The Auction a Romance by Anna Erishkigal

by Anna Erishkigal

"What?"

  Adam's voice broke.

  "So long as Pippa is being raised by her lawfully married mother and father, in an Australian court, the judge thinks the King will lose."

  It took a moment for his words to sink in. It was his grief-stricken expression which finally made me understand what Adam was trying to tell me. I felt as though a horse had just kicked me in the gut.

  "I see." I stood up, eager to get out of there before I lost what little dignity I had left. "Then I had better get home to help Pippa pack."

  Adam bolted out of his seat before I could run away.

  "No, you don't see!" Adam cried out. "I don't want to do this!"

  He threw his arms around me and buried his face in my neck.

  "I don't want to do this, Rosie!" His chest shuddered with misery. "I don't want to go back to her. I want to be with you."

  I didn't want to hear this. I didn't want to understand or make excuses for him or forgive him. But as he crawled into my lap like a beaten dog and the salty wetness of his grief blended with my own tears, I found myself whispering that it was okay, that I understood, that I knew he was doing the right thing, because he was right. If we'd thought the war was ugly between him and Eva, it was nothing compared to what those fools would do to Pippa now that the custody battle had moved onto a global stage.

  I took a breath, for I knew what I had to say.

  "You once told me that everything you have ever done, you've done for love of your daughter?"

  "Yes."

  Tears dripped off the end of my nose.

  "You have to save her. You can't abandon her to those butchers."

  Adam clutched my face with both of his hands.

  "But I'm in love with you."

  I shut my eyes. They were the words I'd dreamed of, the words I so desperately wanted to hear. My voice broke as I drove the knife into his heart.

  "I'm a liability."

  I pulled away, leaving him grasping for me, his eyes anguished as I cut out his heart and handed it to him.

  "Go home, Adam," I sobbed. "Go home to your wife and child."

  I ran out of there, past the reporters who stuck microphones in my face and asked if I'd helped Adam Bristow hide the crown princess of Zurikhistan from her grandfather.

  Chapter 55

  To a person who grows up in a country with adequate rainfall, a perfect blue sky speaks of summertime, of warm, sunny days filled with laughter and freedom, holidays spent with the family and gardens that grow heavy with tomatoes. But when you grow up in a country which has begun to dry down as the trade winds carry the rain further and further from your fields, a flawless blue sky signifies disfavor from the gods, that your dying fields and thirsty cattle will all slowly wither until you are left standing alone in the dust.

  I waited with Pippa in the living room of the house, her suitcases packed and waiting by the door. We stared out the picture window together, me and her and the dog, waiting for the car to come that would take her back to Brisbane, to the house where her parents had been too busy to spend time with her, to the school where the mean girls had tormented her, and the city where nobody had wanted to be her friend.

  Pippa leaned against me, dressed in her Barbie pink shorts, with the matching shirt with a picture of Pinky Pie on the front and a small, yellow mustard stain that her mother would hate. I put my arm around her shoulders as the big hand moved closer to noon.

  "I don't want to go," Pippa said.

  "I know, nipper," I said. "But it's just the way things have to be."

  "What will happen to Luna?"

  "You know I'll take good care of her. I'll make sure she knows you miss her."

  "Can't you come with us?"

  I swallowed. Pippa had no idea why her parents suddenly decided to reconcile. Only that her father called last night before my taxi got me home and explained he'd be here to pick her up today. At her age, she'd begun to grasp there was more that went on between a husband and wife than simply being a mommy and a daddy, and she'd already picked up on the fact that whatever that something was, her father would much rather be doing it with me.

  "I can't, sweetheart," I said. "It will complicate things."

  "What things?"

  "Just … things."

  Pippa frowned.

  "Did you and Daddy fight?"

  A cold, hard knot settled in my throat.

  "No, sweetheart. We just all sat down and had a talk with the judge, and then we decided it would be better for everyone if you and your Daddy moved back to live with your mother."

  We stared at the empty dirt driveway as the second hand moved closer to noon. Across the courtyard, Luna stood in her pasture, a small, white pony standing in a too-dry field, waiting for her little girl to come and give her cuddles.

  "Why can't Luna come with me?" Pippa said.

  I wiped a tear.

  "I wish she could," I said. "But she's still a sick little pony. She needs more care than your mother can give her. And…"

  I started to cry.

  "Don't worry, Rosie! I promise I won't let Mommy hurt Luna!"

  There was no way I could tell her the truth, so I told her the smallest possible lie.

  "What will happen to poor Flying Dutchman," I said. "You told your Mommy you wanted him, so she bought him, and now he doesn't have anybody to love him. If you tell her you don't want him, she'll have no choice but to send him to the auction."

  Pippa threw her arms around my waist and hugged me.

  "You're right, Rosie. I'll take care of Flying Dutchman. Luna at least has you."

  There was no way I'd entrust the pony to Eva Bristow-Jackson, not even under Adam's care, for Eva had proven she had no inhibitions about using something somebody loved as a weapon.

  Thunderlane ran to the screen door and yipped. A cloud of dust preceded Maynor Jackson's limousine as it pulled into sun-parched courtyard like a darkened hearse. The driver got out, but before he could come around, the back door opened and Adam stepped out, dressed in the trappings of that other world he inhabited, the one where he was a man of wealth and privilege.

  Pippa ran out the door and gave her father a hug. I came out more slowly, carrying two of Pippa's suitcases.

  I met Adam's gaze. His expression looked as tortured as mine.

  "Rosie." His voice came out a painful croak.

  "Adam."

  The limousine driver opened the opposite door and out stepped Eva Bristow-Jackson, tall and beautiful, wealthy and aristocratic, Adam's wife. She wore the same grief-stricken, vacant look she'd worn in her wedding photo, the one I now understood was because she'd been cast off by the man she'd loved after she'd made a terrible mistake, and then been forced to lie to the man who loved her, all to protect a little girl she'd never really wanted from her own father, because Pippa was all she had left of the prince who'd committed suicide because of her.

  "Miss Xalbadora." Eva's voice sounded strangely devoid of contempt.

  "Mrs. Bristow."

  Pippa did not greet her mother.

  "Hey, nipper," I croaked through suppressed tears. "Aren't you going to say hello to your Mommy?"

  Adam's blue-green eyes glistened in the sun with tears.

  Eva opened her mouth to speak, but then she looked away.

  "Hello, Mother," Pippa said stiffly. She did not leave her father's arms.

  The driver got the rest of the suitcases out of the house and piled them into the boot. The rest would stay until Adam could send for it, but I was determined to be out of here by the end of the week.

  "It's time to go, sweetheart?" Eva's voice lilted up into a question.

  Pippa threw her arms around me.

  "Take care of Luna for me!"

  My voice broke.

  "I'll make sure she's safe until you see her again."

  A lump rose in my throat as those white-blonde pigtails disappeared into the limousine, the same white-blonde hair and eerie silver eyes that were the genetic lineage of Zurikhistanian royalty.r />
  "C'mon, Thunderlane," Pippa called.

  The dog stuck his nose into my hand and whimpered, and then he disappeared into the limousine as well.

  Adam stepped towards me, his expression tortured.

  "Rosie, I…"

  I held out my hand.

  "Please, Adam, don’t…"

  I looked over the roof of the limousine where Eva stood. Her expression was not one of anger, but fear. She had lost Adam. We both knew it. The only reason she was getting him back was because Adam loved Pippa more than he loved either one of us. And I, goddammit! I loved that little girl enough to let her daddy go.

  Adam took my hand. He ran his fingers down my arm to the Aboriginal bracelet and turned my wrist up so he could examine the laces. One by one, he ran his fingers over the coarse black rawhide, making sure the knots were still tied tightly so the only way to get it off would be to take a knife and cut it.

  "Tell me you don't want me to do this," Adam whispered. "Please, Rosie. Tell me you don't want me to do this, and I will move heaven and earth to find another way."

  My lips trembled. I could not make him choose between me and his daughter. Pippa was just a little girl and she needed her daddy there to protect her.

  "Goodbye, Adam."

  I stepped backwards towards the house. I shot Eva a plea for help. For God's sake, woman! Get your husband away before I break!

  "Adam," Eva's voice warbled. "Pippa is waiting."

  Adam's eyes matched the ocean which surrounded the Great Barrier Reef, brilliant aquamarine, with sorrowful depths of blue and green.

  "G'night, Miss Rosamond," he said softly. "I will wait for you each night by the river in my dreams."

  His golden hair shone in the sunlight, a wild brumby stallion protecting his filly, being loaded for slaughter by the two titans who would use Pippa as a pawn. He held my gaze as the driver shut the door and placed his hand against the window, his lips silently moving to say 'I love you.' The motor started. I felt my heart rip out of my chest as all my daydreams about love, and family, and of someday finding a place I could call home, all drove out of my life in the back of a big, black limousine.

  In the paddock across the courtyard, Luna whinnied as she saw her little girl disappear and ran to the end of the paddock, trumpeting for Pippa to come back again and again.

  I wrapped my arms around myself and sank to the ground, keening. Gone. Adam was gone. And now I was as alone as ever.

  Chapter 56

  Five months after the trial…

  .

  The woman stood outside the gates for weeks, holding a sign that said, 'I have important information for King Azhanibek about his granddaughter Pippa Bristow.' The palace guard questioned the woman each morning as she arrived promptly at 8:00 a.m. and stood there all day clutching a manila envelope until the second changing of the guard at 6:00 p.m., and then the next day she would be back again.

  "I will," she said, "only give my information to King Azhanibek."

  After a few days, the intelligence community sent detectives to question the woman as she stood there silently at the gate, holding her envelope and her sign, but her insistence remained the same. She would only give her information directly to the King. She was allowed to stay, for Zurikhistan law allowed for peaceful demonstration, and the place where she stood was an authorized place to stand. Besides, the woman never created any trouble. She just stood there holding her sign where the King would see it each time his motorcade passed in and out of the palace gates.

  Weeks passed, and after a while the local media noticed and asked the woman if she would give her story.

  "I have important information for King Azhanibek about his granddaughter Pippa Bristow," she said, "and I will only give that information to him."

  Had the King not been embroiled in a legal dispute which had caused fortune-seekers and imposters to come out of the woodwork, some claiming that they had children who'd been fathered by the late Prince Philip, others claiming they had information for sale which would enable the King to get back his granddaughter, he might have agreed to see the woman sooner. But these were strange times in the Kingdom of Zurikhistan, with changing political fault lines and much oil money pouring into an impoverished backwater at the edge of the steppes of Asia. With his trips back and forth to Australia to attend legal hearings in the hopes of at least meeting his only surviving descendant sapping his time, the King had more important things on his mind than a strange Aussie woman who stood outside his gates each day holding a sign.

  Eventually, however, as defeat after defeat piled up, all orchestrated by the oilman who had stolen Pippa away from her grandfather, the King grew desperate, and one day when his motorcade passed through the gate to the palace, he spied the woman holding her sign and told his royal secretary:

  "Tell her I will meet with her at eleven o'clock tomorrow."

  The royal secretary watched the woman now. She was late middle-aged, with bleach-blonde hair and wearing an off-the-rack dress-suit that probably cost far more than the woman earned. At one time she'd been beautiful, but frown lines and tension had set a permanent scowl around her mouth and eyes. She sat quietly in the receiving room, legs crossed, clutching the mysterious manila envelope in her lap.

  At precisely eleven o'clock, the royal secretary got up, strode over to the elaborately carved rococo double doors which contained a white unicorn on one door; a beautiful, gossamer-winged woman on the other, their limbs upraised to support a crown, and slipped inside the door.

  "She is here, Your Majesty," the secretary said.

  The King turned in his chair. Like his late son he had white-blonde hair and eerie silver eyes, a subtle cleft on his chin, and a tall, eloquent frame. His hair, however, now sported streaks of white, and the lines around his face were weary from shepherding his kingdom out of the clutches of former Soviet oppression into a new age where the western world only valued his people for their country's ability to produce oil.

  "Are you certain she is not a suicide bomber or assassin?" the King asked.

  "She has submitted willingly to every search," the secretary said. "She is unarmed."

  "And the envelope."

  "She would not explain the contents," the secretary said. "They do not look promising. But there is nothing in there to put your royal highness at risk."

  The King's face dropped with disappointment. Ever since his only child died, there had been a deep melancholy about him that no amount of revelries could lift. The royal secretary had served him long enough to be deeply protective of her sovereign and king.

  "Would you like me to send her away?" the secretary asked.

  "No," he said. "She has waited outside my gates for eleven weeks. I will listen to what she has to say, and then hopefully she will go away without making a scene."

  The secretary strode back out to the sitting room in her sharp pale pink Armani suit and crisp Louboutins, and tried not to appear too disdainful as she welcomed the nouveau-riche wannabe into the royal chambers.

  "The King will see you now," the secretary said in fluent English.

  The woman rose and smoothed out her skirt.

  "Thank you."

  Despite the manner in which the woman had gained entrance, she walked with confidence, as if she was used to being obeyed. All the nouveau-riche were like that, arrogant in their belief that they held their own fate in their hands, but tolerating them was a decision the King had made to keep Zurikhistan free, for it was either them, or the old-guard Soviet mafia and oligarchs.

  The King no doubt made the same appraisal as the royal secretary walked the woman to a posh Louis XIV chair and instructed her that was where she could sit.

  The woman sat down without bowing and crossed her legs. She reached into the mysterious manila envelope and pulled out the silver CD and single photograph the intelligence men reported the envelope contained and placed them upon the King's desk.

  "Thank you, Mrs. Karimova," the King nodded at the royal secre
tary. "That will be all. I will call you if I need you."

  "Yes, Your Majesty." The royal secretary bowed deeply.

  She glanced at the photograph as she turned to leave. It was a picture of a dark-haired teenage girl wearing equestrian gear sitting atop a golden horse, not a purebred by any standard of breeding, heavily decorated with ribbons. The girl wore a broad smile as she laid her hand atop her golden steed's mane and holding its reins was a handsome, dark-haired man.

  The royal secretary moved to shut the door. She paused, to listen, to the first thing the woman had to say.

  "I want to tell you a story," the woman said, "about the hidden price of winning."

  Chapter 57

  One year after the trial…

  .

  "Alright, children," I said. "Don't forget to write down your homework lessons. I'll meet you out at the corral."

  Eighteen children, ranging from a kindergartener to three who'd already begun to follow in their parent's footsteps as jack- and jillaroos, scrambled to their feet and shoved their books into their rucksacks, ribbing each other good-naturedly as they hurried out of the shed turned one-room schoolhouse. I answered questions for the little boy who always struggled to keep up with the reading, and then reached under my desk to pull out my old black Dubliners and slide them onto feet.

  I twisted my feet at the ankle, admiring the way the ten laces at the vamp made it look like I wore a pair of fancy, Victorian granny boots.

  "G'day Rosie," a handsome, tawny head peeked into the schoolhouse. "My father sent me to tell you he's had some news."

  Billy McAllister was the eldest son of the owner of Tanga Station and one of the many young jacks that forever dogged my every step, vying to catch my eye. I held up my hand in a gesture every child I taught knew meant, 'not another word.'

  "We had an agreement, Billy. I want no news from the outside world."

  "Paw said this news was different," Billy said. "He said you'd want to come real quick."

  "A deal's a deal," I shot him a pointed look. "If you want me to stay, you must give me my privacy and my peace of mind."