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Ionanthe’s voice softened and warmed as she spoke of her parents. Eloise had barely spoken of them or her sister at all, Max remembered.
‘My parents had so many plans—especially my mother. She wanted—’ Abruptly Ionanthe stopped. That was what you got from allowing your emotions to take over. You were in danger of saying things it was best not to say. Her mother had been a reformist, a pioneer in her way, who had felt passionately about the importance of education and who had proved her commitment to her beliefs by setting up her own small school for the children of those who worked in the castle and on its lands. It had been Ionanthe’s own special and much loved task to help the very little ones with their letters.
Watching the way her expression softened, Max thought she had never looked lovelier. Her emotions had brought a luminosity to her skin and her eyes, a sweet approachability that was not vulnerability but something stronger and deeper—as though a path had opened up between them. As though…
Lost in her memories, Ionanthe continued softly, ‘At this time of year my mother would send my father out into the forest to bring back a Christmas tree. It had to be tall enough for the star to touch the ceiling in the grand hall, and its lower branches wide enough for there to be space beneath them for all the presents my mother would wrap for the children. She always seemed to know exactly what each child most longed for. Many of the toys were made in secret in the estate’s carpentry shop—dolls’ houses and cribs for the girls, forts and trains for the boys, puppets and so much more…We made our own decorations too—my mother was very artistic. The time around Christmas always seemed to be filled with our parents’ laughter.
‘At New Year my parents held a large party, with lots of guests coming to stay, but Christmas itself was always for the children. We’d have snow, of course, being in the mountains, and there’d be snowball fights and ski races. To me as a child Christmas was the best time—magical and filled with love and happiness. When my parents died it was as though they had taken Christmas with them, because it was never the same afterwards. That was when my grandfather moved permanently to his apartment in the royal castle.’
Her words had brought an ache to Max’s throat, a need to open his arms to her and hold her safe within them, a longing to tell her that somehow he would find a way to make Christmases magical again. How on earth was he going to be able to stick to his principles if just listening to her talk about her childhood was going to put his judgement in the balance and weight the scales heavily in her favour?
Max told himself that he was glad that he was driving, because that at least stopped him from touching her. ‘And you and Eloise? Where did you live after your parents’ death?’ he asked, trying to sound detached.
His question caused Ionanthe to look at him. Hadn’t Eloise told him anything about their childhood?
‘Grandfather took Eloise with him. They were always close.’ She wasn’t going to say that Eloise had been their grandfather’s favourite and make herself sound even more pathetic and jealous. The plain, unwanted grandchild who had been pushed into the background to mourn the loss of the parents who had loved her as her grandfather had not.
‘And you?’ Max persisted. He was frowning now, as though angered by something.
‘I went away to school. It was what I wanted and what my parents had always planned.’
No need to say that their parents had planned to send them both, not separate them and favour one above the other.
‘What about you and your childhood?’ Ionanthe asked him, wanting to divert their conversation away from herself.
‘Me? I was an only child.’
‘And your parents?’
‘Dead. An accident.’
The curt voice in which the information was delivered warned Ionanthe not to pursue the subject—and yet she wanted to. Because she wanted to know all there was to know about him.
And so what if she did? Wasn’t there an old adage about knowing one’s enemy?
Enemies? Was that what they must be?
Whilst they had been talking the road had started to climb steeply. Small patches of snow lying in the hollows gradually became more widespread, until up ahead of them the whole landscape was white—apart from where the trunks of the trees were etched dark and the sheer face of the rocks showed grey with age.
A flight of geese cut their perfect V formation across the sky—heading, Ionanthe guessed, for the large natural lake that lay just below the snow line.
‘Some of the older estate workers swear that there were once bears in the mountains,’ she told Max with a small smile. ‘But my father always used to say it was simply a story to scare us children.’
It had started to snow. Thick fat flakes drifting down from a grey sky. How she had once loved the first snows of winter, hoping they would fall thick and deep enough to keep her parents in the castle with them. She hadn’t recognised then how hard the harsh weather made the lives of those who worked on the land—tenant farmers, in the main, with flocks of goats and sheep. If there was mineral wealth beneath these sometimes cruel mountains then surely it belonged to those farmers?
Christmas. He hadn’t realised how close it was, Max admitted. The foundation had a special fund that provided money for various charities to help those in need at this special time of year.
Max remembered the year his parents had given him the best present he had ever received. He had been sixteen, and he could still remember the thrill of pride he had felt when they had told him that they were giving him his own small area of responsibility within the foundation. He had been gi
ven a fund-raising target to meet. He had delivered newspapers, cleaned cars and run errands in order to earn the money to make that target, and no target he had met since had been as sweet. Because his parents had been killed shortly after his eighteenth birthday, and from then on there had been no one to praise him for his endeavours.
The four-wheel drive was equipped with snow tyres, and they were needed now that they were above the snow line.
They were nearly there. Once they had gone round the corner they would be able to see the castle. Ionanthe folded her hands in her lap. It was foolish to feel so excited. She wasn’t a child any more, after all. Even so she caught and held her breath as they rounded the next bend, expelling it on a long sigh at the sight high above them, on its small plateau on the mountainside, of the castle, its topmost turrets disappearing into the heavy snow clouds.
It was truly a fairytale castle—all turrets and crenulated battlements, its exterior faced with a white limestone that made it look more as though it was made from icing sugar than the granite the facing concealed.
The small ornamental lake in the grounds where she had learned to skate would be frozen. Her parents had held skating parties there with coloured lanterns suspended from the branches of the trees that overhung the lake to illuminate the darkness. Ionanthe remembered lying in bed with her window wide open, despite the cold, so that she could listen to the adult laughter.
