Only when finally, late in the afternoon, the train stopped at the Halt for Charl Castle did she suddenly feel cold and the fear rising in her throat made it impossible to talk or laugh as she had done all the hours that they had been travelling.
She also felt overawed by the same reception that Lady Odele had received. The red carpet, Mr. Brothwick waiting to greet them, and the carriage, which was far more comfortable and more impressive than anything that the Earl of Storrington owned.
Then, with her first glimpse of Charl Castle, Alana wanted to run away back into obscurity.
Never had she imagined that any private building could be so enormous or so magnificent. It was indeed, as the article that she had read in the Illustrated London News had trumpeted,
“A fitting background for its owner, who has the Royal blood of the Czars in his veins and who lives more in the style of an Eastern Potentate than an English Squire.”
Both Alana and Charlotte were silent as they drove down the long avenue of lime trees and reached a huge courtyard in front of Charl Castle itself.
As the footmen hurried down the steps to open the carriage doors, the Viscount murmured to Alana,
“Good luck.”
Shane looked into Charlotte’s eyes and squeezed her hand as the carriage door was opened.
All four of them, as they stepped out, knew that the curtain had risen on the first act of a play that might turn out to be a comedy, as they fervently hoped, or else a complete tragedy.
They had all been primed by the Viscount on exactly what to say and what to do and, as the butler announced them in the magnificent salon where Lady Odele and Prince Ivan were sitting alone in front of the fire, Charlotte ran forward.
“Here we are, Aunt Odele,” she cried, kissing her aunt affectionately. “We have had a wonderful journey and I do hope you will not mind that we have brought with us Shane’s Cousin Alana.”
Lady Odele was already looking at Alana questioningly.
“She arrived unexpectedly,” Charlotte explained, “because we never received her letter telling us that she was coming to stay and her luggage has been lost somewhere in the Irish Sea.”
Before Lady Odele could speak, the Prince interposed to say,
“There is always room at Charl Castle for one of your friends, Lady Charlotte. And now may I welcome you and say how delighted I am that you are here.”
He spoke in a deep voice and with a sincerity that Alana thought dispersed some of the tension she was feeling, and she sensed that Charlotte felt the same.
“Your Highness is very kind to invite us,” Charlotte replied. “I have been longing to see The Castle and it is even bigger and more impressive than I thought it would be.”
“I am so glad it pleases you,” the Prince said with a smile.
He held out his hand towards the Viscount.
“How are you, Storrington?”
He then shook hands with Shane, who introduced Alana.
“My cousin, Your Highness, Lady Alana O’Derry, arrived just as we were leaving and I felt you would understand that we could not leave her behind.”
“But, of course, not,” the Prince said.
As he took Alana’s hand in his, she looked at him with her large dark eyes and saw that he was exactly what she had expected him to be. Overwhelmingly handsome and very different from any other man she had ever seen before in her whole life.
She thought that it was not only his good looks that made him outstanding, but there was something very compelling about him, something that seemed to vibrate from him and he exuded not only a strong personality but an inescapable aura.
The Prince was looking at her searchingly and she guessed that it was the way he looked at all women, as if he was penetrating deep into their hearts.
She wondered what he expected to find and if he was often disappointed.
Then Lady Odele, who had kissed Richard, was saying,
“I too must welcome you to Charl Castle and to the little party I have arranged for my niece.”
There was no doubt, Alana thought, that the word welcome was not sincere when spoken by Lady Odele and the expression in her eyes was hard.
Then, as they moved towards the fire, she said briskly, almost as if it was a rehearsed speech,
“His Highness and I have arranged such a delightful programme for you, Charlotte. There is no one staying at The Castle except ourselves, but there will be luncheon and dinner parties every day, dancing every evening to a band specially brought from London and innumerable equestrian amusements to keep both Richard and Shane happy.”
“It all sounds thrilling!” Charlotte exclaimed.
“I am sure you will find it so and I really have scoured the country on His Highness’s behalf to find all the young people of your age and, of course, Richard’s. I felt sure that you would not want a lot of old fogies like myself here to spoil your fun!”
As Lady Odele expected, Charlotte protested automatically at such a description.
“An ‘old fogey’ you will never be, Aunt Odele. Richard was telling us that your photographs have sold more than those of all the other beauties including Mrs. Langtry.”
“Is that true?” Lady Odele asked. “Who could have told you that?”
“I asked in three shops,” Richard replied, “and they all claimed that they had always sold out your photographs the moment they put them in the window.”
“That is certainly very gratifying,” Lady Odele said with a smile. “And now I am sure, Charlotte, you and your friend Lady Alana would like to see your bedrooms. And I suggest you have a little rest before dinner as I expect you will all be dancing until the early hours of the morning.”
“We are dancing tonight?” Charlotte enquired.
“Yes, indeed,” her aunt replied. “We shall be fifty to dinner and the band arrived early this afternoon.”
Charlotte clapped her hands together and enthused,
“It all sounds thrilling!”
But she was looking at Shane as she spoke and Alana knew that she was excited because she could dance with him.
“I feel sure that you too enjoy dancing,” the Prince commented to Alana.
“I do enjoy it,” she replied, “but in Ireland we don’t have the chance of learning many of the new steps and I am afraid that I may disappoint my partners.”
“I am sure you will not do so.”
As if Lady Odele was aware that he was talking to the intruder rather than to Charlotte, she said sharply,
“Come along, Lady Alana. We must find somewhere for you to sleep and I suppose we should find you a gown as your luggage has been lost crossing from Ireland.”
“She can wear my clothes, Aunt Odele,” Charlotte said. “We are luckily about the same size, except that Alana is thinner than I am.”
Her aunt did not bother to answer. She was already walking towards the door.
“Don’t worry about not knowing the new steps,” the Prince said, continuing his conversation with Alana. “I am sure that you will have plenty of partners only too willing to teach you.”
“I hope Your Highness is right.”
She thought that the Prince was about to say something else when she realised that Lady Odele with Charlotte beside her was waiting for her and frowning.
She hurried towards them.
A little while later when alone with her niece, Lady Odele made her feelings quite plain.
“Now listen, Charlotte,” she said, “I am not particularly pleased at your bringing an extra girl with you.”
“Surely it cannot matter, Aunt Odele?” Charlotte replied. “The house is big enough for an Army!”
“That is not the point, I want the Prince to concentrate on you and for you to concentrate on him.”
“How can he possibly do that when you are here, Aunt Odele?” Charlotte asked in a deliberately guileless voice. “After all you are so beautiful that I am certain that he will have eyes for nobody else.”
“I made it
very clear to your mother,” Lady Odele answered, “that the Prince wishes to marry again and I know that you, dear child, will make him a perfect wife.”
She paused for a moment before she added,
“If it comes to that, a man does not want a wife who is too beautiful and who attracts too much attention from other men.”
Charlotte did not speak and after a moment’s pause Lady Odele went on,
“I want you, my dear, to show him that you think him handsome and charming, which indeed he is. Listen to what he says and do show your appreciation of everything here at Charl Castle. Girls are often tongue-tied and it is such a mistake.”
“I will try to do as you ask, Aunt Odele,” Charlotte said in exactly the way that Richard had told her she was to speak and behave.
Lady Odele smiled.
“I am sure at the end of this little visit we will have wonderful, wonderful news for your father and mother and I know, my dear, you will make a lovely bride,”
Without saying anything more, Lady Odele swept from the room.
She would have been very surprised if she had known that, as she closed the door behind her, her good dutiful little niece put out her tongue!
A few minutes later Charlotte was in Alana’s room, which was just on the other side of the corridor.
“Aunt Odele is furious that we have brought you,” she related. “I thought she would be!”
“She is very beautiful,” Alana remarked in an awed voice. “I am not surprised the Prince is in love with her.”
“He can be in love with Venus de Milo for all I care,” Charlotte said positively. “What I don’t want is for him to be in love with me.”
Alana did not answer her and after a moment Charlotte added in a different voice,
“I am frightened, Alana. Aunt Odele has it all fixed up. She said just now that when we go home I would have ‘wonderful, wonderful news’ for Papa and Mama.”
“I too am frightened,” Alana admitted. “I think it has been just a waste of time you bringing me here. How could you imagine for one moment that he would look at me when Lady Odele is so beautiful?”
“Richard thinks you are far lovelier than she is.”
“That is because she is Richard’s aunt and one looks at one’s relatives differently from the way one looks at anybody else.”
Charlotte clasped her hands together.
“Oh, Alana, if you fail, I shall have to marry him! You must try to make him interested in you.”
“I will try because I promised you I would,” Alana said, “but he is not like an ordinary Englishman. He is different and that makes it much, much more frightening.”
As she spoke, she was thinking that, if the Prince was like the Viscount, her task would have been easier.
She knew already, from the way Richard looked at her and the note in his voice when he spoke to her, that he found her attractive, but the Prince was not English.
Despite his genial manner and his courtesy, she felt that there was something hard and perhaps cynical about him or perhaps it was just the attitude of a man who had tasted all the good fruits of life and for whom there were no surprises left.
After a long consultation with Charlotte, having chosen the gown she would wear that evening from the dozens the maid had unpacked in her dressing room, Alana was alone and she found herself thinking about the Prince.
He had been indeed what she had expected and yet there had been something more.
For one thing, she had not expected him to be so vital and so alive and she was sure too that he would be difficult to deceive.
‘I must be very careful what I say and what I do,’ she admonished herself.
Even though she was supposed to come from Ireland and therefore be unsophisticated in many ways, the Prince might still be perceptive enough to sense that she was not what she pretended to be.
Yet, when finally she was dressed for dinner with the help of a very experienced maid, she thought that even her own father would have found it hard to recognise her.
The gown she had chosen from Charlotte’s wardrobe was plainer than most of the others.
The fashion was for endless trimmings of lace and flowers, pleats and ruchings and bows of satin ribbon.
But the gown Alana liked best was, of course, white, as Charlotte was a debutante. It had something almost Grecian in the folds at the front, while the sweep of the bustle billowed out behind her like the waves of the sea.
The bodice showed the curves of Alana’s breasts and the maid had pulled in the waist until it looked almost ridiculously small.
The whiteness of her skin was displayed by a low décolletage swathed with tulle over the shoulders.
Then, as she stared into the mirror, she thought that because she was pale with fear she looked almost ghost-like.
There was a knock on the door and when the maid went to answer it she brought back a large tray on which was arranged a variety of flowers.
There were bunches of orchids of every description and buttonholes of gardenias and carnations, which were obviously for Richard and Shane.
Alana looked at them in a bewildered fashion.
“There are so many!” she exclaimed. “I thought that there were only six people staying in Charl Castle.”
The maid smiled.
“The gardeners wished to give you a choice, my Lady. They’d no idea what you’d be wearin’ and therefore they’ve picked many sorts of orchids in the hope that one would please you.”
Alana laughed.
“I would certainly be difficult to please if I wanted anything different.”
She thought for a moment and then took two arrangements of orchids from the tray. They were small and instead of the familiar white, green or purple they were almost blood red.
She thought the maid looked a little surprised at her choice, but she was too well trained to say anything and she took the tray back to the footman who was waiting for it at the door.
“I have an idea,” Alana said. “Will you ask Lady Charlotte if she has some ribbon amongst her things? This colour, if she has it, otherwise purple or white.”
Again the maid seemed astonished, but obediently she went across the corridor while Alana waited.
She came back with two pieces of ribbon in her hand.
“At first her Ladyship thought that she only had white, my Lady, but then she remembered one of her gowns was decorated with Parma violets and had little bows of ribbon attached to them. So I unstitched this.”
Alana took the purple ribbon from her and skilfully attached one orchid to it.
“Now,” she said to the maid, “will you tie it at the back of my neck?”
Her neck was very long and in fact her father had often said,
“You are like a swan, my darling, and, as I used to tell your mother, a woman to be a perfect beauty should have three things that are slim and long, her neck, her legs and her fingers.”
Alana showed the maid how to arrange the orchids that were left in her dark hair and knew that she had not only relieved the whiteness of her gown but had also given herself an almost Oriental touch of colour.
When she went to tell Charlotte that she was ready, she found her dressed in a gown ornamented with dozens of tulle flounces and caught with bunches of rosebuds.
It became her and was exactly the type of gown a pink-and-white English girl with fair hair and blue eyes should wear for a ball.
“You are too pretty to be real!” Alana exclaimed.
After she had looked at her, Charlotte said,
“You look wonderful! And quite, quite different from any other girl I have ever seen. If we were in London, you would cause a sensation.”
“But we are at Charl,” Alana replied.
It was impossible to speak more openly in front of the lady’s maid and, as they walked downstairs together, they were both wondering what the Prince would think when he saw them.
Some of the guests had begun to arrive and had gathered in a
larger salon than the one where they had been before.
There were a number of young girls looking healthy and countrified and young men who would have seemed more at home on horses than in a ballroom.
The Prince was receiving them, but Lady Odele was making quite certain that they would know who their hostess was.
When Charlotte appeared, she exclaimed,
“Dearest child. I was wondering what had happened to you. Because it is your party, you were supposed to be downstairs before anyone arrived.”
Ignoring Alana she took Charlotte round introducing her to everybody who was there already, pausing only to greet new arrivals and bring them immediately to meet her niece.
Alana walked to the side of the room and accepted a glass of champagne that was offered to her by a footman in a resplendent uniform festooned with gold braid and wearing a powdered wig.
Unexpectedly the Prince came to her side to say,
“I am surprised at your choice of my orchids, Lady Alana.”
“I thought them the most beautiful, Your Highness, from the very large selection that was offered to me.”
“I have never known a woman to choose them before,” the Prince said, “and I think I should be flattered that you have done so for the simple reason that I brought them into England after my last visit to the East.”
“They look Eastern to me,” Alana said, “and that is what makes them so attractive.”
“You are interested in the East?”
“I have not had the privilege, as you have had, of journeying there, but I feel that the East has so much to teach us, if we will only listen.”
The Prince looked surprised and then he asked,
“What do you want to learn?”
Alana made a little gesture with her hands.
“How can I put it into words, Your Highness? Perhaps the mystery of the Universe and the secret hidden knowledge that is not vouchsafed to ordinary mortals. Some of us sense it, but the East has always known it.”
The Prince’s eyes were on her face and she thought now that he was not so much surprised as astonished by what she was saying.
Then, before he could say anything further, Lady Odele called out sharply,
“Your Highness!”
Princes and Princesses: Favourite Royal Romances Page 141