The Cruel Count (Bantam Series No. 28) (13 page)

She paused, as if she was thinking what she should say next and then she said hesitantly:

“You may think I am a ... long time coming to the ... point in this ... story, but I wanted you to ... understand why I came to Katona.”

“Go on,” the Count said.

“When Papa told me that your Prince had asked for my hand in marriage, I was completely astonished. I could not believe that he would expect me to do anything so unexpected, so terrifying, as to accept such an offer.

“ ‘But I do not know the Prince!’ I cried.

“Then Papa explained to me that Royal marriages are arranged, that it was not really the Prince who had asked for me but his Government.”

“Did that make much difference?” the Count asked.

“It did to ... me,” Vesta answered. “I told Papa that I could not contemplate for a moment marrying at the request of a Government, or for that matter marrying a man I had never seen and about whom I knew nothing.”

As she spoke she could see herself in the library at Salfont House looking out onto the trees in Berkeley Square and trying to visualise a strange country called Katona which apparently wished her to rule over it.

“Katona has always been very friendly with Great Britain,” her father had said, “and it is important that they should remain so.”

He was standing with his back to the fireplace as he spoke and Vesta felt herself shiver, not from the cold of the room but because there was an inflexible note in her father’s voice which she recognised.

He has always been rather a martinet where his daughters were concerned. At the same time he had never forced any of them into marriage with a man for whom she had no liking.

When the Marquis of Severn had proposed to Harriet and she had said that she could not contemplate becoming his wife, the Duke had not tried to press her.

Although he was disappointed he had allowed her instead to marry a mere baronet to whom she had irretrievably given her heart.

“I am sorry, Papa,” Vesta said. “While I am deeply ... honoured by the suggestion that I should marry Prince Alexander, the answer is of course ... no.”

“Why ‘of course’?” the Duke enquired.

“Because I have no wish to marry without love,” Vesta replied. “You and Mama have always been happy together, and my sisters are happy too. Caroline said to me only last week that she and Robert were more in love with each other now than when they first married.”

“This is different,” the Duke said slowly.

“Why is it different, Papa?” Vesta enquired.

“Because in marrying Prince Alexander you would be doing a service to your country,” he answered.

He had walked across the room as he spoke to stand staring up at a picture which hung on the wall.

It was a picture of his son Gerald, painted when he first joined the Grenadier Guards. It was a good likeness.

The Prince Regent’s favourite portrait painter,, Lawrence, had caught the sparkle in his eye, the smile on his lips, the youthful enthusiasm which had caused him to be loved wherever he went.

“I am willing to do ... many things for England,” Vesta said nervously, as if she already knew what was coming, “but not to spend the rest of my life away from you all in a strange country with a man whom I do not know and who does not know me.”

There had been silence in the library and then her father had said quietly:

“Gerald gave his life for England, Vesta. All I am asking you to do is to serve your country as you would have been willing to do had you been a boy. You cannot fight for England as Gerald did, but in this way you can serve her as the Salfonts have done all down the centuries.”

The Duke’s voice had been full of pain.

Once again Vesta realised how the loss of his son was still as agonising as it had been when the news had first arrived that Gerald had been killed in battle.

She had wanted to go on protesting, she had known that every nerve in her body was rebelling against such a sacrifice, against a decision which was contrary to her deepest instincts.

Then as she opened her lips to speak, to tell her father that it was impossible, that she would do anything else, anything except marry the ruler of Katona, she had seen the tears in his eyes.

There is always for children something horrifying in seeing their parents cry and realising they are not the exalted adults they had thought them to be, but human beings who can suffer.

The Duke had not wept when he had learnt that Gerald had been killed. He had remained stony-faced when a memorial to his son was dedicated in the parish church beside the vault which held a number of their ancestors.

He had not cried when the Duke of Wellington himself had told him of Gerald’s bravery in the battle and how he had rallied his men again and again against the French, until finally he died from a bullet in the heart.

Yet now there were tears in the Duke’s eyes.

“Papa was ... crying,” Vesta told the Count in a whisper.

“I knew then,” she went on, “there was nothing I could do but accept the offer of marriage from Katona.”

She wiped away a tear, before she asked:

“How could I tell Papa I was a ... coward. As you know I am frightened of so ... many things, but I was more frightened at that moment of ... hurting him.”

Her voice died away and now she looked towards the Count with an appeal in her eyes as if she begged him to understand.

“It is one thing to die in battle in the heat of the engagement,” the Count said slowly. “There is an exhilaration in fighting which I think carries a man into the arms of death without fear. But this is different.”

He looked at Vesta as he said quietly:

“Can you really contemplate living day after day, month after month, year after year with a man you may not like, with a man who may repel you?”

He saw Vesta clasp her hands together, and he went on:

“Only the English could think of making a demand so inhuman, so cruel on someone as sensitive as you. Just as they send their precious sons away to boarding schools where they are beaten or starved, so your father was prepared to send you to a strange country of which you knew nothing, to marry a man you had never even seen.”

“Lord Castlereagh said ... the Prince ... was intelligent and a ... good sportsman,” Vesta faltered.

“And what else did you learn about him?” the Count asked.

Vesta was silent and he said:

“I have the feeling you have heard something more. Tell me.”

Still she did not speak and he said again:

“Tell me what you heard!”

It was a command and Vesta replied hesitantly:

“I ... I did not mean to ... listen. It was when we were at sea ... the Prime Minister, the Captain and the Aide-de-camp were ... talking in the Saloon ... I was hanging up my cloak ... in the corridor. It had got wet on deck.”

“And what did you hear?” the Count asked.

“They were ... talking about ... the Prince and ... me.”

“What did they say?”

Vesta’s voice was very low as she answered:

“The Aide-de-camp said I was too ... unsophisticated to be able to ... cope with what ... lay ahead.”

“Did the Prime Minister agree?”

Vesta did not answer and the Count said:

“I want to know.”

“They said,” Vesta said slowly, “that the Prince had a ... fondness for ... someone ... else.”

“And it upset you?” the Count asked.

“I had not ... imagined there would be ... anyone like ... that,” Vesta said. “Perhaps that is ... why they ... thought I was ... unsophisticated.”

“You thought that when you came to Katona,” the Count said in his deep voice, “the Prince would be waiting, that you would fall in love with each other and live happily ever after! Is that the truth?”

“I ... hoped we ... m-might be ... f-friends,” Vesta stammered.

“Friends?” the Count questioned. “Why should you expect friendship in marriage?”

“I thought I ... might help His Royal Highness ... with the people,” Vesta said, “that is why I studied Katona on the voyage ... why I tried to ... learn from the Aide-de-camp and the Prime Minister about the country and its ... people.”

“And did you ask them about the Prince himself?”

“No ... no!”

“Why not?”

“I felt ... shy at appearing ... inquisitive.”

“And yet that was surely the most important thing for you to know!” the Count said. “Instead of which you made an image in your mind of what you wanted the Prince to be. A paper Prince, not a human being, but a man who was a part of your dreams.”

Vesta drew in a deep breath before she asked almost pathetically:

“What ... else could ... I do?”

“What you can do now is face reality,” the Count retorted. “You are in love, little Vesta, the Sleeping Beauty has been awakened by a kiss. My kiss, from my lips.”

“But ... it is ... wrong.”

“It may seem wrong to you,” the Count answered. “But what you are intending to do is far more wrong! Do you really imagine you can keep up this farce, this sacrifice forced upon you by your father for the rest of your life? Do you believe that you can act a part so skilfully that it would not be a mockery of what a wife should be?”

She looked at him wide-eyed and he said:

“Wake up, my beloved, you know now you have a fire of your name-sake flickering within you. Feebly at the moment—but it is there and soon it will become an all-consuming blaze from which you cannot escape.”

His voice was deep with passion as he said:

“I will teach you about love, Vesta, I will teach you to love me as I love you. I will awaken you to the wonder and glory of it. I will make you live! All I ask in return is that you should tell me of your love for me.”

“How can I?” Vesta asked. “I have ... tried to make you ... understand why I must ... go to the ... Prince, why ... already I ... belong to him.”

“You belong to me!” the Count contradicted. “Do you imagine for one moment when you kiss the Prince you will respond to his lips as you have responded to mine?”

He saw an involuntary little shiver run through her. “You have never been kissed before, and when I kissed you just now you said that you did not know a kiss would be like that. I told you then and I tell you again a kiss is not like that save when two people love each other.”

His voice softened as he went on:

“A kiss can be all the wonder of the divine, the perfection of a man and woman united because they were meant by God to be one; Or it can be something lewd and beastly.”

Again Vesta shivered and now she turned her face away from him so that he could only see her in profile.

Her straight little nose and her sensitive lips were silhouetted against the sunshine and the silver cascade.

“And marriage entails not only a kiss,” the Count said relentlessly. “You are very young and very innocent, my Dearest Heart. Have you any idea what happens when a man and a woman are joined together and become, as the Church puts it in the marriage service ‘one flesh’?”

“I-I am ... not ... c-certain.”

“But you can imagine it is something very intimate, something very close, very private. And once again it can be all the wonder and ecstasy of the divine, or something so obscenely degrading that it could frighten you, little Goddess, as you have never been frightened before.”

“Other women have ... married without ... love,” Vesta said hesitantly.

“A great number of women have done so and are doing so at this moment all over the world,” the Count agreed. “Marriages are arranged in England as they are in France and very often in this country. But . it usually occurs when the girl is so young that she has not fallen in love with anyone else.”

He watched the flicker of Vesta’s eyelashes and continued:

“She therefore does not know what to expect from marriage. But, because women are the same the world over, she hopes as you hope, that the Prince of her heart whatever his position in life will awaken her with a kiss!”

He paused, then added:

“But when one has known love already, then it is different.”

As he spoke the Count reached out and took Vesta’s hand in his.

She felt the hard strength of his fingers and a quiver of delight ran through her.

It was so entrancing, so unexpected, and yet so wonderful that without meaning to do so her small fingers tightened on his, and her eyes lit with sudden radiance.

He looked into her face and smiled.

“You thrill at my touch, my precious one. You: are excited because I am near you, because you know I love you and because you cannot help responding to that love.”

As if she suddenly remembered what they had been arguing about, Vesta looked away from him. But she did not relinquish her hold on his hand and after a moment he raised her fingers to his lips and kissed them one by one.

Again she felt thrill after thrill run through her. She knew then that she longed, as she had never longed for anything in her whole fife, for him to kiss her again on the mouth.