69 Love Leaves at Midnight Read online

  “Johanna has doubtless thanked you for all that you have done for us and I would like to thank you too.”

  Xenia turned her face to look at him through the darkness of her veil and saw that he was obviously English and good-looking. At the same time she wondered how Johanna could prefer him to the King.

  “You have no need to – thank me,” she said after a moment. “It has been an – experience I shall n-never forget.”

  Despite her resolution to speak calmly, there was an unmistakable sob behind her words.

  As if Lord Gratton understood what she was feeling, he said in an impersonal tone,

  “I have your ticket to England with me. I have already arranged for your sleeping compartment on the train, and a private cabin in the Cross-Channel Steamer.”

  “Thank – you,” Xenia murmured.

  “Johanna told me that she was giving you two hundred pounds for the part you have played in this masquerade,” Lord Gratton went on, “but because I personally owe you so much I have added another two hundred pounds and it is here in this envelope.”

  He passed it to Xenia as he spoke, which left him still with another paper in his hand.

  She put the money in the satin bag that hung from her wrist and when she had done so Lord Gratton said,

  “You will need a passport to get back into England and it will also be inspected when the train enters Austria. I have had it made out in the name of ‘Mrs. Cresswell’. As you are dressed as a widow, it ought to show your married status.”

  “I – understand,” Xenia stammered.

  “There will be no difficulties, of course,” Lord Gratton continued, “but if by any chance there are, you will not be able to communicate with Johanna. I shall be staying at The Crown Hotel in Molnár for the next week or so.”

  “Is that – wise?” Xenia asked.

  “Wise or not, it is what I am going to do,” Lord Gratton replied. “I must be near Johanna – I cannot bear to leave her.”

  He spoke with a sudden note of passion in his voice that aroused Xenia’s sympathy.

  She could understand so well what he was feeling.

  How could she bear to leave the King? How could she go away like this? And he would never understand why she had changed.

  She knew that Johanna, loving Lord Gratton as she did, would never give the King the love he had received from her.

  He would be puzzled, bewildered and, because she thought he would be hurt, it was an agony that was inexpressible that the carriage was carrying her nearer and nearer to the station.

  She was to start on the long journey that would take her out of István’s country and out of his life and they would never see each other again.

  It was perhaps her silence or perhaps because Lord Gratton was suffering so intensely himself that he guessed what had occurred since she came to Luthenia.

  “You love the King?” he questioned in a low voice.

  Xenia nodded her head and could not trust herself to speak.

  “Then we are both in the same boat,” he remarked bitterly.

  “There was no time – to talk to Johanna,” Xenia said, “but will you beg her to be – kind to the – King? To – help him? He needs help with – all he has to do.”

  “I gather from the newspapers that he has already made some very drastic changes in the country that will certainly receive the approval of Great Britain.”

  “That is what I – hope,” Xenia replied, “but there is still a – great deal to be done.”

  Lord Gratton was silent for a moment and then he said,

  “I can see you are interested in the issues that never have concerned Johanna. It is a pity we cannot leave things as they are.”

  Xenia wanted to agree with him, but she felt that if she did she would break down and cry.

  Instead with an effort she stared out of the window through her veil and thought it was somehow fitting that her last sight of Molnár should be veiled in darkness.

  The streets were busy and, although she knew that it was probably just imagination, she thought that the people looked happier and had a lilt in their walk, which had not been there when she arrived.

  Then she told herself that it was no use believing that her going would really make any difference except to the private life of the King.

  Her whole being cried out at the thought of being separated from him. Then, as she felt as if it was too painful to be borne, the carriage drew up outside the station.

  “Your train goes in five minutes’ time,” Lord Gratton said. “I am afraid that it is a very slow one, stopping at every station until it reaches the border, but in Austria you will catch an Express which will carry you to Vienna.”

  ‘There is no hurry,’ Xenia thought.

  She had nothing and no one waiting for her in England and if she had the choice the journey could take a month or a year before she reached her native soil and severed her last link with Luthenia.

  There was, however, nothing she could say as she stepped out of the carriage and Lord Gratton ordered several trunks that had been strapped on the back of it to be taken by a porter to the guard’s van of the train.

  He and Xenia walked onto the platform where she found that he had reserved a whole carriage for her.

  He handed her into it, tipped the porters generously and then, lifting his hat from his head, took her hand in his.

  “Thank you once again,” he said. “If you need me once I am back in London, you can find me at Gratton House, but I don’t intend to return until I have to.”

  That, as Xenia knew, would be when Johanna commanded him to go.

  “Thank you for looking after me,” she said, “and for the – money – it was very – kind.”

  “I can never repay you in cash for giving me the happiest time in my life,” Lord Gratton said.

  There was a note of despair in his voice.

  Xenia knew that for him as for her everything that made life worth living was over and there was nothing to look forward to in the future but loneliness and despair.

  She tried to find words to comfort him, but at that moment the guard blew his whistle, there was the noise of doors being slammed and Lord Gratton stepped back from beside the carriage.

  With a jerk of the wheels and the clang of the coaches, the train moved out of the station and Xenia saw Lord Gratton turn and walk away towards the waiting carriage.

  It was then that she threw back her veil to take her last look at Molnár.

  In a few minutes they were outside the City and now there were the wild flowers growing beside the railway line and a magnificent view of the valley with the silver river winding through the centre of it.

  The white peaks of the mountains gleamed against the blue sky and made her remember the day she and the King had ridden together.

  As Xenia stared for the last time at the picture it all made, the tears came, at first running down her cheeks, then turning to a tempest of weeping that shook her whole body.

  It was over!

  She had left her heart, her soul, and she thought, her personality behind her and all that was left was an empty shell.

  “I love you! Oh, István – I love you!” she sobbed.

  Then she went down into a special hell where there was no light in the darkness and nothing but despair – despair worse than death.

  ‘At least if István was dead,’ Xenia told herself, ‘I should have the hope and faith that one day when I died I would see him again. But as it is, we will each live in different parts of the world and because he will never know of my very existence, even my thoughts and prayers will not reach him.’

  She cried until she felt exhausted.

  Then she forced herself to wipe her eyes and look out at what she knew would be the last time she would ever see Luthenia.

  Ever since they left Molnár the train had been climbing upwards towards the pass in the mountains.

  It was, as Lord Gratton had warned Xenia, a very slow train. They stopped
at every small wayside station, where sometimes one or two people would get out or a farmer’s wife carrying a basket of eggs or chickens would get in.

  Then with a bang and a clang they would start off again only to repeat the process further along the line.

  Later in the day they waited for a long time in a siding to let another train pass.

  It was growing hotter and Xenia thought that soon it would be midday and by this time the King and Johanna would have left the Palace.

  She had a feeling that whether Johanna wanted to or not she would be forced into going on their honeymoon as planned simply because there would be no alternative.

  She might want to stay in Molnár in the hope of seeing Lord Gratton, but the King had made all his arrangements and he simply would not understand why there should be any objections from his wife.

  His wife!

  The words seemed to cut through Xenia’s heart.

  She was his wife. They had been joined together by the Archbishop and become one in an act of love that had been, she knew, also sanctified by God.

  It had been so perfect, so utterly and completely divine that even to think of it made her tremble with the sensations the King had aroused in her last night.

  “I worship you, my wonderful little wife,” he had said to her.

  She had felt as if they were sanctified by their love and the fire that he evoked in her was a gift from God.

  Now the King would never know, never understand why she had changed, why she no longer sought his kisses or why Johanna in her place would turn away from him.

  “Oh, István! István!” she cried out despairingly, but the only answer was the rumble of the wheels.

  *

  After several hours had passed Xenia realised that she was both hungry and thirsty but she did not dare to try and buy food at any of the stations they stopped at.

  It would be too dangerous, she thought, and also too much of an effort.

  There was not really any likelihood that anyone could look through the thickness of the veil and see her resemblance to their Queen, but still it was better to play safe.

  She only wished that she had asked Lord Gratton what time they would cross the border into Austria.

  She knew that it would not be long now because the train had climbed high up the pass and the land around them was rocky and mountainous.

  As was usual on alpine plateaux, the flowers were even more brilliant and more profuse than they were in the valley and Xenia stared at them. If ever she saw flowers in the future they would remind her of the King.

  She remembered how he had kissed her in the garden and the fragrance of the roses had been all around them.

  The train stopped at yet another station and Xenia was sure that this must be the Luthenia border. She was therefore not surprised when a man in uniform opened the door.

  She drew out from her handbag her ticket and the passport Lord Gratton had given to her.

  The official examined the ticket and then opened her passport, which was in the shape of a letter.

  Surmounted by the Royal Coat of Arms it read,

  “We, George Leveson Gower Granville Earl Granville, a Peer and a Member of Her Britannic Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council, Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, etc., etc., etc., request and require in the name of Her Majesty all those it may concern to allow Mrs. Xenia Cresswell to pass freely without let or hindrance and to afford her every assistance and protection of which she may stand in need.

  Given at Foreign Office London on the 12th day of June 1883.

  Granville.”

  Beneath the Earl’s signature was his personal Coat of Arms.

  The official read it slowly and asked,

  “Will you come with me, please, madam?”

  Xenia supposed that there must be papers to be signed because she was entering Austria.

  Obediently she rose to her feet and the official helped her onto the platform.

  There were a number of peasants in their bright red skirts and embroidered blouses standing staring at the train and several passengers who looked like commercial travellers were boarding it with their luggage.

  The official went ahead of Xenia and she followed him inside an attractive building which was painted white and ornamented with window boxes filled with flowers.

  They passed through a hall where there were a number of people arguing with a booking clerk and the official opened a door at the far end of it.

  He stood back for Xenia to enter first and as she did so she realised that there was one man in a small room who was standing at a desk.

  She looked at him perfunctorily and then felt as if she had been turned to stone.

  It was the King who stood there!

  The King, dressed not in uniform but in his ordinary clothes, bare-headed and staring at her in a manner that made her feel as if her heart had stopped beating.

  “You are Mrs. Cresswell?”

  She could not answer.

  It was absolutely impossible for her to utter a word and she felt too as if her brain had ceased to function.

  She could not even wonder why he was there or why he was asking her questions.

  “I understand that you left Molnár in somewhat of a hurry,” the King said. “In fact you departed with so much haste that you left something behind.”

  Xenia stared at him through the darkness of her veil, trying to understand what he was saying, conscious only of her love that seemed to be welling up inside her like a tidal wave.

  She felt the tears prick her eyes and she could only see him through a mist.

  “Will you come here?”

  As if she was a puppet and he was pulling the strings, she walked towards the desk.

  It was only a few steps and yet she felt like it was miles away.

  She stood in front of him and was acutely conscious of his closeness and yet she could not speak, could not breathe.

  Her mind had been taken from her and it was impossible to think or even understand what was happening.

  “I want you to take off your left glove,” the King asked gently.

  She wondered why, but, because it was so difficult to control her tears, she could only obey him dumbly.

  She pulled off the black kid glove and when she had done so the King reached out and took her hand in his.

  “No wedding ring?” he asked. “How can you be a married woman without one?”

  As he spoke, he drew a ring from his waistcoat pocket and put it on her third finger.

  It was her own wedding ring, Xenia knew, but she could not move or take her hand from his.

  Then the King released her and taking the edge of her veil in both of his hands threw it back from her face.

  “Let me look at you, Mrs. Cresswell,” he said. “I want to see if you are as beautiful as I remember you to be.”

  Xenia stared into his eyes and he looked down at her for a long moment.

  “Why have you been crying?” he asked.

  The tears overflowed as he spoke and ran down her cheeks.

  He was waiting for her to answer and, in a voice that seemed to come from very far away, she whispered through lips that trembled,

  “I thought – I would – never see you – again.”

  “Did you really think I could lose you?” the King asked and his arms went round her.

  He pulled her against him and, as she gave a little gasp, his lips came down on hers.

  She felt as if she had been swept from the very depths of hell into a Heaven that was so dazzlingly glorious that she must close her eyes for fear of being blinded.

  The King kissed her until she was one with him again and they were indivisible.

  Then at last in a voice that was curiously unsteady he asked,

  “How could you have done anything so wicked, so utterly and completely abominable, as to try to leave me?”

  “I love – you! Oh – István, I love – you!”

  Xe
nia’s voice was broken. The tears were still running down her cheeks, but they were tears of happiness.

  He kissed her wet eyes, her cheeks and again her mouth.

  “You are mine,” he asserted. “Mine, completely and absolutely and I can no more lose you than lose my own life.”

  “B-but – Johanna?” Xenia managed to ask.

  The King kissed her again before he said,

  “You need not worry about Johanna, my precious. She is at this moment on her way to Vienna in the Royal Train with her future husband and is planning the trousseau she will buy in Paris.”

  Xenia looked at him in amazement, but he undid the ribbons beneath her chin, pulled her bonnet with its dark veil from her head and threw it on the desk.

  “I will explain everything,” he said, “but first I want to kiss you – ”

  His lips were on hers before he had finished the sentence.

  She felt a thrill like shafts of sunlight running through her body, her heart was beating against his and the wonder of it was almost too glorious to be borne.

  Still holding her against him, the King sat down on a chair and pulled her onto his knees.

  She hid her face against his neck.

  “How did – you find – out?”

  The King smiled.

  “Did you really think I could be deceived by another woman, even if she was so ridiculously like you?”

  “H-how did you – know?”

  “I admit to being bewildered and astounded for the moment,” he replied.

  “Tell me – please tell me,” Xenia begged.

  He kissed her cheek, then her lips, before he said,

  “When the Privy Council was finished, I went to your bedroom to tell you that we could leave at once and that the carriages were waiting for us.”

  Xenia gave a little shiver.

  This was what she had imagined would happen.

  “I walked across the room to take you in my arms and tell you how much I was looking forward to our being alone,” the King went on. “To my surprise you turned your head away and said, ‘really, István! I thought we had agreed to behave like civilised people!’”

  He drew in his breath as if he remembered what a shock the words had been before he continued,