The Power and the Prince Read online

  Then with his usual determined unhesitating manner, which was mitigated by the depth of fascination of his voice, he said,

  “My wife died last week.”

  Lady Odele was startled.

  She had forgotten the Prince’s wife, as everybody else had.

  The Princess was never mentioned, but now that she thought of her, Lady Odele remembered that she had been Hungarian and had been injured many years ago, soon after they were married, in a riding accident.

  It was averred, although the Prince never spoke of her, that she was in fact mad and was shut up in a nursing home in Hungary.

  “It was, of course, a merciful release,” the Prince went on quietly. “She had not recognised anyone for years and it would be pointless to pretend that even her closest relatives will mourn her death.”

  “So you are free,” Lady Odele said softly.

  It flashed through her mind that the Prince might be making her a proposal of marriage. Then she knew that even to think of such a thing was quite ridiculous.

  However outrageously those in the Social world behaved in private, there was one commandment that they always obeyed, one hard and fast rule that was never broken,

  “Thou shalt not cause a scandal!”

  Odele knew that even if the Prince went down on his knees and offered her himself and everything he possessed, she would refuse without even a moment’s hesitation.

  However much she loved a man and she told herself that she loved Ivan perhaps more than she had ever loved anyone, her place in the Social world came first.

  Edward was not only in many ways a kind and generous husband, but he was a favourite of the Prince of Wales and considered a ‘good chap’ amongst the other Stewards of the Jockey Club and the members of White’s Club.

  To leave him would mean social ostracism from everything that made her position in life important and amusing. No one, not even Ivan, could compensate for the loss of that.

  The Prince was now saying,

  “Now that, as you say, I am free, I have made a big decision and this, Odele, is where I want you to help me.”

  “What is your decision?”

  “I must marry again!”

  So he was thinking of marriage.

  Lady Odele drew in her breath, wondering how she could refuse him without losing him.

  “As you are aware,” the Prince continued, “I have no children. My wife was actually with child when the accident occurred that left her a lunatic for the rest of her unhappy life.”

  For a moment his voice was hard.

  Then he went on more softly,

  “But now I want an heir and if possible other sons and daughters to inherit my fortune and to give me what I know will be a new interest.”

  Lady Odele did not speak because she found it difficult to know what she should say.

  “I have thought over the idea carefully,” the Prince carried on, “and I realise that in my large acquaintance of friends I know very few women of the right age.”

  “What age is that?” Lady Odele asked, thinking that her voice sounded very unlike her own.

  “That is another thing I have thought over carefully,” the Prince said. “I want the mother of my children to be pure and innocent of love except for what I shall teach her.”

  Lady Odele stared at him in astonishment.

  Could Ivan really have said ‘pure and innocent’? It certainly seemed strange from a man who was notorious over the whole of Europe for his love affairs.

  She thought of the hundreds of beautiful women who had thrown their hearts and their bodies at his feet only too eagerly.

  Then, as if she realised that she must now say something, she commented almost tartly,

  “In which case your wife will have to be very young.”

  “Exactly,” the Prince agreed.

  “A young girl on the threshold of womanhood?”

  “That is the person I have in mind.”

  “Are you telling me that you have already asked someone to marry you?” Lady Odele enquired.

  Despite her intention to remain cool and calm, she could not restrain the note of indignation that crept into her voice and the sharpness that invaded the liquid beauty of her eyes.

  The Prince shook his head.

  “That is the trouble I know exactly what I want, but, as you must be aware, Odele, I never meet young girls. They appear not to exist in a world that is filled with sophisticated beauties like yourself.”

  Lady Odele gave an almost audible sigh of relief.

  Now she was beginning to understand why he had turned to her for help.

  “You wish to marry an English girl?”

  “As you know, I find the English an attractive race,” he said, giving her a meaningful look with something very intimate in it, “and I like the way Englishwomen who are well-bred have a pride and a self-control that is hard to find in the women of other nations.”

  “You are also half-English.”

  Lady Odele knew as she spoke that he was intensely proud of his English blood and had followed his father in being completely alienated from everything that was Russian.

  The late Prince Katinouski had quarrelled with the Czar and had left St. Petersburg for Europe never to return.

  He had married the Duke of Warminster’s daughter and his only son, Prince Ivan, had been brought up in an entirely English fashion.

  He had been sent to Eton and to Oxford University and it was only after this that his Russian blood and his great wealth had taken him to all the pleasure spots of the world and people had begun to talk of Ivan Katinouski as if he was a character out of The Arabian Nights.

  And his superb racehorses in England, his parties in Paris and his extravagances in Italy were all part of the legend of the Fairytale Prince.

  But it was inevitable that people talked most about the women he loved.

  They pursued him frantically, loving him to the point where they risked their reputations in a reckless fashion if his dark eyes so much as looked in their direction.

  “I suppose an English wife would suit you best,” Lady Odele agreed a little doubtfully.

  As she spoke, she was wondering how any English girl could cope, as even she was unable to do, with the many diverse and strange sides of the Prince’s character.

  Lady Odele knew, if she was honest, that, while she believed that he loved her at least for the moment and that she attracted him passionately, she could not have gone into a witness box on her oath and sworn that she knew him as a man.

  There was so much that was secret about him, so many unfathomed depths to his character that even to think of them left her bewildered.

  Aloud she now said,

  “Perhaps, Ivan, a girl of a different nationality might be more suitable.”

  Then as she spoke she knew that she was being foolish.

  What did it matter if Ivan’s wife did not understand him? She would be there only to give him what he demanded in regard to his children.

  So she was not surprised when the Prince answered her remark by saying,

  “I know what I want, Odele. I wish you to find me an English girl from, of course, a noble family, who will give me children and fill the part of my life that has been empty all these years.”

  As if she could not help herself, Lady Odele replied with a faint smile,

  “Are you really telling me, Ivan, that there has been something missing? I always thought that everything about your life was complete and perfect.”

  “As complete as it was possible to be,” the Prince added, “but always in the background of my life has been the wife I was married to for only six months.”

  There was no need for him to say anything more.

  Even Lady Odele’s limited imagination could conjure up a picture of the poor mad creature who bore his name, hidden away in Hungary while he wandered the world alone.

  It struck her with an unusual perception, because she was not a very imaginative woman, that with
all his houses, Castles, Châteaux and Palaces, not one of them without a wife and family was really a home.

  Because she knew that he expected it of her, she said, speaking in a different tone from the one she had used before,

  “Of course I will help you, Ivan. Tell me exactly what you want and I will do everything in my power to bring it about.”

  As she spoke, she was thinking to herself how in that way she could hold him.

  Society consisted of a great number of wives who sat at home, diligent and virtuous, while their husbands went a-roaming.

  If Ivan decided to marry somebody like herself, Lady Odele knew that she would be wildly jealous and afraid that his wife would supplant her in his affections.

  But a young girl who was asked only to bear his children would not encroach for one moment on their special relationship, any more than Edward interfered so long as she was discreet.

  “I think I know what you want,” she said, “someone young, very well-bred and, I suppose, pretty.”

  The Prince smiled and for the moment it swept from his face everything that was serious.

  “I don’t think I could tolerate looking at a plain face over the breakfast table. Yes, Odele, she will have to be pretty, but I cannot expect or even hope for somebody as beautiful as you.”

  “Very well,” Lady Odele said. “I will have a look round at the debutantes who came out this year. There must be one – ”

  She stopped suddenly and gave a little cry.

  “But, of course! I know the very girl. I cannot imagine why I did not think of her first.”

  “Who is she?” the Prince enquired.

  “My niece, Charlotte Storr.”

  Before her marriage Lady Odele had been a Storr and her brother was now the Earl of Storrington.

  It was impossible to query the importance or the breeding of the Storrs, who had played their parts in English history since the first Storrington had held an important position at the Court of King Henry VIII.

  There had always been Storrs in the Army and the Navy who had been decorated for gallantry, just as there had been Storrs in the House of Lords who had played their parts as Statesmen and had been in attendance on whichever King or Queen was reigning at the time.

  Every Countess of Storrington was a hereditary Lady-of-the-Bedchamber, just as every Earl had held an important post in the Royal Household.

  “Why have I never heard of your niece before?” the Prince enquired.

  “Charlotte should have been presented this year,” Lady Odele replied, “but my sister-in-law was in mourning for her mother and so Charlotte has therefore remained in the schoolroom, although she is eighteen.”

  The Prince was listening and Lady Odele continued,

  “She is a pretty child.”

  “Like you?”

  “A little. Most of the Storrs have blue eyes and fair hair. She will certainly meet your conditions of being pure and innocent.”

  The Prince gave a sigh of relief.

  “Arrange for me to meet her. We might have another party in a fortnight’s time and you and I will compile the guest list together.”

  “We will do that,” Lady Odele said eagerly, “but we must not include the Prince and Mrs. Langtry.”

  The Prince rose to sit down beside her on the sofa.

  “Now that that is settled,” he said, “let’s talk about ourselves.”

  She put her hand in his and as he felt a little tremor go through her at his touch, he smiled and turned it palm upwards towards his lips.

  *

  The Viscount handed his gun to the keeper, saying to his companion as he did so,

  “That was jolly good shooting, Shane. I have never seen a better right and left than yours in the second drive.”

  “I was rather pleased with it myself,” the Honourable Shane O’Derry replied. “But I thought you were a bit off form today, Richard.”

  “The result of too much port last night,” the Viscount confessed, “but, after all that walking, I do feel a lot better than I did first thing this morning.”

  “So do I,” Shane O’Derry agreed.

  They thanked the keeper and walked towards the shooting brake that would carry them to Storrington Park.

  As they sat in it bumping over the rough roads that led from the farmland where had been shooting partridges back towards the main drive, they looked almost as if they might be brothers.

  There was, however, no blood relationship between them, but they had been close friends ever since they had been educated at the same public school and they were now, after graduating from the same University, intent on enjoying the gaiety and social life of London together.

  This was easy for the Viscount, whose father could afford to give him a handsome allowance, while Shane O’Derry seldom had two guineas to clink together in his pocket.

  The second son of the Earl of Bunderry, an impoverished Irish Peer with a crumbling Castle and few meagre rents from his poverty-stricken tenants, the future of the Honourable Shane would have been bleak except for the fact that his friend Richard was prepared to share everything he owned with him.

  They were in fact teasingly called ‘the Inseparables’.

  Now laughing together at some intimate joke, they ran up the steps of the house and wended their way towards their bedrooms in the West wing, where the Viscount had a sitting room that had been his special Sanctum ever since he had been a young boy.

  It was shabby, untidy and cluttered with an extraordinary mixture of sporting trophies, tennis racquets, cricket bats and everything else that found a place on the floor because there was no space left on the walls.

  Occasionally the Countess ordered the housekeeper to see that the room was put in order, but the moment her back was turned it lapsed into the same tangled mess and she gave up the almost unequal task of trying to keep her son in order.

  “I must say I have never enjoyed a day more,” Shane enthused, “but I am damned thirsty.”

  “Ale or cider?” the Viscount asked. “I dare not ask for anything more intoxicating at this time of day or Gilpin will undoubtedly tell my father.”

  “Cider is all I need,” Shane replied.

  The Viscount moved as if to reach for the bell-pull and then said,

  “I am quite certain the bell is broken. I will go and shout down the back stairs.”

  He went from the room as he spoke and Shane moved to the window to look out over the Park with its ancient oak trees and the huge well-tended garden.

  He heard somebody come into the room behind him and, thinking that it was the Viscount, he did not turn his head until a soft voice called,

  “Shane.”

  He then turned eagerly to see a young girl looking at him.

  “Charlotte,” he murmured.

  Then she ran frantically across the room to throw herself against him.

  “Shane! Shane!” she cried and he heard her voice break on his name.

  “What is the matter? What has upset you?” he asked.

  “I-I cannot tell you – oh, Shane – I think my – heart will break.”

  “You must tell me, what is it?”

  He held her close against him and he knew as her face was hidden that she was crying.

  His arms tightened and he kissed her hair and, as he did so, the Viscount came back into the room.

  “I told one of the footmen to bring me – ” he began and then saw his sister in Shane’s arms. “What is the matter? What has happened?”

  “That is what I am trying to find out,” Shane replied. “Charlotte is upset.”

  “Don’t let Mama see you like that,” the Viscount warned.

  His sister raised her head from Shane’s shoulder.

  “Mama is – in the drawing room,” she said almost incoherently, “and – I came to tell you – what has happened,”

  The tears were pouring down her pale cheeks and her blue eyes were swimming with them.

  “Come and sit down,” Shane suggested
gently, “Tell us what has upset you.”

  “It is not like you to be a cry baby, Charlotte,” the Viscount remarked.

  “Y-you would – cry if you were in – m-my shoes!” Charlotte retorted almost fiercely.

  “Tell us what this is all about,” her brother urged her.

  Shane had taken Charlotte to a large armchair that stood at one side of the fireplace.

  As she sat down on it, he perched on the arm and, drawing a handkerchief from the pocket of his tweed coat, he wiped her eyes.

  Because he was gentle about it, it seemed to make her want to cry all the more.

  With an effort she forced away her tears and, holding tightly to his hand, said in a voice that was still very shaken,

  “M-Mama has had a – letter from Aunt Odele. She has – found a – h-husband for m-me.”

  “A husband?” the Viscount exclaimed. “Good Heavens, you have not yet been presented!”

  “I – know,” Charlotte replied, “b-but Aunt Odele wrote that I was – the luckiest girl in the world – and that the whole family should go down on their knees and say thank you to – God for such a wonderful opportunity.”

  “Who has she in mind? It sounds as though it might be the Prince of Wales, except that he is already married.”

  As the Viscount spoke, he saw that his friend Shane had gone very white and was looking at Charlotte with an expression of such pain in his eyes that it was impossible not to be aware of his suffering.

  The Viscount was the only person in the house who had the least idea that Charlotte and Shane were in love with each other and had been for years.

  To the Viscount it had seemed almost inevitable and certainly natural that they should love each other, especially as they were the two people in the world he had the deepest affection for.

  Now for the first time he saw the tragic consequences that their love for each other could involve them in.

  He supposed, if he thought about it, he would have been aware that Charlotte would be expected to make what his mother would call a good marriage if not a brilliant one.

  Shane, as a second son with no money at all, would certainly not be considered an eligible suitor.

  “And who does Aunt Odele suggest you should marry?” he asked aloud.

  “I-I will not do as she says!” Charlotte cried. “N-nothing will make me marry anyone except Shane. But Mama is already excited by the idea – and I know Papa will be too – when she tells him about it.”