His Majesty's Marriage

‘I beg your pardon!’ Daniel said frostily. ‘I resent the term “stick-in-the-mud”.’

‘Sorry,’ Lizzie said quickly. ‘But you know what I mean.’

‘I don’t think I do. He was a man I greatly admired-’

‘But don’t you realise that now you’ve got another reason to admire him? If he could inspire this kind of love he must have been quite a man. Listen…’

“‘You have given me a reason to live. We are so far apart and see each other so little, and yet you are with me every moment because you’re never absent from my heart.’”

From another letter Lizzie read, “‘I can feel you with me now, your body against mine, your loving still part of me, and I wonder how I lived before we met. To me the world is a beautiful place because you are in it. Whatever happens from now on, I shall say my life was worthwhile, because I was loved by you.’”

She stopped. After a moment some quality in the silence made her look up to find him staring into space. He looked stunned.

‘Daniel,’ she said, laying her hand over his.

He didn’t look at her. His eyes were fixed on something she couldn’t see. Perhaps his grandfather. Perhaps himself.

‘I read that letter earlier,’ he murmured. ‘But I barely noticed those words. When you read them-it’s different-I hear them for the first time-almost as though you-’

He stopped, suddenly self-conscious.

‘You’re right,’ he went on after a moment. ‘How little I really knew him! I admired him, but I was in awe of him, just as my own children are of me. He seemed so stiff and remote. But he couldn’t have been if a woman could write such words to him.’

He gave a wry laugh. ‘What do we ever know of another person? I wanted to be like him, and now I discover that I never can be. He was a man who could inspire a woman to say that the world was beautiful because of him. And I know, if I’m honest, that no woman has ever said or even thought that about me.’

‘What about your wife?’ Lizzie asked.

‘I married when I was nineteen. She was twenty-four. We weren’t in love. It was a state marriage, and we were raised to the idea of duty.’

‘But didn’t you ever fall in love?’

‘She was in love with someone else. We didn’t talk about it. Now I look back, we didn’t talk about anything, which may be why we managed to remain on cordial terms until she died. If people don’t talk to each other, there’s nothing to quarrel about.’

‘You poor soul,’ Lizzie said, meaning it.

‘She’s the one you should feel sorry for. She was forced to separate from the man she loved and marry a silly boy. She suffered an arid marriage with only her children to console her, and died before her life could get any better.’

‘How did she die?’

‘A fall from her horse. She was a reckless rider. Maybe she was trying to ease the frustrations of her life.’ He gave a bitter laugh, directed at himself. ‘You should have heard my romantic notions as a bridegroom. Despite the odds, I’d convinced myself that we might fall in love. I’d have gladly loved her. She was beautiful. But the other man was always there in her heart, and I never had a chance.’

‘Did you know who he was?’

‘Oh, yes, he was a splendid fellow, just right for her. A nervous teenager had no chance of winning her heart. I honour her for her fidelity to me. I know she never wavered. But, poor woman, it was a bleak business for her!’

‘And for you,’ Lizzie said sympathetically.

The picture he’d painted for her was vivid: the lonely boy, longing for some love in a world that had given him none and finding only a wife as deprived as himself. The handsome, apparently confident man before her was a shell. Inside him the ‘nervous teenager’ still lived, and probably always would, unless another woman’s touch could heal his wounds.

Thinking of nothing but to comfort him, she laid her hand on his cheek, searching his face. He raised his eyes to hers and she was shocked at their defencelessness. They were on his ground. By all the rules he should be in control. But something in that letter had broken his control by revealing his own loneliness to him in cruel colours. No woman found the world beautiful because he was in it, and the knowledge broke his heart. Now he was reaching out blindly to her in his need, and she responded with her own need.

For she was as vulnerable as he. Bess had said she was too armoured, implying that if she didn’t soon give a man her heart-all of it, with nothing held back-Lizzie was in danger of becoming hard. Her head told her that Daniel could never be the right man. She’d meant only to entice him into letting her win their duel of wits, but suddenly everything was different. She ached for him. She longed to ease his sadness, and everything went down before that. All self forgotten, caring only for him, she put her arms about him.

His own arms went about her at once, and they stood together in a long, close embrace. At first he didn’t try to kiss her, but buried his face against her as though finding there some long sought refuge.

‘Lizzie,’ he whispered, then again, ‘Lizzie, Lizzie…’ Just her name repeated over and over, as though the very sound was a spell to ward off evil.

It was sweet to hold him, feeling the warmth of his body mingle with her own, and for the moment that was all she asked. Then she felt the change that came over him as his lips found her neck and began to bestow soft kisses. She sighed with pleasure and began to wreathe her fingers in his hair, turning her neck this way and that to tempt his mouth.

Lower the trail went, down her neck to her almost exposed breasts in the low-cut nightdress, lower still, lower, and every fibre of her being was crying yes. She would be cautious another time. This was the man she wanted.

He raised his head. She could feel him trembling. ‘You make it very hard to remember that I’m a man of honour,’ he growled.

‘Perhaps you remember that too often. Is being a man of honour so important?’

‘It has to be-it must be-’ he said, as if trying to convince himself. He took her face between his hands, speaking softly and with sincerity. ‘Lizzie, will you believe me? I didn’t come here tonight meaning this to happen.’

‘Yes, I believe you.’ It was true. Beneath the regimented exterior was a man who could be impulsive. ‘It doesn’t matter. Don’t plan everything. Let things happen to you. It’ll be all right. Trust me-trust me-’

And then she felt him freeze suddenly.

‘What did you say?’ he asked in a strange voice.

‘Trust me.’ She kissed him playfully. ‘Don’t you think you could trust me now?’

Bewildered, she knew that a change had come over him. He almost snatched his hand out of hers.

‘It isn’t that,’ he said, sounding as though he spoke with difficulty. ‘But I-I really shouldn’t be here. This isn’t right.’

‘I see.’ Her eyes flashed. ‘Then you don’t trust me. How stupid of me to forget.’

‘Lizzie, please, it isn’t that. It’s just that I-I can’t explain.’

‘Or you don’t need to. You lured me here as an enemy, and I’m still an enemy, aren’t I? What a pity you confided so much to me tonight. And me a historian! Who knows who I’ll tell? Or what indiscreet notes I might make.’

He was pale. ‘Will you?’

‘Of course not. You shouldn’t have asked me that!’

‘I didn’t mean to. I don’t know what came over me-at least, I can’t explain-’

‘I think you already have.’

His tone became more distant. ‘There’s still a lot we don’t know about each other, and perhaps we should both be careful.’

She matched his distant tone with one of her own. ‘I think Your Majesty had better leave.’

‘Yes, perhaps I should.’

He gave her a small, correct little bow, and went out through the secret door.

She hurried after him and slammed the bolts shut. Then she leaned against the door, resisting the impulse to