Christmas Nights (12 page)

‘Dead. An accident.’

The curt voice in which the information was delivered warned Ionanthe not to pursue the subject—and yet she wanted to. Because she wanted to know all there was to know about him.

And so what if she did? Wasn’t there an old adage about knowing one’s enemy?

Enemies? Was
that
what they must be?

Whilst they had been talking the road had started to climb steeply. Small patches of snow lying in the hollows gradually became more widespread, until up ahead of them the whole landscape was white—apart
from where the trunks of the trees were etched dark and the sheer face of the rocks showed grey with age.

A flight of geese cut their perfect V formation across the sky—heading, Ionanthe guessed, for the large natural lake that lay just below the snow line.

‘Some of the older estate workers swear that there were once bears in the mountains,’ she told Max with a small smile. ‘But my father always used to say it was simply a story to scare us children.’

It had started to snow. Thick fat flakes drifting down from a grey sky. How she had once loved the first snows of winter, hoping they would fall thick and deep enough to keep her parents in the castle with them. She hadn’t recognised then how hard the harsh weather made the lives of those who worked on the land—tenant farmers, in the main, with flocks of goats and sheep. If there was mineral wealth beneath these sometimes cruel mountains then surely it belonged to those farmers?

Christmas. He hadn’t realised how close it was, Max admitted. The foundation had a special fund that provided money for various charities to help those in need at this special time of year.

Max remembered the year his parents had given him the best present he had ever received. He had been sixteen, and he could still remember the thrill of pride he had felt when they had told him that they were giving him his own small area of responsibility within the foundation. He had been given a fund-raising target to meet. He had delivered newspapers, cleaned cars and run errands in order to earn the money to make that target, and no target he had met since had been as sweet.
Because his parents had been killed shortly after his eighteenth birthday, and from then on there had been no one to praise him for his endeavours.

The four-wheel drive was equipped with snow tyres, and they were needed now that they were above the snow line.

They were nearly there. Once they had gone round the corner they would be able to see the castle. Ionanthe folded her hands in her lap. It was foolish to feel so excited. She wasn’t a child any more, after all. Even so she caught and held her breath as they rounded the next bend, expelling it on a long sigh at the sight high above them, on its small plateau on the mountainside, of the castle, its topmost turrets disappearing into the heavy snow clouds.

It was truly a fairytale castle—all turrets and crenulated battlements, its exterior faced with a white limestone that made it look more as though it was made from icing sugar than the granite the facing concealed.

The small ornamental lake in the grounds where she had learned to skate would be frozen. Her parents had held skating parties there with coloured lanterns suspended from the branches of the trees that overhung the lake to illuminate the darkness. Ionanthe remembered lying in bed with her window wide open, despite the cold, so that she could listen to the adult laughter.

They had reached the long drive to the castle now, and the trees that bordered it were so heavy with snow that their branches swept right down to the ground.

The light had started to fade, and one by one the lights were coming on in the castle, to cast a warming welcoming
glow from the windows. In the courtyard people were waiting for them, eager hands opening the car doors, familiar voices exclaiming proudly, ‘Your Highness.’

Retainers she remembered as formidable adults not afraid to chide an over-active child were now bowing and curtsying low to her.

Impulsively Ionanthe reached out to take hold of the arms of the cook, remonstrating with her. ‘No, Ariadne, please. There is no need.’

‘Hah, I see you still hold the same republican views as your mother,’ the elderly woman snapped sharply. ‘Well, there are those of us who still respect our Sovereign, and if we want to show that respect then we shall.’

Max was hard put to it not to laugh. The small red-cheeked woman reminded him very much of a Greek cook his parents had once employed. She had run the whole household, and Max suspected that this woman did the same.

‘So you’re a republican at heart, are you?’ He couldn’t resist teasing Ionanthe as they were ushered inside.

‘Ariadne likes to think so,’ was all Ionanthe would allow herself to say.

The great hall was ablaze with lights, a fire roaring in the large fireplace, although Max suspected that it was the radiators that in reality kept the double-height room so warm.

The room’s heat made Ionanthe frown and say accusingly to Ariadne, ‘You’ve got the heating on.’

‘Of course. You don’t think we’d allow our Prince to freeze to death, do you?’

Ionanthe’s lips compressed. She knew how much
wood it took to warm the great hall, and what backbreaking labour it was to provide that wood.

‘I don’t want you using a whole winter’s supply of logs to keep the castle warm just because we’re here,’ she told Ariadne.

When they got back to the royal palace she must make arrangements, somehow, for extra supplies of wood to be delivered to the castle, to replace that which would be burned keeping the place warm for them, she decided.

‘You needn’t worry about that,’ Ariadne assured her. ‘Pieter has turned off all the radiators except those down here and in the drawing room—and in the state bedroom, of course. Made up the bed with that special linen your mother liked so much, Magda has.’

As the full meaning of Ariadne’s words sank into Ionanthe’s head, a trill of horror shot through her. ‘You’ve put us both in the state bedroom?’ she demanded.

‘Well, of course I have. Where else would you sleep?’ Ariadne demanded. ‘Decorated especially for His Highness’s great-grandfather, that room was.’

Ionanthe didn’t dare look at Max.

‘I suppose you’ll be wanting Pieter and the men to go out and bring you a Christmas tree in? Wouldn’t be a proper Christmas without one, after all. It’s time we had you here for Christmas. A place isn’t a proper home without family in it.’

Ionanthe listened to the older woman with growing dismay as she realised that Ariadne thought they were here for Christmas. Ariadne was attempting to sound disapproving, but Ionanthe could see how pleased she
was. She hated having to disappoint her, but she would have to put her right and correct her misapprehension.

‘Ariadne, this is only a brief visit—’ she began. But to her astonishment Max put his hand on her arm and shook his head.

‘What the Princess means, Ariadne, is that we are unable to stay as long as we’d like.’

‘Well, as to that, it’s the mountains that says how long a person stays.
You
should know that,’ she reminded Ionanthe. ‘You’ve been snowed in here often enough, after all. I remember the year that sister of yours kicked up such a fuss because she couldn’t go to some party or other. Chasing after some boy, I expect, and in no mind to be stopped. Always spoiled, she was. The old Baron could never see her for what she really was. Always did favour shine over substance, he did. More fool him.’

Ionanthe shot a quick look at Max, wondering how he was reacting to Ariadne’s criticism of Eloise, but it was impossible to guess his thoughts from his expression.

Ariadne hadn’t finished. ‘You’ll find this one a different kettle of fish from the other,’ she informed Max bluntly. ‘You’ve got the better bargain with her.’

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Max agreed, keeping his face straight.

‘I am right. Watched them both growing up, I did. That Eloise always did think too well of herself and not well enough of others. Of course this one’s just the opposite—always putting others first. What you want, my girl, is a nursery full of little ones to keep you busy.’

Ariadne might be speaking to her, but she was looking
at Max, Ionanthe recognised, with a roguish glint in her small currant-dark eyes. She’d even put her head on one side, as though inviting Max to agree with her.

‘B
EFORE
you complain, let me remind you that none of this is my fault. I didn’t ask you to come here with me,’ Ionanthe told Max sharply.

They were in the state bedroom, and the flush on Ionanthe’s cheeks was caused more by her emotions than by the heat or the fire—even if she
was
desperately trying not to look as though she cared about the fact that the room possessed only one double bed, and not a particularly wide double bed at that.

‘What exactly is it that you expect me to complain about?’ Max asked quizzically.

Ionanthe gave him a suspicious look. ‘You know perfectly well what I mean. We’re going to have to share this… this room, or risk Ariadne making a dreadful fuss.’

Max grinned at her. ‘Well, we certainly don’t want that, do we? She might send us to bed supperless.’

To her own disbelief Ionanthe discovered that she desperately wanted to giggle.

‘She can’t help it,’ she defended the elderly woman. ‘She’s always been the same. Grandfather used to get
infuriated with her and threaten to sack her, but she’d just ignore him.’

‘Sensible woman.’ Max flicked back the heavy silk linen window hanging and informed her, ‘It’s still snowing.’

‘Then you’d better work some royal magic to make it stop,’ Ionanthe told him shortly, adding, ‘I don’t know why Ariadne assumed we’d be here for Christmas. I certainly never said that. When I telephoned I simply said that I’d be staying for a couple of nights.’

‘It won’t be the end of the world if we do have to stay, will it? Or do you have some special reason for wanting to leave?’

Ionanthe frowned. ‘No, of course not. I was thinking of you. It will be expected that you spend Christmas at the palace.’

Max crooked one eyebrow and asked wryly, ‘Why?’

For a reason Ionanthe didn’t want to dwell on, something about the way Max was looking at her made her feel stupidly flustered—hot and flustered, she acknowledged. Treacherously, the image of a fig, luscious and ripe and dusted in sugar, slipped tauntingly into view inside her head. Now she didn’t only feel flustered, she felt flushed as well—hot and flustered and—She licked uncomfortably dry lips. Surely this wasn’t what was going to happen to her every time she was alone in a bedroom with Max?

Ionanthe struggled to replace the teasing image inside her head with a blank screen, knowing that she still hadn’t answered Max’s question and that he was quite obviously expecting her to do so.

‘I wouldn’t have thought that state business comes to a halt just because it’s Christmas,’ she eventually replied, in a stuffy, righteous voice she hardly recognised as her own.

Max looked less than impressed by her argument, one dark eyebrow inclining even more steeply. ‘I can conduct what state business I have to attend to just as easily here as there. One of the benefits of modern technology,’ he informed her dryly, indicating the Blackberry he had just removed from his jacket pocket.

Ionanthe took a deep breath in an attempt to steady herself, and was then forced to exhale it faster than she’d wanted when she saw that Max had turned away from her to remove the jacket of his business suit. The fabric of his shirt stretched across the breadth of his shoulders as he did so. Beneath that shirt lay flesh so smooth and honed that just looking at it was an intensely sensual experience, never mind what happened when she actually touched it—and him.

What was the matter with her? Hadn’t she sat through innumerable business meetings during which men had removed their suit jackets without reacting like this?

But they hadn’t been Max.

Like the muffled sound of a warning bell rung so hard and deep that its echo shook the depths, Ionanthe felt a tremor of warning deep within her body.

No!
It was inconceivable that this man should be the one to affect her like this. The adage that it was too late to lock the stable door after the horse had bolted had surely never been more appropriate.

Ionanthe knew that if Max were to turn to her now and take her in his arms she would not be able to resist
him—or herself. But when he did turn back to her he merely said casually, ‘Didn’t Ariadne say something about having made you some of your favourite soup?’

‘You’re hungry?’ Ionanthe guessed.

She couldn’t look at him. She was too afraid that he might see her disappointment and guess its cause. It was so unfair that, having taken flight here to protect herself from him, all she had done was leave herself more vulnerable. They would be thrown far more into one another’s company here than they would ever have been at court.

Max studied Ionanthe’s downbent head. The fall of her hair revealed a glimpse of the elegant length of her neck, her skin as luminous as a pearl. Desire flamed through him, hot and urgent. He wanted to go to her and draw her back against him, tasting the soft warmth of her skin as he did so, waiting for her to turn in his arms and press herself into him, silently saying that she shared his need, offering him her lips, herself, her love…

Her
love
? Was that really what the hunger gnawing at him was? A need not just for the sexual pleasure he had already shared with her, but for something richer and deeper, something stronger, more primitive and eternal?

Was he hungry? Ionanthe had asked, and the true answer was
yes
, he was. Hungry for Ionanthe. Hungry for exactly what he had told himself he must not want because of the danger attached to it.

How had it happened? Max had no idea.

‘Yes, I’m hungry,’ he agreed.

His voice was flat and hard, and for some reason it left Ionanthe with an ache in her throat and smarting eyes.

The large, comfortable kitchen was busy. A young woman whom Ionanthe vaguely recognised was whisking about, whilst two young children were seated at the table crayoning.

‘You’ll remember Marta, Gorge’s youngest,’ Ariadne informed Ionanthe, and the pretty young woman gave Ionanthe a shy smile. ‘Married to our Tomas, she is now, with two young ones of her own.’

Ionanthe returned the young woman’s smile.

‘I’m teaching my two their letters, Highness, just like you taught me mine. Ever so grateful to you and your mother we were, for telling our parents that we should have our schooling. I’ve told my Tomas that our girls are going to get their schooling no matter what.’

Ariadne, who was stirring a large pot on the stove, gave a derisory snort. ‘Soft as butter, Tomas is—not like fathers were in my day. Them parents of yours have a lot to answer for, filling folks’ heads with ideas above their station with all that talk of schooling and the like.’

‘Take no notice of Mam,’ Marta told Ionanthe cheerfully. ‘Proud as punch of our two girls, she is, and always telling them that they’ve got to pay attention to their lessons. Teachers is what I’d like them to be. But they’d have to go to the mainland for that, and that costs money.’

Watching Marta’s bright smile give way to uncertainty and anxiety, Ionanthe reached out towards her, telling her without thinking, ‘Don’t worry, Marta. The money will be there for them. I’m planning to set up a fund in my parents’ name, out of the money my grandfather
left. It will provide scholarships for children like yours to get all the education they need.’

It was Ariadne who spoke first in the silence that followed Ionanthe’s impulsive declaration, saying triumphantly to her daughter-in-law, in whose eyes emotional tears were beginning to glisten, ‘There—you see. I told you our Princess would see to it that something was done. Not that you’ll have an easy time persuading
some
folk to send their children to school,’ Ariadne added darkly.

‘All the children of Fortenegro should have the right to a good education. It is my duty as Fortenegro’s ruler to ensure that they do.’

Max’s voice was firm and uncompromising, causing them all to look at him.

‘My wife is to be applauded for what she plans to do, but there must come a day when the children on this island receive their education as a right, not as a gift.’

Ionanthe couldn’t take her gaze from Max’s face. They might almost have been alone as her expression showed him how much his declaration meant to her.

‘Do you really mean that?’

‘Yes,’ he confirmed.