69 Love Leaves at Midnight by Barbara Cartland

Author:Barbara Cartland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: M-Y Books
Published: 2013-07-21T16:00:00+00:00

The women looked poor, their clothes were shabby, the children with them were barefoot and one, Xenia noticed, was on crutches.

Without saying anything to the King, she suddenly turned and walked across the grass towards the women with the banner.

It only took her a few seconds to reach them and the crowd around was silent in sheer astonishment as she stopped and asked,

“Tell me what your banner means? Why does nobody care about you?”

As she spoke, she realised that the Count had joined her.

“Your Royal Highness – ” he began, but she held up her hand and he was silent.

“It’s the children, Princess, we’re worried about,” a woman answered hesitatingly.

“Why?” Xenia enquired.

The two women holding the banner had at first looked frightened because she had stopped to speak to them. Now another woman, older and obviously not so shy, interposed,

“What they’re saying, Your Royal Highness, is that there’s no proper hospital. There’s a small place outside the town, but we’ve been told there’s no money to keep it going and only a few children get there. When they do the treatment’s inadequate.”

Xenia looked from the woman who had spoken to the women carrying the banner.

“Is this true?” she asked.

A dozen voices from the crowd, which had now clustered around her answered,

“My little boy’s waited for two years for glasses,” one said, “and now he can see nothing!”

Xenia gathered that another child needed her tonsils removing, but there was no place where the operation could be performed. One woman had lost two children, another three.

Now that they realised she was listening to them, more and more women came up to call out their complaints.

“Your Royal Highness, the Prime Minister will be waiting,” the Count said urgently.

“I am glad you have told me this,” Xenia told the waiting women. “I promise you that both the King and I will try to help you.”

She could see the women looked incredulous, as if they thought it was very unlikely that she would be able to do anything for them. At the same time they cheered.

Then, with the Count beside her, she walked back to the King who was waiting at the foot of the steps.

Xenia looked at him apprehensively in case he was angry, but instead she thought that his eyes were twinkling.

“I am sorry if what I did was wrong,” she murmured as she reached his side.

“Not wrong, but certainly unprecedented,” he said. “I am just waiting to hear what Kalolyi has to say about it.”

There was no time to say more as they ascended the steps to where waiting for them in the doorway stood the Prime Minister.

Xenia was quite certain that he had seen what had happened and she thought that he looked at her in a hostile fashion.

There was nothing, however, that he could do at the moment because there were innumerable presentations to be made.

Then she and the King were led into a huge hall, which the Count had told her during the dinner was all that was left of the old Parliament that had been built in the sixteenth century.

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