As she spoke, it flashed through her mind that perhaps he had come to tell her that her father had been arrested.
But he was smiling as he put his arms around her and drew her close against him.
“I have come, my darling, for you!” he said and his lips came down on hers.
Vida did not understand, but as he kissed her, streaks of lightning flashed through her body.
A wild, irresistible ecstasy seemed to rise like a flame that burnt against the fire on the Prince’s lips.
He kissed her until she felt as if her whole being merged into him and she was no longer herself, but his and they were one.
Then, as she felt the train begin to move and the wheels turn over on the rails beneath them, the Prince drew her down onto the sofa, still holding her closely in his arms.
Only when he was kissing the softness of her neck as he had done before, did she ask,
“Why – are you here? Oh, Ivan – what has happened?”
“My darling, my sweet!” he said. “My heart, my life! Did you really think I could lose you?”
“What – are you – saying?”
“I am saying, my precious, that I am endangering your life and mine in a mad gamble and we must start praying that we will not be caught.”
Vida put her hands flat on his chest, pushing him a little away from her.
“Tell me – explain to me – what you are saying,” she begged. “I-I cannot understand.”
He smiled at her before he replied,
‘There is only one thing to understand, which is that I love you!”
“And I love you,” Vida replied, “but – I thought I should – never see you – again.”
“I knew you were thinking that, my precious little love, but there was no way I could ask you to trust me.”
He would have kissed her again, but Vida said,
“I still don’t – understand.”
The Prince pulled her close to him and said,
“We are running away, my lovely one and, as I have already said, we must pray that we will reach the frontier without being apprehended.”
“You mean – you are coming with – me?” Vida stammered.
“I mean that I am going to marry you the moment we are out of Russia.”
Vida drew in her breath and stared at him as if she thought that she could not have heard him aright.
“M-marry me?”
“You made it very clear that you would not accept my love any other way,” the Prince said with a hint of laughter in his voice.
“But – you are to marry the – Princess Eudoxia!”
“That was her idea, not mine.”
“But – the Czar – ?”
“The Czar will be very angry,” the Prince replied, “very angry indeed! However, once we are out of the country there is nothing he can do about it.”
Vida stared at him in bewilderment.
“But still I don’t understand. Surely he will confiscate – your castle, your estate – ?”
“He is welcome to them!” the Prince said. “The only thing I want, my beautiful soul of my soul, is you!”
“You – cannot be – serious!”
“I am very serious,” the Prince answered.
Vida felt the tears come into her eyes.
“How can you do anything so wonderful – so marvellous?” she asked brokenly. “At the same time I cannot let you – do this for me.”
“I think you will find it very hard to stop me.”
“I love you. You know that I love you,” Vida declared, “But suppose you regret giving up all your – possessions – your wealth?”
The Prince looked at her for a long moment.
Then he said,
“Are you afraid of being poor with me?”
“No – of course not!” Vida replied. “I love you so overwhelmingly that if we had to live in a tent on the Hungarian steppes or in a little cottage in England, I would be supremely – blissfully – happy to share it with – you.”
She spoke with a passionate note of sincerity in her voice that brought a look of tenderness to the Prince’s eyes that few people had ever seen.
“I believe you really mean it!” he said slowly.
“You know I mean it! But you have never been poor and, although Papa may spare me a little money, you would have to give up so many luxuries that I cannot believe that – any woman would be – worth it.”
“Any woman would not be worth it! The only thing I am not giving up is you. You are different, my darling, and it is going to take me a lifetime to tell you how different you are.”
“That is what I want you to say,” Vida said, “but I still think you don’t – understand.”
“What do I not understand?”
“That if we live like ordinary people you will not be important as you are now and you will not be able to enjoy the – perfection that you are – always seeking.”
She gave a little cry and then said,
“I have to make you – think of this before you do anything – irrevocable, something you may – later regret.”
She moved a little way from the Prince and added, not looking at him,
“Have you thought of what – life would be like without so many – servants – without your outstandingly beautiful horses – without your private train?”
She drew in her breath before she went on.
“You have always been able to entertain your friends in unsurpassed luxury, travel wherever you want to go and do a million things which I told you once made you – seem like a – genie.”
Her voice dropped a little lower before she asked,
“Can you – really be sure – that I am – worth all that?”
The Prince reached out his hand to turn her face towards him and cried,
“Look at me, Vida! Look into my eyes!”
She thrilled at his touch and obeyed him.
As her eyes met his, she could feel their vibrations joining in that inexplicable and magnetic way that they had joined before.
It told her that whatever happened she would never find another man to take his place.
“I love you,” the Prince said in his deep voice, “and you love me! Do you think anything in the world could matter beside what we feel for each other?”
“Not – where I am – concerned,” Vida whispered.
He did not speak, but merely pulled her roughly against him and now he was kissing her with a fire that seemed to burn through her whole body.
It was like diving into the heart of the sun.
He kissed her until she felt that even if she died at this moment she would have touched perfection and nothing could ever be so wonderful again.
Only when they were both breathless did the Prince say,
“Do not argue with me any longer! I have no intention of listening! I know what I want, I know what I intend to have, and that is you!”
“I love you – I love you!”
He kissed her and then with his arms around her he said,
“Say that again and again. It is all I want to hear.”
For a moment Vida just closed her eyes because she felt moved by the glory of their love.
Then she asked,
“Tell me – exactly how you – got away and what is – happening.”
“I only want to kiss you and go on kissing you,” the Prince replied, “but I understand you are curious.”
“Very curious!” Vida whispered. “I still find it hard to believe that you are – really – here.”
“I am here! I am not a genie and I am real!”
His lips moved over the softness of her cheeks before he said,
“After we are married, my darling, I will prove to you how real I am so that you will never doubt it again.”
He kissed her straight little nose, each corner of her mouth and then when he would have kissed her lips she put up her hand to prevent him.
“I am still – curious.”
Even as she spoke, he felt her quiver against him and smiled.
“You are trying to prevent me from doing what I want to do, which is to kiss you.”
Then, as if he felt that that he had teased her enough, he said,
“When the Czar told me I was to marry Eudoxia, I realised that she had set a trap for me and I was extremely angry!”
“I knew – that.”
“She has wanted to marry me for quite a time,” the Prince went on, “but very stupidly I did not take her seriously.”
“You mean – so many women have wanted the same thing that you – thought it was – unimportant!”
“I did not intend to marry anybody,” the Prince replied, “until I met you.”
“Oh, Ivan, do you – really want to marry me?”
“I knew from the very first moment I saw you that you were different from anybody I had ever met before, and that you attracted me almost unbearably.”
He smiled down at her and went on.
“If I had known that you were your father’s daughter, I think I would have asked you to marry me on the first night you came to The Castle!”
“But instead – you suggested something – very different!”
“That was your fault, pretending to be a widow and an experienced woman, even though my instinct told me otherwise. That made me think I could make you mine and still remain free.”
“But – why do you not want – that now?”
“Because you are my ‘Dream-Come-True’, the woman I have always wanted as my own, the woman to whom, strange though it may seem, I shall be faithful for the rest of my life.”
The way he spoke made Vida feel as if he was enveloped by the Divine Light she had seen around him before.
All she could do was to make a sound of utter happiness and put her head against his shoulder.
“When you closed the Gates of Paradise against me,” the Prince said, “I knew I could never lose you.”
“So, after I had – gone away, you – followed me.”
“I followed you and I also wanted to rescue your father. Apart from adoring you and worshipping the ground you stand on, I am also very proud, very proud indeed, to marry the daughter of a man I admire more than any other man I have ever known.”
Vida felt the tears come into her eyes.
“How can you say anything so – marvellous,” she asked, “and which makes me so – happy?”
The Prince kissed her forehead before he said,
“I feel that I have fought a million battles for you. I can never begin to describe what I felt when the Czar announced his permission and approval for my marriage to Eudoxia.”
“You did not think that it was – something you – should do?”
“I knew it was something I had no intention of doing,” the Prince answered sharply. “But, my precious, my only chance of escaping and, incidentally, yours, was for me to pretend to agree and to make myself pleasant to Eudoxia. As you must realise, as a Romanov, she can be very vindictive and also very dangerous.”
Vida gave a little shiver.
“Do you mean – she might injure – me?”
“If she even thought that there was any likelihood of my being here at this moment,” the Prince said in a hard voice, “she would undoubtedly have you killed and I should be on my way to Siberia!”
Vida gave a cry of horror.
“Suppose – suppose that – happens to you – now?”
“That is what we have to avoid,” the Prince said in a quiet voice.
“Tell me – tell me – exactly what you have planned.”
Vida knew as she spoke that once again she was almost frantic with terror, not for herself, but for the Prince.
For the moment she could think only of him, of him dying in the salt mines or being tortured by the Czar’s Secret Police.
It made her feel that to give him up when she loved him so much was a sacrifice she must make, whatever the cost to her.
“I-I cannot – allow you to do this!” she said.
“It is too late now to stop me,” the Prince replied. “As you must have guessed, my precious, while the train carried you away from the station at Kiev so that the Palace officials were able to tell Eudoxia that you had left, you were actually only five miles outside the city.”
“Then you rode home,” Vida said, following what he was saying. “Did no one see you leave the Palace?”
“My men were waiting for me as I had arranged and they had told the grooms in the stables that they had been ordered by me to go on special night manoeuvres to test themselves and their horses in the dark.”
Vida was listening intently as he went on.
“When I joined them, enveloped in a military cloak, I looked just like them and the grooms had no idea that I was not an ordinary soldier.”
“Then you came to me here.”
“I had given my orders where the train was to wait. It is an isolated place where it is very unlikely that anybody will report its presence.”
Vida gave a sigh.
“You make it sound so easy,” she said, “but what happens – now?”
“Now we are making for Cernauti,” he said, “which is the nearest foreign frontier town to Kiev.”
“That is in Rumania.”
“What does it matter where it is so long as it is out of Russia?” the Prince asked. “Unless we are delayed, we should cross the frontier tomorrow about noon and I reckon we have a start of at least seven or eight hours before anybody realises that I am not asleep in the Palace.”
“Oh, darling,” Vida cried, “I am praying that yet another of your plans will work out perfectly and this time it is rather more important than any of the others.”
“Very much more important!” the Prince agreed.
“When we reach Rumania, where are we going?”
“I will tell you a little later how we are to cross the frontier,” he said, “and after that we are going to another of my castles, which I hope you will appreciate. It is in the centre of Hungary and is where my horses come from.”
Vida looked up at him and exclaimed,
“I had forgotten you had other houses! I remember now you have a villa in Monte Carlo.”
“I have a castle in Hungary,” the Prince said, “which is, or will be, in many ways as beautiful as the one I am leaving behind in Russia.”
He knew what she was feeling without her saying so and he asked her gently,
“Does it make you happier to know that I am not going to be as poverty-stricken as you thought?”
“Very – very – happy!”
“I will let you into a secret. I have been expecting something like this to happen for some time.”
“You have?”
“Not that I should marry anybody as wonderful, as beautiful, as perfect as you are, my angel, but there was always the chance that in the course of my various activities with your father and others like him, I should be caught out and discovered.”
He paused and Vida asked,
“What did you do?”
“The moment the Czar told me I was to marry Eudoxia,” the Prince replied, “I sent a message to put into operation the removal, as I had planned it, of my treasures from The Castle.”
Vida looked at him wide-eyed as he went on.
“Vans have been travelling all day, taking them over the border into Hungary.”
“I don’t – believe it!”
“It is true,” the Prince smiled. “Of course not everything will be saved, but I hope to have got away the most valuable of my pictures, my icons, ivories, porcelain and the gold plates and goblets that have been in my family for generations.”
Vida gave a cry of excitement.
“It is so like you and I am glad, so very – very glad! I shall – not feel so – guilty for allowing you to – elope with me.”
“I do not feel in the least guilty,” the Prince insisted. “I think, my precious, it is a very exciting way to start our life togethe
r and something we shall always remember.”
“I shall always – remember what you have – given up for me,” Vida said softly.
She felt that the Prince did not understand and went on.
“You are Russian and are giving up your country you love and your position at Court which I well know to every Russian is of great importance.”
“It is, of course, very important,” the Prince agreed, “except for one thing.”
“What is that?”
“Love is more important than anything else, the love that all Russians seek in their souls, but so seldom find.”
He spoke very solemnly as he continued,
“My love for you is totally different from what I have felt for any other woman and, as you are aware, there have been many of them. I have enjoyed them, they have attracted me, charmed my eyes, my mind and sometimes my heart. But not one of them and this is the truth, my lovely Vida, has touched my soul.”
He gave a very soft laugh as he said,
“I began to think that such a thing was impossible and that I would never find the woman whose love would make me feel as if she was enveloped with the Light of the Divine, because she came from God.”
Vida knew that this was what she had felt about him.
What he said made her so happy that she could only stretch out her arms and pull his head down to hers.
Once again he kissed her and carried her up towards the stars.
Then they talked until dawn came.
After that the Prince insisted that Vida go to bed and rest.
“We have things to do later in the day,” he said, “for which we must have all our wits about us and therefore you must rest, my precious.”
“I don’t want – to leave you,” Vida whispered.
“Once we are married, as I intend we shall be by tomorrow evening,” the Prince replied, “or at the very latest the following day, then you will never leave me for one moment. Go to sleep for a few hours, my darling, and dream of me, as I shall be dreaming of you.”
He drew her into the bedroom and waited while she climbed into bed, then he tucked her in and kissed her very gently on the lips.
“I love you! I adore you! I worship you!” he said. “Now and for all eternity!”
*
Vida was awoken by Margit bringing her a cup of coffee and saying,
Princes and Princesses: Favourite Royal Romances Page 45