Wanted a Royal Wife Read online

  “If we were alone in that field,” the Comte carried on, “I would hold you in my arms and make it impossible for you to escape me. The one thing wrong with the Orient Express is that there are too many people on it!”

  Latasha laughed.

  “You can hardly expect, monsieur, to have it all to yourself!”

  “But, of course, one can be alone in the luxurious compartments that have been so acclaimed in Paris.”

  Latasha did not respond and he continued,

  “My friends have taken someone they admired or desired on a journey in this train just because they felt the compartments are more attractive than the best rooms in a hotel.”

  “That is a novel idea, monsieur, but I should have thought unnecessarily expensive.”

  “Money is not important where love is concerned, mademoiselle,” the Comte answered.

  Latasha had eaten her last course and refused some dessert, but accepted a cup of coffee the Steward brought.

  He also tried to fill her glass with more champagne, but she refused.

  “You cannot leave me,” the Comte exclaimed, “to finish this delicious bottle all by myself. Shall we repair to your compartment or mine so that we might talk without being interrupted?”

  “I am retiring to bed and my companion is waiting for me. She will be most perturbed if I do not join her in the next few minutes.”

  “Now this is ridiculous, mademoiselle, you know I want to talk to you where we can be alone and where I can tell you how alluring you are.”

  He spread out both his hands in a typically French gesture before adding,

  “I am so captivated, bowled over and at your feet. How can you be so cruel as to leave me in such a state?”

  “I expect you will soon recover,” asserted Latasha lightly. “As I am tired I wish you goodnight, monsieur.”

  She rose as she spoke and walked out of the dining car before the Comte could prevent her.

  She hurried down the corridor thinking with a sense of amusement that it might be the first time his very eloquent approaches had been refused.

  Her school had been attended by the daughters of a great number of foreign aristocrats and the girls had often talked about the flirtatious Frenchmen.

  “They always talk about love,” one said, “but they spend so much of their time with the courtesans in Paris, who Papa says are greedily expensive.”

  Latasha did not at first understand what this meant.

  When she had asked her brother, he told her that she was not likely to meet any courtesans and therefore the less she knew about them the better.

  However her books told her more about them.

  She found the descriptions of courtesans, especially the most famous ones like Madame de Pompadour, were fascinating.

  She thought the Comte had behaved exactly as she would have expected from a flirtatious Frenchman.

  She walked into her own compartment and locked the door.

  It was then she remembered that tomorrow and for several more days she could not avoid seeing him again.

  She wondered if he would continue to pursue her, but he might easily find someone more amenable on the Orient Express.

  She took off her gown and then she went in to see Nanny.

  When she knocked lightly on the door, there was no answer, so she tried to open it and found that it was not locked.

  Nanny had obviously been expecting her, but had fallen asleep.

  She reflected that Nanny looked rather older when her eyes were closed.

  She pulled down the blinds and then peeped along the corridor to make quite certain that the Comte was not wandering past, perhaps looking for her.

  She remembered that when she left him, the bottle of champagne was only half empty and she felt sure that he would feel obliged to finish it.

  She slipped between the silk sheets and pulled up the soft woollen blanket.

  ‘If real life was always as comfortable as this,’ she pondered, ‘how happy everyone would be.’

  Then she wished Harry was there to argue with her as to whether her statement was true.

  Life would be too easy, he would say, in fact it would be positively boring if it were too soft, too comfortable and never unexpected.

  She had often thought that if an outstanding horse won every race and there was no possibility of him being defeated, the excitement would not be the same.

  Harry had once said to her when they were talking on very much the same theme,

  “It’s the birds I miss when I am out shooting that I think about afterwards, not the ones I have brought down.”

  ‘I suppose,’ Latasha reflected before she fell asleep, ‘that, if we are to live fully, there has to be the unexpected and disappointments in life. Otherwise people would stop struggling to get to the top and they would merely put their feet up and take it easy.’

  Once again she wished that Harry was with her and then she wondered if it would be possible to talk on such subjects seriously with someone like the Comte.

  She felt certain it would be impossible as he would only be thinking about her as a pretty woman and he would not be in the least interested in her brain, nor in what she felt about life and living.

  ‘If I married someone like him,’ she told herself, ‘I should be bored stiff with him in the first few days after the wedding!’

  Then she remembered she was going to see Prince Stefan and she had to make up her mind whether she would marry him or, as Harry had put it so delicately, take ‘pot luck’ with a stranger of Queen Victoria’s choice.

  ‘How can I possibly be so involved in such a mess – such a ghastly situation?’ she muttered to herself.

  Suddenly she felt frightened – frightened in a way she had never been before.

  Up to this moment it had seemed not to be really happening, no more than a joke that she should be going out to Oldessa.

  Going to inspect a bridegroom was rather as Harry might inspect a horse he was considering buying.

  Latasha suddenly had the disagreeable idea that the Orient Express, as it moved speedily and smoothly on, was carrying her into a trap.

  One from which she would be unable to escape.

  She wanted, as she had never wanted so much, to go home.

  To run into the drawing room and find her father and mother waiting for her.

  All through her life they had been her protectors and her guardians – the two most important people in her little world.

  Now suddenly she was alone.

  Alone on a mad journey that she was quite certain would end in disaster.

  Perhaps Prince Stefan would fall into love with her and he might beseech her to marry him, while she thought him repulsive and longed to run away.

  Then Harry would be annoyed because she would be offending his friend Prince Kraus.

  This was another aspect of her situation she had not thought through and it might be a very significant one.

  If Harry, Prince Stefan and his brother Prince Kraus were all begging her to save Oldessa, what could she do?

  ‘I have been a fool,’ she told herself, ‘to even think of coming here. Once they have got hold of me, they will never let me go.’

  It flashed through her mind that she might get off at Strasbourg and go home.

  Then, as the train rolled on, she knew she could not be a coward.

  She had been brave enough in the first place to go on this venture and it was she herself who had worked out the components of the drama she was to play the lead in.

  Now it was impossible to back out.

  If it all ended in disaster, there would be no one to blame except herself.

  Quite suddenly she felt small and defenceless in a large and overwhelming world.

  She wanted someone to protect her and to look after her and if at all possible someone to love her.

  ‘I suppose it’s just what all women really desire,’ she thought scornfully.

  Nevertheless it was true.

&nb
sp; Perhaps it was the Orient Express, perhaps it was the Comte, but she was feeling deeply apprehensive.

  The only thing left was to pray that God would help her and she found herself saying the prayers she had said when she was small.

  Somehow she knew that there was only one person on whom she could depend and that was God Himself.

  *

  In the morning Latasha woke up feeling much less despondent.

  She felt rather ashamed of herself for giving way to fear.

  When Nanny came into her compartment looking neat, tidy and capable, Latasha greeted her,

  “I am so glad to see you, Nanny. You were asleep when I came to say goodnight.”

  “I’m sorry, dearie. I was that tired and just dropped off. When I woke it were morning.”

  Latasha laughed.

  “You are very lucky. Most people would lie awake like I did, worrying and wishing we had not come on this wild escapade.”

  “Now don’t you talk such silly nonsense! It’s better than staying back at home and crying over spilt milk. Who knows, things might be much better than we now expect.”

  “That is so like you, Nanny. I feel I am back in the nursery. I have made a mess of my dress and you are now singing me a lullaby which always sent me to sleep!”

  “Well, instead of singing you a lullaby, I suggest you get up and we go along to breakfast.”

  “I had forgotten about breakfast. Shall we have it in here or in the dining car?”

  “Well, you might be content with a cup of tea, but I’m that hungry,” replied Nanny. “And I’d so like to see this dining car, as I’ve heard so much about it.”

  Immediately Latasha jumped out of bed and Nanny helped her to dress.

  She wondered if she should tell Nanny about what had happened last night and then she thought it would be a mistake.

  The mere fact that Nanny was with her would make it impossible for the Comte to sit down at the same table again.

  It would be best if she just kept out of his way.

  She was certain that if he had been able to escort her to her compartment and found it empty, he would have tried to kiss her.

  Latasha had no intention of allowing him or anyone else to do so.

  Once again it flashed through her mind that perhaps she would never be kissed by anyone she really loved.

  Almost as if Nanny could understand her thoughts, she prompted,

  “Now come along, dearie, and stop worrying. It’s no use you fussing before we arrive about what’s going to happen. We should be saying a prayer that this train don’t run off the line or into another one!”

  “It is far too prestigious for that, Nanny. Think of the money they have spent on it and the fuss that has been made over it. The newspapers have talked more about the Orient Express than about any ship we may have launched in the last few years.”

  “That’s true, but if you asks me, people should be staying at home and a-looking after their families, if they have them, rather than gallivanting round the world making trouble in those countries they goes to.”

  “You must not say that when everyone is trying to make the world smaller, so that we know more about our neighbours than we have ever known before.”

  “Well, I just wants my neighbours to be my kith and kin and that’s the truth. I find them foreigners a bit soft in the head. If you asks me, that’s just what they are!”

  Latasha was chuckling again, as they walked down the corridor to the dining car.

  The table she had sat at last night was unoccupied and the same Steward showed her and Nanny into it with a flourish.

  There was no sign of the Comte and she suspected that he was breakfasting in bed – it was something she might have done if she had been with anyone except for Nanny or Harry.

  Breakfast in England was almost as important as dinner.

  Latasha had often heard her mother say,

  “Ladies and gentlemen always come down for the first meal of the day properly washed and dressed and do not sip coffee and eat a few crumbs in their bedrooms.”

  She was more than aware that the French thought breakfast of no importance as a meal, while the Germans would eat enormous amounts of meat as soon as they were awake and on their feet.

  She and Nanny ordered scrambled eggs and bacon followed by toast spread with marmalade.

  Nanny drank tea while Latasha enjoyed a steaming cup of coffee.

  “We are being so English and I suppose you know, Nanny, that when we are abroad we should do exactly as the foreigners do and not enjoy a large meal at breakfast.”

  “Foreigners don’t know how to behave! If you asks me why Englishmen are tall and strong, it’s because they eat a good breakfast as their mothers told them to do and then have meat for luncheon.”

  “I expect you are quite right, Nanny, but it will be so interesting to see what our new friends in Oldessa do. From what I have gathered from Harry, they are a law unto themselves and have no intention of being dictated to by the French or the Austrians, and least of all, the Russians.”

  “And very right too,” exclaimed Nanny. “I’d never trust them Ruskies. From what I hears of their behaviour it’s time Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, gave them a piece of her mind!”

  Latasha remembered Nanny had been as indignant as everyone else when the story of the Russians’ treatment of Prince Alexander was published in every newspaper.

  She was quite sure it had been as much discussed in the servant’s hall as in the dining room.

  Everyone had agreed that the Russians were simply barbarians and the sooner someone like the British taught them a lesson the better.

  Then Latasha wanted to shy away like a horse from her thoughts. It seemed to her that whatever she was doing, it always came back to the same question.

  Should she stand up to the Russians as Harry was asking her to do?

  If she refused to do so, would she be able to refuse Queen Victoria?

  “I hate the Russians,” she called out, speaking her thoughts aloud.

  “Don’t you worry about them Ruskies, my dearie,” soothed Nanny from the other side of the table. “They’re a bad lot and they’ll get their desserts sooner or later! You mark my words.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  When they had finished breakfast, the courier came to Latasha’s compartment to apologise most profusely for the previous evening.

  “I had no idea that Mrs. Holten was not dining with you, my Lady,” he said, “otherwise I would have been with you.”

  “She was rather tired, as she had felt seasick on the ferry,” explained Latasha.

  “It was very remiss of me not to make certain that you were together,” the courier apologised, “but you will not be worried again by the Comte.”

  Latasha looked at him in surprise.

  “How do you know about him?”

  “One of the Stewards told me that he had insisted on sitting at your table in the dining car and he has a most unsavoury reputation – ”

  “I had rather guessed that!”

  Latasha wondered as she spoke if she would have had trouble with the Comte even if Nanny had been with her.

  Then the courier added,

  “I have made quite certain, my Lady, that he will not trouble you again.”

  “How can you be sure?” Latasha asked curiously.

  “I spoke to him.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “I said that your Guardian was of great importance in the Jockey Club and if you were upset, it might make it difficult for him to run his horses in English races.”

  Latasha laughed.

  She thought it very clever of the courier to be so knowledgeable about the Comte.

  And to know how to put him firmly in his place.

  She did not say anything about it, but last night, just when she was beginning to feel a bit sleepy, she had heard a knock on the door of her compartment.

  She did not answer it or make any sound and a few moments later the k
nock came again.

  When once again she made no response, she heard footsteps receding down the corridor.

  She was quite certain that it was the Comte.

  She told herself he was of no consequence, but she had felt a little nervous in case he made a scene.

  Now the courier had brilliantly disposed of him!

  *

  The next two days passed very comfortably and the food was delicious.

  Nanny managed to take every meal in the dining car with Latasha.

  The train stopped for a short time at Strasbourg and again at Munich and shortly after that Latasha realised they had crossed the Austrian border.

  Finally the train drew into Budapest.

  The courier had already told them that was where they had to leave the Orient Express.

  By this time Latasha felt she had a real affection for this very special train and her journey was something she would never forget.

  She had already asked her brother what she should tip the Stewards who looked after her and Nanny.

  They had been extremely kind and attentive and so she doubled what he had told her to give them.

  As they climbed down the steps onto the platform, Latasha felt an urge to turn round and go home.

  She had no wish to face what lay ahead.

  The courier took them across the station to where another train was waiting to carry them to the South and it seemed very primitive after the luxury, comfort and beauty of the Orient Express.

  Latasha and Nanny were shown into a carriage by the stationmaster.

  When they set off, Latasha had her first glimpse of Hungary and she was absorbed by the intense beauty of the country.

  There were endless high mountains with snow on their peaks and huge rivers as well as small streams.

  More than once she had a glimpse of what she was certain were the famous Steppes, where she had longed to gallop on a spirited Hungarian stallion.

  It was growing late in the afternoon when finally they reached what the courier had informed them was the nearest railway station to Oldessa.

  He also said that there would be someone to meet them.

  Nanny tidied Latasha’s hair and arranged her pretty decorated hat.

  She had already put on one of her smarter dresses with a neat coat to wear over it, but as it was so warm she took it off at the last minute.