Imperial Splendour Read online

  Zoia ran her fingers over the keys.

  Her hands were small and perfectly proportioned and, as she looked down, her eyelashes were dark against her cheeks.

  The Duke thought she resembled even more than she had done before the statues that had always aroused a more intimate response in him than pictures. He had in his possession some of the finest pictures in England painted by great artists from every country in Europe, but whenever he returned to one of his houses it was his statuary that delighted him most.

  Now he thought that the Aphrodite that stood in his house in Hampshire and, which had been brought back centuries ago from Greece by one of his ancestors, was more like Zoia than any of the canvases of the Madonnas, the Venuses or the angels hanging on the walls.

  As she began to play, the Duke knew that, incredibly in a manner that he could not begin to understand, he was reading her thoughts and feeling within himself her response to the music.

  It was winter and the Duke could see the snow on the ground, the trees white with frost and a stretch of frozen water.

  It was beautiful, but cold and impersonal and apart from human needs.

  Then imperceptibly, so for a moment he sensed rather than saw it, the sky brightened.

  There was light, then the first glimmer of the sun and slowly the snow melted, the blue stillness of the ice broke and became a moving stream, the frost fell from the trees and the branches came to life.

  There were the green buds of spring and the first white snowdrops and crocuses in the grass beneath them.

  It was all in the rhythm, the smooth melody of the music and yet to the Duke it was as vivid as if he saw it happening in front of him. He could almost feel the warmth of the sunshine, smell the scent of the flowers as they bloomed one after another and then see the blossom fashion itself in the trees.

  Next there was not only nature in what he saw, but someone human coming through the trees and moving towards him and he knew that she sought him as he waited for her.

  She came nearer and nearer and he felt, as she did so, that his whole being went out towards her.

  As he reached out, not only with his arms, but with his very soul, everything vanished.

  There was silence and with a start that seemed to shake his whole body, he realised that Zoia was sitting at the piano, looking at him, her hands in her lap.

  “Did you – like it – Your Grace?”

  There was just a touch of anxiety in her soft voice as if she found it hard to understand why he had not spoken and why he was looking at her so strangely.

  “Very much!”

  The Duke heard his voice coming as if from a long distance away.

  “I am glad – but I don’t play as well as – Papa does.”

  “What does your father – call it?”

  It was still very difficult for the Duke to speak. He felt as if his voice was constrained and was no longer his own.

  “Papa called it The Melting of the Ice,” Zoia answered. “There is a great deal more of the composition – but I thought perhaps you might be – bored.”

  The Duke wanted to say that she had no right to stop when she had. He had wanted her to go on. He had wanted to know what would happen when she touched the person for whom she had been waiting.

  Then he told himself that, if he said such a thing, she would think he was mad. And yet he was not sure, she might understand.

  He realised that she was waiting for him to say something, but before he could speak, she said,

  “I think you – understood what Papa was – trying to say.”

  “Why should you think that?” he enquired.

  “I don’t know exactly,” she replied simply. “But I felt while I was playing that it was not – just the music you heard – but something else.”

  Quite suddenly the Duke felt that he was bewitched and he was not sure that he liked it.

  “I must go now,” he said sharply. “Thank you, Miss Vallon, for playing for me. I am sure your father must be very proud of you.”

  Even as he spoke, he knew that he had disappointed her, but she politely rose to her feet and curtseyed.

  “Goodbye.”

  He wanted to go and yet he wanted to stay. He did not understand himself.

  “Goodbye – Your Grace.”

  The words were very low, but she did not look at him.

  There was so much he wanted to ask and yet he did not want to hear the answers.

  Abruptly, because he was disturbed out of his usual calm blasé attitude, he walked across the room towards the door.

  Only as he reached it did he look back to see that Zoia was still standing at the piano.

  She was not looking after him as any other woman would have done. Instead she was staring down at the keyboard and once again he had the feeling that he had disappointed her.

  He went from the room closing the door gently behind him.

  As he walked down the stairs, he told himself again that everything he had felt was an illusion and something to do with the heat.

  His drotski was waiting and, as he drove back towards The Winter Palace, he thought that in some weird manner he had become immersed in the emotional dramatics of Russians who veered from elation to depression like a seesaw.

  Yet that explanation did not hold good, because he was neither depressed nor elated.

  Instead he had only felt something so strange that he could not explain it even to himself.

  It had startled him out of a complacency in which he had believed for some years now that there was nothing new under the sun and very certainly nothing emotional that he had not tried in one way or another.

  ‘I can hardly be becoming psychic in my old age!’ the Duke thought to himself almost savagely.

  It was fashionable in London to consult fortune-tellers and mediums and the Duke had heard that both Napoleon and his wife Josephine were fanatically superstitious.

  It was well known that the Empress had been told when she was a girl in Martinique that she would occupy the highest position in France.

  English Generals would relate scornfully that Napoleon consulted soothsayers before he embarked on a battle and was not above taking his revenge out on anyone who predicted bad luck.

  The Duke had always thought that all such omens were a lot of nonsense practised only by charlatans who wished to obtain money in a fraudulent manner.

  He had stayed at various houses over the years that were reputed to be haunted by ghosts and on more than one occasion had occupied what was known as ‘the ghost room’.

  “How did you sleep last night?” his host would ask breathlessly when he appeared at breakfast time.

  “Absolutely peacefully,” the Duke would reply with some relish. “I was not disturbed the whole night. In fact your ghost took not the slightest interest in me!”

  His attitude was always deflating and he was equally contemptuous of those who carried a talisman at a Race Meeting or those of the theatrical profession who insisted on having a hare’s foot in their dressing rooms.

  ‘Good or bad luck is all in the mind,’ he had said often enough. ‘We make our Fate and our destiny is in our own hands.’

  Now he asked himself how it was possible that he, of all people, could be beguiled not once but twice into not exactly seeing a vision but of feeling someone else’s thoughts.

  Being aware of them to the point where they were just as real as the setting sun gleaming iridescent on the waters of the River Neva and the statues on the roof of The Winter Palace silhouetted against the evening sky.

  ‘I am either drunk or going mad’ the Duke told himself irritably.

  But he knew that it was neither of these.

  ‘The sooner I forget such nonsense and get down to work the better,’ he thought as he stepped out of the drotski and went up the steps into The Winter Palace.

  He decided that he would find out what was the latest news from the Front and spend at least an hour coding a long communiqué to Lord Castlereag
h in London.

  A Courier could take it from him first thing in the morning and at least he would justify his stay in St. Petersburg.

  He walked into the hall and handed his hat to an attendant footman. Then an Officer of the Grenadiers of the Golden Guard, who were on duty in the hall and along the corridors, came towards him.

  “Good evening, Your Grace,” he began in French. “The Princess Katharina Bagration would be grateful if you could visit her before you retire to your rooms.”

  “Of course,” the Duke replied. “I shall be delighted to see Her Highness.”

  The Officer instructed a servant to escort him to the Princess’s apartments.

  As he followed the man, the Duke thought that Katharina would bring him down to earth and disperse all his ridiculous fantasies.

  The one thing about Katharina was that she was extremely human, passionate, fiery and demanding, which were all emotions that the Duke could understand and feelings that he was thoroughly cognisant of.

  ‘That is what I want,’ he told himself, ‘and nothing, no nothing else!’

  Chapter Three

  The Duke half-expected to find Katharina alone, but when the footman showed him into a large formal Reception room redolent with flowers, he found that there were a number of other people present.

  Katharina, looking extremely beautiful in a gown of blue gauze, moved towards him and he knew by the expression in her eyes how pleased she was to see him.

  He kissed her hand and then he went immediately to greet the Czarina, who was standing next to the Czar.

  Elizabeth Feodorovna would have been extremely attractive and a fitting mate for the handsome Alexander, only unfortunately she had a most unbecoming scurvy on her face.

  The Duke, however, had always found her charming and far more emotionally stable than her husband.

  He had only spoken to her for a few minutes when the Czar interrupted them.

  “I have something to tell you, Welminster,” he said, leading the Duke a little aside from the other people in the room.

  The Duke looked at him apprehensively, but thought he seemed in a far better mood than he had been yesterday.

  The despondency that made him seem to shrink into himself and become less imposing had gone and instead he was the commanding figure that he appeared to the Russians when he was on Parade.

  “What is it, Sire?” the Duke asked.

  “I know that all will be well,” the Czar replied to him impressively. “Russia will conquer Napoleon and there is no longer any need for alarm.”

  The Duke looked at him incredulously and the Czar went on,

  “This morning I had a direct message, which told me that my fears and my anxiety had been quite groundless.”

  “A message from the Front, Sire?”

  “No, from God Himself,” the Czar replied.

  The Duke waited, wondering if anyone in England would believe this conversation if he recounted it in a despatch.

  “I passed a night of terrible apprehension,” the Czar began, “until at dawn I went to the window to look out and a voice told me to search in my Bible for inspiration.”

  He took a deep breath as if he was remembering every detail of what had happened to him.

  “I put my finger into the Holy Book,” he continued, “and it then pointed to a phrase that answered all my problems in just a few words.”

  ‘What did it say, Sire?” the Duke asked, knowing that this question was expected of him.

  “Arise and shine for thy light is come and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee,” the Czar quoted.

  There was an exaltation in his voice that was unmistakable and the Duke thought that here was another example of Russian mysticism and, as far as he was concerned, he had had enough of them.

  “I am glad, Sire, that it brought you so much comfort,” he said and found it difficult to prevent the cynicism sounding in his voice.

  As if she sensed that the Duke was walking on dangerous ground, Katharina joined them.

  “You are not allowed to talk secrets at my party, Sire,” she said gaily to the Czar, “and I am longing to hear what happened when our English friend called on Princess Ysevolsov.”

  The Duke looked amused.

  He knew that this was Katharina’s way of informing him that she was well aware of where he had been and, if he thought that he could sneak out of The Winter Palace and no one know it, he was much mistaken!

  “What did you expect to happen?” he asked.

  Katharina looked at him from under her long eyelashes.

  “I wondered for one thing whether you met the Ice Maiden and what you thought of her.”

  “The Ice Maiden?” the Duke questioned.

  “Are you referring to Vallon’s daughter?” the Czar enquired. “I was told that she had arrived in St. Petersburg.”

  “She is staying with Princess Ysevolsov, Sire,” Katharina answered, “and I am sure that she has left many aching hearts behind in Moscow.”

  “Why is the lady in question called the Ice Maiden?” the Duke asked.

  Katharina laughed.

  “The Grand Duke Boris can give you a very plausible explanation for that,” she replied.

  “That is true,” the Czar agreed. “I hear that the pavement outside the Vallon house in Moscow is worn thin with his constant pacing up and down.”

  “But the door is always barred to him,” Katharina explained with a shriek of laughter, “and now the bird has flown, I am certain that the Grand Duke is, at this moment in time, in the depths of despair.”

  “I find it difficult to follow what you are saying,” the Duke remarked in a disagreeable voice.

  “It is not really very difficult,” Katharina replied. “The Grand Duke is obsessed by Zoia Vallon and has been from the first moment he saw her. But knowing his reputation, first her mother and then her father barred him from the house and Boris is not used to being outside in the cold.”

  “It will do him good!” the Czar observed and moved away to speak to someone else.

  The Duke thought the same thing. Equally he felt unexpectedly angry at the thought of the Grand Duke besmirching anyone so pure as Zoia.

  For some reason that he could not account for, it had not occurred to him that her beauty would attract men, especially men like the Grand Duke.

  She had seemed a creature apart from all the intrigues and machinations of the Social world, which were always the same in whatever country he found himself.

  But now he began to understand why Pierre Vallon had insisted on his daughter leaving Moscow and coming to St. Petersburg under the chaperonage of Princess Ysevolsov.

  She would be well aware, as the Duke was, what kind of person the Grand Duke was. A playboy, promiscuous and always in aggressive pursuit of some woman.

  He was a byword wherever he went for his notorious love affairs and his extravagant behaviour.

  When he was young, he had married a dull and unattractive German Princess whom he left with their children on his country estate and made sure that she seldom appeared either in St. Petersburg or Moscow.

  That left him free to stalk like a hungry wolf amongst the lovely women who surrounded the Czar and who had made the Russian Court one of the most attractive that the Duke had ever visited.

  It was ridiculous for him, he told himself harshly, to criticise the Grand Duke when his own reputation left much to be desired and his love affairs were gossiped about in England and had doubtless lost nothing in the telling in St. Petersburg.

  Equally he could easily understand Vallon’s alarm at the Grand Duke approaching his daughter.

  He was quite certain that Princess Natasha, before she died, had been especially afraid of the consequences of a man with his reputation showing a partiality for a very young girl.

  As if she knew where his thoughts were leading him, Katharina said to the Duke,

  “Boris is Boris and we all know exactly what he is like. And after all the Ice Maiden might do wor
se for herself.”

  “Are you now suggesting that a girl as young as she is should accept the protection of the Grand Duke when his reputation stinks to high Heaven?”

  The Duke spoke so violently that Katharina looked at him in surprise.

  “I had no idea that you had such an animosity against Boris,” she said. “Personally his affaires de coeur don’t worry me. And for the sake of argument what alternative is there for the daughter of a French musician?”

  “Good Heavens!” the Duke exclaimed. “Both you and Sonya Ysevolsov speak as if he was the trombone player in some sleazy orchestra! The man is a genius. I have never seen the Prince Regent so moved or so enthusiastic as when he played at Carlton House.”

  Katharina shrugged her shoulders.

  “I grant you that his music is good and he has had a great success in the music world, but we are talking about his daughter, the Ice Maiden.”

  “That is what I hope she is where the Grand Duke is concerned!”

  “From all I have heard she indeed offers him no encouragement,” Katharina replied, “but perhaps she is secretly in love with some unimportant suitor her father has no knowledge of.”

  The Duke was about to reply that he was quite certain that Zoia would deceive no one, least of all her father, because it was not in her nature.

  Then he thought that by saying so, he would be making a fool of himself over a girl whom he had seen once and who he knew nothing about.

  What did it matter to him who pursued her, wooed her or offered her protection?

  Even as he argued with himself, he realised that everything in him that was decent and every remnant of his reverence for women, revolted at the thought of anything so spiritual and exquisite being pressured, because there was no alternative, into an immoral association.

  He had an impulse to see Vallon and discuss the problem of his daughter’s future with him and to advise him for instance to take her to England where she would doubtless be more readily accepted than in caste-ridden Russia.

  There was no snobbery in the world, the Duke thought, greater than in the Society that centred around the Czar.

  He knew that both Sonya Ysevolsov and Katharina Bagration were right when they said that there was no possible chance of anyone of her mother’s breeding offering Zoia marriage.