Rebel Princess by Evelyn Anthony Read Free Book Online Page A

of her vivacious beauty and eager charm had filled Peter’s heart with inexplicable dread. In the darkness of many a sleepless night, he had acknowledged with bewildered anger that Augusta frightened him.
    He had insulted her, snubbed her mother, avoided her whenever possible, but however he might try to wound and break her spirit, as his had been broken by Elizabeth, he could not feel at ease. Somehow her personality always emerged the stronger … that was it, he thought, and in spite of the stuffy atmosphere of that overcrowded room, he hunched his shoulders up and shivered.
    There was strength in her ready smile, her eagerness to please; unlike him, everything she did drew admiration, even his aunt’s savage despotism had succumbed to her charm.
    In the midst of these reflections his eye met Augusta’s, and she summoned a dutiful smile; as always her amiability made his flesh creep, and he looked down, scowling.
    â€œGod damn her,” he muttered savagely under his breath. “How I hate that bright, terrible look of hers! How am I to lie in her bed, as everyone expects me, when I cannot bear to touch her? Why didn’t she die? If only she had died I need not marry till I wished, and then to a wife of my own choosing.…”
    For the only time in their lives the Grand Duke and Bestujev were in complete agreement.
    Within the month she made a short appearance at a court ball given in her honor, and all over Russia the church bells pealed in thanksgiving. A magnificent necklace of brilliants was added to her jewel casket by Elizabeth, and a ruby watch was Peter’s unwilling gift.
    It was a brilliant season, and the future Grand Duchess recovered rapidly. She was taller now, and quickly maturing into a lovely girl whose witty company was increasingly sought by the young and gay at court, particularly Leo Narychkin, whose harmless devotion to her was a general joke.
    Through narrow eyes the Chancellor watched Augusta, noticing that her shyness had given place to a poise and practised charm capable of winning many hearts. But there was something a little too boisterous for a girl, despite her outward meekness. Bestujev felt that he was in reality watching a young lioness who had escaped her cage and was too busy roistering in her new-found freedom to try her claws.
    And she had claws. The Chancellor, like Peter, saw her more clearly through the eyes of hate, and he promised solemnly that she would never use them in Prussia’s interest.
    From April until the end of May the court exhausted itself with gaiety, and Augusta entered wholeheartedly into a breathless whirl of pleasure. Watching her, the Empress approved her choice anew. If Peter could resist the lure of such a creature, then Elizabeth’s long succession of lovers had taught her nothing about the weaknesses of men.…
    With an easy mind the Empress abandoned her pleasures and, dressed in sober garb, set out for her annual retreat to the Troitsky Convent, there to fast and purge her soul in peace of its ancient cloisters, while the court amused itself at Moscow in her absence.
    Two days after her departure on the 1st of June, a furious summons arrived at the palace, and an extremely agitated Johanna was bundled into a coach, together with her daughter and the Grand Duke, and the party was driven off at speed to the Troitsky Convent.
    Bestujev had gained his audience at last.
    The next hours were a nightmare of anxiety for Augusta, played out in the long cold room of the convent where she and Peter sat waiting, listening to the sound of Elizabeth’s voice raised shrill with anger, and the muffled pleadings of Johanna behind the door of an adjacent room.
    There was the short glimpse of Bestujev’s figure outlined in a window as their carriage stopped; then the ordeal of Peter’s stupid, curious conversation, maliciously light-hearted in the conviction that no danger threatened him, and still the terrible waiting,