A King In Love Read online

  He had often told Zita of his travels when he was young, of his journeys to Egypt and to Russia and, although he was very reticent about it, the many times he had been to Paris.

  When Zita questioned him as to what he had done, he talked of Rome and, when she tried to tempt him by asking artlessly about the paintings in the Tuileries Palace, he told her of those he had seen in Florence and Madrid.

  Gradually, as the Professor and Madame Goutier made Paris come alive for her as a City of beautiful, feted and beguiling women, she began to understand why her father went there.

  Then, after he had married, the only way he could escape to freedom and think peacefully was by walking in the mountains.

  He loved his country, he loved the people over whom he ruled, but when there were women whose eyes sparkled and whose arms went out to him the moment he appeared, it was certainly not in his nature to turn his back on them.

  ‘I am sorry for Papa too,’ Zita told herself.

  She was also sorry for herself, because she was no longer allowed to accompany him but had to stay in the Palace with her mother.

  At those times the Grand Duchess was more fault-finding than usual and the whole Court seemed to be enveloped in a heavy gloom that was like a fog until her father returned.

  As if he followed her thoughts and understood that his favourite child was feeling as frustrated as he often felt himself, the Grand Duke said,

  “I tell you what I will do, dearest, I will agree with your mother that you will not put in an appearance during the King’s visit and that he shall not meet you, on the condition that when he leaves, you and I go on one of our trips together into the mountains.”

  Zita raised her eyes to his and there seemed to be sunshine in her face.

  “Do you mean that, Papa? It would be wonderful! I cannot tell you how much I have missed our times together.”

  “I have missed them too, my dearest,” the Grand Duke said, “but your mother was adamant that you were too old to accompany me and I must admit that I think she was right.”

  “But this time she will have to make an exception,” Zita said. “Swear to me that you will keep your promise and not let Mama make you change your mind!”

  “I promise, my darling, I want to climb a mountain at the very end of the range where I have not been for at least ten years. It will be exciting to show it to you.”

  “I would love that, Papa. And let’s stay away a long time, because it will be so marvellous for me to have you all to myself.”

  The Grand Duke bent forward and kissed her.

  “I love you, my Zita,” he said, “and I want you to have anything and everything that would make you happy. But it is not always easy for me – you know that.”

  “Yes, I know, Papa, and let’s hope that the King will marry Sophie, so that we can stop worrying not only about whom she can marry but also about Aldross being eaten up by that monster Bismarck.”

  The Grand Duke laughed before he added,

  “Amen to that! And now, dearest, try not to make a fuss about anything until the Royal visit is over. It makes things so much easier for me if your mother is in a good temper.”

  “I will try to keep out of her way,” Zita said simply. “I always seem to upset her, although I cannot think why.”

  The Grand Duke could have answered in one word, ‘jealousy’, but he knew it would be disloyal to say so and therefore he kept silent.

  After Zita had kissed him affectionately and left, he sat for a long time thinking about her.

  He knew that living quietly in the Palace and being constantly found fault with by her mother, Zita had no idea of her beauty or how fascinating men would find her.

  He remembered as a boy the expression he had noted in the eyes of men of all ages, all classes and all descriptions when they had looked at his mother and he thought he had already seen that same look amongst the elderly courtiers of the Palace whenever Zita appeared.

  He was quite certain that, if King Maximilian was thinking of taking a wife to Valdastien, he would certainly prefer Zita to Sophie.

  But it was only fair that the elder sister should be married first and, as Sophie was twenty, it was time that she was settled and off their hands.

  The difficulty was that, with the exception of the Margrave of Baden-Baden, there were very few young men of Royal blood who came to Aldross or invited them to visit their own countries.

  The Grand Duchess had already said despairingly that Sophie would die an old maid if he did not do something about it.

  “What can I do?” the Grand Duke had asked. “I cannot conjure up eligible Kings or Princes as if they were mushrooms and you know as well as I do, Louise, that all the adjacent countries to this, with the exception of Valdastien, are ruled by married Monarchs and their children are mostly still in the nursery!”

  “It is no use thinking of King Maximilian,” the Grand Duchess had said sharply at the time. “He wastes his time with the sort of creatures you find attractive and who are not spoken of in any lady’s drawing room!”

  “I hear the woman he has with him now at Valdastien has a figure that leaves any man who sees her speechless!” the Grand Duke replied, as if he was talking to himself.

  He knew as soon as he had spoken that he had made a mistake, for the Grand Duchess merely lifted her chin disdainfully and walked from the room without speaking.

  This meant, the Grand Duke knew, that she would sulk for the next twenty-four hours and the atmosphere at the next few meals could be colloquially described as one you could cut with a knife!

  He picked up his newspaper from where he had put it down when Zita entered the room and as he did so he said to himself,

  ‘Poor Maximilian! He will find when he is married that Les Belles who have entertained him in the past will be in Paris while he will be incarcerated, for better or for worse, in Valdastien!’

  *

  Although Zita tried not to upset her mother, as she had promised her father, she found it intolerable to hear and feel the excitement running through the Palace and know that she could not be a part of it.

  Sophie had to have new gowns and the dressmakers came and went.

  The covers were taken from the furniture in the ballroom, the floor was polished and the gold and white walls were cleaned so that they shone as if they had been decorated only yesterday.

  Flowers were brought in from the greenhouses and arranged by the gardeners until, not only the ballroom, but almost every part of the Palace looked like a bower of blossoms.

  “I cannot think, Papa, why our rooms cannot always look beautiful just like this for us,” Zita said at luncheon, “instead of everything being done for a passing visitor, who will doubtless not appreciate it as much as we do.”

  “You certainly have a point there,” the Grand Duke replied.

  He always enjoyed arguments with his youngest daughter, which stimulated his mind and hers and that they often took opposite sides just for the fun of it was something the Grand Duchess could never understand.

  “At the same time,” he went on, “if the unusual was the usual and commonplace, you would not appreciate it so much.”

  Zita’s eyes sparkled and she was just about to reply, when the Grand Duchess said,

  “That is enough of your ridiculous ideas, Zita! And try not to bother your father with stupid questions. We have a lot to do and a great deal to plan before His Majesty arrives tomorrow.”

  “At what time are you expecting him, Mama?” Sophie enquired.

  Because it was her favourite who asked the question, the Grand Duchess was prepared to answer.

  “You will find a programme of the events on my desk,” she said. “The King will already have left by now on the first part of his journey. He is staying the night with one of his friends who has a castle not far from our border.”

  “When shall we see him?” Sophie asked eagerly.

  “Your father will greet His Majesty at The Inn of the Golden Cross at eleven o�
��clock tomorrow morning and bring him to the Palace with an escort of Cavalry.”

  “And where shall we be?”

  “We will be waiting for him here,” the Grand Duchess replied, “and you must wear that pretty pink gown in which I am sure he will think you look just like a rose.”

  As Sophie had dull brown hair and a solemn unsmiling expression, she could never at any time have looked like a flower.

  Zita repressed a desire to laugh at her mother’s uncharacteristically poetical remark and then she caught her father’s eye.

  Instead she said, because she felt it would help,

  “Do tell the hairdresser, Sophie, to arrange your hair more softly. If it curls round your face instead of being brushed back, it will be very flattering and, as Mama said, will make you look like a flower.”

  “When I want your opinion, Zita, I will ask for it,” the Grand Duchess remarked crushingly.

  She rose from the table and put out her hand towards her elder daughter.

  “Come along, Sophie, we have masses of things to do before tomorrow and I don’t wish you to listen to anybody’s advice except mine.”

  They went from the room and Zita gave a little sigh and looked at her father.

  There was no need for words.

  They both knew what the other was thinking and the Grand Duke laid his hand over hers.

  “Think of the fun we will have together in the mountains,” he said gently.

  *

  Upstairs in her bedroom, because it was the only place in which she did not feel irritated by the preparations for the King, Zita stood at the window, wondering how she could have a glimpse of him while he was in the Palace.

  The Grand Duchess had reiterated over and over again how she was to stay upstairs in the schoolroom, which had formerly been called the nursery and later ‘Their Royal Highnesses’ sitting room’.

  However, no matter what anybody else called it, in their minds it remained the nursery.

  The room had been redecorated and the windows framed by crisp muslin curtains and the furniture had been made and carved locally.

  Yet it always seemed to Zita to contain the doll’s house, which had belonged to her and Sophie, the rocking horse on which Henrich had ridden for hours on end, his toy fort, which they were not allowed to touch and a number of dolls which he teased them by hiding or, when he was in a temper, breaking.

  ‘I suppose when we leave these rooms and live in Palaces of our own we will feel grown up,’ Zita thought with perception.

  She wondered if Sophie would be happy in Valdastien with the ghosts of La Belle and other women like her peeping round every corner.

  Then she thought it would not be Sophie who would see them – for probably she would never be aware of their existence – but the King.

  She wondered if he would feel frustrated as her father did and if he would have to resort to climbing his own mountains and disappearing into his own forests instead of going to Paris and enjoying himself as he obviously did now.

  It was difficult to guess what he would think or feel when all she had to guide her were the stories she had heard from the Professor and Madame Goutier, and the pictures she had seen in the newspapers and magazines, which she was sure were very bad likenesses of him.

  It was then that she told herself she would see him and that nobody would stop her!

  ‘Even if I have to stand in the roadway as he drives by, I will have a look at him!’ she told herself determinedly.

  Suddenly an idea came to her which she knew was outrageous and very naughty, but which she could not help feeling would be very exciting.

  “Nobody will ever know,” she said aloud.

  At the same time, she was well aware that what she was planning would horrify her mother if she had any inkling of it.

  *

  Nobody paid any attention to Zita the night before the King’s arrival, but, if they had, they might have noticed that she was very silent and engrossed in her thoughts.

  At the same time her eyes had a light in them that the Grand Duke might have recognised as being the same as that which shone in his mother’s when she was planning something particularly adventurous.

  The Princess Louise, as she had been called before she married, had scandalised the old fashioned Dowagers of her father’s Court, but the people had admired her for her courage as well as for her beauty.

  This was something that Zita thought her grandmother would have dared to do, for, like the wild horses she rode, she had a spirit that was impossible to quench or destroy.

  ‘I will do it!’ Zita decided before she went to bed early to her mother’s relief, saying that she had a slight headache.

  Upstairs in her bedroom, anybody watching her undress would have been surprised to see her laying out her riding habit.

  She also took some time in packing up a parcel of clothes that she would carry in the same way as she carried those she took when she went off with her father – attached to the saddle of her horse.

  Because she was too excited to sleep, Zita dozed for a little while but kept waking to look at the sky through the open window from which she had pulled back the curtains.

  Then, as the stars began to fade and the first faint show of the dawn appeared over the distant horizon, she climbed out of bed and dressed quickly, then, carrying the bundle she had parcelled up the night before, she slipped down a side staircase that led to the stables.

  She moved quietly past two sleepy sentries who were on duty at one of the main doors of the Palace and reached the stables without being seen.

  She was well aware that there would be nobody about at this time of the morning and she walked into the nearest harness room to pick up her horse’s saddle.

  Then she hurried towards the small paddock where the horse she loved more than almost anything else in the world was kept in the summer.

  She gave a faint whistle and Pegasus came trotting towards her eagerly.

  She slipped the bridle over his head and flung the saddle onto his back.

  If there was one thing her trips with her father had taught her, it was to be completely self-sufficient where it concerned either herself or her horse.

  “How can you want to cope with your horse without a groom?” Sophie had asked scornfully.

  But Zita had known it was far more exciting to be alone with her father on such trips than to be accompanied by servants who would not only talk about what they did but doubtless would be very critical of the discomforts that Zita and her father ignored.

  She tightened his girth while Pegasus stood quite still for her to do so. Then, without the need of anybody to assist her, she seemed almost to fly into the saddle.

  Twisting between the trees until they were out of the Palace grounds, Zita galloped Pegasus wildly over the meadowland, avoiding the houses and the roads.

  They travelled over lush grass that was thick with alpine flowers of pink, white, mauve and red, which grew more vivid every moment as the light increased and the first rays of the sun turned the snow on the peaks of the mountains to gold.

  It was not far to The Inn of the Golden Cross, which Zita was heading for and, when she arrived it was still so early in the morning, that there was only one sleepy ostler moving about in the courtyard into which she rode her horse.

  When she appeared to know her way about, he took no further notice of her and she put Pegasus into an empty stall and removed her bundle from his back.

  Then she went in through a side door, which fortunately was open and up a narrow staircase leading to the back of the hostelry, where the Proprietor’s private apartments were located.

  She walked along an uncarpeted passage, knocked perfunctorily at the door at the far end of it and, when there was no reply, she lifted the latch.

  She looked inside and saw a young woman sitting on the bed in her nightgown, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

  Zita walked in,

  “Good morning, Gretel!”

  The woma
n looked at her in astonishment and then cried,

  “Princess! What are you doing here?”

  Zita shut the door and put her finger to her lips.

  “Hush!” she cautioned. “I am not a Princess at the moment, but your friend who has come to visit you from the town.”

  Gretel, who was an attractive buxom girl, a little older than Zita, with apple cheeks and china-blue eyes, stared up at her in astonishment.

  “I thought I’d never see you again!” she exclaimed. “I thought your father would visit us, but I didn’t expect you.”

  “I was not allowed to come.”

  Zita sat down on the edge of the bed and went on,

  “Listen, Gretel, I want your help.”

  “I will do anything you ask me,” Gretel replied. “How pretty you have grown! I have seen you in the distance driving through the streets, but you are even prettier close to.”

  “Thank you,” Zita said with a smile. “But it is because I am so pretty, Gretel, that I am not allowed to see King Maximilian when he comes to stay at the Palace today.”

  “Not allowed to see him? Why not?”

  “My mother and father are hoping he will marry my sister.”

  Gretel laughed.

  “There’s no need to say any more. You’re very much prettier than your sister, as you well know.”

  When Zita was travelling with her father, it was understood that they were incognito and everybody talked to them as if they were their equals.

  Sometimes the Grand Duke even pretended to himself that his subjects did not recognise him.

  Of course they did, for he was far too handsome, too loved and too admired for them not to do so.

  But because it pleased him that they addressed him as Mein Herr and Zita was regarded as just a pretty child whom the old men patted on the head and carved wooden toys to amuse.

  “What do you want me to do?” Gretel asked.

  “I read the programme that was being prepared for the King,” Zita said, “and learnt that it has been arranged he should come here for an hour.”

  Gretel nodded. “Yes, we have a room ready and waiting for him.”

  “I have worked out,” Zita continued, “that he will arrive here on horseback and in ordinary clothes, but because he is to drive on with Papa in an open carriage, he will have to change into uniform.”