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Ionanthe turned away from the window and looked at Max.
‘And if I refuse?’ she demanded, her head held high, pride in every line of her body.
‘You already know the answer to that. I cannot force you to marry me, but, according to my ministers and courtiers, if I do not show myself to the people as a worthy ruler by taking you, and if you do not submit to me in blood payment for the dishonour and shame your sister has brought on both our houses, then the people may very well take it upon themselves to exact payment from you.’
The starkness of his warning hung between them in the stern watching silence of the tower—a place that had held and held again against the enemies of the rulers of Fortenegro, protecting their lives and their honour.
The blood left Ionanthe’s face, but she didn’t weaken. Just the merest whisper of an exhaled breath and the movement of her throat as she swallowed betrayed what she felt.
She was as spoiled and arrogant as her sister, of course. They shared the same blood and the same upbringing, after all, and like her sister and her grandfather she would despise his plans for her country. But she had courage, Max admitted.
‘I expect that it was Count Petronius who suggested that you bully me into agreeing by threatening to hand me over to the people,’ she said scornfully. ‘He and my grandfather were bitter enemies, who vied to have the most control over whoever sat on the throne.’
‘It was Count Petronius who told me that in some of the more remote parts of the island the people have been known to stone adulterous wives,’ Max agreed.
They looked at one another.
She was not going to weaken or show him any fear, Ionanthe told herself.
‘I am not an adulterous wife. And I am not a possession to be used to pay off my family’s supposed debt to you to save your pride and your honour.’ Her voice dripped acid contempt.
‘This isn’t about my pride or my honour,’ Max corrected her coldly.
Ionanthe gave a small shrug, the action revealing the smooth golden flesh of one bare shoulder as the wide boat neckline of her top slipped to one side. She felt its movement but disdained to adjust the neckline. She wasn’t going to have him thinking that the thought of him looking at her bare flesh made her feel uncomfortable.
She was an outstandingly alluring woman, Max acknowledged, and yet for all her obvious sensuality she seemed unaware of its power, wearing what to other women would be the equivalent of a priceless haute couture garment as carelessly as though it were no more than a pair of chainstore jeans.
If she was oblivious to her effect on his sex, he was not, Max admitted. There had been women who had shared his life and his bed—beautiful, enticing women from whom he had always parted without any regret, having enjoyed a mutual satisfying sexual relationship. But none of them had ever aroused him by the sight of a bared shoulder. Merely feasting his gaze on her naked shoulder felt as erotic as though he had actually touched her skin, stroked his hand over it, absorbing its texture and its warmth.
Angered by his own momentary weakness, Max looked away from her. His life was complicated enough already, without him adding any further complications to it. Certainly it would be easier and would make more sense to let her think that he expected her to provide him with a son than to try to tell her the truth, Max acknowledged.
‘The people are anxious for me to secure the succession,’ he told her, his voice clipped.
The succession. Her son. The key that would unlock the medieval prison in which the people were trapped.
‘My grandfather would say that it is my duty to do as you ask and take my sister’s place.’
‘And what do you 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.
