The Prince Who Wanted Love

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1895-1

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1895Prince Serge of Tamrush dismounted outside the front door of his Palace and walked inside.

To his surprise there was no one to be seen and he called out for his wife.

“Catherine, I am back!”

There was a cry at the top of the stairs.

Princess Catherine then came rushing down with her arms outstretched.

“You are back! How really wonderful! I was not expecting you until this afternoon.”

“I managed to get away early,” he said, kissing her affectionately. “Have you missed me?”

“But, of course, I have missed you,” the Princess told him. “We are making special preparations for your dinner tonight, but I did not expect you until it was dark.”

“I had enough of listening to people complaining all the time about one thing or another,” the Prince replied. “So I had a sudden yearning for home and, of course, you.”

“Oh, my darling, I have missed you so much,” the Princess murmured. “The place has seemed empty without you and I have had so much to do arranging for Lavinia’s birthday tomorrow.”

“I remembered,” Prince Serge said as they walked down the passage towards their private rooms. “I bought her a very attractive necklace, which I am sure she will be pleased to have.”

“I am sure she will,” the Princess agreed.

He opened the door of his study and then walked in with his arm round his wife’s shoulders.

As he entered, he gave a cry of delight.

The room was filled with flowers and he knew that it was his wife who had arranged them for him.

“So the special roses have come into bud,” he said. “I thought they were going to refuse to flower in a strange land.”

“As you can see, they have accepted us as we have accepted them,” the Princess replied laughingly.

Prince Serge went over to look at the special roses that he had ordered from England. He had been frightened that they might not flower in foreign soil.

But the English roses had adapted themselves to the Balkans in much the same way as Princess Catherine had managed to do when she had been sent by Queen Victoria to save yet another Principality from being invaded by the Russians.

But that had happened twenty-one years ago and now it was their beautiful daughter’s twentieth birthday that they were celebrating tomorrow.

Princess Catherine had been amongst the very first English brides that Queen Victoria had sent to the Balkans to save the Principality of Tamrush from being ‘gobbled up’, as the Politicians expressed it, by the unending greed of the Russian Empire.

Now, after many years of providing English brides for foreign Principalities, she had become known as the ‘Matchmaker of Europe.’

England had now become even more important and respected than it had been at the beginning of her reign.

The marriage of His Royal Highness Prince Serge of Tamrush had caused much commotion in Europe.

Even more so in the Balkans themselves.

For the first time the Ruler of a Principality was aware that, if he could fly the Union Jack beside his own flag, it meant that the Russians would leave him alone and not behave as they were in many other countries.

It had been after Germany took over the German Principalities to make sure that their Empire was larger and more important that the Russians woke up to the fact that, if they were to reach the sea and then have access to the Mediterranean, the only thing standing in their way were the Principalities of the Balkans.

It was then that a subtle more or less secret invasion began, which grew as the years passed by.

The Princes became more and more anxious as one after another the Principalities collapsed.

This was cleverly done by the Russians in causing dissension amongst the people concerned.

They sent spies who infiltrated amongst the people causing them to complain of their Rulers and deliberately starting turmoil in different parts of the Balkan countries concerned.

It was then that the adviser to Prince Serge had told him he must go to London and beg Queen Victoria to give him an English wife.

As the alternative was to lose his throne and his Principality, the Prince had obeyed, even though he had no wish to marry a woman he had never seen.

Someone who would naturally, he thought, resent a husband being chosen for her before she had time to get to know him.

The Prince had made a good impression at Windsor Castle and Queen Victoria had therefore given him as a bride one of her own distant relations, who had only just become a social success and was praised for her beauty in every newspaper.

To everyone’s considerable surprise and delight the two young people had, in fact, fallen very much in love with each other.

When the Prince finally returned to the Balkans in triumph, his wife became, not just one of the most admired women in his Principality, but, as the years passed by, the people loved her.

They asked for her help with their troubles and their difficulties as if she was one of them.

Not, as they had been afraid, that she would be a stuck-up disdainful foreigner who found the people of little importance.

To Catherine the only thing that mattered was that her husband loved her and their devoted love for each other increased year by year.

They were thrilled when their first child was born, although the Prince was a little disappointed that it was not a son.

But that was to come later.

As his daughter was undoubtedly so like her mother and certainly beautiful, he became more and more proud of her.

Now they had two sons, one of whom had already been sent to an English Boarding School, while the other was still in the nursery.

It was his daughter who gave him the most pleasure although both his sons were particularly precious because they had followed in his footsteps.

When he died he was certain that they would keep the Principality from falling into the hands of the Russians or anyone else who might have designs on it.

Now, as he settled down in his favourite chair, the Princess sat on his knee and he kissed her again and again.

“I missed you every night I was away,” he sighed. “Although they begged me to stay, I simply had to come back to you.”

“And I missed you, darling Serge,” she answered. “It has been very quiet and dull without you. If I had not been busy planning Lavinia’s birthday party, I think that I should have been even more miserable than I was without you.”

“You are even lovelier than when I last saw you,” the Prince smiled and kissed her again.

It was then that the door of the study burst open and Lavinia came rushing in.

“Why did no one tell me you were back, Papa?” she asked. “We were not expecting you until later.”

“So your mother has been telling me,” he replied.

The Princess moved off his knee and his daughter bent down to kiss him on both cheeks.

“It is so lovely to see you again, Papa,” she said excitedly. “Things have been so dull and lonely since you went away.”

“Well, I am back now, my darling, and I hear you are to have a very grand birthday party.”

“We have invited just about everyone we can think of,” Lavinia said. “I think the Palace will bulge when they all arrive.”

“I do hope you have chosen a decent band,” Prince Serge remarked. “As it is your birthday, you must open the ball with me. But I expect the young men will be fighting for the privilege of having every dance that follows.”

“I hope so,” Lavinia answered. “My new dress has arrived from Paris and it is just waiting for your approval.”

“I expect the bill is waiting for me too,” he replied a little dryly.

She bent down and kissed his cheek.

“I only have a birthday once a year, Papa, and this is a very special occasion because I am now grown up and no longer have to be educated.”

The Prince did not answer because at that moment Lavinia, who was standing by the window, exclaimed,

“I think the band is arriving! They said they wanted to be early so as to try out the acoustics of the ballroom before the party began.”

“You had better go and see that they are properly looked after, darling,” the Prince suggested, “and if they need any help from the servants.”

“Of course, Papa,” Lavinia said, running towards the door and left the room.

As the door closed, Prince Serge said,

“The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs has just consulted me and you will not be surprised to know that Prince Igor of Dubrik is not only coming to the ball but wishes, while he is here, to have a private conversation with me.”

“Prince Igor!” the Princess repeated. “Why should he want to talk to you?”

“Don’t be so silly, Catherine,” the Prince answered. “You know that Prince Igor is exceedingly worried that the Russians have been causing much trouble in Dubrik and I imagine that he wants my permission to marry Lavinia.”

The Princess gave a cry of horror.

“Marry Lavinia,” she exclaimed. “But why on earth should he want to and why must he ask you, although I do admit that it’s correct, before he asks her?”

There was silence for a moment.

Then Prince Serge said,

“I felt you realised before I left that the Secretary of State informed me that Queen Victoria has said firmly that she has no more Royal relations who are of marrying age, and in fact she has given us all she possibly can. In future there will be no point in approaching her as we have done in the past.”

As she was listening, the Princess’s eyes had been on her husband.

And, as each moment passed, she became more and more alarmed at what she was hearing.

“Do you mean to say,” she asked him after a short silence, “that the Queen of England is not going to help us anymore to find wives to save the countries in the Balkans from being taken over by the Russians?”

“The answer is simple,” Prince Serge replied. “She has no more Princesses of Royal blood to give us. So in the future we have to fight our own battles.”

“I can scarcely believe it!” the Princess said. “We have always relied on Her Majesty and she has sent us so many of her relations. That is undoubtedly the reason that we are as strong as we are and have not been taken over by Russia as we might have been otherwise.”

“I know! I know!” he protested. “But look at the Russians and, unless something is done about Igor, he will surely be overrun and removed from his throne.”

There was silence for a brief moment.

Then the Princess said,

“Are you seriously suggesting that you might agree to him marrying Lavinia?”

“I am quite certain that he is going to ask me for her hand in marriage,” Prince Serge replied. “The difficulty will be for me to decide whether the answer is to be ‘yes’ or ‘no’.”

The Princess walked over the room and knelt down at his chair.

“You know, darling, the reputation Prince Igor has is not that good one where women are concerned. How could our daughter, who is very innocent and very young, cope with a man like that?”

Prince Serge then took the Princess’s hand in his and raised it to his lips.

“I don’t want to worry you, my darling,” he said, “which is the reason I did not tell you this before I left. But now I am home we have to face facts.”

“But Lavinia is far too young to be married,” the Princess insisted. “Because we have always looked after her and sheltered her, she has no idea what men are really like. How could she possibly manage someone like Prince Igor?”

“I think we are condemning him unheard,” Serge Prince answered. “He was very young when he succeeded his father. I imagine that everything he has done has been very much exaggerated.”

“He has been to France on several occasions,” the Princess said, “and, according to gossip brought back with him, extremely attractive French women who stayed at the Palace for quite a long time before their place was taken by someone else who was even younger and more attractive than the one who left!”

“I am sure a lot of that is gossip, just sheer gossip,” Prince Serge responded. “You know, my darling, just as well as I do, that if one of our Princes gives a party, it is denounced as an orgy and, if he is young enough to smile at a pretty woman, they immediately infer that she is his mistress.”