The Cruel Count (Bantam Series No. 28) Read online

  She paused and then she added nervously:

  “But you ... might grow ... tired of ... me.”

  “What then?” the Count asked.

  “Then as far as I was concerned, my life would be over,” Vesta answered. “But it is better to love even for a short while than to exist without love ... without happiness and without ... you.”

  His lips found hers and it was impossible to speak, but only to feel...

  It was very much later that the Count smoothed back Vesta’s hair from her cheeks and kissed her eyes.

  “I will tell you what I am going to do now, my darling,” he said, “I am going to leave you.”

  “Leave ... me?”

  The words were a cry.

  “There are six soldiers here,” he said, “who have been burying the man who tried to assassinate us. I shall take two of them with me and ride to Djilas. The other four will stay here and guard you.”

  “Why must you go tonight?” Vesta asked.

  “For many reasons,” he answered, “the first being that I must make the arrangements that you have asked of me so that we can be married as soon as possible. I cannot wait for you, Vesta, I want you now—now this very moment.”

  His lips found hers again. Then as he felt her stir and quiver beneath his mouth, as he saw the rise and fall of her breasts and felt her breath coming quickly from between her parted lips, he said very softly:

  “I think, my sweet life, the Sleeping Beauty is at last awake.”

  “You have ... awoken me,” Vesta replied, “and I know now that the fire of which you spoke does ... burn within me.”

  “I know that too,” he answered, “and I will make it burn fiercer still until I see from the fire in your eyes that the blaze within you echoes the blaze within me.”

  He would have kissed her again, but then it seemed to Vesta he checked himself at the last moment.

  “It is because I am afraid of that fire,” he said very softly, “that I am going to Djilas tonight. I do not trust myself to stay here with you, my darling, and I think you know the reason.”

  Vesta gave a little laugh of sheer happiness.

  “How shocked everyone would be,” she said, “if they knew we were here alone and I was not yet married to you.”

  “I think everything we have done since we first met,” the Count said with a smile, “has been unconventional and wholly unpredictable.”

  “That is certainly true,” Vesta agreed. “Who would have imagined that having set out from England with so much pomp and circumstance, I should end up here in a bachelor Hunting Lodge, very inadequately dressed with a man I love with all my heart and soul but on whom I had never set eyes until three days ago.”

  The Count laughed too.

  “No-one would believe it, which is perhaps a blessing.”

  “But it is true,” Vesta said almost anxiously as if she wanted him to confirm it.

  “It is true, my precious, wonderful darling,” he said, “and now there is no turning back. You love me as I love you, and we shall be together for the rest of our lives.”

  The thought made Vesta slip her arms round his neck to pull his head down towards her.

  “You will be safe?” she asked anxiously. “Promise me you will be safe! Supposing anyone ... killed you on the way to Djilas?”

  “I shall be safe,” he answered, “the soldiers tell me that the Revolutionaries have all been rounded up. Many had already been exiled and deported before I came to you at Jeno. But those left were the dangerous Anarchists, men who kill for killing’s sake and not for any particular motive.”

  “How did they get here in the first place?” Vesta asked.

  “They were deliberately brought into the country from outside,” the Count answered and his voice was hard.

  Vesta was sure that it was Madame Ziileyha who was responsible for their presence, and she found herself hating the unknown Turkish woman because she might have been responsible inadvertently for the death of the Count.

  “Are you quite ... sure there are no more of ... them?” she asked apprehensively.

  “The soldiers assured me that this man was the last. He was the most wily, the most elusive, and had already been deported from other countries for his Anarchist activities.”

  “And now he is dead,” Vesta said with a little sigh.

  “And I am alive,” the Count said gently, “thanks entirely to you, my brave wonderful sweetheart.”

  His arms tightened about her and he said:

  “I still cannot believe that you would try to save me and risk your own life in doing so.”

  “It was then I knew how much I loved you,” Vesta said. “I had been worried all day trying to think what I should decide to do, wishing there was someone who could advise me and help me.”

  “I knew it was a conflict within you,” the Count said, “but it was something, my beloved, you had to decide for yourself. I wanted to force you, you know that. I wanted to carry you away and make you love me, but it would not have been fair. You had to make the choice yourself.”

  “No, it was made for me,” Vesta contradicted. “It was so difficult to know what was right and what was wrong. Then when the Anarchist threatened you, I knew that you were my life.”

  “And now you are mine for all eternity,” the Count said.

  His lips were against her forehead kissing her soft skin, her little arched eyebrows and then her small straight nose.

  “I want to stay here all night,” he said, “I want to go on kissing you and making love to you. Very soon, Heart of my Heart, I shall kiss you from the tip of your golden head to the soles of your adorable little feet.”

  He kissed her small ears before he continued.

  “But because I have no wish to shock you, my adorable one, I must go away. It will not be for long, I promise you that.”

  “I want to be your ... wife.”

  “And I want to be your husband.”

  He kissed her again on the mouth and then as her lips clung to his, he slowly and reluctantly drew his arms from her and stood up.

  “Promise me you will not leave the house until I come back for you or send a message to say that you can come to me,” he said. “You can go on the terrace or walk in the garden because the soldiers will be guarding you, but do not go into the woods. I would not have a moment’s peace if I thought you were in any danger.”

  Vesta rose from the sofa to stand beside him.

  “And what shall I be feeling?” she asked, “fearing that at every inch of the way to Djilas there may be a man waiting to shoot at you, or more Brigands waiting to capture you?”

  “I promise you that I will be safe,” the Count answered. “I shall ride very swiftly with my escort.”

  Vesta hid her face against his shoulder.

  “You will explain to the Prince that I meant to keep my promise I made in London, that even when you met me at Jeno I intended to come to him ... to help him if he wanted my help?”

  “I will explain exactly what has happened,” the Count promised. “I can only tell the truth, Vesta, and say that I love you more than I believed it possible for any man to love any woman, and that I believe that God intended us for each other since the beginning of time.”

  “I am sure of that too,” she said softly. “But, my darling, I am afraid ... afraid of losing you. We are too happy ... perhaps the gods will be ... jealous.”

  The Count laughed very softly and he lifted her face up to his.

  “The gods will not be jealous of their own,” he said. “You are the goddess of fire, my darling and the goddess of my heart. Because you are so perfect we shall find perfect happiness with each other.”

  “I hope ... that is ... true,” Vesta said with a little sob.

  She was afraid for him to leave her. Afraid with the new feeling that she must protect and take care of him.

  He stood looking down at her in the firelight.

  At her hair hanging over her shoulders, at the wide slee
ves of the robe falling back from her white arms as she stretched them towards his neck, at her face soft and tender with love, her eyes very large and a little frightened.

  “How can I leave you?” he asked hoarsely, “even for a moment? But once this is over we shall be together for always.”

  He paused a moment and then he added:

  “Together day and night, my sweetheart.”

  “Day and ... night,” she whispered.

  Then he kissed her, passionately, violently, with a fierceness which told her of the pain he was suffering in leaving her, until he wrenched himself away and without looking back he walked from the room.

  The door shut behind him and Vesta stood with her hands clasped forcing herself not to run after him, not to call out and tell him he must not go. But she knew the Prince must be told of what had happened.

  ‘He will realise that there are other English girls, who will be only too pleased to come here as the reigning Princess,’ she thought.

  If things had gone according to plan and there had been no Revolution, she would at this moment have been in Djilas either married or waiting to be married.

  Instead now the question was would the Prince allow her to marry the man she loved, or must she go away with him into obscurity and be dead to her family and indeed to the rest of the world?

  She sat down on the sofa again staring into the fire.

  Even now she could hardly believe all that had happened. But she thought she had grown up in the past few days.

  As the Count had said, she had been awakened by a kiss. And she was facing not the gentle romantic daydreams in which she had indulged ever since she could remember, but reality.

  ‘Have I done the right thing?’ Vesta asked herself.

  She knew there was no longer any question of her not belonging to the Count as he belonged to her.

  She found herself wondering where they would live. Perhaps in a small house like this!

  Then with a smile she realised she had no idea whether he was rich or poor, if he was of importance in Katona or perhaps a member of quite an obscure family.

  But it did not matter.

  All her life she had heard so much talk of the consequence of the Salfonts, their place in the hierarchy in the aristocracy, of the respect they commanded at Court, the manner in which they were admired by the social world.

  Vesta would not have been human if she had not realised that every door in the Beau Monde was open to her because of her antecedents.

  There was no noble family in the whole of England which would not have welcomed her as a daughter-in-law, there was no man however distinguished who would not have been proud to take her as his wife.

  And now all she wanted to do was marry a man of whom she knew nothing.

  He was a Count, but she was well aware this might mean very little, since foreign titles were many more in number than English ones. The sons of a Count, however many there were in the family, all took the same rank as their father.

  Perhaps he was very poor, perhaps she would no longer be surrounded by flunkeys and servants of every sort and description. Perhaps there would not be a profusion of horses and carriages and all else that she had grown to expect as appertaining to the comforts of life.

  ‘But it is not important, none of it is of the least importance,’ she told herself. ‘If he is very poor I will cook for him, I will look after his house and love him. That is all that matters.’

  She wished now she had talked to him of the future. But there had been so little time.

  ‘Even if we have to live in a cave,’ she told herself with a smile, ‘I shall be content and happy. We shall be ... together.’

  She waited in the Sitting-room for nearly an hour. With a new intuition that she would not have felt before, she guessed that the Count would not wish to see her again, having once said goodbye.

  He would however have to change his clothes, putting on again the riding-breeches and boots he had worn for their journey over the mountains.

  ‘I must give him time to go away,’ she thought, ‘before I retire to bed.’

  She had known it was difficult for him to leave. He had wanted to stay with her. He had wanted to go on kissing her. They could have sat in front of the fire in the Sitting-room until it was dawn, but he had been right in saying he should leave when he did.

  ‘He is always right,’ Vesta told herself, and I will obey him and do everything that he wishes me to do. Always ... because I love him.’

  It seemed to her the house was very quiet and she was certain that the Count had by now ridden away with his escort of two soldiers.

  She opened the door of the Sitting-room and went into the hall. Jozef was there waiting for her. He handed her a lighted candle. Bowing he said:

  “Good night, Gracious Lady, I hope you sleep well. God be with you.”

  Vesta smiled at him.

  “Thank you, Jozef.”

  She went slowly up the stairs, feeling the house was very quiet and empty.

  When she reached her bed-room it was to find Jozef s daughter was there waiting to help her undress.

  She suddenly felt very tired and she wondered apprehensively if the Count felt as tired as she did. He was a man and was stronger than she was, but she wondered if she had kept him awake last night when she had slept against his shoulder.

  She got into bed, but her thoughts were with the Count as she imagined him riding hard and fast through the woods until he reached the road she had seen winding through the valley which would eventually reach Djilas.

  ‘Will he be thinking of me?’ she asked and knew it was an absurd question.

  They would each be thinking of the other every moment they were apart.

  She tried to send him her love winging its way through the night, she tried to tell him as he galloped away from her how much she loved him and how she was unafraid of the future because she would be with him.

  ‘I love you ... I love you,’ she repeated over and over again.

  Finally from sheer exhaustion she fell asleep.

  Chapter Nine

  Because she was so tired, Vesta slept dreamlessly.

  Very early, however, she awoke to stand at the window and see the pale morning sun glinting on the snowy tops of the mountains.

  The song of the birds in the garden below, and the butterflies of every colour flitting from flower to flower, seemed to echo the happiness within her heart.

  ‘I have never been so happy,’ she told herself and knew it was because she loved and was loved.

  It was difficult to keep her thoughts fixed on anything but the Count.

  When the hands of the clock reached nine, she thought this was about the time that he would be able to have an interview with the Prince and found herself praying that everything would go the way they wished.

  ‘Please God ... help us ... Please God let the Prince agree.’

  She no longer felt any doubts or fears. She had made her decision, and this morning she knew that now, no question hovered at the back of her mind, nor was her conscience telling her she must do her duty to the Prince or to her country.

  She was utterly and absolutely convinced that her duty now was to look after Miklos, the man she loved, to be with him and to devote her whole life to him.

  She had known last night that their kiss had a special significance, and that in it they dedicated themselves to each other.

  ‘Whatever the difficulties and problems,’ she thought now, ‘we are joined together indivisibly and nothing can separate us.’

  Because Vesta realised that many hours must pass before she could hear from the Count or he could return for her, she rang the bell for her clothes.

  Jozef’s pretty daughter brought them to her and she went downstairs for breakfast.

  Fruit from the garden, honey from the beehives which Jozef told her stood in the fields near the lake, fresh eggs from the small farm adjoining the Lodge, made the meal taste more appetising than any breakfast Vesta
could remember.

  When she had finished she asked if Jozef’s wife, who she learnt was called Dorottya, would teach her to cook some of the dishes that were peculiar to Katona.

  ‘If we are very poor when we are married,’ Vesta told herself, ‘then at least I can cook Miklos the food he likes.’

  She imagined herself going into the local market to buy fresh fish for him, choose the best vegetables and the ripest fruit, deliberate over cheeses and sausages just as she knew the housewives of every European country took care over their shopping.

  Dorottya was delighted at the idea of demonstrating how well she could cook. She showed Vesta first the Psaria Plaki, which was the dish which Vesta had found so delicious at the Inn at Jeno.

  “It is what we ourselves would have eaten today, Gracious Lady,” Dorottya explained.

  “And I would like to eat it too,” Vesta smiled.

  She learnt how to make Saltsa Augole Mono—the egg and lemon sauce which the Aide-de-camp had said was the national sauce of Greece.

  “The Katonians serve it with meat, fish and all their vegetable dishes,” Dorottya told her.

  There is nothing that makes two women more companionable than to cook together.

  Soon Vesta and Dorottya were joking and laughing as they prepared a number of different dishes, and Vesta took the opportunity of having a lesson in the Katonian language.

  She had learnt by this time that there were so many dialects that it was going to be hard for her to understand everybody.

  But Dorottya and Jozef were easier to follow than any of the other country people she had met such as Mr. Keupenski and the Brigands.

  She wondered how many different dialects the Count could speak and if there were many people in Katona with whom he could not converse.

  ‘He must teach me,’ she thought and thrilled at the idea of being his pupil even in a peasant dialect.

  The morning passed far more quickly than she had anticipated, but every other minute her thoughts would go to the Count and she would feel a little tremor of fear that perhaps things were not going so well as they had hoped.

  Supposing the Prince, insulted at being turned down and having made the preparations for their marriage, insisted she should go through with it?