An Uncrowned King Chapter 9 Part 2

“Will you sit out this dance with me?” asked Cyril, adjusting one of his sleeve-links as he spoke. The American, watching him, thought the action a piece of aristocratic rudeness, but Cyril was merely doing his best not to look towards Madame O’Malachy. If she should gain from his face an inkling of his compact with her daughter, she was quite capable, he was sure, of making a scene in public, supposing that she judged it to be to her interest to do so, and he felt much relieved when he had succeeded in avoiding her eye, and had left her engrossed in conversation with Mr Hicks. With Nadia on his arm, he led the way to one of the smaller balconies, which were curtained off from the corridors, and decorated with plants and palms, and here he found her a seat.

“Caerleon may not be here just yet,” he said. “I saw him dancing with Madame Sertchaieff just now. He has to be civil to her, you know, as she is the War Minister’s wife.” He went on talking lightly in his ordinary tones, and did not testify any resentment when Nadia vouchsafed no answer to his cheerful commonplaces, but sat still, her rigid hands outstretched before her and locked in one another, until her face changed suddenly at the sound of a footstep without.

“I was very lucky in getting off so soon,” said a voice, and Caerleon drew back the curtain and stood before them, in all the magnificence of the full-dress uniform of the Carlino Regiment. “I caught my spur in Madame Sertchaieff’s dress,” he went on, “and tore it so badly that she had to go and get it sewn up. Now, Cyril, old man, if you will add to your kindness by making yourself scarce for a little while, I shall be much obliged.”

Resisting the temptation to give Nadia a last glance of warning, Cyril departed obediently, and mounted guard in the corridor outside with an air of philosophical calmness, which he was very far from feeling. If she should fail him now! “It would make Thracia too hot to hold me,” he mused, “for she’s bound to tell Caerleon the whole story at once,” and he shifted his position impatiently as he pictured the look of pain and aversion which the revelation would bring into Caerleon’s honest eyes. He would have been still more anxious as to the results of his diplomacy if he could have heard the words in which, without wasting time on preliminaries, his brother went straight to the matter in hand.

“I am going to ask you to make a great sacrifice for me, Nadia. Those silly women out there may think that it’s something very grand to be Queen of Thracia, but you know better, and so do I. It means isolation, and worry, and being opposed and thwarted in what you have set your heart on, and it is very likely to mean danger, perhaps death. There are not many women I could ask to share these things with me; but I think that you care for me enough to be willing to help me through it all.”

He had struck the right chord at once, and the eloquence of Nadia’s eyes encouraged him to go on.

“I know,” he said, taking her hands in his, “that it doesn’t sound the proper thing for me to throw it all on you, and ask you to take me as a charity, but it seems to appeal to you more strongly if it is put in that light. Doesn’t it signify to you at all that I care for you, Nadia? that I have loved you since the very first day I saw you? I don’t believe you realise in the least what you are to me. I wish I could make you understand how I love you. Look at me—look into my eyes, and perhaps you will see.”

But Nadia shivered, and drew her hands out of his clasp. The vehemence of his tone frightened her, and she dared not meet his eye. She could not say a word, for the lump which had suddenly risen in her throat seemed to choke her. He noticed her agitation, and tried to speak more calmly.

“I am sure you can’t possibly know,” he said, “what a revelation it is to a man who has become accustomed to look at things in an ordinary everyday way, to be brought into close contact with a woman whose sole idea is to do right. One’s courage fails sometimes, when one is alone against the world, and I want you to help me to do what ought to be done for the kingdom.”

“I can’t marry you,” gasped Nadia, looking up at him with anguished eyes; “it would not be right.”