Christmas Nights by Penny Jordan Page B

he planned to make, but neither did he intend to put himself in a position where he was afraid that confidences he let slip to Ionanthe in the intimacy of their bed might be passed on to those who opposed his plans.
    It was perhaps as well that he was flying to Barcelona tomorrow.
    Tonight would be different; tonight she would not give way or weaken. Tonight she would be the woman, the Ionanthe, she had to be from now on, she had assured herself as she had dressed for the formal dinner that was being held tonight for Philippe de la Croix, a French diplomat who was visiting from Paris.
    But that had been before she had seen Max—before he had thrust open the door to their private quarters and come striding towards her, causing her heart to slam into her ribs and her whole body to go weak.
    The pleasure he had shown her was not hers alone, she tried to remind herself. He had been married to her sister, after all—a woman who had been far more sexually experienced and desirable than she was herself. The savagery of the pain coiling through her shocked her. So this was jealousy, red-hot and raw, filling her with a fierce, possessive need to obliterate the memory of her sister from his mind and his senses, shaming her with its primitive message. She tried to block the destructive thoughts from her mind, but still they went onforcing themselves onto her, burning her where they touched her vulnerable places.
    Today, studying the cooling ashes of last night’s passion, had he compared her to Eloise and found her wanting?
Aaahhh
, but that hurt so very much, reducing the pain of the rejection she had known as a child to nothing—a shadow of this so much greater agony. Was it because she had known all along that she would feel like this that she had fought so hard against loving a man?
    Loving a man? But she did not
love
Max. She could not. It was impossible. She barely knew him.
    She knew enough of him to know his touch and its effect on her senses. He had marked her indelibly as his, and nothing could change that. If that was not a form of loving then—No. She would not allow it to be. It must not be. She must escape from what was happening to her, from him.
    She took a deep breath and announced shakily, ‘I should like your permission to withdraw to my family’s estate. There are matters there that need my attention following my grandfather’s death, and if I delay going there much longer the castle will be cut off by the winter snows.’
    In truth Ionanthe knew that there was not likely to be any real need for her to visit the castle. Her grandfather had disliked it because of its isolation, and had rarely gone there after the death of her parents, preferring to base himself here, in his State apartment. Eloise had loathed the castle, and had always treated the simple country people who lived close to it, working manuallyon the estate as their families had done for many generations, with acid contempt.
    Their parents, though,
had
spent time there—her mother encouraging Ionanthe when she had tried to teach the young children of the estate workers to read. Those had been happy days—until her grandfather had found out about her impromptu classes and roared at her in anger, telling her mother that she was not to encourage the ‘labourers’ brats’ to waste their time on learning skills they did not need.
    That had been when Ionanthe had recognised that even her parents were not strong enough to stand up to her grandfather.
    Max listened to her in silence. He did not for one minute believe that she really felt any urgent desire to visit the remote castle she had inherited from her grandfather. He suspected, in fact, that the real reason for her request was a desire on her part to distance herself from last night. But he was not going to challenge her on that point. Why should he, when it suited him so well? And yet there was a feeling within him of antagonism towards her announcement—a latent need to assert the right