Princes and Princesses: Favourite Royal Romances Read online

  She thought as she spoke that perhaps it sounded rather forward to admit such a thing.

  Then she told herself she wanted to be honest and straightforward with the Prince and not pretend to be coy as perhaps another woman might have been.

  The Prince took a small sip of his brandy.

  Then he said,

  “I told you this afternoon that I wanted to tell you the whole story of myself. Do you really want to hear it or will it bore you?”

  “Nothing you told me would bore me,” Angelina replied. “You also said I might be able to – help you and that is what I – desperately want to do.”

  “Why desperately?” the Prince asked.

  Angelina dropped her eyes before his.

  “I was – thinking this afternoon that I would want to help – anyone who was in trouble,” she said. “But I particularly want to help you – because you are – Greek.”

  “And also, I hope, because I am me?”

  Angelina smiled.

  “That is obvious. I don’t know any other Princes.”

  “That is not what I meant,” he said. “I would want you to help me whether I was a Prince or a commoner.”

  Because he seemed to be echoing Angelina’s own thoughts earlier in the day, she looked at him wide-eyed.

  Then she said,

  “Please let me help. It seems absurd that I might be – able to do so – and yet sometimes we are helped in ways we do not – expect.”

  “As I did not expect you.”

  The Prince looked at her for a moment and then he said,

  “Very well, let me start at the beginning. My family have been the hereditary Rulers of Cephalonia for hundreds of years, although, of course, the seven Ionian Islands have been colonised many times in their history.”

  “First they were under the protection of Venice,” Angelina murmured.

  The Prince smiled, as if he was pleased that she was so knowledgeable.

  “Then the French,” he said, “followed by the English, but your country gave Cephalonia back to us in 1864.”

  “And now you must keep it,” Angelina urged him positively.

  “That is, of course, what I feel,” the Prince agreed, “and my cousin Theodoros Vlachos is fanatical on the subject.”

  He paused for a moment and then went on,

  “It was only at the end of my father’s reign, and now in mine, that there have been any difficulties and anyone had wished to surrender our Royal independence to the Government in Athens.”

  “You must not do that,” Angelina said quickly.

  “It will not be easy to prevent it,” the Prince replied, “and yet it is difficult to understand why this revolutionary spirit and this dissension have suddenly arisen.”

  He was silent for a moment, as if he was thinking over what had occurred.

  Then he said,

  “You may perhaps have wondered why for such a small country, we have such an impressive Ministry.”

  “Grandmama said that she was surprised when we first learnt who had come next door.”

  “That was due to one of my own relatives,” the Prince said. “Our family name is Vlachos and there are a large number of them in Cephalonia, but my cousin Theodoros Vlachos is rather different from the others.”

  “In what way?” Angelina enquired.

  “Because,” the Prince explained, “he is an extremely rich man. He first made a lot of money abroad in shipping. Then, when he came home, he was afraid that our island might lose our own Government and our own Ruling House, although of course, we are Greeks and acknowledge King George I.”

  There was something in the way the Prince said the King’s name that made Angelina remember that George I was Danish not Greek.

  It was, she recalled, the British who had secured the election of Prince William George of Holstein-Glucksburg, son of the King of Denmark, to the Greek throne.

  It was after his accession as George I, that the Ionic Islands were ceded to Greece by the British.

  “Why does your cousin feel so strongly about this?” Angelina enquired.

  “Mostly because of the trouble in Crete. Theodoros was horrified that the King’s second son should have become High Commissioner under the Sureizing of the Sultan and he is terrified that the same thing might happen in Cephalonia.”

  “I can understand his feelings,” Angelina murmured.

  “He has therefore persuaded a number of European powers, including Britain, to recognise Cephalonia as an independent part of Greece.”

  The Prince smiled as he added,

  “It was my cousin who built the new Cephalonian Ministry, something my Government could not have afforded.”

  The Prince paused for a moment and then he said,

  “It is also my cousin who is anxious for me to marry. He and the Prime Minister are convinced that it could disperse the revolutionary element on the island.”

  “Do all your Statesmen agree?” Angelina asked.

  “The majority of them follow where the Prime Minister leads. There is however, one who is against it.”

  “Who is that?” Angelina asked, feeling that she must show an intelligent interest in what he was saying.

  “A man called Kharilaos Costas,” the Prince replied. “He is the Foreign Minister and will be arriving at the Ministry tonight.”

  “And he does not wish you to marry?”

  “No, he was violently against it from the very beginning,” the Prince replied. “I don’t like the man, but I respect his views on this particular subject.”

  He spoke almost to himself, then he looked at Angelina and added,

  “It is a rather complicated story, but then, as you know, all Greek stories are. There is a great deal more I could tell you, but that is the broad outline.”

  “What it really amounts to,” Angelina said, “is that your cousin, whom you obviously cannot afford to offend, wants you to marry and make quite certain that your Royal heritage is not swept away by a revolutionary group.”

  “That is putting it in a nutshell,” the Prince agreed, “and the only person who suffers is me!”

  “You may find – someone you love,” Angelina suggested.

  “I have!” the Prince answered. “But I cannot marry her!”

  There was an almost frightening silence.

  Then, as Angelina’s eyes met his, he said very quietly,

  “I fell in love the moment I saw you!”

  Chapter Four

  “It – is not – true!” Angelina stammered in a frightened little voice.

  “It is true!” the Prince answered. “When I saw you standing in the Ministry hall, it was as if a light enveloped you.”

  He paused for a moment looking at Angelina in a way that made her tremble.

  Then he continued,

  “The air of Cephalonia quivers with a brilliant yet soft light that is famous all over Greece. I had never seen it anywhere else in the world until I saw you.”

  “H-how can you – say things like that?” Angelina asked, almost beneath her breath.

  “You are so beautiful,” the Prince replied, “so exactly what I have been looking for all my life and now, when I have found you, I can do nothing about it.”

  There was a throb of pain in his voice that made Angelina want to put out her hands towards him.

  She could not bear him to suffer. She could not bear to think that she was making him unhappy.

  “It is agony to look at you,” he went on, “agony to know that you can never be mine and yet in a way, it is a wonder beyond words to know that you exist and to know that there is someone like the Goddesses who I have believed in all my life.”

  Angelina clasped her hands together.

  The Prince’s voice seemed to vibrate through her and she felt her whole being respond to it, as if not she, but he was the light of Apollo, which draws all human beings with its brilliance.

  She knew, because she had read about it so often, that to the Greeks light meant more
than to any other people in the world.

  As if once again the Prince sensed what she was thinking, he said,

  “Homer described the Goddess Athene as the ‘bright-eyed one’, and Helen as wearing ‘a shining veil’. To me you are encircled with that same light, the light that is so intense and so pure that it comes from the very heat of the sun.”

  Angelina could only look at him transfixed by what he was saying.

  She had never thought, never imagined, that anyone could speak to her in such a way, let alone the Prince.

  “I love you!” he went on. “I love you until nothing else seems of any importance and yet what can I do?”

  It was a cry that seemed to come from the very depths of his being and, as Angelina responded to it with her heart, her brain told her that she had to help him and that she was the one who must be strong.

  It was she who must tell him what he had to do and strengthen him to do his duty towards his country.

  She clasped her hands together for fear that without her conscious volition they should reach out to touch him.

  Then she said,

  “Whatever we – feel for each – other, Cephalonia – must come first.”

  “We feel for each other?” the Prince repeated. “Tell me, my lovely little Persephone, what you feel for me.”

  His tone was insistent and demanding and Angelina could not look at him.

  “Tell me,” he said again.

  For a moment she hesitated and then, because she knew that he was waiting and because she was still acutely conscious that he was suffering, she whispered,

  “I – love you!”

  He closed his eyes for a second, as if he could not bear the beauty of her face or the softness in her eyes when she spoke the words he longed to hear.

  Before he could speak Angelina went on,

  “But, as you say, there is nothing we can do about it. You have to marry the – right person who will save Cephalonia from the – revolutionaries.”

  “I know that is what I must do,” the Prince said in a dull voice. “But what about you? What will happen to you, Angelina?”

  She did not answer and he continued,

  “You will marry, of course you will marry, but I cannot bear to think of it.”

  Angelina did not reply, but she thought that it was unlikely she would ever find anyone who would wish to marry her and she would spend the rest of her many years alone in her grandmother’s house.

  She would be surrounded by old people and have no one to talk to except Twi-Twi.

  “For my peace of mind,” the Prince said, as if he followed her train of thought, “it is easier to think of you reading in bed, tending your grandmother and walking in the garden alone with your dog, except that perhaps another man will meet you there, as I did.”

  “If I met a – hundred men,” Angelina said, “none would be like – you.”

  It was true, she thought, as she said it. There could never be anyone like the Prince, not only because he was so handsome, so different with his square shoulders and dark eloquent eyes from any man she had seen before.

  But there was, she knew, also a magnetic link between them that had been there from the very first moment when she had turned round in the hall with Twi-Twi in her arms to find him standing in front of her.

  Their eyes had met and she had felt something strange happen to her heart.

  She had not realised it at the time, but now she thought that it was the moment when the arrow of love had pierced her and nothing could ever be the same again.

  She remembered too the little shaft of lightning which she had felt flash through her body when the Prince had touched her hand.

  She had experienced the same feeling when he had turned her round in the carriage so that she should not look at the decorations but at him.

  ‘We belong,’ she told herself fervently.

  She thought that, if it was an agony for him to leave her, it would be even worse for her to lose him.

  He would have other things in his life – his country, his people, the endless duties that must occupy a Ruler, and of course, the necessity of finding a wife.

  She felt as if her whole being cried out at the thought of him married to somebody else – to a woman who, even if she grew to care for him, would never love him in the same way as she did.

  It was not only that their bodies vibrated to each other, their minds were attuned in a manner that made him know what she was thinking in the same way that she could be perceptive and understanding about him.

  “If I was an ordinary man,” the Prince said now, “and had met you at a ball or in the garden because we were both living in the same square, would you marry me?”

  “You – know the answer to – that question,” Angelina replied, “but we must not – think about it – because it will only make us – unhappy.”

  “Am I making you unhappy?” the Prince asked.

  Angelina looked at him and he saw the answer in her eyes.

  “It is wrong and cruel of me!” he exclaimed. “I wanted to bring you happiness, to make this a perfect evening for you to remember, as I shall always remember it.”

  He gave a deep sigh.

  “I told myself when I was dressing and looking forward so impatiently to seeing you again that I would not tell you of my true feelings. We would laugh and talk and it would be a night of gladness. Nothing else.”

  He sighed again.

  “But, when you came to me looking so beautiful with flowers in your hair, all my resolutions flew away as if on wings and I only wanted to talk to you of my love for you.”

  “It is – something I shall – always remember,” Angelina sighed.

  The Prince suddenly brought his fist hard down on the table making her start and the coffee cups rattle.

  “Don’t speak like that!” he said fiercely. “You are putting everything in the past tense. We still have the present, this moment, tonight, tomorrow and the day after until I am forced to return to Cephalonia.”

  Angelina turned her face away from him to gaze at the restaurant, but she did not see the people dining there or the waiters moving swiftly amongst the tables.

  She saw only the emptiness and the quietness of the house where she lived and what it would be like when there was no one of any interest to look at next door and no one waiting for her in the garden.

  “Whatever happens in the – future,” she declared bravely, “as you have said, we shall always have – this to remember – and I could never – forget.”

  “Nor could I,” the Prince answered. “I realise that I have been vouchsafed a glimpse of Heaven that few men have in their lifetime.”

  He smiled, but it was merely a bitter twist of his lips.

  “I came to England full of resentment and anger,” he said, “because I expected that, while I was here, I would be obliged to meet the woman I was to marry for political reasons.”

  He made a gesture with his hands as he went on,

  “Then what happened? I thought that I had left behind everything that meant anything to me, the light of Greece, glittering transparent and quivering, that I thought was not to be found anywhere else in the world, until I saw you!”

  “Did I – really seem to shine with – a light?” Angelina asked.

  “To me it was blindingly clear,” the Prince answered. “It was the light in you that the Ancient Greeks believed made their eyes see further and gave their bodies unsuspected powers.”

  “You could not – say anything more – wonderful to me.”

  She thought as she spoke, that she might tell the Prince her secret.

  Then it struck her that he might be shocked or perhaps it would detract from her some of the light that he now saw her surrounded by.

  It was what she had longed for and what sometimes she felt she herself could see in the stars overhead, in the glimmer of water and which was at times translated into music like a light in her ears.

  Because she had read so muc
h about Greece and its ancient mysteries, she understood exactly what the Prince was saying to her.

  His tone of voice and the look in his eyes told her that he was not just paying her a compliment, but was speaking with a sincerity that came from the very depths of his heart.

  Yet what he was saying astonished her.

  The light of Greece and the glory of the Gods were all hidden secretly within her mind. She had never spoken of them to anyone and thought it unlikely that she would ever be able to do so.

  Even when she had imagined, as other girls did, that one day she would fall in love, she never dreamt that she would be able to talk to her husband of such things, knowing that an Englishman like her father would not understand.

  He would have laughed at her for being childish or been suspicious that she was not normal, in fact, slightly freakish.

  But the Prince not only understood, he went further and it occurred to Angelina that she could have learnt from him so many things that she herself could not understand.

  But there would now be no time to hear them.

  “What can we do?” the Prince asked, breaking in on her thoughts. “What can we do, Angelina? For God knows I cannot imagine life without you.”

  “You will have – Cephalonia,” Angelina replied, “and we are really of little – importance beside the safety of your – mountainous Paradise.”

  “My people suffered so severely under the Turks. It must never happen again.”

  “Of course not,” Angelina said quickly. “But I understand that the Germans favour the Turks.”

  She saw the darkness and anger in the Prince’s expression and wished that she had kept silent.

  “The Turks are still a menace to us,” he said, “and the Germans are jealous of your power and your colonies.”

  “I know.”

  “So much hatred, so little love.”

  As he spoke, the Prince put his hand out towards Angelina and, knowing what he wanted, she laid her own hand in his.

  She felt the shaft of lightning sweep through her, which was very wonderful.

  “I love you!” the Prince said in his deep voice, “and because I love you so overwhelmingly, my darling, I will do nothing to hurt you, nothing, if I can help it, that will make you unhappy.”