Bride to a Brigand Read online

  In spite of the welcome he had received, when the luncheon ended, Ileana realised that he was impatient to leave.

  He managed to stave off the questions that were being put to him and which succeeded each other so quickly that Ileana thought it would be impossible for them ever to get away.

  And yet by some personal magic Prince Vladilas brought the luncheon to a close and they moved to where the carriage was waiting outside in the Market Place.

  When they had said goodbye to the Prime Minister and were driving towards the Palace, Ileana thought it was characteristic that the good wishes of the populace could only be expressed in flowers.

  It seemed as if everybody waiting in the Market Place had flowers in their hands.

  They threw them into the carriage as it moved slowly towards the gold-tipped gates, leading into the garden surrounding the beautiful building that had been erected on a natural hill overlooking the City two centuries earlier.

  The building outside was as beautiful and as romantic as the interior.

  The domes and spires were embellished with gold and seemed to reflect the sunlight and Ileana thought, although he did not say anything, that Prince Vladilas looked at them appreciatively.

  At last they drew up outside the impressive porticoed entrance where the Palace servants in their white and gold livery were waiting for them, as were the Counsellors of State and the Gentlemen-in-Waiting.

  Again there were congratulations and Ileana realised that they accepted Prince Vladilas with an enthusiasm they would not have accorded to any foreign Prince.

  Then at last they were alone in the beautiful drawing room opening into the garden where her mother had always sat, and which was known as ‘The Queen’s Room’.

  It was then that Ileana felt she must ask again the question she had asked immediately after her husband had introduced himself to their people.

  “Why did you not tell me? Why did you think it was clever to deceive me?”

  “I did not deceive you,” Prince Vladilas replied. “You merely assumed that I was what I appeared to be and there was nothing wrong in that. I have been a brigand and a robber and, as I have already explained, at times rather a special kind of thief. And yet it is a life which I think has given me an insight into the problems that await me here.”

  “And when you have solved them all you will obviously be very bored,” Ileana exclaimed.

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “Perhaps! That is a risk I have to take, but I suppose every man has to settle down sometime in his life.”

  There was a twist to his lips that made Ileana think he was being sarcastic and she said,

  “I suppose if you find it intolerable, you can always go back to your mountains.”

  “Are you trying to tempt me into doing so already?” Prince Vladilas asked in an amused voice. “I think I might first find out how my men acclimatise themselves to Zokāla and, of course, my horses.”

  Because she could not help it, Ileana’s eyes brightened as she thought of the Arab mares and stallions she had seen across the river last night.

  Impulsively she cried,

  “You know I want to ride your Arab horses! When may I do so?”

  “Tomorrow, if you wish,” he replied. “I suppose you have a respectable habit to wear in which to ride?”

  If he had meant to be deliberately provocative, he certainly succeeded.

  Ileana flushed and her eyes glinted at him as she retorted,

  “I will not be dictated to as to what I should or should not wear! It is impossible to school an unbroken horse while I am wearing a skirt!”

  “Then I will school them for you,” Prince Vladilas said calmly. “Let me make this quite clear, Ileana, you will never again, as long as you are my wife, wear trousers!”

  “In which case, the sooner you go back to the mountains, the better! Or perhaps I can dispose of you in some other way!”

  She spoke impulsively and then wondered if she had gone too far.

  Instead the Prince merely threw back his head and laughed.

  “I thought we would not go far before once again I had to impress upon you the fact that I always get my own way! If I find you disobeying my rules, then you will undoubtedly regret it!”

  “Are you still contemplating beating me?” Ileana asked provocatively. “Is it to be a private or a public flogging?”

  “That all depends. It would certainly prove a salutary lesson to other offenders if the wife of the Ruler was seen to be punished in the Market Place!”

  She was sure he was speaking jokingly and yet she had the uncomfortable feeling that he would not hesitate to punish her if she really offended against what he called his ‘rules’.

  Then she gave a little stamp of her foot.

  “You are getting everything your own way, are you not? You have got my people eating out of your hand and all those stupid old politicians think you are saving their faces and that their inefficiency will be covered up and forgotten.”

  “I am delighted to know you recognise how inefficient they are,” Prince Vladilas said. “It is criminal the way they have allowed the country to sink into a complacency that has risked, if not the lives, at least the independence of every Zokālan.”

  He spoke scathingly, and then, as Ileana did not reply, he said,

  “You yourself must bear a great deal of the blame. You have imagination and an unusual amount of intelligence for a woman, but you could not see what was staring you in the face, that Hungary, Rumania or Serbia could gobble you up and hardly lose one soldier in the process.”

  Because she recognised that he was right, it made Ileana all the angrier.

  “That is your story and you have made everybody believe it,” she fumed, “but personally, I think you have invented it to suit your own ends. I have always found our neighbours to be charming and full of goodwill towards us and, as I have had proposals of marriage from the Royal Families of most of them, I just do not believe your bogus story, which you have thought up to frighten us.”

  “Now you are being childish!” Prince Vladilas said. “I am not going to argue with you any further because you are only trying to excuse what is inexcusable.”

  “I can see you are very pleased with yourself,” Ileana remarked, “and so I concede there is nothing to be gained by arguing. But quite frankly I do not believe that we need saving as you so volubly insist. Of course your theory has been an excellent step up into the place you wanted for yourself!”

  “Of course,” the Prince agreed mildly, “and who could put it more delicately and with more diplomacy than you, my dear?”

  The way he spoke annoyed Ileana more than ever.

  “What you are trying to do,” she said, “is to turn this country into an arsenal of weapons of destruction. We are very happy as we are and always have been, tending our crops with which we can feed ourselves, practising a large number of crafts that have kept the women busy, and breeding, however clever you may think you have been with your Arab strain, the best horses in the whole of Europe!”

  “Horses! Of course that is the operative word!” the Prince exclaimed. “Horses have obsessed you until you can see nothing else. How long does a horse last in a modern battle where gunshot brings them to their knees, however fast they can gallop?”

  His voice was serious as he went on,

  “If you had ever seen the suffering of the horses in the battlefield, as I have, you would know that sooner or later somebody has to invent a vehicle to take the place of horses, and which will not scream in agony when it is hit by bullets or the rider is blown up by explosive shells from a gun.”

  He spoke so intensely that Ileana looked at him in astonishment.

  “What are you saying?” she asked.

  “I believe that in the future, though it may be a long way ahead,” he replied, “human beings, when they wish to kill each other, will do so without involving animals who do not understand.”

  Because there was a note in h
is voice when he spoke of the suffering of the horses, which Ileana had not heard before, she felt her anger slipping away.

  No man could be wholly bad who loved horses to the point where he could speak of their being wounded or killed in a manner that told her how much he suffered with them.

  Impulsively she moved closer to him as she said,

  “I am sure you are right, even though it sounds impossible. But it is something I would like to help you with.”

  He looked at her and the frown that had been between his eyes vanished.

  “Why not?” he asked. “Perhaps together we can invent something sensational.”

  “I would like that.”

  “For the moment,” the Prince said, “my horses are there for you to tell me if they are as good as or better than yours.”

  “I shall never admit that,” Ileana replied, “and I will match Satan against any horse you produce.”

  She realised that Prince Vladilas raised his eyebrows as she explained,

  “Satan is my stallion and I think it would be impossible for anybody to find a faster horse.”

  “That is certainly a challenge – in addition to all the other challenges you offer me.”

  She wondered what he meant by that, but did not like to ask him.

  She looked up at him and Ileana saw that his eyes were on her unbound hair.

  Again impulsively, as if she could not help it, she asked,

  “Are you comparing me to your Greek women? I know by the way you spoke of your mother that you thought they could not be equalled by the women of any other country.”

  “That is true,” the Prince replied, “with one exception.”

  Because of the way he spoke, which was a little dryly, Ileana enquired quite ingenuously,

  “Which is that?”

  “Yours!”

  She looked at him in astonishment.

  Then she asked,

  “Are you really paying me a compliment?”

  “I think actually, I am stating a fact,” he replied. “You are very beautiful, Ileana, as you must be aware, but in a different way from the Greek women who are dark and, like my mother, most of them are very soft, sweet and feminine.”

  Ileana stiffened.

  He was speaking the very words that described the Greek girl who had looked after her last night and who she was sure meant something very special to him.

  “I am sorry if I disappoint you,” she said lightly, “but of course, as you married me to make sure of the throne of Zokāla, you really had no choice!”

  “That is not quite true,” the Prince replied, “but we are married, Ileana, and I think we ought to be intelligent about it.”

  “I am interested to know what you mean.”

  “Shall I explain?”

  As he spoke, she found herself thinking of how last night, when she had threatened him with the knife, he had flung her back on the bed and fallen on top of her.

  She felt almost as if she could feel again the weight of his body, the ease with which he had rendered her completely helpless and the pain in her wrist when he had forced her to drop the knife onto the floor.

  Because the memory of it perturbed her, her eyes dropped before his and she looked away from him to say sharply,

  “You have explained very eloquently who you are, but that does not change my feelings towards you. As I told you last night, I hate you! I will play the part of your wife in public, because it is for the good of my countrymen, but if you come near me when we are alone, I swear I shall find some way of killing you!”

  There was a little pause as her voice seemed to vibrate in the beautiful room.

  Then Prince Vladilas remarked again with that dry note in his voice,

  “Now we know exactly where we stand!”

  “Exactly!” Ileana agreed. “So be careful! Another time I shall not be so foolish as to be caught by the trick you played on me last night!”

  “It is most gracious of you to warn me,” he replied.

  She gave a little stamp of her foot and walked away from him and at that moment the door opened.

  “The Prime Minister, Your Royal Highness,” the butler’s voice announced, “the Lord Chamberlain and His Grace the Archbishop.”

  To Ileana’s surprise the three men came slowly into the room.

  As the door closed quietly behind them, the Prime Minister said to Ileana,

  “It is my sad and very painful duty to inform Your Royal Highness that His Majesty King Milko is dead!”

  “Dead!” Ileana repeated.

  She had been meaning ever since arriving back at the Palace to go up to her father’s room, but she had been beguiled into arguing, or rather fighting with Prince Vladilas.

  Anyway, she had not expected there to be any recovery from the coma in which her father had lain unconscious for the last six months.

  Now she clasped her fingers together, knowing that to hear that he was actually no longer breathing was a shock, even though it had been inevitable.

  She was aware that the Prince had moved to stand beside her.

  Then the Prime Minister said in a different tone of voice,

  “The King is dead! Long live the King and Queen!”

  As he spoke he went down on one knee before them.

  Chapter Six

  The funeral was over and Ileana had to admire the way it had been arranged.

  To cope with the arrival of the distinguished visitors and innumerable relatives everything had been perfectly organised by Vladilas.

  She could see his hand in everything, from the funeral cortege, which was extremely impressive, to the order of precedence the Kings and Princes from other countries were received and accommodated.

  Every relative, no matter whether he was important or unimportant, was welcomed and looked after.

  She knew, although she disliked admitting it, that she would have found it a very difficult task to carry out herself and undoubtedly the Prime Minister and other members of the Cabinet would have made a mess of it.

  The only people who were at all discomfited were the elderly Generals who found themselves being given orders instead of giving them and were inevitably envious of the new weapons and the strange-looking soldiers who manned them.

  There were an enormous number of people to be catered for in the Palace, but by a miracle the chefs, obviously having a great deal of extra help, managed it.

  Although it was an undoubtedly gloomy occasion, there was laughter at the dinner table besides a lot of intelligent conversation.

  Sitting at the other end of the large table from Vladilas, who had taken the place her father used to occupy, Ileana even while she told herself she hated him had to admit he made a very handsome and resplendent King.

  Dressed in the uniform of the Commander-in-Chief of the Zokālan Army, he made a brilliant patch of colour among the sombre black of the mourners.

  Ileana, on the other hand, detested the dark veil that she had to wear over her face and her gown, which she thought made her look like a raven.

  Actually it was a perfect frame for the translucence of her skin and accentuated the red-gold of her hair.

  What was more, the green of her eyes seemed to gleam like emeralds and more than one Prince from the neighbouring countries looked at her reproachfully because she had refused his offer of marriage.

  She was in The Queen’s Room alone the day after the funeral, having already said goodbye to a number of guests, when the door opened and Prince Tomilav came in.

  She smiled and put out her hand saying,

  “I am so glad you were sent to represent your country and not some disagreeable Minister like the one from Hungary!”

  Prince Tomilav knew she was referring to the Hungarian who had made it obvious that his interest was not in mourning King Milko, but in inspecting the guns and new weapons of war that Vladilas had put very prominently on display.

  The gun carriage, which had carried the King’s coffin to the Cathedral, was diffe
rent from any other gun carriage to be seen in the Northern part of the Balkans and, to make certain that their readiness for war was apparent, there was a display of troops and their weapons on the Parade Ground.

  “You know as well as I do,” Prince Tomilav said as he joined Ileana in the window, “that my country would never go to war with yours any more than I would fight you!”

  That was true, Ileana knew and, because she realised from the way he had looked at her yesterday and last night, that he was still very much in love with her, she said,

  “I hope, Tomilav, you will always be my friend.”

  “I have no wish to be your friend,” he replied. “I love you, Ileana, as I shall never love anybody else. If only you had accepted me, I know we would have been very happy.”

  Ileana gave a little sigh.

  She was wondering whether in fact she would rather have married Tomilav than the brigand, who had forced her into marriage without her having a chance of refusing him.

  Because she felt that in some way she was scoring over Vladilas by being nice to Tomilav, she said softly,

  “It is too late now and there is nothing we can do – about it.”

  She saw the light come into his eyes from the way she spoke and he put out his hand to take hers saying,

  “I love you! I love you until I cannot sleep for thinking about you and when I heard that you were married, I wanted to shoot myself!”

  “No! No!” Ileana exclaimed. “You must not talk like that. I married Vladilas in order to save Zokāla since we were in danger of being overrun by Hungary. The sight of all these weapons will certainly deter them.”

  “You do not love him?” Prince Tomilav asked in a low voice. “You swear that is true?”

  “I hate him!” Ileana answered. “But now he is my husband and the King and there is no escape.”

  “My darling, if only I could take you away and make you happy.”

  He kissed her hand passionately with hot burning kisses.

  Then, as she looked at him with a warmth in her eyes she had never shown him before, he said,

  “If you ever want me, you know I will come to you – from the ends of the earth, if necessary! You fill my life, Ileana, and it will be impossible for me ever to love anybody else.”