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Max drained his glass, and was just turning away from her when after a brief knock the drawing room door was hurriedly opened. The Chancellor came in, looking very concerned, Count Petronius hard on his heels,
‘I told you there was no need for us to disturb His Highness, Ethan. I can deal with this matter,’ said the Count.
‘What matter?’ Max demanded.
The Chancellor needed no further invitation. Ignoring the Count’s obvious irritation he addressed Max. ‘Highness, there has been a disturbance in the city—fighting in the streets among some of the men of your new bride’s people, claiming that it is wrong that she has been forced to make a blood payment on behalf of her sister—’
‘They have been arrested and are now, as we speak, being held in the square by the Royal Guard,’ the Count broke in. ‘There is no need for you to concern yourself on the matter, Highness. They will be treated with appropriate severity.’
‘No!’ Ionanthe defended her people automatically. These were men who had been loyal to her late parents and to their land. Now they stood firm to support Ionanthe. ‘They will have meant no real harm.’
‘They threatened the person of their ruler,’ the Count insisted. ‘And they must be punished accordingly.’
Max looked from the Count’s implacable expression to Ionanthe’s flushed face. So, something could apparently arouse his bride to passion, even if it wasn’t him.
‘I shall speak to these men myself,’ he told the Count.
‘And I shall come with you,’ Ionanthe told them both firmly.
Max looked at her. Her announcement and her determination were very different from the reaction he had expected, knowing from experience what the reaction of both her sister and her grandfather would have been. He would have pursued the subject, to satisfy what he admitted was his growing curiosity about the differences he was observing between his late wife and the sister who had taken her place, but this was not the time for that.
‘Sire, I would urge you not to risk either your own safety or that of Her Highness,’ the Count was warning. ‘Far better to allow the authorities to deal with the situation.’
Max listened to him, and then pointed out coolly, ‘I disagree with you, Count. In fact I believe that it is time that all the people of Fortenegro recognised that I am this island’s final authority, and that my word is law.’
With a brisk nod of his head, and without waiting to see what the Count’s reaction was to his none-too-subtle challenge to the older man’s determination to hold on to the power he had made on his own, Max strode towards the main doors to the castle.
‘Open the doors,’ he told the waiting guards firmly.
Was he going to order that those who were loyal to her family be punished? Ionanthe worried as she half ran to catch up with him.
‘The Count is right when he says that you should not be exposed to danger,’ Max told her.
‘I am coming with you,’ Ionanthe repeated, raising her voice so that he could hear it above the noise pouring in through the now open doors from the square below.
Somehow or other, without the need of heralds or trumpets, the crowd seemed to sense their presence, even though Max had descended the steps in silence. The words ‘the Prince’ seemed to pass from one person to another, to become a hush that gathered in force and intensity until the whole square was silently expectant. A shiver ran through Ionanthe as she felt the ancient power of the people’s belief in and dependence on their ruler.
On the other side of the square the lights on the walls clearly illuminated the ceremonial uniforms of the Royal Guard, highlighting the disparity between their richness and the poverty of the small group of men they had herded into a corner and were keeping captive. Her people. A huge lump formed in Ionanthe’s throat and her eyes stung with tears of mingled pity and pride for the men who had been brave enough and foolish enough to want to protect her.
Without thinking, she turned to Max and hissed fiercely, ‘You must not hurt them.’
From deep within her memory she heard an echo of Cosmo as a young boy, saying savagely to her in the middle of a childhood quarrel, ‘You cannot tell me to do anything. I am Fortenegro’s ruler. No one can tell me what to do, and those who try have to be punished.’
Max was ignoring her, and instead was striding towards the captives and their captors. The mass of people in the square parted before him.
When he reached the guards, Max demanded, ‘What is going on here?’
‘We have arrested these troublemakers, sire,’ the most senior of the guards told him.
‘You have forced our Duchess to marry you under duress. It is our duty to protect her and her honour,’ one of the men under guard shouted.
Immediately someone in the crowd who had heard him yelled out, ‘Listen to how the traitor speaks of our Prince and the honour of a family that has no right to any honour. His words are an insult to His Highness.’
Despite herself, Ionanthe shivered as she saw the speed with which anger burned its way through the crowd.
Max saw the colour leave Ionanthe’s face, and without being able to reason why he should want to do so he reached for her hand, holding it within his own and giving it a comforting squeeze.
Any prideful attempt she might have wanted to make to pull away was demolished as the crowd started to surge around them, almost knocking Ionanthe off her feet. Small stones were being thrown at the captive men.
Quickly Max pulled her close to him, holding her protectively and then commanding, ‘My people, listen to me. Today has signified a very special moment in our shared history. For your sake, and out of her love for you, the Duchess Ionanthe consented to become my wife. Those who have served her family have every right to feel great pride in the sacrifice she has made for the sake of our principality. Together we will work for the good of this island and its people—all its people. It is my will and my decree that our wedding day should not be marred by violence and punishment.’
Although initially shocked to hear Max speak in such a powerful and flattering way about her, Ionanthe recovered quickly, seizing the moment to join her own voice to that of her new husband and address the now silent and watchful crowd.
‘Your Prince speaks the truth.’ She turned to where the captive men were standing stiffly and resentfully and told them, ‘You do me great honour, but it is no exaggeration to say that your Prince has done me an even greater honour in taking me as his wife.’
A low rumble of dissent from her people and an even stronger rumble of contempt from the rest of the crowd swelled ominously into the silence, but Ionanthe refused to be deterred. She could feel the warmth of Max’s arm against her back and she could feel too the protective clasp of his hand on her shoulder.
‘Out of our shared love for you, if God wills it, the Prince and I will create the son who will one day rule you all. It is for him that I have submitted to my duty in the eyes of our ancient law, for him that your Prince has accepted my sacrifice. My people—our people—we do this for you.’
The whole square had fallen silent once more, but it was a tense, watchful and judging silence, Ionanthe knew. A silence that brooded and threatened. And then, unbelievably, Max caught hold of her hand and lifted it to his lips. Placing his kiss not on her knuckles but rather opening her palm and placing a kiss into it. Those close enough to witness the emotional intimacy and intensity of the small gesture gasped.
‘My wife is right,’ Max told the crowd. And, raising his voice, he commanded them, ‘My people, this is not a time to dwell on past quarrels or injustices. It is a time to celebrate. Those who would have fought for the honour of my wife are to be praised, not punished, because in serving her best interests they also serve mine. I commend their loyalty, just as I promise my loyalty to all of you. Captain—’ he turned to the captain of the Guard ‘—these men are to be allowed to go free.’
There was a great cheer from the crowd, and then another, and then suddenly the people were surging all around them, laughing and cheering, the earlier mood of hostility wiped clean away.
‘Thank you for… for freeing them,’ she managed to say to Max, even though she knew her voice was stilted.
The movement of the crowd suddenly threw Ionanthe against Max’s chest. His arms came round her to hold her steady. Her hands were on his shoulders as she too sought to steady herself. She looked up at him, and then couldn’t look away. The noise of the crowd seemed to fade, and all her senses registered was contained within the encirclement of Max’s arms. He bent his head towards her own. Her heart was beating far too fast—and for no sensible reason. Her people were safe now, there was no need for her heart to thud or her pulse to race.
Max’s lips touched her own, their possession hard and purposeful. She should pull away, she wanted to pull away, but the dominating power of his mouth on hers wouldn’t let her. Instead she felt as though she was being carried by a swift and dangerous current that was taking her deeper with every breath she took. Until she was giving in to it and sinking down into its hot velvet darkness, allowing it to take her and possess her. Reality and everything that went with it was forgotten, sent into oblivion by what she was feeling, as though those feelings and her own senses had united against her, treacherously allowing an enemy force to overwhelm her defences.
Her whole body had turned soft and heavy, as though she had drunk some potion brewed by the witches who centuries ago were supposed to have inhabited the high mountains of Fortenegro. Desires, longings, needs that less than half an hour ago she would have fiercely claimed it was impossible for her to feel for any man, much less this one, were now burning through her, invading her belly, making her breasts ache, making her long with increasing sexual urgency for the most intense and intimate possession of her flesh by the man who was holding her.
And then the darkness beyond the town square was broken as a firework display began, the sound bringing her back to reality. Above them in the night sky showers of multi-coloured stars exploded and then fell back to earth, their effect a mere shadow of the explosion of desire inside her. Shocked, Ionanthe pulled herself out of Max’s arms.
His arms felt cold and empty, and his body was racked with a physical ache that gnawed at him; all he wanted right now, Max acknowledged, was to take Ionanthe back to the castle and his bed. Her response to his kiss had ignited a need inside him that had taken him completely by surprise. And, more than that, during those intense moments a hope had come to life inside him that went against everything he had told himself he believed with regard to any marriage he might make. It should have been a salutary experience, or at the very least one which left him feeling wary and concerned about his own misjudgement, but instead what he actually felt was a feeling that was far sweeter.
Could it be that against all the odds—miraculously, almost—they shared a mutual desire for one another which could prove to be an unexpected foundation stone on which they could build a strong marriage? Max asked himself ruefully. If so… He looked at Ionanthe.
Sensing Max’s gaze focusing on her, and dreading what she suspected she would see in it if she were foolish enough to meet it, Ionanthe fought to keep her burning face, with its scarlet banners advertising her folly, to herself.
She knew perfectly well what Max would be thinking. She had experienced male sexual arrogance—if mainly second hand—often enough during the course of her work in Brussels to know full well that the average man’s reaction to a woman who responded as passionately as she had just done to Max was to assume that she must find him irresistible, must be desperate for even more sexual intimacy with him. There was no way Ionanthe wanted Max to think that about her. It offended her pride more than enough that she had to acknowledge to herself that she had responded to him, without having to endure him smirking over her vulnerability as well. She had to say something that would convince him that she had not really been affected by his kiss at all.
Ionanthe took a deep breath and said, as coolly as she could, ‘Well, now that I’ve played my part and done everything I can to convince everyone that I’ve married you willingly, including that faked display of wifely adoration, perhaps we could return to the palace?’
Ionanthe took care to wait for the silence that followed with a small frosty smile that was more a baring of her pretty white teeth than a real smile, before actually risking a look at Max.
The stony expression carved on his face should have been reassuring—as should the icy-cold tones in which he informed her, in a very distancing manner, ‘Very well. I’ll get the Captain of the Guard to escort you back.’
Instead, for some silly reason, they actually made her feel abandoned and forlorn.
So much for his stupid hopes, Max reflected grimly as he watched the Captain of the Guard escorting Ionanthe back to the hotel. At least the Captain was a middle-aged, heavily set man, and not the kind of Adonis-like youth his first wife had seemed to find so irresistible—just in case her sister should have the same proclivities. What a fool he’d been to think for even a moment that there could be something personal between them. Hell, he’d already told himself that that was the last thing he wanted. Didn’t he already have more than enough on his plate, with all the problems involved in bringing a new era to subjects without wanting to burden himself with some more? He simply could not take the risk of allowing himself to become sexually or emotionally vulnerable to Ionanthe. He knew that.
Cerebrally he might know it, but what about his body?
His body would have to learn, Max told himself grimly.
It was late in the evening—far later than he had initially envisaged having this conversation, thanks to the incident in the square—and the formal surroundings of the Grand Ministerial Chamber were hardly suited to its subject matter. But he had been determined to sign the necessary declaration that would ensure the freedom of the protestors without any delay.
Not that their earlier surroundings had been any more intimate—their first shared evening meal as a newly married couple having taken place in the equally formal and grand State Dining Room, where they had been seated at either end of a table designed to accommodate formal state dinners. With the length of a polished mahogany table that could easily seat fifty people separating them, and a silver-gilt centrepiece from the Royal Treasury between them, even if they had wanted to talk to one another it would have been impossible.
However, despite the cold hauteur with which Ionanthe had made plain exactly what her expectations of their marriage were, Max felt duty bound to have this conversation.
‘As there hasn’t been time to arrange a formal honeymoon—’ he began.
‘I don’t want one.’ Ionanthe stopped him quickly.
He had taken her sister to Italy—surely one of the most romantic honeymoon venues there could be?—but that wasn’t the reason for her immediate interruption. That owed its existence to what had happened to her out in the square, when Max had kissed her. How easily she had risked humiliating herself. She could just imagine how much it would please her new husband’s male ego if he thought that he could arouse her so easily. Men had no conscience when it came to women’s emotions and desires. She had seen that so often in Brussels. She had seen how men exploited the vulnerability of women, persuading them to give up their own moral beliefs for their own advantage. She certainly wasn’t going to put herself in that position—not when there was so much at stake for the country, for the son she hoped to have who would one day rule it.
There must be no further impulsive and unnecessary intimacies between Max and herself. It was her duty to consummate their marriage—how else could she conceive the son she was so determined to have for the people?—but she was determined not to put herself in a position where she might be sucked back into that dangerous state she had experienced earlier. A cool, calm and controlled execution of her marital and royal duty was her goal.
‘Maybe not,’ Max agreed calmly, ‘but it is expected. Therefore I plan to arrange for us to spend several days at the hunting lodge.’
Ionanthe looked at him in dismay.
The Royal Hunting Lodge was up in the mountains, and in winter doubled as a ski lodge as it was above the snow line.
‘Surely it will be inconvenient for you to be away from the centre of government?’ she protested. Not for anything was she going to admit to him that the hunting lodge’s remoteness and the fact that they would be alone there were filling her with panic.
When Max made no response she shrugged and affected a cool logic she was far from feeling, telling him, ‘I can’t see any purpose in us isolating ourselves in the mountains. It is our duty, I know, to produce an heir to succeed you, but we can do that just as well here.’
Such a pragmatic and logical, unemotional approach to their union was surely something he should applaud, Max told himself. After all, it reflected everything he had already told himself their marriage must be. Why, then, was he finding that he felt not just repelled but also in some dangerous way actively challenged as a man by Ionanthe’s attitude to the intimacy they must share?
‘You showed great passion this evening in your defence of your people.’
Ionanthe stiffened. What was he hinting? Was he going to ask her to deny that she had also shown great passion for him? Her pride writhed in agony at the thought.
‘Their safety is my responsibility,’ she answered coldly. ‘Your sexual pleasure is not. I refuse to fake passion for the sake of a man’s ego. You may have been able to force me to marry you, but you cannot force me to desire you and nor will I do so. Having said that, however, as I have already confirmed, I am fully prepared to fulfil my duty to the crown and to the people.’
The red mist of savage male sexual anger that rose up inside him shocked Max. He had to bring this conversation to a close before he was tempted to do something he considered beneath him, something he knew ultimately he would regret. He had never before wanted to overwhelm a woman’s resistance and arouse her to the point where she succumbed and gave herself completely and mindlessly to him out of the white-hot desire he had brought her to. But right now the images imposing themselves on his thoughts were of Ionanthe on a bed—a very large bed—on which their naked bodies were passionately entwined. Even without closing his eyes and focusing his senses he could imagine the silky softness of her hair against his own skin, its scent—her scent—heated by desire to release its erotic fragrance into the air, filling his nostrils. Her head would be thrown back against his arm, her eyes a passion-glazed glitter between thick dark lashes, her lips swollen from their shared kisses and eagerly parted, proclaiming her pleasure and her desire for more as she smiled invitingly up at him.
Angrily Max dragged his thoughts back to reality. He had no business allowing his mind to create such images. They were an offence, a mental assault that he could not allow to continue and that he would not tolerate in himself.
Even so, he could not stop himself from saying curtly, ‘You have a very clinical and detached attitude to the creation of a new life. A child deserves to be loved by those who give it life.’
‘The fact that I can remain clinical and detached about the process that will create the next ruler of Fortenegro does not mean that I will not love my son any more than a woman who seeks medical intervention in order to conceive does not love her child,’ Ionanthe retaliated sharply.
How much longer was she going to have to wait? Lying alone in the darkness of the large bed, waiting for Max to come to her, Ionanthe tried not to feel anxious. She had promised herself that she would remain calm, that she would not repeat her foolishness of earlier in the evening, but now, with the chimes of the cathedral clock striking midnight dying into silence, it was growing harder for her to quell her over-active imagination.
What would she do if he refused to adopt the same clinical manner she had sworn to show him and instead kissed her as he had done in the square? Why was she asking herself such a silly question? If he did that, then of course she would not respond to him. But if he were to persist? If he were to persist then she must just continue to remain unaffected.
How much longer would it be before he came to her? Was he delaying deliberately, in order to torment her and to break down her resistance? Did he think by leaving her here alone in their marriage bed that when he did choose to join her she would be so grateful that she would fling herself into his arms? If so, then he was going to learn just how wrong he was.
She looked at her watch. It was half past twelve. Had her sister found him such a reluctant bridegroom? Somehow Ionanthe doubted it.
Where was he?
It had been a long day, but despite her physical tiredness she knew that it would be impossible for her to sleep until the final act cementing their union had been completed. Beyond the huge windows which she had deliberately asked to be left uncurtained she could see the bright sharpness of the late autumn moon. Not many weeks ago it would have had the heavy fullness of the ripe harvest moon, signalling the culmination of nature’s seasons of productivity, emblazoning her fertility across the night sky. Ionanthe touched her flat stomach. There was a season for all things, for all life, a time of planting and growing. An ache sprang to life inside her, urgent and demanding: the desire for a seed that would create the most precious gift Mother Nature could give.
Tears came out of nowhere to burn the backs of her eyes, accompanied by a helpless yearning and longing. Her body was waiting to conceive this son she wanted so very much. She was ready to give herself over to the sacrifice she must make for the future of the people. More than anything else right now she wanted to feel that necessary male movement within her, giving her the spark of life she ached so physically for. It must be her longing for the conception of their child that was driving into her, possessing her, filling her with restless longing. It couldn’t possibly be anything else.
Where was he?
CHAPTER FIVE
‘I UNDERSTAND that you wanted to speak to me?’
It would have been wiser for him to accede to Ionanthe’s formal request to his aide by seeing her somewhere other than in this bedroom. All the more so when he had spent the last eight nights avoiding coming anywhere near it—because he couldn’t trust his own self-control to prevent him from reacting to the dangerous mix of fierce anger and equally fierce sexual desire she aroused in him, Max recognized. But it was too late for him to regret that error now. He could hardly have ignored it, after all—not when she had delivered it so very publically, via his aide de camp.
What did she want? he wondered. Money? Jewellery? Her sister had asked for both those things and more. He thought angrily of the obvious and pitiful poverty of that group of men who had been prepared to risk their lives, if necessary, for the sake of Ionanthe’s honour.
‘Yes,’ Ionanthe confirmed. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Max. She didn’t trust herself to do so. They had been married for just over a week—eight days, in fact, and eight long, humiliating nights. All of which she had spent alone in a bed that was obviously designed to accommodate two people—the bed that she was determined not to look at now, even though its presence in the room dominated her thoughts almost as much as Max’s absence from it had dominated them during these last eight days of a marriage that was in effect no marriage at all.
Because she was not her sister? The pain of her childhood, with its lack of love and her grandfather’s rejection, must not be allowed to affect her now. She must not allow herself to appear vulnerable or needy. She must demand what was her right—not for her own sake, of course. She had no desire to share the intimacy of sex with a man who, having forced her into marriage, now chose to ignore her. After all, she had never been the kind of woman who was driven by her own sexual need—far from it. In fact, going without sex had, if anything, become her preferred way of life, and one she had been happy with. No. It was for the sake of the people that she was forcing herself to put aside her own personal feelings. Alone, she could not change things for them. She knew that. The island’s society was one rooted in the past, in which the male head of the family held absolute control. It would take a man to change that—a very strong, very aware, very courageous man. A son. Her son. A man who would be enlightened enough to change things for his people.
Despite her own lack of any need to be a sexually desired woman, there was still the undeniable fact that Max’s very public rejection of her had left her feeling humiliated. Theirs was not, after all, a ‘normal’ marriage. As the island’s ruler Max had to live very much in the public eye, and as his wife so did she. It would have been easy enough to bear if only she had known about her husband’s sexual rejection of her, but of course the rest of the court was bound to know. Ionanthe hadn’t missed the sympathetic looks her maid had been giving her every morning for the last eight mornings. The fact that everyone knew that Max had married her because he needed a son, and yet had not consummated their marriage shamed and insulted her, turning her into a laughing stock. She was not prepared to tolerate the situation any longer.
Max could feel his muscles, in fact his whole body, tensing against Ionanthe’s presence, whilst at the same time his senses strained to absorb as much of it and her as they could. The room smelled of her, of the scent she always wore, which somehow he had learned to search for in the rooms from which she herself was absent. In the long, aching reaches of the empty nights it had tormented him, conjuring up for him images of it cloaking her skin and scenting the darkness until he’d felt he was being driven close to madness by the folly of his own savage hunger for her. How had it come to this? How was it possible for him to want her so deeply and so compulsively?
Max didn’t have the answer to that question. The manner in which his physical hunger for her suspended all that was rational and normal for him was something he couldn’t analyse to any satisfactory conclusion. Not that he hadn’t tried; he had. And in the end all he’d been able to tell himself was that the desire that burned inside him was simply the result of some primitive male instinct within himself that had been unleashed by her behaviour towards him.
He had been with his personal aide, the son of one of the island’s barons when Ionanthe’s lady-in-waiting had brought the message that Ionanthe wished to speak with him, so it had been impossible for him to ignore it.
Ionanthe took a deep breath and, still keeping her back to the bed, began. ‘Your absence from our marital bed has humiliated me and made me the subject of court gossip.’
Max fought to control his body’s reaction to her words. Only he knew how hard it had been for him to keep to his decision not to give in to his growing desire for her. He would not partner her in the kind of cold and clinical intercourse she had described to him as the manner in which she wished to consummate their marriage. He would not, or did he fear that he could not? Max was forced to ask himself. Wasn’t it true that he was staying away from the bed they should have shared because he was afraid that if he did share it with her he would not be able to control the desire she aroused in him? The fact that she should arouse that desire was difficult enough for him to come to terms with, without having to add his concern that he would not be able to control it. It had, after all, come out of nowhere, with such speed and power that it had left him punch-drunk, reeling and, worst of all, feeling that he could no longer trust his own carefully set inner controls. No woman had ever affected him as Ionanthe did. No woman had ever aroused him to such a pitch of aching need combined with furious anger—
severing him from the man he had always thought himself to be when it came to sexual needs. That man had been willing to follow his partner’s wishes, been very careful to keep the emotional temperature on merely warm. That man had certainly never had to deal with the kind of raw, demanding need he was experiencing now.
Why? He had barely registered the fact that Ionanthe even existed before he had met her, and yet now here he was…
Here he was what? Here he was wanting her so desperately and so passionately that he barely recognised himself any more?
Max’s mouth hardened—the only outwardly visible sign of his inner demons and one that Ionanthe registered as antagonism towards her.
Max was trying to force her to back down. Well, she wasn’t going to.
The proud arching of her neck as she lifted her chin to confront him brought a sharp shock of physical reaction to Max’s senses. He wanted to cover the distance between them—to cover her in the most basic and intimate way. He wanted to slide his hand and then his mouth down the tormenting oh-so-proud and yet vulnerable arch of her creamy-fleshed neck. He wanted to pushed aside the neat fawn cashmere sweater she was wearing and explore the curve of her shoulder, tasting her, knowing her, feeling her breast swell into his hand and her nipple harden and tighten in his palm.
