Although they were still walking she was aware of his sudden inner tension.
‘Is this organization on the lines of the Bosnia Youth Movement?’ he asked with a slight frown.
‘Papa thinks it is potentially much more dangerous than the Bosnia Youth Movement. Its official title is “Unification or Death”, but it is commonly referred to as the Black Hand.’
‘And its aims are the same?’
‘Its aims are to free all Slavs living under Habsburg domination.’
‘There’s nothing new about that,’ he said wryly. ‘There must be a score of Balkan revolutionary groups all with that aim.’
‘Yes, but not all are committed to the use of violence.’
Julian thought differently but didn’t trouble to correct her. If the new organization was one that was perturbing Alexis Vassilovich, then it was one the British government should certainly know about.
He said thoughtfully, ‘Would your father mind if I were to speak to him about what you have told me?’
She paused for a moment and then said slowly, ‘No, I don’t think so. He likes you and he has always said that Serbia should maintain the closest links possible with Great Britain.’
He stopped walking and turned to face her, his good-humoured face unusually solemn. ‘I’m glad your father likes me and I’m glad you asked to speak to me in privacy this evening, Katerina. There’s something I’ve wanted to ask you for a long time and there’s never before been a suitable opportunity…’
Katerina stood very still, so still she could hear her racing heartbeats.
‘Katerina, I…’
It was Max Karageorgevich who interrupted them. He came tramping along the pathway, a lighted cigarette in his hand. ‘Sorry,’ he said gracelessly as he approached them, ‘am I interrupting a romantic tête-à-tête?’
‘No,’ Katerina lied, wishing him a million miles away. ‘We simply wanted some air. As you apparently do.’
Max dropped his cigarette to the ground. ‘If you also want some supper you’d better hurry back for it.’
‘Thank you for your advice,’ Julian said dryly, ‘but we’re not in need of it.’
‘Then here’s some advice you might be in need of,’ Max said with the same infuriating complacency his sister often displayed. ‘Uncle Alexis is looking for Katerina. He might not like it if he found her out here.’
It was true and both Katerina and Julian knew it.
‘We’d better go back inside,’ he said to her regretfully. ‘We can continue our conversation later.’
‘Yes.’ Her voice was oddly abrupt and Max looked across at her, frowning slightly.
‘I’ll walk back with you,’ he said, uncaring that his presence was very obviously not wanted. ‘You’re not coming down with a cold, are you, Trina? Your voice sounds suspicously hoarse. Perhaps you should make an early evening of it and dose yourself with a lemon powder.’
Katerina remained silent only with the greatest difficulty. He had spoiled what would have been the most beautiful moment of her life with his crass oafishness and she doubted if she would ever forgive him.
When they returned to the ballroom Julian escorted her to her father and then dutifully went in search of Vitza.
‘So that’s where you were,’ her father said when Julian was safely out of earshot, ‘with young Fielding. I thought he’d been paying our family rather a lot of attention recently and now I know why.’
Katerina blushed. ‘You don’t mind, Papa, do you?’
His eyebrows shot upwards. He had been merely teasing when he had suggested Fielding was a prospective suitor. Now, realizing he had inadvertently hit on a momentous truth he said, suddenly serious, ‘I shall want him to speak to me before this goes any further, Katerina.’
She took hold of his arm lovingly. ‘He hasn’t actually said anything to me yet, Papa.’
He patted her hand thoughtfully, sure that if the look in her eyes was anything to go by Julian Fielding would be doing so very soon.
His premonition was correct. Half an hour later Julian was declaring himself ardently. He had wanted to speak to Katerina before he did so, in order to find out if he was likely to meet with any success. Max Karageorgevich’s untimely arrival had prevented him from doing so but she had told him that her father liked him and the information had given him courage.
He was in the Italian drawing-room. It was the smallest drawing-room in the Vassilovich house and its unconventional blue and lemon décor gave it a summery atmosphere even when the curtains were drawn and it was lit only by candlelight.
He was down on one knee before the sofa and he didn’t feel even slightly ridiculous. All he felt was terror in case she rejected him.
‘I want you to marry me,’ he said thickly. ‘I love you, and I shall always love you. Only you. For ever.’
Chapter Three
Natalie stared at him in stunned amazement. She had accompanied him into the Italian drawing-room because she had wanted to put her feet up for a minute or two, because he was amusing and diverting company and because leaving the ballroom with a young man was such a daring, moderne thing to do. Never had it remotely occurred to her that he would take advantage of the situation in order to declare undying love for her, still less that he would actually propose marriage to her.
‘You can’t mean it,’ she said, suddenly sure that it was a joke, a typical example of obscure British humour. ‘You’re teasing me, aren’t you?’
‘I’ve never felt less like teasing in all my life,’ Julian said, his voice slightly unsteady. ‘You must have guessed how I feel about you, Natalie. I love you with all my heart and I can’t imagine life without you. Please say you care for me, at least a little.’
‘I do,’ Natalie said truthfully. ‘I like you an awful lot. But I’m not in love with you. I can’t imagine being in love with anyone, or at least not with just one person for the rest of my life.’
Despite the terrible gravity of the situation Julian felt a tremor of amusement at her guilessness. ‘That’s because you’re only seventeen,’ he said, still clinging to fierce hope. ‘I know we would be happy, Natalie. I know you would soon stop only liking me and learn to love me. I may not be a Serbian prince but I come from impeccable family, my forebears landed on the coast of England with William the Conqueror in 1066. I have a brilliant future and…’
With horror Natalie realized that he was in deadly earnest. ‘Please stop,’ she begged, before he could go any further. ‘Your asking me to marry you is the sweetest thing that has ever happened to me. I feel so flattered I can hardly believe it…’
It was true. Now that she had recovered from her amazement, she was overwhelmingly flattered. It wasn’t as if Julian Fielding was a callow, impressionable youth. He was in his late twenties, a handsome, mature, sophisticated diplomat. And he was in love with her. So much in love that he wanted to marry her. It was incredible. Euphoria engulfed her. She wondered what her mother would say when she told her. What Katerina would say.
Julian saw the successive emotions chasing across her face and cursed himself for a fool. He should have realized that at seventeen she was too young to have responded to him as he needed her to respond. The freedom she was allowed had fooled him into believing that Serbian girls matured early. Certainly Katerina was sensibly mature and she was only two years Natalie’s senior, but he wasn’t in love with Katerina. He was in love, God help him, with the fairytale vision sitting before him on the sofa.
In a sea of misery he rose to his feet, saying with a stiffness totally alien to him, ‘I’m sorry if I took you by surprise.’
‘Oh, please don’t apologize!’ Natalie’s horror was genuine. Even though she wasn’t in love with him his proposal had been the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to her and she didn’t want the memory of it to be spoiled by apologies. ‘I shall always remember this moment,’ she said with a carefree sentimentality that almost destroyed him, ‘the candlelight and the scent of the flowers and the
music…’
From the distant ballroom could be heard the faint strains of a mazurka.
‘And can we still be friends?’ With luck he had at least another year to serve in Belgrade. A lot could happen in a year. In a year Natalie could grow from liking him to loving him.
She rose from the sofa and slid her arm affectionately through his. Until now it had never occurred to her that they had been friends. She had always thought of him as being more Katerina’s friend, or even of his being her father’s friend.
‘Of course we will still be friends,’ she said, highly gratified at all the new, grown-up things that were beginning to happen to her. As he began to walk with her out of the room she said effervescently, ‘Have I told you that Prince Alexander has given me Bella? She’s absolutely adorable. I’m teaching her to sit and to stay and she’s very, very good.’
Julian couldn’t have cared less about Bella. He felt unbelievably exhausted, both emotionally and physically. For once in his life he had grossly miscalculated. As they neared the ballroom he assessed his feelings, wondering if rejection had altered them.
The assessment took the merest fraction of a second. If his feelings had altered at all, it was only that he was more determined than ever that one day she would be his wife. At twenty-eight he had been lightly in love many times and had enjoyed many affairs. What he had never been previously was totally and irrevocably in love and that was because he had never before been bewitched. Natalie, with her dark brilliant eyes and her irresistibly infectious gaiety, had bewitched him at their very first meeting. Since then he had done everything in his power to ensure that their paths converged on every conceivable occasion. Fortunately in a capital city as provincial as Belgrade, such connivance was relatively easy.
He genuinely liked the entire Vassilovich family. Alexis Vassilovich was that rare thing in the Balkans, an enlightened liberal. Zita Vassilovich was refreshingly intelligent with as sure a grasp of the current political situation as any diplomat. Katerina Vassilovich possessed the grace, beauty and calm composure of a Renaissance madonna and a man would be a fool not to be grateful at the thought of having her as a sister-in-law. And Natalie … Natalie had become an obsession.
She said now, smiling guilelessly at up him, ‘I’ve promised this next dance to Monsieur Quesnai and he’ll be looking for me.’
Wishing Phillippe Quesnai at the far ends of the earth Julian watched her hurry lightly into the ballroom. He also had dances promised but he didn’t have the heart to seek his partners out. As unobtrusively as possible he made his way round the back of the room until he came to the first french window and then, once again, he stepped outside.
It was after midnight now and there was the hint of a chill in the night air. Lighting a cigarette he inhaled deeply and crossed the terrace. There were a half dozen couples, walking modestly together, heads as close as propriety permitted. Julian ignored them and taking the steps two at a time descended to the gravel pathway and the lawns.
If Max Karageorgevich hadn’t interrupted his conversation with Katerina, would she have warned him that his proposal would be in vain? And if she had, would he have heeded her warning and not made his proposal? He walked quickly, head down, shoulders hunched, towards the rose garden. Probably not. And in an odd way he was beginning to think his proposal, and Natalie’s rejection of it, had been no bad thing. At least now she knew what his feelings for her were and when she had time to reflect on them she might very well discover that her own feelings were not quite so fraternal as she had supposed.
He sat down on a rustic bench strategically placed in a rose-bower, ground the remains of his cigarette out beneath his heel and lit another one. He no longer felt as if he had made a fool of himself and he no longer felt that he had acted imprudently. At seventeen it had obviously never occurred to Natalie that she was old enough to fall in love or old enough to have anyone fall in love with her. He had just disabused her of that belief and now that she realized she was a child no longer, and that he loved her, reciprocation would soon follow. It was bound to if he courted her assiduously enough.
He rose to his feet feeling a whole lot better. The future was once again hopeful. He had suffered a setback, nothing more. Full of renewed optimism he began to make his way back towards the ballroom. No prize was worth the having if winning it didn’t necessitate a long, hard struggle. And he was determined to win Natalie. Winning was his style.
Katerina saw him as he entered the ballroom from the terrace and her first thought was that he had been outside hopefully waiting for her.
‘My dance, I think?’ Max was saying to her.
‘Oh Max, must we? It’s too hot in here and I feel quite faint…’
Out of the corner of her eye she could see Julian approaching Princess Xenia of Montenegro. Princess Xenia checked her dance card and then with a smile allowed him to lead her on to the dance floor.
Katerina’s heart plummeted. There was no chance now of discreetly approaching him and of him being able to invite her once more out into the garden so that their interrupted conversation could be continued.
‘You don’t look at all faint,’ Max said unhelpfully. ‘All you look is anxious and I want you to tell me why,’ and with one hand beneath her arm he propelled her mercilessly out on to the thronged floor.
Katerina didn’t desist. With Julian now dancing with Xenia there was very little point. The dance was a waltz and it felt distinctly strange going through the same movements as she had with Julian only an hour or so earlier, and with such different effect. Max was as tall as Julian, but much more ruggedly built. His large hands held her far too proprietorily and he didn’t smell deliciously of lemon-scented cologne. He smelled of riding leather and, very faintly, of brandy.
‘Why the anxiety?’ he persisted as the orchestra blazed into a new coda. ‘And why were you in the garden taking a breath of air with an Englishman? Don’t you know they’re all degenerate?’
Katerina treated his remark with the contempt it deserved. ‘With whom I choose to walk on the terrace is my affair, not anyone else’s,’ she retorted frostily, trying to catch a glimpse of Xenia’s magnificent plumed headdress and Julian’s thick thatch of fair hair.
Max negotiated her past the orchestra’s dais with all the grace of a hippopotamus, saying, ‘It was the garden, not the terrace, and if he knew of it your father would think it very much his affair. I imagine he would also regard Natalie’s excursions into kafanas as being his affair as well. Or he would if he knew about them.’
‘One kafana,’ Katerina corrected, wondering why on earth she had allowed him to mark her dance card. ‘And there are no blackmail opportunities in it for you. Natalie realizes how foolish she was and it isn’t an incident that will be repeated.’
The waltz was reaching its climax. Julian and Xenia were nowhere in sight and were presumably at the far end of the room.
Max’s dark eyebrows rose slightly. ‘Blackmail? Why should I want to blackmail anyone? All I’m doing is warning you to keep an eye on Natalie; She’s all Karageorgevich and it’s bound to mean trouble some day.’
‘You’re full of unwanted advice, Max,’ she said dismissively as the music came to an end. ‘And don’t bother approaching me for another dance. I shall be unavailable.’
A strange, shuttered look came down over his face and she spun on her heel, hoping that she would be able to meet with Julian before the next dance began.
She saw him almost immediately. He was on the opposite side of the ballroom, speaking to her parents. Incredibly she saw him inclining his head as if he were thanking them for the evening and saying goodbye. With rising consternation she picked up her demi-train, crossing the ballroom floor as quickly as her skirts and dignity would allow.
She was too late. He was shaking her father’s hand and when she was still a good ten yards away he walked from the room, making what was unmistakably a final exit.
She stood still. Should she follow him? For a rash, reckless mom
ent she almost succumbed to the temptation and then good sense prevailed and she remained where she was, looking towards the now empty double doorway, her sense of excitement and expectancy draining from her.
Had he left so precipitately because he was crushed with disappointment at not being able to talk to her in privacy and because he believed there would be no future opportunity that evening to do so? Or was she simply letting her imagination run away with her? Was she reading into his behaviour motives she ardently wished were true but which might, in reality, be very far from the truth?
A distant Vassilovich cousin approached her. ‘My dance, I think,’ he said genially.
She felt suddenly very tired but to excuse herself before the last waltz would draw comment and after the short conversation she had had with her father earlier, he might even think she was leaving in order to keep a romantic assignation with Julian Fielding.
Forcing a smile she agreed that it was, indeed, his promised dance and allowed him to lead her on to the floor for what she realized with a heavy heart was an energetic cotillion.
Natalie had never felt more full of life. She was fizzing with joie de vivre. Her dance card had been crammed with names all evening and the names had not been merely family names, uncles and cousins doing their duty. Every minister present had asked for a dance, some of them more than once. Prince Danilo of Montenegro, who was in Belgrade for private talks with her Uncle Peter, had also asked her to dance as had a Russian Grand Duke and the most wonderfully handsome Cossack officer it was possible to imagine. And to top it all, she had received her very first proposal of marriage.
Even now, an hour later, she could scarcely believe it. And it hadn’t been just any old, mundane proposal. It had been heart-stoppingly serious; unutterably romantic.
She smiled dazzlingly at her partner as he whirled her exhilaratingly round and round. Once her immediate shock at Julian’s proposal had worn off she had found herself reflecting that it was a great pity he was an Englishman and not a Slav. If he had been a Slav she might, just might, have been tempted to accept. To be engaged at seventeen would be a triumph. Katerina would have to stop taking such a heavy-handed attitude with her, Vitza would be green with envy and a magnificent engagement ring of diamonds and emeralds would look simply stunning on her left hand.
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