Christmas Nights

CHAPTER TWO

THE sun was sinking swiftly into the Aegean sea whilst the man who had been her sister’s husband—who now wanted her to take Eloise’s place—stood in silence by the window. The evening breeze ruffled the thick darkness of his hair. With that carved, hawkish over-proud profile he could easily have belonged to another age. He did belong to another age—one that should no longer be allowed to exist. An age in which some men were born to grind others beneath their heels and impose their will on them without mercy or restraint.

Well, she wasn’t going to give in—no matter how much he threatened her. She had been a fool to let herself be tricked into coming here, especially when she knew what the old guard of the island were like. That was why she had left in the first place. Was it really only a handful of hours ago that she had been promising herself that finally, with her grandfather’s death and the money she would inherit, she would be free to do what she had wanted to do for so long. Offer her services as an economist to what she considered to be the most forward-thinking and socially responsible charitable organisation in the world—The Veritas Foundation.

Ionanthe had first heard about Veritas when she had been working in Brussels. A male colleague to whom she had taken a dislike had complained about the charity, saying that its aims of alleviating poverty and oppression by offering education and the hope of democracy to the oppressed was just a crazy idealist fantasy. Ionanthe had been curious enough about the organisation to want to find out more, and what she had learned had filled her with an ambition to one day be part of the dedicated team of professionals who worked for the charity. The Foundation was about doing things for others, not self-aggrandisement, and she approved of that as much as she did not approve of her homeland’s new ruler.

As far as she was concerned, the island’s new Prince was every bit as bad as those who had gone before him. He expected her to take Eloise’s place and wipe out the shame staining both his reputation and that of her family—to give him the son Eloise had not. A son who would one day rule in his place.

A son, an heir. A future ruler.

All of a sudden a sense of prescient awareness so powerful that it reached deep down into the most secret places of her heart shuddered through her, warning her that she stood at a crossroads that would affect not just her own life but more importantly the lives of others—not for one generation, but for the whole future of her people.

She might originally have studied law and gone to Brussels hoping to make changes that would benefit the lives of others, but she had gradually become disillusioned and the bright hopes of her dreams had become tarnished. Now she could do something for others—something just as important in its way as the work she might have been able to do via the Veritas Foundation.

The man confronting her needed an heir. A son. Her son. A son born of her who, with her love and guidance, would surely become a ruler who would be everything a good ruler should be—a ruler who would honour and love his people, who would guide them to a better future, who would understand the importance of providing them with proper education. A ruler who would build hospitals and schools, who would give his people pride in themselves and their future instead of tethering them to the past.

Hope and determination gathered force inside her like a tidal wave, surging up from the depths of her being, refusing to allow anything to stand in its way. Her breath caught in her throat, lifting her breasts. The movement caught Max’s attention. His late wife had considered herself to be a beauty, a femme fatale whom no man could resist, but her sister had a darker, deeper female magic that owed nothing to the expensive beauty treatments and designer clothes Eloise had loved. The promise of true sensuality surrounded her like an invisible aura. Max frowned. The last thing he wanted was another wife whose sex drive might take her into the arms and the beds of other men. But against his will, against logic and wisdom, he could feel the magnetic pull of her sensuality on his own senses.

He dismissed the warning note being struck within him—he had been too long without a woman. But, since he was thirty-four years old, and not twenty-four, he was perfectly capable of subsuming his sexual desire and channelling his energies into other less dangerous responses.

Unexpectedly, irrationally and surely foolishly a small thrill of excitement surged through Ionanthe. She had the power to give Fortenegro a prince—a leader who would truly lead its people to freedom.

She looked at Max. He exuded power and confidence. His features were strongly drawn into lines of raw masculinity, his cheekbones and jaw carved and sculpted and then clothed in flesh in a way that drew the female eye. Yes, he was very good-looking—if one liked that particular brand of hard-edged arrogant male sexuality and darkly brooding looks. He carried within his genes the history of all those who had ruled Fortenegro: Moorish warriors, Crusaders, Norman knights, and long before them Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans. He wore his pride like an invisible cloak that swung from his shoulders as surely as a real one had swung from the shoulders of those who had come here and stamped their will on the island—just as he was now trying to stamp his will on her.

But she had her own power—the power of giving the island a ruler who would truly be an honourable man and a wise and just prince—her son by this man who had brought her here to be a flesh-and-blood sacrifice—a destiny that belonged in reality to another age. But she was a woman of this modern age, a twenty-first-century woman with strong beliefs and values. She was no helpless victim but a woman with the strength of mind and of purpose to shape events to match her own goals.

She was no young, foolish girl with a head and a heart filled with silly dreams. Yes, once she had yearned to find love, a man who would share her crusading need to right the wrongs of the past and to work for the good of her people. She had known that she would never find him on the island, governed by men like her grandfather, who adhered to the old ways, but she had not found him in Brussels either, where she had quickly learned that a sincere smile could easily mask a liar and a cheat. Powerful men had desired her—powerful married men. She had refused them, whilst the men she had accepted had ultimately turned out to be weak and incapable of matching her hunger for equality and justice for those denied those things. She was twenty-seven now, and she couldn’t remember whether it was five or six years since she had last slept with a man—either way, it didn’t matter. She was not her sister, greedy and amoral, craving the shallow satisfaction of the excitement of sex with strangers.

Her sister—to whom the man now waiting for her response had been married. She was surprised that Eloise had cheated on him. She would have thought that he was just Eloise’s type: good-looking, sexy, rich, and in a position to give her the status she and their grandfather had always craved.

Ionanthe might have acknowledged that she would never fulfil her dream of meeting a man who could be her true partner in life and in love, but she still had that same teenage longing to change the world—and for the better. That goal could now be within her reach. Through her son—the son this man would demand from her in payment of her family’s debt to him—she could change the lives of her people for the better. Was that perhaps not just her fate but more importantly her destiny? That she should provide the people with a ruler who would be worthy of them?

The sun was dying into the sea, burnishing it dark gold. Ionanthe shook back her hair, the action tightening her throat, the last of the light carving her profile into a perfect cameo.

There was a pride about her, a wildness, an energy, a challenge about her, that unleashed within him an unfamiliar need to respond. Max frowned, not liking his own reaction and not really understanding it. Eloise had been sexually provocative and had left him cold. But Ionanthe challenged him with her pride, not her body or her sexuality, and for some reason his body had reacted to that. He shrugged, mentally dismissing what he did not want to dwell on. Ionanthe was a beautiful woman, and he was a man who had been without sex for almost a year.

Ionanthe turned away from the window and looked at Max.

‘And if I refuse?’ she demanded, her head held high, pride in every line of her body.

‘You already know the answer to that. I cannot force you to marry me, but, according to my ministers and courtiers, if I do not show myself to the people as a worthy ruler by taking you, and if you do not submit to me in blood payment for the dishonour and shame your sister has brought on both our houses, then the people may very well take it upon themselves to exact payment from you.’

The starkness of his warning hung between them in the stern watching silence of the tower—a place that had held and held again against the enemies of the rulers of Fortenegro, protecting their lives and their honour.

The blood left Ionanthe’s face, but she didn’t weaken. Just the merest whisper of an exhaled breath and the movement of her throat as she swallowed betrayed what she felt.

She was as spoiled and arrogant as her sister, of course. They shared the same blood and the same upbringing, after all, and like her sister and her grandfather she would despise his plans for her country. But she had courage, Max admitted.

‘I expect that it was Count Petronius who suggested that you bully me into agreeing by threatening to hand me over to the people,’ she said scornfully. ‘He and my grandfather were bitter enemies, who vied to have the most control over whoever sat on the throne.’

‘It was Count Petronius who told me that in some of the more remote parts of the island the people have been known to stone adulterous wives,’ Max agreed.

They looked at one another.

She was not going to weaken or show him any fear, Ionanthe told herself.

‘I am not an adulterous wife. And I am not a possession to be used to pay off my family’s supposed debt to you to save your pride and your honour.’ Her voice dripped acid contempt.

‘This isn’t about my pride or my honour,’ Max corrected her coldly.

Ionanthe gave a small shrug, the action revealing the smooth golden flesh of one bare shoulder as the wide boat neckline of her top slipped to one side. She felt its movement but disdained to adjust the neckline. She wasn’t going to have him thinking that the thought of him looking at her bare flesh made her feel uncomfortable.

She was an outstandingly alluring woman, Max acknowledged, and yet for all her obvious sensuality she seemed unaware of its power, wearing what to other women would be the equivalent of a priceless haute couture garment as carelessly as though it were no more than a pair of chainstore jeans.

If she was oblivious to her effect on his sex, he was not, Max admitted. There had been women who had shared his life and his bed—beautiful, enticing women from whom he had always parted without any regret, having enjoyed a mutual satisfying sexual relationship. But none of them had ever aroused him by the sight of a bared shoulder. Merely feasting his gaze on her naked shoulder felt as erotic as though he had actually touched her skin, stroked his hand over it, absorbing its texture and its warmth.

Angered by his own momentary weakness, Max looked away from her. His life was complicated enough already, without him adding any further complications to it. Certainly it would be easier and would make more sense to let her think that he expected her to provide him with a son than to try to tell her the truth, Max acknowledged.

‘The people are anxious for me to secure the succession,’ he told her, his voice clipped.

The succession. Her son. The key that would unlock the medieval prison in which the people were trapped.

‘My grandfather would say that it is my duty to do as you ask and take my sister’s place.’

‘And what do you say?’ Max prompted.

‘I say that a man who tricks and traps a woman into marriage and threatens her with death by stoning if she refuses is not a man I could either respect or honour. But you are not merely a man, are you? You are Fortenegro’s ruler—its Prince.’

Even as she spoke a powerful sense of destiny was filling her. A demand. And her own answer to it rose up inside her and would not be denied. A sacrifice was being demanded of her, but the thought of the potential benefit for her people was so filled with hope and joy that her own heart filled with them as well.

She took a deep breath, and told Max calmly, ‘I will marry you. But I will live my own life within that marriage. No, before you make any accusation, I do not wish to copy my sister and crawl into the beds of an endless succession of men. But there is a life I wish to live of my own, and I shall live it.’

‘What kind of life?’ Max demanded. But she refused to answer him, simply shaking her head instead.

As Max’s wife, as Crown Princess, she could surely begin to do some of those things she had argued so passionately for her grandfather to do, which he had told her so angrily he would never do nor allow her to do either. She could start on their own estates; she would have the money. Her grandfather had been a wealthy man, and had had power. Education for the children, better working conditions for their parents—there was so much she wanted to do. But she must move carefully; she could, after all, do nothing until they were married.

Why was he standing here feeling such a sense of loss, such a sense of a darkness within himself? Ionanthe had given him the answer he needed.

Yes, she had given him that—but he sensed that there was something she was concealing from him, some sense of purpose, something that might affect his own plans to their detriment.

Max shrugged aside his doubts. Their marriage was as necessary to him for his purpose as it was to her for her safety. They would both gain something from it—just as they would both lose something.

‘So we are agreed, then?’ he asked her. ‘You understand that you are to take your late sister’s place in my life and in my bed, as my wife and the mother of my heir?’

They were stark and dispassionate words, cold words that described an equally cold marriage, Max acknowledged. But they were words that had to be said. There must be no misunderstanding on her part as to what would be expected of her.

Ionanthe lifted her chin, and told him firmly, ‘Yes. I do.’

‘Very well, then,’ he acknowledged.

They looked at one another: two people who neither trusted nor liked one another but who understood that their future lay together and that they were trapped in it together.

CHAPTER THREE

‘ASIIEEE —how cruel it is that your poor mother did not live to see this day. Her daughter marrying our Prince and being crowned Princess.’

‘I too wish that my mother was still alive, Maria,’ Ionanthe told the old lady who had been part of her grandfather’s household for as long as Ionanthe could remember.

She had the happiest of memories of her parents, who had died in a skiing accident in Italy when she had been thirteen. She had missed them desperately then and she still missed them now. Especially at times like this. She felt very alone, standing here in what had once been her grandfather’s state apartment. The weight of the fabric of the cloth-of-gold overdress—a priceless royal heirloom in which all Fortenegro brides were supposed to be married but which apparently her sister had refused point-blank to wear—was heavy, and felt all the more so because of the old scents of rose and lavender that clung to it, reminding her of previous brides who had worn it. But its weight was easier to bear right now than the weight of the responsibility she was about to take on—for her country and its people, she told herself fiercely, for them and for the son she would give them, who would transform their lives with the light of true democracy.

There was a heavy knock on the closed double doors, which were flung open to reveal the Lord Chamberlain in his formal regalia, flanked by heralds wearing the Prince’s livery and supported by the island’s highest ranking dignitaries, also wearing their ancient formal regalia.

The gold dress, worn over a rich cream lace gown that matched her veil, no longer seemed so garishly rich now that she was surrounded by her bridal escort in their scarlet, and gold.

Since she had no male relative it was the Lord Chamberlain who escorted her. The heavy weight of her skirt and his cloak combined to make a surging sound as they walked ceremoniously through the open doors of the staterooms.

Max looked down at the bent head of his bride as she kneeled before him in the traditional symbolic gesture that was part of the royal marriage service whilst the Archbishop married them.

It made her blood boil to have to kneel to her new husband like this, but she must think of the greater good and not her own humiliation, Ionanthe told herself as one of the other two officiating bishops wafted the sacred scented incense over her and the other dropped gold-painted rose petals on her.

‘Let the doors be thrown open and the news be carried to the furtherest part of his kingdom that the Prince is married,’ the Archbishop intoned. ‘Let the trumpets sound and great joy be amongst the people.’

From her kneeling position Ionanthe couldn’t see the doors being opened, but she could see the light that poured into the cathedral.

Max reached down and took hold of Ionanthe’s hands, which were still folded in front of her.

Ionanthe looked up at him, ignoring the warning she had been given that it was forbidden by tradition for her to look at her new husband until he gave her permission to do so.

Also according to tradition she was now supposed to kiss his foot in gratitude for being married to him. Ionanthe’s lips compressed as she deliberately stood up so that they were standing facing one another. The triumph she had been feeling at breaking with tradition and showing her own strength of character and will was lost in the Archbishop’s hissed gasp of shocked breath when Max stepped forward, clasping her shoulders and holding her imprisoned as he bent his head towards her.

When she realised what he intended to do Ionanthe stiffened in rejection and hissed, ‘No—you must not kiss me. It is not the tradition.’

‘Then we will make our own new tradition,’ Max told her equably.

His lips felt warm against her own, warm and firm and knowingly confident in a way that her own were not. They were alternately trembling and then parting, in helpless disarray. He had undermined her attempt to establish her independence far too effectively for her to be able to rally and fight back. His lips left hers and then returned, brushing them softly.

If she hadn’t known better she might even have thought that his touch was meant to be reassuring—but that couldn’t possibly be so, since he was the one who had mocked her with his kiss in the first place. Had he perhaps confused her with Eloise, assuming that she was like her sister and would welcome this promise of future intimacy between them? If so he was going to be in for a shock when he discovered that she did not have her sister’s breadth of sexual experience. It was too late now to regret not taking advantage of the ample opportunities over the years when she had preferred her studies and her dreams to the intimacies she had been offered.

‘It is not the custom for the Crown Prince’s bride to stand at his side as his equal until she has asked for permission to do so,’ the Archbishop was saying, with disapproval.

‘Sometimes custom has to give way to a more modern way of doing things,’ Ionanthe heard Max saying, before she could react herself and refuse to kneel. ‘And this is one of those occasions.’

‘It is our custom,’ the Archbishop was insisting stubbornly.

‘Then it must be changed for a new custom—one that is based on equality.’

Ionanthe knew that she was probably looking as shocked as the Archbishop, although for a different reason. The last thing she had expected was to hear her new husband talking about equality.

The Archbishop looked crestfallen and upset. ‘But, sire….’

Max frowned as he listened to the quaver in the older man’s voice. He had told himself that he would take things slowly and not risk offending his people, but the sight of Ionanthe kneeling at his feet had filled him with so much revulsion that he hadn’t been able to stop himself from saying something.

The Archbishop’s pride had been hurt, though, and he must salve that wound, Max recognised. In a more gentle voice he told him, ‘I do not believe that it is fitting for the mother of my heir to kneel at any man’s feet.’

The Archbishop nodded his head and looked appeased.

The new Prince was a dangerously clever man, Ionanthe decided as Max took her arm, so that together they walked down the aisle towards the open doors of the cathedral and the state carriage waiting to take them back to the palace.

An hour later they stood on the main balcony of the palace, looking down into the square where people had gathered to see them.

‘At least the people are pleased to see us married. Listen to them cheering,’ said Max.

‘Are they cheering as loudly as they did when you married Eloise?’ Ionanthe couldn’t resist asking cynically. She regretted the words as soon as they had been uttered. They reminded her too sharply of the way she had felt as a child, knowing that their grandfather favoured her sister and always trying and failing to claim some of his attention and approval—some of his love—for herself. Her words had been a foolish mistake. After all, she didn’t want anything from this man who had been her sister’s husband.

‘That was different,’ he answered her quietly.

Different? Different in what way? Different because he had actually loved her wayward sister?

The feeling exploding inside her couldn’t possibly be pain, Ionanthe denied to herself. Why should it be?

The scene down below them was one of pageantry and excitement. The square was busy with dancers in national dress, the Royal Guard in their uniforms—sentries in dark blue, gunners in dark green coats with gold braid standing by their cannons, whilst the cavalry were wearing scarlet. The rich colours stood out against the icing-white glare of the eighteenth-century baroque frontage that had been put on the old castle.

The church clock on the opposite side of the square, which had fascinated her as a child, was still drawing crowds of children to stand at the bottom, waiting for midday to strike and set off the mechanical scenes that took place one after the other. Eloise had always been far more interested in watching the changing of the guard than looking at the clock.

Ionanthe closed her eyes. She and her sister had never been close, but that did not mean she did not feel any discomfort at all at the thought of taking what had been her place. Tonight, when she lay in Max’s arms fulfilling her sacrificial role, would he be thinking of Eloise? Would he be comparing her to her sister and finding her wanting? They would have been well matched in bed, her sister and this man who somehow remained very sensual and male despite the formality of the dress uniform he was wearing. It caused her a sharp spike of disquiet to know that it was his sensuality, his sexuality, that was somehow foremost in her mind, and not far more relevant aspects of his personality.

Max watched the crowd down below them, laughing happily and enjoying themselves as they celebrated their marriage—the same crowd that, according to the Count, would have threatened to depose him if he had not followed the island’s tradition and accepted its cruel ancient laws. Once again he had a wife—this time one who had been blackmailed and forced into marrying him. Max wished he knew Ionanthe better. Eloise had never talked about her sister or to her, as far as Max knew, other than to say that Ionanthe had always been jealous of her because their grandfather had loved her more than he did Ionanthe.

Had he known her better, had he been able to trust her, then he might have talked openly and honestly to her. He might have told her that he loathed the way she had been forced into marriage with him as much as she did herself. Told her that as soon as it was within his power to do so he would set her free. And, had he thought there was the remotest chance that she would understand them, he might have revealed his dreams and hopes for their people to her. But he did not know her, and he could not trust her, so he could say nothing. It was too much of a risk. After all, he had already made one mistake in thinking he could trust her sister.

In the early days of their marriage, when he had still been foolish enough to think that they could work together to create a marriage based on mutual respect and a shared goal, he had talked to Eloise about his plans. She had sulked and complained that he was being boring, telling him that she thought he should let her grandfather and the other barons deal with the people, because all she wanted to do was have fun. Eloise had quickly grown bored with their marriage once she’d realised that he was not prepared to accede to her demands that they become part of the spoiled wealthy and well-born European social circle she loved.

Max had soon come to understand that there was no point in blaming Eloise for his own disillusionment at her shallowness and her adultery. The blame lay with their very different assumptions and beliefs, and the fact that they had each assumed that the other felt as they did about key issues.

Eloise and Ionanthe had been brought up in the same household, and whilst Ionanthe might seem to have very different values from those of her sister, that did not mean that he could trust her. As he had already discovered, the elite of the island—of which Ionanthe was a member—were fiercely opposed to the changes Max wanted to make. Given that, it made sense for him not to say anything to her.

Count Petronius appeared at Max’s elbow. ‘The people are waiting for you to walk amongst them to present your bride to them and receive their congratulations,’ he informed them both.

Max frowned, and told him curtly, ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea.’

Ionanthe drew in a sharp breath on another fierce stab of angry pride. Before she could stop herself she was demanding, ‘I presume that you followed the custom when you married Eloise? That you were happy to present her to the people?’

How many times as a child had she been forced into the shadows whilst her grandfather proudly showed off Eloise? How many times had she been hurt by his preference for her sister? Those he had appointed to care for them had pursed their lips and shaken their heads, telling her that she was ‘difficult’ and that it was no wonder her grandfather preferred her prettier and ‘nicer’ sister. The feelings she had experienced then surged through her now, overwhelming adult logic and understanding. For a handful of seconds her new husband’s unwillingness to present her to the people with pride in their relationship became her grandfather’s cruel rejection of her, and she was filled with the same hurting pain as she had been then.

But analysing logically just why she should feel this angry rush of painful emotion would have to wait until she was calmer. Right now what she wanted more than anything else was recognition of her right to be respected as her sister had been.

Max’s clipped ‘That was different’ only inflamed rather than soothed her anger.

Gritting her teeth, Ionanthe told him fiercely, ‘I will not be humiliated and shamed before the people by being bundled out of sight. I may not be the bride—the wife—of your free choice, but you are the one who has forced this marriage on both of us. In marrying you I have paid my family’s debt to you and to the people. I am now their Princess. They have a right to welcome me as such, and I have a right to that welcome.’

She spoke well and with pride, Max recognised, and maybe the fears he had for her safety amongst a crowd who not so very long ago might have turned on her in fury and revenge were unnecessary. She, after all, would know the people, the way they thought and felt, far better than he.

‘The Princess is right, Highness. The people will expect you both to walk amongst them.’

‘Very well, then,’ Max agreed.

The square was crowded, the air warm from the many food stalls offering hot food. The heavy weight of the gold overdress added to Ionanthe’s growing discomfort as they made their slow and stately progress through the crowd.

Initially, when they had set out from the palace steps, they had been surrounded by uniformed palace guards, but the square was packed with people and gradually they had broken through the ranks of the guards. The people might be enjoying themselves, but Ionanthe couldn’t help contrasting their general air of shabbiness and poverty with the extreme richness of the appearance of those connected with the court—including, of course, herself. Here and there amongst the sea of faces, Ionanthe recognised people from her grandfather’s estate, and a wave of self-revulsion washed over her as she acknowledged that her family was responsible for their poverty. That must change. She was determined on that.