As the crowd took it up with a great roar of enthusiasm, he stepped back, turned to Cristabel and saw her strongly held in Fylde’s arm. Anguish for him fed the cold tide of desolation that had flooded through Martha since that first moment when the twin Princes had stood facing each other, and the truth had hit her. Her dear friend Franz Wengel was Prince Franz, burdened with all the dynastic duties she found so hard to understand. Was he perhaps seeing it too? Was it deluding herself to have thought that he also had imagined a moment, when the plotting was over, when they two would have time to talk? Surely there had been something unspoken between them? Or was she merely a lonely spinster, imagining things? It made no difference. Franz would do his duty, she knew, and was proud to know it. And I shall go back to America. With Brodski?
‘What are they saying now?’ Lady Helen asked it for the second time, impatiently.
‘What?’ Coming up from a great depth of despair, she heard what the crowd was saying. Most of them were still shouting ‘Long live Prince Franz’, but some had changed back to ‘Freedom and Franz’. These were male voices, and now, in a kind of descant above them, women were joining in with different words. ‘Franz and his lady.’ Could that be it? And, ‘Where is our lady?’
Her eyes were suddenly veiled with tears, but she thought she saw some signal pass between Frau Schmidt and Franz, down there on the stage, so infinitely far away.
‘Well, what is it they are saying?’ Lady Helen asked it more impatiently than ever. ‘Something about a lady? What lady?’
‘I don’t –’ She turned at a gentle touch on her shoulder. It was the guard who had winked at her.
He was smiling now. ‘You’re wanted on stage, Fräulein. Time to take your bow. We all knew you were behind him, every inch of the way. Our Franz.’ And then, handing her solicitously down the narrow stair. ‘Only fancy him being a prince all the time! You won’t mind it too much, will you, Miss?’
She was crying. She was plain Miss Peabody from Philadelphia, and she was about to make her first appearance on any stage. I can’t do it. Of course I can. He’s there waiting. But is he waiting for me? She brushed the tears away with the back of her hand as the friendly guard opened a door and pushed her gently forward. The chorus opened up a way for her, she caught the breath of a friendly whisper, was dazzled for a moment by light from the huge chandelier, moved blindly forward and saw Franz waiting for her. What could she do but walk straight into his arms?
‘I thought I’d lost you.’ His voice came muffled through her hair.
‘So did I!’ Now she could look up at him. ‘What’s that they are playing?’ But she knew.
‘I’m afraid it’s the Lissenberg National Anthem. Time to take your bow, my love. We owe them that.’
‘We certainly do. If they hadn’t …’
‘I’d have gone looking for a princess. Will you be my princess, Martha?’
‘I’ll be your wife,’ she said, and looked up for his kiss.
About the Author
Jane Aiken Hodge was born in the USA, brought up in the UK and read English at Oxford. Before her books became her living she worked as a civil servant, journalist, publishers’ reader and a reviewer.
She wrote lives of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer as well as a book about women in the Regency period, Passion and Principle. But her main output was over twenty historical novels set in the eighteenth century, including Polonaise, The Lost Garden and Savannah Purchase, the third volume of a trilogy set during and after the American War of Independence.
She enjoyed the borderland between mystery and novel and was pleased to be classed as a feminist writer. She died in July 2009.
First Night Page 22