The temptation to lean against the comfort of his broad shoulder and to tell him everything nearly overcame her. If they had been engaged then surely she could have told him? And surely they were on the brink of being engaged? Why else would he be so deeply concerned about her distress or attempting to comfort her with such exquisite tenderness?
‘I can’t,’ she whispered, wishing with all her heart that she could.
All the time they had been talking the sound of distant weeping had continued.
‘It’s Natalie who is crying, isn’t it?’ he asked, an odd edge to his voice.
She nodded and he gently released his hold of her.
‘I’m going to talk to your father,’ he said, and before she could protest again he turned away from her, walking swiftly down the corridor that led to Alexis’s study.
When he reached the door he hesitated only for the very briefest of seconds and then, Natalie’s sobs still ringing in his ears, he knocked sharply.
‘What the devil …’ he heard Alexis exclaim tautly and then the door was yanked open.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said quickly, before Alexis could give vent to his wrath. ‘I need to speak to you and it’s extremely urgent that I do so today.’
Alexis hesitated and Julian said, ‘It’s about Natalie, sir.’
Alexis hesitated no longer. Certain that the British must have received information linking Natalie with Princip and that Julian had been sent by his minister he said tersely, ‘Come in. What is it you have to say to me?’
Julian wiped a bead of sweat from his brow. He was accustomed to ticklish situations but this was one for which he had no precedent. Deciding that the best way of dealing with it was to come straight to the point he took a deep breath and said, ‘I want to marry Natalie, sir.’
Alexis gaped at him. He had been expecting to hear that the British knew of Natalie’s meeting with Princip in Sarajevo and that probably, thanks to their superbly efficient Secret Service, they even knew about her meetings with him at the Golden Sturgeon.
‘Marry?’ he said incredulously when he had recovered his powers of speech. ‘Marry Natalie? Surely you mean Katerina?’
Julian shook his head, unsurprised by Alexis’s assumption. Katerina was, after all, of marriageable age. At seventeen, Natalie was still precociously young. ‘No, sir,’ he said firmly. ‘I want to marry Natalie.’
‘And you’ve come to ask my permission to propose to her?’ Alexis struggled to gather his scattered wits. ‘It’s out of the question. She’s far too young…’
‘I know that, sir. What I would like from you is permission to write to her …’
‘How the devil did you know she was leaving the country?’ Alexis demanded in fresh alarm. If a British diplomat knew, Austrian diplomats might also know. ‘We only arrived back from Bosnia yesterday!’
‘I didn’t know, sir. I was told this morning that I’m being recalled to London and so my first thought was to propose to Natalie again …’
‘Again?’
‘… and if she refuses me again, to have your permission to write to her until she is older and does accept my proposal.’
‘Again?’ Alexis had thought nothing could take his mind from the fear that the Austrians would demand Natalie’s arrest before she was safely aboard the Orient Express. He had been wrong. ‘Again?’ he repeated, stupefied. ‘You’ve already proposed marriage to my seventeen-year-old daughter without asking my permission?’
Julian flushed scarlet. ‘Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir. If I could have your permission now, to propose to her again…’
Alexis drew in a deep breath, about to tell Julian Fielding exactly what he thought of his English impertinence. Then he remembered the hell he was in. He remembered that Zita was at that very moment lying down in a darkened room, overcome with grief at the prospect of being parted from him. He remembered the long, lonely months, possibly even years, that lay ahead of them.
He said sharply, ‘You’re leaving for London this week?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And you’re in love with Natalie and want to marry her?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Julian’s discomfiture was beginning to turn to bewilderment.
‘And you come from a good family? You have excellent career prospects? A private income?’
‘Yes to all three questions, sir,’ Julian said, wondering what on earth had happened to change the tenor of the conversation so drastically.
The tips of Alexis’s waxed moustaches quivered. ‘Wait here,’ he said peremptorily, striding towards the door. ‘I must speak to my wife.’
The door slammed and Julian stared after him, more bewildered than ever. Why did Alexis need to speak to Zita? What on earth was going on? Slowly, sensing that his wait was going to be a long one, he sat down. He still hadn’t asked why Zita and Natalie were leaving so suddenly for Switzerland. He still didn’t know why Natalie was sobbing so broken-heartedly.
He looked around the room. There were several hunting trophies on the walls and a half dozen water-colours, all landscapes. A large group photograph hung nearby and even from where he was sitting he could recognize the exotically garbed figure of King Nikita of Montenegro, his daughters standing and sitting around him.
He stood up and crossed the room, looking at the photograph more closely. It had obviously been taken some years ago. Princess Elena, now Queen of Italy, looked scarcely old enough to be out of the schoolroom. With difficulty he differentiated between the Princesses Vera and Xenia and recognized Princess Militza.
The other faces he was unsure of. There was a willowy, ravishing looking creature on the far end of the back row, a dark-haired laughing-eyed young woman standing next to her, and there were another two elegant figures sitting on the ground on either side of the king’s booted feet, large flower-bedecked hats almost obscuring their faces. He tried to remember the names of Nikita’s other daughters and failed, all he could remember was that one of them was married to a Russian grand-duke and another had married Prince Franz Joseph of Battenberg.
His attention went back to the two girls at the far end of the back row. He had the most curious feeling of having met one of them, and quite recently. He frowned, pondering. Princess Militza had been at the Vassilovich Summer Ball but he couldn’t remember any other female members of the Montenegrin royal family being there. When recognition came it almost took his breath away. It was Zita. And if it was Zita, then the vibrant-eyed young woman next to her could only be Princess Zorka.
He continued to gaze at the photograph, intrigued. He had known that Zita had acted as Zorka’s lady-in-waiting during the years of Zorka’s marriage to King Peter but he hadn’t realized how far back the relationship extended, nor had he realized that Zita was regarded as being almost a member of the Montenegrin royal family. He was just beginning to muse on the political advantages of such a relationship when the door opened and Zita walked into the room, Alexis behind her.
‘We need to talk to you,’ Alexis said abruptly to him. ‘We need to talk to you in the utmost confidence.’
Zita sat down, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. Alexis remained standing, his eyes holding Julian’s with burning intensity. ‘Do you still wish to marry my daughter?’ he asked bluntly.
Despite his certainty that something was very seriously wrong, Julian answered without hesitation. ‘Yes,’ he said and was aware of Zita’s small gasp of relief.
Alexis crossed to his desk and sat down behind it. ‘Then I want you to do so.’ A pulse throbbed at the corner of his jaw. ‘I want you to do so tonight.’
Julian wasn’t at all surprised that Alexis had had to sit down before making his request. He, too, wished to sit down but there was no chair within reach. ‘You have to tell me why,’ he said, retaining a composure Alexis was always to remember with respect. ‘You have to tell me why it’s so important Natalie leaves Serbia.’
Alexis nodded. He had known, from the moment he had come to his decision regarding Julian and Na
talie that he would have to tell Julian everything. ‘There is very little to tell,’ he said heavily, ‘but what there is, is disastrous.’
Julian had guessed as much long ago. He waited.
‘Unbeknown to us Natalie made friends, some time ago, with students who meet in the Golden Sturgeon café. One of them, Gavrilo Princip, she met again by accident while we were in Sarajevo. They were seen together by an Austrian army officer well aware of her identity.’ He paused and then said tautly, ‘It was Princip who assassinated the Archduke and Duchess.’
It was Julian’s turn to gasp.
‘You have my word for it that though the assassination plot was hatched in Belgrade, King Peter and those closest to him had no knowledge of it. Austria, however, will prefer not to believe that. Princip is a Serb and Austria will use the assassination as an excuse to mount an attack against Serbia and annihilate her. In order to prevent their doing so King Peter is going to have to comply with any demands they might make regarding the arrest of Serbian suspects within Serbia.’
At the thought of Natalie standing in an Austrian courtroom charged with complicity in murdering the heir to the Habsburg throne, Julian felt so giddy he thought he was going to black out.
‘With circumstances as they are, you can see why I am so desperate that Natalie leaves the country at the earliest possible moment. My wife is prepared to accompany her but if she does so, it will mean our being separated for what could be a cruelly long length of time.’ Alexis shielded his eyes with his hand for a moment and then said with heart-stopping frankness: ‘I love my wife very much, Mr Fielding. I don’t want to live months, and perhaps years, separate from her. By marrying Natalie and taking her with you to London, you can save me from such a fate.’
The blood was drumming so hard in Julian’s ears that when he spoke he could hardly hear his voice. ‘What if Natalie still doesn’t want to marry me?’
‘She’ll marry you,’ Alexis said, rising to his feet, ‘if you’ll have her.’
Julian tried to think coherently and couldn’t. He wanted to marry Natalie more than anything else in the world, but he certainly didn’t want her to be forced into marrying him.
Zita, seeing his difficulty, said quietly, ‘I think it quite possible that Natalie only refused you because, at seventeen, the idea of marriage took her totally by surprise.’
‘She is still only seventeen,’ Julian said, stalling for time as he struggled to come to a decision, knowing that when he did so it would be the most important decision of his life.
‘She may still be only seventeen,’ Zita said bleakly, ‘but she has aged years in the last twenty-four hours. We all have.’
It was true. He could see lines around her eyes that had never been there before and Alexis looked far older than when he had last seen him.
‘Let me speak with her,’ Alexis said, moving away from his desk and crossing once more to the door, ‘and then the two of you must speak together.’
‘May we speak together in private, sir?’
Alexis nodded. ‘Of course.’
He left the room and Zita said awkwardly, ‘Would you like some tea, Mr Fielding?’
Julian nodded, suppressing the fierce desire to ask instead for a large whisky or a large brandy. He said instead, striving to bring normality into a situation so far from normal it beggared belief: ‘I was looking at the photograph of King Nikita and his daughters. Was it taken in Cetinje?’
‘Yes, have you been there? I know visiting diplomats often regard Belgrade as being unsophisticated, but Montenegro’s capital really is unsophisticated. In 1889, when that photograph was taken, Cetinje was little more than an overgrown village and the royal palace was simply a two-storeyed villa situated on the main street.’
Julian breathed a sigh of relief. He had been wondering what he and Zita could possibly talk about as they waited for Alexis’s return and now the problem was solved. In the bizarre situation in which both of them were they could at least talk about Cetinje without embarrassment, and perhaps about Princess Zorka as well.
‘He’s a handsome young man, of excellent family, with a brilliant future in front of him,’ Alexis said, knowing that he wasn’t exaggerating, certain that one day Julian Fielding would be an ambassador.
‘I can’t marry him, Papa!’ Natalie felt as if she were in the seventh circle of hell. ‘I’m not in love with him!’
‘But you like him?’ Alexis persisted.
‘Yes, I like him …’
‘And you think him handsome?’
‘Yes, but I don’t want to marry him! I don’t want to marry anyone!’
Alexis frowned, wondering how best to continue. Whatever happened Natalie had to leave Serbia and knowing her temperament as he did, he was convinced she would be far happier as the wife of a rising young diplomat in a glamorous European city than she would be living quietly in Geneva with her mother.
‘I want you to listen to me very carefully,’ he said, knowing that she was on the brink of hysteria. ‘Love doesn’t always come before marriage. In the right circumstances, between the right people, it often comes after. I wasn’t in love with your mother, nor was she in love with me, when we married. It was a marriage arranged by our parents and we agreed to it because we trusted their judgement. If you marry Julian Fielding you will have an advantage we didn’t have, for he is already in love with you. And you must bear in mind that if you don’t marry him you will still have to leave Serbia, and instead of living in London or Paris or Petersburg you will be living in Geneva with your mother.’
She remained silent, her forehead pressed against the window-pane as she looked down into the garden with eyes swollen with crying.
‘Having a daughter marry and leave home and live far away is in the natural order of things,’ Alexis continued with devastating frankness. ‘Having a wife living a thousand miles away is not, and it will break my heart.’
The agony in his voice was more than she could bear. He had come to her asking her to make a choice and she knew now that she had no choice. From the moment Julian Fielding had offered to marry her and take her with him out of the country there had been only one course of action she could possibly take.
She turned her tear-ravaged face towards him. ‘If it means you and Mama being able to stay together, then of course I will marry him,’ she said, knowing that somehow, for her parents’sake, she had to find the strength to be able to do so with dignity.
‘Thank you, my dear,’ he said unsteadily, folding his arms around her and holding her close.
She hugged him tight, fresh tears springing to her eyes, wishing with all her heart that she had never met Gavrilo and Nedjelko at the Conservatoire; that she had never accepted their invitation to meet again in the Golden Sturgeon; that she had never gone to the Oriental bazaar.
‘I’ve told Julian he can have a few words with you in private,’ Alexis said when he could trust himself to speak. ‘I think the Italian drawing-room will be as good a room as any, don’t you?’
With a heavy heart she followed him from her bedroom and down the grand staircase. The door of the main salon was open and she could see Katerina sitting strategically near to it, making a poor pretence of reading Madame Bovary. There was no opportunity for them to speak to each other, the most she could do was flash her a look of despair before following her father into the Italian room.
‘Julian Fielding is in my study,’ Alexis said, remaining near the door. ‘I’m going back there now to tell him you are ready to speak with him and I shall see to it that you are not disturbed while you do so. The wedding is going to have to be within hours.’
‘When will we leave Serbia?’ Her voice was barely audible.
‘He told me he was due to leave at the end of the week but that isn’t going to be soon enough. Even before we left Bosnia the police were rounding up all Princip’s and Cabrinovich’s known friends and relatives. A demand that you are returned to Sarajevo for questioning could come at any minute. I’m going t
o ask Pasich to speak to the British minister and to ask if, as a special favour, Julian can be allowed to leave tomorrow. I’ll tell him we have relatives in London and that a family crisis has necessitated your sudden marriage and made it obligatory for you to leave for London with the utmost urgency.’
She didn’t speak, there was nothing further she could possibly say.
Fully aware of how deep her homesickness was going to be, Alexis felt as if his own heart was breaking. ‘I’m sorry, my dear, so very, very sorry,’ he said inadequately and then, his eyes suspiciously bright, he left the room, walking towards his study, leaving her alone.
When Julian entered minutes later she was still standing where Alexis had left her. She met his eyes with dread, certain he was about to launch into a flowery, romantic declaration of his feelings for her. If he did, she knew she would not be able to cope. She would have to tell him that she wasn’t in love with him; that in all probability she would never be in love with him.
He gave her a wry smile. ‘You really have landed yourself in an unholy mess, haven’t you?’ he said sympathetically. ‘What on earth possessed you to begin frequenting kafanas? Don’t you know the coffee at the British Legation is far superior?’
She gave a strangled cry, half a sob and half an hysterical laugh of relief and as he crossed the room towards her she ran to meet him.
His arms closed round her. ‘God, what a silly goose you’ve been,’ he said thickly, hardly daring to breathe in case he destroyed the sudden rapport he had created between them.
‘I’d no idea anyone was going to be killed! Especially not the Duchess!’ It was as if a dam had broken, the words came rushing in an anguished torrent. ‘I liked the Duchess! I still can’t believe Gavrilo killed her! Even though I saw him do it I still can’t believe it! And then Papa said that I would have to leave Serbia and that it might be for years and years and oh, I can’t bear it! I love Serbia! I’m every inch a Karageorgevich! Katerina isn’t. Katerina wouldn’t mind living in London or Paris or Petersburg but I’m going to hate it! I’m going to die!’
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