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  Again there was a poignant silence.

  Then Linetta asked,

  “But Papa, is there no other country the Russians are afraid of, except for Great Britain?”

  “Unfortunately,” he replied, “there is no one who has the power that we have and I have always believed that eventually the Czar will attempt to seize India.”

  There was a murmur from the Count as he said that, which told those listening that Prince Vladimir was right.

  There was no doubt that India was the prize that the Russians desired before anything else.

  “So is there no one else,” Linetta asked, “who could marry Prince Ivor and perhaps enjoy the status and power it would bring her?”

  She was looking at the Count as she was speaking, but it was the Earl who answered her.

  “I went to Windsor Castle yesterday,” he said, “and found, as I expected, that Her Majesty had been worried that this subject would soon arise.”

  There was silence for a moment.

  “She had gone very carefully through her relations to find one who she could send,” he continued, “as she has sent quite a number of others to Europe to save them from the avarice and greed of the Russians.”

  He paused before he went on,

  “But Her Majesty professed that she had searched most diligently amongst her family and could find no one available until unexpectedly she remembered your father.”

  “I thought no one would remember the commotion that I caused over twenty years ago,” Prince Vladimir said with a sarcastic note in his voice.

  “It would be difficult for anyone who knew you well to forget you,” the Earl pointed out. “Although you may think I am exaggerating, I have often thought of you and had wished that you were still in London so that we could laugh together as we did in the good old days when anything unusual occurred.”

  “And now something unusual has occurred,” Prince Vladimir said abruptly. “And frankly I am not amused.”

  His daughter looked up at him.

  Then she rose to her feet and walked to the open French window.

  She stood gazing out at the garden and the fountain, not only at the beauty but the peace of the scene in front of her.

  She could not help thinking that a number of people just like herself might be looking in the same way at their gardens and their land, knowing that, if the Russians took it over, their lives would never be the same again.

  Perhaps they would be happier if they died than if they continued to live, losing all their dearest friends and most prized possessions.

  Then Linetta looked up at the sky.

  Instinctively she was praying to God to whom she had said her prayers since she was a small child.

  ‘Help me! Please help me!’ she prayed. ‘Help me, God, to take the right decision and not one that will make other people suffer unnecessarily.’

  Even as she said the words, she knew the answer in her heart.

  Somehow, because she believed it came from God Himself, she turned slowly and came back into the middle of the room.

  The three men had not moved since she had risen.

  But their eyes were on her as she walked towards her father.

  She put her hand on her father’s shoulder and he covered it with his.

  Then she said very quietly,

  “Ever since I was a very small girl, Papa, you have taught me to think of other people rather than myself and I feel that it would be wrong and perhaps wicked to let a lot of people die and be tortured because I will not do my best – to help them.”

  “I thought you would say that, my darling one,” he sighed.

  There was a note of pain in his voice.

  “I want, Papa,” Linetta went on, “to make certain conditions. I don’t feel that I am asking too much, so I beg of you to listen to me without prejudice.”

  “Of course,” the Earl agreed. “We will listen to anything you have to say. We will try in every possible way to make your task, if you undertake it, an easy one.”

  There was an expectant hush in the room before Linetta began in a very low voice,

  “I have always believed that one day I would find a man who would love me for myself as I would love him. And if we married, I would be as happy as my father and mother have been.”

  She hesitated for a moment before she went on,

  “When I was old enough to understand it, Papa told me how horrified not only his family but the Society they moved in were – when he fell in love with – my mother.”

  There was a break in her voice as she added,

  “Because they loved each other – so much, they ran away from all that was familiar to them – and everything they had been brought up to believe was their world where they each played such – a vital part.”

  She drew in her breath and her fingers tightened on her father’s as she said,

  “I never imagined that two people could be – so very happy or that my home was so filled with love that it has seemed to me impossible to ever want to leave it or to try and find someone I would love in the same way – as my mother loves my father.”

  Both the Earl and the Count were deeply moved by the way she spoke, but said nothing.

  After a moment Linetta took out her handkerchief and wiped away a tear and then she went on,

  “You will therefore understand, at least I hope you will, that I cannot marry a man I have never seen, someone I might dislike – or even hate rather than love.”

  “I can understand that,” the Count said very quietly before anyone else could speak.

  “I thought perhaps you would,” Linetta murmured. “So I am asking for a little time before I make my final decision.”

  “Time is the one thing that is difficult to give you,” the Count answered. “As his Lordship well knows, the Russians are very swift in their movements. In fact they had begun their work in Samosia and achieved quite a lot of progress before we realised just how dangerous they can be.”

  “I have read in the newspapers all about the way the Russians are behaving,” Linetta said. “It horrified me – even though I had no idea it might have anything personal – to do with me. At the same time I have my own life and future to consider.”

  She glanced at her father before she added,

  “Therefore I cannot say ‘yes’ to your proposition of marrying the Prince until I have seen him and know if it is possible for me ever to be his close friend let alone his wife.”

  The Count made a helpless gesture with his hands.

  “Then what can we do?” he asked.

  “That is what I am going to tell you.”

  Linetta looked at her father again as if he gave her strength.

  He knew from the way her fingers trembled in his that she was very nervous.

  “Take things slowly, my darling,” he said. “We are all listening and you have every right, if you are to make such a great sacrifice, to ask for anything you want at this moment.”

  Linetta turned to the Count.

  “Tell me,” she asked him, “although perhaps it is a question I should have asked before, have you a family of your own?”

  “I have indeed,” the Count replied. “My wife and I are happily married and we have three children. My eldest daughter is fourteen, her sister is twelve and I have a son who will be ten years old on his next birthday.”

  There was a distinct note of pride in his voice that was rather touching.

  Linetta actually smiled before she said,

  “Then that would surely make things easier because I want to ask if you will take me to Samosia and let me stay with you before anyone finds out who I am. I could come as a Governess, who will teach your children music.”

  The Count stared at her in astonishment and so did the Earl.

  “As a Governess!” the Count exclaimed, almost as if he thought that he could not have understood what she had said to him.

  “I learnt music from my mother and, as my father knows, I am a very good
at the piano. I will stay with you and your children will learn from me while you arrange for me to see Prince Ivor and perhaps even speak to him.”

  The three men stared at her.

  After a moment she declared,

  “I will then, as quickly as possible, say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to your proposition.” “Is that possible?” the Count asked incredulously.

  It was then that Prince Vladimir spoke.

  “I think it is an extremely sensible and reasonable suggestion,” he said. “If my daughter feels that life would be intolerable with the Prince, then she has every right to refuse him and she can return to England in safety.”

  “I have a better idea than that,” Linetta said. “In fact the idea of it is coming to me in a way that I feel is in answer to my prayers – rather than what I have thought out on my own.”

  She looked again at her father as if asking him to believe in her.

  He smiled at her as he asked,

  “Tell me exactly what you want, my darling. It is you who must make the final decision one way or another. I know that the Count will make things as easy as possible for you in Samosia. But then, as always happens in Royal circles to a certain extent, his hands are tied.”

  “I am aware of that,” Linetta replied. “Therefore what I want is for me to go ahead with Count Unkar and have perhaps a week or so with his children and see the Prince as much as he can arrange for me to do so.”

  Her father nodded and she went on,

  “By the time the week is over I would like, if at all possible, for you, Papa, as His Royal Highness, to be at the Port with an English ship which, if I stay, will carry my wedding gown, but if not then it will take you and me back home.”

  The three men stared at her in surprise.

  Then Linetta carried on,

  “What it amounts to is that either you, Papa, come ashore bearing your own name as Your Royal Highness the Prince of Leiningen or else I leave without any difficulties and return to England with my father, the Baron.”

  As if he could not help it, Prince Vladimir gave a laugh.

  “Brilliant!” he exclaimed. “Only you, darling, could have thought of anything quite so clever, something which, if properly arranged and planned could happen without any trouble or interference.”

  He paused for a moment before he added,

  “Of course I would wish to give you away at your Wedding. I want to impress the Russians and the people you will rule over and I must therefore take up the position again that I threw away when I married your mother.”

  “If the Union Jack is flying at your Wedding,” the Count interposed, “I promise you by the next morning the Russians will be moving out of Samosia and back into the Principalities they have already conquered.”

  “Do you then accept my proposition?” she asked, looking at him.

  “I think there is only one place worthy of you, Lady Linetta,” the Count said, “and that is on a throne!”

  “I agree with that,” the Earl joined in. “In fact I am astonished that you should be thinking so clearly and so positively at what we can only describe as a few minutes’ notice.”

  He smiled as he turned to Prince Vladimir and said,

  “She is so incredibly like you, Vladimir. When she was speaking, I kept thinking that I was listening to you at Oxford and how you astonished the class by expressing what the Professor was trying to teach us and making it so much clearer than the old boy could manage himself!”

  Prince Vladimir laughed.

  “That all happened a long time ago. But I am glad you think that my daughter takes after me and needless to say I am very proud of her.”

  “So you think that I have made the right decision – Papa?” Linetta asked in a low voice.

  “You have made a decision that no one could say was unjust or unfair. Indeed I could not have thought of anything better myself.”

  Linetta smiled.

  “That is high praise indeed, Papa. But you must promise me that you will come to my Wedding because, however charming the Prince might be, I would not marry anyone unless you were there to give me away.”

  “I will not only come myself to your Wedding,” the Prince answered, “but I will bring your mother because I don’t want to be without her and it is only right that she should take her place as the Princess of Leiningen, which she has always been but never claimed.”

  “But, of course, you must bring Mama with you!” Linetta exclaimed. “If anything would induce me to marry the Prince even if he is not as handsome as I want him to be, it would be because you, Papa, and Mama have hidden yourselves away for too long. If you came back to the world in Samosia, then I think it would be good for both of you.”

  Prince Vladimir laughed again.

  “You see,” he said, turning to the Earl, “out of the mouths of babes and sucklings one always gets the truth.”

  There was silence for a moment.

  “Although I am quite happy as I am,” he continued, “perhaps there is work for me to do somewhere in the world, which would be of advantage to more people than I can employ on the small piece of land that belongs to me here.”

  “I think that you and your daughter are both exactly what Samosia wants at this moment,” the Count said. “I can only thank you, Lady Linetta, for the brilliant way in which you have solved this problem and your bravery in saying that you will come to Samosia.”

  Now he took Linetta’s hand in his and kissed it in the French fashion.

  She smiled at him before she said,

  “You must not forget that if I don’t like the Prince and there is always the chance he may dislike me, I must leave without any difficulty – and without any fuss.”

  “I promise everything shall be exactly as you have asked for it,” the Count said. “Of course, if I do my part of the bargain, I am very sure that the Earl, in his important position as a British Secretary of State, will do his.”

  “I don’t think that there will be any difficulties in my carrying out exactly all that Lady Linetta has asked of us,” the Earl replied. “Now, as we have been nervous that we might have left here empty-handed, I would now like to drink a toast to the future Princess, or maybe even ‘Queen’ would be a better word, of Samosia.”

  Prince Vladimir released his daughter’s hand and rose to go to the side table and pour out the champagne.

  Linetta walked to the window again and looked up into the sky. She was thanking God in her heart for what she thought had been the answer to her fervent prayers.

  Because there had been no opposition and they had accepted everything she had asked for, she felt as if God or perhaps one of His archangels was hovering over her and guiding her.

  At the same time she could not help feeling in the depths of her heart that there was a question at present still unanswered.

  It was –

  ‘What was the Prince like and would she find the love she was seeking?’

  Her father then poured out the champagne and the Count and the Earl walked to the side table to pick up their glasses.

  As they turned around to raise them to Linetta, it was to find that she had vanished.

  There was only the sunshine pouring in through the open window.

  “Your daughter is brilliant,” the Earl enthused. “I confess now that I was very nervous when we came here. I thought that like many young girls she would be hysterical at the idea of leaving home and marrying someone she had not even seen.”

  “I feel certain that she will like Prince Ivor,” the Count said, as if reassuring himself. “I have always found him a charming young man. He is very cosmopolitan in many ways.”

  He smiled before he continued,

  “In fact he was educated in France for some years and finally went for a year to a University in Germany.”

  Both men listening thought that this ensured that he would not be too insular or ignorant of the world outside his own country.

  Prince Vladimir then toasted his two visitors and t
he future of Samosia.

  Then he left them alone.

  He went from the study along the corridor to the drawing room where he knew he would find his wife.

  He was not surprised that Linetta was with her.

  As he walked in through the door, Princess Crystal, as she should have been called, rose to her feet.

  “Linetta has been telling me what has happened, Vladimir,” his wife said. “Oh, darling, must we lose her?”

  “I don’t believe,” he replied, “that we are losing a daughter, but gaining a son-in-law and exploring a country I have never visited which I believe we will find extremely interesting.”

  As he was speaking, he put his arm round his wife and pulled her close to him.

  “You are not to be upset,” he urged. “This is Fate and I cannot help thinking that perhaps it will make us take our rightful place in the world again because we could give many people the happiness we have passed on here to just a small number of those who know us.”

  Crystal looked up at him with concern in her eyes.

  He thought as she did so that she was even lovelier than when he had first married her.

  She had always been a beauty but somehow instead of losing that elusive beauty which had shone behind the footlights and as she had become older it had softened and grown in his eyes even more spectacularly than it had been before.

  Linetta was very like her.

  And she had inherited her father’s strong as well as elegant body.

  In his opinion she was superb on a horse.

  “I know whatever had been arranged, if it has your approval, darling,” Crystal was now saying, “it will be the right thing to do and as we are English we must help those who are menaced by the cruel and wicked Russians.”

  “That is just what Queen Victoria would say,” her husband replied. “Therefore, my darling, there is no need for you and I to be upset because our beloved Linetta is leaving for another part of the world.”

  “Now it is so easy to move about either by sea or in a train,” Crystal said, “we can visit Linetta whenever she needs us just as, if it all goes wrong, she could come home rapidly to us.”