“You don’t understand. I’ve just been reunited with him. I am so incredulous at how that went, how the love was just there, instantly, as if we’d never been separated. I don’t want to upset him!”
“If you want to save Karsten’s life, you might rethink that.”
“Oh, stop it. You aren’t going to kill him.” She glanced at him, and he actually looked as if he was savoring the thought. She rolled her eyes. “I don’t even think this was my father’s idea. I mean, he loves the idea, obviously, but I think it was Nikola who suggested the match.”
“I’m not surprised. She wants an end to the hostilities more than anyone. There are even whispers that her fears have caused her many miscarriages.”
Alana sighed again. “I wish I could talk to Poppie. There must have been more to Henry’s last message and I just didn’t hear it all.”
“Perhaps you will today.”
She looked at him sharply. “Tell me this outing isn’t a trap?”
She had hoped for a denial, but didn’t get it. “At your father’s suggestion. But you aren’t to worry. I won’t harm him. You’ve had Frederick’s word on that.”
“That’s all fine and good, but I don’t have Poppie’s word that he won’t harm you!”
Christoph laughed. “You worry for me?”
“Not one jot!” she insisted. “But how is it going to look if he kills you? I don’t think my father will be very benevolent if that happens.”
He smiled. “It won’t happen while you’re with me, or did you sing his praises for becoming a new and better man a bit too much? Do you really think he would spill blood in front of you? Now might be a good time to admit that, if it’s so?”
“Why? He can’t single-handedly stop this sleigh anyway, or were you going to stop it and invite him to join us? Yes, of course you are, all very civil—before you cart him off to prison. You knew Henry was waiting out in the ward for me, didn’t you? That’s why you rushed me out there!”
“Very persistent, your little friend.”
She glared at him. “And once again you didn’t tell me?” Then she guessed, “My father didn’t really cancel our meeting this morning, did he? You told him Henry had come with another message for me and this would be a golden opportunity!”
She was suddenly so furious she felt like screaming.
Christoph didn’t admit or deny it. He didn’t say another word, as if he saw nothing amiss in what he’d done. It was such a blatant example of his high-handed manner, making decisions for her, proceeding with them regardless of her feelings. But she managed to get her anger under control. His silence helped.
So she was a bit surprised to hear his own thoughts were still with Henry. As soon as the sleigh began heading up into the hills, he said, “I am beginning to like that boy. Very aggressive in his worry over you. Very courageous to argue with my men. He reminds me of myself at that age.”
“I doubt that,” she said scathingly. “You were probably out smashing something with clubs like all the other little barbarians, while he carves beautiful figures out of wood that amaze and delight people.”
He chuckled over her assessment and bent down to take something out of his saddlebag to hand to her. “These are his work?”
It was the two carvings Henry had made for her. She hadn’t even noticed they weren’t in her trunks that had been brought to her new room in the palace.
“Why do you have them?”
He shrugged. “I told Boris to put them on my mantel after we left the other day. I thought they might make you feel—at home in my quarters. I didn’t know at the time that you wouldn’t be going back there.”
She was incredulous. That was such a thoughtful, nice thing for him to do, not barbaric at all. She wished he would stop showing her glimpses of that side of himself. It made it harder and harder to maintain her original assessment, that he was and would always be a coarse barbarian by nature. And she needed to maintain that, to keep the hurt away from the constant reminder that he would never be hers!
Then he surprised her even further by adding, “The pair, they remind me of us.”
She quickly disagreed. “No, the male figure, he’s just a soldier, an English one, actually. Henry had never even heard of Lubinia when he carved that for me.”
“He thought you should be paired with a soldier instead of the English lord you thought you would have?”
“It was an—odd reason he had for picking a soldier for me, I . . . I don’t remember,” she lied.
She wasn’t about to tell him that Henry had figured it would take a courageous man to marry her because her intelligence could be intimidating. Christoph would just scoff at that, or laugh, since he didn’t find her the least bit intimidating, neither before or after she’d donned the royal mantle.
But he obviously didn’t believe that she couldn’t remember because he said, “Maybe I’ll ask him, since you don’t want to say.”
