‘There! Look! Can’t you see?’ She was staring, horrified, at something inside the lapel of her blouse.

Guy looked. Low down on Nerine’s throat, just where the swell of her breasts began, the white skin was disfigured by a pink and rapidly swelling blob.

Relief making his voice light, almost teasing, Guy said, ‘It’s only a mosquito bite, my dear, and nothing at all to worry about in this climate. In the tropics it would be different, but there’s been no malaria round here for ages.’

‘Nothing to worry about!’ Nerine was watching with utter hopelessness the mottled disfiguration still spreading in hideously irregular patches across her skin. Did no one understand the cost of beauty? The yellow satin she had planned to wear that evening was extremely décolletée. And her surprise — her lovely surprise for the opera would be completely ruined! It would be days before the bite was invisible: days and days and days… Piteously, she laid a hand on his arm and in a voice she just managed to keep from breaking, said, ‘Take me back, Guy. Just take me back.’

‘Well?’ said the Swan Princess. ‘Have you spoken? Have you settled it between you? Or do you mean to let her spend the rest of her life grubbing about backstage like a kitchenmaid?’

Maxi looked in a hurt manner at his mother. Assembled in the round room of the West Tower with the Duchess and the Margravine, an hour before dinner, she seemed to be part of a phalanx of ‘Older Womanhood’ and the kind of thing he found most difficult to bear.

‘I tried to get her to come for a walk this morning but she said she had to work,’ said Maxi, on whom the memory of this statement still had its effect. ‘And she’s been cooped up in the theatre ever since.’

He frowned and his frown was repeated on the faces of the ladies.

‘We would be so happy to feel that everything was understood between you,’ said the Duchess. ‘As you know, it was her parents’ dearest wish.’

She sighed. Herr Farne had reiterated his invitation to them to stay in the West Tower, making it clear that once the house party was over there would hardly be a shortage of space. But Mrs Hurlingham, though politeness itself, had not seconded her fiancée’s words. The eyes of the beautiful widow had been cool and appraising as they rested on Tilda and herself and it seemed likely that their days at Pfaffenstein were numbered. Somehow they would always contrive to make a home for Putzerl, but to see her married and suitably established before they died was the one desire now left to them.

‘I hope you are not going to be feeble, Maxi,’ said the Swan Princess. ‘If there is one thing a high-spirited girl cannot stand, it is feebleness.’

‘No, Mother. I mean, yes, Mother. I won’t be feeble,’ said Maxi. ‘I thought I’d ask her tonight during the firework display. Of course, I won’t have the dogs…’ He paused, pondering his strategy.

‘Ah, yes, that will be so romantic!’ said the Margravine approvingly. ‘By the lake… with the orchestra playing.’

‘You’d better see if you can get her away from the theatre now, dear,’ said the Duchess. ‘It’s time she came in and changed for dinner.’

‘And for heaven’s sake, Maxi, go and comb your hair. And your moustache. You look like a spaniel,’ said the Swan Princess.

‘Yes, Mother. I mean, no, Mother,’ said Maxi, and went.

But when he entered the theatre there was no sign of Tessa. There seemed, rather, to be pandemonium everywhere. On stage, a bald little man was rushing about shouting at people; coloured lights flashed on and off and the sound of oaths came from above.

Deeply shocked by the environment in which his beloved spent her days, the prince asked for Her Highness and was directed down some iron stairs by the laconic thumb of a carpenter. Tessa, when he ran her to ground, was in a kind of cubby-hole, kneeling with her mouth full of pins, while on a low table stood a figure in a pleated, golden dress.

Jacob had not dared to put a ballet in The Magic Flute. What was fair game for Puccini and Donizetti was out of the question for a man who ranked only a millimetre below God himself. This did not mean, however, that he had left behind the Heidis. They were to appear in beguiling animal skins as the wild beasts who cavorted to the sound of Tamino’s magic flute. But Jacob, studying the libretto, had also been reminded that the temple of the high priest, Sarastro, was dedicated to Wisdom, Industry and Art. It was therefore as statues representing these three virtues that the Heidis were to appear in Act One.

Having had this brainwave Jacob, in pursuit of musical perfection, had largely forgotten it and it was left to Tessa, at the eleventh hour, to complete their costumes. Fitting the two elder Heidis had been no trouble but Heidi Schlumberger was proving difficult. The discovery of Tessa’s identity had thrown the Littlest Heidi into a stupor of servility. She could not bear Tessa to do anything for her and now, supposedly standing still to be pinned, was wringing her hands in an excess of outraged serfdom.

‘But Your Highness shouldn’t be doing this. Your Highness should let me—’

‘Heidi, please will you shut up and stand still!’ said Tessa. ‘How can I get the hem straight if you keep bobbing about?’ She turned, feeling the draught of the open door. ‘Good heavens, Maxi, what on earth are you doing here?’

‘I came to fetch you. The aunts say it’s time to change for dinner.’

He surveyed his beloved, who looked as though a good deal of changing would be necessary before she could take her place between Monteforelli and the Archduke Sava in the state dining-room.

‘I can’t come until I’ve finished this, Maxi. I’m not even sure that we’re stopping for dinner at all.’ She had lost the morning’s pallor, for the excitement of work as they prepared for this most crucial of performances was like ambrosia. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, how rude! Maxi, this is Heidi Schlumberger, one of our dancers. Heidi, this is my friend, Prince Maximilian of Spittau.’

Maxi, taking his eyes off Tessa for the first time, looked up. Looked, stared… and flushed a dusky red as emotion took him by the throat.

The girl he was looking at, standing with bare arms in a gold bodice and sculptured, golden skirt, was not merely pretty; she was enchantment itself. Blonde curls, as fat and shiny as butter, tumbled on to her shoulders; her eyes were huge and blue and long-lashed; her cheeks were dimpled, her mouth a rosebud. Not only that but her look, demure yet coy, the slight parting of the lips, called to his mind the woman who embodied for him everything that was most desirable in the female sex: Mary Pickford stood before him, in the flesh.

‘Enchanted, Fräulein,’ he said, and bowed.

The Littlest Heidi, equally rapt, returned his regard. That long and handsome face, the duelling scar, the luxuriant moustache! So manly, and a prince!

‘I am honoured, Your Highness,’ she said. And gracefully, delightfully, still on her pedestal, sank into a curtsy.

10

The firework display was going splendidly. A dozen barrels of wine sent down by Guy at the beginning of the evening had secured the enthusiastic cooperation of the villagers, now assembled on a strip of beach below the road. From the three islands in the middle of the lake, there erupted a succession of rockets, Roman candles and exotic set-pieces which trailed a blazing path across the sky, dimming the stars themselves. Chinese lanterns were strung between the trees, braziers with roasting chestnuts glowed on the shingle, and on a platform constructed near the bathing huts the orchestra played Handel.

‘My dear, you must have spent a fortune,’ said Nerine, standing with Guy and a group of guests, still in their evening clothes, beside the water’s edge. Like most of the younger members of the house party, she had come down to the lakeside after dinner, leaving the older people to watch from the comfort of the terrace.

Guy shrugged. ‘It is no good being stingy with fireworks,’ he said, watching with approval the coordination between David, Morgan and the head forester, who were each in charge on a different island.

Tessa, standing at the other end of the beach close to the wooden jetty which ran out across the darkness of the water, was watching with parted lips, her republican principles not noticeably outraged by this wanton display of extravagance. That she was looking extremely pretty was not her fault, for it had been her intention to miss dinner and slip down later, still in her working clothes. In this she had been foiled by her old nurse, who had never been interested in the question of whether Tessa was or was not grown-up, and had dragged her upstairs, immersed her in a bath, and released her in a long, full-skirted dress of cream taffeta, with satin pumps on her feet and a rose on a velvet ribbon around her throat.

‘Putzerl,’ said Maxi, who had been glued to her side all evening. ‘Tessa…’ The orchestra had come to the end of its piece and there was a lull in the pyrotechnics. Now was the moment. He took her arm. ‘I’ve been absolutely longing to talk to you alone—’

‘Hush! Listen, Maxi!’ Tessa had turned away from him, her gaze on the row of trees fringing the shore. ‘Don’t you hear it?’

Maxi did. A strange, coughing noise, then a low growl… And then a dark shape shambling out of the trees… pausing… the great head swaying in confusion and fright.

‘Oh, Lord, it’s Mishka!’ Tessa’s voice was breathless with concern. ‘He must have broken down the door. And Uncle Sava’s not here, he’s taken Frau Romola for a drive! They were going to watch the fireworks from High Pfaffenstein.’

‘The devil!’ Maxi was well aware of the danger. The Archduke’s bear had been found as a cub in a fair in Novgorod with a firecracker tied to his tail. Normally he was docile enough, but now…

A piece of frayed rope dangling from his collar, the bear slithered down on to the shingle and a group of children ran screaming in the direction of the bathing huts. For a moment he paused uncertainly, his eyes glowing red in the light of the braziers. But ahead of him was darkness and quiet, and now he lumbered on to the jetty and moved down to the end, sniffing the water.

Only the dark and the quietness were deceptive. The fireworks were starting up again and as a burst of rockets went up from the nearest island, he turned with a roar of terror and stood, growling and swaying, facing the shore.

‘Oh, poor thing, he’s so frightened!’

‘There’s nothing you can do, Tessa. Look, those men have gone for—’

But Tessa was no longer by his side. She had picked up her skirts, was running towards the jetty, had reached it and now slowed down, moving quietly along the planking, holding out her hand. ‘It’s all right, Mishka: don’t be frightened. It’s all right—’

The next moment her arms were seized from behind, she was viciously jerked backwards and a furious voice said, ‘Are you mad? Come back at once!’

Guy. Only it couldn’t be Guy. She had just seen him standing on the far side of the beach. No one could have run as fast as that.

‘Let me go!’ Desperately she tried to wriggle free, bracing herself against him, kicking out with her satin slippers.

The attempt of this freshly bathed and bird-boned infant to get the better of him might have amused Guy at some other time, but it did not amuse him now. His hold tightened. ‘You will move slowly round behind me and get back to the shore.’ Keeping his eye steadily on the bear, taking care to make no further sudden movements, the anger that possessed him was concentrated wholly in his voice.

‘No, I will not.’ A strand of her hair had caught in the stud of his dress shirt. Savagely, she wrenched it free. ‘He knows me, he won’t hurt me! It’s you he’ll go for — you’re a stranger.’

‘A terrified animal knows no one.’

As if in echo to his words, there came a fresh shower of rockets from the lake and the bear, roaring in renewed terror, reared up on his hind legs.

For a moment, confronted by the animal’s appalling height and his vicious canines, hearing the screams from the shore, Tessa went limp and Guy appeared to loosen his hold. At once she rallied and seeing her chance, began to move forward again.

This was a mistake. Guy had merely been adjusting his grasp. Now he gripped her elbows as if in a vice, lifted her up into the air and threw her, without the slightest sign of effort, far out into the lake.

The shock of the icy water, the struggle to surface in her voluminous dress, gave Tessa a few moments of immunity. Then she kicked off her shoes, trod water and opened her eyes to see… Maxi wading with idiotic chivalry into the lake towards her… some men approaching with a muzzle and chains… and then — because in the end she had to look — the bear on all fours and Guy, holding the rope, leading it quietly back towards the shore.