The Protection of Love Read online

  As she dressed for dinner, Meta found herself going over all this endlessly in her mind.

  She finally decided that it really did add up to nothing.

  ‘The whole thing is ridiculous,’ she said beneath her breath. ‘After all, if he was spying, whom would he find to spy on here in the quiet English countryside?’

  There was no answer to that.

  She was angry with herself that she was worrying so much and all to no purpose.

  The sooner she relaxed and enjoyed the company of the Prince and his sister the better.

  That evening Meta wore one of the prettiest gowns she had bought from Madame Rosa.

  When Nathlia saw it, she admired it at once.

  “It is lovely,” she said, “and suits you to perfection. You look exactly as if you might fly away into the mist.”

  “I hope I shall do that after the dance and not before,” Meta replied. “If you are looking forward to dancing, then so am I. I have been in mourning for so long that I am afraid I shall tread on everyone’s toes and fall over my own!”

  “That is nonsense,” Nathlia said. “I am sure you will dance better than anyone else in the room except for me. I want to be the best, just as Alexis wants to win every race.”

  “Then I am sure that you will be the best,” Meta smiled.

  Nathlia was certainly looking very pretty in a gown that was the colour of her eyes.

  It was very much more elaborate than the gown that Meta was wearing, but at the same time it suited Nathlia.

  Meta was surprised to see that she was wearing a necklace of large diamonds round her neck and the same stones in the bodice of her gown.

  Without Meta having to ask the question, Nathlia explained that they were her mother’s jewels.

  “I wanted to wear them on such an important occasion as my first dance in England,” she said. “I hope there are going to be many many more.”

  “So do I,” Meta agreed.

  She thought the same when, after dinner, she was being swept round the ballroom by one of the young men she habitually met out hunting.

  “I had no idea,” he commented, “that you were such a good dancer.”

  “I am glad you said that,” Meta replied. “I have not had a chance to dance for such a long time.”

  “I am sorry about your mother,” he answered. “She was so beautiful and rode so well.”

  Meta smiled as he went on,

  “I suppose everyone has told you that you are just as beautiful and an exceptional rider.”

  “I can only hope that it is true,” Meta said. “Thank you for saying it. I am counting my compliments one by one.”

  Her partner laughed at that.

  He made her promise to give him the first dance at every ball which they both attended.

  Then, when the evening was getting on, the Prince asked her to dance.

  As he put his arm around her waist, she felt unexpectedly shy.

  She did not know why because as a rule she never was.

  Yet now, as they moved to the music of a soft romantic waltz, she felt somehow unsure of herself.

  “You dance as well as you ride,” the Prince remarked in his deep voice. “But I expect you have been told that a thousand times already.”

  “Only twice tonight,” Meta told him. “As you are well aware, people don’t pay many compliments in England, so I am delighted to receive them.”

  As she spoke, she thought that she sounded slightly sophisticated and she was not being the country girl that Richard wanted her to be.

  There was silence as they went a little farther round the room.

  Then the Prince asked her,

  “What do you feel about having my sister and me in your home?”

  “We are delighted that you are with us,” Meta replied. “I found it very lonely being here when Richard was away – and there was no one to talk to except for the servants.”

  “Were you really alone?” the Prince enquired.

  Meta nodded.

  “I was all alone and I began to think that Richard would never come home. I told him I would have to talk to myself and people would think I was going mad.”

  The Prince laughed.

  Then he said,

  “I don’t think anyone who has eyes to see or ears to hear would think you are mad. In fact you are much more intelligent than you pretend to be.”

  Meta was so surprised at what he said that she almost stumbled.

  His arm tightened so as to support her and she enquired a little breathlessly,

  “Why do – you say that?”

  “It is true,” the Prince said. “You think a great deal and you don’t speak impulsively like Nathlia.”

  There seemed no answer to this and Meta thought uncomfortably that Richard would be annoyed that she had acted her part so badly.

  “I am not complaining,” the Prince went on. “I find you entrancing just as I find your house as beautiful as its surroundings and as comfortable as if I was floating on a cloud.”

  Meta laughed because she could not help it.

  It was something that no Englishman would have ever said. It was very poetic and she was sure very Russian.

  “Now,” the Prince said, “let us stop pretending. Tell me if you really like having Nathlia and me here or is it just because we pay the bills?”

  This was plain speaking.

  Looking up at him, Meta’s eyes met his and she felt as if he was reading her thoughts as she had read his.

  So there was no need for words!

  Then, because she felt as if in some way he was carrying her away so quickly that she could not keep her feet on the ground, she forced herself to say lightly,

  “Now you are fishing for compliments. Your sister tells me that it is what you receive overwhelmingly in Russia.”

  “You have not answered my question,” the Prince stipulated firmly.

  “Because I think it is unnecessary. You know without being told that everything that has happened since you arrived has been very exciting for me.”

  “That is just what I wanted you to say,” the Prince said with satisfaction. “But I think the credit in a large way must go to my new horses.”

  Meta laughed and then she suggested,

  “Now you are pretending to be modest.”

  “Need I pretend?” the Prince enquired.

  “Not really,” Meta said. “At the same time we all have a great deal to learn about one another and you and your charming sister have only just arrived to stay with us.”

  “Funnily enough,” the Prince said, “I feel as though I have been here a long time. This is just what I wanted, but I thought that it would be impossible to find.”

  “That, of course, is very satisfactory from Richard’s point of view and mine,” Meta said. “We are trying to make you feel at home and happy.”

  “I know you are doing that and I am very very grateful.”

  As he spoke, Meta felt as if he had pulled her a little closer to him.

  Then the music came to an end.

  She thought, as he took his arms from round her and the other dancers were laughing and talking, that it had been a strange conversation.

  It was even stranger because it had taken place while they were dancing.

  Because she was so inexperienced, she was not at all sure if the Prince had been flirting with her or not.

  She had been told that Russians, like the French, managed to do so very skilfully.

  Because she was so ignorant of men and because she had lived only in the country, she wondered if that was indeed true.

  She only thought as she looked at the Prince how very distinctive he appeared.

  She was well aware that every young woman in the room was hoping that he would ask her to dance with him.

  ‘He danced with me because I am his hostess,’ Meta told herself.

  She hoped that he had enjoyed it and it was then that another young man who lived only a few miles away asked her f
or the next dance.

  As he did so, the Prince turned and walked out of the ballroom.

  Meta wondered where he was going.

  Perhaps, having done his duty dance where she was concerned, he now no longer found the party amusing.

  The music up started again.

  As her new partner was swinging her around rather roughly, they passed one of the long French windows that opened out into the garden.

  Meta had a brief glimpse of the Prince walking across the lawn.

  He was heading towards the shrubbery and it seemed odd that he should have gone away from the party so quickly.

  Then it occurred to her that perhaps he was meeting someone in the darkness outside.

  Could it be possible that the young man who had been so keen to come into the house as a footman was in some way connected with him?

  Perhaps they were communicating with each other in the garden where they could not be seen or overheard.

  ‘I am being ridiculous,’ Meta chided herself yet again.

  At the same time she knew that she could not help speculating on something that she did not understand.

  It made her apprehensive when she thought more about it.

  The party ended after one o’clock and the guests went home saying that they had never enjoyed themselves so much.

  They all planned to give dances themselves and would ask Meta and Richard to them.

  “We have set a new fashion,” Richard claimed when they had all left.

  “But a very enjoyable one,” Nathlia chimed in. “When can we have another dance?”

  “If you are going to ask for one every night,” Richard replied, “I shall have to buy myself a new pair of shoes. These will be worn out quite soon.”

  Nathlia smiled at him.

  “You dance as well as you ride,” she praised him. “I want to dance with you lots and lots of times.”

  “I must remember to put you down on my list of applicants,” Richard teased her.

  For a moment Nathlia did not understand.

  Then she said,

  “You are a stiff stuck-up Englishman. No Russian would make such a horrid reply.”

  “I am sorry,” Richard smiled. “Forgive me and I promise to dance every dance with you the next party we go to.”

  “That is better,” Nathlia said. “But what you should have said is, ‘I will ask you to dance every dance with me at the next party we go to’.”

  “I stand, of course, Your Highness, corrected.” Richard said.

  His eyes were twinkling and Nathlia said quickly in French,

  “If I have to learn English, then you have to learn to be gallant so I will teach you some compliments in French, which are what every woman always wants to hear.”

  “I daresay I know them already,” Richard replied, “and I will answer you in Swahili or Portuguese so that you will not understand a word of what I am saying.”

  Nathlia threw a cushion at him.

  Then, laughing, they all went up the stairs to bed.

  In her own room Meta admitted she had never enjoyed an evening more.

  It was certainly a great change from the long dreary evenings when she had only a book to help her pass the time.

  ‘It is really lovely having Nathlia and the Prince here,’ she told herself. ‘And, if they are spying, as long as they don’t get caught, who cares?’

  She climbed slowly into bed.

  She was just going off to sleep, thinking that she would be dreaming of dancing round and round the ballroom with the Prince, when the door opened.

  Someone came near to the bed and she realised that it was Richard.

  “What is it?” she asked him.

  He sat down on the side of it as he had before.

  There was just enough light coming in through the window from the stars outside for her to see him silhouetted against them.

  Meta had pulled back her curtains as she always did when she wanted to wake up early.

  “What is it?” she asked him again a little sleepily as Richard did not speak.

  “I just came along to tell you something rather strange,” Richard said. “I saw the Prince walking in the garden after his dance with you. Charles Burton had told me that his father had a horse to sell and I thought that the Prince would like to hear about it.”

  “I am sure he would,” Meta commented.

  “I went to the garden to search for him, as Charles had to leave early,” Richard went on. “It was only when I reached the shrubbery that I realised he was talking to someone.”

  Meta stiffened.

  “He was talking to ‒ someone,” she repeated. “Was it a man?”

  “Yes, I could hear a man’s voice,” Richard said. “Then, as I thought it a mistake for him to think I had followed him and was perhaps curious as to what he was doing, I went back to the house.”

  Meta did not speak and he asked,

  “I suppose you have no idea who it could be?”

  Meta moved a little higher up on her pillow.

  “I will tell you what Bell said to me ‒ earlier,” she began.

  Chapter Four

  Richard and Nathlia walked away from the stables together towards the house.

  They had all been riding and Meta stayed behind to give some instructions to Forster.

  As they moved into the courtyard, Richard saw some ducks on the lake that had not been there before.

  He thought he should go down and look at them and Nathlia went with him.

  When they drew near they saw that the ducks were a different breed from those normally on the lake and they had clearly come from some other pond or river in the neighbourhood.

  ‘They are very pretty,” Nathlia commented, “so I should not frighten them away.”

  “I have no intention of doing so,” Richard said, “because I am delighted, like you, that they have come to visit us and I will ask Bell to feed them to encourage them to stay with us.”

  “Are you really delighted to have Alexis and me to stay?” Nathlia then asked.

  “You are making my sister very happy for one thing,” Richard replied, “and I am only hoping that you will not become bored too quickly with the country.”

  “Not if I can ride these marvellous horses and dance with you,” Nathlia replied.

  Richard raised his eyebrows.

  “You have plenty of young men to dance with.”

  “You are a very good dancer,” Nathlia said to him in French.

  “Speak English!” Richard insisted firmly.

  “Eh bien,” she replied. “You – are a very exciting – man for me to dance with.”

  “That is better,” Richard said approvingly. “At the same time you will soon have plenty of young men to dance with as much as you like. Meta tells me that she has already had an invitation from Lord Brookland, who was here on Saturday night and I am sure that there will be a great many more arriving shortly.”

  Nathlia shrugged her shoulders.

  “They are very nice young boys,” she said, “but I would rather dance with you.”

  “I am very flattered,” Richard said. “But I am much too old for you.”

  Nathlia looked at him from under her long eyelashes.

  “Not to talk to and not to teach me the things I want to know about England.”

  She spoke with a light in her eyes and a depth in her voice.

  It made Richard look at her a little uncertainly.

  He had thought of her as more a child than a young woman.

  Now the sun was shining on her dark hair because she had taken off her riding hat.

  With her large blue eyes turned up to his, he thought that she was, without exception, one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen.

  But his instinct was warning him of danger.

  It told him that the last thing he must do was to allow this lovely little Russian to fall in love with him or worse still for him to fall in love with her.

  “We must go back and
tell Meta about the ducks,” he said abruptly and then turned back towards the house.

  He had gone only a few steps when Nathlia slipped her hand into his.

  “I am trying very hard to speak English because you want me to,” she said. “And I like your beautiful house, your sister and, of course, you.”

  Richard drew in his breath.

  He felt that this was going too fast and too quickly towards what he knew would be a very complicated if not dangerous situation.

  “I am only pleased,” he said after a pause, “that you are enjoying England. You might have been yearning to return to Russia, which I am sure would have upset your brother.”

  He was aware, because Nathlia was holding his hand, that a shiver went through her.

  “I never want to – see Russia – again,” she murmured in a low voice.

  “Why not?” Richard enquired.

  He felt that this was a leading question that he should ask her.

  Yet he had no wish to involve this lovely young girl in the complicated tangle in which he and Meta found themselves.

  He was still wondering who the man was to whom the Prince was speaking on Saturday night.

  Was he the servant that Meta thought he might be?

  What was the connection between the two of them?

  To his astonishment he found the answer to this when they had finished luncheon.

  They were just about to leave the dining room when the Prince said,

  “Oh, by the way, Lindley, as we have bought some more horses and, as I hope to buy a number more, I would like to engage a Russian man who worked at one time for my father.”

  “A Russian!” Richard exclaimed.

  “He is very experienced with horses,” the Prince exclaimed, “and I would trust him to break in any young ones which we add to your stables.”

  There was nothing that Richard could do but agree with him.

  He was just rising to leave the room when the Prince added,

  “And if it is not inconvenient to you, Miss Lindley, I would like to have my valet, who has followed me from Russia, with me. He has been with me for five years and is extremely reliable. I am sure that he will get on well with everyone in your household.”

  “I am sorry if Bell has not looked after you properly,” Meta replied.