Princes and Princesses: Favourite Royal Romances Read online

  “Mention what?”

  “That my grandmother was Lord Byron’s daughter.’

  The Prince sat down beside Angelina on the sofa.

  “Start from the beginning” he said. “How do you know that? How can that be true?”

  Angelina looked at him anxiously.

  “Are – are you – shocked?” she asked. “I – did not think you – would be.”

  “I am not shocked, my darling” the Prince replied, “I am only waiting to hear something that I can hardly believe, hardly credit is not just a part of your imagination.”

  “It is true!” Angelina exclaimed.

  She looked up at Lord Byron’s picture and thought his handsome face was encouraging her as she said,

  “When he was staying in Cephalonia for the four months before he went to Missolonghi, where he died, he fell very much – in love with a – beautiful Cephalonian girl.”

  “How is it possible we did not know this?” the Prince asked.

  “Because” Angelina said, “she came from an important family.”

  “Do you know the name?”

  “Yes – it was Diliyiannis”

  “I know them! Of course I know them!” the Prince exclaimed.

  “She and Lord Byron met secretly and he wrote her some very beautiful letters and, of course – some poems”

  “You have them?”

  “Papa put them in the bank for safety and also because he was afraid that I might show them to somebody.”

  “Go on!” the Prince said. “Tell me everything – everything!”

  He spoke with an insistence that Angelina thought was rather surprising, but she continued in a low voice,

  “After Lord Byron left Cephalonia, Nonika, for that was her name – realised that she was – having a – baby.”

  Angelina blushed as she spoke.

  Even though she was very proud of her connection with Lord Byron, it was embarrassing to speak of such things to the Prince.

  As if he understood what she was feeling, he put out his hand and took hers holding it very closely.

  “Nonika was therefore forced to tell her family how much she had loved Lord Byron,” Angelina went on. “They were horrified that she should be in – trouble and were – determined to keep it – secret.”

  “The baby was born in Cephalonia?” the Prince asked.

  “Yes. It was a girl and she was christened Athene by a Priest who was sworn to secrecy.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Lord Byron had become great friends with the British Governor and Military Resident, Colonel Charles James Napier.”

  “I remember that,” the Prince commented.

  “He also loved a Cephalonian who was called Anastasia – and they had two daughters.”

  “That is true,” the Prince murmured.

  “As soon as she was old enough to travel, Colonel Napier took Athene to England and she was brought up by one of his relatives.”

  Angelina smiled as she continued,

  “When she was twenty, she fell very much in love with Henry Medwin, who was a Captain in the Grenadier Guards. They had two little daughters who died in infancy – and then my father was born in 1855.”

  She paused for a moment and said wistfully,

  “I never knew my grandmother – because she died when I was only a year old and Grandpapa married again.”

  She glanced up at the Prince and went on,

  “Because Papa wished it, I have always called his stepmother – ‘Grandmama’. He never speaks of his real mother.”

  Her fingers tightened on the Prince’s as she said,

  “Please tell me – you are not – shocked? The Medwin family have always been very ashamed of what they think of as ‘a skeleton in the cupboard’, but I have always been proud, very proud – to be a relative of Lord Byron.”

  “Of course you are!” the Prince exclaimed, “and, my darling, surely you understand that this changes everything?”

  Angelina looked at him not understanding.

  “I mean,” he said gently, “that now we can be married – if you will accept me, my precious little Persephone!”

  “M-married?” Angelina said, “But how? I don’t understand. You have – to marry somebody Royal.”

  “It would be far more acceptable for me to marry Byron’s great-granddaughter,” he said. “Everyone knows that he was to have been offered the Sovereignty of Greece at Salona and certainly the Greeks regarded him then, as now, as a King among men.”

  “I – did not know,” Angelina said. “Is that – true?”

  “Absolutely true, as any Greek will tell you,” the Prince answered. “But most of all he belongs to us, the Cephalonians. I cannot imagine anything that would give my people more pleasure than for me to marry the descendant of a man who is looked on not only as the saviour of Greece but also on the island as almost a Saint.”

  “I – cannot believe it!” Angelina cried.

  “I see that your knowledge of history, my darling, is somewhat inadequate!” the Prince smiled.

  Then he went on in a more serious vein,

  “The fall of Missolonghi in 1826 would have been just one more horror of war except that two years earlier Lord Byron had given his life for Greece.”

  His voice deepened as he continued,

  “The tragic fall of Missolonghi shocked Europe. But for Byron’s death the Turkish fleet might never have been attacked and destroyed in the Bay of Navarino the following year and the last flicker of Greek freedom might have been extinguished.”

  Angelina clasped her hands together.

  “I remember – now.”

  “Fifty-seven of the Turkish warships were sunk,” the Prince said, “by twenty-six British, French and Russians.”

  He looked up at Byron’s portrait before he said,

  “By the end of the century Greece had slowly gathered herself together as a nation. Byron’s faith in Greek unity to which few paid any attention in his lifetime, became in his death an idea of immense credibility.”

  “I think – I understand,” Angelina whispered.

  “What the Greeks said and indeed the rest of the world,” the Prince said solemnly, “was that, if Lord Byron, the most famous figure in Europe, had chosen to link his name with strife-torn, down-trodden, ‘poor Greece’, hers must indeed be a cause worth fighting for.”

  The Prince rose to his feet and drew Angelina to hers.

  With his arms round her he lifted his glass towards the picture over the mantelpiece.

  “It is because of you, my Lord,” he said quietly, “that my people and I are free. It is because of you that I shall find happiness with your great-granddaughter. Together we will continue your fight for the ideals of Greece – which will never die!”

  Chapter Seven

  The Prince put out his hand to help Angelina up a stony path that was shadowed by trees.

  They had left their horses with Captain Soutsos at the bottom of the incline and now Twi-Twi, who had been carried in a saddlebag on the Captain’s horse, ran ahead of them.

  His white tail was arched over his back as if he was leading a small crusade on his own.

  “This is very exciting!” Angelina exclaimed.

  The Prince smiled at her with such tenderness in his eyes that she felt as if the sunshine blazed through the thickness of the leaves above them.

  They had only been married for ten days, but they had planned that their first pilgrimage would be to Metaxata, which had been the name of Byron’s island retreat in Cephalonia.

  To Angelina it was astonishing that Lord Byron, who in England was still considered to be a libertine, should be respected and revered with awe by the Greeks who believed him to be both heroic and holy.

  From the moment she had arrived in Cephalonia, she had known that the Prince had been right in describing it as a mountainous Paradise and it was even more beautiful than she had expected it to be.

  The air quivered with a brilliant
yet soft light that seemed to be concentrated with a dazzling radiance on the mountain peaks.

  At times Angelina felt that she herself had become a Goddess and that the Prince was in fact Apollo, as she had first imagined him to be.

  It still seemed incredible that, simply because her great-grandfather was Lord Byron. her misery and unhappiness had been swept away from the moment she had looked up at his portrait in the Cephalonian Ministry and told the Prince her secret.

  Sometimes in the night she would wake up thinking that her happiness was all a dream and she, in obedience to her father, had not told the Prince the secret of her grandmother’s birth.

  She had begun to realise how important the revelation of her secret was to be, when after the Prince, standing in front of Lord Byron’s portrait, had kissed her until she was breathless, and then had gone to the door.

  With a note of irrepressible excitement in his voice, he had told one of the servants in the hall to ask the Minister and everyone else who was with him to come into the Council Chamber.

  Angelina had watched him a little apprehensively until he joined her again and then she put out her hands and asked nervously,

  “What – are you going – to do?”

  “I am going to introduce my future wife to my Prime Minister who has been so concerned over my marriage,” he replied.

  “Are you – sure – quite sure that it will be – all right for you to – marry me?”

  “I am going to marry you,” he answered, “and don’t forget that, as you saved my life, I am your responsibility from now on.”

  “That is – all I want,” Angelina said, “but I would not – wish to do anything that was not entirely right for your – country.”

  “Marrying you will not only be the right thing to do but it will be just the inspiration that Cephalonia needs,” the Prince said positively.

  The Minister, looking a little shaken from what had just taken place, with the Prime Minister and all the other officials, came filing into the room.

  Angelina thought shyly that they would suppose that the Prince had sent for them so that they could thank her again for being instrumental in not only saving the Prince’s life but also disclosing the villain in their midst.

  The Prince waited until they were all inside the room.

  Then as the door was closed, he said,

  “Gentlemen, I have such an important announcement to make that I know you will feel as I do, surprise, and yet at the same time, an irrepressible elation.”

  He paused for a moment and then taking Angelina’s hand in his, he said,

  “You have already met Miss Medwin. You know how courageous she has been and what she has already done for us, but what you do not know is that she is, in fact, the great- granddaughter of the man we revere above all others, Lord Byron who died for us, when nobody else in the world was interested.”

  The Prince looked, as he spoke, up at Lord Byron’s portrait and Angelina, watching the Statesmen’s eyes follow his, could see the astonishment in their expression and something that seemed almost an adoration.

  This, she was to learn when she had reached Cephalonia, was the right word.

  The memory of Lord Byron was revered and in the little village of Metaxata she was shown a great ivy which was said to have been planted by him and at the beginning of the path they were climbing now, was a rough wooden signpost bearing the words, “Byron’s Roci.”

  When she talked to the Cephalonians, they all seemed to quote Byron’s words and his poems as if they were a part of their everyday conversation.

  It was not only as the Prince’s bride that everyone wished to meet her and to cheer her as she moved about the Capital, but also because her blood was part of theirs.

  Everything had happened so quickly that by the time Angelina arrived in Cephalonia she felt, as the ship sailed into the harbour, that she was breathless from the haste in which everything had taken place.

  The Prince had been so insistent in his desire to marry her as quickly as possible that even Lady Medwin had not protested.

  She was, in fact, so thrilled at the prospect of Angelina becoming a reigning Princess that she even forgot to rebuke her for being deceitful in having met the Prince without telling her.

  Neither Angelina nor the Prince revealed the fact that they had dined alone together or had attended the Cephalonian party at the restaurant.

  They just admitted to having been introduced by Twi-Twi and the ginger cat and having met in the garden.

  Immersed in the excitement of providing Angelina with a trousseau in under three weeks and arranging for her to travel to Cephalonia where she was to be married, Lady Medwin fortunately did not ask too many searching questions.

  The Prince smoothed everything over and was so charming to Lady Medwin that she confessed to Angelina,

  “He is the most delightful young man I have ever met. In fact I am in love with him myself!”

  Unfortunately, although all the excitement revived Lady Medwin’s health, she was not well enough to travel with Angelina for her Wedding.

  Lady Hewlett came to the rescue, declaring that it would give her the greatest possible pleasure to visit Cephalonia and, as it would be impossible for Angelina’s father to return from India in time to give her away, Lord Hewlett would be only too delighted to deputise for him.

  Because Angelina knew how disappointed her grandmother was that she could not attend her Wedding, she told her over and over again how much she would have liked her to be there.

  But it was the Prince who, before he left England, insisted that Lady Medwin was well enough to have a reception in the big drawing room, which had been shrouded in its Holland covers for so long.

  “It will be too much for her!” Angelina protested when they were alone.

  “Nonsense!” the Prince replied. “Happiness and excitement never killed anyone. It is when people are bored and disillusioned that they die.”

  He had seen the indecision in Angelina’s face and kissed her, adding,

  “That is something, my darling, which will never happen to either of us. You will excite and entrance me until my dying day.”

  “I – hope so,” Angelina replied in a small voice, “but you have seen so much and done so many things in your life – while I was still at school – and at times I feel very ignorant”

  “Wherever you have been” the Prince said, “you have thought, and we agree it is thought, that the Greeks brought to the world an appreciation of beauty.”

  He kissed her again and smiled,

  “That is something you have, my darling, in abundance and you are so beautiful that I am content to spend the next one thousand years just looking at you!”

  *

  When Lady Medwin, dressed in her best gown and wearing all her jewellery, was carried down the stairs to the drawing room where she received her guests, sitting comfortably in a chair with an ermine rug over her knees, Angelina knew that the Prince had been right.

  ‘As he always is,’ she thought to herself, ‘and I have so much to learn from him.’

  It appeared that almost everybody in London wanted to meet Prince Xenos and the girl who was to be his English bride.

  But, as it was impossible to accommodate them all, they were obliged to restrict the invitations to Lady Medwin’s personal friends and the Prince’s Royal and Diplomatic connections who could not be left out.

  It was a delight in itself for Angelina to see the drawing room looking as it was meant to look with the chandeliers sparkling and the room fragrant with the scent of lilies.

  Angelina’s gown, made at breakneck speed, which entailed the dressmaker’s staff who had designed it having to sit up all night to get it finished in time was, the Prince told her, a poem in itself.

  “You look like Aphrodite,” he said and added when they were alone, “and to the Greeks the Goddess of Love was not a many-breasted matron, but a young virgin rising out of the sea.”

  His lips were very
near to Angelina’s as he carried on,

  “Beautiful, my precious one, and full of promise like the coming of a new day.”

  “That is what our – marriage will be,” Angelina whispered, “a new day – and we shall be – together.”

  *

  After the Reception the Prince had left for Cephalonia to make all the necessary preparations for their Wedding.

  The Prime Minister had gone with him, but the newly appointed Foreign Minister was to be one of Angelina’s escorts as was Captain Soutsos.

  It was the aide-de-camp who on the journey took charge of Twi-Twi.

  At the last moment, seeing how much Angelina minded leaving the little white Pekingese behind, Lady Medwin had given her Twi-Twi as a present.

  “Do you really mean it, Grandmama?” Angelina had exclaimed. “I would rather have Twi-Twi than all the many wonderful gifts I have received, but I would not like you to be unhappy without him.”

  “I think, dearest child, he would be unhappy without you,” Lady Medwin replied, “and I am really too old to have a dog because I cannot look after him properly.”

  She smiled and added,

  “Who will take him to the garden if you are not there? Although I assure you, I would make the effort if I thought I could meet anyone as delightful as dear Xenos!”

  “They say lightning never strikes twice in the same place!” Angelina laughed.

  When she went to bed that night, she hugged Twi-Twi and said,

  “I am so glad you are coming with me and, if people look at me with curiosity, they will certainly think you are a visitor from another planet!”

  It was true that Twi-Twi caused so much interest that Angelina felt she ought to have him in her Wedding procession, but instead she was provided with ten very beautiful young women who were to be her bridesmaids.

  They came from all the most important families in Cephalonia and the name of the two leading bridesmaids was Diliyiannis.

  These two girls were so lovely that Angelina was glad that, in contrast to their dark beauty, she was fair-haired and blue-eyed.

  “I cannot think,” she said to the Prince after they were married, “why you did not fall in love with a Cephalonian. I cannot imagine any women anywhere could be more lovely.”