She threw her arms around his neck, wondering how she could bear it now that he was her whole life.
“It’s not forever,” he said intensely. “We married each other a long time ago, remember?”
He showed her the pearl ring on her left hand, the one he’d given her at Horogzegi, and as he’d done then, he pressed it to his lips before kissing hers.
She clung to him, uncaring who watched. “I love you,” she whispered. “Please live.”
“For you. I’ll find a way.”
From nowhere, a twist of laughter curled through the tears. “Do it quickly,” she ordered, and while he was still smiling, she pressed her mouth to his, hard, one last time, and stepped back to watch him leave.
****
Although she hadn’t expected it to, the sight of her brother waiting for her so close to the border lifted her spirits out of the pall of grief that had settled on them after parting from Vlad. Encountering Miklós so conveniently felt like an omen.
As she and her escort rode up toward the house of the nobleman with whom they hoped to lodge that night, she discovered Miklós there before her. His strong, stocky figure was unmistakable, his dirty blond hair blowing in the wind. He looked nothing like Mihály, and yet something in his posture reminded Ilona of her father. Memories of childhood flooded her.
Like a breath of home, Miklós came out onto the front step and watched her dismount and run toward him. As always his boots and his cloak and the tunic visible beneath, were modest and yet spotless.
All quarrels with him forgotten, she embraced him with enthusiasm and felt his arm close hard around her waist. He must have been so afraid for her, and they had still to share their grief for their mother…
But these were private matters, and so, as he drew her inexorably into the house, she said only, “Where is our host?”
“Visiting.” Miklós closed the door firmly in the face of the faithful Dobrin brothers. “We have his permission to use his house as our own.”
“Thank God,” Ilona said. “I don’t feel fit for company.”
“You aren’t,” Miklós said and hit her full across the face.
Ilona staggered back against the wall, her head spinning with more bafflement than pain. Covering her stinging jaw with one hand, she stared at her brother as he advanced on her with fists clenched. His face contorted in contempt and a determination she’d never seen there before.
“You’ve ruined us,” he uttered. “Whore. Traitor.” And struck her again.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Visegrád, Hungary, 1474
.
As the last of the remaining daylight faded from Vlad’s comfortable prison, Ilona looked more ethereal than ever, like a ghost who’d disperse in a puff of air. Vlad rose and lit the other lamps, then returned to sit with her by the dying embers of the fire. Her gaze followed him. “We harried Radu a little,” he said, “just to show that I was still around, but even then some of the boyars began to trickle in to him. I could have raised another army, but the people, the country, had had enough. They needed time to recover. I chose to wait for Matthias so that I could simply frighten Radu and his Turks away. It never entered my head that having finally got to the Wallachian border, Matthias would change the game and recognise Radu instead.”
“It didn’t enter anyone’s head,” Ilona remembered. Afraid she’d drift away again, Vlad took her hand. She didn’t withdraw it. She said, “They kept it from me for a while, but even by the time I learned of it, people were still scratching their heads over it. He went to rescue you and fulfill his part of the crusade—and returned with you as his prisoner and an Ottoman alliance in his pocket.”
“He ‘negotiated’ with me for weeks. I knew something was wrong, but even after he’d actually recognised Radu, he was still offering me an alliance that included you. Eventually, we crossed back into Wallachia, where I was separated from my soldiers by trickery and taken prisoner. By then, they’d managed to collect a fine array of forged letters and stories of atrocities, largely from the Transylvanian Germans, with which to convict me. And here I am.”
Ilona whispered, “They told me that you’d made a secret alliance with the sultan, offered to deliver Matthias himself up to him. They said you were in league with Stephen too. I told them that I was there, that none of that was true. They told me you’d impaled most of your people and just about the entire German population of Transylvania. They said you’ d burned the beggars in Tîrgovişte, even when I told them it was Pardo. They told me vile, disgusting things that you’d done to women and children and priests and when I told them it was all lies, they began to show me books, as if they made it any truer. So I stopped talking to them.”
“To whom?” Vlad asked.
Her gaze flickered up to his. “I didn’t believe it. It was as if they were talking about somebody else. At first it distressed me, until…”
“Until what?”
“Until I realised they didn’t believe it. They just wanted me to.”
“Who?” Vlad asked again.
Ilona sighed. “Everyone.”
Vlad tried again. “The Dobrin brothers came back to me. They said they’d given you into the care of your brother, only just over the Transylvanian border.”
“Yes,” Ilona agreed. “They were good men. I hope you rewarded them.”
“I gave them more land then they’ll ever be able to hold, but I’d like to see any lawyers take it away from them. Did you go home with Miklós?”
“Eventually.” Ilona swallowed. “He took me to Matthias first.”
“To Matthias? Why?”
“I think…I think because I insisted I was already married to you. In the eyes of God.”
Delighted in spite of himself, Vlad asked, “What did they think you meant? Deflowering you is the one crime they never accused me of!”
“Well, they couldn’t, could they?” Ilona said reasonably. “To have had a member of the king’s family so close to you while you betrayed Christendom would not have suited Matthias at all. Anyway, I didn’t mention deflowering, just let them think we’d gone through some kind of formal betrothal. I insisted it was as good as marriage.”
Her lip curled. “That was when they decided it would be best if I’d never been to Wallachia. But they couldn’t pretend that, so they said I’d barely been, just for a few weeks, and had been saved from this horrendous mistake by the timely invasion of the Ottomans, from whom I had only just escaped with my life.”
“That’s what they wanted the world to believe,” Vlad said slowly.
She nodded. “With the implication that you and not the Ottomans were in fact the greater danger.”
“So they gagged you by tying you to the husband you didn’t like.”
She nodded once and dropped her eyes. Taking her chin in his hand, he lifted her face again.
“Are you ashamed of that?”
She seemed to think about it, then: “No. That didn’t feel like betrayal. I didn’t want it, but I couldn’t prevent it either.”
“Did something else feel like betrayal?”
“I didn’t betray you,” she whispered. “I didn’t.”
“I know.” He put his arms around her, very gently, felt the trembling of her silent sobs against him. “I know, Ilona. I just want to know why…how…you…stopped paying attention.”
She closed her eyes as if she couldn’t bear to see him, but at least she didn’t pull away from him.
“They just went on and on, every day. And when I wouldn’t listen, when I defended you and stuck to the truth, and refused to disown the marriage, they began to…to revile me.”
She gasped. “They said things that were true to make me believe things that weren’t. That I was responsible for my mother’s death, for Maria’s, that I was a worthless creature who’d almost brought about the fall of John Hunyadi’s family. That you would never have married me unless you had to for political gain, that you had a hundred mistresses besides Maria. Every
thing was cast up, from my clumsiness, to my stupid tongue, to the fact that I had no husband and had done nothing for my family. Aunt Erzsébet came specially to ram those points home.”
Her eyes opened again suddenly, staring into his. “I wouldn’t have cared, if only I’d been able to make them listen about you.”
“Ilona…”
“But I couldn’t. That was my betrayal, my final failure. I waited and waited for you to come, to send me some word. I tried to reach you by letter, by messenger, but heard nothing back. They said you never asked the king about me, had requested a different match. And then I found out that you were in prison. And all that was left was my worthlessness. My sisters were appalled that I defended you, couldn’t believe that I had changed so much that I was opposing my own family. They seemed to hate me too. It wore me down, wore me out. So that now when Miklós beat me, I knew I deserved it.”
Vlad couldn’t prevent the convulsive grasp of his fingers. She gasped but didn’t cry out at the pain, and he kissed her head in pity and horror. The quiet, systematic destruction of her as a human being, a sensitive, compassionate woman, by all the people who were meant to love her, appalled him beyond belief.
“Miklós was my brother. We didn’t get on, but I’d cared for him. And he struck me.”
“Because he was worthless, not you!” His instinct was to hug her too tightly, to rage against her brother to the point of breaking everything in the room as if it was Miklós. He heard his own breath tremble with the effort of restraint. “How often?”
“I don’t know. At first, when we went to Matthias, he let everyone believe my bruises were your fault, not his. Later, no one noticed them. Sometimes it’s good not to pay attention. When I was away from him, I thought it probably had more to do with the fact that I’d gone to Wallachia in the teeth of his opposition. Perhaps even because my father had trusted me more than him. It doesn’t matter now. They all lost interest when I did. And for good measure, they married me off.”
He was torturing himself, and by stripping away some of her protective coating, he knew he was torturing her too. But he had to ask.
“Did your husband abuse you?”
She looked surprised. “Can husbands abuse wives?”
Oh yes. As families abuse their daughters. The savage words rang in his head before he caught the hint of sardonic humour in her eyes. And he smiled as if he’d discovered some new beauty in her. Ilona, his Ilona, was still there.
She whispered, “I didn’t regard it as abuse. My own family, my own brother, gave me to that man. It was all part of the same… I deserved it because my family reviled me, because I couldn’t change them about you. I couldn’t bear myself. I had to…step away. I drifted, I suppose, and the years fell around me like autumn leaves.” The faintest smile flickered across her lips, as if she liked the image. Then she swallowd hard. “I couldn’t bear to go through it all again. Not with you. They’d reduced it all to pain and betrayal and suffering and longing, a waiting that never ended. And I knew when you saw me, you wouldn’t want me anyway—how could you? —and that would be a million times worse.”
“I will always want you.”
Her lips parted in a gasp that was half sob and half smile.
He said urgently, “We played for everything, and we lost. But the game is not over. It was never over.”
“Can we really win this way?”
“I think so,” Vlad said. “The last time, we waited and let him prevaricate. We played by his rules. This time, we have to strike quickly.”
Another smile flickered over her lips. “I like being with you again, Vlad Dracula.” Unexpectedly, her lips touched his, like the caress of a butterfly wing. Even so, it stirred his blood, and he knew he’d be fighting another enemy before the morning. He’d dreamed for years of making love to Ilona Szilágyi again. But he’d never imagined a frail and damaged Ilona. She needed to be cherished and cared for, not taken in blind lust.
He said, “Then come, sleep in my bed, and I’ll watch beside you until the spectacle begins.”
She let him raise her from the chair, walked with him to the bed. Her fingers fumbled with the fastenings.
He said gently, “You don’t need to. The scandal is in your being here with me.”
“I’d be more convincing in my shift.”
Gown and underdress fell to the floor between their feet in a shining red puddle. Then, in her shift, she climbed into the bed. Vlad couldn’t take his eyes off her. Though thinner than he remembered, her body was still young and shapely, her breasts prominent and alluring. She was still the woman who’d lain in his arms so often, surrendering to the passion that consumed them both. It was consuming Vlad again now. Memory was in danger of blending with the present.
He drew the sheet over her too hastily, saw her quick frown as she searched his eyes. Whatever she saw there cleared her brow. She shifted over against the wall.
“Lie beside me,” she pleaded. “Just once.”
Just once. Because she didn’t really believe their desperate plan would work? Or because she didn’t believe he loved her still?
Vlad took off his clothes without a murmur, leaving only his linen shirt, and climbed into the bed beside her. That was when he saw the pearl ring on a narrow ribbon, nestling between her breasts. Almost as if she’d hidden it there from her family, from everyone, all these years. She’d worn it on her finger in the gallery, but she must have hidden it again as soon as the king forbade the marraige. It broke his heart. When she looked at him with uncertain, almost frightened eyes, he took her gently into his arms, kissed her hair and her cheeks and her lips.
“Go to sleep,” he whispered.
Her arms closed over his. Her eyes shut, and she lay perfectly still. He had the feeling she didn’t want to sleep, but she did. He could tell by her breathing. He didn’t think he’d be able to sleep, tortured as he was by his own bodily lusts. But old memory and new contentment washed over him, soothing him as he lay beside her. His last coherent thought was that she still smelled the same.
***
Ilona woke in the darkness. A man’s body pressed close to her, his unmistakable erection hard against her thigh.
Vlad.
Her heart beat loudly in her ears. It was no dream. She’d really come here. She was really lying in his bed beside him, his body moving instinctively against hers, although when she opened her eyes and gazed at him by the starlight gleaming palely through the unshuttered window, she saw that his eyes remained closed in sleep.
Right now, it didn’t matter whether it was general or specific lust. All that counted was that he was here with her. She moved her head on the pillow to bring her lips closer to his, brushed them against him. His mouth opened, drawn to hers, where it fastened in the first kiss of passion she’d known in twelve years.
He moved, throwing his thigh over hers, and she pressed closer, urging him on. His hands roamed her body, finding her breasts and hips. An inarticulate groan came from deep in his throat, and he woke suddenly, staring deep into her eyes.
“Ilona.”
For an instant, they rocked on a cusp of his misplaced honour and her sense of inadequacy. But because his eyes, still struggling into wakefulness, betrayed his need, she pushed him back and rolled onto him. Beneath his shirt, she laid her palms flat against his naked chest. Then, without releasing his wondering gaze, she moved and took him inside her.
“Ilona,” he whispered again. “Ilona.” And then he rolled her beneath him, and if there ever had been, there was now no possibility of turning back.
***
Dawn was breaking. Naked in her lover’s arms, Ilona wanted to sing with the birds. She felt as if she was awakening with them after a very long but disturbed sleep.
Vlad said, “That’s the first time I’ve ever left my seed in you.”
She smiled into his shoulder. “Perhaps I’ve conceived. Or perhaps I’m too old.”
“Either is fine with me,” he assured her.
“It will have to be now. I wonder if Margit’s awake? When does your servant come?”
“When Szelényi lets him in. Are you hungry?”
In fact, she couldn’t remember when she’d last eaten, and her stomach rumbled audibly at the mention of food. In wonder, she watched him pad across the room and return with bread and watered wine. They sat together in bed, eating and talking while the castle woke up. For modesty’s sake, she put the shift back on but rejected the gown in favour of the bedsheets. Vlad, still bare-chested, smiled at her with delighted approval and cut her another slice of bread.
The knock, when it came, almost took them by surprise. As they exchanged glances, it came again. Then the key turned in the lock and Szelényi’s voice said, “Sir?”
“Szelényi?”
The count needed no further invitation. The door opened, and he came in, followed closely by the servant. They both stopped dead, their jaws dropping. When Ilona turned her face into the pillow in embarrassment, it wasn’t all acting.
Vlad slid out of bed, reaching for his shirt, and, the damage now complete, stood protectively in front of her.
“You shut her in,” he said mildly. “Peter, go away. Count Szelényi, I wonder if I might ask you a favour?”
The servant bolted. Hopefully to spread the gossip as far as he could. Count Szelényi swallowed.
“You know you can rely on my total discretion, sir.” Studiously, he didn’t look at Ilona.
“I’m delighted to hear it,” Vlad returned. “But not what I was going to ask. Do you think you could possibly bring Countess Hunyadi here? To protect the lady Ilona, obviously.”
Szelényi goggled at him. “That would be a favour?”
Vlad grinned. “I suspect it’s the only way you’ll dance at my wedding. Oblige me, Szelényi. Get her here, and don’t trouble about how much noise you make doing it. They’ll hush it up afterwards, but the damage will be done.”
Understanding dawned in Szelényi’s face. He looked as if he didn’t know whether to laugh or complain. In the end, he waved his hand wordlessly and left.
A Prince to be Feared: The love story of Vlad Dracula Page 29