The fur rugs enveloped her and would, she decided, prove an almost insuperable obstacle to escape. There were two men on the sleigh, the driver and a groom, and now, since one of them had touched her, she was afraid of their violence.
She had always been afraid of the Russians – they were not like other men – and, as she remembered some of the things that Harry had said about them, she began to feel more frightened than ever.
It would be fruitless to question them as to where they were taking her, but, as they galloped over the open countryside, she knew with a premonition that could not be denied that her destination was to be Katharina’s country.
She wanted to scream then, not only in fear but in defiance. This was a violation of all civilised behaviour.
It was incredible and unbelievable that this should be happening to her, Wanda Schonbörn, in the nineteenth century.
‘We might be living in Medieval times that I can be spirited away without anything being done to prevent it!’ she told herself angrily.
Then she remembered something Richard had said when he and the Baroness were talking one evening about the Russians.
“We cannot judge them by European standards,” he remarked. “They are Orientals and their civilisation is Medieval. In another five hundred years they may have reached the standard that we have reached now. In the meantime, it is no use expecting them to be anything but – savages.”
Wanda shut her eyes for a moment.
What was she personally to expect from savage, uncivilised people? She felt herself tremble.
The hatred in Katharina’s eyes had been unmistakable and, although the Princess was left behind in Vienna, when she reached Russia, she knew that she would be unable to escape from the violence of that hatred.
It was to Russia that the sleigh was taking her, she was sure of that now and she began to pray as she had never prayed before that she might be saved.
She wondered how soon it would be before Richard found out that she had gone.
Harry had seen her go – that was her only hope.
‘Let him find me, dear God! Let him find me!’
Having her eyes closed in prayer, Wanda did not see the inn until the sleigh slowed down and came to a standstill in the yard.
Then she opened her eyes in astonishment at the lights and the grooms running to attend to the horses.
With a sudden wild hope in her heart, she sat up.
Here was a chance to escape, to cry for help, but, even as she moved, a heavy hand came down on her shoulder.
“If you make a sound,” a coarse guttural voice said fiercely in her ear, “I shall cover your mouth with my hand.”
That was all, but she knew that the man meant what he said and she could not bear to contemplate the horror of it.
With his high cheekbones and slit Mongolian eyes, his face was like that of some heathen idol, she thought, and she felt herself tremble with fear beyond anything she had ever known in her short sheltered life.
Fresh horses were harnessed to the sleigh, as the men took it in turns to go into the inn, one always remaining on the sleigh behind her.
She knew by the way they returned, wiping their mouths with the backs of their hands, that they had eaten and drunk.
Nothing was offered to her and she could not have taken it even if it had been. Her throat was closed with fear – she was conscious only of that heavy hand on her shoulder and the voice in her ear.
Then they went off again, driving into the darkness, the cold wind whistling in her face.
After some miles a piece of harness broke and there was a long delay while the sleigh was brought to a standstill and the Russians mended a broken trace.
Wanda thought that if Richard was following, this would enable him to catch up with her.
She kept looking over her shoulder at the road they had just come down.
‘Please, God, let him find me – please, God, please, please!’
But her prayers were apparently unheard.
The broken trace was repaired, the road behind was empty and they set off again.
Now their route lay up the steep hills and down again into deep valleys. Their pace was slower, the horses in some places picking their way with difficulty.
Finally they came to a great forest and, as they entered the dark impenetrability of it, Wanda heard the Russians talk to each other for the first time since they left Vienna.
She could not understand what they were saying, for they spoke in their native tongue, but she knew by the tone of their voices that something was amiss.
Then she heard the baying of the wolves and the horses pranced and reared as they heard them as well. Only the whip, used cruelly and persistently, drove them forward and made them obedient to the man who wielded it.
The baying came again and yet again.
Wanda looked back over her shoulder and saw that the Russian behind her had drawn his pistols and was holding them ready in his hands.
The wolves were drawing nearer.
Now she could see that they were running through the trees on either side of the sleigh, keeping level with the horses.
Their bodies were little more than black shadows flitting between the tree trunks, yet the night was suddenly hideous with the sound of their tongues.
The horses were bolting now, there was no need to whip them, no need to urge them on.
They were terrified, speeding through the darkness, striving to escape.
Wanda held her breath.
The pack was closing in, coming nearer and nearer.
Then the leader of the wolves sprang across the roadway.
The horses stopped suddenly, rearing in the air.
There was a crash as the sleigh slithered to a standstill, quivering, shaking and nearly overturning itself.
There was the sudden report of a shot, another and yet another.
Then Wanda found herself standing, clinging to the front of the sleigh, while the Russians fired and the horses plunged, twisted and reared before the snarling attacks of the hungry wolves.
Chapter 15
Richard heard the shots and drove his team forward at such a speed that it was only by a miracle that they kept on the road.
Without receiving any instructions the Russians in the sleigh began to prime their pistols and Richard in the sleigh wished that he himself had not come away unarmed.
Then, as they swung precariously round a corner, Richard was just able to pull his horses to a standstill, averting by a hair’s breadth a collision with Wanda’s sleigh, which stood in the middle of the road, encircled by the snarling wolves.
The trees in this part of the forest were not so thick and the moonlight managed to percolate through the interlocked boughs to show all too clearly what was happening.
The whinnying horses, wild with fright, were rearing amongst the debris of the broken harness and woodwork.
The sleigh-driver and his attendant groom were firing indiscriminately and without taking aim into the shadows, while Wanda, white-faced and frozen by sheer terror into immobility, stood clinging to the front of the sleigh, her cloak of white ermine making her conspicuous against the darkness.
The sudden appearance of another team of horses made the wolves, timid enough when the odds were against them, withdraw to a safe position amongst the trees.
They did not go far and it was easy, if one looked carefully, to see the glitter of their eyes and the slobber from their jaws.
They were waiting, ready to attack if the time should seem propitious, but they were prepared, for the moment, to allow the travellers a respite.
“Get to the horses’ heads,” Richard shouted to his grooms and they sprang to obey him, hanging on with difficulty as the horses began to shy and whinny, sensing the lurking danger on the other side of them.
When his team was more or less under control, Richard threw down the reins and stepped into the snow. As he passed one of his grooms, he took from him a loaded and cocked pistol
and, holding it in his right hand, walked to where Wanda’s escort stood staring at him.
He heard Wanda breathe his name in a choked voice, but he did not look at her, speaking only to the Russian driver standing at the back of the sleigh with the broken reins and a smoking pistol in his hands.
“His Imperial Majesty, the Czar, commands that this lady be taken back to Vienna,” Richard said in a tone of authority.
“I have my orders from His Highness Prince Volkonski,” the man replied in slow broken German.
“His Majesty is not concerned with the Prince’s instructions,” Richard retorted sternly.
He held out his left hand as he spoke so that the moonlight could glitter on his ring.
He saw by the expression on the man’s face that he recognised it, but he repeated,
“I am the Prince’s servant, mein herr, and the lady must go to Gruzino.”
“You will take your instructions from me, as I give them in the name of the Czar,” Richard replied.
As he spoke, he raised the pistol he held in his hand and, although the Russian’s secretive Mongolian expression did not alter, Richard knew that he had surrendered to the inevitable.
The pistols of both Prince Volkonski’s men were empty and besides, the Czar’s name was too awe-inspiring, too omnipotent, to warrant opposition.
Knowing, without the need for words, that he was victorious, Richard turned to Wanda.
“May I escort you to my sleigh, madame?” he asked formally, offering her his arm.
He saw her check the impulsive words that had risen to her lips and restrain the overwhelming relief that made her want to throw her arms round his neck.
With a dignity that made him proud of her, she answered in a soft voice,
“I am ready to obey His Imperial Majesty’s commands.”
Then her trembling fingers were on his arm and he was leading her through the snow to his own sleigh.
He handed her in and covered her with a rug before he turned to the senior of his two grooms.
“Tell those fellows they are to take their horses slowly to the next Posting inn and to wait there for further instructions,” he said. “Our other groom had best go with them. That will allow one to drive and two to keep the wolves at bay until they are out of the forest.”
“Very good, mein herr.”
The man, still hanging to the horses’ heads, gave the orders in fluent and forceful Russian.
Then, as the grooms let go of Richard’s team, he managed to turn them with the dexterity that had made him so brilliant with horseflesh.
As Prince Volkonski’s grooms watched them in surly silence, Richard’s man sprang onto the back of the sleigh and they galloped away on the road down they had just come down.
Only as they came out of the forest and into the open country, did Richard check the speed of his horses.
“His Imperial Majesty suggested that we return to Vienna by a different route from the one we left by,” he said to the groom. “He does not wish anyone to know that this lady has returned. How can we reach the South gates of the City?”
“There is a turn to the left a little further on, mein herr.”
“Do you know the road?” Richard enquired.
“Yes, mein herr, I have travelled it once or twice.”
“Good.”
Richard drew the horses to a standstill.
“You can drive,” he said.
The Russian took the reins while Richard climbed into the sleigh.
As he settled himself in beside Wanda under the heavy rug, he heard her draw in her breath excitedly.
She turned her face towards him, framed by a little bonnet of velvet trimmed with ermine and he could see in the light of the moon that her eyes were shining like stars.
“You – came!” she whispered. “I was praying and praying that you would come – and save me.”
“Did you doubt it?” he asked, forgetting in that moment his own fears that he might be too late and that he might fail to deliver her from the horrors of Gruzino.
“No, I was sure you would do so,” she answered. “Yet at the same time I was afraid – terribly afraid.”
“My darling, it is my fault. I should have married you a week ago,” he said, “the night after I had rescued you from the fire at the Razumovsky Palace.”
She was silent for a moment and then her hands sought and found his.
“Richard! You mean – can you mean that you will marry me now?”
“The very moment we arrive in Vienna,” he replied. “I have to be sure of you and to be in a position where I can protect you.”
“Oh, Richard!”
There was no need for her to say anything more.
The happiness on her face seemed to transfigure her.
“I love you, my darling,” he said, “Will that always be enough for you?”
“Always,” she answered. “What does anything else matter except that we love each other?”
“If you really believe that, then nothing else will matter. Dear God, I wish I had more to offer you!”
“You have everything – I want and need,” she sighed. “When you came towards me just now, I thought that there had never been a man like you – so brave, so strong and clever enough to find me – after I had been spirited away from the Baroness’ house in that terrible manner. How did you know where I had gone?”
“Harry told me that a sleigh had come for you,”
“The driver said that you were waiting for me at the Hofburg.”
“Harry told me that too. I went to the Hofburg and found that there had been a mistake.”
“It was so stupid of me not to suspect it might be a trick,” Wanda murmured.
She wondered if she should put her suspicions into words that it was Katharina who had sent the sleigh for her.
Then she decided to say nothing.
It was best not to mention names. They were talking in whispers and it seemed impossible that the man standing behind them with the wind in his face could hear anything, yet one never knew.
Wanda gave a little sigh of utter contentment. Richard was here, he had saved her, that was all that mattered.
And now she was to marry him, to be his wife.
She would be safe!
While to bear his name and belong to him would be a wonderful happiness beyond words.
She dropped her head against his shoulder.
She was thinking only of her utter and complete contentment.
But Richard was concerned with other and more frightening things.
“As soon as we are married,” he said slowly as if he were thinking aloud, “we must leave Vienna. We had best go to Brussels, I think. I have a slight acquaintance with the British Ambassador and I might persuade him to help us.”
“Why must we leave Vienna so quickly?” Wanda asked wonderingly. “The Baroness would be pleased to have us stay with her. I am sure that she is fond of us both.”
“No, we must leave.”
Richard did not wish to frighten Wanda by explaining in what jeopardy he had placed his own life.
He did not wish her to know that there was every likelihood of her becoming a widow almost as soon as she was a bride.
Prince Volkonski would never forgive the indignity of being pummelled into unconsciousness and locked in a cupboard.
Katharina, too, would want her revenge for being trussed up and gagged.
“No, we must get away,” Richard said again.
There was something so decisive in his voice that Wanda said no more.
She was not really concerned with their destination.
Once they were married, she was content to let him decide and plan their lives, asking only that she should be with him, wherever he might wish to wander.
“If only we could go home!” Richard cried suddenly.
It seemed to him intolerable that the peace and security of his own country were forbidden him.
Well might the English laugh at
foreigners, he thought, with their high emotions, their vendettas and vengeances, their intrigues and conspiracies.
In the Clubs of St. James’s they would laugh at the idea that he must go in fear of his life because a Russian Princess loved him and a Russian Prince disliked him.
They would not believe the stories he could tell of plot and counter-plot, of kidnappings and last-minute rescues or of the desperate measures they must now take to escape retaliation.
No one in England would credit such dramas and yet they were happening to Richard Melton, an ordinary Englishman and the woman he loved – an unimportant girl by the name of Wanda Schonbörn.
“If only we could go home to England!”
Richard repeated the words, following the train of his own thoughts, which brought him back always to the same point, to a yearning for home and for his own people.
“Is there no hope?” Wanda asked.
“None!”
He had told her already what had occurred that night when he had gone in search of his cousin and had been made the scapegoat of a crime he had not committed.
“Suppose you went to the Prince Regent yourself and told him what had happened?” she suggested.
“That is what Harry is always asking me to do,” Richard said, “but Prinny would not believe me.”
His voice was so bitter for the moment, remembering how easy it had been for the Prince Regent to be gracious in the past when he had been in favour and his reputation unblemished.
“Curse all Princes, Kings and Emperors,” he asserted. “Why need we concern ourselves with them? All we ask is to be left alone, to live out our lives in obscurity and happiness.”
“We are happy,” Wanda said soothingly. “So perhaps it would not be fair if we had everything else as well.”
He smiled at that and his dark thoughts went from him and he turned to look into her eyes.
“You are right,” he said. “It would not be fair that I should have you and everything else as well.”
“Something will happen to help us, I am sure of it,” Wanda said. “We have been through so much already and yet we have found each other and we are together.”
“And we will be together for ever, my darling. Will you promise not to tire of me?”
The Enchanted Waltz Page 22