Crowned with Love Page 14
Giona felt herself quiver because he was touching her and because his arms were around her.
There were so many things she wanted to say to him, but she felt as if her voice had died in her throat and it was impossible to find words to say what was in her heart.
“Today,” Miklōs said, still in that quiet voice, “you kissed me because you were so glad that we were no longer in danger. I would like to think that you kissed me for another reason.”
He felt her tremble, but she did not speak and after a moment he asked,
“Because you love me?”
She wanted to hide her face against him, but he prevented her from doing so. Instead he said,
“I will say it first – I love you, my darling! And the only way I can express my love is by kissing you.”
As he spoke, his lips came down on hers and without thinking, without really meaning to, she pressed herself closer to him and felt his arms tighten.
Then his lips, which were at first very tender and gentle, as if she was something infinitely precious and he was afraid of frightening her, became more intense and more demanding.
Now the sunlight was streaking through her body so vividly and so acutely that it was almost a pain as well as an indescribable pleasure.
He kissed her until she felt that the whole world was whirling around them and they were being carried up into the sky, until at last he raised his head to say in a voice that was curiously unsteady,
“I love you, my beautiful wife! Now tell me what you feel about me.”
“I – love – you.”
It was difficult to say the words, and they were only a whisper, but she saw his eyes light up as if they were on fire.
Then he was kissing her again, kissing her demandingly and fiercely as if he was afraid of losing her.
It was so perfect and so wonderful that she thought she must be dreaming and it could not be true.
How could she possibly in this Palace of all places, feel so happy?
“I-I love you – I love – you!” she cried when Miklōs released her.
He drew in his breath before he said,
“I feel as though I have loved you for a million years and you will never know how frightened I was that you would not love me.”
“When did you first love me?” she asked as she pressed herself close against him.
“I suppose really I fell in love with you when Otho told me about you and how young and innocent you were and at the same time so intelligent. I was also captivated by the pictures of you in the newspapers, although they were very bad sketches, my darling, and not half as beautiful as you are in reality!”
“So you – thought of me before we met in the railway – carriage?”
“It was because I thought about you,” Miklōs said, “that when I heard what my people intended, I knew that I could not let them destroy you. It was a crazy idea which I would never have sanctioned if I had had the slightest hint that that was what they planned.”
“So you saved me, as I saved you.”
“I knew when I talked to you in the train,” he said, “that you were everything that a Queen should be and I was almost tempted to give up fighting for my rightful place because I thought that, if you ruled over my people, they would be safe without me.”
“How could you have thought of anything so – terrifying as to – leave me with – him?”
Miklōs drew in his breath.
“I had no idea that he would treat you with anything but respect and propriety, even though I knew how bestial he was in his private life.”
He felt Giona give a shudder of horror and he asserted,
“Forget him! The only thing we have to think about at this moment, my darling, is ourselves, our happiness and our love!”
He accentuated the last word and Giona looked up at him as she said,
“I do love you – I love you as I always – wanted to love the man I was married to – but thought because I am Royal it would be – impossible. Mama said that to marry without love was the penalty we pay for our position, yet I prayed that I would be the – exception.”
“Your prayers have been answered,” Miklōs said, “for I shall love, adore and worship you for the rest of our lives. Will that be enough?”
“Only if we – live a million years together,” Giona answered him passionately. “Oh, Miklōs – I am so – happy!”
“That is what I want you to feel and I adore you, my sweet little glorious Queen.”
He held her close to him and she thought that he was going to kiss her again. But instead, he said in a very serious tone,
“I thought perhaps after I had talked to you and told you how much I loved you, you should rest and I should leave you alone. Is that what you want?”
Giona hid her face against his shoulder as she murmured in a voice that he could hardly hear,
“I-I want to be – with you.”
“You are sure of that? I told you last night, and it seems a long time ago, that perhaps we should first get to know each other as friends. I think now, my precious one, we have passed the stage of friendship. Or am I mistaken?”
“I-I want to be your – friend – I want to do things with you,” Giona said, “and I – also want you to love me – really love me.”
She knew that Miklōs’s heart was beating feverishly as hers was as she went on,
“You will think I am – very ignorant, but Mama did not tell me – exactly what – happens when a man and a woman – make love to each other – and, although it must be – horrible and obscene with somebody one does not – love, with you I know it will be – different.”
“Oh, my darling heart, are you sure of that?” Miklōs asked. “You are so very young and I am desperately afraid of frightening or shocking you.”
Giona shook her head.
“I don’t – think you could do that and – when you kiss me – I feel as if your kisses carry me into the sky and are – part of the sunshine – the stars and everything that is – beautiful – and I am sure that your love-making will be very much the same.”
Miklōs closed his eyes for a moment, as if he could hardly believe what he was hearing.
Then very gently he picked Giona up in his arms and carried her through the communicating door into her bedroom.
There were only two candles to light the room burning beside the beautiful gold bed.
He put her on her feet, very gently pulled off her negligée and then picked her up again and laid her down against the soft pillows.
Then, as she gazed up at him wide-eyed, her mystical eyes seeming to fill the Grecian oval of her face, he said,
“I worship you! There is no other word to describe what I feel. It is true, Giona, there have been women in my life while I have been waiting for you, but I have never felt about any of them as I feel now about you.”
Giona held onto him almost as if she was afraid that he might leave her and begged,
‘Tell me – what you – do feel.”
“I want to look after you and protect you,” Miklōs said, “not only from anything that might hurt or frighten you but also a little from myself. Love is not quiet and gentle here, like it is in England, but a force strong, irresistible and at times uncontrollable! I know that what I feel for you is greater than myself, greater than both of us. It comes from a Power that is omnipotent and we have no defence against it.”
She was looking at him wide-eyed and, as he gazed down at her, he said,
“If you want me to wait a little longer before I show you how much I love you, before I make you completely and absolutely mine, I will, because I have laid my heart and my life at your feet, obey you. But it will be very difficult not to let you realise how deep, strong and passionate my love for you already is.”
As he finished speaking, he raised himself up a little and Giona felt as if he was already leaving her, already going away and she would be all alone.
She lifted up her arms and put them aroun
d his neck.
“It is not a question of how long we have known each other, Miklōs,” she said, “it is that at the very moment you came near me in the dark, I could feel your vibrations reaching out towards me, as mine reached out to you. I knew then in a strange way not only that I could trust you, but somehow I – belonged to you, as I belong to you now. I love you – I love you! Please stay – with me and – tell me of your – love.”
As she finished speaking, something seemed to break in Miklōs.
He bent forward to take her fiercely into his arms and crush her against him.
Then he was kissing her with wild, passionate, demanding kisses that seemed to draw not only her heart from her body but also her soul, her very life and make it his.
And yet she was not afraid.
She could feel the fire burning in him and something leapt within her to meet it and the flames carried them wildly up into the sky.
It was impossible to think, but only to feel and to love.
*
A long time later, when the candles had burnt low, Miklōs said in a voice deep with emotion,
“My precious, my darling, my adorable little wife, do you still love me?”
Giona laughed and it was a very happy sound.
“How can you ask such a foolish question? Oh, Miklōs, I had no idea that – love was so wonderful – so perfect.”
He held her a little closer to him before she went on,
“I-I did not – disappoint you – or do anything that was wrong?”
“How could you think of anything so ridiculous, my lovely one?” he said. “I have never, and this is true, been so happy and like you I never knew that love could be so perfect, so utterly and completely supreme.”
Giona gave a little sigh.
“Now I understand all the things I have read about love, the music that expresses it and the pictures that try to depict it on canvas.”
She threw back her head to look up at her husband as she said,
“If you should – ever stop – loving me – I know I would – no longer want to – live.”
“There is no fear of that,” Miklōs replied. “I think, my darling one, we were made for each other from the beginning of time and Fate has been drawing us together over the centuries until at last, after hundreds of lives in which we have striven to do what was right, we are now in a position where we have the power to help other people and bring to this country a happiness that will influence and inspire everyone who lives here.”
He spoke very solemnly and Giona quizzed him,
“You – really believe – that?”
“I believe that is what we can achieve together. Our love will create love in other people, especially those who admire and serve us.”
Giona gave a little cry.
“Oh, Miklōs, that is a beautiful idea! All I want is to love you and go on loving you and, as you love me, it – will not be very difficult.”
He smiled before he said,
“Because we are human there will be difficulties. But, darling, I think that just as we have surmounted a great many obstacles already, we shall be able to surmount any more that stand in our way.”
“That is what we must do.”
Then she said in a different tone of voice,
“You promised that tonight we should think of nobody but ourselves and I want to be selfish and just say ‘I love you!’ Please, Miklōs, love me!”
“That is a very easy thing to do,” he said, “because I love you so much already that you fill my whole world. In fact at the moment I cannot believe that there is a Kingdom waiting for me to rule it.”
He looked down at her in the dying light as he added,
“All I want to do, my darling one, is to make love to you until you love me a thousand times more than you do already and very nearly as much as I love you.”
“That is – impossible.” Giona smiled.
“No, it is what is going to happen and I will prove it very easily.”
As Miklōs spoke, he kissed first her little winged eyebrows and then her eyes and her straight little Grecian nose. Then, although her lips were parted waiting for his, he bent lower still and kissed the softness of her neck.
It gave her a strange feeling that she had not known before and she stirred a little beneath him until as if he could not help himself his lips found hers.
Then, as he kissed her with a passion that was even more intense than when he had kissed her before, she felt his heart beating against hers.
She knew that he was right when he had said that love was irresistible and uncontrollable.
She could feel the fire within her responding to the fire within him.
As they burned together in the flames of love, Giona knew that this was the love they had sought through Eternity and would continue on to Eternity, world without end.
OTHER BOOKS IN THIS SERIES
The Barbara Cartland Eternal Collection is the unique opportunity to collect as ebooks all five hundred of the timeless beautiful romantic novels written by the world’s most celebrated and enduring romantic author.
Named the Eternal Collection because Barbara’s inspiring stories of pure love, just the same as love itself, the books will be published on the internet at the rate of four titles per month until all five hundred are available.
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Elizabethan Lover
The Little Pretender
A Ghost in Monte Carlo
A Duel of Hearts
The Saint and the Sinner
The Penniless Peer
The Proud Princess
The Dare-Devil Duke
Diona and a Dalmatian
A Shaft of Sunlight
Lies for Love
Love and Lucia
Love and the Loathsome Leopard
Beauty or Brains
The Temptation of Torilla
The Goddess and the Gaiety Girl
Fragrant Flower
Look Listen and Love
The Duke and the Preacher’s Daughter
A Kiss for the King
The Mysterious Maid-servant
Lucky Logan Finds Love
The Wings of Ecstacy
Mission to Monte Carlo
Revenge of the Heart
The Unbreakable Spell
Never Laugh at Love
Bride to a Brigand
Lucifer and the Angel
Journey to a Star
Solita and the Spies
The Chieftain Without a Heart
No Escape from Love
Dollars for the duke
Pure and Untouched
Secrets
Fire in the Blood
Love, Lies and Marriage
The Ghost who Fell in Love
Hungry for Love
The Wild Cry of Love
The Blue-eyed Witch
The Punishment of a Vixen
The Secret of the Glen
Bride to the King
For All Eternity
King in Love
A Marriage made in Heaven
Who can deny Love?
Riding to the Moon
Wish for Love
Dancing on a Rainbow
Gypsy Magic
Love in the Clouds
Count the Stars
White Lilac
Too Precious to Lose
The Devil Defeated
An Angel Runs Away
The Duchess Disappeared
The Pretty Horse-breakers
The Prisoner of Love
Ola and the Sea Wolf
The Castle made for Love
A Heart is Stolen
The Love Pirate
As Eagles Fly
The Magic of Love
Love Leaves at Midnight
A Witch’s Spell
Love Comes West
The Impetuous Duchess
A Tangled Web
Love lifts
the Curse
Saved By A Saint
Love is Dangerous
The Poor Governess
The Peril and the Prince
A Very Unusual Wife
Say Yes Samantha
Punished with love
A Royal Rebuke
The Husband Hunters
Signpost To Love
Love Forbidden
Gift Of the Gods
The Outrageous Lady
The Slaves Of Love
The Disgraceful Duke
The Unwanted Wedding
Lord Ravenscar’s Revenge
From Hate to Love
A Very Naughty Angel
The Innocent Imposter
A Rebel Princess
A Wish Comes True
Haunted
Passions In The Sand
Little White Doves of Love
A Portrait of Love
The Enchanted Waltz
Alone and Afraid
The Call of the Highlands
The Glittering Lights
An Angel in Hell
Only a Dream
A Nightingale Sang
Pride and the Poor Princess
Stars in my Heart
The Fire of Love
A Dream from the Night
Sweet Enchantress
The Kiss of the Devil
Fascination in France
Love Runs In
Lost Enchantment
Love is Innocent
The Love Trap
No Darkness for Love
Kiss from a Stranger
The Flame Is Love
A Touch of Love
The Dangerous Dandy
In Love In Lucca
The Karma Of Love
Magic For The Heart
Paradise Found
Only Love
A Duel with Destiny
The Heart of the Clan
The Ruthless Rake
Revenge is Sweet
Fire on the Snow
A Revolution of Love
Love at the Helm
Listen to Love
Love Casts out Fear
The Devilish Deception
Riding in the Sky
The Wonderful Dream
This Time it’s Love
The River of Love
A Gentleman in Love
The Island of Love
Miracle for a Madonna
The Storms of Love
The Prince and the Pekingese