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King Milas blinked in surprise, but also smiled. “What story would you like me to tell?” he asked, moving to sit with Charlotte, keeping his back straight and his mien majestic the whole time. “I’d wager you haven’t heard some of the finer folk tales of Aegiria,” he suggested.
“I should love to hear those, your majesty,” Charlotte said with a smile designed to charm. “But it is another story I wish to hear from you right now.”
The king looked intrigued. Better than that, he looked as though he liked Charlotte and admired her pluck. “What story is that, my dear?” he asked in a paternal voice.
Charlotte smiled. “I should like to hear the story of how you and Queen Sylvia met and fell in love.”
For a moment, the king looked startled. Then something came over him that made him practically glow from the inside.
“That is my very favorite story to tell,” he said, pink coming to his cheeks and light to his blue eyes.
“Go on,” Charlotte said, matching his enthusiasm and scooting closer to him.
“We were so young,” King Milas began, shaking his head and chuckling. “I was as full of myself as Oskar is now. I’d been sent abroad, to Copenhagen, for my education. I chose Copenhagen over Stockholm or London or Paris, because my family had once gone on holiday by the shores of Lake Furesø. I remembered seeing a blonde nymph bathing in the water every morning when I went out for my daily walk. Something told me that if I went back to Copenhagen, I might see that nymph again.”
“And did you?” Charlotte asked, beaming as she guessed where the story was headed.
“I did,” King Milas said. “It was more than a month after I’d arrived and taken up my student lodgings. I’d been invited to a ball at a country house just outside of the city. I attended with several of my mates, and, being a foolish and raucous student with too much time and money, my only intention was to eat and drink too much and to carouse.
“But there she was,” he continued, his eyes unfocused and dreamy. “The crowd of dancers parted, and I saw my Sylvia standing there in a gown of the same blue as the waters of Lake Furesø. I knew at once she was my nymph. I approached her directly and asked her to dance. We danced the entire night away, simply enjoying each other’s company.”
“And then you told the story of the nymph and she confessed it was her?” Charlotte asked, her heart beating wildly.
King Milas laughed aloud. “I told her the story, and she said that she had never been to Lake Furesø in her life.”
Charlotte laughed along with him at the twist in the story.
“She thought it was romantic of me to pick her out for that reason,” the king went on. “We had a good laugh over it. That laughter led to much more, and by Christmas of that year, I asked her to marry me and be my queen.”
The king continued to smile fondly at the memory, and Charlotte’s heart beat even faster. She could feel the moment to say something upon her.
“It is a wonderful thing when two young people in love find each other and know that they are meant for each other,” she said, lowering her head a bit and glancing up at him through her lashes.
King Milas came out of his thoughts and grinned at her knowingly. “I am not the one standing in the way of true love, Miss Sloane,” he said frankly, with just a hint of mystery. “I am too old and too well-versed in the ways of the world to prevent people who should be together from marrying.”
Charlotte sat back, blinking rapidly, more confused than ever. “So, you have not forbidden…people from marrying the ones they love?” she asked, too intimidated to come right out and say Petrus wanted to marry her.
King Milas grinned at her as though he could read her thoughts. “This is a strange and mischievous family, Miss Sloane,” he said, “as I’m certain you might have guessed from our unconventional games and rituals. I am not the one who has taken it into his head that duty must be followed above all else. There is another who has convinced himself that self-sacrifice is something a royal must do. It is a silly notion, and no matter how much I argue with him, he has the audacity to tell me how I should be ruling my kingdom and running my family.”
The impish light in the king’s eyes confused Charlotte even more.
“Won’t you please tell me who this is and why you are allowing them to be that way?” she asked.
The king laughed. “Not yet, my dear,” he said. “For I believe this lesson will be best learned by taking things further than they should go.”
That statement tipped Charlotte over the edge into hopeless confusion. She sighed and slouched a bit. “I do not understand,” she said.
“Do not worry on that regard,” the king said, taking her hand and patting it. “Simply rest assured knowing that I will not allow the forfeit to continue on to the point where someone will be hurt. I am merely trying to teach someone a lesson.”
Charlotte supposed she had to accept that answer, but she most definitely did not like it.
Still, as King Milas got up and begged her pardon before continuing on with whatever duties he had, Charlotte felt as though she were in the middle of a completely foreign situation that she did not know how to get out of. Were Aegirians simply mischievous like that? Or should she be worried about someone other than King Milas throwing a wrench in the works of her love affair with Petrus. And who was the person gumming up the works and standing in the way of everyone’s happiness anyhow?
ChapterEight
Christmas at the palace of Aegiria was usually frantic, what with all the family traditions Petrus participated in every year. He enjoyed those traditions most of the time, particularly the madness of the family decorating the palace instead of the servants. But everything seemed strained and fraught this year, and as Christmas Eve, the day of the ball, dawned, Petrus was as anxious as he’d ever been.
Everything was about to come to a head. The way his uncle had chided him and Oskar about being true to themselves and true to the family, and about being more considerate toward their guests, who had come a long way to spend the holidays with them, stuck with him. Uncle Milas had been firm and adamant. At the time, Petrus had been certain his uncle meant that he should get on with things, set Charlotte aside, and propose to Lady Jenny, as was always intended.
