Free Bride to the King by Barbara Cartland Page A

tried to interfere in politics, they would soon stop me, so what is the point of my wasting my time on trying to understand them?”
    Zosina gave a little sigh.
    The King, she thought, was more than ever like a truculent schoolboy and she had the feeling he was so angry that whatever she said he would never understand the seriousness of the situation or that she was not trying to manipulate him in some manner.
    She rose to walk across the room and stand not beside him but at the next window looking out as he was.
    The sunshine made the snow on the peaks of the mountains a dazzling white against the blue of the sky and she thought she could see the cascades of water running down the sides of the hills.
    In the distance like a silver streak, the river which passed through the City flowed towards the distant horizon.
    “Dórsia is so lovely!” she said, “and it is yours . It belongs to you!”
    The King laughed loudly.
    “That is what you think, but the person who rules it is Uncle Sándor and everyone from the Prime Minister to the lowest crossing-sweeper knows it.”
    His voice had a jeering note in it as he went on,
    “Have you not been told by now that I am an unfortunate ‘afterthought’? The son of an Albanian gypsy who ought never to have got into Dórsia in the first place?”
    “You are the King,” Zosina replied, “and surely it is up to you to gain the love and respect of your people? When you have done that – and kept your country free – you may justifiably feel very proud of yourself.”
    The King laughed again and this time there was a note of genuine amusement in his voice.
    “Now you are really starting in the way you mean to go on,” he said. “‘You must be a good King! Be kind to your people! They must learn to love you! You must do the right thing!’”
    He threw up his hands in a gesture that was somehow derisive.
    “Uncle Sándor has done it again!” he jeered. “He has picked the right ‘petticoat’ to rule Dórsia – and who could have learnt how to do it better than a Princess who comes from Lützelstein?”
    Zosina felt her temper rising.
    “I think you are being needlessly insulting!” she asserted. “If I could do what I wish to do, I would go back to Lützelstein, stay with my father and tell him I will not marry you, when everything I say or do is suspect.”
    “So you have got a temper!” the King said. “Well, that’s better than all that mealy-mouthed preaching anyway.”
    Zosina suddenly realised that she was being almost as rude and angry as he was.
    “I am – sorry,” she said with genuine humility. “I do not wish to preach – and I promise you I don’t wish to coerce you into doing anything you don’t want to do.”
    “But you will all the same,” the King said, “and you will do it for my own good.”
    Again his voice was jeering before he went on,
    “That is what Uncle Sándor always says, ‘I am only telling you this for your own good!’ If you want the truth I am sick to death of my uncle and everyone else for that matter! I want to be left alone! I want to enjoy myself, have fun with my own friends, make love to the women I choose – and let me tell you once and for all – you are not my type!”
    Zosina was tempted to snap back that he was not her type either, but she knew it would sound very childish.
    Instead she just stood staring blindly out of the window feeling that this could not be happening. In fact, the whole conversation was like something in a nightmare.
    “I will tell you one more thing,” the King said loudly. “If we have to marry and I cannot see how I can get out of it, the moment I am properly a King and can send Uncle Sándor packing, I shall go my way and you can go yours!”
    As he spoke, he walked across the sitting room and left the room slamming the door behind him.
    Zosina put her hands up to her face feeling this could not be true and if it was, then perhaps it was all her fault.
    ‘How did I manage to upset