A Kiss for the King Page 6

  “I am almost ashamed to say I was sound asleep!”

  “You are amazing, ma’am! I never thought a woman could show such fortitude.”

  “I am so delighted to find that I am a good sailor.”

  “You have never been to sea before, ma’am?”

  “Never,” Anastasia answered. “But as I had no wish to miss my lesson, I was determined to keep on my feet!”

  “That has been almost an impossibility,” Captain Aznar said with a twinkle in his eyes, “but let us get to work.”

  He opened the book that he had in front of him, which Anastasia knew had been brought aboard by the Baroness. After they had gone through some of the verbs, it seemed simpler and much more pleasant to converse in Mauronian.

  “I never believed anyone could learn as quickly as you have done, ma’am,” Captain Aznar said after they had been talking for nearly an hour.

  “I think it is a very pretty language,” Anastasia answered, “and I want you to tell me more about what must be a very pretty country.”

  After Captain Aznar had talked for some time, Anastasia said a little hesitatingly,

  “C-can I – trust you, Captain?”

  The Captain’s eyes opened in surprise before he responded,

  “I should be very distressed, ma’am, if you did not believe that you could do so.”

  “Of course I do believe it,” Anastasia answered, “but I want you to tell me quite frankly, forgetting for the moment the position I shall hold, what I can do to help Maurona.”

  The Captain was silent for a moment and then he said,

  “You speak, ma’am, as if you had already heard that we have difficulties.”

  “I have learnt that there is unrest amongst those who live South of the mountains,” Anastasia replied. “They feel they are not on equal terms with those who – shall we say – are more influenced by their French neighbours.”

  At first Captain Aznar seemed to choose his words with care, but then he began to talk rapidly with an eloquence and a sensitivity that told Anastasia how deeply he felt in the matter.

  He told her how the more important positions in the Government Departments were always given to those with French sympathies, how there was more constructive development in the North of the country than in the South, how trading concessions always appeared to be granted to those of French lineage.

  “What is more,” Captain Aznar continued, “the nobility and upper classes habitually speak French, so that our own language is gradually going out of use and being forgotten.”

  Anastasia could realise this was an important point.

  “The Prime Minister is passionately committed to Maurona,” Captain Aznar went on. “But many of his colleagues favour the view that the country might fare better if more closely affiliated with France.”

  He paused to add forcibly,

  “To me and to a number like me that would prove utterly and completely disastrous.”

  “What is the position in the Army?” Anastasia asked.

  “There, things are much more equal,” Captain Aznar conceded. “But then, the Army is usually stationed in the South. The great plain of Leziga lies just below the Southern slopes of the mountains where manoeuvres always take place, and new barracks have been built there, so that the Army, one might say, is more acclimatised to the Spanish Region.”

  “They are loyal to His Majesty?”

  There was a significant pause before Captain Aznar replied,

  “I believe so. I am telling you the truth, ma’am, when I say I really believe so, although there has been a little unrest from time to time when His Majesty has been abroad.”

  There was no need for the Captain to explain that the King was spending too much time out of his country – and there was certainly no need to tell Anastasia where he went.

  “Lord John Russell spoke to me of your difficulties,” she said, “and you know only too well how very hard it will be for me to alter the status quo. I would be much criticised for trying to do so. I have told myself that I am a foreigner and as a foreigner I must move very very carefully in case I do something unacceptable.”

  “I cannot express to you, ma’am, what it means to me to hear you speak like this,” Captain Aznar said. “When first I saw you, I thought – ”

  He stopped.

  “What did you think?” Anastasia prompted.

  Again Captain Aznar hesitated before he said,

  “I thought you were the most beautiful woman I had ever seen! But I also thought, and please do not think I am being rude, ma’am, that you were far too young and too inexperienced to think of anything but pretty gowns, balls and parties.”

  “But now?” Anastasia asked.

  “Now I think you will capture the hearts of everyone in Maurona,” he said in a low voice, and there was no need for him to add that his own heart was already completely captivated.

  *

  The bad weather continued until they reached the Straits of Gibraltar.

  It was then that Anastasia learnt that the battleship had suffered some superficial damage during the storms, which must be repaired before they could finish the last part of their journey.

  She was not perturbed.

  She was enjoying herself on the Warrior, and as far as she was concerned there was no hurry to reach Sergei.

  Baroness Benasque struggled up on deck looking white-faced and a physical wreck after being so seasick, and exclaimed in horror at the delay.

  “This will mean,” she said, “that unless they postpone the date of your marriage, ma’am, which I think is impossible, you will have very little time in Sergei before the wedding.”

  “Does that matter so much?” Anastasia asked lightly.

  She thought to herself that however long the interval between her first meeting King Maximilian and the day he became her husband, it would make no difference to the final issue.

  Even if they disliked each other on sight, there was nothing either of them could do about it.

  She had been sent off from England with great pomp and circumstance and she had been told of the preparations that were being made for her arrival and subsequent marriage.

  Anastasia had already made up her mind that she must not anticipate too vividly what lay ahead, or dwell on potential difficulties so that she became afraid.

  ‘I have to be calm, sensible and intelligent about all this,’ she told herself.

  But she could not help a little cold shiver of fear deep down inside her. It was hard to imagine what she would feel when she met her future husband, so she kept thinking of his face in the portrait.

  In the meantime she was ready to enjoy Gibraltar!

  The moment the English Garrison stationed there learnt that H.M.S. Warrior would be docked for two or three days while the storm damage was repaired, the Commanding Officer called with a request that Anastasia would attend a ball to be given in her honour.

  After her inactivity at sea, she was longing for exercise and could imagine nothing more exciting than the opportunity of dancing with a number of charming young men.

  The ship’s Officers, who had had an exhausting voyage during the storm and no time to make themselves pleasant to Anastasia, were only too delighted to accept the invitation, and the Commanding Officer hurried away to make the arrangements for the ball.

  It was fortunate that, when he came aboard, the Grand Duchess was still too weak to leave her cabin.

  When she did so, she told Anastasia that she had no right to accept an invitation to be guest of honour at a ball in Gibraltar when it was not on the programme arranged for them by the Foreign Secretary before they left England.

  “How could it have been, Mama?” Anastasia argued, “when Lord John Russell had no idea it was going to be so rough in the Bay of Biscay?”

  “I think it would have been more becoming, Anastasia, for you to have gone ashore to see the Rock and perhaps the famous apes, and then return to the ship.”

  “I think, Mama,
” Anastasia said gently, “it would have been very priggish, and what the sailors would call ‘snooty’ to have refused such a delightful invitation, and actually I think the decision was one for me to make.”

  The Grand Duchess looked absolutely astonished.

  “Really, Anastasia, you must have become swollen-headed to speak in such a manner,” she said coldly. “You are not yet a Queen.”

  “I shall be in a very short time, Mama,” Anastasia said, “and it was as a future Queen that I was asked if I would permit the English Officers to give a ball in my honour.”

  Her mother was silent, mostly because she felt too ill to argue.

  When the evening came, she refused to attend the ball, saying that she did not feel well enough.

  Baroness Benasque was therefore deputed to go as Anastasia’s chaperone, and Captain Aznar, of course, escorted them.

  It was perhaps a good thing that the Grand Duchess was not present.

  After a slight stiffness and formality during the dinner party given for Anastasia by the Commanding Officer, she quickly managed to put everyone at their ease.

  She chatted away, her eyes bright with excitement, a patch of colour on her cheeks, looking so entrancingly pretty that after the first conventional dance with her host, hopeful partners besieged her.

  She wore one of her new gowns of green tulle. The multiple frills were ornamented with bunches of lilies-of-the-valley, and it was more becoming than any dress she had ever owned before.

  There was no doubt that Queen Victoria would have been scandalised at the verve and energy which went into the Mazurkas, and it seemed to Anastasia that even the waltzes were played faster than they had been at Windsor Castle.

  It was all very gay, she told herself, and very good for her morale!

  “Why did you have to be a Princess?” one Army Officer murmured in Anastasia’s ear as she swept round the room on his arm.

  “I ought not to say this, ma’am,” he went on, “and you will very likely have me shot at dawn, but you are the prettiest girl I have ever seen, and now when I compare every other woman I meet to you, I swear I shall never get married!”

  Anastasia knew it was not only her charms which had loosened the young man’s tongue so indiscreetly, but also the fact that he had imbibed a great deal of the champagne that was provided at the ball.

  At the same time it was delightful for her to listen to compliments she had never had the chance of hearing before. At Windsor Castle or when she had been staying with the Earl and Countess of Coombe she had only met men who had always been far too conscious of her rank, or perhaps her surroundings, to speak of anything but commonplaces.

  “I hope King Maximilian will realise how lucky he is,” a Naval Commander said during the last dance of the evening.

  “I am hoping the same thing,” Anastasia said lightly.

  “His Majesty would be blind, deaf and dumb not to appreciate what we have brought him from England,” the Officer said with a note in his voice, which told Anastasia that he was quite prepared to be truculent about his convictions.

  “Nobody has told me yet whether or not the English are popular in Maurona,” she answered.

  “Whatever they have been in the past,” the Commander replied, “I can assure you, ma’am, Maurona is getting now what by rights should have been kept in England! If I had my way I would lock you up with the Crown Jewels! You are far too beautiful to be exported abroad!”

  Again Anastasia was quite certain that the Commander would not have spoken to her in such a familiar manner aboard the Warrior. But Gibraltar seemed to be a ‘no-man’s land’ where she was far away from England and had not yet reached Maurona.

  Besides, when one was being whirled round the room to the music of a Regimental band it was very hard to remember to be strictly conventional.

  When they were back on board Anastasia went to her mother’s cabin.

  “You missed a wonderful party, Mama!” she said enthusiastically.

  “You look somewhat dishevelled, Anastasia,” the Grand Duchess said coldly. “I hope you have not been dancing in a manner of which I would not approve.”

  “I hope not, Mama,” Anastasia said evasively.

  She kissed her mother goodnight and then she said, as if in answer to an unspoken criticism,

  “I might as well enjoy myself, Mama. In a few days’ time I shall be a staid married woman and you yourself wished I could have gone to more parties and balls in the London Season.”

  “That was different, Anastasia,” the Grand Duchess replied. “You know quite well that your partners this evening were hardly of the nobility or your equal in rank.”

  Anastasia laughed.

  “I am sure Papa would have said that all of them have to blow their noses if they have a cold!”

  She smiled at her mother and whisked out of the cabin before the Grand Duchess could think of a reply.

  Then, as she was about to enter her own cabin next door, she remembered she had left a book she was reading in Mauronian in the Captain’s cabin where she had her lessons with Captain Aznar.

  She opened the door to find the Captain helping himself to a drink from a ‘grog’ tray, which stood on a side table.

  He stood to attention, clicked his heels and bowed.

  “May I offer you a drink, ma’am?”

  “I would like a little lemonade, if there is any,” Anastasia said.

  He poured her some into a tumbler and handed it to her.

  “You enjoyed tonight, ma’am?” he asked with his eyes on her face.

  “It was delightful!” Anastasia answered. “More fun than any party I have ever been to.”

  She smiled and added,

  “Not that I have been to many.”

  “I cannot understand that, ma’am. Everyone in England must have longed for you to light their parties like a star.”

  “The people Mama would call ‘everyone in England’ did not concern themselves with a Princess of no importance living in a Grace and Favour house in Hampton Court Palace!”

  Captain Aznar smiled.

  “So now, Cinderella, ma’am, is not only going to the ball, but is also to marry Prince Charming!”

  Anastasia walked across the cabin to look out of the porthole at the lights on the quay.

  “You think that is what His Majesty will be?” she asked in a low voice.

  “I hope so,” Captain Aznar replied. “I want your happiness, ma’am, as I have never wanted anything before in the whole of my life!”

  Anastasia did not reply and after a moment he added,

  “And to help you find it, ma’am, I pledge myself to your service, now and for all time!”

  There was a depth of emotion in his voice that Anastasia found very moving.

  Slowly she turned round to look at him and the expression in his eyes made her drop hers.

  “One day I may have to hold you to that promise,” she said quietly.

  “And when that happens I will be a very proud and grateful man,” he answered. “I am ready not only to die for you, ma’am, but also to live for you!”

  Again Anastasia’s eyes met his and for a moment it was impossible to think of an answer.

  Then she held out her hand.

  “Thank you,” she said very softly, “I feel that where I am going I shall need a friend.”

  Captain Aznar took her hand in his and spontaneously went down on one knee and kissed it.

  She felt his lips against her bare skin and then, as he rose to his feet, she took her hand away and said in a very young and breathless little voice,

  “Thank you! Thank you very much!”

  *

  It was late the next afternoon when the ship was ready to leave Gibraltar. The band played on the quay and there were crowds of people to wave goodbye.

  Anastasia, wearing one of her pretty gowns, stood beside the Captain and waved in reply.

  The cold, the rain and the storms had been left behind. Now there was continual su
nshine, and as they moved along the coast the Mediterranean was as blue as the Madonna’s robe.

  “We are late! We are terribly late!” the Grand Duchess moaned, and her cry was echoed by the Baroness. Anastasia left them commiserating with each other over the disruption of the timetable and went up on deck.

  For the first time she was enjoying a warm breeze in her face, and the ship was moving smoothly over the water. Smoke was belching from the Warrior’s funnels, but the sails were also being set in place, the three masts silhouetted against the blue of the sky.

  “It is lovelier than I thought,” Anastasia said to Captain Aznar who had come to her side as she leaned against the ship’s rail.

  “It is indeed very lovely!” he answered, but his eyes were on her face.

  “Does our being so late really matter?” she enquired. “Mama and the Baroness are making such a to-do about it.”

  “It will merely mean that you will be married the day after we arrive instead of waiting a week, as had been intended,” he replied. “It would be impossible to cancel all the arrangements or postpone them.”

  “Why?” Anastasia asked.

  “Because of the Royalty who have been invited from neighbouring countries and the people who will have travelled for days so that they can be in the Capital to watch the marriage procession.”

  He smiled as he continued,

  “I imagine all work in Maurona will practically come to a standstill. They will not have had so much pageantry and excitement since the Coronation.”

  “What Royalty has been invited?” Anastasia asked.

  “I am not certain,” Captain Aznar replied. “His Majesty was still discussing the guest list with the Prime Minister when I left.”

  “You don’t think the Emperor and Empress of France will be invited?” Anastasia asked.

  “If they are, I should think it unlikely they will accept,” Captain Aznar replied.

  This was somehow reassuring. Anastasia did not know why, but she did not wish to meet Napoleon III.

  She was sure that he was very much to blame for the difficulties that Maurona was having and, moreover, his behaviour towards England made her feel suddenly antagonistic towards everything French.

  “I am sure the rumours that the French will invade your country are untrue,” Captain Aznar said, as if he guessed what she was thinking.