The Kent Heiress Page 3

  Katy was frightened, just as frightened at the notion of living among the nobility as at losing Brina. Even the pain of losing her sugar baby could not have forced Katy into such a situation—but Brina’s pain was far more compelling to her than her own. Generally Sabrina was a very happy little girl, but she had one deep-seated trouble. She seemed to think she had done something that had lost her parents. Why, she would cry, had they left her? As if that were not bad enough, recently the child had been asking whether Katy was tired of her, too, because Katy had hinted that Brina would be going away with Lady Leonie. And then, with too bright eyes, she had asked whether, after a while, Leonie would grow tired of her and leave her also. A solution had to be found.

  “I canna be a lady,” Katy said slowly. “I wouldna like it and—and yer servants would know. Ye can make them behave, but I’d be lonely. I’d have nothin’ to do. I’ll come—but as Brina’s maid. Then I’ll have friends among the servants, ye see, and I’d still be with Brina as much as she wants me.”

  Lady Leonie considered that, then nodded. “Why do we not combine the plans, Katy? There will come a time when your parents will need help. Perhaps you will wish to return to them, but perhaps you will not. It will be best then if you have enough of your own money to do what you think best.”

  Truer words were never spoken. It took some years before Katy really believed the money was hers and got over feeling guilty whenever she spent any on anyone but Brina, but she was used to it now. Her parents were willing to take a little from her, too; they believed she was paid for her duties as a companion—and that was proper. And they hadn’t even lost Brina, who spent at least one month every summer with them—still feeding chickens and lugging water—until she married.

  Katy shook herself. She was as bad as Brina, standing like an image with the soiled undergarments in her hands. Everything had been perfect until Brina married that… Katy groped hopelessly in her mind, unable to think of a word foul enough to describe Lord Elvan accurately. He had fooled them all. Then she sighed. He hadn’t only fooled all of them, he had deceived himself as well.

  A lot of women would not have cared that he played around; they would just have looked for a man for themselves. But Brina wasn’t that kind. Something had changed, however. Katy knew that. The first time, in Vienna, Brina had been bitterly hurt. The second time she was more angry than hurt—and she wasn’t as relieved and happy when he came back to her. This time Brina was acting really queer. She didn’t seem hurt at all, only…tired? Bored? She was more uncertain than anything else.

  Chapter Two

  As she hurried down the stairs, somewhat impeded by the huge footman who held her carefully by the arm, Sabrina wondered how William would act. He had gone out immediately after she agreed to attend the ball and “behave herself”, leaving a message that he would not be in to dinner. She wondered also whether William’s impatience was owing to an important Russian official who would be at the ball or because the present object of his affections would be there. Her double doubt was resolved as soon as she entered the drawing room.

  “Of all days for you to be late, Sabrina,” William exclaimed. “I told you the tsar himself is expected to look in, and if he does—”

  It was obvious that William intended to act as if that morning’s incident had not taken place at all. Sabrina felt a flicker of pique, but that faded into relief. It really was easier that way. Not to be beaten by his sangfroid, Sabrina said, “I don’t believe it,” as soon as the servant went off to bring her furs. She watched William pull on his marten-lined greatcoat. He seemed totally unaware of a possible double meaning. “Alexander hasn’t the nerve,” she went on, acknowledging she would get no rise from her husband. “He tried to sneak into St. Petersburg at night two weeks ago, and he hasn’t showed his face at a single function. Besides, Alexander is said to be disenchanted with our host, Prince Czartoryski. Then certainly he would not come to the foreign minister’s ball.”

  William growled but made no direct reply because a footman had returned and was tenderly inserting Sabrina into her ermine wrap. It wan bulky garment, completely lined with ermine fur and faced with marten, but it would keep Sabrina as warm as a heated room in the subzero temperature of a St. Petersburg January. Although she did not resist, Sabrina still resented being dressed like an infant, even having her arms lifted and pulled through the sleeves. The house servants, except for Katy and William’s valet, Charlot, were Russian and had been trained to act as it their masters and, even more particularly, their mistresses were feebleminded, paralytic infants.

  It was annoying, but to send the servants away caused them such fear and even grief that Sabrina had yielded. It was, after all, her purpose to be as “Russian” as possible, to convince her hosts that she loved them and their ways. It was part of her success as a diplomatic wife that she was so sensitive to the balance between seeming to toady and seeming to appreciate the good aspects of a foreign culture. There was a limit, however. As it was, every time she went up or down the stairs, she was supported on one or both sides by footmen. For the first six months she had spent in Russia, Sabrina had thought she would go mad.

  The behavior of the servants, especially their terror when Sabrina initially refused their attentions, had given her the worst impression of Russian noblewomen. She had struggled against the feeling because contempt has a way of revealing itself, no matter how determined the façade. That would have been a disaster. A quite remarkable amount of diplomacy was actually conducted in lacy boudoirs and at feminine tea parties. News flew between sips of tea and intimate whispers. Much of it was false or only half true, but sifted together with the half-truths and falsehoods the men told each other, both officially and unofficially, trends of favor could be guessed.

  Fortunately Sabrina had discovered that physical idleness had no effect on the brains of Russian ladies. In fact, they wielded far more power and influence than most European females. They were not minors under the law; they administered their own money and property if they desired and, very frequently, dominated their men. Moreover they were not in the least mealymouthed—a disease growing more and more prevalent in England, where far too many things could not be said or were discussed only in whispers.

  The liking and respect Sabrina soon developed for the various princesses and countesses permitted her to accept other customs as harmless eccentricity. There was a deliberate hypocritical blindness in this, Sabrina knew, but it was her duty to her own country to be liked and trusted—which would have been impossible if she went about preaching. So she bit her tongue when the Russian servants acted as if she were a senseless doll.

  Conversation between herself and William had been suspended while the footman buttoned up Sabrina’s coat, wrapped her fur scarf carefully around her head so that it would not crush or damage her hair, and inserted her hands into a huge ermine and marten muff—carefully holding the muff so that Sabrina would not have to support its weight. Another footman had come in and set a hat on William’s head, then eased his gloves onto his hands. William gritted his teeth. A third footman arrived to announce that the sleigh was waiting for the “little father” and “little mother”.

  Regardless of the bitter weather, all three footmen accompanied William and Sabrina out of the house to help them down the stairs until the grooms, hurrying up, could take over the support of their master and mistress. William’s breath hissed in with frustration, but he made no protest. He was an excellent diplomat, willing to endure any discomfort to show respect for his host country.

  Once they were safely closed into the luxurious sleigh, he picked up the conversation they had abandoned while surrounded by servants. Although they customarily spoke English to each other and the servants were supposed to know only Russian and French, both Katy and Charlot had reported a suspicion that English was understood. This had not surprised either William or Sabrina.

  “It’s true enough that Alexander doesn’t trust his foreign minister’s
policy anymore,” William confirmed, “but he’s too proud to make a clean about-face. That would be admitting openly that he’s been wrong from the beginning. Besides, he doesn’t trust anyone else, either. Worst of all, he doesn’t trust himself. At least, that’s what Lord Gower says.”

  “Then why would the tsar show up at Czartoryski’s ball? In fact, after a disaster like that battle at Austerlitz with thirty or forty thousand Austrian and Russians dead or prisoners and the rest still scattered all over Poland and Germany as well as Russia, I don’t understand any government official giving a ball.”

  “To save face. There’s a lot of the Oriental in Russians.”

  “Tsar Alexander might want to and need to, but Czartoryski? Isn’t he finished as foreign minister, William?”

  “Yes… No… How can one be sure? This isn’t a rational government. It’s—it’s a figment of a man’s imagination—or rather, of a woman’s who’s been dead for years.”

  “You mean Tsarina Catherine?” Sabrina asked.

  “Yes indeed. First she has her grandson Alexander educated by a damned republican—that La Harpe. Then she changes her mind, after everything blew up in France, and starts clamping on the screws so her own people won’t get any revolutionary notions. Then she dies and her lunatic son Paul takes over. Can you imagine trying to run a country this size like an army camp—uniforms for everyone, hours to do this and that, making dress styles illegal—”

  “But William,” Sabrina protested, “he really was a lunatic. Why should you have expected him to act rationally?”

  As she said the words she winced internally. Of all people, it seemed to Sabrina, William should be the most understanding of irrational urges. Was it rational never to be able to care for a person who cared for you?

  And was her own behavior any more rational? Eighty or ninety percent of married women of her class would call her a lunatic, to consider leaving a kind, polite, generous husband, who was willing even eager, to include her in the fascinating work he did, only because of an affair now and again. Lady Melbourne had confessed herself humbly grateful to her husband’s mistresses, who diverted his attention and left her free to pursue her own love affairs. The duchess of Devonshire had invited her husband’s mistress to live permanently in their household and cherished Lady Elizabeth Foster as her dearest friend.

  Now, sitting in the carriage, listening with half her mind to William’s penetrating analysis of the situation, Sabrina wondered with the other half of her mind whether she was insane. Why couldn’t she compromise? So she no longer loved William—so what? Most of the women she knew did not love their husbands. Some devoted themselves to their children, some chose to have affairs of the heart—and sometimes of the body, too—of their own. Even those who did love their husbands often accepted the existence of a mistress. “Men will be men,” they would say with a shrug. “It doesn’t mean anything.” Why couldn’t she accept that?

  She watched William’s animated expression as he described how the Tsarina Elizabeth had taken Catherine’s son Paul away from her and given him an ineradicable hatred for his mother. This had become mutual over the years, violently intensified after Catherine had encouraged a military rebellion against her husband, Peter III and rewarded the men who murdered him with her body as well as her trust. Of course, Peter III had been madder than his son Paul—although possibly Paul was not Peter’s son. Owing to the unsavory situation, Catherine had repeated Elizabeth’s actions—removing Alexander and his brother Constantine from their parents’ care and influence.

  It was hard to guess, William continued judiciously, whether this had done the present tsar more harm or good. Certainly it had been good for Russia. The four years of Paul’s reign had been a hell that even the Russians—who were accustomed to insane rulers—had found unacceptable. If Alexander and all his brothers had been raised by his father and had been in accord with Paul’s ideas, either the palace coup that had unseated (and murdered) Paul would not have taken place or the country might have suffered anarchy.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know whether being raised by his grandmother was good or bad? Surely it couldn’t have been worse than being raised by an inane martinet,” Sabrina protested.

  She could respond with interest to anything William discussed, she was thinking as she spoke. She could admire the flash of his dark eyes, the straight, fine nose, the well-curved lips. She could respect his intelligence and enjoy his perceptions—but she could not feel a quiver of sexual response, or far worse, a spark of affection. There was no warmth in William. There was no excuse for fondness or tenderness. He was only capable of the hot lust of pursuit or cold usage. He was not talking to her because he was interested in her. He was giving her information so that she would not make a faux pas and therefore could be useful to him.

  “Perhaps not,” William responded, “but being filled with a mess of republican idealism and then told ‘right-about-face, march to absolutism’ by his grandmother and finally being dumped into four years of militaristic lunacy—all drill and parade with no rhyme or reason to it—didn’t do him much good, either. Particularly when the only way out was to have his father murdered.”

  “William! I can hardly believe he agreed to that.”

  “No… In fact, he asked for assurances that Paul would only be forced to abdicate. But Alexander isn’t stupid Sabrina. He knew it wasn’t possible to have two tsars with diametrically opposed ideas. As long as Paul was alive there would be a strong focus for the opposition. Every tsar who had been deposed before had died—if not immediately, then within a few weeks or months.”

  “I suppose he lied to himself,” Sabrina said with sympathy. “So many people do.”

  “Yes,” William agreed without a shadow of self-consciousness. “Anyway, it’s a very touchy subject. If it comes up, just look blank, as if you never heard a word about it. After all, that was in 1801. You were only a child. No reason you should have known. I was only trying to explain that Alexander doesn’t always let his left hand know what his right hand is doing. That is why he might attend Czartoryski’s ball.”

  Sabrina chuckled. “That should make him a first-class politician.”

  “It should,” William remarked dryly, “only very often his head doesn’t seem to know what either hand is doing. He was taught too much idealistic nonsense totally unsuitable at this time in this country. He hasn’t the maturity or patience to work toward those ideals slowly. So when he’s had a disappointment, he wants to throw the baby out with the bathwater—only he doesn’t want anyone to see him doing it. He’ll keep Czartoryski for window-dressing for a while.”

  “Poor man. Does he know?”

  “I should imagine so. Czartoryski’s clever enough. It’s too bad. He had some good ideas, and he was reasonably pro-British. He’d even discovered a way to make Alexander acceptable to the Polish nobles and they would have fought with the Prussian-Russian army—only Alexander hemmed and hawed, so Bonaparte got to the Poles first.”

  “Would it have made any difference?” Sabrina asked doubtfully.

  “Probably not. I’m no military man, but from what I can gather, the defeat was virtually assured by Alexander—who’s no military man, either, though he may have thought he was with all his father’s drilling on the parade ground—taking control. He did about everything wrong that could be done. Oh, here we are. Sabrina, drop the women—Novosiltsov’s and Stroganov’s mothers and sisters, too. Both are out of favor. I don’t mean cut them dead—”

  “I wouldn’t even if you did mean it,” Sabrina snapped. She knew the needs of political friendships, but the coldness of William’s order was ugly. ”That would scarcely recommend me to my other friends, would it? I’ll manage.”

  “It may not be as easy as you think,” William warned. “Drowning people cling rather desperately to any support in sight. Just remember there isn’t anything you can do for them anyway and we don’t want to be tarred with the same brush. There are som
e signs that Alexander is looking around for someone else to blame for his troubles. I don’t want it to be the British.”

  As he spoke the sleigh was threading its way through the large number of other similar vehicles waiting in the street. Sabrina kept her eyes on her muff. She could not bear to look at the coachmen and grooms huddled together or curled up asleep under the sleighs. The temperature was probably below zero already, and a sharp wind was blowing. No provision ever seemed to be made for those poor creatures. They waited outdoors for many hours without the slightest protection.

  Sabrina was glad William never permitted it, although she wondered if it was not his concern for the horses more than for the men. In any case, both were protected. Invariably William found an errand for the men to do or a necessity for them to return to the house for some hours. She heard him giving instructions but did not really listen. Her mind was busy with the problem of avoiding women she had heretofore cultivated. Foreign Minister Czartoryski had no women in his household—at least none presented at formal balls, but the others…

  The sleigh door opened again, letting in a blast of air so frigid that it stung her eyes and nose. Hands reached out to help her down from the sleigh. Their own grooms handed William and Sabrina over to Czartoryski’s servants on the stairs and in another moment they were in a reception chamber being tenderly divested of their outer garments. Opposite were doors, either gorgeously or ostentatiously decorated, depending on one’s taste. Sabrina would have preferred less gold leaf and fewer convolutions in the carving, but ostentatious or not, they were beautiful. They were flung wide to show an impressive staircase. In winter the reception rooms on the upper floors were used because they were warmer, and it was necessary to use every possible device to conserve warmth. Although two fires blazed in the reception room, Sabrina had been very glad of the cashmere shawl that protected her bare shoulders and arms.

  Once they entered the rooms above, Sabrina allowed the shawl to drop and rest in the crook of her elbows. She was, as always, dazzled for a moment by the brilliant lighting of the thousands of candles glittering back from crystal ornaments, from jewels that made her own look paltry, from rich fabrics embroidered in silver and gold, from the bright-colored, overdecorated walls and ceilings. She had noticed in the past that her pale eyes were more sensitive to light, particularly sudden changes from dark to bright, than were other people’s.