She felt his fingers under her chin, gentle, yet shocking and impossible to resist as it turned her face up to his.
“I’m asking you now,” he said softly. “Do you want this marriage, Ilona Szilágyi?”
Heat flamed under his fingers, flooded her. “Don’t make me answer that,” she whispered.
“Why not?” His hooded eyelids swept down on a flash of something that looked like pain. It wrung her heart, forced her to blurt the truth.
“If I admit it, I admit so much more that I couldn’t live with if…”
The long, black lashes snapped upward. “If what?”
She took hold of his wrist, trying in vain to dislodge his fingers from their hold of her chin. He said, “If I don’t love you?”
Her hand fell away, leaving her helpless. She closed her eyes, afraid once more, not of him but of herself.
He said low, “Tell me, Ilona. If you don’t want it, I’ll never trouble you with it again. If you do, you have to tell me. Do you want it?”
She gasped, forcing her eyes open to meet the blaze of his. “I want it,” she whispered, and the light in his dark eyes seemed to flare. His lips curved upward. The fingers on her chin moved, caressing, making her shiver. He bent his head, and her lips, remembering, parted for him of their own accord.
The door whisked open, and abruptly Ilona was free. Vlad stood in front of her, instinctively protecting, which made her want to laugh and cry with pride.
Especially when her mother’s voice said, “Ilona? I hear we have a guest… Why, Prince, how wonderful to see you again.”
***
“He’s dead?” Ilona stared at her aunt in disbelief.
“I just said so,” snapped Erzsébet, but not in temper, merely to get it out of the way so that her mind could race ahead, thinking, planning.
King Ladislas, known as the Posthumous because his father— “If it was his father!” Erzsébet always said cuttingly—had died before his birth, had suddenly died himself.
“But he was so young…”
Erzsébet’s lips twisted. “László was young too.” It was a grief neither forgotten nor forgiven, but overwhelming it was, clearly, the future.
“What will happen now?” Ilona said. But she knew the answer. Her father and Erzsébet would fight to make Matthias king far sooner than anyone had expected.
And if they won, if Matthias was elected King of Hungary, then she, Ilona, would be the king’s cousin. It was, no doubt, the least of anyone else’s concerns, but that couldn’t stop her own personal, wayward thoughts—that at last she would be a worthy wife for the Prince of Wallachia.
And from Mihály’s point of view, surely now of all times, as he struggled against the next inevitable Habsburg candidate, he needed to cement his alliance with Vlad Dracula.
***
Carstian and Stoica glanced at each other, then back to the prince, who was still gazing at the letter as though stunned. Stoica, who had spoken for Vlad at the recent peace negotiations between the town of Brasov and Mihály Szilágyi, had been reporting the favourable outcome for all concerned—except, of course, for Dan, the most troublesome pretender to the Wallachian throne, who’d finally been evicted from his refuge in Brasov—when the messenger intervened.
“Bad news?” Carstian hazarded at last.
“Bad?” Vlad dropped the letter. “Damned if I know. Ladislas is dead.”
“The king? Dead? How?”
“Apparently of natural causes. Last month, in Prague.” Vlad reached for the wine jug and rattled it on the table. At once, a servant appeared and poured cups for each of them.
“I don’t see that it’s bad,” Stoica said judiciously. “If the Habsburgs gain the throne again, we’ve lost nothing.”
“It may lose us Mihály Szilágyi’s favourable influence,” Carstian pointed out. “But I don’t believe the Habsburgs will win. If you ask me, the Hunyadi boy will be elected in a wave of glory because of his father’s memory.”
“If the Szilágyis have anything to do with it—and they will—that’s exactly what will happen,” said Vlad.
“But that is the best thing possible for us!”
Vlad knew it. It would give the German townships in Transylvania less excuse and less cover for troubling him. And he would have the greatest friend possible at the Hungarian court in Mihály Szilágyi, who undoubtedly would govern in the name of the king until Matthias came of age.
He just prayed that Mihály had sent his messenger with the marriage contract before the king had died. Because if he hadn’t, he would inevitably start looking ridiculously high for Ilona. Always in search of more power or even security should anything go wrong with Matthias.
Vlad understood that. It was what he would do himself. And that made him fear the worst.
Rightly, as it turned out. When a messenger finally came from Buda, bearding the prince in his hall at Rucăr as he held audiences with petitioners, he brought not the contracts but a letter from Mihály Szilágyi excusing himself from entering such negotiations at this busy juncture. Although he valued nothing more highly than Vlad’s continued friendship, his first concern had to be matters of state.
“Negotiations?” Vlad raged, sweeping everything off the table in one violent sweep of his arm. Abruptly, the room fell silent. “We’d done all the damned negotiating! Several times! And now…”
He broke off, reining in the full force of his vile temper for the benefit of the others in the room waiting to speak to him. And yet he wanted to maintain that anger, that fury, because it kept out the despair.
Ilona was further from his reach than she’d ever been. His stupid, childish dream of a life partner who was also his friend and his lover should never have been allowed to exist. He was a prince with a country to rule, not a snivelling boy to weep over lost love.
And yet all he really wanted to do was weep and howl all his pain away. Preferably in Ilona’s arms.
He laughed harshly. “Happy Christmas. Bring the next petition.”
***
The boyars hadn’t forgotten Easter. They knew his generosity was occasionally barbed. It was why he made a special effort to make the Christmas feast enjoyable for all. Not to curry favour after his cruelty but to remind them of the difference. Under his regime, the rewards for loyalty were as great as the punishment for betrayal.
And so, after being the perfect host, eating, drinking, dancing with his guests, he had left them to it and retired to his lonely quarters to get blind drunk.
He succeeded in that too, as he discovered when he rose to his feet and stumbled to keep his balance. Perhaps he should just fall into bed and finish the flagon there. At least that way, no one would find him sprawled unconscious on the floor.
On the way to his bedchamber, he became distracted by the moon, beaming in through the narrow window, and paused to admire it. He hoped Ilona gazed at it too and thought of him. What was she doing? Celebrating with her family…if they took the time away from advancing the cause of Matthias’s election.
Vlad sprawled on the bench beneath the window and rested his burning forehead on the wall’s cool stone. Once he’d been naïve enough to hope for Ilona by his side this Christmas. Missing her was like an ache he could neither lose nor assuage. Not with work, not with wine.
Maybe he should go out in disguise to some low tavern and pick a fight. Grimly amused by that idea, he grabbed the jerkin he wore for hard riding and left the room. Not that he’d any real intention of carrying through his drunken fantasy. But the fresh cold of the night air called to him.
By the time he reached the stairs, he had better control over his wayward limbs and was able to walk down with almost his normal pace. Annoyingly, the first thing he thought of at the door was that in the spring, he’d taken Ilona out this way and kissed her in the moonlight.
He hadn’t really thought she’d let him, and her response had both surprised and delighted him. And knowing Ilona, he’d believed then there was more than the thrill of
dangerous flirting in her heart.
He still believed that. Was she suffering as much as he? He couldn’t wish that for her, and yet anything else maddened him.
Hauling the door open, he wanted desperately to be rid of this feeling, this agony, before it consumed him.
A faint, fluttering behind him made him turn his head. Someone slid under his arm and for an instant, he thought, incredibly, that it was Ilona. He could swear she smelled of Ilona.
But it was quite a different pair of eyes that peered up at him, half-anxious, half-teasing. “Your Highness? Is everything well?”
Maria, he recognised. Maria Gerzsenyi, Countess Hunyadi’s little spy, Ilona’s friend. What business did she have smelling of Ilona?
Drawn, he lowered his head and located the distinctive scent to her shoulders and lower—a rather beautiful embroidered shawl pinned over her breasts for modesty, yet still revealing enough to set a tortured man’s blood on fire.
“Your shawl is beautiful,” he observed. He didn’t even slur his words.
“Thank you!” she said breathlessly. “Ilona sent it to me as a Christmas gift. She does such lovely work.”
Vlad laughed and placed his hand over the shawl. Beneath its soft texture, he felt her heart beating like a bird’s. He put his lips to her ear. “What do you want, Maria? To come to my bed?”
Her breath came quick and uneven. “To serve Your Highness any way I can,” she managed.
“Oh, good answer.” He bent his head and pressed his lips over the scarf and the wildly beating heart beneath. He closed his eyes and imagined it was Ilona. The woman began to speak, but he hushed her, inhaling before he raised his head and claimed her willing lips.
“Don’t talk,” he said into her mouth. “Don’t talk.”
She didn’t.
***
It took the letter some time to find her, since she was in Buda with Countess Hunyadi. Matthias, duly elected as King of Hungary, was everybody’s darling. And Mihály Szilágyi, his uncle, was appointed governor for five years to guide the young king’s first steps in ruling his domain.
To Ilona, it was almost amusing to be treated like royalty. To be royalty, even if only on her little cousin’s account. She wondered if Vlad would come in person to swear allegiance to the new king and felt her breast constrict with longing. Mihály, however, whenever he mentioned her marriage, never did so in conjunction with Vlad’s name. With more than a hint of indignation, Ilona realised he was too sure of Vlad now. Vlad was his ally with or without the marriage, so Ilona was a far more useful bargaining tool elsewhere.
And when she tried to broach the subject with Mihály, she realised he was no longer listening to her. Both he and his sister had bigger issues to consider than her opinions of lesser men. So, frustrated at every turn and still, interminably, waiting, Ilona was delighted to see Maria’s ornate if slightly childish handwriting among the letters from home. It was always a joy to hear from Maria, and now, sometimes, her letters gave her the added secret pleasure of domestic news of Vlad.
She waited until the countess went for her afternoon rest. Then, enjoying her brief gift of solitude, she took the letter with her to the fireside and settled down to get warm among the wintry draughts of Buda Castle to enjoy it.
She even smiled at Maria’s opening rush of words. Something, clearly, had happened to excite and please her volatile friend. But because Maria tried to tell her so many things at once, it took Ilona some time to decipher it. At first she thought she’d misunderstood completely and went back to the beginning. But slowly, horrendously, the truth began to form in her mind.
Something cold pinched around her heart. It hurt. That must be what hurt. Maria’s happy words faded into blackness before her eyes. Ilona lifted the letter and dropped it into the blinding flames.
***
Vlad Dracula took the tiny baby into his arms and gazed down at him in wonder. It didn’t seem possible that any living creature could have fingers so small. He became fascinated by the child’s perfect, miniature ear.
“Your son,” Maria murmured. Vlad spared her a smiling glance—she too looked tiny and exhausted in the huge bed, yet happy enough to be purring like a cat—before returning his attention to the baby.
“Mihnea,” he uttered. “That is a good name in my family.”
Reluctantly, he surrendered his son to the waiting nurse. Mihnea made a tiny, grunting sound that tugged at his heart.
Maria said, “You are pleased with our son?”
He sank onto the bed beside her and smoothed the damp hair from her face. “I am well pleased,” he admitted. “And grateful.”
Maria smiled and turned her head to kiss his hand. “Thank you,” she murmured. “I am so lucky, so blessed.”
Vlad rose to his feet and left her falling asleep. The euphoria of his son’s birth lingered and with it the surge of affection for his mother. In many ways, taking Maria as his mistress was not the cleverest thing he’d ever done. She was sweet and good-natured, but though far from stupid, she had no interest in the things that mattered. Like governance and alliances and balancing power within the country and without. Besides, Vlad was well aware that he couldn’t have chosen a mistress more guaranteed to wound Ilona Szilágyi.
He hadn’t done it for that reason. In fact, after the drunken night in Tîrgovişte, which he could barely remember—beyond a shawl and the aching smell of Ilona—he had resolved not to repeat the experience. He had taken Maria for the wrong reasons, and his best excuse was the desperation of his body, which, for some romantic reason of honour, he’d kept pure during all the protracted negotiations for Ilona. But he was an intensely physical man, and he’d been unable to stop himself from finally seeking release when opportunity offered. And this child, Mihnea, was the result.
He didn’t think he’d set eyes on Maria for the next two months, until she came to him privately one day and told him she was pregnant by him. Cynically, he’d doubted that—until he looked into her eyes and read a genuine love he’d done nothing to inspire.
Startled, he’d swallowed the words with which he’d meant to dismiss her and asked her instead what she wanted to do. She didn’t ask him to marry her, which, fortunately, saved him the trouble of refusing. Instead, she fell into some inarticulate story of her youth and how she’d been misled by a man before and given birth to his child, which had been taken from her. And again, the grief and misery in her face had been genuine. Further questioning had elicited the information that Ilona and Countess Hunyadi had helped her then, and how Ilona had kept her secret and been her only friend.
But the point of her story was she couldn’t bear to give away another child, nor suffer the shame of a nameless birth. And so he’d acknowledged the child and made her his official mistress. God knew it was no hardship to make love to her.
In fact it would be hard to force himself to leave tomorrow morning for his new castle at Poenari, but there were matters to attend to there before winter set in.
Returning to his hall to announce the birth of his son to the waiting court, he found a familiar messenger skulking in the doorway.
Wordlessly, Vlad held his hand out and received the document. He clapped the man once on the shoulder and nodded to the boyar Iova to pay him. Then, striding to the table amid the expectant silence, he swept up his cup and raised it high in an enthusiastic toast.
“To my son, Mihnea! May he have a long and happy life!”
They roared out their approval and drank deeply. His line had an heir, to keep out his Ottoman-dominated brother Radu as much as the hated Danesti clan.
Satisfied, Vlad sat and opened his letter—which cast rather a blight on his happy day. Mihály Szilágyi had been dismissed from his position as governor and the young King Matthias had taken up the reins of independent government himself. Worse, he’d arrested Mihály and imprisoned him.
“That,” Vlad said with a shiver of prescience, “is not good.”
Chapter Fourteen
T
îrgovişte and Poenari, Wallachia, 1459
Mihály Szilágyi said, “Come with me to Wallachia.”
And here she was. Although it was the last place in the world she wanted to visit, she couldn’t refuse her father, especially not after he came home from prison, a changed and chastened man. He had endured prison before, of course, and escaped none the worse for his ordeal, but somehow it was different to be turned on by your own nephew, the boy you had brought to power. And so Ilona didn’t even try to talk him out of it. Part of her was even touched that he wanted her company again.
All she did do was suggest her mother came too—but, still low from last year’s illness, Countess Szilágyi remained at home. When Ilona remarked casually that she would prefer to avoid the court and perhaps spend time with Maria, Countess Hunyadi snorted.
“She is not a fit companion for an unmarried lady of the royal family.”
“I believe she is considered perfectly respectable in Wallachia,” Ilona returned calmly. “Her son is just as acceptable as an heir to the prince as the child of any woman he actually marries.”
Erzsébet sniffed. “Maybe. In Wallachia. Besides, if you ask me, Maria will be wherever the court is.”
Mihály’s purpose, now he was again in Transylvania, was to discuss with Vlad the parameters of their alliance. Matthias, in an attempt to cow the prince or to replace him, had again sent the pretender Dan to the Transylvanian town of Brasov, to act as a focus for Wallachian discontent and rebellion. Vlad would not be happy about that.
Ilona’s purpose, if she had one beyond restoring the spark of enthusiasm to her father, was to avoid Vlad. But if she couldn’t, then she knew she would deal with that too. A year and a half without him or the hope of him had returned her to full strength and common sense.
Despite that, she couldn’t help her profound relief when they discovered Maria to be alone in Tîrgovişte. Vlad, apparently, was in the south, organising the construction of a new fortress around the villages of Bucharest.
A Prince to be Feared: The love story of Vlad Dracula Page 18