Curse Not the King by Evelyn Anthony Read Free Book Online

own skin, in case your son succeeds you while he is still alive. If I remember, Nikita’s safety was always his first consideration.”
    Despite herself Catherine laughed.
    â€œYou mean the morning of the Revolution when he hid in his bed with the covers over his head, pretending to hear nothing till one side or the other had won the people over? Ah, yes. Then he brought Paul to the Church of Our Lady of Kazan to swear allegiance to me.…”
    â€œI’ll vow that Paul remembers it as well as we,” Naryshkin remarked drily. “Therefore Nikita seeks to bury the memory and the Czarevitch in the Schüsselburg.… Don’t listen to him yet, Madame. Be patient with the boy. He’s young and he may turn towards you.”
    Impulsively Catherine held out her hand to him, and Leo lifted it to his lips and kissed it. There was no shadow of formality between them.
    â€œHe’d never believe that you pleaded for him. He hates you, too, my dear friend; he told a lackey once chat he was sure you’d been my lover, and that when he came to the throne he’d punish anyone who shared my bed. If I die and he succeeds me, what will befall you, then? What will he do to all those that I love who are left to his mercy?”
    Naryshkin held her beautiful fingers in his, watching the jewels in her rings flashing in the candlelight.
    â€œIf what he thinks had ever been true, I would consider any punishment worth the payment. But it won’t occur, Catherine. You’ll live for many years to torment my heart. And you’ll be ruling Russia long after I’m in my grave.”
    When he left her, Catherine sat alone at the card table, turning up the squares of pasteboard at random, thinking of his words and her own.
    If Paul succeeded her, the lives of everyone she cared about would be in jeopardy. Leo, despite his extra years, the Orlovs, even poor stupid Vassiltchikov, whose dismissal was about to take place; he, too, would suffer for the two years he had been her lover. Scores of helpless men and women would become the objects of Paul’s vengeance, and Catherine never underestimated the strength of his memory or the extent of his vindictiveness.
    He was loyal, she knew that too, and ambitious, as she was herself. Many of her traits were in him, but until his marriage, his nervous disability had hampered their development. She had tried to make peace by giving him a wife, and the union was rapidly changing him into a dangerous rival.
    She remembered that Panin thought him conspiring with Pugachev, and that the pamphleteers and street-corner voices who cried out, “Long live the Czarevitch, down with the Empress Catherine,” did so with his consent. How true that was she did not know, but if anyone could discover it and trap him it would be Panin. And if it were proved, she could take action.
    They would all be safe then, all those she loved and who depended on her, and if Paul were declared a traitor it would not plague her conscience; it would never haunt her like the death of Peter and of Ivan.
    â€œAh,” said the Empress under her breath. “Let him make one false move, and I swear by God that Panin shall have his way.”
    Before autumn the Court was preparing to leave Tsarskoë Selo and return to Petersburg. Already an army of servants and lesser courtiers had departed to put all in order for the Empress’s arrival.
    The end of that long summer idyll was a source of dread to Natalie Alexeievna. Here, where etiquette was lax, her meetings with her lover had been easily arranged, the disappointed, trusting Czarevitch fobbed off with pleas of headaches and fatigue, and her ladies anxious to pursue their own paths and leave the Grand Duchess to herself.
    From the moment of her surrender to André, Paul’s wife dispensed with modesty or guilt. She loved the handsome equerry beyond all caution, and as her passion for the one increased, so her dislike of