Imperial Splendour Read online

  Then everybody started to talk hurriedly at once.

  *

  In the next several days Zoia suffered from no embarrassment or received anything but kindness even from the Russian guests in The Palace.

  “You have Russian eyes, my dear,” one old Countess said to her, “and I know that, like your grandmother and your mother, you feel things very deeply.”

  She gave a little sigh.

  “That is to us Russians our glory and our curse. We so often touch ecstasy, but we also know despair, deep despair. You cannot have one without the other.”

  “I suppose not, ma’am,” Zoia commented.

  She knew that it was ecstasy to be with the Duke, to see him and to talk to him, but it was the darkness of despair to know that, as he grew better day by day, the time when they could be together was rapidly running out.

  As soon as he had recovered from the strenuousness of the journey, he was well enough to dress and just to sit on the balcony of his large bedroom which overlooked the garden and the sea.

  A few days later he was carried downstairs to sit on the verandah.

  “It is so beautiful here,” Zoia said again and again.

  She listened to the birds in the morning and felt a touch of salt on the warm air that came from the waves moving restlessly over the sea that was vividly blue against the sunlit sky.

  “There is only one thing missing,” the Duke replied.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  “Your music.”

  “Do you want me to play to you?”

  “I would love you to do so.”

  She had seen that there was a piano in the next room and, without saying anything more, she walked towards it and sat down.

  The windows were all open and she could see the Duke as she played and she thought that he should listen to one of her father’s compositions that described so vividly the beauty of nature.

  Then, when she started playing, without really being conscious of it, she expressed in the music that her father had composed not what he had felt but what she herself was feeling.

  Despite every resolution not to, her love crept into her fingers and with it the ecstasy and despair that the Countess had described so accurately.

  There was the ecstasy that she had felt from the moment she had met the Duke and when his hand had first touched hers, a sensation so perfect and so beautiful that it was part of the Divine and yet a very human part of herself because she was a woman and he was a man.

  She told him in her playing how she had always believed that one day she would find love as her mother had done and one day the man who had been only a dream in her heart would materialise.

  Now it was real – very real – and, when she saw him, she had recognised him because already she had loved him for years or perhaps was it for centuries and in many other lives?

  Then, as her love flowed from her fingers, there was the despair too and the knowledge that inevitably and inescapably they must part.

  She told him how, if she never saw him again, her heart would always be with him, her prayers would always protect him and what he had evoked in her would go on living eternally because it was an indivisible part of her life.

  As always when she was playing and she was carried away by the music, Zoia forgot everything except what she must express, because it swept from her like the waters of the sea.

  When she finished, because it seemed as if there was nothing more to say, she was suddenly exhausted because she had poured her very self into the music that she had created.

  Only then did she realise that there were a number of people listening to her including her father.

  They had moved into the verandah and were sitting beside the Duke. They had made no noise, but listened in silence because it was impossible for anyone not to be moved by what they heard.

  Then, as Zoia came back from the world she had been carried into by her own creation, she saw her father’s face and knew that she had revealed what she felt so clearly that he was deeply touched by what he had learned but at the same time apprehensive.

  With a feeling of consternation and also one of shyness that seeped deep into her soul, Zoia realised that she had betrayed herself.

  Rising to her feet without an explanation or apology, she left the room, moving as if in a dream along the passages of The Palace and then up the stairs to the sanctuary of her own bedroom.

  Chapter Seven

  Going to her bedroom to dress for dinner Zoia the beautiful train saw lying on the bed that the Duchesse had given her.

  It had been three days ago that the Governor-General had said at luncheon,

  “Our most distinguished guest, the Duke of Welminster, has told me that he feels well enough to enjoy a party. I therefore intend to invite all the people to meet him, who have been longing to do so since they learnt that he had arrived in Odessa.”

  “A party? What sort of party?” the Duchesse enquired from the other end of the table.

  The Governor-General smiled.

  “Just the sort that you will enjoy, my dear, with dancing and, of course, for Monsieur Vallon’s benefit, the best musicians obtainable in New Russia.”

  “Dancing!” the ladies exclaimed in unison and went on to add,

  “What you are saying, Your Excellency, is that you are going to give a ball.”

  “A ball it shall be,” the Governor-General promised, “and I hope our Imperial Splendour is as magnificent as His Grace enjoyed in St. Petersburg.”

  The Duke smiled.

  “Everybody was very sober-minded in St. Petersburg. In fact, when I was staying with His Imperial Majesty, there were no balls only Receptions when everyone gossiped eternally on the same subject.”

  “I shall issue a decree,” the Governor-General asserted, “that no one is to speak of war and we are all to be entirely frivolous and light-hearted!”

  Listening, Zoia thought that it would be very exciting to be present at a grand ball such as her mother had often described to her.

  She was well aware that it would be very splendid and everything would glitter from the crystal chandeliers to the bejewelled guests.

  But she knew with a terrible ache in her heart that now the Duke was well, he would be planning to leave Odessa and the moment when she would see him for the last time was now approaching nearer and nearer.

  The only person who did not seem to be very enthusiastic about the idea of a ball was her father, but he had always disliked formal parties and Zoia suspected that he would not be very impressed by any musicians that the Governor General would engage to entertain him.

  At the same time, woman-like, she immediately began to consider what she should wear.

  She wanted the Duke to admire her and it would be very humiliating to feel that she was outshone in every way by the other ladies staying in The Palace.

  Fortunately among the things that she had brought with her from Moscow was one very elaborate evening gown that she had not yet worn.

  And she had been keeping it for the winter balls that the Governor of Moscow, Count Rostopchin, gave in the Kremlin.

  She had been invited last year, but, although she was in mourning for her mother, she had thought that it would be very exciting to accompany her father to such a function.

  So she and Maria had planned together a beautiful and elaborate white gown that she hoped would gain her father’s approval.

  She knew, from what her mother had told her that, if the Governor-General’s ball in Odessa was to rival those held in St. Petersburg, the ladies would all have trains.

  This was a luxury that she did not possess and she wondered if she should explain her lack of one to her hostess and then decided against it.

  She had, however, yesterday evening, been sent for by the Duchesse. When she reached the Governor-General’s State apartments, she found that her hostess was lying on a couch in the window wearing an attractive negligée.

  “Sit down, child,” she ordered. �
�I want to talk to you. There does not seem to have been a moment since you arrived for us to have a quiet chat.”

  “It is very kind of you, madame, to have my father and myself to stay.”

  “Your father is my husband’s concern,” the Duchesse replied, “but you, because you are your mother’s daughter, are mine.”

  “You knew my mother?” Zoia asked, her eyes lighting up.

  “I met her in France just after she had married your father and before my husband and I had to flee the country unless we wished to be guillotined!”

  She put out her hand to take Zoia’s and added gently,

  “Now she is no longer with you, I know you must miss her. You are so very like her.”

  Zoia’s eyes filled with tears at the sympathetic note in the Duchesse’s voice and, because she found it impossible to speak, the Duchesse went on,

  “I know in the circumstances that you now find yourself in that your mother would wish you to enjoy the ball that is taking place tomorrow night. You must therefore allow me to give you a train to wear, which, as I expect you know, is correct on such occasions.”

  “I knew that, madame, and I was feeling embarrassed because I did not have one,” Zoia responded.

  “That is why I must supply your need, my dear. Look in the next room on the bed and see if you like what you see.”

  Zoia then went from the Duchesse’s boudoir into her bedroom and saw lying on the huge carved and canopied bed, the loveliest train that she could ever have imagined.

  It was of turquoise blue silk embroidered with pearls and narrowly edged with snow-white ermine.

  She stared at it in delight and then went back to her hostess to say,

  “It is beautiful! Really beautiful! Are you quite certain, madame, that you wish to give me anything so valuable? Perhaps I should just borrow it for the evening.”

  “It is a gift,” the Duchesse said, “and I have a brooch that matches it which I would like you to wear as well.”

  She opened a velvet-lined box that she had beside her and Zoia saw a brooch fashioned of turquoise and diamonds in a very delicate design, which made her exclaim in delight.

  She pinned it in the front of the gown she was wearing and said,

  “I cannot begin to thank you for such lovely presents and I am sure that the turquoises will bring me luck, as I believe they are reputed to do.”

  “Here and in the Caucasus they are considered to be very lucky,” the Duchesse agreed, “and perhaps that is what you are looking for at the moment.”

  Zoia did not answer, but the Duchesse saw the sadness in her eyes and so she then said,

  “Life has been difficult for you, especially when the two nations that you belong to are at war with each other, but I have a feeling that you will find happiness when you least expect it.”

  “I hope – so,” Zoia murmured.

  Then, as she had no wish to discuss the Duke with anyone, she thanked the Duchesse again for her presents and went to her own room.

  When she was alone, she asked herself how it was possible for her ever to find happiness when she must lose the Duke.

  Every day he had grown stronger she had been glad both for his sake and because she felt that she had been partly instrumental in his regaining his health so quickly.

  Equally she recognised that this carried her inevitably nearer to the time when they must part.

  She wondered how she could bear to actually utter the word ‘goodbye’ and was afraid that, when the moment came, she would break down and collapse sobbing at his feet.

  Then she told herself that her pride would prevent her from doing anything but behave in a dignified and proper manner.

  A pride that came from the blood of the Strovolskys and their ancient heritage and the pride that was very much part of her father because he had achieved so much with his great talent.

  And when she walked with the Duke in the garden and listened to him talking to her in his deep voice, she knew that her love was so overwhelming and so intense that it was hard to behave as he would expect her to do.

  How, she would ask herself at times, could anyone ever call her an ice maiden when her whole body seemed to burn with hidden fires and she had an uncontrollable urge to express her love because it filled her mind, her heart and her soul to the exclusion of all else.

  Ever since the day she had played to the Duke and revealed if not to him, then to her father, the depth and breadth of her feeling, she had not touched the piano.

  She did not trust herself and she still felt shy and ashamed at the way that she had been carried away into proclaiming what she felt.

  ‘It was indiscreet and foolish of me,’ she berated herself.

  But she felt sometimes that, if she did not express the fires that consumed her, she would explode like the gun which had injured the Duke.

  Then in the quiet of the night, she would tell herself that the practical sensible French side of her nature must control the impetuous wildness of the Russian.

  Yet there was not one part of her that was not desperately and massively in love.

  *

  The maid had prepared a bath for Zoia and it was scented with perfume that smelt to her like tuberoses, the flowers of passion.

  As she lay in the warm water, it was impossible not to think of the Duke and repeat in her mind the things that he had talked about as they wandered around the garden earlier in the day.

  There were other people in the house party doing the same and, although they moved out of earshot, Zoia was very conscious that they were never completely alone.

  “You are really better?” she asked the Duke. “The ball tonight will not be ‒ too much for you?”

  “Maria asked me the same question,” the Duke answered, “but even she has had to admit that my wounds are healed and she can no longer mollycoddle me any more than you can.”

  “I have no – wish to do that.”

  Zoia well knew, as she spoke, that it was not the truth. She wanted to keep him helpless simply so that she and Maria should be indispensable to him.

  “My wounds are healed,” the Duke went on, ‘“but I shall carry the scars as decorations, or should I say, souvenirs of the battle of Borodino for the rest of my life.”

  “It is something I have no wish to remember,” Zoia replied. “When the servants brought you to our house in Moscow, I – thought you were – dead.”

  “I was not meant to die,” the Duke said lightly, “and one day I shall tell you why.”

  She glanced at him questioningly wondering what more he would tell her, but he was not looking at her but across the garden at the sea stretching away towards the horizon.

  ‘He is thinking of his home in England,’ she thought with a little contraction of her heart and she wondered if she should ask him how soon he intended to leave Odessa.

  Then she knew that she could not bear to hear the answer. It was too painful and she might even betray her true feelings when she learnt of the actual date of his departure.

  “I think I shall always remember the beauty of this garden,” the Duke was saying aloud, “and that you look like one of the flowers in it.”

  Their eyes then met and for a moment it seemed as if they were as close as they had been when he had listened to her music and known what she was thinking.

  Then, before she could speak and before they could say anything further to each other, they were joined by people who wanted to talk about the ball.

  After her bath Zoia sat in front of the mirror while her maid arranged her hair in the more fashionable style that she had worn in Moscow.

  Among her mother’s jewellery that she had brought away with her was a lovely wreath of diamonds that Natasha Strovolsky had been given on her seventeenth birthday.

  Reverently Zoia had taken it from its wrappings and felt that, if she wore it tonight, her mother would be thinking of her at the first grand ball that she had ever attended.

  Zoia had seen her mother wearing the wr
eath on occasions when she had accompanied her father to some distinguished function that she was too young to be invited to.

  “You look like the Fairy Princess, Mama,” she had said once, “and Papa is, of course. Prince Charming.”

  “That is what he has always been to me,” her mother replied.

  She put up her hand and touched the wreath on her head and then said with a smile,

  “I am so glad I can hold my own with all the important and distinguished people who will be there tonight. I so very nearly sold this when we first married and were very poor before your father was recognised as a great musician, but he insisted on my keeping it and now I am glad I did.”

  It was not because it was valuable, Zoia knew, but because it stood for everything that her mother had given up for love.

  ‘This was Mama’s Imperial Splendour,’ she thought. ‘Tonight it will be mine and maybe I shall never go to a ball like this again.’

  She was certain that, when they reached France with the War still raging, there would be few festive occasions at which people would be dressed as they would be tonight.

  With the wreath on her head she certainly looked very regal and the maid helped her first into her gown and then fixed the exquisite turquoise blue train to her shoulders.

  It gave her a presence and a dignity that she had never had before, but all she wondered, as she looked at her reflection in the mirror, was what the Duke would think of her.

  The door opened and her father came into the room.

  “You are ready, Papa?” Zoia asked him.

  She turned from the mirror so that he could look at her.

  “I want to speak to you,” Pierre Vallon stated.

  Her expression changed. She made a gesture to the maid to leave the room and waited until the door had closed behind her.

  “What is it, Papa?”

  He walked towards her and she knew instinctively that he was feeling for his words.

  “What – is it?” she asked again.

  “There is a Turkish ship in the Port of Odessa,” Pierre Vallon replied. “It will leave on the dawn tide.”

  Zoia drew in her breath.

  “I have spoken to the Captain,” her father went on, “and he will take us to Marseilles. It is an opportunity that we cannot afford to miss.”