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  Apparently the previous owner had her own private band and all their instruments had been left where they had always been including many sheets of music.

  Linetta thought it would be wonderful to play with the windows open, looking onto the flower-filled garden, which would be an inspiration in itself.

  It was when dinner was finished that the Count said very kindly,

  “I am sure, Miss Lane, that you are very tired after such a long journey and would like to retire to bed.”

  He smiled as he continued,

  “I had thought of asking you to play to my wife as I know that she is longing to hear the beautiful music you will teach the children, but it would be cruel not to let you rest tonight, while tomorrow we might sing a very different tune.”

  Linetta laughed.

  “You are very considerate and thank you, I would like to go to bed now as I am sure that there is much for me to explore tomorrow.”

  “Much, indeed,” the Count replied.

  Linetta then curtseyed to both the Countess and the Count and left the room.

  Upstairs in her bedroom that also overlooked the garden, she stood for a long time at the window wondering whether one day she would be in the garden next door, perhaps in charge of The Palace itself.

  ‘If he is as charming and attractive as the house he lives in,’ she thought, ‘then it will not be difficult for me to stay. But he may, in point of fact, be different.’

  She had thought while she was driving through the streets to The Palace that the people themselves were on the whole good-looking and striking.

  Equally there were men who perhaps were Russians and their faces were rather frightening.

  They looked at the carriage they were travelling in with what she thought was an unpleasant expression in their eyes.

  Quite suddenly she was somehow apprehensive and longed to be back in England with her beloved father and mother.

  ‘I am so alone here,’ she told herself.

  She felt herself tremble.

  She had a sudden wish to run away to hide and then rush back to her own home to be with those she loved.

  Yet here she was in a strange and intimidating place with the Russians at their gates and the people themselves incapable of keeping them away.

  ‘I want to come home, Papa,’ she said silently to herself. ‘Why did I listen when they scared me by saying that these people, who are nothing at all to do with us, might be conquered by the Russians?’

  It was then she knew that she wanted to run away.

  To go back home to the comfort and security that she had always known in England.

  To forget Samosia and the threats of the Russians upon people she had never seen before.

  They might, for all she knew, be quite content to allow the Russians to order them about, rather than their Prince whom she had not yet met.

  She had tried not to think about him while she was travelling through the Mediterranean and past the Greek Islands to where she was now.

  ‘Of course,’ she thought to herself, ‘what I have always wanted is the love that Apollo, as the King of Love, offers to those who worship him.’

  The very love that she realised now she might never find with the man she was marrying to save him and his people from the Russian yoke.

  ‘Why did I ever agree to anything so crazy?’ she asked herself.

  Then she felt that the Count has been very clever in making her believe how many people might be killed and those who survived might be terrified and treated cruelly and abominably by their conqueror.

  Linetta gazed up at the moon.

  ‘I want to go home,’ she told it. ‘I am frightened of being here and frightened of what lies ahead of me. Oh, please, please help me to be free as I have always been in the past.’

  As the moon shone down on the garden, turning the water and everything around it to silver, the stars seemed to look at her with piercing eyes not of fear, nor danger, but of love.

  Linetta found herself thinking that God would not have let her come here if he had not believed that there was something very important for her to achieve.

  She had a key part to play in the danger that was waiting just outside the country itself.

  It could be controlled only if she did as the stars themselves wanted and brought love, peace and happiness to Samosia.

  It was then Linetta turned away from the window and started to undress.

  When she had done so, she crept into the large four-poster bed, which was in itself very lovely and she felt as if its arms enfolded her.

  It was strangely almost as comforting as her father or mother would have been.

  ‘You are never alone,’ the stars seemed to tell her. ‘We are with you. We and the angels are looking after you and protecting you. You must not be afraid to hold your head high and to pray that if you are scared of the Russians then they are more scared of the British.’

  Linetta could hear these words as clearly as if they had been said aloud.

  They were coming to her just like the soft sound of music.

  It was a tune that she felt she must play to herself tomorrow.

  It was a tune that she had never heard before.

  Yet somehow she realised in a flash that it was of great significance to her.

  She did not know why.

  She just knew that it was there in her mind and her head.

  For the moment she could not escape from it.

  A tune in fact that made what was happening not frightening but magical, a tune which she knew in some strange way spoke to her of love.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Prince Ivor, having spent the night with his friends who lived by the sea, then said goodbye to them rather reluctantly

  He knew when he returned to his Palace that there would be a large number of problems waiting for him that his people would insist that he solve for them even though they were insoluble.

  He thought as well that there would be an endless number of complaints against the Russian infiltrators who were already secreted inside the City and those who were still determined to force their way in however much those on guard tried to prevent them from doing so.

  “I wish I could stay with you for at least a week,” he told his host who chuckled.

  “There is always a room for you here, Your Royal Highness, and you know we love having you with us,” was the reply.

  The Prince thought for a moment that perhaps he would stay a little longer just to enjoy himself as he had been so relaxed with his good friends.

  But, because he had been brought up by his father and by all those who served him to put duty first, he knew that he must return speedily to the City.

  “Goodbye and thank you so much again,” he called out as he rode off.

  His escort was keeping well behind as he disliked them intruding on him or riding beside him.

  It was when he was moving swiftly across the open land and birds that had been nestling in the long grass were flying up in front of him, he suddenly remembered that by now his Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs should have returned from England.

  As the Prince knew only too well, he had gone to see Queen Victoria to beg her, if necessary on his knees, to send them a Princess to save his precious country from the Russian invasion.

  He was only too well aware that it was only the Union Jack that could save him.

  The Russians were becoming ever more outrageous every day and more of them were creeping into the City however hard the Samosian Army tried to stop them from doing so.

  As he rode on, the Prince was thinking that the last thing he wanted was a dull English bride.

  If it had been a case of taking a Frenchwoman as his wife, he knew that, however difficult she might be, she would still be amusing.

  Her wit would keep him laughing even when things were at their most serious.

  Alternatively he had always had a special affection for the Greeks.

  When he was quite young,
he thought perhaps if he was lucky that he would find someone who resembled one of the Greek Goddesses themselves.

  She would keep him in love with her because she was so beautiful and because she understood love as only the Greeks seemed to be able to do.

  But it had been inevitable when he had watched the Princes in the other Principalities either topple completely in front of the Russian invasion or, if they were fortunate, be provided with an English wife who made the Russians turn round and return in haste to their own country rather than face British retribution.

  ‘I expect the Count has managed to find someone for me,’ he thought as he rode on.

  He was passing through the part of the country that he most admired.

  The rivers, wide and silver, rushed past as they coursed towards the sea.

  Every so often a stork rose from the riverside to fly high up into the mountains that still held a touch of the snow that had covered them in the winter.

  ‘I love my country,’ the Prince thought to himself as he rode on.

  At the same time it was demanding a sacrifice from him that he found hard to meet.

  He had always imagined that one day he would be married.

  His sons would learn how to ride from him, how to shoot and how to rule the people of Samosia in the same brilliant and outstanding way that their ancestors had done over the centuries.

  For his daughters he felt that it would be easy to find them handsome and enterprising husbands, who would make them happy.

  Their families would certainly make the Balkans more charming and delightful than they were already.

  ‘That is the life I want,’ he said to himself, as he pushed his horse forward.

  Then suddenly he felt that he must return quickly to the City in case anything had gone wrong whilst he had been staying with his friends.

  Not that something went wrong every day.

  But he thought when he retired to bed at night that his problems and worries were increasing.

  At the same time if only Queen Victoria would give him her blessing he knew that the Russians would then withdraw.

  And Samosia could then go back to being the quiet, happy and contented country it had been since his father’s time.

  ‘Why is this happening to me?’ he asked himself again.

  It was the same question that had been asked many times before.

  The Palace was now just ahead of him.

  He thought as he had thought so often that it was extremely attractive and romantic.

  ‘If only I had the time,’ he mused, ‘to choose the woman I want to marry. To love her with the love that has always eluded me and to have children who were the result of our loving each other, how marvellous everything would be.’

  Then he told himself with a cynical laugh that he was asking far too much.

  He would have to be content if his English bride was good-tempered, demure and obeyed him in things that appertained to the country and if she gave him an heir who would follow him when, like his father, he died.

  ‘I am still asking far too much,’ he told himself. ‘I must try to give anyone who has come from the Queen my admiration and respect even if I cannot love her, as I would want to do.’

  Now he was nearing The Palace and climbing up the hill towards the gates.

  He jumped off his horse at a side door where two sentries presented arms.

  His butler was waiting for him.

  “What has happened while I have been away?” he enquired.

  “Nothing very sensational, Your Royal Highness,” the butler replied to him. “But the Count has returned from England and, of course, will be anxious to see Your Royal Highness as soon as you have the time.”

  The Prince took off his riding jacket and gloves and gave them to the butler.

  “I will come and see him now,” he said. “Tell my secretaries I will be with them as soon as I have seen the Count.”

  The butler bowed.

  The Prince then walked into the garden.

  He proceeded towards the house where the Count lived without hurrying himself.

  He loved the house, as his mother had, the green lawns, the flowers, the trees and the sun shining on the lake and turning it to silver.

  It suddenly struck him that it would be an agony beyond words if he had to leave The Palace.

  And to be forced to leave his own country for ever.

  There were already a number of Balkan Princes in exile.

  Some of them wrote him pathetic letters asking for news of what was happening in their Principality now that the Russians were in charge.

  They were undoubtedly, as he was all too aware, extremely homesick.

  ‘I must never be like that,’ he reflected, ‘however boring and difficult my English bride will turn out to be, I must endeavour to make her happy.’

  And because he had loved his mother so deeply, the Prince had made the house she moved into when she had become a widow as beautiful as his Palace.

  At times he thought that it was even lovelier and more welcoming.

  Certainly the colours of the curtains and the covers of the furniture were all of the soft rose-pink that was her favourite colour.

  The carpets bore a touch of rose-pink too while he had chosen for her some of the best pictures that had in the past always been in The Palace.

  There was no barrier between The Palace and the house where his mother had lived and died.

  As he was walking on increasingly slowly because he was anticipating what he would hear from the Count, he suddenly realised that there was the sound of music coming from the music room of the Count’s house.

  As music was something he had always loved and this was particularly enchanting, he stood very still for a moment.

  He thought that he had never before heard the piano played so brilliantly.

  Nor had he heard music that seemed to enter into his very heart.

  As it was so entrancing, it was some time before he asked himself who it could possibly be.

  How could the Count have found anyone to play in such a marvellous and sublime way?

  The Prince must have stood there listening outside the house for over ten minutes.

  Then, because he was so curious as to who was the player, he passed quickly on and in through the door that led into a large hall.

  On the other side of it was the main entrance.

  As soon as he appeared, a man, who was one of the assistants to the Count, hurried forward to say as he bowed deeply,

  “Good afternoon, Your Royal Highness. We were hoping that you would return today as no one seemed to be aware of Your Royal Highness’s movements.”

  “Well, I am here,” the Prince said, “and I wish to speak with the Count.”

  “If you will come this way, Your Royal Highness, he is in his private sitting room.”

  “I know the way,” the Prince replied. “There is no need for you to accompany me.”

  He knew only too well as he spoke that he was familiar with every inch of this lovely house.

  It always pleased him that, when it had been given to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, there were very few alterations made.

  The house was almost exactly as it had been in his mother’s time.

  There appeared no one else about, so he opened the door of the sitting room and went in.

  The Count was sitting at his writing desk and then looked round to see who had entered.

  He sprang to his feet.

  “You are now back, thank goodness!” the Prince exclaimed. “I was worrying that too many things might happen before you could return and I only hope that you have brought good news with you.”

  “Very good news, indeed, Your Royal Highness,” the Count replied. “But we will have to wait a short time, perhaps two or three days, before Her Majesty the Queen answers our request completely.”

  He saw that the Prince was looking worried and added,

  “I remain almost certain, Your Roya
l Highness, that it will be exactly what we want. But naturally I only had a short time with Earl Granville and he had to discuss the matter with the Queen.”

  “I can understand that,” the Prince said. “The only thing that matters is your journey was not in vain.”

  “I think there is no doubt that Your Royal Highness will be pleased when we hear definitely that the Queen will give us her blessing and provide you with a bride, who will most assuredly be entitled to add the Union Jack to our own flag.”

  “That is all I want to hear, Count. You have done really splendidly in what I was terrified might be a useless and hopeless visit.”

  “I was very nervous myself, Your Royal Highness,” the Count told him. “But I feel sure that with God’s help everything will work out perfectly.”

  The Prince was smiling.

  Then he said,

  “I was hearing the most beautiful music when I was walking along outside the house just now. So beautiful that I just could not believe it was actually emanating from the window of your music room. Who can it possibly be and how could you have found someone who could play the piano so sublimely?”

  “Do come and meet her for yourself, Your Royal Highness,” the Count suggested. “I think that you will be as surprised as I was. Actually she has come here out of the kindness of her heart to teach my children to play the piano.”

  “If they can learn to play like that then they will be known all over the world,” the Prince commented.

  Smiling secretly to himself as this was exactly what he would like, the Count walked ahead to open the door for the Prince to pass through.

  Then he led him down the passage in the direction of the music room.

  Just before they reached it, the Count stopped and said,

  “I know that Your Royal Highness will excuse me, but someone is calling shortly with an important message and I must be there to receive it.”

  He paused before he added,

  “Your Royal Highness knows the way to the music room and do introduce yourself as I am sure that the player will be very honoured by your appreciation.”

  He did not wait for the Prince to reply, but hurried away as if he was feeling concerned that he might miss the messenger.

  The Prince put his hand on the door handle.