“This is symbolic,” the Prince explained, “of a people sticking together in adversity and supporting one another.”
The women joined in for a dance performed in a circle while a male leader waved a handkerchief, swirling, pointing and lunging as if brandishing a sword with a remarkably acrobatic skill.
While he did so, a chain of dancers shuffled around, their arms entwined and they were accompanied by a lyre, drums, a clarinet and a very scratchy violin.
The Greek dances went on for a long time and, while the Prince refused to take part because he did not wish to leave Angelina, Captain Soutsos was dancing as energetically as the rest.
Angelina noticed that he was smiling at a very pretty young girl who seemed, however much the dancers twisted and turned, always to be at his side.
She was watching wide-eyed when the Prince said quietly in her ear,
“Shall we go?”
“Can we?” Angelina asked.
As the music came to an end, the Prince rose to his feet.
He made a short speech in Greek and because he spoke so clearly, Angelina understood quite a lot of what he said.
He thanked the Cephalonians for inviting him and told them how much he appreciated their loyalty and their continued love of their country.
He said that he would take home with him the conviction that Cephalonians would always be the same, wherever they might find themselves. And they would never lose their initiative, their courage and their patriotism.
The Prince’s speech was hailed with cries of “Bravo!” and as with Angelina beside him they walked down the centre of the room, the guests with their hands held above their heads, clapped them all the way to the door.
Only as they reached it and Captain Soutsos joined them did the Prince say,
“You stay, Aristotelis. As far as you are concerned, the night is still young and there are many other places in London tonight where you will enjoy yourself.”
“You are quite certain, sir, that I should not accompany you home?” the aide-de-camp asked.
“I assure you that in the morning I will cover up any of your deficiencies in that respect,” the Prince replied.
Captain Soutsos stole a quick glance at Angelina and she knew that he realised that the Prince did not want him with them any more than he wished to return to the Ministry.
“Thank you, sir,” he bowed. “Goodnight, Miss Medwin.”
“Goodnight, Captain,” Angelina replied.
They stepped into the carriage and, after Twi-Twi had joined them from the box where he had been sitting beside Alexis, they drove off.
The Prince waited until they were out of sight of the restaurant, then put his arm about Angelina and drew her against him.
“At last!” he said. “I thought we should never have a chance of being alone.”
Her heart had started beating frantically and, at the first touch of his arm, she felt the lightning flash through her and an overwhelming excitement rising in her throat.
“I love you!” the Prince signed. “I can think of nothing else to say except that I love you!”
“It has – been a very – long day,” Angelina whispered.
“I know, I know,” he said. “It was an unbelievable agony to sit in the Council Chamber listening to Costas drooling on about his troubles and the Prime Minister wanting to talk of nothing but my marriage.”
Angelina did not speak and the Prince went on as if he felt that she must know what had been happening.
“There was a letter from my cousin, Theodoros, today. He says that he has something of very great importance to tell me, something that concerns the revolutionary element in the South of the island.”
“What do you think it is?” Angelina asked.
“I have no idea,” the Prince answered, “but it means, my precious, that I shall have to return to Cephalonia as soon as the Coronation is over.”
“Oh – no – no!”
She knew, even as he spoke, that this was what she had anticipated. He would have to leave and she might never see him again.
“What can I do?” the Prince asked. “I can hardly write and say that I am no longer vitally concerned with the trouble in Cephalonia, because I am in love.”
He pulled her close against him as he spoke and looked down into her face to say,
“Yet you know that is true.”
She could see him quite clearly by the light from the gas lamps and illuminations which swept away so much of the darkness that even the inside of their closed carriage seemed filled with light.
“I love you too,” Angelina said, “but I know that you have to do your duty to your country, and we – have to be – brave.”
“My sweet! My precious!” the Prince cried. “Was there ever anyone like you?”
His last words were lost against her lips, as his mouth took possession of hers.
He kissed her until once again he swept her up into the sky and she could think of nothing but the wonder and glory that surrounded them.
She knew that this was what she had been praying for and yearning for all day and all night, but had been afraid at the back of her mind that nothing could ever be quite so wonderful and so ecstatic as their kiss in St. James’s Park.
But now she felt new emotions awakening within her, sensations that she did not know even existed.
Their love seemed to grow and expand until it carried them ever higher and higher into the sky.
The Prince must have instructed Alexis before they left the mews not to carry them home too quickly and, when Angelina came back to earth, she realised that they were in darkness as they were no longer passing through the streets.
Instead they were driving through Hyde Park, travelling she thought, the long way round.
“I cannot leave you,” the Prince murmured.
Then with a deep sigh he asked,
“Why could I not have fallen in love with someone I should be allowed to marry? Or else with someone I could have taken back with me to Cephalonia and kept secretly near the Palace, so that whenever I was free, we could be together?”
Angelina was still for a moment and then she said in a very small voice,
“Are you – asking me – to do that?”
“No,” the Prince said positively, “I told you, my precious one, that I would never hurt you and neither would I insult you or our love by suggesting such a thing.”
He made a little sound that was half a groan and half a cry of despair.
“I am only saying aloud that there are barriers around you that I cannot cross and, even if I could, I would want to leave you as you are, pure and untouched, my Persephone who belongs to me with her heart, her soul and her mind.”
That was true, Angelina thought, and she understood exactly what he was trying to say to her. But she knew, as he did, that there was no solution.
She could not help thinking, however, that it would be very wonderful to be with him even as his mistress.
Then she knew, even if she agreed to such an idea, it would soil the perfection of their love and the sanctity that underlay their kiss and their feelings towards each other.
“Perhaps,” she said hesitatingly after a moment, “if – if we cannot – be together in this life – there will be – others.”
“Is that enough for you or for me?” the Prince asked. “I want you now! I want you so violently, so uncontrollably, Angelina, that, after I take you home tonight, I can never see you again.”
Angelina gave a little cry.
“D-do you – mean that?”
“I knew last night when I let you go without kissing you again,” he said, “that I had reached breaking point.”
There was a raw agony in his voice that made her slip her fingers into his and hold onto him tightly.
“I am not an Englishman,” the Prince said. “I am a Greek and my love is something greater than myself, greater than my pride and perhaps even my honour.”
His voice deepened as he w
ent on,
“I want you, Angelina! I want you, not only as a Goddess in a shrine at which I worship, but as a woman. I want you to belong to me, not only with your mind, as you already do, but with your lovely exquisite body.”
He spoke with a violence that made Angelina think that, if she did not love him so overwhelmingly, she might have been afraid of him.
Instead she only pressed herself a little closer to him and tightened her fingers on his.
“Even if I had not had a letter from my cousin urging me to return immediately,” the Prince said, “I should have gone the day after tomorrow.”
Angelina felt her lips were too stiff and dry to reply, but somehow she managed to say,
“I-I understand.”
“Do you?” the Prince asked. “No, it is impossible! You are too pure and innocent, Angelina, to know that I am being tempted by all the devils in hell to take you while I have the opportunity!”
There was silence before he went on in a quieter tone,
“But between us, there stands an angel with a flaming sword. Your angel, my darling, who is protecting you, even if you are unaware of it, from a man who is burning in the unquenchable fire of hell.”
He raised her hand to his lips as he spoke and kissed it passionately and possessively and she knew that, as he was determined to control himself, he dared not kiss her lips.
The carriage had come to a standstill beside the bridge of the Serpentine. The Prince looked out through the open window and Angelina could see the water glimmering silver beneath the moon and the stars.
“I thought before we set out tonight,” he said hoarsely, ‘that I could walk with you under the trees to where we sat that first magical afternoon when I told you about myself and you tried to help me.”
He kissed her hand again before he said,
“But instead, you made me fall so deeply and wildly in love with you that I know I never will love another woman.”
“I want you to be – happy,” Angelina muttered.
“That will be impossible,” the Prince replied, “since I cannot live with you and, loving you as I do, I dare not go with you now out into the moonlight.”
“I – want to be with you – beside the – w-water,” Angelina whispered.
“Don’t tempt me,” the Prince cried almost roughly. “I have already said, Angelina, that I am weak and, if I touch you, if I hold you close to me and there is nothing to restrain me, I may do something that we should both of us regret afterwards.”
There was a look in his eyes and an expression on his face that she had not seen before. By the light of the moon that faintly came in through the carriage window, she thought for the moment that he looked sinister.
Then she knew that whatever he did, whatever he said, however uncontrolled he might be, she still loved him.
But she understood even better than he did that their love must not be spoiled.
With an effort that seemed almost to tear her apart, she said in a low voice,
“Let’s go – back.”
The Prince bent forward and knocked on the wall of the carriage above Twi-Twi’s head.
The horse moved forward and crossed over the Serpentine and, as they drove into the light from the gas lamps, Angelina could see that the Prince’s expression was grim and stern.
He looked immeasurably older and she thought that the lines on his face were sharply etched because they were lines of pain.
They drove in silence and yet she was tinglingly aware that their hands were touching and that he held her close against him.
They were driving back through the street lights and yet Angelina felt as if they had both stepped from the light into a darkness that would encompass them both for the rest of their lives.
“Will you watch me going to the Abbey tomorrow?” the Prince asked at length. “I would rather you did not.”
“I – m-must see – you,” Angelina said. “And you – promised me my – little bit of the – Coronation.”
“To me it might as well be a funeral pyre,” the Prince said savagely.
Angelina drew in her breath.
“Please will you – listen to me – for a moment?”
“You know I will listen to your voice as I always shall whenever I am alone,” the Prince replied.
“Then you must not – fight against the – impossible,” Angelina said. “It will – only harm you – like hitting your head against a brick wall. We have to accept that – this is Fate – and there is nothing we can – do about it.”
“You are very wise, my darling,” he said, “but I cannot control my own feelings.”
“You are controlling them,” Angelina replied very softly.
He turned to look at her for the first time since they had left the Serpentine and now he said in a very different tone of voice,
“I love you, I admire you, I worship you! Everything about you is perfect, so absolutely right. You are not only saying the right thing, but you are thinking it. It is there in the light which always envelops you, the light that I can never escape from until my dying day.”
“Do you – want to?” Angelina asked. “Are you – sorry we – met each other?”
“Sorry?” the Prince cried. “It is the most wonderful thing that has ever come into my life and I know, Angelina, that even when you are not there, you will inspire me to do what is right.”
He made a gesture with his hands, as if he knew that there was no point in stating the obvious.
“The legends of Greece are usually tragic and end unhappily,” he said. “We are part of our own legend, but because of you, and this is true, Angelina, I shall try to be a better Ruler and a better man than I have been in the past.”
“Do – you mean – that?”
“I mean it because it is true,” he answered, “and you are right, we shall meet again because what we feel for each other is greater than the confines of the body, greater than death.”
Angelina felt the tears come into her eyes and then, as the carriage entered Belgrave Square, the Prince turned her face up to his.
“Goodbye, my dearest, my most perfect and only love!” he said. “You will always be with me and I with you. Perhaps one day we shall find each other again.”
He kissed her as he spoke, but very differently from the way he had kissed her before.
It was the kiss of a man who pledges himself to an ideal that is so sacred that it evokes no other emotion within him.
The carriage came to a standstill and Angelina knew that this was the end.
There was nothing more to say, nothing that could alter their future.
The Prince stepped out of the carriage and opened the garden door.
For a moment they looked at each other and she thought that there was an infinite sadness in his expression that she had not seen before.
Then, without speaking, she moved into the garden and heard the door close behind her.
Chapter Six
“It’s a nice mornin’. Miss Angelina, just as I told you it’d be,” Emily said, as she pulled back the curtains.
Angelina lay with her eyes still closed and did not move.
She did not wish to face the world.
She only wanted to stay asleep and to forget that she had to wake up to the loneliness and the misery of knowing that she would never be with the Prince again.
Last night, when she had climbed into bed, she had cried until she was exhausted and her pillow was wet with tears.
Then she had forced herself to dream back into the moments of wonder when he had kissed her and when it had been impossible to think of anything but the closeness of him.
But she could not shut out from her mind or from her soul the passionate violence in his voice when he had said that he wanted her to belong to him or the knowledge within herself that it was what she wanted too.
They were one and she knew that neither of them would ever be complete without the other.
But tomorrow he would go bac
k to Cephalonia and she would be left in England and there would be half Europe lying between them and a loneliness that was beyond expression.
She could not help feeling that if she was the one to be in Greece it would have been easier to bear.
There would be the light, the feeling of being close to the Gods and the inescapable knowledge that all things pass in time.
Then she told herself that wherever either of them were it would still be the same. They needed each other and she believed the Prince when he claimed that she inspired him.
It was not just she herself alone who brought that about, it was love that was greater than either of them, the love that came from God and was so Divine that it made the Prince treat her as something sacred.
But because he was a man and a very masculine and virile man, he desired her as a woman.
“Now what’ll you be wearin’ today, Miss Angelina?” Emily asked, breaking in on her thoughts.
Angelina wanted to reply that all she wished for was sackcloth and ashes, but she knew that Emily would not understand and would be shocked by such a remark.
Although she longed to tell the old housemaid to go away and leave her alone, she knew that it would be unkind.
She remembered too that if she did not wish to get up and face the world, Twi-Twi who had jumped down from her bed as soon as Emily opened the door, would want to go out.
He expected her life to revolve around him with a punctuality that made him resent it if she was ever late.
“Which gown do you think I ought to wear, Emily?” Angelina asked, although she had no interest in what to choose.
Yesterday she had chosen what she thought was her prettiest day dress because she had hoped that the Prince might see her and last night she had known by the look in his eyes that she had chosen the right gown to go with him to the Cephalonian restaurant.
Today there would be only the servants to notice if she was wearing a pretty dress or her nightgown.
It came to her mind almost with a feeling of horror that this evening she would have to dress up to dine with Lord and Lady Hewlett.
How could she make herself pleasant to the men who would sit on either side of her and to those who later would ask her to dance, when all she longed for was to be in the Prince’s arms?
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