An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition

by Cartland, Barbara

  From the windows of the sitting room Emilie could look across the gardens of the Casino directly on to the sea. To the West she could see the harbour and beyond it the great rock of Monaco, its ancient Palace and Fortress still standing grimly sentinel as they had done for over 500 years. But Emilie was more interested in the view which she knew lay behind the hotel – a view of a town which had sprung up like a gaudily tinted mushroom, a brilliant, vivid place, rising roof upon roof up the hillside, white and glittering and seeming in its opulence and magnificence to be the result of some magical power from a wizard’s wand.

  Surely that was just what François Blanc had been to Monte Carlo – a wizard, for he had created from a barren poverty stricken rock a veritable wonderland of wealth and luxury, gaiety and pleasure.

  Emilie had not believed all that the newspapers had told her these past years. But now that her eyes had seen the revelation for herself, she was astonished. The hotel, too, exceeded anything she had expected, and when, with Mistral beside her and Jeanne following humbly behind, she had swept into the foyer and crossed the big hall, feeling her feet sink into the pile of the luxurious carpet, taking in with one quick glance the marble pillars, the glittering mirrors, the profusion of palms and flowers, she had for one moment felt half afraid of her own courage at daring to enter such a world.

  And then something stronger than herself, some force within her drove her forward so that when she reached the reception desk she was able to act convincingly the little play she had already rehearsed in her mind.

  ‘A suite has been engaged for me,’ she said, ‘by my man of affairs, Monsieur Anjou.’

  The clerk bowed.

  ‘It has indeed, Madame, and we have been expecting you. May I welcome you to the Hôtel de Paris and to Monte Carlo?’

  The inclination of Emilie’s head was a model of condescension.

  ‘Everything is prepared, Madame,’ the clerk said. If you will be good enough to sign the register, I will have you escorted upstairs.’

  Emilie picked up the big quill pen and turned towards the open, leather bound book which lay on the desk, then she hesitated, making sure that the clerk saw her hesitation. She glanced back at Jeanne who stood a little distance away holding in her hands a leather jewel case on which a coronet was prominently embossed.

  ‘It is a little – difficult,’ Emilie said at length. ‘My niece and I are here for a holiday. We wish to have a quiet time and would remain – incognito.’

  ‘I am sure your wishes will be respected, Madame,’ the clerk said, but there was the light of curiosity in his eyes.

  ‘Yes, incognito,’ Emilie repeated. ‘That is the right word.’ She dipped the pen in the ink and in a strong, bold hand wrote ‘Madame – ’. Then again she hesitated until finally with a little laugh she added a name. ‘I am Madame Secret,’ she said, ‘at least for my stay here in this charming holiday resort.’

  ‘It is as Madame wishes,’ the clerk said, but Emilie noticed that once again he glanced towards the jewel case with its embossed coronet in Jeanne’s hands.

  But Emilie still hesitated.

  ‘My niece – ’ she said at last and wrote another name. Mistral glanced at what her aunt had written. The bold, large handwriting was easily decipherable. Emilie had written Mademoiselle Fântóme.

  The suite into which they were shown was delightful. It consisted of a large room for Emilie, a smaller one for Mistral, a sitting room with a balcony connecting the two. Emilie had instructed a lawyer in Paris to write for the best apartments that the hotel could command, and while he had obeyed her, giving no name but saying only that a client of his would be arriving in Monte Carlo on the 28th February, Emilie had not anticipated anything so comfortable from what she remembered as an untended, straggling orange grove.

  It was late in the evening when they arrived and despite the disappointment in Mistral’s face she had insisted on dining upstairs.

  ‘I do not wish you to be seen until our trunks are unpacked,’ she said. ‘When we appear, we must be dressed in our best so that people will notice us.’

  ‘But, Aunt Emilie, I thought you said that you wished to be incognito?’ Mistral asked bewildered.

  Emilie looked at her in a strange way, and then said abruptly ‘Do not ask so many questions, Mistral. I am tired. Tomorrow I will explain things to you – at least those which it is important for you to know, but tonight I shall retire early. I wish to be alone.’

  ‘But of course, Aunt Emilie, I understand,’ Mistral said. ‘You must be very tired after such a long journey. Indeed I am tired myself, but more with excitement than anything else. I cannot tell you how I long to see Monte Carlo and the Mediterranean. I wish it was not so dark.’

  She went to the open, uncurtained window, staring out into the deep purple twilight. Emilie called her back almost irritably.

  ‘Go and help Jeanne with the unpacking, child, and do not show yourself at the window.’

  ‘Yes, Aunt Emilie.’

  But alone in the sitting room, Emilie herself crossed to the window and did just what she had forbidden Mistral to do. She stared out into the twilight trying to see what lay outside. She too was impatient that the night must pass before she could see more.

  When their evening meal was finished, Emilie retired to her room, and when Jeanne came to her to help her to undress, asking her solicitously if she would like a glass of milk or a hot brick in her bed, she sent her away saying she wanted only to be left alone.

  And when at last this wish was realised, Emilie laid on a chair a heavy despatch box. It was a big casket covered in purple leather and without the big gilt coronet which adorned her other luggage.

  Nevertheless it was a distinguished piece of luggage and almost without realising it Emilie’s hand caressed the leather before she drew a key from her purse and turned it in the lock. The box was filled not with state papers for which it had been originally intended, but strangely enough with scrapbooks, made of brown paper such as were sold for children to stick transfers in and young ladies their valentines.

  Slowly, with what appeared to be almost a tenderness, Emilie drew the books from the leather box. She chose one and opened it. It was filled with newspaper cuttings. There were six scrapbooks equally filled with cuttings dating back for eighteen years and all referring to one place and one person.

  The authorities of Monte Carlo would have been interested if they could have seen Emilie’s scrap books, for they constituted in themselves an almost unique history of the rise of the town. At the beginning of the book the cuttings referred to events occurring at irregular intervals, sometimes two or three months elapsing between each one, and then they referred only to the Grand Duke Ivan of Russia.

  As the years passed, the cuttings were more numerous.

  François Blanc, the genius of Homburg, had been invited to set up a Casino in Monaco and a new name was to be chosen. The natives called it ‘Les Spelugues’, but this was not considered suitable as it had an improper meaning, and finally it was decided that the Casino and the new town which was being built around it should be called Monte Carlo.

  Now there was hardly a day when a fresh cutting had not been added to the book – cuttings describing the beauties and the importance of the new buildings, cuttings mentioning the amusements, galas, balls, fêtes, concerts and the games such as whist, écarté, piquet, faro, boston and reverse, as well as roulette and trente-et-quarante, which were being played in the Casino.

  There were columns of print, paeans of praise from enthusiastic correspondents, and nearly every one of them mentioned the distinguished visitors who were to be found in this new and exciting playground of wealthy society. Princes – Montenegrin, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian – Rajahs, Maharajahs, Grand Dukes, Arch Dukes and swarms of lesser nobility, all received their comment, and there was a veritable fanfare of exaltation when two years earlier, in 1872, England’s Prince and Princess of Wales had visited the Principality. Although the whole list of names was i
ncluded in Emilie’s book, there was only one name she sought amongst them, and each time he was mentioned she had underlined the printed word with a blue pencil.

  It was easy to see at a glance from the blue pencil marks, which stood out clearly, how often this name occurred among those present at the Casino, among those attending the opening of the Opera Season, among those taking part in the pigeon shooting. Always the same name, always underlined in blue, ‘His Imperial Highness, the Grand Duke Ivan of Russia’.

  In later years and especially in the last two or three years another name was invariably added to the first – His Imperial Highness, the Grand Duke Ivan of Russia and his son, His Serene Highness, Prince Nikolai.’

  Slowly Emilie’s fingers turned the pages of the scrap books. Some of the earlier books were already well worn and a little ragged from the many times they had been read and handled. And yet to Emilie sitting alone in her bedroom at the Hôtel de Paris it was as if she read her cuttings for the first time. For eighteen years she had waited for this moment.

  It was after midnight when she raised her head and put the scrap books back in their leather-covered casket. But she did not feel tired, as any ordinary woman of nearly sixty might have felt tired at the end of such a long journey. Instead she felt as if she had an inexhaustible strength. Nothing and nobody could prevent her now from doing what she had set out to do.

  As she thought of what lay ahead, her eyes narrowed and a smile twisted her lips. She looked evil at that moment, but after a while, as her thoughts wandered back into the past, her eyes softened, as invariably they did when she thought of Alice – Alice who had been the one thing she had loved in her life. How different her rest would be tonight in the big comfortable bed awaiting her from what it had been when she had come here last with Alice! Then they had arrived battered and bruised from their journey from Nice, but they had been greeted with cries of excitement and a loving welcome from the aunt and cousins with whom they had come to stay.

  Emilie had never met them before, those nephews and nieces of her mother’s and her own first cousins, and she had not expected such a warm greeting or such a sincere one when she had written to ask if she and Alice might visit them for a month or so. She had almost expected a refusal in reply to her letter despite the fact that Marie had spoken of Louise as being her favourite sister.

  Aunt Louise had indeed taken them to her ample bosom, and her family of six boys and four girls had been none the less generous in their efforts at hospitality. Emilie had always been inclined to be superior and standoffish with her French relatives, for she liked to remember that her father was an Englishman. She had also when she was quite young been aware of her own illegitimacy and felt aggressively self-conscious that this stood as a barrier between her and her mother’s family. But in actual fact she need not have worried herself on this score. The Riguad family accepted the result of Marie’s courtship with the young Englishman as philosophically as they accepted a bad lambing season or a storm which did damage to the crops.

  It was a pity, but there was nothing to be done about it, they would aver with a shrug of their shoulders, and they were far more awkward with Emilie because she had a sharp tongue and they felt that her English blood made her despise them than because they had any inclination to cast aspersions upon her parentage.

  Just as her grandfather, old Louis Riguad, had accepted philosophically and without reproach the irregularities of Marie’s love affair and eventually Emilie’s own arrival at the farm, so the rest of the family had looked upon it as part of the inscrutable ways of Providence.

  If anything, they were rather proud of Emilie’s connection with a distinguished English family, especially after John Wytham brought Alice to Brittany. Alice was a true aristocrat, the Riguads told themselves. They all learned of her arrival at the farm in the extraordinary way that news travels among families without the aid of the written word, and they knew too that she was the result of John Wytham’s marriage with a lady of his own class.

  That the child of such a union should be brought to Marie Riguad’s home to be brought up by her was a compliment to the whole Riguad family. If Emilie had feared that she and Alice might prove unwelcome at Monaco, her mind was set at rest within a few minutes of her arrival.

  Talking excitedly, gesticulating and striving to point out all the possible objects of interest at the same time as they asked questions about the journey, the Riguad family bore Emilie and Alice off down the hill to their home. It was a noisy, triumphant procession and Alice, white-faced and fair, walking in the midst of the dark haired and dark skinned Riguads, looked like a creature from another world.

  The Riguads’ home was an old-fashioned shack, almost on the shore itself, but as their aunt and uncle explained, they were lucky to have that, although it meant a long way for the boys to walk to where they could graze the goats. The peasants’ houses in Monaco were few and in very bad repair. How could they be anything else when the whole Principality was impoverished and there seemed to be no possible way of improving conditions?

  The Princess Caroline, wife of Florestan I, it was true, had tried to introduce lace making and the manufacture of perfumes among the industries of the Peninsula. There was also flower growing and the distillation of alcohol, but none of these seemed to be very successful and as communication with the outside world was so difficult it was easier in most cases to remain poor and hungry, but happy and lazy in the sunshine.

  Certainly Emilie and Alice had been happy in the Riguads’ ramshackle house by the sea. Alice’s cough, the reason for which the whole journey had been undertaken, began to get better. It appeared regularly every winter when the raw winds swept across the flat plains of Brittany and the damp mists lay over the ground in the early morning.

  Her face, too, lost that white pinched look and her laugh rang out more frequently. In Emilie’s eyes at any rate she seemed to assume a new beauty. Yes, they had been happy in those spring days nineteen years ago until something happened, something which even now Emilie could not remember without clenching her hands, without feeling the slow dull anger rise within her, virulent and malignant. She could see it all happening so clearly.

  Alice in her blue frock, which matched the blue of her eyes, had taken the youngest Riguad child, a baby of two, up to the top of the rock to look at the Palace. Alice had been attracted by the Palace. She had never known much about Princes and Kings, for in the past eight years in Brittany people had seldom mentioned such exalted personages.

  Now the Palace and its encircling walls and the high battlements appeared to fascinate her. It was her favourite walk. She would climb from the shore to the top of the rock to sit there and look at the Palace, watching the soldiers go in and out and occasionally seeing Prince Florestan come driving past, his carriage drawn by a pair of magnificent white horses.

  Occasionally, too, she would look at the only other great building on the Peninsula. It was called a Chateau, but to Alice it, too, appeared to be a Palace. It reminded her somewhat strangely of her grandfather’s house in England. It was of grey stone with one great tower in the centre of it, and there were wrought iron gates surmounted by crowns opening on to the road. Although the garden was filled with flowers and fountains it had a grandeur which in itself held for Alice an inexplicable attraction.

  It was here, they told her, that the Grand Duke Ivan of Russia lived. A friend of the reigning Prince, he had built the Chateau about six years earlier. He had meant it to serve him as an occasional holiday residence when he visited his friend, the Prince of Monaco. But when it was completed, he found the climate and the house itself so much to his liking that he stayed on almost indefinitely, returning to Russia at very infrequent intervals and every year adding to the size of his Chateau until it looked as if it would eventually be larger and more impressive than the Palace itself.

  ‘What is he like, the Grand Duke?’ Alice had asked.

  ‘He is tall and very handsome,’ someone replied, ‘but now he is s
ad, for his wife, a lovely Russian lady, has died. The cold in Russia was too intense for her. They went back, it is said, because the Czar wished them to be present at a Court Ball, but it was cold, very cold, and the Grand Duchess caught a chill. She grew worse and worse, and not all the Doctors in Russia could save her.’

  ‘Oh, poor thing!’ Alice exclaimed. ‘So now the Grand Duke is alone?’

  ‘Not entirely,’ she was told. ‘The Grand Duchess left behind her little baby, Prince Nikolai. He is two years old, a dear little boy, and always he lives here because if he goes to Russia the Grand Duke is afraid that the cold will kill him too – poor little motherless babe.’

  Emilie could remember how interested Alice had become in the widowed Grand Duke and his little son. Day after day she used to go up to the top of the rock to look at the Chateau d’Horizon where the Duke lived. And then it happened.

  The Duke’s carriage, coming swiftly and unexpectedly along the dusty track which served the Peninsula as a road, nearly ran down the Riguad baby, little Thérése. Just in time Alice was able to snatch her from under the horses’ hoofs, but she stood there white and shaken while the baby screamed in terror. The carriage was drawn to a standstill and the Grand Duke himself descended to speak to Alice and to reassure the frightened baby.

  No one else was present and no one ever knew exactly what he said or what Alice replied, but she must have told him of her interest in his house and perhaps how it reminded her of her grandfather’s mansion in England, for the next day the Duke’s carriage called at the Riguads’ shack to take Alice to the Chateau. It was only when the carriage arrived that Alice related what had happened the day before, and before Emilie, dumbfounded and astonished, could make any protestation, she had driven off alone.

  If Emilie was speechless then, she was certainly not speechless when Alice returned. She took her out on to the shore, for there was little privacy to be found in the Riguad household, and she extracted from her the whole story of her meeting with the Grand Duke. Word by word she learned all that had taken place that afternoon at the Chateau.