Claiming the Royal Innocent (Kingdoms & Crowns)

by Jennifer Hayward

  ‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ Bastiaan replied dryly. ‘But Philip will toughen up, don’t worry.’ He’ll need to, he thought caustically. Just as he himself had had to.

  ‘He’s so impressionable!’ his aunt cried. ‘And so handsome. No wonder these wretched girls make a beeline for him.’

  And, of course, so rich, Bastiaan added cynically—but silently. No point worrying his already anxious aunt further. It was Philip’s wealth—the wealth he would be inheriting from his late father’s estate once he turned twenty-one in a couple of months—that would attract females far more dangerous than the merely irksome spoilt teenage princess Elena Constantis. The real danger would come from a very different type of female.

  Call them what one liked—and Bastiaan had several names not suitable for his aunt’s ears—the most universal name was a familiar one: gold-diggers. Females who took one look at his young, good-looking, impressionable and soon to be very rich cousin and licked their lips in anticipation.

  That was the problem right now. A woman who appeared to be licking her lips over Philip. And the danger was, Bastiaan knew, very real. For Philip, so Paulette, his housekeeper at Cap Pierre, had informed him, far from diligently writing his essays, had taken to haunting the nearby town of Pierre-les-Pins and a venue there that was most undesirable for a twenty-year-old. Apparently attracted by an even more undesirable female working there.

  ‘A singer in a nightclub!’ his aunt wailed now. ‘I cannot believe Philip would fall for a woman like that!’

  ‘It is something of a cliché...’ Bastiaan allowed.

  His aunt bridled. ‘A cliché? Bastiaan, is that all you have to say about it?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. I could say a great deal more—but to what purpose?’ Bastiaan got to his feet. He was of an imposing height, standing well over six feet, and powerfully built. ‘Don’t worry...’ he made his voice reassuring now ‘... I’ll deal with it. Philip will not be sacrificed to a greedy woman’s ambitions.’

  His aunt stood up, clutching at his sleeve. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I knew I could count on you.’ Her eyes misted a little. ‘Take care of my darling boy, Bastiaan. He has no father now to look out for him.’

  Bastiaan pressed his aunt’s hand sympathetically. His maternal uncle had succumbed to heart disease when Philip had just started at university, and he knew how hard her husband’s death had hit his aunt. Knew, too, with a shadowing of his eyes, how losing a father too young—as he himself had when not much older than Philip—left a void.

  ‘I’ll keep Philip safe, I promise you,’ he assured his aunt now, as she took her leave.

  He saw her to her car, watched it head down the driveway of his property in the affluent outskirts of Athens. Then he went back indoors, his mouth tightening.

  His aunt’s fears were not groundless. Until Philip turned twenty-one Bastiaan was his trustee—overseeing all his finances, managing his investments—while Philip enjoyed a more than generous allowance to cover his personal spending. Usually Bastiaan did nothing more than cast a casual eye over the bank and credit card statements, but an unusually large amount—twenty thousand euros—had gone out in a single payment a week ago. The cheque had been paid into an unknown personal account at the Nice branch of a French bank. There was no reason—no good reason—that Bastiaan could come up with for such a transfer. There was, however, one very bad reason for it—and that he could come up with.

  The gold-digger had already started taking gold from the mine....

  Bastiaan’s features darkened. The sooner he disposed of this nightclub singer who was making eyes at his cousin—and his cousin’s fortune—the better. He headed purposefully to his study. If he was to leave for France in the morning, he had work to do tonight. Enterprises with portfolios the size of Karavalas did not run themselves. His cousin’s fortune might be predominantly in the form of blue chip stocks, but Bastiaan preferred to diversify across a broad range of investment opportunities, from industry and property to entrepreneurial start-ups. But, for all their variety, they all shared one aspect in common—they all made him money. A lot of money.

  The cynical curve was back at Bastiaan’s mouth as he sat himself down behind his desk and flicked on his PC. He’d told his aunt that her son would toughen up in time—and he knew from his own experience that that was true. Memory glinted in his dark eyes.

  When his own father had died, he’d assuaged his grief by partying hard and extravagantly, with no paternal guardian to moderate his excesses. The spree had ended abruptly. He’d been in a casino, putting away the champagne and generally flashing his cash lavishly, and it had promptly lured across a female—Leana—who had been all over him. At just twenty-three he’d been happy to enjoy all she’d offered him—the company of her luscious body in bed included. So much so that when she’d fed him some story of how she’d stupidly got herself into debt with the casino and was worried sick about it, he’d grandly handed her a more than handsome cheque, feeling munificent and generous towards the beautiful, sexy woman who’d seemed so keen on him...

  She’d disappeared the day the cheque had cleared—heading off, so he’d heard, on a yacht belonging to a seventy-year-old Mexican millionaire, never to be seen again by Bastiaan. He’d been royally fleeced and proved to be a complete mug. It had stung, no doubt about it, but he’d learnt his lesson, all right—an expensive one. It wasn’t one he wanted Philip to learn the same way. Apart from taking a large wedge of his money, Leana had damaged his self-esteem—an uncomfortably sobering experience for his younger self. Although it had made him wise up decisively.

  But, unlike Bastiaan, Philip was of a romantic disposition, and a gold-digging seductress might wound him more deeply than just in his wallet and his self-esteem. That was not something Bastiaan would permit. After his experience with Leana he’d become wise to the wiles women threw out to him, and sceptical of their apparent devotion. Now, into his thirties, he knew they considered him a tough nut—ruthless, even...

  His eyes hardened beneath dark brows. That was something this ambitious nightclub singer would soon discover for herself.

  * * *

  Sarah stood motionless on the low stage, the spotlight on her, while her audience beyond, sitting at their tables, mostly continued their conversations as they ate and drank.

  I’m just a divertimento, she thought to herself, acidly. Background music. She nodded at Max on the piano, throat muscles ready, and he played the opening to her number. It was easy and low-pitched, making no demands on her upper register. It was just as well—the last thing she wanted to do was risk her voice singing in this smoky atmosphere.

  As she sang the first bars her breasts lifted, making her all too aware of just how low-cut the bodice of her champagne satin gown was. Her long hair was swept over one bare shoulder. It was, she knew, a stereotypical ‘vamp’ image—the sultry nightclub singer with her slinky dress, low-pitched voice, over-made-up eyes and long blonde locks.

  She tensed instinctively. Well, that was the idea, wasn’t it? To stand in for the club’s missing resident chanteuse, Sabine Sablon, who had abruptly vacated the role when she’d run off with a rich customer without warning.

  It hadn’t been Sarah’s idea to take over as Sabine, but Max had been blunt about it. If she didn’t agree to sing here in the evenings, then Raymond, the nightclub owner, lacking a chanteuse, would refuse to let Max have the run of the place during the day. And without that they couldn’t rehearse...and without rehearsals they couldn’t appear at the Provence en Voix music festival.

  And if they didn’t appear there her last chance would be gone.

  My last chance—my last chance to achieve my dream!

  Her dream of breaking through from being just one more of the scores upon scores of hopeful, aspiring sopranos who crowded the operatic world, all desperate to make their mark. If she could not succeed now, she would have to abandon the dream that had possessed her since her teenage years, and all the way through musi
c college and the tough, ultra-competitive world beyond as she’d struggled to make herself heard by those who could lift her from the crowd and launch her career.

  She’d tried so hard, for so long, and now she was on the wrong side of twenty-five, racing towards thirty, with time against her and younger singers coming up behind her. Everything rested on this final attempt—and if it failed... Well, then, she would accept defeat. Resign herself to teaching instead. It was the way she was currently earning her living, part-time at a school in her native Yorkshire, though she found it unfulfilling, craving the excitement and elation of performing live.

  So not yet—oh, not yet—would she give up on her dreams. Not until she’d put everything into this music festival, singing the soprano lead in what she knew could only be a high-risk gamble: a newly written opera by an unknown composer, performed by unknown singers, all on a shoestring. A shoestring that Max, their fanatically driven director and conductor, was already stretching to the utmost. Everything, but everything, was being done on a tiny budget, with savings being made wherever they could. Including rehearsal space.

  So every night bar Sundays, she had to become Sabine Sablon, husking away into the microphone, drawing male eyes all around. It was not a comfortable feeling—and it was a million miles away from her true self. Max could tell her all he liked that it would give her valuable insight into roles such as La Traviata’s courtesan Violetta, or the coquettish Manon, but on an operatic stage everyone would know she was simply playing a part. Here, everyone looking at her really thought she was Sabine Sablon.

  A silent shudder went through her. Dear God, if anyone in the opera world found out she was singing here, like this, her credibility would be shot to pieces. No one would take her seriously for a moment.

  And neither Violetta nor Manon was anything like her role in Anton’s opera War Bride. Her character was a romantic young girl, falling in love with a dashing soldier. A whirlwind courtship, a return to the front—and then the dreaded news of her husband’s fate. The heartbreak of loss and bereavement. And then a child born to take his father’s place in yet another war...

  The simple, brutal tale was told as a timeless fable of the sacrifice and futility of war, repeated down the ages, its score haunting and poignant. It had captivated Sarah the first moment she’d heard Max play it.

  What must it be like to love so swiftly, to hurt so badly? she’d wondered as she’d started to explore her role. For herself, she had no knowledge—had never experienced the heady whirlwind of love nor the desolation of heartbreak. Her only serious relationship had ended last year when Andrew, a cellist she had known since college, had been offered a place in a prestigious orchestra in Germany. It had been his breakthrough moment, and she had been so glad for him—had waved him off without a thought of holding him back.

  Both of them had always known that their careers must come first in their lives, which meant that neither could afford to invest in a deeply emotional relationship which might jeopardise their diverging career paths. So neither had grieved when they’d parted, only wished each other well. Theirs had been a relationship based primarily on a shared passion for music, rather than for each other—friendship and affection had bound them, nothing more than that.

  But this meant she knew that in order to portray her character now—the War Bride—as convincingly as she could, she would need to call on all her imagination. Just as she would need all her operatic abilities to do credit to the challenging vocal demands of the hauntingly beautiful but technically difficult music.

  She reached the end of her song to a smattering of applause. Dipping her head in acknowledgement, she shifted her weight from one high-heeled foot to the other. As she straightened again, sending her gaze back out over the dining area, she felt a sudden flickering awareness go through her. She could hear Max start the introduction to her next number but ignored it, her senses suddenly on alert. She heard him repeat the phrase, caught him glancing at her with a frown, but her attention was not on him—not on the song she was supposed to have started four bars earlier. Her attention was on the audience beyond.

  Someone was looking at her. Someone standing at the back of the room.

  He had not been there a moment ago and must have just come in. She shook her head, trying to dismiss that involuntary sense of heightened awareness, of sudden exposure. Male eyes gazed at her all the time—and there was always movement beyond the stage...diners and waiters. They did not make her pause the way this had—as if there were something different about him. She wanted to see him more clearly, but the light was wrong and he was too far away for her to discern anything more than a tall, tuxedo-clad figure at the back of the room.

  For the third time she heard Max repeat the intro—insistently this time. And she knew she had to start to sing. Not just because of Max’s impatient prompt but because she suddenly, urgently, needed to do something other than simply stand there, pooled in the light that emphasised every slender curve of her tightly sheathed body. Exposed her to that invisible yet almost tangible scrutiny that was palpable in its impact on her.

  As she started the number her voice was more husky than ever. Her long, artificial lashes swept down over her deeply kohled eyes, and the sweep of her hair dipped halfway across her jawline and cheekbone. She forced herself to keep singing, to try and suppress the frisson of disturbed awareness that was tensing through her—the sense of being the object of attention that was like a beam targeted at her.

  Somehow she got through to the end of the number, pulling herself together to start the next one on time and not fluff it. It seemed easier now, and she realised that at some point that sense of being under scrutiny had faded and dissipated. As if a kind of pressure had been lifted off her. She reached the end of the last number, the end of her set, with a sense of relief. She made her way offstage, hearing canned music starting up and Max closing down the piano.

  One of the waiters intercepted her. ‘There’s a guy who wants to buy you a drink,’ he said.

  Sarah made a face. It wasn’t unusual that this happened, but she never accepted.

  The waiter held up a hundred-euro note. ‘Looks like he’s keen,’ he informed her with a lift of his brow.

  ‘Well, he’s the only one who is,’ she said. ‘Better take it back to him,’ she added. ‘I don’t want him thinking I pocketed it and then didn’t show.’

  Her refusal got Max’s approval. ‘No time for picking up men,’ he said, flippantly but pointedly.

  ‘As if I would...’ She rolled her eyes.

  For a moment, it crossed her mind that the invitation to buy her a drink might be connected to that shadowy figure at the back of the room and his disturbing perusal of her, but then she dismissed the thought. All she wanted to do now was get out of her costume and head for bed. Max started opera rehearsals promptly every morning, and she needed to sleep.

  She’d just reached her dressing room, kicking off her high heels and flexing her feet in relief, when there was a brief knock at the door. She only had time to say, ‘Who is it?’ before the door opened.

  She glanced up, assuming it would be Max, wanting to tell her something that couldn’t wait. But instead it was a man she’d never seen before in her life.

  And he stilled the breath in her lungs.

  Copyright © 2016 by Julia James

  ISBN-13: 9781488000850

  Claiming the Royal Innocent

  Copyright © 2016 by Jennifer Drogell

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