was in the same building or only a room away.
The Count began to be afraid.
He felt like a man who had made a small hole in the dyke and now the whole sea was rushing in and threatening to overwhelm him and everyone else.
With an expertise that came from long practice, he began to disentangle himself both metaphorically as well as physically from the clinging arms of Luise, from her lips, hungry for his kisses, and from her insistent demands upon him.
She sensed, as a woman always can, what was happening.
So she bombarded him with letters and messages and, when they were alone, begged him to love her with an abandonment that made him uneasy.
Too late he realised that her nature was hysterical to the point where she could easily become unbalanced.
Too late he realised that he had started an avalanche that was now out of control.
“Listen, Luise, you are a married woman,” he said to her over and over again. “You have a duty to your husband. If you behave like this, he will take you away to the country and we shall never see each other again.”
He thought as he spoke that it would be the best thing that could happen, but his words brought a flood of tears and protestations.
On one occasion Luise even knelt at his feet, pleading with him, begging him with the tears falling down her cheeks not to leave her.
In his dealings with women the Count had always been very much the dominant figure.
In fact his name was apt in that he was indeed the victor, the conqueror, and the women he made love to invariably surrendered themselves completely to everything he demanded of them.
At the same time the majority were sensible and sophisticated enough to safeguard their reputations.
The Count often thought cynically that it was the women who listened, even when they were at their most abandoned, for a footstep on the stairs, a creak of the door or the faintest sound that might mean discovery.
He had made a mistake, he realised, in choosing someone as young as Luise, apart from the fact that her whole temperament was obviously unsuited to intrigue of any sort.
He might have been excused for not realising how she would behave in as much as she had been married for four years, given her husband the heir he craved and could therefore no longer be thought of as being a young and innocent bride.
What he had forgotten was that Luise had never, until she met him, been in love.
She was swept off her feet and like many women before her thought the world well lost as she was awakened for the first time to the ecstasy of passion.
The Count was a very experienced lover and he was also when he made love considerate and tender as he never was at any other time.
Men thought him ruthless and it was only in moments of intimacy that a woman could see the softer side of his nature which at other times he was rather ashamed of.
Never before in all his years of enjoying the favours of the fair sex whenever they were offered to him had he known anyone so wildly, almost insanely, in love as Luise.
Aloud now, without turning round, he asked,
“What, ma’am, does Willem intend to do about it?”
“I have already spoken to him,” the Queen Dowager said. “He is, as might be expected, extremely bitter and would wish, if it was possible, to kill you!”
“I think that would be unlikely,” the Count remarked involuntarily.
“That is not the point,” the Queen Dowager retorted sharply. “You know as well as I do, Viktor, if one word is known about this, it will cause a huge scandal that will reverberate throughout Europe and harm the Queen. That is something I cannot allow.”
“No, of course not.”
“I decided when I became the Regent,” the Queen Dowager then went on, “that, because Wilhelmina was so young, the Court must set an example of purity and propriety.”
The Count wanted to say, ‘very commendable’, but he thought it might sound sarcastic.
The Dutch Court had, he thought, never been anything but an example of dull uninspired Monarchy, which most other Courts had no wish to emulate.
But he knew by the serious manner in which the Queen Dowager was speaking that she felt very strongly about the direction where her duty lay.
“It is,” she was saying, “as you can easily imagine, impossible for you and Willem to meet. That is why I have decided on a solution that I think will solve, for the moment at any rate, his problem and yours.”
The Count turned from the window.
“What are you asking me to do?” he enquired.
“I am telling you,” the Queen Dowager replied, “that you must leave here immediately and take a ship that I have already learnt is sailing from Zetland tonight for the East Indies.”
“The East Indies?”
The Count was so surprised that his voice as he said the words was unexpectedly loud.
“I shall inform the Privy Council that I have received news from the Island of Bali,” the Queen went on, “and have sent you as my Personal Advisor to report what is happening in that part of the world.”
“Bali!” the Count repeated as if he had never heard of the Island.
“Provided you leave today,” the Queen Dowager continued. “Willem will not announce the death of his wife until tomorrow, when you will have left the country.”
“How can it be possible for him to postpone the announcement?” the Count enquired automatically.
“Fortunately the doctor who attended Luise is one of my private physicians,” the Queen Dowager replied, “and he, Willem, you and I are at the moment the only persons who know that Luise is dead apart, of course, from her lady’s maid, who had been with her since she was a child and can be trusted.”
The Count said nothing and after a moment the Queen Dowager went on,
“You should be very grateful to Willem that, when he found that Luise was dead, he came at once to ask me what he should do. As an old servant of the Crown he was aware that knowledge of his wife’s action would be detrimental to the Monarchy.”
“You wish me to leave today?”
“If you are to catch the ship that I intend you to travel in,” the Queen Dowager said, “you will have only a few hours to pack your things.”
She paused as if she expected the Count to speak. When he did not do so, she continued,
“Before you leave you will receive your credentials and all the secret papers that you will carry on my behalf. And, of course, the names of those Officials whom you will interview on arrival in Bali.”
The
