A Prince to be Feared: The love story of Vlad Dracula (5 page)

“You have done yourself no harm here today,” her father said gently.

“And no good.” There was a short pause, then, “Apart from the pleasure of your acquaintance and his. Which is better than wealth.”

He’d made himself say it, to cover the ungraciousness of his previous words. And yet Ilona could find none of the hidden insolence she’d detected at various stages of the day. For some reason, she wanted to hug him.

Then the swishing of skirts heralded her mother’s voice, kindly inviting her guest to dine.

To Ilona’s disappointment, he turned her down. “I have abused your hospitality for long enough, lady. Tempting though your kindness is, I shall impose no longer.”

“Then wait one more moment,” Hunyadi said. “I have something for you.”

Ilona heard them move away and laid her head back against the wall. There came the sound of someone exhaling. Clearly, someone still lurked in the garden. Quick, light footsteps sprang across the terrace, and before she could register their direction, someone vaulted over the low wall and landed right beside her.

Vlad Dracula paused in midstride. “You again.”

“Are you leaving?” she asked.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he said, “You have a good family.”

“You sound surprised.”

His lips curved. “I didn’t expect to like them.”

“I imagine they can return the compliment.”

For an instant, his eyes searched hers. “You’ll dirty your dress and get into trouble.”

“I’m in trouble already.”

Unexpectedly, he stretched down his arm to help her up. Ilona gazed at his capable, long fingers, her breath catching.

She took his hand and allowed him to pull her to her feet before she grinned with blatant triumph. “Tag.”

Vlad Dracula blinked. Then he threw back his head and laughed. He was still laughing as he walked away.

***

Count Hunyadi’s gift was a horse, but Vlad would accept it only on the terms of a loan, promising to return it. And all the Hunyadis and Szilágyis, including a sizable portion of their servants, stood around the doorway and steps to watch him ride out of the front gate—an upright and proud young man in shabby clothes and a borrowed mount, with no home and, surely, very little hope.

“It’s a pity in some ways,” Aunt Erzsébet murmured. “But that boy will ride straight to the devil. That’s the last we’ll see of him.”

She couldn’t have been more wrong.

Chapter Three

Visegrád, Hungary, 1474

Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, glanced up as his mother made her regal entry into his reception chamber. Waving away his secretaries, he rose to greet her.

“Mother. You are abroad early this morning.”

“I’m always abroad early. You just don’t normally see what I do.”

Matthias’s eyes narrowed. “And what do you do this morning, Mother?”

An alien expression flitted across Erzsébet’s paper-skinned face. So alien that it took Matthias several seconds to recognise it as uncertainty.

She said, “I need to talk to you about Ilona.”

Matthias waved one impatient hand. “She’ll do her duty as we all must.”

Erzsébet drew in her breath. “Find a solution to the problem of the principalities that doesn’t involve him.”

When he realised his jaw had dropped, he picked it up. “Believe me, I’ve looked. Stephen and Vlad are not just the best solution. Right now, they’re the only one. Why are you against it all of a sudden? I thought you went to talk sense into Ilona last night.”

“I did. And I realised what an unnecessary cruelty it would be to give such a pathetic, damaged creature to him.”

“She isn’t
damaged
, ” Matthias said derisively. “She’s merely ageing badly. Let herself go, if you ask me. But if Vlad wants the alliance, I’m more than happy to accommodate him. She won’t be the help to me I’d once hoped for in that position, but since he’s determined to stick to the bargain we made fourteen years ago…”

“Matthias, she’s your cousin! You were almost brought up as brother and sister! I am all for duty as you know, but I cannot countenance forcing my niece into this marriage. Not after what she’s been through. In our position, there is duty and there is politics—and there is sheer inhumanity.”

“Don’t be so melodramatic, Mother. She always liked him. More than she should have, if you ask me.”

“Sometimes you are obtuse,” Erzsébet accused. “Do you really think that when she looks at him now she’ll see the engaging youth who dared to climb over her garden wall under the sentries’ noses, just to speak to your father? If he was ever truly that boy we imagined him to be, he certainly isn’t now, and she knows it.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” Matthias said coldly. “In danger, one would suspect, of believing your own propaganda.” From the corner of his eye, he saw Stephen of Moldavia enter the room. “She was agreeable enough to the match fourteen years ago—in fact, as I recall, she was reluctant to give it up, even when commanded by her entire family! She should be doubly grateful for it now.”

“Maybe,” Erzsébet interrupted. “But fear could have motivated her then as it does now. Fear of him if she didn’t stand by him. And now, with the passage of time, fear of going back to him. Something happened to her in Wallachia, when the Ottomans invaded. She was never the same after that, was she?”

Something he didn’t want to think about prickled Matthias’s skin. His mother
wanted
to believe in Vlad’s evil as the alternative to her own guilt, to his. Neither suited Matthias at this moment. “Her mother died. Her friend died. You can’t blame that on him.” Deliberately, he summoned Stephen closer.

“Can’t I?” demanded Erzsébet, turning to glare down whoever Matthias was trying to shut her up with. Recognising Stephen, she simply carried on. “Something happened there that showed her what the rest of the world already knew. Tell me, Prince Stephen, would
you
give a female of your family to the Impaler?”

***

Count Szelényi’s duties were not arduous. There was a certain cachet in being the official keeper of such a notorious prisoner as Vlad Dracula, yet the task itself was far from unpleasant. He accompanied the prince on riding expeditions each morning, partnered him in sword practice, conducted him to the king’s very fine and constantly growing library whenever he wished, and to whichever social functions the king wished his “guest” to attend. In between times, he occasionally remembered to lock the captive’s door before going in search of his mistress or other amusements to be found at court.

It was a recent appointment, but he was hoping it would earn him another piece of land to add to his growing estates in Hungary and Transylvania. He thought about that, and about his wife and children at home, as he left the palace and stepped out into the midday sunshine, making his way to the formal gardens where he had an assignation to keep.

The left-hand path was usually deserted. Any parties out to enjoy the flowers tended to stick to the central path, which led to a charming, open summerhouse. But today he was sure someone followed him. The hairs at the back of his neck prickled. If it was his mistress, she was early, and he could look forward to a longer than expected dalliance. If it was her suspicious husband, he might well have to postpone it.

With careful nonchalance, he paused to inspect the red tulip on his right. With his attention on the path behind him, he was surprised to hear hushed male voices drifting on the breeze over the nearby hedge. Alarm bells began to ring in his head. Had Helena’s husband truly discovered their affair? Had he hired someone to teach Szelényi a lesson?

Uneasily, Szelényi strained his ears and caught a furious, intense whisper: “…damn it, we tried! But he’s not an easy man to pick a fight with!”

“I never heard he was a coward,” came a different voice, and one that made Szelényi frown, because although it spoke Hungarian, the accent reminded him of an occasional inflection he noticed in his prisoner’s. Wallachian?

“I never
said
he was a coward!” came back the angry, Hungarian whisper. “He just sneered at me as though it would insult his sword to cross it with mine. Before throwing me across the room by the throat!”

And abruptly, the overheard conversation was far more important that petty intrigue. For Szelényi was sure it related to the incident in the exercise chamber this morning. He and the prince had been practicing sword play as usual when a group of young courtiers had come in and tried to pick a fight with Vlad. It wasn’t such an unusual occurrence. Young bullies trying to make an easy name for themselves by besting the ageing prince with the fearsome reputation. If the prince had ever risen to the bait, it hadn’t been in Szelényi’s time. He wasn’t going to risk his freedom and his throne for the pleasure of humiliating a stupid young man. And Szelényi had fought often with Vlad. Provoking him for self-gain was incredibly stupid unless you wished to die.

Vlad had dealt with them leniently by his own lights and anyone else’s. Szelényi had then murmured a few words about the king’s displeasure and their own narrow escape, designed to frighten them. He’d thought no more about it. But now… The young men from the morning had been Hungarian natives. Now it almost seemed they’d been put up to it by a Wallachian who wasn’t best pleased by their failure.

He needed to warn the prince that someone didn’t want him free. Presumably the agents of the present incumbent of the Wallachian throne, Besarab Laiota. Or even Vlad’s brother Radu…

Szelényi wondered ruefully if he could still fit in his assignation. Then his eye was caught by a drifting grey figure gliding along the path toward him. The person he’d imagined was following him. A woman. Definitely not his mistress, unless she was in heavy disguise.

Szelényi blinked.
Good God.

Straightening, he bowed to the princess. The voices drifted away, no longer audible.

The lady stopped in her tracks as if surprised by his courtesy. A nervous smile flitted across her face and was gone before he could acknowledge it.

She took a step nearer him. “Count Szelényi?”

“At your service, my lady.”

“I’m Ilona Szilágyi.”

“I know,” he said gravely. “And I’m honoured to meet you.” He found himself speaking gently to her, as if to a nervous horse. Her restless eyes sought his once more, searching.

“Are you?” she asked vaguely, and yet he had the uncomfortable feeling that those eyes weren’t vague at all but distressingly perceptive.

He swallowed, and found himself dropping both the courtly manner and the condescension behind it. “Actually, yes. I have the honour to attend the exiled Prince of Wallachia.”

Her tongue flickered over her lips. Her gaze dropped once more. “I know.” She reached out with odd blindness, touching one soft white petal at random. “And you are—conscientious in your duties?”

“I hope so,” he said, frowning with incomprehension. “To be honest, they don’t tax me. I find the prince most amiable.”

Again the fleeting smile skimmed across her lips. “Amiable,” she repeated with blatant disbelief. “And biddable?”

Since she caught and held his gaze once more, he found himself smiling back. “No, not biddable. But then—”

“And is he well?” she interrupted. She blurted the words as if they wouldn’t wait any longer, and yet as soon as they tumbled out, she waved one slender, surprisingly elegant hand as if to dismiss her own question. A delicate flush brightened the pale skin of her cheeks.

Fascinated in spite of himself, Szelényi chose to answer. “Yes, he is very well. Not unnaturally he has suffered bouts of frustration and melancholy in the past, but I am happy to say he looks to the future now with hope. I’m very glad that his fortunes are improving.”

Her gaze pierced him once more. She nodded as if believing him. Then, abruptly, she turned. “Thank you,” she said over her shoulder. And Szelényi, oddly reluctant to let her go, fell into step beside her.

“My pleasure,” he said. “I can also tell you he’s very much looking forward to meeting you again.”

Her gaze flickered up to him, hunted, distressed. He would have pitied her had he not become distracted by the delicate beauty of her bones. Ilona Szilágyi had once been a lovely woman. In fact, now that the vitality or emotion, whatever it was, consumed her face, she still was. Too thin perhaps, and grey was not her colour. Her dress was ugly, but the lady was not.

Or perhaps that was the illusion. As she turned away and quickened her step, he saw once again the grey, ageing frump.

She said, “Did my aunt, Countess Hunyadi, visit him yesterday? In the evening?”

“Yes.”

She nodded. Her mouth opened as if to ask another question. Then, apparently deciding against it, she closed her lips.

Szelényi’s mistress, inexplicably shocking to his eyes just then, tripped along the path toward them. In a charming, heart-shaped headdress and a blue overgown with ridiculously trailing sleeves, she couldn’t have presented a greater contrast to the colourless princess.

Ilona seemed to regard her with even less interest, merely nodding to the other woman’s elaborate courtesy. Helena’s eyebrows danced in Szelényi’s direction, her blue eyes glinting as she walked gaily past them.

Szelényi could hardly compromise her by following just then. But neither, he found, did he want to. There was some mystery about his prisoner’s proposed nuptials that he wanted to get to the bottom of, some help this frail lady needed that he wanted to give.

She said, “He spoke to you about meeting me.”

“Well, it was hardly a discussion,” Szelényi admitted. “But he said it once. And in any case, I can tell. I know him quite well now.”

“Then you would know if he changed his mind.”

Szelényi stared at her averted profile. “Changed his…?”

“You must tell me at once. Good-bye, Count.”

Perplexed and dismissed, he stared after the ghostly figure until she whisked round the corner of the path. He was free now to go to Helena. But his thoughts were still with the other, very different woman. And he found what he most wanted to do was to go and ask questions of his formidable prisoner.

***

Count Szelényi didn’t feel at ease as he knocked on his prisoner’s door later that afternoon. Mostly, he didn’t feel at ease with himself. For the first time in months, despite his hectic and delicious interlude in the shrubbery with Helena, he wanted to go home to his family.

“Enter,” came the prince’s familiar voice. And it struck him as he unlocked and opened the door that the person he would miss most when he left court would not be Helena or even the king or any of the high-ranking noblemen who called themselves his friends. It would be this strange, isolated prince with his formal manners and veiled humour.

Vlad Dracula sat at his desk, writing busily, his long, still-black locks falling around his broad shoulders, half hiding his face. Without looking up, the prince greeted him civilly and invited him to take some wine.

Szelényi went to the table and poured two glassfuls from the silver jug. He laid the first by the prince’s elbow and received as always a murmur of thanks. Taking his own to the carved wooden chair by the empty fireplace, he sat and sipped his wine.

He waited until the prince began to fold his letter. Like all his correspondence, it would he handed to Szelényi before he left, but never by word or deed had the prince acknowledged that he knew his jailer was expected to read them.

In fact, Szelényi rarely did. These days he had a list of Vlad’s acceptable correspondents, and he simply sent on all such epistles. Most of them were addressed to noblemen of Wallachia, old friends and supporters, exiled and otherwise. Once, when he’d first come in trepidation to this post, it had surprised him that there were so many of those who kept in touch with him. He’d assumed the boyars would have been delighted to see the back of so cruel and unpredictable a lord.

Szelényi quickly explained his suspicions about the men trying to provoke him in the exercise chamber this morning. The prince merely sighed and nodded as if unsurprised. Leaving the matter to Vlad whether or not to take the matter further, Szelényi took a deep breath. “I had the honour of meeting your lady today.”

Vlad made his second fold in the paper with precision. “You are to be felicitated.”

Szelényi inclined his head and waited. But it seemed Vlad was too indifferent—or too proud—to ask for any further information.