Christmas Nights. Penny Jordan

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