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Abel wasthe trip to Europe for three reasons : first to confir contracts for new Baron hotels in London, Paris and possibly Roive Florentyna her first view of Europe before she went to Radcliffe to study es; and third, and most important to him, to revisit his castle in Poland to see if there was even an outside chance of proving his ownership
London turned out to be a success for both of them
Abel’s advisors had found a site on Hyde Park comer, and he instructed solicitors to proceed iotiations for the land and the perland’s capital could boast a Baron Florentyna found the austerity of post - war London forbidding after the excess of her own home, but the Londoners seeed city, still believing themselves to be a world power She was invited to lunches, dinners and balls, and her father was proved right about her taste in clothes and the reaction of young Europeaneyes and stories of new conquestsShe couldn’t make up her mind whether she wanted to marry an Etonian from the Grenadier Guards who saluted her all the ti to the King She wasn’t quite sure what ’in waiting’ meant, but he certainly knew exactly how to treat a lady
In Paris, the pace never slackened and because they both spoke good French, they both lish Abel was non - nally bored by the end of the second week of any holiday, and would start counting the days until he could return home to work But not while he had Florentyna as his companion She had, since his separation from Zaphia, become the centre of his life and the sole heir to his fortune
When the tio, so they stayed on a few otiating to buy a famous but now run - down hotel on the Boulevard Raspail He did not inform the owner, a Monsieur Neuffe, who looked, if it were possible, even more run - down than the hotel, that he planned to deain froned the papers a few days later, Abel ordered the building razed to the ground while he and Florentyna, with noin Paris, departed reluctantly for Roaiety of the French capital, the sullen and dilapidated Eternal City immediately da behind thenificent Royal parks together, ads, and Florentyna had danced until the small hours In Paris, they had been to the Oper - A, lunched on the banks of the Seine, and taken a boat down the river past Notre Dame and on to supper in the Latin Quarter In Ro sense of financial instability and decided that he would have to shelve his plans to build a Baron in the Italian capital Florentyna sensed her father’s anxiety to once again see his castle in Poland, so she suggested they leave Italy a day early
Abel had found bureaucracy rant a visa for Florentyna and himself to enter an Iron Curtain country than it had been to issue a permit to build a new five - hundred - room hotel in London A less persistent visitor would probably have given up, but with the appropriate visas firmly stamped in their passports, Abel and Florentyna set off in a hired car for Sloni for hours at the Polish border, helped along only by the fact that Abel was fluent in the language Had the border guards knohy his Polish was so good, they would doubtless have taken an entirely different attitude to allowing hied five hundred dollars into zlotys - that at least seemed to please the Poles - and motored on The nearer they came to Slonim, the more Florentyna are of how much the journey meant to her father
’Daddy, I can never re!
’This is where I was born,’ Abel explained ’After such a long tie every day, ies aled since I left’
They drove on towards Slonihtened in anticipation, while horrified and angry at the devastadon of the once tries
Across a time span of nearly forty years he heard his childish voice ask the Baron whether the hour of the subed peoples of Europe had arrived and would he be able to play his part, and tears came to his eyes to think how short that hour had been, and what a little part he had played