In which case, if she intended to ride hard and fast, she would not need more than her blouse to cover her.
There would be nobody to see her anyway.
She pinned her hair tightly at the back of her head and did not wear a hat.
When she was ready, she left her room very quietly so that no one would hear her.
She moved along the corridor to where there was a secondary staircase as she knew that there would be a footman on duty in the hall.
As she went, she glanced in a mirror and thought that her face was very pale.
Her eyes seemed enormous and she knew that the darkness in them was due to the pain that she was suffering.
It made her feel as if there were a hundred arrows piercing her heart all at the same time.
She found her way without any difficulty to the door the Prince had taken her through on the first day she had arrived at the stables.
By the time she reached them the sun was shining and turning everything to gold.
It was far too early for Herr Hévis to be about.
She was to find a stable boy who had been on duty during the night.
She told him that she wanted to ride Nyul the grey she had ridden on the first afternoon.
By the time that Nyul was ready and saddled, another groom appeared and asked if he should accompany her on her ride.
She understood enough Hungarian to tell him that she was only going a little way and so wished to be on her own.
She thought that he looked surprised, but he was young and did not expostulate as Herr Hévis would have done.
She trotted out of the stables on the superb grey and forced herself to think of nothing except the horse she was riding.
“Now I can forget everything except you,” she told Nyul affectionately.
She rode through the paddocks and out through the way they had been before to reach the meadowland.
The rising sun had already brought out the butterflies and they were all fluttering over the flowers.
Just as they had done when before they rose in front of her like an elusive cloud.
The birds, disturbed by her approach, then soared up into the sky.
Nyul was fresh and Aletha gave him his head.
He sprang forward and she was riding as swiftly as the flight of a bird.
On and on they went until Aletha felt as if the hard lump of misery within her breast had softened a little.
Now the sunshine was dazzling her eyes and she thought that the beauty all around her was some consolation for the darkness and dread within her heart.
She rode on further and further deep in her thoughts.
Suddenly in the distance she saw coming towards her two men on horseback.
She thought it an intrusion that they should be encroaching on her.
For the moment she was in a sombre world where she was completely alone.
She was just about to turn round and go back to The Palace the way she had come.
Then she realised that there was something familiar about the two riders.
As she stared in their direction, she recognised with a sensation of shock that one of them was the Baron.
He was riding a very large stallion which she recalled as being the best in his stables and
the groom beside him also rode a horse that was larger than the average.
There was no doubt that it was the man who she had no wish ever to see again.
Then she became aware that the Baron had seen her.
The two horsemen were still quite some distance away, but she saw him bringing down his whip sharply on the stallion.
He spoke to his groom who also swept forward at the same time moving out from beside him.
It was then that Aletha’s intuition told her that she was in danger.
Almost as if she had heard the order that the Baron gave, she knew that he intended to come up on one side of her and the groom on the other.
Then she would be totally helpless and at their mercy.
Without wasting any more time she turned Nyul’s head for The Palace.
As she did so, she realised that she had come much further than she had at first intended.
The Palace was not yet in sight and she was no longer at the point where the Prince had turned to take them back by a different route.
She galloped for some distance and then looked back.
The Baron was far nearer to her than he had been before and he was bending over his horse and riding almost jockey-style to overtake her.
She was aware then that her distinct sense of danger had not been mistaken.
She shuddered to think what might happen if she became a captive of the Baron.
It might be a long tune before Mr. Heywood or anyone else in The Palace had any idea of where she had been taken to.
‘Help me – oh, God – help me!’ she prayed as she heard the Baron’s horse thundering along behind her and still gaining on her.
Nyul was certainly doing his best.
At the same time they had already ridden for a long way at full gallop before Aletha had become aware of the Baron.
Now Aletha was riding faster than she had ever done in her whole life.
Yet she knew that the Baron was closing the gap between them.
She thought as she tried to go faster still that she would rather die than be in his power.
*
Prince Miklós had also spent a sleepless night in his large four-poster bed.
When he had left Aletha amongst the orchids in the glasshouse, he had walked blindly across the garden.
He wanted to get away from the music and the sound of laughter.
He knew realised too well that what he was doing would break his heart and haunt him forever.
But he had been brought up to really appreciate how great his heritage was.
It had been drummed into him that he must dedicate his whole life to being as fine and brave as his ancestors had been before him.
His father had said to him when he was a small boy that whatever sacrifices he had to make he must accept them all willingly and not complain. He must not fail those who had preceded him and those who would follow him in later generations.
Prince Miklós had not quite understood at the time.
He had, however, learnt as he grew older that his duty to his family was more important than his own desires and wishes.
At school he had worked not for himself.
But by being as clever and intelligent as his father, he would not fail the family when it came to his turn to be the reigning Prince.
Of course there had been women in his life.
From the moment he was old enough they had pursued him, had tried to seduce him and make themselves indispensable to him.
They captured his body and he found them fascinating and intriguing.
But a critical part of his brain told him that they were not good enough for the position that he had to offer.
His mother had been of Royal blood and she had loved her husband and her family more than anything in the world.
For Miklós she was the standard by which he judged every woman who was offered to him as a wife.
He always found them all to be lacking.
He knew now that he would never love anyone as he loved Aletha.
From the very first moment that they had met he had known that they were already part of one another.
As he had told her, he had seen her enveloped with a Divine light.
When she came to The Palace, he could read her thoughts and sense her feelings.
He knew that she was the one and only woman who had been meant for him by God.
Even the Sacrament of Matrimony would not bind them to each other any closer than they were already.
But his brain told him that marriage with a woman whose grandfather was a paid servant of the Duke of Buclington was completely impossible.
The ancestor after whom he was named had built The Palace.
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br /> Ever since then the Estérházys had encouraged all the greatest musicians, artists and the finest brains of the country to come to Fertōd.
They had all served the family in one way or another.
‘Served’ was the operative word.
Franz Joseph Haydn might have been the finest musician of his age, but there could have been no question of his marrying an Estérházy.
The same applied to the artists, the architects, the poets and the writers.
All of them were welcome, but only to ‘serve’ the family in their various ways, certainly not becoming a part of it.
Perhaps the women who bore the aristocratic name of Estérházy were even more proud and more implacable than the men.
Prince Miklós well knew that there was not one of them, including his sister Misina, who would accept Aletha as her equal.
How could he find tranquillity or happiness in The Palace in those circumstances?
He had to live there, it was an integral part of his Kingdom.
He had to minister to those who bore his name in the same way that his ancestors had done.
They had built up a Kingdom within a Kingdom.
They all, Miklós mused, bowed to the Emperor, but privately they considered themselves superior to an Austrian.
When finally Prince Miklós walked back to The Palace the music was now silent and the guests had all departed.
The lights had been extinguished in most of the windows.
He went to his bedroom to pull back the curtains from the windows.
He felt that he must have more air to carry on breathing.
He did not undress, but just pulled off his evening coat.
Then he sat with his head in his hands and suffered as he had never suffered before in the whole of his life.
When dawn came, he knew that he felt that he had to get away so that there would be no chance of seeing Aletha again.
Even to think of seeing her made the blood throb in his temples.
Every instinct in his body told him to carry her away to his house in the mountains and make her his.
And they would be happy, deliriously, wonderfully and blissfully happy.
But there was always tomorrow and tomorrow always came.
Tomorrow and the endless years that came after it.
Years when eventually he would have to leave her and she would never forgive him.
He rang the bell for his valet and, when the man came, he told him to pack.
As he had no wish to see anyone and have to make explanations or answer questions, he ordered breakfast to be brought to his room.
Having bathed and changed his clothes, he stood at the window and looked out blindly over the flower-filled garden.
Beyond was the meadowland where he had galloped freely with Aletha. It was separated from the gardens by a brick wall that surrounded the whole Palace.
Then he was aware that there were three horses in the far distance.
At that range they were little larger than dots and they seemed to be moving towards The Palace at speed.
He watched them only vaguely as he was so immersed in his own unhappiness.
Suddenly he saw, although he could hardly believe his eyes, that the leading horse was Nyul and that Aletha was riding him.
He watched her as she rode leaning forward, straining every nerve to make the grey go faster and faster.
Because he thought that it all seemed so strange, he looked past her.
She was being followed by two men.
With a sense of shock he realised that one of them was Baron Otto von Sicardsburg.
He definitely recognised him at first glance and also the big black stallion of which he was told the Baron continually boasted.
It was then that he knew almost as if she had called to him that Aletha was frightened.
He realised that her fear was for what the Baron obviously intended.
He wanted to curse him and at the same time he wanted to assure Aletha that whatever happened he would save and protect her.
There was no doubt now that the Baron was gaining on her and was in fact only a few lengths behind her.
In front of them there was no opening into The Palace garden, only the brick wall.
Then, as Miklós saw what she meant to do, he felt as if he was facing a firing squad.
*
Aletha was very conscious of the fact that the Baron was now close behind her.
She had reached The Palace, but did not turn in the direction that would lead her towards the stables.
To do so meant that she would have to pull Nyul in and then the Baron would certainly overtake her.
She was very sure that he intended to snatch at her reins.
She would be powerless to stop herself from being led away beside the black stallion, back to the Baron’s Castle.
‘Save – me! Save – me!’ she cried in her heart.
Then, as the brick wall loomed ahead of her, she knew what she must do.
She had never jumped on Nyul and anyway the wall was too high and too solid to risk anything quite so dangerous.
But it was her only hope.
She spoke to Nyul softly, feeling that he would understand the predicament that she was in.
As she gathered him for the jump, he leapt into the air carrying her into the sky almost as if he had wings.
It would have been impossible, she knew only too well, for any ordinary horse to manage such a huge jump.
Incredibly Aletha was to think afterwards, it must have been with the help of God and His Angels that Nyul cleared it with less than an inch to spare.
The horse landed, again by exceedingly good fortune, in a flowerbed.
He staggered and nearly fell, but then regained his balance. He was sweating and for the moment completely exhausted.
Aletha kept her seat, but was almost unconscious with the effort.
She closed her eyes and her head drooped on her breast and her hair had come loose with the speed that she had been ridding at.
It fell over her shoulders in a golden cloud.
She had released the reins and was now holding onto the saddle.
She felt overwhelmingly that the whole world was slowly slipping away from her.
Then strong arms were lifting her down from the saddle.
A voice that seemed to come from far far away was saying,
“My darling! My sweet. How could you have done anything so dangerous? I thought you were going to kill yourself!”
She could not answer him, but could only lie limp in Prince Miklós’s arms.
Her head was now resting on his shoulder and he then went down on one knee in order to hold her close against him.
The strength of his arms told her that she was safe.
As he looked down at her pale face, her closed eyes and her glorious hair, something broke within him.
Wildly and passionately he kissed her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks and her lips.
He drew her back to life and it was the only way that he could express his joy that she was not dead.
To Aletha it was as if she had stepped from a Hell of fear into a Heaven of happiness.
It was just impossible for her to open her eyes however hard she might try.
She still felt as if she had drifted a long way into oblivion.
At the same time she could feel the passion of his kisses.
As he held her lips captive, something flickered within her heart and she knew that it was life itself.
“I love you! I love you!” Miklós was saying. “And I thought I had lost you!”
Because there was a note of agony in his voice, Aletha opened her eyes.
His face was very near to hers.
When she saw the expression on his face, she knew how frightened he had been that she would be killed.
‘I-I am – alive,’ she wanted to say to him.
But her lips could not part before he was kissing her passionately again.
“The Baron,” she screamed as if she had just remembered him, “is close behind me. Oh, save me!”
“The Baron has gone, he knows when he has been defeated,” Miklós assured her. “You are safe now in my arms and I promise that I will never let that demon go anywhere near you again.”
“Oh, Miklós ‒
“I am going to carry you into the house now,” he insisted.
As if he could not help himself, he kissed her again. Now her whole being responded and she thought that lightning flashed in her breast.
There were little flames rising up her throat and touching her lips.
Miklós’s voice was deep and very moving as he averred,
“You are mine! Mine completely and I know now I cannot live without you! How soon will you marry me, my darling?”
She stared at him.
“Are you – really asking me to – marry you?” she whispered.
They were the first words she had spoken since Nyul had jumped so incredibly over the wall.
“You will marry me,” Miklós answered, “if I have to fight the whole world to make you my wife!”
It was so wonderful to hear the words she had longed to hear him say that Aletha closed her eyes again.
He picked her up in his arms and started to carry her towards The Palace.
Only when they had gone a little way did Aletha say in a voice that he could hardly hear,
“Do you – really love me – enough to make me your – w-wife?”
“No one and nothing is of any importance except for you,” Miklós replied.
His lips touched her forehead before he went on,
“It will not be easy, but I love and worship you and we will pray that nothing else will ever be of any consequence in our lives together.”
“Nothing – will – be,” Aletha murmured.
They reached a side door of The Palace and Miklós took her inside.
Aletha was suddenly conscious of her hair falling about her shoulders.
“I don’t – want to be – seen like this,” she whispered.
Miklós smiled.
He put her down, but kept his arm around her.
He opened the door of a room that was not far from where they had come in.
It was one of the many small but beautiful sitting rooms situated on the ground floor of The Palace.
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