Fire in the Blood

by Barbara Cartland

  Pandia drew in her breath.

  “Knowing that you are – prepared to take the – risk?”

  “There is no risk if you help me, Pandia. If you are seen at the funeral tomorrow nobody is going to think for a moment that I am anywhere else. That will give me tonight and tomorrow night and Thursday with Ivor, since George does not return until Friday.”

  “He must not see me,” Pandia cried. “As your husband he might be able to tell the difference between us.”

  “There is no difference between us,” Selene said firmly. “Nobody has ever been able to tell us apart.”

  Pandia was silent for a moment. Then she said,

  “I was talking once to Papa about twins, after we had been learning about Castor and Pollux, those Greek twins who belonged to the Gods.”

  “I found them all very boring,” Selene remarked.

  “I said to Papa,” Pandia went on, ignoring the interruption, “that when twins are identical like you and me, it would be possible for them to play all sorts of tricks on people simply because nobody could tell them apart.”

  “That is what I have just said,” Selene countered impatiently.

  “Papa replied,” Pandia continued, “that if a man was in love with one of them, he would never be deceived by the other.”

  “I don’t believe it!”

  “Do you really think,” Pandia argued, “that if I went instead of you to meet your Prince, he would be deceived?”

  Selene thought for a moment. Then she responded,

  “I don’t know the answer to that. I am certain George would not notice – but that is different!”

  “Are you saying that he is not in love with you?” Pandia enquired.

  “Not in the same way. Besides we have been married for a long time and George is not as young as he was.”

  What she said was very revealing, and Pandia could not help wondering whether her sister was truthful in saying that her marriage had brought her everything she wanted.

  Material things, perhaps, but not the love and ecstasy she was finding, if regrettably, with another man.

  Then, as they travelled on, Selene, as if she could not help herself began to talk to Pandia as she had in the old days and now it was all about Prince Ivor.

  “The moment I saw him, Pandia,” she said, as the horses carried them towards London, “I felt my heart turn a hundred somersaults and I knew that he was the man I had dreamed about long before I left home.”

  “And did he feel the same about you?”

  “Yes, of course! He said that, when he looked at me moving towards him across the ballroom at Devonshire House, he thought I was enveloped with a celestial light and that I was not a human being but a Goddess from Olympus!”

  “Papa would have understood that.” “If Papa had taught us more about Gods who looked like Ivor, I might have found my Greek lessons more enjoyable!” Selene said. “As it was I found them an unending bore!”

  Pandia wanted to protest, but knew it would be useless.

  While she had thrilled to the stories of the philosophy, the mysticism and the beauty of the ancient Greeks, and for her they had been an inspiration which had become part of her thinking, she was aware that for Selene it was different.

  She had wanted to share her enjoyment with her sister and had once said to her father,

  “How can we make Selene realise how exciting what you are saying is, and how the Greeks altered the thinking of the whole civilised world?”

  “There is nothing either of us can do,” her father said quietly, “and, my dearest, we must never expect from people more than they are capable of giving.”

  Pandia had often thought of the way he had said that and knew it was true.

  She had known as the years passed there was no use expecting Selene to be anything but herself and she could not force beauty upon anybody.

  Whether it was a beauty she saw with her eyes, heard with her ears, or felt in her heart she could not give it to Selene.

  Yet the beauty, which she and her father had enjoyed, Selene had now found, she thought, in a different way, even though she was shocked that it should be an illicit affair.

  “Because I love him” her sister was saying, “I want to be perfect so that he will think me so. I want to be so beautiful that he can see no other woman’s face but mine and so clever that he wants to talk only to me!”

  “I am sure nobody could be as beautiful as you, dearest,” Pandia said.

  “I hope not!” Selene replied. “And do not dare, Pandia, look so beautiful tomorrow that people tell me later they had never seen me ‘look better’!”

  She gave a scornful little laugh.

  “That is about as effusive a compliment as any Englishman is likely to pay me! If only you could hear the things Ivor says!”

  She made a rapturous little sound as she went on,

  “He calls me ‘heart of his heart’ or likens me to a star that has fallen from the sky, which he will keep captive for ever!”

  She spoke with a passionate note in her voice that Pandia did not miss. Then in a different tone she added,

  “I will not lose him! Nobody shall take him from me! If any woman did, I swear I would kill her!”

  “Selene, how can you talk like that?” Pandia asked.

  “Does it sound very dramatic?” Selene replied. “Again it’s my Hungarian blood and it is Mama’s fault if I am over-passionate. She should have married a nice staid Englishman, so that we would have been unemotional, prim and proper young women whom everybody would commend!”

  “In which case, we might not have been twins and would certainly not have been beautiful!” Pandia replied. Selene smiled.

  “Perhaps you are right and after all I should be grateful to Papa for that, if for nothing else!”

  She did not wait for Pandia’s answer, but went on,

  “I used to hate him because Mama had run away with him so that we had none of the things that I wanted which should have been ours if she had not preferred a Hungarian Tutor to a Nobleman like Grandpapa.”

  “How could you feel like that about Papa who was so charming, so handsome and so clever?” Pandia asked. “I have often thought I shall never find a man like him, in which case I shall never marry!”

  “You will be very stupid if you don’t take the first opportunity you get!” Selene snapped. “After all, you cannot go on living alone with only Nanny to talk to for the rest of your life.”

  “I expect that is what I shall have to do,” Pandia replied mournfully.

  There was silence for a moment. Then she said,

  “Sometimes I tell myself stories that because you miss me so much you invite me to stay with you and introduce me to your friends.”

  She spoke dreamily as if she was expressing in words what she had thought of so often and was hardly aware that she was saying it aloud.

  Selene gave a shrill scream.

  “Of course that will never happen! Never! Never! I have told you that as far as our relations are concerned and all the friends I have made since I was married you do not exist! You are dead, Pandia, from the point of view of the Social world and you must never forget it!”

  She paused before she went on,

  “There must be a farmer or somebody in the village you could settle down with. The farms, if I remember, are quite comfortable and I dare say you would be content. You never wanted the luxuries I wanted.”

  Because Pandia knew her sister was deliberately disparaging her and speaking with a contempt that was very obvious in her voice, she felt she wanted to return home immediately.

  Then she realised that she had already committed herself, having been stupid enough to let Selene manipulate her for her own ends and for her own selfish needs.

  Selene had no love for her and never had and the only reason she had been nice since she had suddenly reappeared was to make use of her.

  She had made herself pleasant to Nanny while really despising the old woman who had nursed
her, loved her and made her childhood a very happy one.

  ‘Why did I ever agree to this ridiculous farce?’ Pandia now asked herself.

  She knew it was because, whatever Selene might feel about her, she still loved her twin.

  There was a link between them which no amount of unkindness or even cruelty could break.

  They were born at the same time on the same day and under the same stars and whatever happened, even if they never saw each other again, they were still in some strange manner indivisible.

  She was silent for so long that Selene looked at her sideways as if she thought she had been too unkind or perhaps actually the word was too ‘frank’.

  “It’s no use thinking of the future, Pandia,” she said. “Let’s just think that we are together now and it’s just like the old days.”

  Pandia knew that again Selene was placating her and, because she could not bear a scene, she was ready to be placated.

  “You will never know how much I have wanted to see you again and talk to you,” she said quietly, “and now that we are together, go on telling me about yourself so that I can think about it after it is all – over.”

  Selene was only too willing and she told Pandia how rich her husband was and how generous in giving her jewellery, gowns and anything else she wanted in the various houses he owned.

  “Of course,” she said, “he is set in his ways. I suppose every man becomes that with age. He is desperate to have a son and if I gave him one I think he would cover me with diamonds from head to foot!”

  Her voice expressed her excitement at the idea and she went on,

  “He has also promised to settle a large sum of money on me so that when he dies I shall be a very rich widow!” “Then why are you not having a baby?”

  Pandia knew as she spoke that it was a question Selene did not want to answer.

  Then, as if it was somehow a relief to be able to talk about it, she replied,

  “I don’t know, Pandia, and that is the truth. I am sure I ought to have had one by now, but I am afraid, desperately afraid, that George is too old.”

  “Papa always said,” Pandia replied hesitatingly, “that identical – twins often do not have – children of their own.”

  “I have heard that too and without telling George I went to see a physician. He is Queen Victoria’s doctor as a matter of fact.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said it was a lot of nonsense and he could show me dozens of identical twins who had all had babies of their own.”

  Selene’s voice dropped until it was little more than a whisper as she added,

  “You must never tell anybody because it sounds very immodest, but he examined me and said there was nothing wrong with me at all! He was actually quite certain I could have dozens of children without any trouble.”

  “I am glad, so very glad,” Pandia cried.

  Then a thought struck her and she looked hastily at her sister.

  “You – you don’t think – Selene – that when you are – with the Prince – ?”

  There was no need to say any more.

  Selene’s chin went up and she answered,

  “Why not? I know that if I have a baby George would welcome it with such joy that it would never occur to him for one moment that it was not his!”

  Pandia drew in her breath.

  It seemed to her that suddenly the world was a very different place from what she thought it was.

  Never in her wildest imaginings could she have believed that in her own life there would be people like Selene behaving in the same strange and immoral manner that she had believed could only be found in the stories of the Gods.

  When studying Greek mythology with her father, she had been intrigued by the stories of how Goddesses had been attracted by handsome men with whom they were unfaithful to their celestial husbands.

  The Gods on their part assumed the guise not only of mortal men, but also of animals and pursued exquisite nymphs.

  The tales had never seemed real, only Fairy stories to explain the natural elements, like the sun, the moon, the stars. And yet here in real life Selene was behaving as her namesake had done.

  Because her twin had always seemed to her so beautiful, Pandia had been able to think of her in the words her father had translated for her from the original Greek to whom she was the moon,

  “After bathing her lovely body in the ocean, she clad herself in splendid robes and rose in the sky in her chariot drawn by shining steeds.”

  Pandia could imagine Selene doing this all too clearly and she would look up in the sky to see her golden crown which illuminated the shadowy night.

  Now she remembered that her father had told her how Selene had attracted Zeus, who had made her the mother of three daughters, but that she loved to distraction Endymion, the handsome King of Elis.

  Then she told herself that she did not want to think about it.

  The story of the Goddess had ended in tragedy and she wanted Selene to be happy.

  ‘Will she ever be able to find happiness if what she is doing is so wrong?’ she asked herself, as the carriage drove on towards London.

  But, with Selene still talking rapturously of Prince Ivor, she could find no answer to her question.

  Chapter Three

  Linbourne House in Grosvenor Square was very impressive and Pandia longed as they walked into the marble hall to look around and see some of the main rooms.

  But Selene hurried her up the staircase and into her bedroom which overlooked the back of the house.

  It was very magnificent as she might have expected, tall and square with a huge bed draped with silk curtains from a carved corolla.

  As soon as they entered the room Selene pulled the bell, saying as she did so,

  “Now you can throw back your veil, but be careful that nobody sees you except Yvette.”

  “This is a very large house!” Pandia remarked. “I suppose the reception rooms are very lovely.”

  “I can give parties for a hundred people without there being a crowd!” Selene said in her boastful voice. “But you must come and look at my boudoir.”

  She opened another door and Pandia saw a room which was exactly what she had always imagined a boudoir would be like.

  The curtains were softly draped, the sofa and chairs were piled with silk cushions and there were little tables with objets d’art on them and a profusion of hothouse flowers.

  It seemed incredible in the middle of winter that there should be huge carnations and purple, white and green orchids.

  Pandia could not help thinking of how much they must have cost, while her father and mother had had to count every penny.

  Then she told herself there was no use, as her father had said, expecting people to give more than they were capable of giving.

  That certainly applied to Selene, but it still seemed incredible that she should so easily have distanced herself from their father and herself and doubtless never given either of them a thought until now.

  ‘I hope Papa never knows how little she cared for him,’ she thought.

  Because she was so certain that he was still with her, she was afraid that he would know and yet perhaps he would understand.

  “Do you see that picture on the wall?” Selene was saying. “George bought it for me on one of his previous visits to France. It is a Boucher and it cost him thousands of pounds.”

  “It’s amazingly beautiful!” Pandia exclaimed enthusiastically. “I have always wanted to see one!”

  There was a door on the other side of the boudoir and Selene said,

  “George’s room is through there. He redecorated this whole suite as soon as I married him and allowed me to choose the curtains, the carpets and of course the chandeliers which came from Venice.”

  “It is all a perfect background for you,” Pandia said.

  Because she was pleased at the compliment, Selene smiled at her as she used to do in the old days without being affected.

  T
hen there was the sound of somebody in the bedroom and Selene said,

  “That is Yvette. Come along, we must get busy.”

  Yvette was a Frenchwoman with sharp, shrewd eyes who, as they moved back into the bedroom, stared at them in astonishment.

  Then she clasped her hands together and said in French, “C’est extraordinaire! I don’t believe two ladies look justement the same!”

  “You do see, Yvette,” Selene said, “that nobody will suspect for a moment that I am not attending the funeral tomorrow.”

  “Oui. C’est impossible, madame!”

  “Then let’s get on,” Selene insisted. “Where is my gown? I suppose I shall have to wear the cloak in which my sister arrived.”

  “Mais oui, madame,” Yvette agreed. “I pack two trunks and send downstairs, you give the lady old clothes for charity pour pauvres maîtresses.”

  Selene laughed and said to Pandia,

  “Poor Governesses! Yvette is so clever! As you see, I could not manage without her.”

  “I suggest, m’mselle,” Yvette said, “you undress and go to bed. I say downstairs want dinner up here, after long journey très fatiguée.”

  “I shall want your widow’s bonnet,” Selene said, “and perhaps it’s prophetic that I should wear one!”

  Pandia was shocked that she should be hoping that her husband might die, but she knew it was no use saying so.

  She merely lifted the widow’s bonnet with its long crêpe veil from her head and put it down on a chair.

  Selene was taking off the very elegant blue gown she had travelled in and after she had washed, Yvette helped her into a black one which was very unlike the one Pandia was wearing.

  She saw to her surprise that it was an evening gown with the bodice cut extremely low with ruched tulle over her bare shoulders that matched the rows of tucks on the hem of the skirt.

  Because she had the same white skin and red lights in her hair, Pandia watching her felt almost as if she was seeing herself.