De Richleau saw nothing beyond the bounds of reasonable possibility in this pathetic story. In England, at that date, unmarried girls of good family were rarely allowed to go out shopping without their mothers, and when they did were always accompanied by a maid; while on the Continent young women of position were still more carefully guarded from the possible attentions of undesirable males. Even engaged couples were allowed to be alone together only within earshot of their elders, and to conduct a clandestine affair bristled with danger and difficulties. Yet it did strike him as strange that his obviously lovely partner should have reached the age of twenty-four without having acquired a single swain with the audacity to secure a succession of rendezvous with her, however innocent and fleeting.
After a moment’s consideration, he decided that he did not believe it. Her full mouth, fresh complexion, and limpid eyes all suggested that she was far from cold by temperament. On her own confession, it was ten years since she had first become conscious of the opposite sex. In all that time it seemed incredible that she had not had a single active love affair. Suddenly, it occurred to him that she, in her turn, was amusing herself at his expense. Just as he had pretended to be cruel and dissipated, so she was now acting the role of the maiden in the ivory tower.
At once he decided to scale the tower and call her bluff.
“You poor little rich girl,” he said softly. “It is high time that someone opened your prison doors for you, and I am prepared to do it if you will let me.”
She started, looked at him in evident surprise, then asked with a low laugh: “Am I to take that as a proposal of marriage?”
“Hardly!” he laughed back. “It is customary for a man at least to see a lady’s face before he asks her to marry him. But from the very moment when you fell into my arms on the staircase, I felt greatly attracted to you; and I ask you now to accept me as your beau.”
“I appreciate your offer, and would be glad to have your friendship,” she said gravely. “But, unfortunately, it is most unlikely that any future occasions will arise where we could talk like this in private.”
“Why? Are you, then, returning to the Continent almost immediately?”
“Oh no. I shall be staying in England for some time yet.”
“Then we are certain to meet at lots of places. London society is not large, and the season will be opening shortly. You must let me know to what parties you are going, and I shall make it my business to get myself invited.”
“As soon as it was noticed that you were paying marked attention to me, my people would formally request you to desist.”
“From fear that I was after your millions, eh? Then we must manage matters so that they suspect nothing. We must refrain from dancing together sufficiently to make ourselves conspicuous. Sometimes it might be wise not to do so once in a whole evening; but we could sit out together, like this. Besides, Roehampton, Hurlingham, Ascot and Henley would offer us a score of opportunities to meet, get lost in the crowd, and slip away for a while together.”
As she remained silent he took her hand and pressed it. A tremor of excitement ran right up her long kid-gloved arm to the elbow, and she let her hand remain in his; so he hurried on, “Even after this brief meeting I feel myself near to being in love with you already. You say you have been starved of romance. I offer it to you now. I beg you not to reject it.”
Her voice came almost in a whisper. “I am sorely tempted to say yes. But I am frightened. Not for myself, but that I might become involved in a scandal, and so bring disgrace on my family.”
“I swear to you that I will be the very essence of discretion.”
“And—and I believe you. But I am sure that for you to see me alone will be far more difficult than you suppose.”
De Richleau did not doubt that she and her money-bags were well protected from amorous assault; but he thought it certain that she was deliberately exaggerating in order to keep up the role of snow-white innocence, and test him to the utmost. Yet, even had he fully believed her, no difficulties, real or imagined, would have deterred him now. His ardour was aroused to a greater degree than it had been for a long time, by the temptation to enter on what, for him, would be an entirely new kind of love affair.
Smiling into her eyes, he said firmly, “Leave everything to me. I promise you I am no roué; but I would be a poor sort of beau if, at my age, I had never been in love before. And I am rich enough to bribe servants so lavishly that I have never yet known one to betray me. It would not be the first time, either, that I have scaled a garden wall to keep an assignation with a lady on its other side in the middle of the night.”
She caught her breath. “I—I can believe that too. The moment you unmasked I knew you to be bold and determined. But if I consented to let you play this dangerous game, nothing—nothing could come of it.”
“Do you call love nothing?”
“I mean it could lead nowhere, and there would be a bitter aftermath for both of us. As an honourable gentleman, which I now feel sure you are, you would not expect of me anything—anything, the memory of which would cause me shame when I come to marry. Yet, if we were found out, people would believe the worst; and that risk is too high a price to pay for a few stolen conversations.”
He raised her gloved hand to his lips, and kissed it. “My beautiful unknown, I beg you not to act your part of sweet innocence too faithfully, by pretending that you would forbid me all but talk. Tender embraces and gentle kisses never ruined any girl’s marriage yet, and stolen kisses are the very salt of stolen meetings. They afterwards become the sweetest memories of our lives.”
As she did not reply, he felt that the time had come to call her bluff. Slipping an arm about her waist he swiftly drew her to him, and added: “That you may have a sample to think about tonight, I am about to steal one now.”
“Wait!” she exclaimed, jerking herself erect and throwing back her head. “Rather than you should regret what you are about to do, I will unmask.”
For a second he paused, dreading that in boasting of her beauty she had lied, and now intended to disclose some horrid scar or blemish that disfigured her face. But, as she ripped away the black satin with her free hand, he found himself gazing on features that were delicate but strong; sensuous, yet chaste; with a skin as smooth as her kid gloves. She was still a little flushed but her blue eyes, now calm and serene, met his without a quiver.
The thought flashed through his mind that she had been wrong in supposing that he would know her at sight, as he could not recall ever having seen a photograph of her in any of the weeklies that featured the doings of society people. But, as he had spent the greater part of the past two years in the Balkans, that seemed hardly surprising, and entirely irrelevant to their present situation.
He smiled at her, and murmured: “I thank you for that gracious gesture—and the sweet surprise of your dazzling beauty.” Then, crushing her against his chest, he pressed his mouth firmly on her half-open lips.
Her hands swiftly gripped his shoulders, and for a moment he felt her resist him. But under the pressure of his mouth hers opened wider, her head fell back and her whole body went limp in his arms. Overjoyed at her complete surrender, he tightened his embrace and showered more kisses upon her. She made no response, and he took her lack of it for shyness. Then he asked her to tell him her name. She did not reply. Suddenly, with a start of dismay, he realised that she had fainted.
Next moment his distress and alarm were increased a hundredfold—he had heard the sound of approaching footsteps. His right arm was caught between the basket-work back of the settee and the girl’s limp body. Before he had time to pull it free, the footsteps halted and a woman’s voice cried excitedly in German:
“Here she is! Ach! Gott im Himmel! But this is terrible!”
At a glance the Duke recognised her as the grey-haired dowager whom his partner had pointed out to him in the ballroom. Beside her was a distinguished-looking elderly man. His voice now came sharp and angry, in good Engli
sh but with a heavy accent.
“What has happened? How dare you, sir! What have you done to her?”
De Richleau considered himself an adept at slipping out of awkward situations; but rarely had he been caught in quite such an embarrassing one, and for once his habitual sang-froid deserted him.
“Nothing,” he stammered. “Nothing very reprehensible, I assure you. I—I would not harm her for the world. She must be a very sensitive young lady to faint just because—because I whisked her mask off. But really, she will be quite all right again in a few minutes.”
Ignoring his protests, the elderly woman ran forward, pushed him aside, and took the unconscious girl in her arms. Producing a bottle of smelling salts from her bag, she administered first aid, while the man continued to stand there glaring at the Duke.
After a moment the girl’s eyes flickered open. Raising a hand, she pushed the smelling salts aside, hurriedly sat up, and murmured in German:
“Oh, Frau Grafin, how—how do you come to be here?”
“For the past half-hour we have been looking for you everywhere,” the Grafin replied in tones of mingled concern and reproach. “We became alarmed by your disappearance, and with good cause it seems. I cannot say how distressed——”
“Please!” the girl interrupted. “Please say no more. I was quite enjoying myself until—Oh, it was absurd of me to faint. But—but it is the first time I have ever been kissed like that.”
Then, burying her face in her hands, she burst into tears.
‘Now the cat is really out of the bag,’ thought the Duke grimly. ‘I could at least have saved her that, had she not become hysterical. How damnably annoying that her people should make such a fuss over so little. I hope they don’t put the poor child on bread and water for this, but they are probably quite capable of it. Still, from all she said, they must be appalling snobs; so perhaps when they know who I am they will regard her little lapse more leniently.’
These thoughts coursed through his mind in a second as he turned his glance from the girl to the elderly man. At her words his lined face had taken on a look of consternation that almost amounted to horror. Trembling with anger, he confronted de Richleau, and burst out:
“Did you hear what she said? Your conduct is outrageous—unpardonable. Do you not realise that it is lèse-majesté to have forced your vile and brutal attentions on Her Imperial Highness?”
Chapter II
The First Lord Intervenes
At that moment, attracted by the raised voices, two other men appeared round the corner of the banked-up mass of orchids that hid the seat from passers-by. One was a good bit over six feet tall, with greying hair; the other, of medium height, with a bulging forehead and chubby face. Both were masked, and remained standing at the bend of the alley; silent spectators of the scene.
Amazement and swift realisation of the seriousness of his offence temporarily robbed de Richleau of words. When Sir George Holford had invited him to the ball that morning he had omitted to mention that he was giving it in honour of the Archduchess Ilona Theresa. The Duke had not even known that she was in England, but the revelation of her identity explained a multitude of things that had puzzled him in the past half hour.
The person of the fair-haired young man who had fallen down stairs had seemed vaguely familiar and, by association, de Richleau now realised that the Archduchess’ partner must have been one of the Royal Princes. The unusual combination in her of maturity and innocence, which had attracted him so strongly, was explained by her royal upbringing. Naturally, photographs of her were always appearing in the Press, and when she had said, ‘I am accounted the most beautiful …’ she had stopped short of adding ‘Princess in Europe’, only in order to preserve her incognito. Naturally, too, as the future bride of some crowned head or heir apparent, she would have been kept with the utmost strictness, and any young nobles who began to pay her attentions at the Court of Vienna would have been promptly banished to some distant province. It was probably true that she had spent much of her youth in Munich, as the Royal Bavarian House of Wittelsbach was more closely tied by a series of marriages to the Habsburgs of Vienna than to any other family, and she had obviously refrained from telling him that she was an Austrian in the belief that he would then guess her identity. It was now clear, too, that on removing her mask she had expected him to recognise her immediately, and so desist from kissing her.
Recovering his wits after a moment, de Richleau drew himself up and said: “My attentions, sir, were neither vile nor brutal. You overstate the case. My fault arises solely from the fact that this lady happens to be a royal personage. The liberty I took was no more than any man might be tempted to take at a masked ball, where partners are not always known to one another.”
“Her Imperial Highness was unmasked,” snapped the elderly man. “You could not possibly have failed to recognise her. Who are you, sir?”
De Richleau took out his gold card-case, extracted a card, and handed it over with a little shrug. “I assure you that you are mistaken. I arrived in London from the Near East only yesterday. I have never seen Her Imperial Highness before, or, as far as I can recall, any portrait of her.”
With a stiff bow the other took the card, glanced at it, and said: “I am Count Mensdorf, the Austrian Ambassador, and Her Imperial Highness is in my wife’s care this evening.”
“Then, your Excellency, I deeply regret having caused you such grave concern, and beg that you will use your good offices to induce Her Imperial Highness to accept my humblest apologies for the lack of respect which I unwittingly showed her.”
The Ambassador appeared in no way mollified. He tapped the Duke’s card impatiently on his fingernail. “Your Grace cannot fail to be aware that, in view of this incident, your continued presence here would prove most embarrassing to Her Imperial Highness. Therefore I must request you to leave the house at once. Moreover, it would gravely embarrass her to meet you again at any functions she may attend, so it will be my unpleasant duty to warn anyone from whom she accepts invitations that your name should not be included in the list of guests.”
The young Archduchess had swiftly overcome her tears. Standing up, she resumed her mask, then she took her chaperone’s arm and, without a glance at de Richleau, moved towards the exit of the alley. The two onlookers at its bend made way for her to pass, and all four men in the group gave a low bow as, with her head held high, she disappeared behind the greenery.
The Duke was just about to express his willingness to withdraw, when the shorter of the two hitherto silent spectators stepped forward and removed his mask. His big head was well set on powerful shoulders. Beneath his beetling brows, shrewd, kindly eyes twinkled with humour and vitality. In a deep, sonorous voice, he addressed the Ambassador.
“As my friend and I chanced to witness the latter part of this regrettable incident, may I be permitted to suggest that your Excellency should give further thought to the decision you have just announced before putting it into execution. Your natural indignation is fully understandable. As a Minister of the Crown I should like formally to express my deep distress that Her Imperial Highness should have been subjected to this deplorable experience while a guest of Britain. Clearly it is our duty to protect her as far as we are able from any future repercussions of it. But should your Excellency pursue your intention of having this gentleman’s name struck out from lists of guests at all parties where she is appearing, that will inevitably link his name with hers, and almost certainly give rise to scandal.”
The taller man had now also unmasked. He had the lean, bronzed face of a soldier, his eyes were bright blue, and a great cavalry moustache swept up towards his high cheekbones.
“First Lord’s right, Mensdorf!” he boomed abruptly. “Least said, soonest mended. No great harm done by a feller kissing a gel at a dance—even if she is a Princess. No doubt he’ll give you his assurance that he won’t tell tales out of school, or approach her again. That’s all you want. Then forget it. I’m no diplom
at. Never did understand that high-falutin’ sort of stuff. But that’s my advice.”
Count Mensdorf’s face broke into a reluctant smile. “I have met many a worse diplomat than you, Sir Pellinore, and the First Lord is right. I thank you both for your timely intervention. This incident perturbed me so greatly that I spoke without giving the matter sufficient thought.”
“That’s a very handsome admission from a man of your Excellency’s calling,” the First Lord chuckled, “and one which I am sure you have never been called on to make in the course of official business.”
De Richleau stepped forward and bowed to the Ambassador. “Sir, I willingly give you my word I will not mention this matter to anyone, and that during the remainder of Her Imperial Highness’ stay in England I will do everything reasonably possible to avoid appearing in her presence.”
The Ambassador returned the bow a little stiffly. “I thank your Grace. Let us consider the incident closed.” Then he bowed more cordially to the other two, adding: “You will excuse me, gentlemen, if I rejoin my wife?” and hurried away.
The giant with the cavalry moustache, who had been addressed as Sir Pellinore, was staring at the Duke. “I know your face,” he declared suddenly. “We’ve met before; I’d bet a pony on it. Where was it, eh?”
“In Constantinople, about eighteen months ago,” replied de Richleau. “We were not actually introduced, but I remember you were pointed out to me, during a conference on munitions, as Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust. I was then on the Turkish General Staff, and I gathered that you were representing the British Government in a big armaments deal that the Turks were endeavouring to put through.”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed the tall baronet. “You’re all at sea, there. I’m not capable of representing anybody at a show of that kind. I’ve an eye for a horse or a pretty woman, and I’m no bad judge of vintage port. But I’ve no brains—no brains at all. Anybody will tell you that.”
The Second Seal Page 3