Barbara Cartland: Imperial Splendour

It reached to her ankles and there was a tight bodice, low-cut to display a long swan-like neck and her bare arms.

The Duke mused impatiently that the new ballet that he had seen performed the previous evening in Catherine the Great’s theatre in The Winter Palace had rather bored him.

Then he realised that it was not the music of that ballet and he had not heard it before, also the movements of the dancer on stage were exceptionally graceful.

Despite his irritation he found himself watching the way she moved.

He had a feeling that the dance was not traditional or, if it was, he had never seen it before.

He knew too that the music, while strange, was particularly tuneful and had a melodious beauty about it that intrigued him.

The Duke, like the Prince Regent, was very fond of music. As in everything else that he was really interested in, he was a connoisseur and a very discriminating one.

Now he knew that he was listening to an exceptionally fine work that did not sound to him in the least Russian.

Then, as he watched the girl moving around the stage, dancing with a spontaneity and a kind of joy that he had never seen expressed before, he was sure, although he had no reason for it, that she too was unusual.

He could not explain why she seemed different, except that, as far as he was concerned, she was original both in her movements, in her grace and in her dance.

‘Russia is full of surprises,’ he told himself and found that the music of the dance evoked some response in him that he had not felt for a very long time.

Earlier, when he was young, he had been deeply moved not only by music but also by poetry until, like everything else in his life, it had grown far too familiar. He had found that, while he appreciated the subtleties of such things, they no longer aroused him as they had in his youth.

Now oddly and almost inexplicably he felt his mind, or was it something deeper, flying as if it had wings on the music as his eyes watched the grace and joy expressed by the dancer.

It seemed to him as if she moved amongst trees covered with blossom and the whole world was awakening with spring.

There was something young and creative about her and the Duke thought that he saw butterflies hovering around her and birds in the sky above.

It was almost with a sense of loss when he realised that the dance was over as the dancer swept to the ground in the traditional curtsey and the music came to an end.

Two red velvet curtains fell and then rose as the two girls came forward hand in hand to take a final bow.

There was only the Princess to clap her hands, but she did so with enthusiasm.

“Excellent,” she called out. “Both of you were very good. Go and change and come to the White Salon.”

The two girls then slipped away through the curtains and for the first time the Princess became aware that the Duke was standing behind her in the box.

She gave a little cry of delight and, rising, held out both her hands.

“Blake!” she cried. “You have come and I am so very pleased to see you.”

“As I to see you, Sonya,” the Duke answered. “Who were those entrancing creatures? They held me spellbound.”

“The first was Tania, my little Tania, whom I so much want you to meet,” the Princess replied. “You will see her in a few moments and I know that you will believe everything I have told you about her and so much more.”

The Princess linked her arm through the Duke’s as she spoke and led him through the door at the back of the box.

As they started to climb the malachite staircase, the Duke asked,

“And the other dancer?”

There was a quite perceptible pause before the Princess replied,

“Oh, that was Zoia!”

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