Chapter Two

All night Zenka lay awake trying to think of how she could avoid the terrible fate that seemed to have descended on her from the sky without any warning.

‘If only I was in love with someone, or someone was in love with me,’ she thought, ‘I would run away.’

Until the beginning of the year she had been kept in the schoolroom, and it was only when they came to London that the Duchess made any attempt to entertain young people. The result was that the men who had stayed at the Castle were mostly her Godfather’s friends and of his age.

The Duchess Kathleen was apparently quite content to be admired, complimented, and flattered by older men, but as far as Zenka was concerned they treated her as a child or else, because she was of Royal Blood, they were afraid to be too familiar.

‘What can I do? What can I do?’ she asked in the darkness and found no answer.

She thought that only the Duchess could have thought of anything so diabolical as having her incarcerated in a convent. But she knew she had in fact spoken the truth when she had said it was both a refuge and a prison for those who disobeyed their relations or, like the lovely Duchess de Mazarin, offended their husbands.

Zenka was very well read and she could remember dozens of instances of ladies of noble or Royal birth who had been shut away for having offended their relatives. She could imagine nothing more horrifying than being enclosed inside high walls, and it was her Hungarian blood that made her long to be free, to ride wildly over the open steppes with the wind blowing in her face.

‘That was freedom,’ she thought. ‘I shall never know it again!’

She was well aware that as a Queen she would be expected to behave with every possible circumstance, and tossing about on her pillow she told herself that the person who should suffer besides herself for this imposition, would be the King.

If Wilhelmina had been right, that he was horrible, cruel, and doubtless brutal, he would soon realise he had made a mistake in wanting her as his wife.

It was hard to visualise what he was like except that Wilhelmina had said his face was deformed and he was lame. She imagined him to be something like the wicked King Richard II with a hump on his back, and she wondered whether, if she really offended him, he would have her murdered. Then she told herself she was merely being imaginative and such things did not happen in the nineteenth century.

At the same time something rebellious within her, something that sprang from her far-off Hungarian ancestors, made her swear vengeance and feel as if to achieve it she held a weapon in her hand.

‘I will fight him!’ she thought and because she could not sleep rose from her bed to walk to the window.

She looked out into the quiet darkness of Hanover Square and found it hard to visualise what Karanya would be like. She had once had a Karanyan nurse called Sefronia, a sweet woman whom she loved and who had only left her when she became old enough for a governess.

Sefronia had talked about Karanya as if it was the most attractive place in the world. But what the peasants enjoyed and what she would have to endure in the Palace were, Zenka thought, two very different things.

She suddenly felt cold at the thought of what lay before her. Then a fierce pride made her tell herself that whatever happened she would never be crushed or become subject to the man she was forced to call her husband.

“I hate him! I hate him!” she said aloud and fell asleep saying the same words, over and over again.

*

The following day Zenka knew, when she went downstairs, that her Godfather looked at her apprehensively and the Duchess triumphantly.

During breakfast they spoke only commonplaces and when they had finished the Duke said,

“His Excellency the Ambassador of Karanya has asked if he may call on you this morning.”

“I am sure you have already accepted on my behalf,” Zenka replied.

“I could see no reason for refusing his request,” the Duke said with just a touch of rebuke in his voice.

Looking at his ward he thought how lovely she looked, despite the shadows under her eyes which had not been there the previous day.

He was sorry that he must make her suffer. At the same time he knew there was really no alternative. In her position Zenka would have to marry sooner or later, and he was well-aware of his wife’s feelings on the matter.

Like Wilhelmina, he knew there were no other monarchs left in Europe who were not already provided with wives. And he could not help thinking, however much Zenka might resent the thought of marriage, she was lucky to be offered the position of a reigning Queen when she had nothing to recommend her, except her looks and the fact that she was related to the Royal family of England.

The Duke had travelled a great deal when he was a young man and he had stayed every year with his friend Prince Ladislas in Vajda. Hungary had always appealed to him. He liked the high-spirited, charming Hungarian aristocrats with their chivalry, their almost sacred ideals when it concerned the honour of their family, and their beautiful women. He had known that they lived the type of life he would have enjoyed himself had he not inherited an ancient title and a great estate in Scotland.

When the Prince and Princess had been killed, it had seemed to him obvious that he should look after their child. But he had never imagined the difficulties it might make in his own life, until he married for the second time and realised how bitterly and resentfully jealous Kathleen was of Zenka.

The Duke was not a particularly perceptive man where other people’s emotions were concerned, but he had begun to feel in these last few months that he was living on a volcano. When the Queen had suggested that Zenka should marry King Miklos, he had welcomed it as an ideal solution to his problems, as well as to hers.

He had never imagined that she would react as she had and be so violently opposed to such a proposition. Now he told himself, remembering how happy her father and mother had been, that he might have anticipated that she would demand love for herself also.

But where was there an eligible Prince whom she could meet and love in the same overwhelming, almost unrestrained way that Princess Pauline had loved Prince Ladislas?

‘That sort of thing happens only once in a century,’ the Duke told himself.

At the same time, looking at Zenka he felt guilty and that was an uncomfortable feeling which he did not often experience.

He took out his gold watch, looked at it and shut the case with a snap.

“His Excellency should be here within half-an-hour,” he said. “We will receive him in the drawing room.”

He looked at his wife as if for confirmation and the Duchess replied,

“I will tell the servants to show him up as soon as he arrives.”

“Thank you, my dear,” the Duke said and went from the room.

The Duchess waited until the door had closed behind him before saying to Zenka,

“I hope you are in a better mood this morning. You would do well to remember that anything you say to the Ambassador will be repeated word for word to the King, so I advise you to guard your tongue.”

“Do you think otherwise the King might refuse to marry me?” Zenka asked.

“I should not set your hopes on anything so unlikely,” the Duchess retorted. “If he requires a British Princess as his wife, there are not many others available at the moment.”

That was undoubtedly true, Zenka knew, but she bit back the words that came to her lips thinking there was no point in starting the argument with the Duchess all over again, even though for the moment she hated her, almost as violently as she hated King Miklos.

She finished her coffee and rose from the table.

“I shall expect you to be in the drawing room in a quarter-of-an-hour’s time,” the Duchess said coldly. “Try to behave with dignity. Remember the exalted position you are to occupy in the future.”

She was being deliberately provocative, Zenka knew that, and crowing over a fallen adversary in a manner that was almost intolerable.

Without a word Zenka went from the breakfast room, picking up as she did so some of the newspapers which had been laid on a side-table in case the Duke should require them.

She opened them in the morning room and found they were full of eulogies on the Queen’s visit to Hyde Park the previous day, and how appreciative the 30,000 schoolchildren had been of the bun, milk, and Jubilee mug with which they had been provided. There were sketches of the balloon, which had been named Victoria, and of the Queen, accompanied by the Princesses, talking to some of the children.

‘I suppose that is the sort of thing I shall be doing in the future,’ Zenka thought to herself.

The newspaper also gave a list of some of the events that had been planned for the Queen during Jubilee Year – a Review in Hyde Park with 28,000 volunteers, a foundation stone to be laid at the Imperial Institute, the presentation of prizes at the Albert Hall for the R.S.P.C.A., and the Battersea Dogs’ Home.

Zenka turned over the page and found the Queen was also to attend a large review to boost the Empire at Aldershot, a Garden Party at the Hertfordshire home of Lord Salisbury, and a Spithead Review of 26 armoured ships, 43 torpedo vessels, 38 gunboats and 12 troop-ships, with their crews totalling 20,000 men.

Zenka flung down the paper. It was too much – impossible to contemplate – all that smiling, shaking of hands, and listening to addresses.

It had been bad enough when she was...