An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition (96 page)

Mistral sighed. How difficult it was to do the right thing in Aunt Emilie’s eyes!

‘The Prince did not mention that he was coming here this evening,’ she faltered at length.

‘And you had not the sense to question him, I presume,’ Emilie snorted. ‘Well, I shall have to do my best to rectify your inefficacy. You will ask him to come here to speak to you and, when he comes, you must see to it that he invites you to dance.’

‘But, Aunt Emilie, I could never do that,’ Mistral said in a horrified voice.

‘You will do as you are told,’ Emilie said. ‘I hoped that he would be attracted by your innocence, but perhaps he is too young himself to appreciate those schoolgirl airs you give yourself. You must try other methods, my dear, and the sooner the better.’

But, Aunt Emilie, why must I do this? Why is it so important for me to attract the Prince?’ Mistral asked.

‘I have told you before, Mistral, not to ask questions, but to do as I tell you,’ Emilie replied. ‘It is imperative that you should captivate the Prince, but there is no need for you to know the reason. All you have to do is to carry out my instructions.’

Emilie paused suddenly and her eyes narrowed.

‘He was attracted to you at the beginning,’ she said. ‘You cannot deceive me. I knew it by the look in his eyes and by the way he spoke to you. But he has gone no further. What have you done, what have you said?’

‘Nothing – nothing at all,’ Mistral answered hastily. The Prince is always very kind, always charming – but I do not know what else – you want him to be.’

‘I want him to be in love with you,’ Emilie replied. ‘There, is that clear enough?’

‘ – I am sure he does not – think of me – like that’ Mistral stammered.

‘Then make him!’ Emilie retorted.

She beckoned the waiter to their table, and demanded a piece of paper and a pencil. He gave her the small block on which he wrote down the orders. Emilie handed it to Mistral, then passed her a pencil.

‘Write to him!’ she commanded.

‘How can I?’ Mistral cried. ‘Please, please, spare me this, Aunt Emilie, it is too humiliating.’

‘Stuff and nonsense,’ Emilie replied. ‘Men are always pleased when they think a pretty woman is running after them.’

‘But I have no wish to run after the Prince,’ Mistral said with a pathetic effort at defiance. ‘It makes me embarrassed, Aunt Emilie, when you throw us together so obviously. People must talk because they know that he is the only man to whom I may speak. They must be laughing at me.’

‘I
want
people to talk,’ Emilie said. If they laugh it is of no consequence. Stop making absurd excuses, Mistral, and do as you are told. Write to him.’

Mistral knew then that any appeal that she might make to her Aunt was hopeless even before she formulated the words. Her face was very pale as she picked up the pencil.

‘What am I to say?’ she asked.

‘Must I even tell you that?’ Aunt Emilie questioned savagely. ‘You seem to have no ideas of your own. Very well then, I will tell you what to say. Write this,

“I have something of import to tell Your Serene Highness. Could you most graciously spare a moment to come to our table?

Mistral.”

Mistral wrote down the words as they were dictated, then she raised her eyes to her aunt’s face.

‘But I have nothing to say to him.’

‘Then you had best think of something,’ Emilie remarked grimly.

‘But what is there to tell him about?’ Mistral asked wildly as she watched Emilie fold the note and hand it to the waiter with instructions to take it to the Prince’s table.

‘You would do well to decide that and quickly,’ Emilie replied and her voice was like steel.

It was as if she were caught in a trap from which there was no escape, Mistral thought, and was ashamed of her own weakness in obeying Aunt Emilie.

She was frightened, it was true, but nothing could be worse than knowing instinctively that she had betrayed her own code of decency in writing to the Prince, in coercing him to her side by making a false appeal to his chivalry.

Inexperienced though she was in the ways of the world, she was sure that ladies did not do such things. They did not deliberately seek a man out and force their company upon him, especially when he was of such social importance as Prince Nikolai.

As if it were a nightmare Mistral watched the waiter take her note to the table at the other end of the room. She saw him pause at Prince Nikolai’s side, saw the Prince’s hand go out to take the piece of paper from the tray. Then she could look no more, but bent her head and, clenching her trembling fingers together in her lap, wondered wildly what she could say. He would come to the table, she was certain of that, because he had good manners and also he had told her that if ever she was in any need of his help she was to ask him for it. But when he came, he would know her appeal was but a pretence and a subterfuge, and he would despise her. With a rising sense of panic Mistral heard Emilie say in a tone of satisfaction,

‘He is coming!’

Wishing the ground would open and swallow her up, Mistral waited in misery as the Prince came walking quickly across the room, pausing every now and then to speak to people who hailed him from adjacent tables or to those who were dancing and who touched him on the shoulder as he passed them by. Still Mistral could not raise her eyes, not even when she heard her aunt purr,

‘Good evening, Your Serene Highness. How nice to see you, and how delightful it is here this evening, so gay and amusing.’

‘The Gala would not be complete without your presence,
Madame
,’ the Prince said with almost an exaggerated courtesy. ‘Good evening,
Mademoiselle
.’ He bowed to Mistral and at last she was forced to raise her eyes to his. He saw the appeal in them and he smiled at her reassuringly. Then he bowed again to Emilie. ‘Is it permitted,
Madame
, that I invite
Mademoiselle
to waltz?’

‘Certainly, Your Serene Highness.’

Emilie’s permission was given in just the right tone of graciousness and condescension, but Mistral, rising to her feet, felt only miserable and ashamed. Then, as she preceded the Prince on to the floor, she caught a glimpse of a dark face looking towards her, of dark eyes watching her every movement. In that moment she knew that her pride was saved.

She had something to tell the Prince! A story of an incident which might have perturbed her more had she not almost forgotten it in worrying over Aunt Emilie’s strange and varied moods. She would tell the Prince about the Rajah, tell him how he not only had attempted to buy her pearls but had tried for one second to hypnotise her. There was no need to exaggerate the story, it was horrible enough in all conscience.

At her relief at not having to abase herself and tell the truth as to why she had sent him a note, the colour came back into Mistral’s cheeks and her eyes shone. She looked exquisite as she stood for a moment on the dance floor waiting for the Prince to put his arm round her, her wide skirts of ruched net billowing out around her, her neck and shoulders white as ivory above the closely swathed bodice.

The light from every gas jet in the room seemed to shimmer in her hair, its pale gold framing the exquisite outline of her face, in vivid contrast to the mystery of her dark-fringed eyes.

The Prince looked down at her and laughed a little as he swung her round, their feet moving in perfect unison to the strains of
The Blue Danube’
.

‘She is very lovely,’ Lady Violet said, and there was no need for Sir Robert to ask whom she meant.

He had been watching Mistral from the moment she rose from her table and now, as he watched her dance across the room, her head thrown back a little for she was speaking to the Prince, he thought that her grace was comparable only to that of the swans which moved over the silver waters of the lake at Cheveron.

‘Yes, she is very lovely,’ he heard his own voice say and was surprised at the depth in it.

‘We are not the only people who think so,’ Lady Violet said. ‘Look at the Rajah.’

Sir Robert turned his head in the direction in which she was looking. The Rajah was bending forward, his elbows on the table, his head resting on his hands. He, too, was watching Mistral, and the expression on his face made Sir Robert suddenly angry with a white fury that he had never experienced before.

How dare the fellow look at Mistral like that! He had a sudden wild desire to rise from the table, to stop Mistral from dancing with the Prince and take her away from the Restaurant, from Monte Carlo, from everywhere where she might be besmirched by coming in contact with such men as the Rajah.

She was too sweet, too good, for this sort of thing, Sir Robert thought, and he wondered what would happen if he walked across to the Rajah’s table and punched him hard in the face.

He was suddenly aware that Lady Violet was staring at him in surprise.

‘What is the matter, Robert?’ she asked.

Slowly his hands unclenched themselves.

‘Matter? Why, nothing!’

The veneer of civilisation had fallen upon him again. He felt rather foolish as if in actual fact he had made a scene in public.

‘You were looking so angry,’ Lady Violet said. ‘I thought something must have upset you. Or is it just my imagination?’

‘I am tired,’ Sir Robert said abruptly. ‘How soon can we leave?’

‘Oh, not yet,’ Lady Violet protested. ‘It is very early. Besides, I am enjoying myself.’

Mistral and the Prince stopped dancing, but they did not go back to the table where Emilie sat alone. Instead they went through the open doors into the garden. Sir Robert watched them go.

That child was getting herself talked about with the Prince, he thought, and enough was being said about her without that. Prince Nikolai was quite a pleasant young man from all accounts, but nevertheless out to enjoy life. He would doubtless flirt with Mistral and make love to her. She would not understand, she was too young.

Sir Robert felt his anger rising once again. He had not realised until this moment that he disliked the Prince as much as he disliked most of the foreigners he met in Monte Carlo. He thought of Mistral walking beside the Prince in the garden.

It would be cool and dark out there. But there would be just enough light for the Prince to perceive the loveliness of her little face, the velvet texture of her white skin, the curved sweetness of her lips. Perhaps he would lose his head out there in the darkness. Perhaps he would attempt to touch Mistral, to hold her in his arms, to force a kiss from her. She would be frightened and shocked. There would be no one to help her, no one to whom she could turn for aid.

With an almost superhuman effort Sir Robert forced himself to stay in his chair.

‘The Rajah is leaving,’ Lady Violet remarked casually.

Sir Robert saw the Rajah rise from his table. He was whispering to one of the men with him and there was an unpleasant smile on his face which showed all his white teeth.

‘I wonder why he is so pleased with himself,’ Sir Robert thought, but his mind went back to the Prince, wondering if all women would find him irresistibly good looking.

Outside in the garden Mistral told the Prince about the Rajah.

‘He said that he meant to have the pearls and it would be wiser for me to give them to him willingly,’ she said. ‘I am not really afraid, but there is something horrible about him, something uncanny.’

‘Have you told your aunt about this?’ the Prince asked, Mistral shook her head.

‘She would have been angry with me for listening to the Rajah in the first place,’ she replied, ‘but somehow it was difficult not to do as he asked without being rude.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ the Prince said. ‘I will speak to
Monsieur
Gutier, the
Chef de la Sûreté,
who is an old friend of mine. If the Rajah dares to be tiresome to you or to anyone else, he will be told to leave the Principality and not to come back.
Monsieur
Gutier will drop him a hint in the meantime. They have very clever ways of dealing with people of the Rajah’s type here. In consequence we have but few scandals.’

‘Thank you,’ Mistral said. ‘It is kind of Your Serene Highness to take so much trouble.’

‘It is no trouble and I am very glad you have told me of this,’ the Prince replied. ‘You are not to worry any more about it. Promise me?’

‘I promise.’

They smiled at each other and the Prince said,

‘When are you leaving, and where are you going when you do leave here?’

Mistral hesitated.

‘I cannot answer either of these questions, not because I do not want to, but because I do not know the answers.’

The Prince’s face was suddenly serious.

‘I wish I could help you,’ he said. ‘I would like to, but I don’t understand – ’ He broke off suddenly. ‘We are not going to discuss it now, at any rate. There is no time, for I must go back to my party, but we will meet tomorrow. We will go driving if the dragon will let you, then we can talk it over.’

‘I would like that,’ Mistral said simply.

‘Then I will call for you at three o’clock,’ the Prince said. ‘Come alone. The
beau monde
will chatter, but they have nothing else to do!’

He put his hand under Mistral’s arm and guided her back down the narrow twisting paths of the garden towards the Restaurant. Mistral was silent as they moved. She longed to stay where she was in the enchanting, lantern-lit garden with the star-strewn sky above.

She did not want to go back to the crowded Restaurant, to know that hundreds of curious eyes were watching her, that Aunt Emilie was waiting at their table like a hungry spider spinning some sinister web in which both she and the Prince were entwined. But there was nothing she could do but obey the pressure of the Prince’s hand. A few seconds later they had reached the table, the Prince had bowed and gone back to his guests.

‘Well?’

There was no mistaking the question in Emilie’s voice.

‘His Serene Highness has asked me to drive with him tomorrow afternoon,’ Mistral replied.