Imperial Splendour Read online

  Yet the Duke found it impossible to think of her stepping down from the pedestal on which he had placed her to become soiled and besmirched by the type of life that the Grand Duke was ready to offer her.

  ‘Why should it concern me?’ he asked himself yet again.

  Yet, as he moved around the Reception room, meeting old friends, being introduced by Katharina to some of the most prestigious personages in the Czar’s entourage, he knew that he was only giving them half his attention.

  In fact he was not doing his duty of probing deeply into what they were thinking about the War and the consequences of Bonaparte’s invasion.

  When the Czar and Czarina left, the rest of the guests followed and the Duke realised that, if he was to be changed in time for dinner in the Imperial apartments, he would have to hurry to his own room.

  Katharina tightened her fingers on his as he raised her hand to his lips.

  “Retire early this evening,” she whispered, “I wish to talk to you.”

  “Talk?” the Duke queried.

  “That is for you to decide,” she replied softly.

  There was no mistaking the invitation in her eyes or the fire he saw deep down in the dark depths of them.

  ‘That is what I want,’ he told himself as he walked away down the long corridor.

  Yet by the time he had reached his own bedroom he was thinking not of Katharina but of Zoia.

  Once again he was finding it just incredible that he should have felt what he had and experienced what amounted to a vision not once but twice in her presence.

  Half-dressed the Duke moved to the window to look again at the last rays of the setting sun shimmering on the moving water of the River Neva.

  ‘It’s all the fault of this damned atmosphere!’ he told himself and then added as many Russians had done before him,

  ‘Why the devil could not Peter the Great have built this City with a better climate in another part of the country?’

  He stood staring at the water, thinking what it must be like when it was frozen in the winter and the sky and the City of Palaces would seem frozen too.

  ‘The Ice Maiden!’

  Would she too melt with the spring that she had made him see when she played him the music that her father had written?

  He found himself thinking about the figure that had come towards him through the trees and then he shied away from admitting who it had been.

  He turned around and his valet was waiting for him, holding out his evening coat in his hands.

  The Duke shrugged himself into it.

  Made by Weston, the tailor patronised by the Prince Regent, it fitted without a wrinkle and he had already seen the Czar look at his coats speculatively and with an undoubted touch of envy in his eyes.

  The valet added his decorations, taking them from velvet-lined boxes and fixing them in the correct places on his chest.

  The Duke took a quick glance at himself in the mirror, an elaborately gilded one that had come originally from France and was, he knew, unique in both its age and its artistry.

  Then, as the clock on the mantelpiece warned him that he only had a short time to reach the Czar’s apartments, he set off down the corridors that seemed every time he traversed them to grow longer and longer.

  It was the custom for each Czar to occupy a different part of The Winter Palace from his predecessors and Alexander had chosen for himself one that in many ways echoed his taste for simplicity.

  The first Romanov to dispense with Royal pomp, he wore no jewellery and refused to allow people to dismount when they met him on the quay.

  He liked to wander among his guests and had patterned his behaviour on that of an ordinary gentleman, using phrases as, ‘I beg to be excused’ and ‘please do me the honour’.

  Unfortunately in Russian eyes this diminished rather than increased the respect they had for him.

  The Duke was fond of him and always had been because he believed that he was trying to rule in a different way from his mad father and the autocratic Catherine the Great.

  It was, as he knew, no easy task to change anything in the Russian hierarchy, which, in the Palaces, ruled far more effectively than the Czar himself.

  But the Duke had read reports from the British Ambassador about the incredible poverty and suffering in Russia and he knew that in the over-large perfumed rooms of The Winter Palace he was not seeing the real Russia that lay outside.

  The reports spoke of filthy cellars not far from the Palaces where men and women were huddled together on wooden benches or on bundles of rags on the slimy wet ground.

  “There are sixty, eighty, a hundred thousand, who have not enough to eat. There is not a face that is not bleared, blotched and blurred by drink. Dressed in rags most of them with bruised faces too sunken to speak, intent only to stay alive and not be put into the ice-cold ground. They are the dregs of the nation of eighty million and nothing can be done for them and nobody is in the least interested.”

  The Duke suddenly felt constrained and stifled.

  He could not explain to himself why he had a sudden desire to be free of the Society he had come from London to seek and that in many ways was more polished and more appealing than he had expected.

  ‘I must get away,’ he told himself and was surprised at the urgency of his own feelings.

  *

  Tania burst into Zoia’s bedroom where she was sitting mending the lace on one of her gowns which had been torn.

  “Mama is taking me to call on some of her friends,” she said. “I asked if you could come, but she wants to take me alone.”

  “But of course,” Zoia answered. “And I will be here when you return.”

  “But I wanted you with us,” Tania pouted. “It is so much more fun when afterwards we can talk over the people we have met and what they have said.”

  “If your mother wishes you to go with her alone,” Zoia said, “there is nothing you can do about it and you can store up everything you have seen and heard to tell me about. And that will be exciting.”

  “It is not so exciting for me,” Tania complained. “I cannot think why Mama is being so tiresome. She knows how happy we are together.”

  “Three women without a man to accompany them is an embarrassment to any hostess,” Zoia smiled. “Go and enjoy yourself, dearest, and, when you come back, we will plan a new ballet dance to give your mother a surprise with.”

  “I would much rather dance with the handsome English Duke who was here yesterday,” Tania said. “Mama has been talking about him to me and she says he has a delightful brother he particularly wants me to meet and that will be something to look forward to when we go to England.”

  Zoia noticed the word ‘we’ but she said nothing. She only tidied Tania’s hair under her high crowned bonnet and then kissed her gently.

  “Don’t keep your Mama waiting,” she urged. “You look very pretty and I am sure that there will be plenty of people to tell you so.”

  “I do wish you were coming,” Tania repeated.

  She hurried away leaving the door open behind her.

  Zoia rose to close it, then changed her mind and, putting away the lace she had been mending, she went downstairs.

  Now that there would be nobody in the house, it was an opportunity for her to play the piano and try out the new music that had arrived early today from Moscow.

  Her father had sent it to her with a letter which told her what a success the orchestra had been at a performance the previous night and he had added,

  “There are rumours, scaremongers and a certain amount of quite needless panic. I am glad you are safe in St. Petersburg. At the same time you will know how much I miss you and how I shall look forward to when we can be together again. Don’t worry about anything but enjoying yourself. I love you, my dearest daughter, and every time I play our special music, I know, we are very close.”

  Zoia had read the letter again and again.

  There was no one like her father, she thought, who could say
things that were exactly what one wanted to hear and which made the heart contract with joy.

  It was true that, when they played certain music, they were close in way that brought Zoia an intense happiness.

  She felt that it compensated her father a little for the loss of the wife he had loved with a devotion that had never wavered since the moment they had run away together.

  ‘That is the sort of love I would hope to find one day,’ Zoia told herself.

  Because she had lived with such an example of married happiness she had known that she would never be content with a love that was not the highest and the best and which came from a man who was intrinsically a part of herself as she was a part of him.

  It was difficult to put into words what she felt, but she could say it with music.

  Just as many of her father’s compositions were written in an effort to express the love he felt for his wife, so the music she played to herself when she was alone portrayed her own search for what was beautiful and Holy when it came to an expression of love.

  From the moment her father had gone to Moscow two years ago, there had been men, who, having once seen her, had made every effort to make her acquaintance and court her.

  It was then that her mother had explained to her, in more detail than she had ever done before, her exact position in life.

  Zoia had always known that her mother’s family, the Strovolskys, were one of the most important in Russia.

  Her mother said frankly that she had committed an almost unforgivable crime in running away with the French Tutor, who had been employed to teach her and her brothers and sister to speak French.

  “The aristocratic families like those in every country,” the Princess Natasha had said, “do not connect marriage with love or love with marriage.”

  Zoia had listened wide-eyed as she went on,

  “I knew that my grandfather was making every effort to find me a husband who would be condescending enough to overlook the fact that my father was Count Orlov, who did not marry my mother and accept me as a wife simply because I have Strovolsky blood in my veins.”

  The Princess’s voice had sharpened as she added,

  “It was not enough! Something within me rebelled at the thought of being condescended to and accepted under sufferance.”

  “I can understand that, Mama.”

  “I wanted love,” the Princess Natasha said softly. “I wanted real love, the love that my mother, rightly or wrongly, had given Count Orlov and that she could never give to any other man.”

  She put her arm round her daughter.

  “One day, my darling, you may have to face the same situation as I did. Then I promise you that love, real love, such as I have for your father, is worth all the sacrifices that one may have to make for it and nothing, I repeat nothing, else is of any consequence.”

  When Zoia saw the agony her father suffered when her mother died, she had known that, while she was watching his crucifixion at losing love, it was still the only thing worth having in the whole world.

  She realised too that her mother’s death had brought a new dimension to her father’s music.

  There was a depth in his compositions that had not been there before and he raised the playing of the orchestras he conducted to heights that they had never achieved previously.

  ‘That is what love does,’ Zoia told herself. ‘It enlarges the capabilities and broadens the horizons of those who are able to find it.’

  As she went downstairs, she heard below her the Princess and Tania leaving The Palace.

  She had no intention of telling Tania so, but she understood exactly why the Princess did not wish to take her calling on her friends.

  It was not only because she was slightly embarrassed by the fact that Zoia’s father was only a musician and a Frenchman at that, it was also because only after they left Moscow had the Princess realised that despite Tania’s beauty she was overshadowed by her friend.

  Doting parents are proverbially blind and Zoia was sure, when the Princess had extended the generous invitation for her to accompany them to St. Petersburg, she had not expected that she would impinge on Tania’s success in the Social world.

  Zoia had no wish to go to St. Petersburg and leave her father, but then Pierre Vallon had insisted that she should do so.

  “The Grand Duke is becoming more of a nuisance every day,” he said bluntly, “and, when I am not with you, my dearest, I worry as to whether he will find some new way of forcing himself upon you. I find my anxiety interferes not only with my peace of mind but also with my work.”

  “Perhaps he will – follow me to – St. Petersburg?” Zoia suggested hesitatingly.

  “He may certainly try,” Pierre Vallon agreed, “but the Princess will deal with him more effectively than I can.”

  Zoia knew exactly what he meant.

  It was difficult, even for such a distinguished man as her father, to stand up to and offend anyone of such importance as the Grand Duke Boris.

  But the Princess Ysevolsov could speak to him on equal terms and Zoia knew that she would certainly not allow him to behave licentiously in any way while she was with Tania.

  Because her father was so insistent and because secretly Zoia was rather frightened of the Grand Duke, she had finally agreed to go to St. Petersburg with the Princess and the huge retinue of servants who travelled with them.

  They had left Moscow in no less than eighteen carriages and, although the journey had been tiring, Zoia had found herself interested in the countryside they were passing through, although sometimes the poverty of the peasants made her want to cry.

  The journey had taken quite a long time for the simple reason that they had stayed with the Princess’s friends en route.

  It was then that the Princess had become aware of Zoia’s attractions and wished that she had not been so hasty in extending her an invitation to stay with them at their Palace in St. Petersburg.

  It was the Grand Duke Boris who had christened Zoia the Ice Maiden and the name had already preceded her so that everywhere they had stayed the men in the party eyed her with interest and wondered if perhaps they would be fortunate enough to melt the ice.

  The Princess was made furious by their attentions.

  She so wanted everybody to concentrate on her daughter and, although she had already planned that Tania should make a brilliant marriage, she thought that learning how to handle men, flattering them and certainly refusing their suit, would be an experience that should not be missed.

  By the time they reached the second house on their route, it was obvious that the focus of attention was not Tania but Zoia and the Princess made her plans accordingly.

  Zoia, she told herself, should take her rightful place when they reached St. Petersburg as companion and Teacher to Tania.

  There would be no question then of her appearing in public or accepting invitations to parties.

  She did not wish to be unkind and Sonya Ysevolsov was in fact a warm-hearted woman and made few enemies.

  But she was prepared to fight fiercely and tenaciously for the well-being of her child and she was determined that Tania should make the most brilliant marriage that any girl had ever achieved.

  This, in the Princess’s eyes, meant marrying outside Russia.

  She had seen much too much of the decadence and licentiousness of Society under the Romanovs and it was quite impossible to find anyone amongst her husband’s relations or contemporaries who was happy.

  Even the Czar with all his high-flown ideals, which had made so many people think that on his succession a new era was dawning, had early in his reign fallen deeply in love.

  Madame Naryshkina was a lovely and dashing Polish lady who bore him two children and tormented him with her infidelities.

  Because he was so much more of a gentleman than his predecessors, the Czar took great pains to pay public deference to his wife and they were acclaimed everywhere as the most handsome couple in Europe.

  But it was not ea
sy to say that the Czar, or for that matter the Czarina, were happy and the Princess longed for Tania not only to be of great social standing but to find happiness.

  Englishmen, she had always believed, were excellent husbands.

  They might have little moments of infidelity, affaires de coeur that were conducted with great propriety and discretion, but on the whole they appeared faithful and happy with their wives and their children.

  It had therefore seemed providential to the Princess when she learned that the Duke of Welminster was coming to St. Petersburg as the Czar’s guest.

  She had not actually had an affair with the Duke herself, but she had flirted with him and thought him extremely fascinating when they had met both in London and Vienna.

  ‘He is the type of man I have always admired,’ the Princess had told herself.

  She knew that the Duke found her as attractive as she found him and it was hard to resist the temptation of taking him as a lover.

  But it would be far more of a triumph, she told herself, to have him as a son-in-law and, although he had made it clear that he wished to remain a bachelor, more obstinate men than he had changed their minds on that score.

  And while she kept the Duke’s brother in reserve, she had not quite given up hope where he himself was concerned.

  As they drove away from The Palace, she started again to talk to Tania about the Duke’s position in England, of his magnificent houses and fine possessions and of the very alluring qualities she found in him personally.

  *

  As it happened, Zoia, as she went downstairs, was also thinking about the Duke.

  She had been conscious of his presence at the back of the box while she danced and she thought afterwards that it was strange she should notice that he was there.

  When she concentrated on her father’s music, she was usually carried away completely and lost in the world that he created for her so that she was oblivious of everything else.

  And yet somehow at the back of her mind, hardly impinging on her consciousness but definitely there, she had known that there was a man standing at the back of the box.