Bride to a Brigand Read online

  She was sure it was now well past the middle of the night and she wondered if she had awoken to the sound of a closing door and if it had been the King returning to his own room from the valley.

  She had left one candle alight in the sitting room that lay between their rooms and she could see the glimmer of it under the door.

  It was the only light in the darkness and as she waited she knew that if it was the King he had not thought to come and tell her he was back.

  ‘Why should he do so?’ she asked herself. ‘He has never been near me ever since we married!’

  She had to admit that this was not surprising, considering the way she had behaved on their wedding night when she had threatened him with his own knife.

  And yet, when she thought of it, she could still feel the heaviness of his body on hers and the violence of his fingers clasping her wrist.

  Even more insistent was the memory of his kisses and the pain she had felt when his mouth had taken possession of hers.

  Then there had followed that strange sensation which she could not describe and yet was still so vivid that she could feel it happening again.

  When he had released her, he had walked away without looking back and had avoided her all that day and evening.

  ‘I suppose he hates me as much as I hate him!’ Ileana thought.

  Somehow it was a very dismal idea and she wondered if she could suggest to him that they call a truce and work together for the good of Zokāla.

  He might with his weapons have frightened off their immediate enemies, but there would be others and inevitable problems of one sort or another in which she was sure two brains would be better than one.

  As she wondered how she could persuade him that she was necessary, she clearly heard a strange noise.

  At first it sounded like feet shuffling about, then she knew it came from overhead and it seemed to intensify.

  She sat up in bed to listen and, as she did so, she was almost certain that what she was hearing was people, perhaps walking on tiptoe or else very softly, but certainly moving about in the turret above her bedroom.

  Suddenly she had visions of one of the neighbouring countries of Zokāla invading them, perhaps Rumania or Hungary.

  As she thought of it, she remembered that Vladilas had not brought any guns with him to the Mispa Valley, but had left them behind where they had been on display during the funeral.

  It would be a clever move for an enemy to come to Mispa where nobody would expect one and to occupy the valley.

  If that was what the enemy did, they could, in the same way Vladilas had invaded the Bela Valley, be ensconced with men and guns before the rest of Zokāla was aware of what had happened.

  The noise overhead seemed to increase and Ileana thought she might be the only person who knew the danger of what was happening.

  She jumped out of bed and, without thinking she was clad only in a diaphanous nightgown, moved swiftly across the room towards the sitting room and opened the door.

  The candle was guttering low, but by its light it was easy for her to run to the opposite side of the room and open the door into Vladilas’s bedroom.

  Then, as she did so, she wondered what she would do if he was not there and how she would be able to inform him of what was going on in the turret.

  But, as she entered the room, she saw that he was sitting up in bed with two lighted candles beside him reading some papers.

  He looked up as she appeared and stared at her in astonishment.

  Because she was frightened, she stammered incoherently,

  “There are – people – I am sure they are – enemies, they are climbing up into the turret – over my room – I can hear them moving – it sounds as if there are a great number of them!”

  For a moment Vladilas just went on looking at her.

  Then he said,

  “I am sorry you have been disturbed. It is not people you are hearing in the turret, but bats.”

  As he finished the sentence, Ileana gave a shrill scream and running towards him, flung herself against him.

  “Save me!” she cried. “I-I cannot bear bats! They are terrifying! If – they get – caught in my hair – they can never get – free!”

  Her words seemed to fall over themselves and were almost incoherent as she hid her face against his shoulder.

  His arms went round her and she went on,

  “Suppose they come – through the – ceiling? I cannot – bear it! They are – horrid – like little devils – and they have – hooks on their wings!”

  “It’s all right,” Vladilas said in his deep voice. “I will not let them hurt you.”

  “They – terrify me!” Ileana whispered.

  His arms tightened.

  “I promise you will be safe.”

  “I have – always been – frightened of – bats.”

  “I can understand that,” he replied quietly. “At the same time it is unlike you to be afraid of anything and I have always admired you for your bravery.”

  As he spoke quietly and kindly, for some reason she could not understand Ileana felt the tears come into her eyes.

  “I-I am – not brave!” she stuttered. “I am – frightened of – bats. I am frightened of – being alone – and I am – frightened when you are – angry!”

  As she spoke, she felt the tears running down her cheeks.

  Then suddenly she was shaking with a tempest of tears and weeping uncontrollably.

  It was a culmination of the misery she had been feeling at being alone in The Castle, her fear of Vladilas’s anger and his intention in the future to ignore her, except for when they appeared together in public.

  She cried as a child might, forgetting where she was and who she clung to, only swept away by her own misery.

  Vladilas held her very closely to him, moving her gently so that, without her realising it, she lay beside him in the bed and he pulled the sheet over them both.

  Then stroking her long hair with one hand he said gently,

  “It is all right. There is nothing to make you afraid and nothing to make you unhappy.”

  “But – I am alone – terribly alone!” Ileana sobbed. “You have Thelia and I know you – love her – but I have nobody to love me – and I cannot manage by – myself.”

  It was a confession she had never made before.

  She heard the despair in her own voice and thought she no longer had any pride and it did not matter if he knew the truth.

  “My poor unhappy little wife,” Vladilas sighed softly. “I see there is a lot of explaining to be done. Stop crying and let me sweep away all the untrue things you are thinking. Tomorrow I will have the bats cleared from the turret and the place wired so that they can never return.”

  The calm way he spoke and the comfort of his arms around her made Ileana’s tears abate a little.

  She still kept her face hidden knowing she had made his silk nightshirt damp with the tempestuous way she had been crying.

  But somehow the gentleness of his hand on her hair was very reassuring and she knew while she was in his arms that the bats could not hurt her.

  She had always been terrified of bats ever since her Nanny told her a story of a bat being caught in a woman’s hair and it fluttered and struggled until it became so entangled that the only way it could be freed was by cutting away all her hair.

  Because of this story Ileana had always been frightened even to see a bat flying overhead when dusk came or to hear their shrill whistle in the darkness.

  Now in a very small voice she asked,

  “Can you really – sweep them – away so that they – will not – come back?”

  “I promise you they will all be removed tomorrow.”

  “But – I cannot – go back to that – room tonight!”

  “No, of course not!” he agreed. “We will change rooms or you can stay here – with me.”

  It flashed through her mind that she could only feel safe when he was there, but she did not sp
eak and after a moment he went on,

  “I am sorry I could not come back in time for dinner tonight, but there was an accident to one of the men as he was unloading a wagon. His leg was very badly gashed and because we thought it was broken, I had to fetch a doctor from the city to attend him.”

  He paused before he added,

  “I can only blame myself for not having brought a doctor with me in the first place. I had actually arranged for one to arrive as soon as we had built a hut which could be used, if necessary, as a hospital.”

  Ileana still did not speak and after a moment he continued,

  “When that was done and I had found somebody to look after his wife and family for the night, it was too late to come back to dine with you. I therefore accepted something to eat from one of the women who had travelled with me when I first arrived and who is an excellent cook.”

  He smiled.

  “You will understand,Ileana, that as I had eaten nothing since breakfast, I was in fact very hungry.”

  Ileana was listening, but she had not raised her head from his shoulder.

  Now she felt him draw her a little closer to him and he said,

  “I did not stay with Thelia, because she was with her husband.”

  “Her – husband!”

  Ileana was not certain whether she said the words aloud or merely murmured them in her mind.

  “Thelia is married to one of my most trusted Lieutenants who will be in charge of the Mispa Valley,” Vladilas explained. “They were both very anxious to come here and build their own house, because Thelia is expecting a baby.”

  Ileana drew in her breath.

  “But – she loves you!”

  “I think she has a kind of hero worship for me,” Vladilas replied. “I have known her ever since she was a child. Her family are Greek and they were friends of my mother’s.”

  “She is – very beautiful,” Ileana murmured, “and – I thought you – loved her.”

  “She is indeed very beautiful,” Vladilas agreed, “and I might perhaps have fallen in love with her two years ago when she was eighteen, but I was already very much in love with somebody else.”

  Ileana stiffened.

  “So you were – in love!” she murmured.

  “Yes, I was in love and I found it difficult to find any other woman as beautiful or in fact to think of anybody else.”

  There was a short silence before he went on,

  “Then when I saw for the second time the woman I loved six months ago, I knew she was everything I admired and wanted in my wife.”

  Ileana drew in her breath.

  Now she would definitely have moved away from Vladilas, but his arms imprisoned her.

  ‘Why – did you not – marry her?” she demanded.

  She knew as she spoke that it was impossible to hide a note of despair in her voice.

  “I did!” Vladilas said quietly.

  For a moment Ileana felt she could not have heard him aright and she raised her head to look up at him.

  “Did you say – you – m-married her?”

  “I married her!”

  “B-but – you said you had fallen in love – two years ago!”

  “That was when I first saw you. I came to Zokāla to spy out the land, to see what had happened to my father’s castle and to discover if the country to which I really belonged was as attractive as it had always sounded.”

  “Then what – happened?”

  “I saw a girl who was so beautiful, so exquisite, that I felt she could not be real, but must have stepped down from the snow-covered mountains!”

  Ileana made an inarticulate little sound and once again her face was against him as he continued,

  “You were riding superbly with an expertise that I admired, but I knew it was not what you did, but what you were that mattered.”

  “Why did I not – know you were – there?”

  “Why should you?” Vladilas replied. “I was just an ordinary traveller passing through the country, but inquisitive enough to learn a great deal from the people I talked to about their Princess.”

  “But – you did not try to – meet me?”

  “I was not quite certain how your father would receive me and I had always resented the way he had driven my father into exile.”

  “But – after you left, you – thought about me?”

  “I found it impossible to think of anything else,” Vladilas answered. “Then after my father’s death and, when I heard that the King was in a coma, I came back, having visited Austria and Hungary and learnt their intentions with regard to Zokāla.”

  “What happened after – that?”

  “I knew when I saw you,” he said quietly, “that I would never rest until you belonged to me!”

  Ileana raised her head again.

  “You – wanted me?”

  “Shall I tell you how much?” he asked very quietly.

  Then, as he looked down at her tear-streaked face, her long wet eyelashes and her lips trembling with the emotions she had passed through, he pulled her against him and his mouth came down on hers.

  He kissed her possessively, determinedly, and at the same time with a tenderness he had never shown before.

  Ileana knew this was what she had been wanting and longing for, even though she was not aware of it.

  Incredibly the sensations he aroused in her were a rapture that swept through her, rising through her breasts into her throat, then to her lips.

  It was a strange ecstasy that was like nothing she had ever imagined, but was part of herself and part of Vladilas as well.

  She could feel his heart beating against hers and she knew strangely, unexpectedly, that she loved him and had loved him for a long time.

  Although she had refused to admit it to herself, she had loved the mastery of him, the manner in which he had married her by force, even as he had lifted her by sheer strength from her horse onto his.

  It was what she admired in a man, wanted in her husband and only her pride and spirit of independence had made her fight against him.

  And yet, instinctively, she had known it was hopeless and because he wanted her, she was his.

  He kissed her until Ileana felt as if she was joined to him so completely and so absolutely that they were no longer two people but one.

  Then, as he seemed to draw her closer and still closer, she felt as if he was carrying her up to the very peaks of the mountains and beyond.

  Her whole body seemed to pulsate with the magnetism that came from him and yet was a part of her.

  Now his hand was touching her and his lips were becoming more insistent, more demanding, and yet she was not afraid.

  She felt as if he was asking something of her and she wanted to give it to him, even while she did not know what it was.

  As he kissed her and went on kissing her, she had the feeling that he drew both her heart and her soul from her body and yet he was asking more.

  Only when he raised his head did she say with a rapt note in her voice he had not heard before,

  “I love you – Oh, Vladilas – I – love you!”

  “As I love you, my precious darling!”

  As he turned round and laid her against the pillows so that he could look down at her, she was afraid that she might lose him and her arms went out towards him.

  “I-I love you!” she sighed again. “Please – don’t leave me.

  “Do you think that possible?”

  Then he was kissing her wildly, passionately, and she felt his lips on her neck, her shoulders, her breasts, arousing new feelings she did not even know existed.

  Now they were no longer touching the peaks of the mountains but the stars above them, and, as Vladilas drew her closer still, Ileana knew that they were no longer human but one with the Gods.

  *

  A long time later when the candles beside the bed were guttering low Ileana stirred in Vladilas’s arms and asked,

  “Do you – still love me?”

  “My
precious,” he replied, “that is the question I should be asking you.”

  “I-I did not – know that love could be so – wonderful – so glorious!” she whispered.

  “I made you happy? I did not hurt you?”

  “It was – perfect!”

  “And you are no longer frightened of me?”

  “I should be very – very frightened if you did not – love me – and left me alone – as you did today.”

  “I will never do that.”

  “After you were – angry with me – because I was with – Tomilav – you did not speak to me – or look at me.”

  “If I had, I would have swept you into my arms and not only kissed you, but made you mine.”

  “I know now that it would have been – very marvellous – but I did not understand.”

  “What did you not understand?”

  “That making love is so – thrilling – so glorious, like the sunshine – the flowers and – climbing to the top of the – mountains!”

  “My darling that is what I want you to feel.”

  “Did you – feel like – that?”

  “Loving you was the supreme moment of my life.”

  “Oh, Vladilas – I love you!”

  “And I love you, my beautiful wife! But Prince Tomilav was fortunate to leave the Palace without having his nose broken!”

  “I was only going to let him – kiss my cheek!”

  Vladilas arms encircled her like bars of steel.

  “Let me make this clear, my adorable one,” he insisted. “I am a brigand and if any man touches you, except respectfully, I swear I will murder him – and then beat you!”

  Ileana gave a little gurgle of laughter.

  “It is exciting to think I can make you jealous when I have been so desperately jealous of Thelia – and I expected, because I thought you did not love me, that there would be dozens of Thelias in the future to make me – unhappy.”

  “I will not even know another woman exists unless you cease to love me,” Vladilas replied. “I know now you are what I always wanted, but thought I should never find.”

  There was silence for a moment.

  Then Ileana said,

  “I cannot understand quite why you – love me when whatever you may say I am not the – soft – gentle – obedient woman you – want as your – wife.”