“Well, it did happen,” Mikloš said sternly, “and while I cannot really blame him for wanting you, I am very angry with you. ”
“Please – forgive me,” Tora begged him.
“I suppose I shall have to,” he replied, “and also for doing anything so wildly and absurdly dangerous as to dress up as a peasant. I cannot imagine what the Professor was thinking about to take you with him as one of his quartet.”
“Because he loves me, he was – horrified that I should have to – marry an old man like your father in order to give him another son because the disreputable Prince Vulkan had run away to enjoy himself in other lands,” Tora said teasingly.
Mikloš’s fingers tightened on her chin as he said,
“I cannot quite make up my mind whether to beat you or kiss you!”
Tora gave a little laugh.
“You can do anything you like – so long as you go on loving me! Oh, Mikloš, you may be angry – but if I had not gone to Salona to spy on your father, we would never have met in the woods and you would never have known what Prince Boris was doing.”
“You are making out a very good case for yourself!” Mikloš answered. “But I can see you need somebody to look after you and, if I have to shut you up in a dungeon, I shall never allow you to take such risks with yourself another time.”
“There will be no reason to,” Tora said. “All I was doing was rebelling, as you did, against the restrictions made by unimaginative and obstinate old men who have forgotten, if they ever knew, what it is like to be in love.”
She spoke with a passionate sincerity that made Mikloš smile very tenderly before he said,
“And so, my darling, you were looking for love!”
“Of course!” Tora agreed. “But how could I have been – so incredibly lucky as to find you unexpectedly in the wood I was hiding in – !”
She did not finish the last word for Mikloš’s lips were on hers.
He kissed her until she felt little flames flickering through her body and knew that they were incited by the fire on his lips.
Only when once again the world seemed to be brilliant with the light from a thousand fireworks exploding all around them did Tora say,
“Please – can we be – married very quickly?”
“That is exactly what I intend,” Mikloš said firmly, “and I shall speak to your father tomorrow.”
“Perhaps he will think it rather strange that your father’s plan for marriage – is now taken up by you.”
“I think you will find that all your father wants is that his daughter should be the Queen of Salona, so that our countries shall be more closely united.”
Tora knew this was true. Then she said,
“Will we have to be – engaged for a – long time?”
“Leave everything to me,” Mikloš answered. “I intend to tell your father, in confidence, what Boris was planning and I shall make out that the country is less stable than it really is. Then I shall point out that what it needs is a Royal Wedding to be followed in the not too distant future by a Coronation, and that will certainly give the population something very different to occupy their minds.”
“And, of course,” Tora cried and added, “all the world – loves a lover!”
“All I want to know is that I love you,” Mikloš said firmly, “and I cannot wait to tell you how much and to make you mine.”
He kissed her again before he said,
“No more disguises, no more disreputable and dangerous excursions into other countries. That is why, my precious one, this is the last time we shall meet in secret before we are married.”
“Oh, no – please,” Tora said. “I want to be with you – I want you to kiss me.”
“That is what I want too,” Mikloš said in his deep voice, “but I have to look after you and take care of you, and Princesses are not allowed to be rebellious, only Princes!”
“Which is extremely unfair!” Tora protested.
“Is there anything you want to rebel against?”
“Only the length of time I shall have to wait until I can be with you and you can – kiss me.”
He laughed before he replied,
“When I have asked your father officially for your hand in marriage, I will tell him that I must propose to you formally and that will ensure at least one more kiss before I leave.”
Tora wanted to tell him that was not nearly enough.
But he was kissing her, fiercely, demandingly, and with a possessiveness that made it impossible to speak or think, but only to feel that he carried her towards the stars.
*
There were great crowds lining the route as the Palace was left behind and Her Royal Highness Princess Viktorina slipped her hand into her husband’s as she sighed,
“I loved every minute of our wedding. I kept thinking it was a dream that I was able to be your wife and that everybody was so delighted about it.”
“I kept thinking of – how much I love you.”
“It was only when we were being married,” Tora went on, “that I realised your name really is Mikloš! I would have found it difficult to think of you by any other name.”
“Does it really matter what I call myself?” Mikloš asked. “When I was travelling, I became Count Mikloš because I had no wish for everything I did to be reported back to my father, either by the newspapers or the nosey parkers who have nothing better to do.”
“Was he very angry when you left home?”
“We kept having arguments about everything being old-fashioned and out of date and it always ended in the same way with his telling me that he was the ruler of Salona and he was not going to listen to my or anybody else’s crazy ideas until I took his place.”
“I can see how frustrating it must have been,” Tora said sympathetically.
“Now he is completely reconciled,” Mikloš went on, “to living a lazy comfortable existence in the sunshine until he dies.”
Tora looked at her husband enquiringly.
“You mean – he is not coming back to Salona?”
“He wrote in a letter I had from him yesterday,” Mikloš replied, “that he might return for a week or so to attend the christening of our first child.”
He waited to watch his wife blush and, when she did, he thought that it the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
“Otherwise,” he went on, “he is prepared to abdicate and leave everything in my hands unless, of course,” he added somewhat cynically, “‘you make a mess of it!’”
“You will never, never do that, darling Mikloš,” Tora cried. “You are so clever and so right in everything you want to do that I know you will be a huge success.”
“That is what we both have to make certain of,” Mikloš said, “but I have a feeling that however difficult it will be, we will win because we are together.”
“Of course we will!” Tora agreed, “and, darling, you always get your own way. I thought both Mama and Papa would faint when you first said you intended that we should be married within a month!”
Mikloš laughed.
“I convinced your father that I was thinking entirely of the tension in my country. He now believes that we have rebels under every stone and that there is a gun pointing at us from every mountaintop!”
Tora laughed.
“Papa is very easily frightened and I believe that is why he is longing for me to have a crown on my head.”
“All I want to do is to crown you with kisses,” Mikloš said in his deep voice, “and I intend, my beautiful one, to kiss you from the top of your head to the soles of your tiny feet tonight and every night while I tell you how much I love and adore you!”
The way he spoke made Tora feel as if little flames were flickering once again within her.
At the same time she felt shy.
She had counted every second, every minute, every hour until she could be with Mikloš and, although he had insisted on their being married in under a month, she felt as if she had waited for
him for a century.
However now they had been married in the Cathedral and, after a family luncheon at the Palace, they were driving to where they would spend their honeymoon at Mikloš’s castle near The Three Bells.
They were in an open carriage drawn by four horses, which made her remember how Mikloš had sent her and the Professor to safety the night he had gone to crush Prince Boris’s revolution once and for all.
Only Mikloš, she thought, could have done it so swiftly and with so little fuss that few people in Maglic had realised what had happened.
‘He is so wonderful,’ she told herself.
She had prayed as they were married that she would make him a good wife and make him so happy that nothing would ever stop him from always loving her.
They passed by the road that led up to The Three Bells and carried on through the pass.
As they did so, Mikloš lifted her hand to his lips, kissed it and turning it over pressed his lips on her palm.
“Welcome to your new country, my beloved wife!” he said. “This is where a new chapter in both our lives begins.”
“A very exciting chapter,” Tora said, “but darling, anywhere I lived with you would be like Paradise.”
She knew that he drew in his breath at her words.
Then, as she looked into his eyes, she saw the fire burning in them.
“How can you be so perfect?” he asked. “How can I be so lucky as to have found you?”
“That is what I keep asking myself,” Tora said softly, “and I thank God every night on my knees, as I thanked Him again today when we were being married, that you are my husband and I can look after you and love you for ever.”
“That is exactly what I intend to do to you,” Mikloš said, “and, darling, no man could have a more beautiful or more adorable wife!”
Because she was so intent on what Mikloš was saying to her, Tora did not realise that the horses were drawing them on a zigzag road that led up the side of the mountain.
When at last they came to a standstill, she saw Mikloš’s castle and felt that it must have stepped out of a Fairytale.
It was unlike any castle she had seen before, being much smaller and far more beautiful than anything she had anticipated.
In fact it glowed like a precious jewel against the darkness of the fir trees behind it.
It had been built on a small level shelf with an amazing view over the plain in front of it and on one side there was a cascade flowing down from the snowy top of a high mountain.
When they stepped out of the carriage and entered through an exquisitely carved doorway, she thought that the castle itself might have been made for lovers.
The rooms were small, but, as she had seen in the music room of the Palace in Salona, Mikloš’s taste was superb.
Everywhere she looked there were examples of a connoisseur’s love of beauty and he told her that he had been collecting them all his life and from every country he had ever visited.
There were pictures that she felt she could have looked at for hours because they were so lovely and centuries’ old furniture from France and Austria.
Then, when Mikloš took her into the bedroom, it was impossible for her to find words to express the beauty of it.
The huge bed draped in blue velvet was surmounted by a canopy of golden angels.
There was a ceiling painted by an artist whom Mikloš had imported from Italy and everywhere she looked there was beauty that had been created by the hands of great Masters.
Even as she glanced around her, she realised that, much more important than anything else, Mikloš was beside her.
As he unfastened the cape she had worn over her going away gown and undid the ribbons of her bonnet, she could only think of him.
He swept her into his arms, kissing her eyes, her cheeks, her mouth and the softness of her neck and there was only him and the wonder of their love.
*
Late that night after they had dined in a small dining room decorated in blue and silver and lit with candles that created a golden glow of light that gleamed in their eyes, Mikloš drew her into the beautiful bedroom.
Here there was only one crystal candelabrum alight standing by the bed and there was nobody waiting up for them.
They were alone.
Mikloš drew back the curtains from the window and Tora could see the stars in a great arc of sky over the plain beneath them.
On the ground there were only a few twinkling lights to be seen, as if one or two stars had fallen down to bring light and joy to those still on earth.
“It is so lovely!” Tora breathed.
“And so are you, my precious wife,” Mikloš said hoarsely, “so lovely that I am afraid you will fly away from me, back into the woods where I first found you.”
“I will – never do that,” Tora replied, “and I am much more afraid that you will find, when you are ruling over this fantastic country, that you are too busy to – remember me!”
Even as she spoke, she knew that it was an impossibility because their love for each other was too great and too overwhelming.
At the same time she wanted him to reassure her.
Mikloš did not reply.
Instead he started to take the pins from her hair, so that it fell down in shining waves over her bare shoulders.
Then very slowly and gently, as if he was moving to music, he undid the back of her gown.
She did not move or say anything to prevent him, she only felt that, somehow with the starlight on one side of her and the candlelight on the other, she had ceased to be herself.
Instead she had become part of the beauty of the castle and a rising wave of love that beat in her heart and which she knew beat in his.
Then, as her gown fell to the ground with the soft slithering sound of a sigh, Mikloš stood looking at her.
She knew that he was not only loving but worshipping her for all the ideals and chivalry that she symbolised in his mind.
Just for a moment they looked at each other, their love seeming so spiritual, so Divine that they had both ceased to be human but had become as Gods.
Then, with what was a very human murmur of desire, Mikloš picked her up in his arms and carried her into the shadows of the great velvet bed.
He laid her down and, as she waited, feeling that the music of love flowing in the air came not only from the cupids above their heads but also from themselves, Mikloš joined her.
He put his arms round her and drew her against him and, as he felt her quiver not only with the ecstasy of her love but also because she was shy, he knew that never in his whole life had he known such happiness.
He had sought to find beauty everywhere he went and in everything he saw, but he had never found it completely until this moment.
“I worship you, my darling!” he said in his deep voice.
“I – love you – I love you until there is – nothing else in the whole world but – you!”
Tora moved a little closer to him as she went on,
“You fill the sky, the earth, the sea, and I am no longer alone, but yours completely and absolutely.”
My darling, my lovely one, my heart, my soul!”
Mikloš moved his lips over her delicate skin and his hand was touching the softness of her body.
Tora felt the fire on his lips and the flames within her leapt higher and higher.
Then, as Mikloš made her his, they flew towards the stars and found the Divine Love for each other that comes from Eternity and goes on to an everlasting Eternity and beyond.
OTHER BOOKS IN THIS SERIES
The Barbara Cartland Eternal Collection is the unique opportunity to collect as ebooks all five hundred of the timeless beautiful romantic novels written by the world’s most celebrated and enduring romantic author.
Named the Eternal Collection because Barbara’s inspiring stories of pure love, just the same as love itself, the books will be published on the internet at the rate of four titles per month until all five
hundred are available.
The Eternal Collection, classic pure romance available worldwide for all time .
Elizabethan Lover
The Little Pretender
A Ghost in Monte Carlo
A Duel of Hearts
The Saint and the Sinner
The Penniless Peer
The Proud Princess
The Dare-Devil Duke
Diona and a Dalmatian
A Shaft of Sunlight
Lies for Love
Love and Lucia
Love and the Loathsome Leopard
Beauty or Brains
The Temptation of Torilla
The Goddess and the Gaiety Girl
Fragrant Flower
Look Listen and Love
The Duke and the Preacher’s Daughter
A Kiss for the King
The Mysterious Maid-servant
Lucky Logan Finds Love
The Wings of Ecstacy
Mission to Monte Carlo
Revenge of the Heart
The Unbreakable Spell
Never Laugh at Love
Bride to a Brigand
Lucifer and the Angel
Journey to a Star
Solita and the Spies
The Chieftain Without a Heart
No Escape from Love
Dollars for the duke
Pure and Untouched
Secrets
Fire in the Blood
Love, Lies and Marriage
The Ghost who Fell in Love
Hungry for Love
The Wild Cry of Love
The Blue-eyed Witch
The Punishment of a Vixen
The Secret of the Glen
Bride to the King
For All Eternity
King in Love
A Marriage made in Heaven
Who can deny Love?
Riding to the Moon
Wish for Love
Dancing on a Rainbow
Gypsy Magic
Love in the Clouds
Count the Stars
White Lilac
Too Precious to Lose
The Devil Defeated
An Angel Runs Away
The Duchess Disappeared
The Pretty Horse-breakers
The Prisoner of Love
Princes and Princesses: Favourite Royal Romances Page 119