Bride to the King (14 page)

“Of course I love you!” he said, as if the words broke from his lips. “How can you expect me to feel anything else when everything about you is so perfect?”

He drew in his breath before he went on,

“It is not only your beauty that made my heart beat from the moment I first saw you, but your sweetness, your charm, your clever little brain and above all because we understand each other.”

“That is why I love you!” Zosina cried. “You understand as – no one has ever – understood before and no one ever – will again.”

The Regent did not speak and, after a moment, she said in a voice that trembled,

“I cannot – marry the King! You don’t – know what he was like tonight – he drank too much – and those friends of his – ”

“I know, I know!” the Regent interrupted.

“You know he is like that? You know about them?” “Of course I know.”

“He thinks he is deceiving everybody when he goes out of the Palace – ”

“I know everywhere he goes and everybody he associates with,” the Regent replied, “but there is nothing I can do about it because in two weeks’ time he will be free to behave as he likes and with whom he pleases.”

“Do you – really think that I can – stop him?” Zosina asked in a whisper.

“Not now that I have seen you,” the Regent answered. “I was such a fool, I imagined that you would be a very different type of woman who would be able to control him and make him do the things he ought to do.”

“I would – not be able to – do that – ” Zosina began.

“It’s no use,” the Regent answered. “Things have gone too far. The Prime Minister and the Cabinet know why you are here and so more or less does the whole of Dórsia. Every newspaper has pointed out the advantage such a marriage would be in stabilising the independence of our two countries.”

Zosina clasped her hands together.

“I understand – everything you are – saying,” she said, “but – I want to – marry
you
.”

The Regent put his hands over his eyes.

“Would it be – possible if we were just – ordinary people? Would you then – want to – marry me?”

“Do you really need to ask me that question?” the Regent asked. “You know that, if it was possible and we were ordinary people, I would take you up in my arms and carry you away to where we could be alone together and I could tell you how much I love you.”

His voice was deep and broken and Zosina knew how much he was suffering and she said very quietly,

“I shall – always remember that you – said that to me.”

“It would be easier for you if you forgot me and everything about me,” the Regent said.

“Will you forget me?”

“That is different.”

“Not – really. I can never – forget you because in a way it is difficult to put into words I not only – belong to you, I am – part of you.”

She hesitated a moment before she added,

“Perhaps we can be together in some – other reincarnation – I don’t know – all I do know is that I have been – looking for you all my life.”

“As I have been looking for you. Oh, my darling, why did this have to happen to us?”

He gave a laugh that had no humour in it before he went on,

“I thought my life was so complete with my work for Dórsia. I thought at my age that I was past falling in love in the accepted sense of the word. Then when I saw you step out of the train – ”

He paused.

“What happened?” Zosina asked.

“I felt as if my heart had turned several somersaults and then you came towards me in a blaze of light.”

“Did you – really feel like that? I wish I could say the same. All I knew was that when I touched your hand – I felt as if you protected me and gave me courage.”

“God knows it was what I wanted to do,” the Regent said, “and ever since then I have fallen more and more deeply in love until your face is always in front of my eyes and all I can hear is your voice.”

Zosina put out one of her hands and slipped it into his.

“Please – will you take me away with you?” she begged. “Could we not go and – live in another country where no one will know us – and we can just be – together?”

The Regent’s fingers closed over hers until they were almost bloodless.

“I could be with you anywhere,” he said. “We could reach Heaven. But you know as well as I do that we are both too important to disappear and Germany would take full advantage of any scandal that might affect the situation.”

‘He has an answer for everything,’ Zosina thought helplessly.

The mere fact that the Regent was touching her made her thrill and she felt because they were so near to each other and because of the things he had said, that her breath was coming more quickly from between her lips.

Then she saw through the window of the carriage, the lights from the Palace ahead of them and she said hastily,

“I have to see you alone – I have to go on – talking to you.”

The Regent shook his head.

“There is nothing to talk about and nothing to say, except goodbye!”

“I cannot do it –
I cannot
!”

“I shall go away,” the Regent said sadly, “and, when you return to Dórsia for your marriage, I shall not be here.” Zosina gave a cry that was like that of a wounded animal. “Where will you – go?”

“Anywhere!”

“No – I cannot let you – you must help me – ” “Do you think I could stay and know that you were married to somebody else?” he asked.

There was a raw note in his voice that told Zosina how much he was suffering.

“But how – can – I – manage without – you?” “You
will
manage,” he said, “because you are intelligent and because you have an instinct that will always guide you into doing what is right.”

“It is not enough!” Zosina said wildly. “It is not enough! I want you – and I want to be with you – I need your love – and I want to give you mine.”

They were nearer the Palace now and in the lights from it she saw him shut his eyes as if in agony.

Then he lifted her hand to his lips.

“Goodbye, my love – my only love!” he said very quietly.

The way he spoke made the tears come into Zosina’s eyes and she could see nothing but only feel as if her voice had died in her throat.

The carriage did not stop at the main door, but drove round the great building to a side door that Zosina had not seen before.

It stopped and she realised that there were no sentries.

The Regent stepped out of the carriage and drew a key from his pocket and, having opened the door, waited for Zosina to pass into the Palace in front of him.

Then, when they stood inside a small attractively furnished hall, he drew her domino from her shoulders.

“Go straight along the passage in front of you,” he directed, “and you will find a staircase that will lead you to the first floor and you will know your way from there. We must not be seen together.”

Zosina turned to look at him.

There was only one light burning in the hall and she could see quite clearly the pain in his eyes, the sharp lines on either side of his lips.

They stood looking at each other and, as if she knew there was nothing more she could say, no appeal against what they had to do in the future, she began helplessly to walk away from him, thinking that he was sending her into a darkness that would always deny her the light.

She had almost reached the passage when suddenly in three steps the Regent was behind her.

He turned her round and pulled her into his arms. Then, as she felt her heart leap with the wonder of it, he was kissing her, kissing her wildly, passionately, demandingly.

At first his lips hurt hers and yet even the pain he inflicted on her was a wonder and a glory that made her vibrate to him with a rapture that was almost an exultation.

Then his kisses grew more tender and there was a gentleness that was more compelling, more insistent than she had ever known.

She felt as if not only her body, but her whole spirit and soul were aroused until, as she had said, she became a part of him and they were indivisible.

It was a love that was divine, so spiritual, so perfect that Zosina felt as if God blessed them and had given them to each other.

She knew that love was even mightier and more majestic than she had ever imagined. It was all-enveloping.

There was love in every breath they drew, in every thought in their minds, in every beat of their hearts, just as there was love in the way her whole body quivered because she was close to him.

‘I love you! I love you!’ she wanted to say.

Yet there was no need because she knew he was feeling the same and however much Fate must force them apart, they were still one person rather than two.

Then, as if the reality broke under the strain of what they were feeling, the Regent suddenly took his arms from her and, when she would have clung to him, he turned her round and pointed her in the direction of the passage down which she had been facing when he stopped her from leaving him.

For a moment she could not think what she had to do, because she was pulsating with the celestial feeling that he had awoken in her and it was impossible to come back to life.

Then she heard a door open and close and she knew that he had left her.

Alone, but because she loved him in doing what he told her to do, she started to walk slowly down the dark passage towards the staircase.

The visit to the hospital which was in a Convent had been a very moving experience and, as they walked through the quiet high rooms with the sweet-faced nuns, Zosina learnt it had been the Regent’s idea that the women who were dedicated to the relief of suffering should actually take their patients into the Convent.

Because she loved him, she felt that she was seeing everything in Dórsia in a different way from what she had done before and finding his influence everywhere.

The wildness and irresponsibility of the King had made her realise, as she felt everybody else must do, that it was the Regent who had made the country not only prosperous but well ordered and in fact, happy. There was no need to hear the Mother Superior telling her that, due to his foresight, the sick and elderly of Dórsia were better looked after than those of any other country in Europe or that the mortality rate, concerning the newborn babies, had dropped dramatically.

It was the Regent whose thought and care for the people extended over every aspect of their life and Zosina was sure, without having to ask, that there was little unemployment in Dórsia and modem methods were being introduced into their factories.

Having met the Prime Minister, she was sure that he was a good man politically, but outside Parliament she felt that he was not strong enough personally to have a great impact on the people.

It was the Regent, who for the last ten years had done everything, but in the King’s name.

It was the Regent too, she told herself, who was trying to ensure the stability of the country when he had gone.

When she looked at what had been achieved and when she thought what might happen when the King gained control, she wanted to cry out at the injustice of the Monarchical system, which put a man on the throne, not because he was fit for the position, but because it was his right by birth. But what alternative was there?

The idea of a country where there was no King or Queen to rule over it was unthinkable.

When in Lützelstein, she had heard that the King was wild Zosina had no idea what that entailed.

She had never met men who were described as ‘wild’ and her reading had only given her a superficial idea of what any man could be like.

Now, as she thought of the way the King had behaved at the masked ball, the friends who treated him so familiarly and the women who had kissed him, she felt helpless and apprehensive of the horror that being married to such a man might entail.

Last night, when she had gone to her room, she could think of nothing but the Regent and the ecstasy his kisses had given her.

Because he had swept her into the sky, because he had aroused in her emotions and sensations she had not known she was capable of feeling, she could not for the moment take in the full impact of knowing that she must lose him.

All she could think of was that she loved him and he loved her and that in itself was a wonder beyond wonders, a glory beyond words.

When she entered her bedroom, she saw a book lying on the table beside her bed and knew then how the Regent had learnt that she had left the Palace.

It was the book of poems written by the nun he had promised to give her.

She was sure that what had happened was that he had forgotten it until he went to bed, then, because he thought she would not be asleep, had sent his servant to give it to Gisela.

Gisela would have said that Her Royal Highness was writing a letter that had to be carried in the Diplomatic Bag back to Lützelstein the next day.

It had been then that the Regent’s servant, intent on pleasing his Master, would have asked Gisela late though the hour was, to take the book to her Mistress.

Zosina was concerned that, although the old maidservant would have grumbled, she would have done as she was requested, only to find the bedroom empty.

She could imagine all too clearly the panic that must have ensued. Gisela would have sought out the Regent’s servant to tell him what she had discovered and his Master, knowing where the King had gone, would have guessed.

Zosina could only hope that the Regent had made Gisela promise to keep silent, and, when her maid came to call her next morning, she learned that this was what had happened.

“You gave me the shock of my life, Your Royal Highness,” Gisela said reproachfully. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going out last night?”

“The King invited me to accompany him to a party,” Zosina answered. “But please don’t tell Her Majesty. She might think it was too late for me.”

“His Royal Highness told me to keep my mouth shut,” Gisela replied. “But if I was doing my duty I should report such goings-on when I get back to Lützelstein.”

Because Gisela was really fond of her, Zosina knew that this was an idle threat.

“You have never been a sneak, Gisela,” she said, “and, as you see, although I was late, I have come to no harm.”