PENNY JORDAN - Christmas Nights - A Bride for His Majesty's Pleasure / Her Christmas Fantasy / Figgy Pudding

‘“Get it over with”?’ he repeated grimly. ‘Are you sure that’s what you really want?’

He was referring to that… that incident on the stairs, Ionanthe knew, trying to humiliate and mock her because of her response to him then. The memory of that response was a taste as sour as the bitter aloes her nursemaid had painted on her nails as a child to stop her from biting them. Ionanthe looked down at those nails now, immaculately neat, with well-shaped cuticles, buffed to a soft natural sheen.

Max saw Ionanthe look down at her own hand. Her nails were free of the polish with which Eloise had always painted hers, and he had a sudden urge to reach for her hand, with its slim wrist and elegant fingers, and hold it within his own in an age-old gesture of comfort. Comfort? For her or for himself? Why not for both of them? After all, they were entering the unknown and uncertain world their marriage would be together, weren’t they?

What was wrong with him? He already knew that there could be no real intimacy between them. Far better that they kept their emotional distance from one another. After all, she had made it plain enough to him that she didn’t look for anything from their physical union other than getting it ‘over with.’

He had moved closer to her, Ionanthe recognised. She hadn’t seen him move, but her body knew that he had. Her senses had registered it and were still registering it; her nerve-endings were going into overload as they relayed back the effect his closeness was having on them.

‘Yes. That is what I want,’ Ionanthe confirmed, her pride pushing her to add recklessly, ‘What else is there for me to want?’

‘Pleasure, perhaps?’ Max suggested.

Pleasure. Her muscles locked against the images his mocking words had evoked, but it was too late. Those same feelings she had experienced on the steps were running riot inside her like a gang of skilled pickpockets, overturning the barriers put up to deter them and plundering the vulnerable cache they had discovered.

‘I don’t look for pleasure in a relationship such as ours.’ Her words were as much a denial of what she could feel within her own body as they were of what she was sure was his taunting mockery of her.

‘But if you were to find it there…’ Max persisted.

‘That’s impossible. There could never be any pleasure for me in having sex with a man I can’t respect. I wouldn’t want there to be. It would shame me to want such a man,’ she declared furiously, desperate to stop him from thinking she had actually wanted him when they had shared that kiss.

Max felt the swift running tide of his own pride, its power and speed sucking away reason and impartiality. She was challenging him as a man—challenging his ability to arouse her and pleasure her. Telling him that she would rather lie ice-cold in his arms than permit her body to be warmed by any shared need or desire.

Ionanthe saw the glint of anger in Max’s eyes. A quiver of something that was more than mere apprehension feathered across her nerves. Perhaps she had gone too far? she admitted. Said more than was wise? Now, in the chill of her growing anxiety, it was easy to admit what she had not been prepared to see in the heat of her prideful anger. Her husband was a powerful, sexual man—a man who knew how to touch a woman’s body to draw the most sensual response from it. In her determination to stop him from thinking that she wanted him, and so spare her pride, had she unwittingly triggered his own pride?

‘I am sure we are both agreed that we have in our different ways made a commitment that it is our duty to honour,’ Ionanthe told Max hastily, trying to repair the damage she feared she might have caused. ‘That being the case, I am sure we are also agreed that there is no need for either of us to look for anything more than the… the satisfaction that comes from doing that duty.’

‘Your views on sex are obviously very different from those of your late sister,’ Max responded wryly.

‘My views on many things differ from those of Eloise,’ Ionanthe hit back. ‘I did not want to marry you,’ she added when he made no response. ‘You were the one who forced me into this marriage.’

‘You are right,’ Max announced. ‘We might as well “get it over with”.’

Was it because he was thinking about Eloise, comparing her sexuality to her late sister’s and finding her wanting that he had made that abrupt statement? Ionanthe wondered.

The light had faded whilst they had been arguing, the sun sinking down into the sea and turning it a dull molten gold.

In their absence an ice bucket containing a bottle of champagne and two crystal champagne flutes had been placed on one of the modern black-marble-topped tables just inside the glass doors.

Ionanthe watched as Max opened the bottle with a single economically fluid movement, expertly filling the two glasses and then holding one out to her.

She rarely drank, but she suspected that to refuse now would open her up to another unfavourable comparison with her late sister.

‘What shall we toast?’ Max asked as she took the glass from him.

What did you toast on your wedding night with Eloise? Ionanthe was tempted to ask, but of course she didn’t. Instead she looked at him and said quietly, ‘I would toast freedom. But of course it is not a toast we can share.’

Max could feel the anger burning up under his skin.

‘You toast freedom, then, and I shall toast pleasure,’ he told her mockingly, slanting a glance at her that made her whole body burn.

She was trembling so much she could barely hold the glass, never mind drink from it.

When she replaced it on the table, Max said coolly, ‘You’re right—we’re wasting time when we should be performing our duty.’ He shot back his cuff and looked at his watch—a plain, serviceable watch, not at all the kind of ostentatious rich man’s toy she would have expected him to be wearing.

‘Shall we agree to meet in the bedroom in, say, fifteen minutes’ time? Dressed, or rather undressed for action?’

Ionanthe could feel her heart bumping along the bottom of her ribcage. She wasn’t going to let him see the despair she was beginning to feel, though. Instead she lifted her chin and agreed, ‘Very well.’

Max drained his glass, and was just turning away from her when after a brief knock the drawing room door was hurriedly opened. The Chancellor came in, looking very concerned, Count Petronius hard on his heels,

‘I told you there was no need for us to disturb His Highness, Ethan. I can deal with this matter,’ said the Count.

‘What matter?’ Max demanded.

The Chancellor needed no further invitation. Ignoring the Count’s obvious irritation he addressed Max. ‘Highness, there has been a disturbance in the city—fighting in the streets among some of the men of your new bride’s people, claiming that it is wrong that she has been forced to make a blood payment on behalf of her sister—’

‘They have been arrested and are now, as we speak, being held in the square by the Royal Guard,’ the Count broke in. ‘There is no need for you to concern yourself on the matter, Highness. They will be treated with appropriate severity.’

‘No!’ Ionanthe defended her people automatically. These were men who had been loyal to her late parents and to their land. Now they stood firm to support Ionanthe. ‘They will have meant no real harm.’

‘They threatened the person of their ruler,’ the Count insisted. ‘And they must be punished accordingly.’

Max looked from the Count’s implacable expression to Ionanthe’s flushed face. So, something could apparently arouse his bride to passion, even if it wasn’t him.

‘I shall speak to these men myself,’ he told the Count.