Christmas Nights

by Penny Jordan

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘For what? Misjudging me? Destroying my illusions? Believing that I wasn’t good enough to know the truth? That I wasn’t worthy of sharing your ideals?’

  ‘Ionanthe, don’t—please…’

  He’d hurt her, and she was justifiably angry. Max understood that, but there was something he still had to tell her. ‘I was a fool for not realising that you—’

  ‘No, I am the one who was the fool. But not any more, Max,’ Ionanthe cut across him bitterly.

  Before she could continue Tomas was approaching them, looking self-conscious and uncertain as he addressed himself to Max.

  ‘Highness, the people are asking if you will lead them in the sled race tomorrow, Christmas Eve morning.’

  ‘What sled race is this?’ Max asked, looking at Ionanthe. But she shook her head, leaving Tomas to explain whilst her heart sank like a lead weight inside her chest. Her father had led the traditional sled race, and now she wanted to protest in bitter anger that Max should be asked to stand in her father’s place.

  ‘It is a tradition of the estate that on the day before Christmas there is a sled race from the top of the ridge behind the castle, and that the race is begun by our lord,’ Tomas was explaining eagerly to Max. ‘For many years we have not had anyone here to do it, and the old ones are saying that it will bring us luck to have our Prince commence the race for us.’

  The people—her people—were showing their approval of Max and their willingness to accept him. Ionanthe felt very alone. Alone and unloved, deceived and misjudged.

  Max had misjudged her and hurt her, but she had also misjudged him, honesty compelled her to admit. Yes, that was true—but at least he had always known who she was. She hadn’t hidden her true self away from him. She hadn’t let him talk about his dreams knowing that in comparison to her achievements they were as a child’s drawing compared to the work of a master. That was what hurt so badly: knowing that he had excluded her from such an important part of his life; knowing that he had already done all those things she longed so much to do.

  Now she could admit to herself what she hadn’t really known before. That it was important to her that they met and recognised one another as equals. In her grandfather’s eyes she had always been a poor substitute for Eloise. Knowing that, growing up with it, had diminished her. She couldn’t allow herself to love a man whose very existence and achievements could not help but do the same.

  Their marriage would have to be brought to an end. There was no purpose to it now, after all. Max was the perfect man to rule Fortenegro and to give its people all that they needed. He was also the best role model there could be for his son. Max—the Max she now knew him to be—could achieve far more than she had ever envisaged being able to achieve. There was no purpose in her staying—no need, no role for her, nothing. Ionanthe prayed that fate had been wiser than she had herself, and that she had not yet conceived Max’s child.

  Max looked towards Ionanthe for guidance as to how he should answer Tomas’s request, but her expression was remote and cold. Tomas’s interruption had come at the wrong time.

  ‘I shall be pleased to begin the race,’ he told Tomas, when Ionanthe continued to ignore his silent request for advice.

  The beaming smile with which Tomas received his reply told Max that at least one person was pleased with his response.

  She would have to wait until they returned to the palace—until she was sure that she was not carrying Max’s child—to inform Max that she wanted their marriage brought to an end, Ionanthe decided. Or maybe she should just leave the island and then tell him. Although of course that would be cowardly. And what if she had conceived? The frantic despairing leap of her heart told her how easy it would be for her to clutch at the excuse to remain married to him.

  How Max must have inwardly laughed at her when she had confided to him her admiration for the head of Veritas, unknowingly extolling his virtues, for all the world like some naive teenager filled with hero-worship. All she had to hold on to now was her pride. But she had survived before without love, without anyone to turn to.

  That had been different, though. Then she had had hope. Now there was nothing left for her to hope for other than that she did not make even more of a fool of herself than she already had.

  Max had married her because his very nature impelled him to want to improve the lot of the islanders. Every move he had made had to have been part of a carefully orchestrated plan designed to eliminate what stood in the way of his progress and to move forward with his plans. She couldn’t argue with or object to his underlying motivation—after all, she had married him with her own agenda. She couldn’t either logically or clinically refuse to understand why he’d had to be so suspicious of her. But pretending to want her—and he had done that, even if he had not said the words—allowing her to believe that they shared a mutual desire for one another, that was unforgivable.

  And she never would forgive herself for believing even momentarily that he did want her. Hadn’t she known all along that he had been married to Eloise? Hadn’t she known that there were questions she should ask, doubts she should have? But she had wilfully ignored the inner voice that had been trying to protect her.

  Whenever she had asked Max about Eloise he had answered that his marriage to her sister had been ‘different.’

  But it hadn’t. He had married them both for exactly the same reason. He had married them because he believed that marriage within their family would help him to gain the acceptance of the islanders and protect their mineral rights. As a person she meant nothing to him. She was simply a means to an end.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ‘SO YOU are not going to watch the sled race, then?’ Ariadne kneaded the dough on which she was working with a fierce pummelling motion that matched the ferocity of her expression.

  ‘No,’ Ionanthe confirmed.

  ‘Hah—I always said that you had your grandfather’s stubborn pride, and look what that got him! So you and the Prince have had a few sharp words? That’s no reason for you to be sitting here in my kitchen sulking.’

  ‘I know you mean well, Ariadne, but you don’t understand.’

  Ariadne gave a cross snort.

  ‘I understand well enough that our good Prince deserves better than a sulking wife—especially when anyone can see how much he thinks of you.’

  Ionanthe shook her head grimly. ‘He married me because of who I am, Ariadne…’

  ‘Well, I dare say he did. A man would be a fool not to look about him for a wife who can bring some benefit to a marriage. But you can’t tell me that those soft looks he keeps giving you when he doesn’t think anyone else is looking don’t mean anything, because they do. Look at the way he went out and got you that Christmas tree. It’s as plain as plain can be how much he wants to please you, and a man doesn’t do that for no reason. I’ll tell you now that your father would have had something to say if your mother had behaved like you’re doing—showing him up in front of everyone instead of supporting him. I thought our Prince had chosen himself a good wife in you, but now I’m beginning to think I was wrong. You aren’t just his wife, and he isn’t just your husband. He’s our Prince and you are our Princess. That means a lot to folk like us—even if it doesn’t to you.’

  Ionanthe flinched under the lash of Ariadne’s outspoken criticism. The old lady saw things in black and white, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t an element of truth in what she was saying.

  ‘Quarrel all you want with him in the privacy of your bedroom,’ Ariadne continued bluntly. ‘There you and him can be just like everyone else. But don’t you go forgetting that he’s our Prince and you’re his wife. The people have expectations of you.’

  Ionanthe gave in. ‘What is it you’re trying to say, Ariadne?’

  ‘I’m saying that your place isn’t here in this kitchen, sulking like a child—those days are gone. You should be up on that mountainside, showing yourself as our Princess. It’s what the people
expect, even if His Highness himself doesn’t.’

  Ariadne had a point. Her people wouldn’t understand why she wasn’t there. Her absence would hurt them, and she had neither the wish nor the right to do that.

  She looked at her watch, and as though Ariadne had read her mind the cook told her, ‘You’ve still got time. Tomas won’t start the race without you being there.’

  Ionanthe gave her a grim look, recognising that she had been manipulated and outmanoeuvred.

  It was crisp and fresh on the snowy ridge above the steep slope down which the home-made sleds would race. In his teens Max had been a keen winter sportsman, so he was no stranger to the cold and the snow. No stranger to that, but a stranger here nonetheless. An outsider, a man obliged to stand alone, without the woman he loved. Instinctively he looked towards the castle. Only he knew how alone he felt, and how painful that feeling was. How much he wished things were different and he could be free to give all his time and energy to showing Ionanthe how much he loved her.

  Ionanthe spotted Max immediately, in a group of men clustered together at the starting point.

  ‘It was lucky I had your father’s ski suit stored away,’ Ariadne had told Ionanthe earlier. ‘The Prince is taller than your father, though.’

  Her father’s old black racing suit now outlined the breadth of Max’s shoulders. Ionanthe knew that there hadn’t been a single heart’s breath of a second when she had looked at the men from a distance and not known exactly which one he was long before she’d recognised the suit.

  She started to walk faster as she climbed the last few yards of the incline.

  Those planning to take part in the race had already claimed their sleds from the waiting pile, and the children were watching excitedly as their fathers and elder brothers prepared themselves. The race should have started already, and the children were getting impatient.

  One father was smiling at the baby held tight in its mother’s arms. An unfamiliar feeling tugged at Ionanthe’s heart. The father looked so proud, the mother so lovingly indulgent. It was a matter of great pride and respect to these people that the head of the family showed his bravery and skill on an occasion like this one.

  Something made her lift her head and look again to where Max was standing. When she saw he was looking back at her, that he must have been watching her, her heart rolled over inside her chest as fiercely as though it was about to start an avalanche.

  She loved him so much.

  Her breath made small puffs of white vapour on the cold air as she climbed.

  She had almost reached him when a sudden anxious cry went up, and a small boy—no more than five or six years old, Ionanthe guessed, who must have been sitting on his father’s sled—suddenly somehow dislodged the sled, which began to rush down the mountainside with him clinging to it.

  The course was fast and dangerous, and for that reason the race was forbidden to children. A wave of horror gripped them all for a split second, and then, before anyone else could react, Max dropped down onto his sled and kicked off in pursuit of the little boy.

  Ionanthe had watched the race many times, and always admired the skill of the contestants, but never with her heart in her mouth like this, or her partisanship for one man’s skill so strong.

  Max steered the sled more skilfully than she had ever seen anyone do, Ionanthe acknowledged as she joined in the concerted gasp the onlookers gave as he raced downhill in pursuit of the child. The boy was clinging precariously to his own sled, heading right for the darkly dangerous outcrop of rocks that lay outside the formal lines of the run.

  Max would never catch the boy in time, and he too would end up crashing into the rocks. Ionanthe felt sick with dread for them both. What woman watching the man she loved risk his life in such a fashion would not feel as she did now? Her heart leapt into her throat as somehow Max expertly spun his sled sideways across the snow.

  He was going to try to cut off the other sled—put himself between it and the rocks. He would never be able to do it—and if he did then the extra weight of the little boy would take Max crashing right into them, the child’s life spared at the cost of his own.

  ‘No!’ Her denial was torn from her lungs on an agonised cry, and then, just when she feared the worst, somehow Max managed to intercept the other sled and turn it so that it was running alongside his own.

  The rocks were so dreadfully close, and getting closer. Max was reaching for the little boy, pulling him off his sled and into his arms, then rolling off his own sled so that he became a human snowball.

  Other men were racing down the hill towards them. Ionanthe wanted not to have to watch, not to have to see Max’s beautiful body lying still and unmoving in the snow. But she couldn’t not look—just as she couldn’t stop herself from following the men’s headlong flight down the steep slope, falling herself a couple of times, only to pick herself up and then wade knee-deep through the snow in her desperation to get to Max.

  Incredibly, when she did get there, when she flung herself down in the snow next to his inert body, Ionanthe realised that she was in fact the first to reach him.

  Whilst her tears fell unheeded on his snow-frosted face and eyelashes, the small boy he was still holding wriggled out of his grip, wide-eyed and unbelievably unharmed, to be snatched up in the arms of his father who had reached them within seconds of Ionanthe.

  A firm strong hand—Max’s hand—grasped Ionanthe’s and held it. Max’s eyes opened and he smiled at her. The voices of the men gathering round them faded as Ioanthe clung to Max’s hand, Max’s gaze. She was only able to say tremulously, ‘You’re alive. I thought…’ The weight of what she had thought brought fresh tears.

  Max lifted his free hand, the one that wasn’t holding hers, and brushed them away, telling her tenderly, ‘You mustn’t cry. Your teardrops will freeze.’

  ‘I thought you were going to be killed.’

  ‘I couldn’t let that happen,’ Max told her. ‘Not when I hadn’t told you or shown you how important you are to me—how much I love you and value you. How much I respect you, and how much I can’t bear the thought of my life without you. How much hearing you praise the work of Veritas—work which is so important to me and whose importance I haven’t been able to share with anyone since my parents died—blew me away with pride and delight. We haven’t known each other very long, Ionanthe, but I can tell you honestly that being with you has been like finding the true heart of my life, its true purpose and its true meaning.’

  ‘Oh, Max…’

  As she leaned towards him Max cupped her face and lifted himself up so that he could kiss her.

  ‘No—you mustn’t,’ Ionanthe protested. ‘You could be injured. You mustn’t move.’

  ‘I won’t move—if you stay with me.’ His voice grew strong as he added, ‘Stay with me, Ionanthe. Stay with me for the rest of our lives and help me to become worthy of the values and hopes we share.’

  There was no time for her to do more than nod her head, because the village doctor had arrived, quickly pronouncing that Max had had a remarkable escape and hadn’t broken anything, but that he was likely to be badly bruised.

  The father and the grandfather of the child whose life Max had saved had, of course, to shake his hand and thank him, and then all the men were hoisting him up on their shoulders for a triumphant journey back to the castle. Ionanthe joined the women and children following in their footsteps.

  Surely there could be no frustration as tormenting as that which kept the one you loved at your side but out of the intimate reach you both craved? Ionanthe thought ruefully, as she and Max played their roles in the great hall at the party around the Christmas tree.

  They hadn’t even been able to snatch a few precious minutes alone together after their return from the accident, such had been the eager demand of her people to thank Max for his bravery.

  Now the youngest children were snuggling sleepily in the arms of mothers and fathers as the final carol came to an end and the last cup of spice
d wine was drunk.

  A sweet, sharp thrill of excitement mingled with apprehension zinged through Ionanthe when at last they were free to leave—circumspectly saying their goodnights, and even more circumspectly walking down the long stone corridor together in silence. But what if she had misunderstood Max earlier? What if he had not meant those oh-so-sweet words he had said, which had completely taken away the sting of her earlier pain?

  Ionanthe’s heart started to beat faster. They had reached their room. Max put his hand on the door handle and looked down at her.

  ‘It’s gone midnight. That means that I can give you my gift.’

  He’d got her a Christmas present? Ionanthe felt guilty. ‘I haven’t got anything for you—’ she began.

  Max shook his head and told her softly, ‘Oh, yes, you have.’

  They were inside the room, private and shadowed, warmed by the fire in the hearth and even more by their love.

  As Max took her in his arms, Ionanthe protested, ‘You’re going to be so dreadfully bruised and sore.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Max agreed. ‘But not tonight.’

  And then he was kissing her, fiercely and hungrily and demandingly, and she was kissing him back with all the sweetness of her love and all the heat of her desire. And nothing, but nothing mattered other than that they were together.

  Still holding her, Max reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and removed an envelope, which he handed to her.

  ‘What is it?’ Ionanthe asked uncertainly. It looked bulky and formal, and for some reason the sight of it had made her heart plummet.

  ‘It’s your Christmas present,’ Max told her. ‘Open it and see.’

  Reluctantly Ionanthe detached herself from him and opened the envelope, hesitating a little before she removed the folded sheets of papers inside it.

  That it was some kind of legal document she could see immediately, but it took her several minutes and three attempts to read the first page before what exactly it contained could sink in.