Katerina remembered Natalie’s sunny conviction that her lover was as ardent a supporter of the monarchy as she was herself and felt a stab of pity for her. Did Natalie now know the truth? Had Kechko revealed his true political colours to her when he had revealed his true character, refusing to share her exile with her and disowning any responsibility for the child she was carrying? Since Nice, no letters had passed between them and she had no way of knowing.
As Sandro continued to waltz her around the room she reflected that even if Natalie did know Nikita Kechko’s true political aims she would in all likelihood reason them away, as all her life she had always reasoned everything unpleasant away.
All the complex turbulent emotions Natalie aroused in her rose to the surface until she felt as if she were going to choke with them. How could Natalie have agreed to marry Julian, in the circumstances in which she did so, without giving him her unconditional loyalty? How could she possibly have imagined that her family would view her action in taking a lover as being reasonable and justifiable? When Katerina remembered how Natalie had intended accompanying Kechko to Belgrade, and the distress and shame her parents would have suffered if she had done so, the stab of pity she had felt earlier for her disappeared. Whatever anguish and disillusionment Natalie might now be suffering was anguish and disillusionment well deserved.
The dance came to an end and as Sandro returned her to her father’s side her heart leapt. Julian was standing next to him, resplendent in white tie and tails.
There had been times, over the last few days, when she had doubted if he would be in attendance at all. Her mother had been adamant that she was not going to invite him. In her eyes, despite the explanation he had given her, she saw him as having abandoned Natalie when Natalie most needed him. It had been her father who had tactfully pointed out that so far no-one in Belgrade thought it odd that Julian, a diplomat, should be in Belgrade while Natalie remained with her parents-in-law in London.
‘Rumours about their relationship will only start to fly if we are seen to be behaving oddly towards him,’ he had said reasonably. ‘And having a grand ball with the world and his brother in attendance and our son-in-law conspicuously not in attendance, will most certainly be perceived as being odd.’
Katerina knew that her father felt deeply responsible not only for Natalie’s unhappiness, but for Julian’s unhappiness also. Their marriage had taken place at his suggestion and his motives had been selfish. For that reason, the relationship that now existed between himself and Julian was as close as the relationship between Julian and her mother was cool.
He said to her now, ‘Julian has claimed your next dance, my dear. I’m promised to Vitza and must set about finding her.’
Behind them, in one of the giant mirrors lining the room, Katerina could see their reflections clearly. In the months since the war had ended her father had regained a lot of his old vigour and in evening dress, with his moustaches magnificently waxed and curled, he looked almost as fine a figure of a man as he had in 1914.
Over the last few weeks Julian, too, had recovered much of his old élan. Strain was still visible in the tiny lines at the corners of his well-shaped mouth but his inner unhappiness was no longer nakedly visible. In a room dominated by stockily-built Slavs his tall, broad-shouldered physique and Anglo-Saxon blondness set him noticeably apart. He looked very northern, very English. Even though his married marital status was common knowledge Katerina could see many interested feminine eyes looking covertly towards him. As her own eyes returned to his reflection the love she felt for him flooded through her so that she could hardly bear it.
Terrified that her emotions were showing on her face she met her own eyes in the mirror. Her fear was groundless. She looked cool and calm, her hair swept high in cloudy waves, her skin creamily pale against its mahogany darkness. At twenty-five she was no longer a young girl and she had not dressed as one. Her ballgown was of black tulle over moonlight-blue and it emphasized her natural elegance and sophistication. She looked a young woman who had never entertained a carnal thought in her life and at the disparity between her inward emotions and her outer demeanour an expression of wry disbelief touched her mouth.
‘It’s a long time since we danced together,’ Julian was saying to her as he led her out on to the dance floor. ‘It seems strange to think how little we realized then how near we were to war. I don’t believe the possibility was even discussed that evening.’
‘Our thoughts were on other things,’ Katerina said, a shiver of pleasure running down her spine as he took her lightly in his arms and they began to dance to a melody by Schubert.
He was silent for a little while, remembering how his head and heart had been full of Natalie and his determination to make a proposal of marriage to her.
After a little while, as an elderly gentleman swept past them, an impressive array of orders and decorations on his chest a stately Eudocia in his arms, he said wryly, ‘I still can’t regret everything. If I hadn’t married Natalie, Stephen wouldn’t have been born and it’s impossible for me to imagine a world without Stephen.’
It was her turn to be silent for a little while. She knew the pain it must have cost him to leave his son, with whom he had only just become acquainted, two thousand miles away. She knew also that he hadn’t had to do so. He could have engaged a nanny for Stephen and brought Stephen with him to Belgrade, but if he had done so it would have been quite obvious that his marriage was no longer viable and rumours as to the paternity of Natalie’s coming child would have been rife.
She wondered what would happen when Nikita Kechko’s child was born and if Julian would keep to his decision about publicly and privately accepting it as his own. She wondered, too, if she should tell Julian of Nikita Kechko’s present whereabouts and loyalties or if the mention of Kechko would cause him too much unnecessary pain.
As if reading her thoughts he said suddenly, ‘Don’t you find it strange that Kechko hasn’t surfaced here yet? It’s just possible, of course, that he might have changed his mind. That he’s not in Belgrade at all but in London and that he’s going to accept paternity for the child…’
‘No,’ she said firmly, knowing that no matter what the consequences she couldn’t possibly let him continue to hope for such an eventuality. ‘Kechko isn’t in London. He’s in Zagreb.’
The orchestra was blazing into a new coda and as he whirled her past the orchestra dais conversation of the kind they were now conducting was impossible.
‘Let’s go outside,’ he said tautly, waltzing her towards the nearest of the french windows. ‘I want to know every single damn thing about Kechko. And I want to know why, if you know his whereabouts, you haven’t told me of them before.’
It was too early in the year for the night air to be warm and only a few couples were enjoying the relative privacy of the moonlit terrace. With his hand beneath her elbow he steered her across it and down the steps on to the gravelled path that skirted the lawns and led towards the rose-garden.
Not until the music from the ballroom was muted by distance and no-one else was within sight did he come to a halt. His face was grim as at last he turned to face her, saying again, ‘If you know of Kechko’s whereabouts, why haven’t you told me of them?’
‘I’ve been told of them only this evening and …’ she hesitated and then said awkwardly, ‘and I didn’t know if you would want to know. I thought perhaps you might never want to hear Kechko’s name again.’
A pulse began to beat at the corner of his jaw. ‘I wish to God I didn’t need to,’ he said tersely, ‘but for professional, as well as personal reasons, I do.’
In the chill late spring air Katerina shivered and he took off his tail-coat, slipping it around her shoulders. ‘Well?’ he said, his voice softening slightly. ‘How long has Kechko been in Zagreb and what is he doing there?’
They were only inches apart. She could smell the familiar fragrance of his cologne and feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek. If she lifted her
hand only slightly she would touch him.
Remaining perfectly still she said as steadily as she was able, ‘I asked Prince Alexander some time ago if he knew the name Nikita Kechko and he said that he didn’t. Tonight, however, he asked me why I had wanted to know.’
The slight frown furrowing his brows deepened. ‘You didn’t tell him?’
She shook her head. ‘No. I said that someone I had met in Nice had been asking about him and that they were under the impression Kechko was destined to be a junior minister in the new parliament.’
Faintly the strains of Strauss’s ‘Emperor Waltz’lapped around them.
‘And tonight?’ Julian prompted. ‘What did the Prince Regent say to you tonight?’
She pulled his tail-coat closer around her shoulders, knowing how bitterly he would receive the news that the man with whom Natalie had betrayed him was a man who wasn’t even loyal to the Karageorgevich dynasty.
She said reluctantly, ‘He said that Kechko was very far from being a member of his government. He described him as being Dr Josip Frank’s chief henchman. Dr Frank is the leader of an extreme Croat nationalist party and is virulently anti-Serb.’
Julian, well aware of Dr Frank’s political beliefs, gave a short, mirthless laugh. ‘Natalie really surpassed herself this time, didn’t she? She might just as well have allied herself with a Habsburg as with a crony of Josip Frank’s.’ The bitterness she had known he would feel was naked in his voice. ‘I wonder if Kechko told her of his true political allegiance when he told her he was leaving London without her?’
It was a question Katerina had asked herself only half an hour earlier and which she had been unable to answer.
As she remained silent he shrugged his shoulders, dismissing Nikita Kechko temporarily from his thoughts, wanting to change the subject entirely and to say something to her that he had wanted to say for a long time. With brotherly affection he took her hands in his.
‘I want to thank you for your friendship, Katerina,’ he said with deep sincerity. ‘Without it, these last few months would have been unbearable.’
She tried to make a suitable response and failed. Though they had danced together and often spoken together, there had never before been such intimate contact between them and it was almost more than she could bear.
A tremor ran through her and mistaking it for a shiver of cold he said wryly, ‘It was a little warmer the last time we talked here. I remember intending to ask if you thought Natalie would accept my proposal of marriage and Max Karageorgevich joined us before I could do so.’ He gave her a crooked smile. ‘What would you have said to me if he hadn’t done so? Would you have told me I would be rejected? That I shouldn’t persist? If I hadn’t your father would never in a million years have suggested I marry Natalie and take her to London. She would have gone to Geneva with your mother and would no doubt still be there.’
In the distant chandelier-lit ballroom the orchestra had played the last notes of the ‘Emperor Waltz’and were taking a few moments rest. There was very little scent in the air for only a few early-flowering roses were in bloom. A few yards from them a gallant Gloire de France boasted pale pink blossoms and a little further away a Princesse de Lamballe gleamed milkily in the darkness.
She said quietly, ‘I doubt if I would have said any of those things. I would have been too shocked.’
It was not what she had intended saying. She had intended saying something inconsequential; that it was impossible for her to know what she might, or might not have said, five and a half years ago or that Natalie might have settled happily in Geneva now that Hélène was also living there.
Their eyes held; his surprised, hers dazed with disbelief.
‘Shocked?’ It was not the answer he had expected and his eyebrows quirked quizzically. ‘Why? Because Natalie was only seventeen?’
It would have been easy to agree with him; easy to step back from the precipice her words had brought her to. She didn’t do so. Inadvertently she had spoken to him from her heart and she knew, no matter what the cost, that she had no option but to continue.
As the orchestra began to play again and the muted, melodic notes of ‘Roses From the South’ drifted towards them she said with devastating simplicity, ‘No. Not because of that. Because I had foolishly believed it was me you wanted to marry. That it was me to whom you were about to propose.’
He sucked in his breath as though she had dealt him a blow to his chest and she was swamped by instant, bitter regret. A moment ago he had been completely at ease in her company. Now he would never be so again.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said hoarsely, trying to disengage her hands from his. ‘That was supremely foolish of me. I didn’t mean to embarrass you …’
He held her hands fast. ‘You haven’t embarrassed me.’ The implication in her words had been searingly clear and there was stunned incredulity in his voice. ‘You haven’t embarrassed me in the slightest, Katerina. It’s just that I hadn’t realized… It had never crossed my mind…’
‘No,’ she said with so much emotion she shocked even herself. ‘I know that it hadn’t.’
His eyes continued to hold hers, his mind racing back to the spring and early summer of 1914. He remembered how he had always looked forward to meeting her at a Konak tea party or garden party; the friendly ease of the chats in which they had always indulged; his realization that she, and not the kitten-faced witch he was in love with, was the true beauty of the Vassilovich family.
He remembered more recent things too. He remembered Nice and the overwhelming pleasure he had felt at meeting her again. He remembered the hell of explaining to Alexis and Zita why he had accepted a posting in a city Natalie was forbidden to travel to and his overwhelming relief that there was one person in the world he didn’t have to deceive. He remembered how deep his affection for her had always been and how highly he had always valued her courage and integrity.
He said slowly, almost as unbelieving of the road his thoughts were taking him down as he had been when he had first realized what her confession implied, ‘And if I had proposed to you? Would you have accepted me, Katerina?’
Time seemed to waver and halt. The night air was cool on her cheeks. Beneath the cover of the nearby rose bushes a small nocturnal animal scurried about its business.
‘Yes,’ she said quietly, over the precipice and heedless of the consequences.
For a long moment he neither moved nor spoke. He wasn’t naturally introspective but at that moment he faced a great inner truth. Though it was Natalie with whom he had fallen hopelessly in love, it was Katerina he should have married. His character and hers were deeply compatible. How could he, all these years, have been so blind to something so obvious? Another realization followed swiftly and with utter certainty. It wasn’t mere affection he felt for her. It was far, far more. He was on the very edge of being in love with her.
Katerina was aware only of his silence and the unreadable expression in his eyes, an expression she was certain was going to change at any moment to one of pity. The band had once again ceased to play and in a desperate attempt to free them both from the agonizingly embarrassing situation she had plunged them into, she said stiltedly, ‘It must be the supper break. Your partner must be wondering where you are.’
‘I didn’t promise to partner anyone into supper.’
There was a new note in his voice. A note she didn’t understand, but one that was certainly not pity.
He made no attempt to begin walking back to the house and no attempt to release her hands. In the moonlight the upswept waves of her hair had the sheen of satin and her lips were as softly inviting as the petals of a flower. Desire pulsed through him. He wanted to feel the unpinned weight of her hair sliding down over the backs of his hands and to crush the sweetness of her mouth beneath his.
It occurred to him that he had grossly underestimated the depths of his new-found feelings for her. He wasn’t on the edge of being in love. He was in love. Not in the way he had been with Nat
alie. That thunderclap of unreasoning, instant infatuation had been a once in a lifetime experience and would not come again. What he was experiencing now was love of a different kind. Love that would be fully and loyally returned.
Gently, and very firmly, he drew her closer towards him.
‘I made a very great mistake the last time we were in this garden in the moonlight together,’ he said thickly. ‘And it’s a mistake I have no intention of making a second time.’
There was no misunderstanding now the vibrations of tenderness in his voice, or his intentions, and her heart began to slam so hard that it hurt.
As his arms encircled her waist she knew a hair’s breadth of hesitancy and then she remembered Nice and Natalie’s terrible confession and all hesitancy vanished. Natalie did not love him and never had loved him. No-one was being betrayed. Guiltless and in utter certainty of the love she felt for him her hands slid up around his neck, her lips parting willingly beneath his as his mouth closed at last on hers.
A week later, in Kalemegdan Gardens, he said tenderly, ‘I’ve moved out of my apartment adjoining the Legation and into a small house in one of the little cobbled streets behind Terazije Square. It’s Hungarian in style and drowning beneath lilac and jasmine blossom. We should be able to meet there without attracting comment from my neighbours.’
They were walking a very proper foot or so apart and she longed to close the distance and slip her hand into his.
‘I shall only be able to visit you there on an afternoon,’ she said, a touch of apprehension in her voice in case he had not realized how difficult it would be for her to spend time unaccounted for away from home. ‘Peter has music lessons on Monday and Friday afternoons and French lessons on Thursday afternoons. Usually I while away his lesson time by walking here or down by the river, but now …’
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