Aleksey's Kingdom

Readers love
A Royal Affair

by
J
OHN
W
ILTSHIRE

“
A Royal Affair
absolutely delivers all that I’m looking for in a story: unique and compelling characters, a vivid, action packed setting, believable romance, all wrapped in a fresh and captivating narrative style.”

—It’s About The Book

“There are twists and turns, both in plot and with characters. Brilliantly scrumptious fiction.”

—Prism Book Alliance

“…as soon as Doctor Nikolai Hartmann meets Prince Aleksey of Hesse-Davia, I quickly became in engrossed in the book.”

—MM Good Book Reviews

“
A Royal Affair
is beautifully crafted and certainly a journey worth taking… There is no doubt that I will be reading more by John Wiltshire, especially with the poetry he creates through the simplest of words.”

—Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words

“
A Royal Affair
is so far from predictable that it had me catching my breath with all the surprising and intense moments.”

—The Blogger Girls

Published by

D
REAMSPINNER
P
RESS

5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886  USA

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Aleksey’s Kingdom

© 2015 John Wiltshire.

Cover Art

© 2015  L.C. Chase.

http://www.lcchase.com

Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.

All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/.

ISBN: 978-1-63216-888-7

Digital ISBN: 978-1-63216-889-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014922530

First Edition April 2015

Printed in the United States of America

This paper meets the requirements of

ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

I
DID
not intend to take up my pen again so soon—if at all.

I am no longer a man of reflection or one of science as I once purported to be, and do not analyze my life as I once did.

In this place of towering trees and deep, cold lakes, of mountains and wild coastlines, I have no need to pretend to be what I am not. But the events of the last few weeks have shaken me, I confess. Even now, sitting at my crudely fashioned desk in our cabin, I can feel a slight tremor in my hand as I write. It will pass, as will the nightmares and the drumming in my ears, which sounds like a summons from the dead.

But I do not pretend this time that alleviation of these small woes is my chief motivation in recording the events I am about to relate.

I have another motive.

I say I am no longer a man of science, but that does not mean I have fallen so far in my beliefs to now be… irrational… and yet… what I have witnessed over the last weeks has utterly confounded me. I will set it down. Once more I will record
I went here, I did that,
and maybe when the path is clear upon the paper, it will become clearer in my mind and fit once more into the laws of nature I have not wholly abandoned.

For if it does not, what is the alternative?

The alternative is unthinkable.

I
SUPPOSE
the beginning of the tale belongs to Aleksey.

Did I think our flight from Hesse-Davia to this new world would leave us in a kind of semiparadise? Heaven here on earth? I suppose I did. If put under torture—and trust me when I say from firsthand knowledge I would not want that experience again—then I would retrieve my account of my time in Hesse-Davia and confirm I did use the word heaven—or Aleksey did. I do not think either of us gave thought to how our lives would play out here in the New World.

If we were man and wife….

Dammit. He is as difficult to write about as he is to live with.

Aleksey, Aleksey, Aleksey. Now the trees whisper his name as once the wind cracking the sails did, the seagulls mewling….

Now I think on it, perhaps they were warning me.

Aleksey. His Majesty King Christian Aleksey Frederik Mountberg. What can I say about living with Aleksey that would capture one fraction of the ecstasy and fury that are my everyday lot? I brought a king to a wilderness, the general of a victorious army to a place where, if you listen closely, you can hear trees growing. I removed a young man who had lived out his twenty-four years surrounded by court intrigue and gossip to this place where the arrival of winter and the departure of ducks is something to be noted. He had spent his life being amused by people paid to invent novel entertainments: picnics, masques, dances, tournaments, concerts. Now he has me to divert him. You may have gathered from my previous account that I am not the most enthralling companion anyone could choose. I have my moments, but they are usually when I am horizontal—or Aleksey is—and then I can be inventive and amusing enough. But we can only be horizontal (and clearly this is only an expression, as we are as happy to share our bodies standing up pressed to any convenient wall as we are lying down) so much of the day, following on from nights when we exhaust ourselves to pain with the frequency and urgency of our passion.

As I started to say earlier, if we were man and wife…. If we were, there would most likely be children now: two people becoming three and then four. Then the love and the devotion that brought two people together would spread to encompass all. I assume that is how it works. I have no firsthand experience of this, naturally. But here we are. Just the two of us. Of course, I am not wistfully picturing Aleksey as my spouse surrounded by children. I am content enough. But I just wish….

Dammit, I wish he had not visited the newest settlement on the coast, and I wish he did not now find it so necessary to his happiness.

Aleksey has gone a handful of times to a small colony on the seaboard, and I am as a lovesick, jealous girl. There. I have improved my ability to be honest with my feelings.

He infuriates me because he finds my jealousy funny. Damn him, he has entirely forgotten how our relationship is supposed to work. He is only twenty-six. I am thirty-eight.

I should never have called this new home Aleksey’s kingdom and told him he had a devoted subject entirely in his thrall. I think he took me a little too literally.

I think now, upon reflection, it was a very bad idea to allow His Majesty to read my thoughts on our time in Hesse-Davia at all—recollections he has now read a number of times—some passages extremely well thumbed. It is very hard for me to now present myself as the stern arbitrator of his folly, censorious of his ridiculous whims and enthusiasms, when he knows I am usually thinking entirely different to what I actually say.

Aleksey, I am very sad to relate, takes liberties with me I should not allow.

He thinks my body is his to do with as he wishes.

He thinks my thoughts are constantly upon him.

He thinks my heart is unable to beat without the spark his presence lends.

His folly in all this is quite unsupportable.

A
S
I
have already said, therefore, Aleksey precipitated these strange events. He returned one day in late autumn from his latest excursion to the colony to tell me some news that was to have more of an impact upon us than I anticipated when I first heard it. As he had been away for two weeks, I was not in the best of moods. I was chopping logs, a task I had taken to with great relish that morning, waking for some reason very out of sorts and needing something extremely physical to revive my spirits. Faelan was the first to sense his return. Now gray muzzled with age, he rose with difficulty from beside the woodpile where we had been comparing our thoughts on Aleksey’s absence and padded stiffly to the edge of the tree line. Aleksey got more of a welcome from his wolf than he did from his lover. I ignored him. I was busy. Wood does not chop itself.

After regarding me for some time, perhaps waiting for a greeting, Aleksey released Boudica to her paddock and came closer, his hands behind his back. “Do you not want your present?”

“Am I a girl needing trinkets to sweeten me?” The log split with one of those perfect blows you can only reproduce once in a while. I smiled privately and lined up another.

Aleksey picked up my shirt, which was draped over the log pile, and sat down, idly running his fingers over the material. Faelan slumped down at his feet with a sigh of pleasure. “He is glad to see me. I do not see why you are not too. It is very hard to have ridden so eagerly to get home and tell you my news—and give you a present—only to be treated so rudely.”

“One day you will return and find Faelan has died while you have been gone, and then you will be sorry—he is ten, Aleksey. That is a great age for a wolf, and he pines for you when you are not here.”