For a moment Alana could hardly believe what had happened and she felt so weak from the emotions she had experienced that she had to hold onto the piano for support.
Then, a little later, she had no idea how long, she sat down on the music stool and gradually felt as if she came down from a great height to the ground that was still unstable beneath her feet.
Later still, it might have been an hour or perhaps longer, she found her way to her bedroom.
It never struck her for a moment that she should go to the ballroom.
Her only instinct was to be alone, not to have to speak to anyone and not to lose the last ecstatic rapture that seemed still to envelop her like a golden cloud.
Finally she had climbed into bed to thrill and thrill again to the memory of the Prince’s lips until reality became a dream and she fell asleep.
When Charlotte had awakened her and told her what she and Shane intended to do, she knew at once that it was right.
What she and the Prince felt for each other was only the extension of the first night when they had gazed at the icons together.
Apparently this had only made him more determined than he had been before in his desire to marry Charlotte.
She could not understand it, but then everything about the Prince seemed incomprehensible except for the fact that she loved him and, although he might deny it, some part of him loved her too.
In that she could not be mistaken. It was as real as the fact that she breathed or that her heart beat. It was as real as Charl Castle itself and yet perhaps that was in a way only a mirage.
Whatever it might be, it was over now, the Grand Opera when she had felt that she was playing a leading part and she had a few hours to adjust herself to being, as she had been before, the ‘help’ at the Vicarage.
The early morning train that they had travelled on from Charl Halt to London had been what was known as the ‘Milk Train’ and did not even possess a First Class carriage.
There was, however, a Second Class one, which was empty because there were few passengers at that time of the morning.
It was a very different way to travel from the way that they had arrived in the Prince’s Private train, but Shane and Charlotte were concerned only with getting away.
As they sat holding hands and looking into each other’s eyes, it would not have mattered what the train was like as long as it was moving.
“The only danger,” Shane said, “is if your aunt learns that we have left and telegraphs the Station Master in London to detain us.”
“Could she do that?” Charlotte enquired in a frightened voice,
“I very much doubt it,” Shane replied, “but the first person who is likely to be informed is Mr. Brothwick and, if he is called at eight o’clock, that gives us more than two hours’ start. It is also unlikely that he will think it necessary to inform the Prince of what has occurred.”
“Suppose the Prince rises early?” Charlotte enquired.
“We were very late last night,” Shane replied. “Even so, by the time His Highness has told the servants to wake your aunt and she has given instructions to someone to send a telegram and it has been received in London and the Station Master has begun to look for us, we should be on a train that will take us to Holyhead.”
“I could not – bear it if we – failed at the last moment,” Charlotte quavered in a small voice.
“You will not,” Alana interposed. “You will both reach Ireland, I feel it in my bones.”
She smiled at Shane as she added,
“I told you that you had only to want something enough to make it possible to achieve it.”
“I followed your instructions,” Shane replied, “so, whatever happens now, it will be your responsibility.”
“I feel very proud and very happy that you have been brave enough to grasp at what you both really want in life.”
“Of course we want each other,” Charlotte agreed, “we always have and we will never – never have any regrets.”
“I could never possibly have any either, Charlotte, but I want to make sure that you feel the same.”
“I am so – happy,” she said in a low voice, “that I want to dance and sing – at the same time, because it is so wonderful, I want to cry.”
“My sweet,” Shane sighed and put out his hands towards her.
After that they sat very close to each other, whispering, while Alana tactfully pretended to go to sleep.
Now, alone, she wondered if she would ever see Charlotte and Shane again.
The Viscount was a different matter.
When they had said ‘goodbye’ in Charlotte’s bedroom and Shane had gone downstairs to order a carriage and find two footmen to carry down the luggage, the Viscount had held Alana’s hand in his and said,
“You know I will be in touch with you as soon as it is possible to do so.”
“You must be careful,” Alana advised him quickly.
“I will be very careful for your sake, because whatever happens, no one at Brilling must realise that you have been involved in what will undoubtedly be a scandal when it is known that Charlotte has run away with Shane.”
“I would love to hear, if it is possible, that they are married and happy.”
“I will write to you,” the Viscount promised, “and somehow we must meet.”
Alana shook her head.
“That will be quite impossible.”
“Nonsense,” he replied to her sharply. “You know I have every intention of seeing you again, but I really cannot just drive up to the Vicarage door and have the whole village chattering their heads off.”
“No – of course not.”
“I will think out a plan. Leave it to me, but we may have to wait for a little while.”
“You must be very careful with letters too,” Alana warned. “The Postmistress always reads all the postcards everyone receives.”
“I will write in a disguised hand and you had better invent a good number of your relatives who have quite suddenly become ardent correspondents.”
“Please be careful,” Alana begged him again.
“I shall be,” he answered, “and thank you so much for being so magnificent in doing everything we asked of you.”
Charlotte, who had been talking to Shane, turned her head to say,
“We can none of us be too grateful, Alana. It’s all due to you that I am not married to that horrible Prince and, as soon as we are no longer in hiding, I am going to ask you to come and stay with us at Derryfield.”
“Of course,” Shane agreed.
“Then I can meet you there,” the Viscount said with a smile, “if we have not managed it before.”
There was a look in his eyes that said a great many things that could not be said in words, but Alana knew that she did not wish to hear them.
All she wanted to think about was the Prince and yet to tell herself severely that everything that had happened with him was part of a Fairy story in which he was the leading character.
Now she had to close the book and go back to a normal life as if nothing had ever happened.
‘At least I shall have something to remember,’ she ruminated, but somehow it was cold comfort.
She reached Brilling at about teatime and, carrying the plain light carpet bag that she had left the Vicarage with, she asked a porter if there was anyone else travelling there.
“’Tis no use askin’ me,” he replied in a surly tone. “You’d better go enquire outside the Station.”
It was very different, Alana thought, from the way he would have replied had she been wearing the smart travelling gown and fur-lined cloak in which she had journeyed with Charlotte to Charl Castle
Now she had on her own clothes and they commanded no respect and apparently at this moment not even friendliness.
When in the waiting room at the Station she had changed from the clothes that she had left The Castle in, she could not, because she was a woman, help feeling a little pang of regret because her
own clothes seemed so drab and dull in comparison with the elegance and luxury of those that she had borrowed.
As if what she was thinking communicated itself to Charlotte, she said impulsively,
“I should have given you some of my clothes, Alana, you looked so lovely in them. But I did not think of it and now it is too late to unpack anything.”
“You will need them for yourself,” Alana replied, “and it is so important to keep every penny of the money Shane has won only for necessities.”
“Yes, I know that,” Charlotte answered, “and I intend to be very very sensible. But one day I shall have my own money. Papa will not be able to keep me from having what really belongs to me, will he?”
“No, of course not,” Alana agreed. “At the same time count the pennies! When one is poor, there are always extra expenses that one never expects.”
Charlotte kissed her.
“You are so wise,” she said, “and I shall miss you so much, even though I shall have my darling wonderful Shane with me.”
“I shall miss you too,” Alana replied. “You have all thanked me, but really I have to thank you. I shall always remember you both and Charl Castle – ”
She could not say it aloud, but her heart told her that the end of the sentence was,
‘– and for ever and Eternity and the Prince.’
CHAPTER SIX
Alana was bathing Billy in the flat tin bath that she had placed in front of the fire in the nursery after carrying two heavy cans of hot water upstairs from the range in the kitchen.
She was late getting the children to bed because she had been on her own with them all day.
The Vicar and Mrs. Bredon had taken Lionel, their eldest son, and gone to stay for the night with the Vicar’s mother at the other end of the County.
“I hope you will be all right, Alana,” Mrs. Bredon said cheerfully before she left, “and I have asked Mrs. Hicks to sleep in.”
“I shall be all right without Mrs. Hicks,” Alana responded quickly.
“You could not stay alone here. That would be incorrect,” the Vicar’s wife replied reprovingly.
Alana thought that she would have much preferred to be alone rather than have to cope with Mrs. Hicks, who was usually more trouble than she was worth.
But she realised that Mrs. Bredon was thinking that the whole village would be shocked if she, an unmarried woman, was in the Vicarage at night without a chaperone and so she merely smiled and said,
“Don’t worry. The children will be good with me as they always are. You enjoy yourself.”
“It’ll be a change to get away,” Mrs. Bredon admitted a little wistfully, “but a family party can sometimes be overwhelming.”
Alana wanted to say that she had no idea what a family party might be like, never having been to one.
As if Mrs. Bredon recognised that she had been tactless, she merely kissed the children, told them they were to be good and went off with the Vicar.
It was a cold rough day and after Alana had taken them all for a walk they roasted chestnuts over the fire and had hot buttered toast for tea.
By bedtime they were all much quieter and ready, Alana thought, to go to sleep with the exception of Billy, who, having slept after luncheon, was still active and in high spirits,
Alana found it easier therefore, to prepare the other three for bed first.
The two eldest were at the age when they enjoyed reading or playing with their toys and, once she had insisted that they wash themselves and have their supper, they were quite happy to go to their room, which they shared with Lionel.
That left her only with Eloise, whom she bathed first and who was now sitting in her blue wool dressing gown at the table eating bread and milk heavily laced with brown sugar.
Billy, on the other hand, ran round and round the room naked before he could be caught and put into the bath.
There he splashed about like a small dolphin and Alana was glad that she had a flannel apron over her gown.
It was a plain gown that she had made herself, but in an attractive if serviceable green wool that made her skin very white and reflected in her eyes adding to the mystery of them.
She had rolled up her sleeves above the elbow and was soaping Billy, while he made every effort to prevent her from doing so, when the door of the nursery opened.
She thought that it must be Mrs. Hicks who had come upstairs with a long-winded story about some grievance or other that would not only take an inordinate amount of time to tell but there would inevitably be no answer for it.
“Splash! Splash!” Billy was saying, suiting his actions to the words.
“No more splashing,” Alana insisted firmly.
She picked up a big sponge and squeezed it over him to wash away the soap and he put up his hands to try to catch the water, laughing as he did so.
Alana too was laughing when she heard Eloise say,
“Why are you here?” and turned her head.
To her utter astonishment it was the Prince who stood there looking extremely elegant and very large and overwhelming in the low-ceilinged room.
For a moment it was impossible for her to speak and impossible even to realise that he was actually there and she was not imagining him.
She had thought of him so often, because she could not prevent herself from doing so, and that he was in her life and in her very breathing, although without substance or reality.
It was not only every night when she was alone that she thought of him and remembered the wonder of his kisses and the way that she had felt that she was part of him and he was part of her.
It also seemed during the daytime that he was beside her and she thought at times that it was as if she could speak to him and he could answer her.
Now, incredibly, so that she felt as if a meteor had fallen from the sky, he was there!
Ever since she had left Charl Castle, now nearly three weeks ago, she had longed irrepressibly for news of Charlotte and Shane and, although she tried not to admit it to herself, news of the Prince.
It was only yesterday that she had received a letter from the Viscount that she had almost despaired of getting.
When she saw that it was postmarked from Paris, she knew why it had been so long in coming and why too there had been no talk about him in the village.
It was a strange letter because he had not started it with her name but had plunged straight into what he had to say.
And she read,
“I know that you will be wanting to hear from me, but I have had little opportunity for writing and very little to tell you. My aunt, as we all anticipated, was furious when she learnt that Charlotte, you and Shane had left The Castle without her being informed.
I told her, as we arranged, that Shane had received a telegram saying that you and he must return to Ireland immediately and that Charlotte had decided to go with you. I think she was suspicious as to Charlotte’s real reason, although she thought it wiser not to say so.
I could see that she was doing very best to placate the Prince and to leave the relationship between them undamaged by such a precipitate departure.
I pretended that I saw nothing peculiar in this and I think on the whole she believed me. Anyway, as I did not wish to be embroiled in the row that would ensue when my father and mother learnt the truth, I decided to leave England for Paris, where I have been staying with some friends.
I therefore have very little to tell you and I am sure that you will know better than I do what has happened at Charl Castle.
I must see you as soon as I return. Don’t worry about gossip, I will think of a way that we can meet without anybody being aware of it and I have a great deal to say to you.
I cannot forget how splendid you were in what I know was a very difficult part to play, and that is something else we must discuss.
Take care of yourself,
R.”
Alana read the letter through several times and thought that it was disappointing.
&nbs
p; There was so much more that she wanted to hear and so much more she wanted to know about Charlotte.
Strangely enough, although she expected the scandal to break every day, as yet the village knew nothing about Charlotte and Shane.
When Alana returned to the Vicarage, it was to learn that the Earl and Countess had gone North to stay with some friends in Northumberland.
They were not due back at The Castle for another two days.
It was almost an anti-climax to find that the people of the village were not whispering about what had happened at Charl Castle and Alana could only imagine that Charlotte’s lady’s maid had not been in touch with Charlotte’s parents.
Now, when she saw the Prince standing in the nursery, another idea came to her.
Perhaps something had gone wrong. Perhaps he had come to tell her that Charlotte was in difficulties.
She did not question how he should know or why.
She only looked at him as she knelt on the floor beside the bath, her eyes very large in a face that had gone suddenly pale.
“What – is wrong? Why are you – here?”
Her voice sounded strange and inarticulate even to herself and the Prince walked farther into the nursery and he then said,
“There is nothing wrong now that I have found you.”
“F-found – me?” Alana repeated.
Then, almost as if she felt Billy was some protection against her own feelings, she picked him up out of the bath, wrapped him in a big white Turkish towel that had been warming in front of the fire and sat down in a low chair with him on her knee.
He protested volubly at being taken out of the water and, by the time she had quieted him down and was drying him, she saw that the Prince had seated himself in an armchair on the other side of the hearthrug and was watching her.
She was suddenly aware of how very different she looked from when he had last seen her and it made her feel inexpressibly shy.
“I’m finished,” Eloise said from the table.
“Then say your grace,” Alana answered automatically.
Princes and Princesses: Favourite Royal Romances Page 146