‘Good,’ he said, grinning. ‘Why are you wearing so much?’
She laughed and tossed her clothes aside while he poured two glasses.
They toasted each other, then Daniel said, ‘There must be something else. Let’s drink to a bargain well sealed. Except that you haven’t kept your side yet.’
‘How do you mean?’ she asked, trying to sound casual, although she sensed doom creeping up on her. However she’d pictured the moment of truth, it hadn’t been like this.
“‘I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours,’” he quoted. ‘That was the deal. What have you done with Alphonse’s letters? Oh, never mind; I’m feeling too happy to worry about that. I just want to think about you. Tomorrow will do for the letters.’
‘Yes,’ she said, relieved. ‘Tomorrow.’
But something in her voice struck his ears strangely. He frowned and looked curiously at her face.
‘You have got them safe, haven’t you, darling?’
Oh, heck! she thought. Why now?
‘You have, haven’t you, Lizzie?’
‘I thought you said you didn’t want to talk about this now?’
‘Yes, but you’ve got me worried. Lizzie-’
‘Daniel, I told you right from the start that I don’t have those letters.’
He looked at her quizzically. ‘But of course you have them. You as good as told me-’ He caught her eye and said slowly, ‘What have we been talking about all this time?’
She took the precaution of rising and moving away, unaware that her shape was distracting Daniel from what he was pursuing. Almost, but not quite.
‘Evidently we haven’t been talking about the same thing,’ she observed.
‘You knew I was offering a bargain.’
‘And you knew I didn’t have them. I told you that in this very room.’
‘Yes, but then you-’ He rose from the bed and began to follow her. ‘Then you-’
‘Eased up on the denials a little,’ she told him, bland-faced.
He advanced purposefully on her. ‘You scheming, two-faced little-’
She backed away. ‘Now Daniel-’
‘Your Majesty!’
‘Rats! If you want to be called Your Majesty, put something on first.’
‘Don’t change the subject.’
She chuckled. ‘There’s only one subject that interests me at the moment. You too, from the look of it.’
One glance down at himself was enough to make him accept the inevitable.
‘We’ll talk later,’ he muttered, lifting her right off her feet and tossing her so that she landed sprawling on the bed.
‘All right, my love,’ she gasped as he dived and landed on top of her. ‘Anything that you-mmm!’
CHAPTER FIVE
SHE began a double life. By day she was the historian working seriously on the Voltavian archives. If she met Daniel in the presence of anyone else she would address him as ‘Your Majesty’ the first time, and ‘sir’ after that, as did his courtiers.
But at night she called him Daniel, and laughed as she melted in his arms. Their loving was passionate, and full of joy, and afterwards, as he lay sleeping in her arms-for he always slept first-she would hold him protectively and wonder if this was how Liz had felt with Alphonse. And then she knew that was impossible, because no woman in the world had felt the special joy that was hers.
After the first explosion he’d accepted the fact that she couldn’t produce Alphonse’s letters with wry humour. It delighted her that he had managed to laugh about it.
‘You got the better of me,’ he said without rancour. ‘But you wait and see. I’ll get even.’
‘I’m looking forward to it,’ she teased.
When she was there he could enjoy a family evening, and even displayed a talent for playing the piano that none of his children had known about before.
They confided this to her when Daniel was out of ear-shot. They revealed also, without exactly knowing they were doing so, that their mother had drummed into their head that he was their king first and their father second. With herself, she had stressed, it was the other way around.
Daniel might regard his late wife generously but Lizzie’s thoughts were less charitable. Serena had been so possessive about her children that she’d bolstered her own position at her husband’s expense, and everyone was suffering for it now.
Once, when the palace was quiet, he showed her where he lived, and she was struck by the contrast between the magnificent bedroom where the king officially slept and the little monastic cell where he actually passed his nights-those that he didn’t spend with her.
‘Who’s this?’ she asked, looking at a small painting on the wall. It showed a man in Voltavian military uniform, but with a gentle, unmilitary face, on the verge of a smile.
‘That’s my great-uncle, Carl. Alphonse’s younger brother. He was a dear fellow, everybody loved him. There’s a story that the only reason Alphonse married Princess Irma was to clear the way for Carl to marry the woman he loved. She was the daughter of a lawyer, respectable and a lady, but this was seventy years ago, when it was unthinkable for a prince to make such a marriage. And Carl was next in line to the throne, after Alphonse.
‘So Alphonse married and had a son, and then the way was clear for Carl. He renounced his rights of succession, married his lady, and they lived very happily for fifty years.’
‘What a charming story. And Alphonse really made a dutiful marriage just to help Carl?’
‘So they say. My grandfather would never confirm or deny it. But Carl was very dear to him, and his happiest times were spent visiting the family. Mine too. They always seemed so happy. Carl was a wise man to marry where his heart led him.’
‘But he did it at someone else’s expense,’ Lizzie pointed out. ‘Your grandfather couldn’t have done the same. Nor could you.’
Daniel was studying the picture. ‘I think I could-now,’ he said. ‘I’ve made one state marriage, given my country three children. Next time I shall please myself.’
He wasn’t looking at her as he spoke-almost deliberately, it seemed to her. She drew a sharp breath at what he might be implying, but before she could reply a buzzer went to summon him to deal with an unexpected crisis. Lizzie had to leave and it was the following evening before she saw him.
He didn’t raise the matter again, and she wondered if she’d misunderstood him. Or perhaps he really had meant what she hoped, and then caution had checked him. The thought that they might actually be able to marry was too wonderful to be believed. She wouldn’t let herself dwell on it.
Their secret life was charmingly domestic, although Daniel observed that it sometimes made him feel like a character in a French farce. In the morning she was always the first up, slipping out to the sitting room where the newspapers had been quietly laid out by Frederick. Breakfast of rolls and orange juice was served in the same fashion, with Daniel discreetly out of sight behind the bedroom door. And if anyone noticed that Lizzie’s food consumption had recently doubled, nobody mentioned it.
They would enjoy breakfast together, lingering until the last moment, until he had to present himself to his court and she must go to the library, and they would look forward to their meeting in the afternoon when they rode with his children.
The morning papers came in three languages, and while with Lizzie Daniel would particularly enjoy reading the English ones, giving some trenchant opinions on what he read there.
‘You should see what they say here,’ he said one morning. ‘I know there isn’t a word of truth in it, but what can I-? Lizzie? My darling? What is it?’
She forced herself out of a sad dream and gave him a forced smile. ‘Nothing,’ she said.