Love Leaves at Midnight

Chapter 1 1883-2

“I have always understood that Royal marriages were arranged,” Xenia remarked.

“And a great many others as well,” Mrs. Sandon agreed, “but Royal brides are supposed to have no feelings and no desires and only a sense of duty to their country.”

She laughed and threw out her arms.

“Oh, Xenia, how can I explain to you how different it is to be married to your father and to know I am loved for myself and nothing else. But I could bring him no dowry – nothing!”

“Did Papa have to leave his Regiment?”

“Of course. We had caused a scandal and that was unforgivable. Everything was hushed up as much as possible not only for my father’s sake but because it was inconceivable that an English aide-de-camp should run away with a King’s daughter! I believe it considerably upset the Military Mission.”

Xenia laughed at the note in her mother’s voice.

“One would hardly think that mattered.”

“There is very strict protocol in a Palace – everything matters!” Mrs. Sandon said. “So your father and I had to disappear.”

“Is that why you came to Little Coombe?”

“Your father knew it and, when I saw the pretty village and the little house that was available for us, it seemed to me my idea of Heaven.”

She looked at her daughter and went on,

“When you fall in love, my dearest, you will understand that all one wants is to be alone with the man you love and to look after him. Nothing else is of the least consequence.”

“I am sure Papa thinks the same.”

“He does, although he regrets quite unnecessarily that he cannot give me all the comforts I knew in Slovia.”

“Is it because you ran away that we have always been so poor?” Xenia asked.

“Exactly, my dearest, but, although it has never worried me, I want so much for you that we cannot give you.”

“I am very happy,” Xenia said. “As long as I can ride with Papa and you can teach me so many things, I know I am lucky too.”

Mrs. Sandon put her arm round Xenia and kissed her.

“That is exactly what I wanted you to say, my darling, when I told you my secret.”

“It is a very exciting one!” Xenia exclaimed, “but why did your sister not keep in touch with you? She must have missed you too.”

“I know Dorottyn missed me, just as I missed her,” Mrs. Sandon agreed, “but she was left at home and there was no possibility of her communicating with me against our father’s commands. In any case she would not have known my address.”

“You did not write?”

“No. I knew it would be an embarrassment.”

“And has she married?”

“Yes. I saw the announcement of her marriage a year after I left Slovia to the Archduke Frederich of Prussen.”

“That sounds very grand.”

“He was in fact the man my father meant me to marry,” her mother answered, “but I promise you, darling, that I have never for one moment wished to change places with my twin sister.”

“Has she any children?” Xenia asked curiously.

“I don’t know,” Mrs. Sandon replied sadly. “You see the English newspapers are not particularly interested in the smaller States of Europe. Sometimes there is a brief mention of Slovia and two years ago I learnt that my mother was dead.”

“Your father is still alive?”

“Yes, an old man and, when I last read about him, in ill-health. I thought he might have come to England for one of the State occasions, but I imagine he was too ill to travel.”

Xenia drew in her breath.

“It is hard to think of you, Mama, as the daughter of a King!”

“It is something I had forgotten and you too must forget,” Mrs. Sandon said.

“I don’t want to forget it,” Xenia replied. “I want to remember it. Now I know why you have such dignity, Mama, and why Papa teases you about your aristocratic nose.”

She jumped up to run to a mirror that hung on one wall of the room.

“I have a nose like you,” she said. “In fact I look very much like you with my red hair and green eyes. Do you think I look aristocratic?”

“I hope you will always behave as if you are, my darling, and that means being both proud and brave, considerate and understanding of other people.”

“Just like you,” Xenia said. “I will try, Mama. I will, really! It’s all very exciting!”

“Not really,” Mrs. Sandon replied. “And remember, Xenia, you can never tell anyone who I am. My father, as did my mother when she was alive, behaves as if I was dead.”

There was a little throb of emotion in her mother’s voice, which was very moving and Xenia ran to put her arms round her neck.

“Never mind, Mama,” she said. “You have Papa and me and we love you very very much.”

“That is all that matters and I promise you, Xenia, that it is far better to be in a house of love than in the grandest palace in the whole world.”

Xenia thought that her mother had spoken very truly when she found in the huge luxury of Berkeley Towers no love and very little consideration for other people.

“Good gracious, girl, but you have been a long time!” Mrs. Berkeley had remarked disagreeably when she had brought her something she had requested but which had been difficult to find.

“It was right at the top of the house,” Xenia explained apologetically.

“I am sure that you can run up a few stairs at your age!” Mrs. Berkeley had retorted. “When I want something, I want it at once! You must make up your mind to hurry.”

‘I have hurried,’ Xenia wanted to say.

It was no use arguing, she thought. Mrs. Berkeley would find fault whatever she did.

On other occasions she rebuked Xenia for running up and down the stairs, saying that it was undignified and a bad example to the servants.

At night, when she lay in the large comfortable bedroom she was provided with at Berkeley Towers because it was near to her mistress and she could be summoned at a moment’s notice, she longed for the tiny bedroom with its sloping ceiling she had occupied at home.

There, with its little casement of diamond panes under the thatch, she had thought the world outside was full of sunshine and laughter.

Inside the tiny cottage there had been an atmosphere of peace and contentment that she had not really appreciated until it was lost.

“You are not listening to what I am saying, Xenia!” Mrs. Berkeley said snappily now.

“I am sorry,” Xenia said quickly. “The wheels are so noisy.”

“I don’t expect to have to say the same thing twice to anyone. I was telling you that you must be very careful with our hand baggage when we reach Dover. All Continentals are thieves and robbers, and I don’t wish to find my precious possessions have all disappeared while you are wool-gathering.”

“I will be very careful,” Xenia promised.

“So I should hope,” Mrs. Berkeley said. “After all, it has cost me a lot of money to bring you on this trip.”

“I know that,” Xenia said, “and I have thanked you many, many times.”

“As you should!” Mrs. Berkeley replied. “That gown alone cost a considerable sum. After all I can hardly have a companion travelling with me looking like a ragged beggar.”

This was such an untrue and offensive thing to say that Xenia felt the colour come into her cheeks, but she had learnt by now to say nothing to such taunts.

Mrs. Berkeley had gone out of her way to disparage the clothes she was wearing when she had taken her from the cottage to Berkeley Towers.

They were, it was true, of cheap materials, but they had been beautifully made by her mother and were in perfect taste.

Mrs. Berkeley had bought Xenia some black gowns, but, after she had been in mourning for only five months, she had suddenly commanded her to dispense with everything she owned that was black.

“I dislike the colour,” she said. “Besides it makes you look far too theatrical with that anaemic white skin of yours and that ostentatious red hair.”

Obediently Xenia had put on the gowns she had worn before her father and mother died, only to be ridiculed and then obliged to be effusively grateful for the gowns that Mrs. Berkeley bought her in their place.

She was well aware that they also annoyed her employer because every colour seemed to accentuate the whiteness of her skin.

“She has a skin like yours, darling,” she heard her father say once to her mother. “It is like a magnolia both to touch and to kiss.”

Mrs. Berkeley’s choice of gowns kept most of Xenia’s magnolia skin well concealed, but there was nothing she could do about her hair.

It was the Titian red beloved by artists and was exactly the same colour as Winterhalter had portrayed in his picture of Elizabeth, Empress of Austria.

“Are we related to the most beautiful Queen in Europe?” Xenia had asked her mother once.

“As a matter of fact she is a distant cousin,” her mother replied, “and there is also Hungarian blood in you.”

She smiled as she went on,

“Now you understand why I want you to learn both German and Hungarian. Your father thought it was unnecessary, but I insisted.”

“Perhaps one day, Mama, I could go to Slovia.”

“Our people are a mixture of both the nations on either side of us,” her mother explained. “But we have fused the languages together and, while many words are German, others are completely Hungarian.”

There had been an expression on her face which told Xenia she was looking back into the past as she added,

“My father had always insisted that we should be good linguists and be able to talk to our neighbours in their own language. I remember when the King of Luthenia visited us he was delighted because both Dorottyn and I could talk to him in Luthenian.”

“I feel I shall never be as proficient as you, Mama.”

“It is difficult to learn a language if you have never visited the country of its origin,” Mrs. Sandon said, “but you will find when you do that it is not difficult if you know German, French and Hungarian and perhaps a little Greek to speak all the Balkan languages.”

After Xenia had learnt her mother’s secret, she assiduously studied the languages that previously she had thought, as her father did, were rather a waste of time.

When she and Mrs. Sandon were alone together they never spoke in English.

Soon Xenia began to dream that one day, even if she went in the cheapest possible manner, she would visit Slovia and the other Kingdoms her mother had known so well.

Now, she thought, it was one step forward that Mrs. Berkeley was taking her to France.

“I don’t suppose you know any French?” her employer remarked.

She spoke in a manner that made Xenia feel she hoped she was right and would therefore be able to show her own superiority.

“I speak French,” Xenia answered.

“You do?” Mrs. Berkeley raised her eyebrows, then added, “But of course you have foreign blood in you. There is no doubt of that. Neither you nor your late mother looked English.”

It was not a compliment and Xenia could not help replying,

“Mama was not English! She came from the Balkans.”

“Oh – the Balkans!” Mrs. Berkeley made it sound as if there was something degrading about such a connection.

Because Xenia was afraid that she might lose her temper, she had quickly changed the subject.

Now she wondered if her mother would have been pleased that she was going to France.

Often when she was alone in bed she would talk to her mother just as if she was there, telling her how miserable she was without her.

At the same time she knew it would be the utmost selfishness on her part to wish either her father or her mother to be alive without the other.

They had loved her, she did not doubt that, but their real love had been for each other and she knew that if either of them had survived they would have wanted only to die so that they could be together again.

Mrs. Berkeley looked at her watch.

“We should not be long now,” she said. “Really, I find travelling by train extremely tiring. I am sure the poor creatures in the Second and Third Class carriages find it quite exhausting.”

This remark, Xenia knew, was intended to point out to her how fortunate she was to be able to travel in expensive luxury.

The words were just about to come obediently to her lips when suddenly there was a noise like an explosion and at the same time a crash that made the whole coach shudder. There was a shrill shriek from Mrs. Berkeley and the coach turned over.