Rivals for Love (4 page)

The Duke's lips twisted a little.

He had heard this line of attack before and realised that the Prime Minister knew only too well that he found it difficult to resist one of his challenges.

“What I want you to do, Varin, is to go to Russia.”

“To Russia!” the Duke exclaimed. “Why Russia particularly?”

The Prime Minister bent forward over the table.

“I am very worried about what is happening there and the reports I receive from St. Petersburg do not tell me everything I need to know.”

“I am surprised to hear this, William, as after all you have our Ambassador in residence in the City.”

The Prime Minister nodded.

“I often think that our Ambassadors tend to take the point of view of the country where they are posted rather than their own.”

The Duke smiled.

“As I expect you know, Varin, Russia has been fighting two wars. In the North against the Swedes, whilst in the South they are still advancing in a manner that I find rather worrying.”

“Are you telling me,” enquired the Duke, “that the war against Sweden is at an end?”

The Prime Minster nodded his head.

“I have learnt that under heavy pressure from the Swedish aristocracy, many of them bribed by the Empress Catherine's agents, King Gustavus III himself is recalling his forces.”

“I am quite astonished,” commented the Duke. “I thought he was determined to stand up to the Russians' greed in grabbing everything they could lay their hands on.”

“He was indeed,” the Prime Minister informed him briefly. “But the war has tailed off and ended with no gains for Sweden.”

“You do astonish me, that must have been extremely expensive in money and in blood.”

“You are indeed quite right, Varin, a great number of Russians and Swedes have been killed.”

“So now the Russian Empress can concentrate on the South – ” added the Duke.

“Exactly right,” the Prime Minister admitted. “The Russian Army has stormed a number of Turkish fortresses on the Black Sea. They have also taken the key fortress of Izmail on the Danube and now we are worried as to how far Potemkin is determined to go.”

The Duke glanced at him sharply.

“What do you really fear?” he asked.

“I think you know the answer to that question, my friend.”

The Duke drew in his breath.

“Are you thinking of Constantinople?” he asked quietly. “And then perhaps India? It cannot be possible!”

“Nothing is really impossible,” replied the Prime Minister. “But if we are alert, if we know what is in their minds, we can be prepared. That is just what I want you to find out.”

“Well then do show me whatever information you have already,” said the Duke. “I make no promises. At the same time I would rather like to visit St. Petersburg as I have never been there”

“That is where I want you to go. Unfortunately what we know at present about Potemkin's ambitions does not amount to much as nothing is written down in black and white.”

“You can be quite certain of that,” remarked the Duke cynically.

*

Having enjoyed a delicious dinner with her uncle and aunt, Elva slept peacefully.

At daybreak breakfast was brought to her in her room and she knew it was because her Uncle Edward liked to have his wife to himself first thing in the morning.

When she walked downstairs, she was told by the butler that her Ladyship was at present in the study, but was expecting a visitor at any moment.

Elva remembered what her Aunt Violet had told her yesterday. The Duke of Sparkbrook was calling on her early this morning.

Elva had not seen him for a very long time and wondered what he was like now. All her relations spoke affectionately and admiringly of him but that, she thought rather scornfully, must be expected.

Dukes were always given much more praise and attention than ordinary mortals, so she thought she would find herself something to read and walked into the room next to the study.

It had been converted into a small library with all four walls covered in books.

Elva observed with much delight that many of the volumes were about foreign countries. Because her uncle had travelled so much as a diplomat he had collected what had become an exceptionally fine library of foreign books, many of which were unobtainable in England.

She began selecting some books from the shelves that she particularly wanted to read.

She had already found two large books on the Near East when she heard her aunt next door say quite clearly,

“Varin, it is delightful to see you.”

“And I am very charmed to see you again, Cousin Violet,” a man's voice replied. “You are looking even lovelier than when we last met, I think it must have been five years ago.”

“Is it as long as that?” queried Lady Violet. “Well, you have become most important in the meantime and I hear people singing your praises wherever I go.”

The Duke chuckled.

“What you have actually heard, if you are honest, is my family begging me on their knees to get married.”

“I am afraid it was exactly what they were saying,” said Lady Violet sympathetically.

“They will just never leave me alone, Violet. With the result that I intend to travel abroad again as soon as possible, so that I don't have to listen to them.”

“What has turned you so against marriage, dear Varin? To me, as you know, it is the most wonderful estate in the world.”

“You are certainly fortunate,” responded the Duke. “If I fall in love as you and Cousin Edward did, then I shall thank God on my knees. But at the moment I am thanking Him that I am still a bachelor and do not have to endure the inevitable boredom of a woman trying her best to change me from what I am into what she wants me to be!”

Lady Violet laughed.

“I do know exactly what you mean. But I do not think, Varin, you have come to talk to me about your desire for perpetual bachelorhood.”

“No, I am just making it very clear, since you are a relative, that I have no intention for at least another twenty years of acquiring any Duchess to be nagging away at my side!”

Lady Violet laughed again.

“Now tell me exactly why you are here.”

There was just a short pause and the eavesdropping Elva found herself waiting as eagerly as her aunt for the Duke's reply.

“I went to see the Prime Minister yesterday,” he began, “and you will remember that I was at Pembroke with him?”

“Yes, of course, you are about the same age and I know you have always been close friends.”

“Very close,” the Duke now admitted confidentially, “and that is why he has asked me to undertake a special mission for him. Of course it is most sensitive and I am only telling you because you know better than anyone else how important and secret anything is which concerns our Prime Minister.”

“I have not existed in the Diplomatic Service all these years for nothing,” Lady Violet commented with a rueful smile.

“What he has requested me to do, Cousin Violet, is to travel to St. Petersburg. I thought, as I know you have only just spent some time in Russia, you would be able to advise me how I can best help him.”

Lady Violet now regarded the Duke with what he thought was a very worried expression in her eyes.

“What is wrong?” he asked apprehensively.

“It is difficult for me to say this,” replied Lady Violet, “but it is really quite impossible for you to go to St. Petersburg.”

The Duke stared at her.

“But why?” he demanded.

“To put it bluntly, because of your looks!”

The Duke was for a moment too surprised to speak and Lady Violet explained,

“You are tall, dark and extremely handsome. Three attributes which make it just impossible for you to go to Russia.”

“But why? I do not understand!”

“I will tell you in as few words as possible, dear Varin. Many years ago, as we all now know, the Empress Catherine fell in love with Potemkin, a strange, stormy, unpredictable man, who also fell deeply in love with her.”

“I do recall the story – ”

“Most Russians believe that the Empress secretly married Potemkin in 1774,” she continued. “There is no doubt that she very often refers to him in private as ‘my beloved husband', and alludes to herself as his wife.”

“Do you think it is true, Violet?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“It does not matter one way or the other. What is important is that although the Empress showered riches on Potemkin and persuaded the Austrian Emperor to make him a new Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, he quickly became restless in his captivity.”

“I have heard that tale,” murmured the Duke.

“After two years of life in the Winter Palace he developed a craving to travel.”

The Duke gave a laugh.

“That I
can
understand.”

“Of course you can,” agreed Lady Violet. “But Potemkin is a General, and he went to Novgorod and later on to the Turkish wars.”

The Duke nodded slowly thinking he knew all this anyway, but he was wondering just how it could concern himself.

“Before Potemkin departed,” went on Lady Violet, “he provided a lover for the Empress. This started a long chain of lovers, which won the Empress the title of, ‘
the Messalina of the North
'.”

“That was indeed such a long time ago,” mused the Duke. “Surely she is too old now?”

“Actually not,” came back Lady Violet. “No one knows how many young men she has slept with. The most handsome and the tallest soldiers have always been picked as guards to her apartments.”

She was silent for a moment before resuming,

“None of the official lovers last for more than two years. They are all in their twenties and when they are dismissed they leave the Palace with a fortune.”

“Can that really be true?” wondered the Duke.

“Sir James Harris, when he was Ambassador in St. Petersburg, estimated, Edward told me, that the Empress had spent a total of two hundred and fifty million roubles, the equivalent of five million pounds, on her lovers.”

“From what I hear they deserved it and more,” the Duke chortled somewhat cynically.

“I do agree with you, Varin, but at the same time, while she has grown older and has lost a great deal of her attractions, she still finds it impossible not to desire every tall, dark, attractive man she sets eyes upon.”

She was quiet for a moment.

Then the Duke enquired quizzically,

“Are you really saying that although the Empress must now be at least sixty, she might still make advances to
me
?”

“Looking as you do, I am perfectly certain that she will make a great fuss of you and it will be very difficult for you not to agree to everything she asks.”

“You astound me, dear Violet. In fact I still find it hard to believe that any woman – ”

“The Empress is not just any ordinary woman,” interrupted Lady Violet. “She is a Dictator and a Leader in every possible way. She gets her own way and not even Potemkin, much as she adores him, could ever control her in any way.”

As she spoke, Lady Violet was recalling the past.

At sixty years of age the Empress Catherine was very different from when she had first seen her. She did not want to tell the Duke that the Empress had become immensely stout and that her long black luxuriant hair, of which she had been so proud, was now completely grey.

She had also taken to using an enormous array of skin lotions and cosmetics. She sent to Paris for them and to every other Capital City in Europe. But nothing could conceal the crow's feet, the lines and the old age spots on her neck and hands.

Her eyesight was failing, but she refused to wear spectacles because she considered them unbecoming.

Yet her desire for attractive, robust young men was just as strong as it had been twenty years earlier.

Knowing the Duke was waiting for her to continue, Lady Violet said,

“All the Empress's lovers have been, as I told you, chosen by Potemkin. But there is at the moment one who has been waiting eagerly to take over the place of the last Adjutant General in the Empress's suite.”

“What is the name of this man?”

“Platon Zubov,” replied Lady Violet. “He is dark, handsome, extremely ambitious and a twenty-two year old Horse Guards Officer.”

She paused for a moment.

“We met him and Edward thought that, although he boasts the figure of youth, he also possesses the hard guile of a Courtier.”

“What does that all add up to?”

“When we departed from St. Petersburg everyone was wondering what Potemkin would think about Platon Zubov's formidable success. An indiscreet Court Lady-in-Waiting told another, who in turn told to me, that in a letter to Potemkin the Empress wrote,

“When I first met Zubov I returned to life like a fly which had been frozen by the cold.”

“Well that lets me off,” crowed the Duke, “I shall certainly be quite safe.”

“I doubt it,” cautioned Lady Violet. “Because I am quite certain that Potemkin will get rid of the Adjutant General. He has not chosen him and he is likely to be jealous, quite apart from the fact that one lover has never prevented the Empress from taking on others.”

The Duke made a gesture with his hands.

“Then what on earth can I do? I can hardly tell the Prime Minister I am frightened of going to Russia because I might have to make love to the Empress. Which, I can assure you, is definitely something I have
no
wish to do. Do you really think if I refuse her it might cause a diplomatic incident? I cannot believe it.”

He spoke scornfully and Lady Violet responded,

“I know the Russians. They are all very emotional, easily hurt or insulted and extremely vindictive.”

“Then what can I do?” asked the Duke.

“The obvious answer is for you to wait until you are married,” laughed Lady Violet. “Even an Empress cannot separate a husband and wife unless, as you well know, they actually wish to be separated.”