Nikōs was waiting for her in the sitting room and, when she entered it, she gave a little gasp of surprise.
He looked quite different and not at all what she thought of as himself.
He was dressed in conventional clothes that she had not seen him wear before.
The cravat at his neck was exquisitely tied and the only unconventional detail was the red sash he wore under his long-tailed coat.
It gave him a somewhat raffish appearance and Thea exclaimed,
“You look very – smart!”
“And you look exactly as I want you to,” he said, “a Goddess from the mountains and the Queen of my heart!”
At the word ‘Queen’ Thea stiffened.
Then she told herself that it was the title that she really wanted and Nikōs was the King of her heart.
She moved towards him thinking that he would kiss her. Instead he put his hands on her shoulders and said in a serious voice,
“Are you quite certain, Heart of my Heart, that you will never regret marrying me?”
“How could I? It is what I want more than – anything else in the whole – world.”
“I am giving you a last chance to escape,” he said. “At the same time, if you try to do so, I am quite certain that I shall stop you. I could not let you go now!”
“All I – want is to stay – here with you for – ever,” Thea sighed, “and to love you so that you will never become bored with me.”
“That would be impossible,” he answered. “Now we must go.”
He took her to the door and she thought that there would be a carriage waiting outside for them.
To her surprise there was only Isten.
She saw that he had a new saddle and his harness had been decorated with flowers.
Valou was grinning when he saw them and Nikōs picked Thea up in his arms and sat her on the saddle. Then he mounted Isten behind her and, picking up the reins, rode into the wood.
Thea thought that this was the way that she had wanted to ride with Nikōs’s arms around her, close to him and her lips very near to his.
She thought to herself that no man could look more handsome and at the same time so authoritative. It was the same way he had looked when he had forced the bandits to listen to him.
Because she was afraid that her feelings for him would overwhelm her, she managed to ask,
“Where – are we – going?”
“We are going to be married in a strange but delightful little Church,” he told her, “which I hope you will come to love as much as I do.”
“Is it in the wood?” Thea asked.
“It is in the wood,” Nikōs affirmed, “and the Priest is a very old man whom I have known all my life.”
He paused before he went on,
“He was offered a Bishopric, but because he loves the woods and the animals that live here amongst the trees, he came here to pray for them and for people who are too busy to pray for themselves.”
As Nikōs spoke, they were moving slowly along a very narrow track and the sun shining through the fir trees threw shadows in odd patterns on the path.
As always when she was in a wood, Thea felt as if she was aware of the spirits that lived in it.
The goblins, burrowing under the ground and the Gods above them in the mountains.
As she had found Nikōs in the wood, she thought after centuries of searching for him, it was perfection that this was where she was to be married.
“That is what I think too,” Nikōs said.
Thea gave a little laugh as once again they were knowing what each other was thinking.
Then ahead of her she saw the Church and knew that it was like no other Church that she had ever seen.
It was made of the trunks of trees and there were trees all around it, so that it seemed to be a part of them.
As they drew nearer, she could see that there was no glass in any of the windows.
Most of the Church was covered in creepers with small birds of every sort flying in and out of it.
There were also dozens of little red squirrels and running on the ground were rabbits and hares.
Nikōs brought Isten to a standstill and then a small boy came from the building to hold his bridle.
Nikōs dismounted and, lifting Thea down, said quietly,
“Now, my darling, our new life begins!”
He gave her his arm and they walked up the wooden steps into the Church.
It was empty save for a Priest standing in front of an exquisitely carved and coloured Altar.
As they moved up the aisle, Thea was aware of the soft movements of birds and animals and she felt because they were not frightened that they knew she loved them.
They were blessing her marriage in their own particular way.
As soon as they were in front of the Priest, he began the beautiful words of the Marriage Service.
When Nikōs made his vows in his deep serious voice, Thea knew how much it meant to him and she knew too how much he loved her.
As he placed a ring on her finger, she was saw at once that it was not the conventional Wedding ring. It was a superb signet ring that he must have been taken from his own hand.
She thought that later he would give her a traditional Wedding ring.
Yet she knew that the ring, which had been blessed by the Priest, would always be her most treasured possession.
As they knelt for the Blessing, Thea felt as if the whole Church was silent.
At the same time she and Nikōs were enveloped in a light that came not from the setting sun but from Heaven itself.
When the Service was over, Nikōs led her away and they left the old Priest kneeling in front of the Altar.
Thea felt sure that he was praying for their happiness and that they would never lose each other.
Isten was waiting for them outside and Nikōs gave the boy who held him a golden coin, which made him gasp with excitement.
As they rode away from the Church, he shouted out after them,
“Good luck! God bless you!”
And there was something very touching in his young vibrant voice.
It flashed through Thea’s mind that perhaps one day it would be their son who called after them in similar words. And it made her blush to think of it.
As she turned her head so that she could rest it against his shoulder, Nikōs said,
“A strange Wedding, my darling one, but now you are mine for Eternity!”
Thea loved him so much that there were no words that she could think of to tell him so.
As if he understood her and was in a hurry to go back home, he urged Isten to move a little faster.
The sun was sinking low when they reached the little house and the sky was crimson and turning to gold.
The windows of the house reflected the sky and it seemed to Thea as if that too was part of the beauty of the whole world.
Valou took Isten from them and they walked into the house and went into the sitting room.
A log was burning in the fireplace and now there were great vases of flowers that had not been there before.
Nikōs closed the door behind them and then, before Thea was expecting it, his arms were around her.
“My wife!” he murmured quietly.
Then his lips were on hers.
As he kissed her the rapture that she had felt before seemed to seep through her and the intensity of it made her feel as if he carried her into the heart of the sun.
She realised that his kiss was passionate and demanding but equally there was something very spiritual about it.
She sensed that the beauty of the Service in the little Church in the woods still lingered in his heart and mind.
He kissed her as if he owned her and at the same time there was a reverence about his love and it was what she too felt for him.
She not only loved him as a man who had so completely captured her heart, she also admired him because he was so fine and noble and she knew too that he was good.
/> She thought perhaps that ‘good’ was an odd word to apply to him.
Yet there was no other word that could express what she felt and was in some way linked with everything that she believed in.
Nikōs kissed her until they were both breathless.
Then, as the sun that had been coming through the windows died away and it was dusk, he said,
“Come and have something to eat, my beloved. It is waiting for us next door.”
They went into the dining room and she was not surprised to see that it too was decorated with cascades of flowers that were all white.
The table was beautifully arranged, but there was nobody to wait on them.
As Thea looked at the sideboard, she realised that Valou’s wife must have been cooking for them all day.
“How can we eat so much?” she laughed.
“Valou and his wife will be very disappointed if we do not,” Nikōs answered.
He kissed her lightly as he spoke.
Then he chose without her telling him what she would eat and put the plate down on the table.
“I am too excited to be hungry,” Thea announced.
“So am I,” he answered, “but they have gone to so much trouble.”
She realised that he was only making it an excuse to make her eat.
She did try, but afterwards she could not remember what she had eaten.
She was only acutely aware of Nikōs looking so handsome and so different from the way he had looked before with his artist’s bow tie and his velvet jacket.
There was champagne for them to drink, but she felt that it would be impossible to feel more elated than she did at the moment.
Nikōs raised his glass to her.
“To the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in this world!” he toasted. “Someone so perfect in every way that I find it hard to believe that at last she belongs to me.”
“You sound as if you have been waiting for me for a long time,” Thea teased, “and I know that people would be shocked if they knew the truth.”
“The truth is quite simple,” Nikōs answered. “I have been searching for you in this life and, I think, in a million other lives before I found you and now I will never let you go.”
“Do you think I would want to?” Thea asked him.
“I have fought more than a thousand battles for you, I have sailed across a hundred seas and climbed the highest mountains in the world to find you.”
“I know – now that I have been – looking for you too,” Thea answered. “You were in my dreams – but when I awoke you were gone.”
“Now I will always be there and I think we both realised in the Church in the wood that love is found in unusual places and not always in those that are conventional.”
Thea thought of her father’s plans for her and knew at once that Nikōs was right.
The love they had found had nothing to do with this mundane world. It was spiritual and belonged to the trees, the birds, the flowers, the sun and the stars.
They finished their meal and Thea had managed to eat more of the delicious food than she had expected to at first.
Then when Thea thought that they would return to the sitting room to sit in front of the fire, Nikōs drew her tenderly up the stairs.
As he did so, she felt her heart begin to beat excitedly and she could feel his need of her vibrating from him.
They reached the top of the staircase.
He turned to the room on the other side of the corridor to hers, which she had not seen before.
He opened the door and for a moment she felt that she must be dreaming.
It was so different, so entirely different from anything that she had expected from any bedroom that she had ever seen.
As she looked round, she realised that the walls were all hung with material.
On it Nikōs had painted the colourful flowers that meant so much to them both and the birds that they had just left behind in the wood.
It made the room look as if they had stepped onto the flower-filled grass where they galloped their horses.
There were flowers of every colour flaming round them.
It was so beautiful that Thea could only stare at it in bewilderment.
“I think, my precious,” Nikōs pointed out, “that, when I painted this, I was thinking of you.”
“It is so beautiful!”
“And that is why you need the right background for me to tell you how much I love you.”
Now Thea could see the bed, which was very low on the floor and it was carved in the same way as her own.
The difference was that the headboard was decorated entirely with butterflies. Large ones and small ones, they flew open-winged to blend with the flowers on the walls.
“How can you have thought of anything so – wonderful?” she gasped.
“I told you – I was thinking of you.”
Nikōs put his arms around her.
She realised that, while she had been looking at the room, he had pulled off his coat and his cravat.
Now in his thin white shirt and the red sash above his trousers he looked, she thought, even more exciting than he had before.
Because she felt shy she said a little incoherently,
“I-I have not yet – thanked you for – thinking of my – Wedding gown.”
“You look adorable in it,” Nikōs replied. “But now I want you closer to me and I want to see your glorious hair over your perfect white shoulders.”
He took off her wreath as he spoke.
Then he pulled her close into his arms and kissed her.
She was trembling with the excitement that was flickering through her like little flames.
He lifted her arms and her Wedding gown slipped onto the floor and he carried her naked to the bed.
He put her down and, as she looked up at the ceiling, she saw that it depicted the sky.
One half of it was blue and brilliant with sunshine and the other half was filled with stars.
She knew, now that the sun had set, the real stars would be shining above them in the sky.
And yet here in this bedroom, Nikōs had somehow captured the world that mattered to them.
A world of beauty, music and birds.
Even as she thought of it, she heard the soft sound of the Voivode’s violin.
For a moment she thought again that she must be dreaming.
Then she realised that Nikōs was playing the same ecstatic music that had moved her so emotionally the day before.
As the melody throbbed with a passion that aroused her Hungarian blood, Nikōs joined her.
He blew out the candles that had illuminated the room before he did so.
To her astonishment there was a faint light behind the silken walls and in the ceiling overhead.
She did not ask him how it was done, she only knew that it was very lovely, unusual, original and so thrilling that it completed the wonder of the world that contained just them alone.
No one could encroach on them at this moment in time and space and no one could hurt them.
She knew that what Nikōs had said was true – they were protected by the Gods.
Then he was kissing her eyes, her nose, her lips and the softness of her neck.
It made her tremble.
And then she could feel a wild passion that was irresistibly demanding seep through her.
It was the ecstasy of Nikōs’s kisses.
His hands moving over the softness of her skin.
His heart beating against hers.
The music swirled and rose as if the notes themselves flew up to the stars and touched the moon.
Thea knew that her heart and soul went with the music.
“I worship you,” Nikōs murmured.
His voice was part of the music, which was becoming more and more intense.
Now there was a wildness and an irresistible desire.
Thea felt a longing within herself that she could not control.
She loved N
ikōs absolutely and completely. She wanted to be even closer to him than she was at this very moment.
She did not understand and yet she wanted to give him herself.
She wanted to be his and no longer have any identity of her own.
“I love you – oh, Nikōs – I love you!”
She was not certain whether she said the word aloud, they came from the rapture that he was giving her.
“You are mine!” he asserted. “Mine, Thea, as you were meant to be since the beginning of time!”
“I am – yours! I – want to be yours – and oh – Nikōs – I love you!”
The music rose higher and higher and was carrying them together towards the stars.
She could feel the fire on Nikōs’s lips and the fire within her breast.
The world was left behind.
There was nothing except their love and they were one person.
*
It was a long time later when the Voivode was no longer playing and the light behind the curtains was a soft glow that Thea whispered to Nikōs,
“I-I did not know that – love was like this.”
“Like what?” Nikōs asked.
He drew her a little closer to him and his lips were on her hair.
“It – it belongs to – God,” Thea murmured, “and it is also – everything that I believe in and sensed was there – if only I could find it.”
She was thinking as she spoke of the woods and of her dreams.
She was seeing, as if she was now sitting beside it, the lake where she had found Nikōs on that very first day.
“We have been very privileged,” he said quietly. “The Gods have blessed us and we must never cease to thank them for their generous bounty.”
“How could I do anything else – now that I am your wife?” Thea asked.
She gave a deep sigh.
“I never dreamt I should find anyone so – marvellous, but – somehow – I knew you were there waiting for me.”
“And I feel the same,” Nikōs smiled, “but I was desperately afraid that my dreams would never come true.”
“And now that they – have?” Thea asked.
“I have to make sure that I am not dreaming!”
Because he was touching her, she gave a little murmur.
“How is it possible,” he asked, “that you can be so lovely, so beautiful and so perfect in every way?”
The Passionate Princess Page 11
