married!’ she thought.

  She turned towards the King, but the place where he had slept was empty and she felt a sense of disappointment, which was almost one of dismay.

  Then she heard him come back into the room through the communicating door.

  He was dressed and he went to a window and pulled back the curtains. As the sunshine flowed in, golden and compelling, he turned to look at her with a smile on his lips.

  “Are you awake, my precious?”

  “I had just – woken up to – find you gone and I thought I had – lost you.”

  There was a throb in her voice that pleased him and he walked to the bed, thinking as he did so that he had never seen a woman look so lovely in the morning.

  Xenia’s skin was dazzlingly white, her red hair was streaming over the pillow and her eyes still a little hazy with sleep were vividly green.

  He stood looking down at her for a moment before he asked,

  “Are you real? I feel you are like a nymph from the sea or from the woods who will suddenly vanish back to where you have come from and I shall be alone again.”

  Xenia felt with a pang of her heart that this was something that indeed would happen and, perhaps because they were so closely attuned to each other, she had put the idea into his head.

  “What are we – going to do – today?” she asked.

  “I would like to answer that by saying that I am coming back to bed to make love to you. I assure you that there is nothing I want more.”

  He sat down facing her as he spoke and put out his hand to touch her hair.

  “What are we – really going to – do?”

  There was a sense of urgency in her voice because she had to know.

  “I have arranged much against my wishes a Privy Council meeting for this morning,” the King replied. “Then, whatever anyone may say, whatever urgent matters are outstanding, we are leaving on our honeymoon.”

  “Where are we going?” Xenia enquired.

  “It’s a secret. I have a surprise for you. It would spoil it if you knew.”

  She gave a little cry of excitement.

  “I love surprises – if they are – nice.”

  “This will be very nice,” the King said, accentuating the word, “but I can think of a more descriptive adjective for being alone with you without any pomp and ceremony and certainly without a Lady-in-Waiting.”

  “All I – want to be is to be with – you,” Xenia whispered.

  There was a little note of passion in her voice that was unmistakable and the King bent nearer as he said,

  “If you look at me like that and say such things, there will be no Privy Council! Or they can wait where they are until tomorrow.”

  The fire was back in his eyes and, because she could not help herself, she put her arms round his neck.

  “Do you still – love me?” she questioned.

  “Do you want me to prove it?” the King answered. “It is something I am very willing to do.”

  His lips came down on hers and for a moment she could not answer.

  Then, with an almost superhuman effort, she put her hands on his chest to push him away from her.

  “You must do what is – right.”

  “What is right is for me is to kiss you!”

  His lips were demanding.

  She knew that she had excited him and he wanted her, as indeed she wanted him.

  Then she turned her face to one side away from his lips.

  “Hurry,” she urged. “Hurry with the Privy Council and let’s get away – quickly on our honeymoon, and please – please, István, darling – don’t let anything disturb us, however – urgent it may appear.”

  “I will make sure of that,” the King answered.

  As she turned her face round to his, he said in a voice she hardly recognised,

  “It is agony to leave you, you know that, and my whole body burns for you. I think too, my precious, that there is a little fire burning in you that has not been there before.”

  Xenia looked into his eyes and he saw the answer without her speaking.

  He kissed her once again and then walked from the room as if he was a soldier going on parade.

  Xenia gave a sigh of sheer joy.

  Never had she believed that it was possible to feel as happy as she did at this very moment knowing that the King had awoken a thousand different sensations within her that she had never felt before.

  This was love, as it was meant to be, love which not only united a man and a woman as human beings, but which had taken them up to the Heavens so that their very passion for each other was sanctified and made holy.

  ‘He is so wonderful!’ she mused.

  Margit brought in her breakfast and she had her bath, thinking only of the King and wondering where he had planned that they should go where no one would find them.

  ‘The people are beginning to trust him,’ she thought, ‘and without the Prime Minister to stir up trouble everything will carry on peacefully until he returns.’

  When she had finished drying herself, Margit brought her a wrap of pale blue satin trimmed with frill upon frill of real lace.

  Xenia put it on to sit at the dressing table while Mar
git arranged her hair, choosing a style that was young because she knew that was how the King would want her to look.

  And yet he had said that she had become a woman!

  She stared at her reflection in the mirror to observe any difference thinking that there should be an enormous one.

  But the eyes that looked back at her not only were very green but alight with a happiness that had never been there before.

  She thought too that her lips were fuller and very curved because all through the night the King had kissed them.

  Margit had just finished putting the last pin in her hair when there was a knock at the door.

  She crossed the room to open it.

  There was a whispered conversation and then she returned to Xenia and said,

  “There is a lady from England to see Your Majesty. The Major Domo thought that, as you asked for her so often yesterday, Your Majesty would be expecting her and she is waiting outside.”

  “Not outside, but in!” a voice called from the door.

  Without turning her head, Xenia knew who had spoken.

  It was Johanna – a day and a night late!

  Chapter 7

  Margit moved towards the door.

  “If Your Majesty will ring when you want me – ” she murmured, curtseying and left the room.

  Xenia turned round.

  Johanna was standing at the far end of the bedroom just inside the door and Xenia saw that she was dressed as a widow.

  Her gown, far too elegant for anyone who was deeply bereaved and which revealed her slender and graceful figure, was ornamented with crepe.

  She wore a small crepe bonnet on her head and had a crepe veil that completely covered her face.

  She raised this with black-gloved hands and Xenia saw that she was smiling.

  “Here I am!” Johanna exclaimed, “and don’t say that you are surprised to see me!”

  “Not – surprised,” Xenia managed to reply, “but I expected you – yesterday or the – day before.”

  Johanna walked towards her and once again it was as strange as if she was seeing her own reflection in a mirror.

  The mourning might be a clever disguise, but it accentuated Johanna’s white skin, red hair and green eyes.

  “I thought,” Xenia went on, “that you would read in the newspapers that the King’s – marriage was to take – place and would know it was – imperative that you should come here at – once.”

  “I did not see the newspapers for some days,” Johanna answered. “I had other things to think about.”

  She smiled as she spoke and added,

  “Oh, Xenia, I can never thank you enough for taking my place. I have been so happy and had such a heavenly time with Robert.”

  There was almost a dreamy note in her voice.

  Then in a very different tone she said,

  “But you must hurry! He is waiting for you downstairs and your train leaves in an hour.”

  “M-my – train?” Xenia echoed almost stupidly.

  “Robert has your ticket and he will see you off. He also has the money I promised you.”

  “B-but – I – ” Xenia began and then her voice died away.

  There was nothing she could say, nothing she could do.

  This was the moment when the Fairy story came to an end.

  Feeling as if it was difficult to move she rose to her feet.

  “As you are not dressed, you have nothing to do but put on my clothes,” Johanna was saying. “You will have to undo my gown at the back.”

  She pulled off her widow’s bonnet as she spoke and turned round so that Xenia could undo the little silk-covered buttons which fastened her gown.

  “You – have been – happy?” Xenia asked.

  “Marvellously, blissfully happy!” Johanna replied. “I love Robert and to me he is the most attractive man in the world!”

  “Then why – why do you not – stay with him?”

  Xenia could not help asking the question that seemed almost to burst from her lips.

  Johanna put up both her hands in a gesture of self-protection.

  “Don’t say it,” she begged. “I have listened to nothing else from Robert all the time we were coming here.”

  She gave a little laugh that was almost a sob.

  “You don’t understand nor does Robert, but I cannot – I will not vanish into obscurity like your mother.”

  She spoke violently.

  Then after a moment she added,

  “If I had known that I could feel like this when I first knew Robert, I would have run away with him. But I would have made it quite clear that I would remain a Princess and would not have allowed my relatives to hush everything up and treat me as if I was something untouchable.”

  “Is it – too late – now?” Xenia asked in a low voice.

  “Much too late!” Johanna replied. “And how could we ever explain your presence here?”

  The words brought Xenia a forcible reminder of all that she had done for Luthenia.

  “Listen Johanna,” she said quickly. “For I have so much to tell – ”

  “But there is no time for me to listen to it,” Johanna interrupted. “Robert is waiting and I understand the King has a Privy Council, but they don’t necessarily last for long.”

  “We were – leaving on our – h-honeymoon.”

  “Well, that is something I have no intention of doing,” Johanna replied. “As long as I remain in Molnár, there is some chance of my seeing Robert.”

  “He is – staying in the – City?” Xenia enquired.

  “For the time being,” Johanna said, “but how can I let him go?”

  The question was almost a cry. At the same time she had stepped out of her gown and thrown it on the chair and now she was taking off the beautiful lace-trimmed underclothes of which there were so many duplicates in her luggage.

  She pulled off her chemise and then naked turned to look at herself in the mirror.

  “Robert thinks I am as beautiful as a Greek Goddess,” she sighed, “and I suppose he would think the same of you. I am glad he is not accompanying you back to England.”

  Xenia told herself that she had no interest in what Lord Gratton thought.

  Aloud she said,

  “You must help István, Johanna. He needs help.”

  “István can look after himself!” Johanna retorted. “And I gather from the newspapers which I read as we crossed the border that you have been very busy with hospitals and such things. I cannot tell you how much they bore me!”

  “But – Johanna – they are necessary – desperately necessary for Luthenia.”

  Johanna did not answer and Xenia thought despairingly that she was not in the slightest interested.

  Almost automatically she put on the clothes Johanna had discarded and her cousin slipped her nightgown over her head and over it the blue silk wrap trimmed with lace.

  “Robert has some luggage for you,” she said. “I had to buy a lot of things in one way or another and I expect you will find them useful.”

  “I-I have nothing – else.”

  “Then you will appreciate them,” Johanna smiled, “and they are quite as attractive, although not to be compared with all that I bought in Paris.”

  She glanced towards the wardrobe as she spoke where Margit had left the doors open waiting for Xenia to choose what she would wear.

  Then, without being asked, Johanna buttoned Xenia’s gown up at the back and picked up the crepe bonnet she had thrown to the floor.

  “It was a clever disguise, was it not?” she asked. “Actually it was Robert who thought of it. He said it would be impossible for me to arrive in Luthenia with everyone thinking I was you.”

  “I think I – ought to tell you – ” Xenia began.

  Even as she spoke, she knew it was somehow impossible to say to Johanna that she was deeply in love with the King, and he with her.

  She knew too she ought to tell her that they had been together last night and she was i
n fact his wife not only legally but because they loved each other.

  Yet the words would not come to her lips and, as she hesitated, trying to express that which seemed inexpressible, Johanna looked at the clock and gave a little scream.

  “You will miss your train,” she cried, “and you know as well as I do that the sooner you are out of the country the better!”

  She picked up her black gloves and with them a handbag she had carried on her wrist when she came into the room.

  “Give me your wedding ring!” she ordered, “and hurry downstairs. Robert is waiting for you in the carriage and he will explain everything.”

  As she spoke, she put Xenia’s bonnet on her head, tied the ribbons under her chin and kissed her cheek before she pulled the veil over her face.

  Xenia took off her wedding ring and, as Johanna took it, she said,

  “Thank you, kindest, most accommodating of cousins. It’s sad that we shall never see each other again, but I shall always be grateful for what you have done for me.”

  She put out her hand as she spoke and rang a little gold bell that stood on the dressing table.

  Almost as soon as it tinkled the door opened and Margit returned.

  “Show my friend Mrs. Cresswell to the top of the stairs,” Johanna said.

  “Very good, Your Majesty.”

  Xenia had half expected Margit to notice the difference in her Mistress, to think perhaps that her voice had changed since she left the room.

  But it was obvious that Margit accepted Johanna without question and with a feeling of helplessness Xenia could only follow her to the door.

  There she turned and curtseyed to Johanna who gave her a little wave of her hand.

  Then Margit led her to the top of the staircase to where the Major Domo was waiting to escort her down the staircase and out onto the steps.

  Xenia could see a closed carriage waiting and outside the gold-tipped gates there was a crowd ready to wave to their King and Queen as they left for their honeymoon.

  It was like having a thousand daggers turned in her heart to know that he would drive away with Johanna while she was scuttling out of the country hidden beneath a black veil.

  Slowly, step-by-step she walked towards the closed carriage, a footman opened the door and she climbed into it.

  There was a man inside, but he did not speak until, as the horses moved off, he said,