by Kim Lawrence
‘I’m fine, barely a scratch,’ she admitted guiltily.
‘And Chloe?’
‘I don’t know. She’s been transferred to a burns unit.’ It certainly put her own problems in perspective. ‘It’s so unfair. I caused this and Chloe and you are both paying for it.’
He arched a brow. ‘How exactly is this your fault?’
‘I ran away.’ She blinked as her eyes filled with the sting of unshed tears burning.
‘It was an accident, Sabrina, a freak set of circumstances. Beat yourself up by all means if you want to, but I suspect that Chloe would benefit from a slightly less self-indulgent response.’
She flinched, the initial flare of indignation at his callous attitude vanishing as she recognised he had a point. She scrubbed her eyes with her knuckles and took a deep breath. ‘You’re right,’ she admitted. ‘Mum and Dad are with Chloe. It’s where I should be.’ Her jaw firmed as she wondered how quickly she could get to them.
Disarmed by the admission that he could not imagine any woman finding herself in Sabrina’s position, he studied her face. The tear stains, the bruised smudges beneath her eyes, the honey hair lying loose and tangled—and yet she still looked beautiful. His body, bruised, battered and broken even as it was, reacted to that beauty, the lust tempered with tenderness that struck a chord of shock through him.
‘Family loyalty?’
Sabrina’s eyes lifted at the soft comment. Her slender shoulders rose in a tiny shrug. ‘It’s what families do.’
‘Your family maybe.’
‘Have you and your father...?’ she began tentatively.
‘Always hated one another?’
She met his gaze steadily. ‘I wasn’t going to say that.’
‘No, I’m sure you were going to be more tactful. My father never forgave me for being born even after he discovered I was actually his son and, unlike Luis, I never forgave him for killing my mother. Oh, not literally,’ he admitted in response to her wide-eyed reaction. ‘He didn’t need to. Perhaps he did love her, or his version of it, I don’t know, but he sealed her fate the day he married her. She was very young and the marriage was—’
Across the space that separated them Sabrina could feel the emotion rolling off him. Years of anger and resentment that had dominated his childhood and shaped his adult life. ‘Convenient,’ she inserted quietly. ‘What was she like?’
A flicker of surprise crossed his face and for a moment he was silent, as if considering the question. ‘Didn’t Luis ever speak to you about her?’
She shook her head. ‘We never talked much at all.’
He stayed silent as he absorbed this information; something in his expression made her wish she had been less open. ‘Delicate,’ he said eventually. ‘And sensitive, shy. I used to will her to stand up to him.’ His jaw clenched as he admitted with an air of acceptance she sensed had been a long time coming, ‘But she couldn’t, it wasn’t in her. Ironic really—Luis did what we always wanted her to do: he escaped. But she never did. It was like seeing a wild bird trapped in a cage. Painful, heartbreaking, but you know deep down that even if someone opened the door for her she’d be too scared to fly away.’
The poignant image his words drew made her eyes fill, but as much as she felt for the sad, unhappy woman he described Sabrina felt more for her sons. She strongly believed that a mother’s job was to protect her children but it seemed the roles had been reversed with Sebastian and his brother. She sucked in a deep breath as she silently vowed that no child of hers would ever feel like that.
‘Or, she knew it was her duty to stay,’ she suggested quietly. ‘I know you think it’s a dirty word, but isn’t that what you’re doing by marrying me?’
‘Did you just propose to me, Sabrina?’
Her delicate jaw quivered. ‘I expect that that will happen when we’re not in the same room by someone who is working on the press release now and it’s better that way, isn’t it? No pretending, given the circumstances.’
There was no trace of the relief she had anticipated in his expression, but then he was most probably in pain. He certainly didn’t object when a nurse bustled in and offered to top up his pain relief.
The effects of the analgesia hit Sebastian almost straight away; within seconds his eyelids were closing, and before a second nurse appeared with a holdall that had arrived with fresh clothes for Sabrina he was asleep.
She changed quietly in the bathroom so as not to disturb Sebastian. On her way to the door she paused and looked down at him. Asleep he looked younger, the lines of cynicism ironed out.
Unable to fight the impulse, she reached out and found her fingers halfway to his cheek before she stopped herself. A quiver of sensation radiated out from the pit of her stomach...not her heart. Gratitude was natural. He had saved Chloe. They had gone through a trauma together.
This was a merger, not a marriage.
CHAPTER EIGHT
LOW-KEY, IT HAD been agreed, was appropriate under the circumstances, and the civil ceremony was just that, a handful of people beyond the immediate family. There were photographs, which would be released along with an official statement to be issued later that week.
So she was married. Sabrina could not decide if she was meant to feel different. She glanced to the man, her husband, who sat beside her. There was a remote, untouchable quality about him that even had she wanted to make conversation would have made her think twice. Sabrina didn’t want to.
They were physically inches apart but in every other way worlds apart; the journey passed in total silence, not the companionable variety. He was making no effort to change that.
The only time he had spoken was when they’d got in the car and she had told him that she wanted to go to the hospital to see Chloe. He’d nodded and issued a curt instruction to the driver. Then, when they’d arrived at the hospital, he’d pulled out a laptop.
‘I’ll wait here.’
So Sabrina had gone into the private London hospital her sister had been transferred to, flanked by two security men, to the room where her sister had spent the last few weeks. Chloe had been scheduled to leave before the wedding, but an infection had meant that the skin grafts on her leg that had sustained injury had not taken and the entire painful process had had to begin all over again.
The amount of suffering her sister had endured made her own situation seem insignificant. She took a deep breath before she went in, donning a smile along with a sterile gown. The guilt she felt was her problem. It was not something she was about to burden Chloe with; her sister had enough to contend with but Sabrina knew it was her fault. If she hadn’t run away Chloe would not be lying in a hospital bed.
‘Hello, you!’
Chloe was lying in bed, her lower body beneath a cradle arrangement that held the sheet off her skin, her face a little thinner than it had been a few months ago and a lot paler, but her smile was just as bright.
‘So, how did it go?’
Sabrina pulled up a chair and did her best to soften the truth with humour.
‘Oh, you know—your usual shotgun wedding atmosphere. Without the pregnancy, of course. Lots of glaring and suspicion and a man...actually, four...guarding the door to stop anyone from legging it.’
‘Sounds a laugh a minute.’
‘It was pretty much what I’d expected and this time the groom turned up, which most people seemed to think a plus,’ Sabrina added drily.
‘Well, I think you had a lucky escape. Imagine living your life with a man who was in love with someone else.’
The way Chloe was talking it was almost as if she believed that Sebastian loved her. If it made her happy Sabrina saw no reason to correct her.
‘So where is the man himself? I forgot to thank him for the fruit basket he brought this morning, so send my love.’
‘You
saw Sebastian this morning?’
‘Didn’t he say?’
Say? She swallowed a bubble of hysteria in her throat. ‘He must have forgotten.’ She was not about to tell her sister that they barely communicated at all.
Had it really been two months since that strange twenty four hours when they had shared a hospital room the night after the accident? She had barely been alone with Sebastian since.
‘He comes most mornings—has all the nurses drooling. You do know that if you hadn’t married him I would have had him myself, don’t you? If he hadn’t got me off that cliff I couldn’t have held on any longer.’ She shuddered. ‘I know that nowadays it would be sympathy sex, but—’
‘Chloe, don’t say that!’ Sabrina said, her voice husky with tears. ‘The doctors say that the scars will be—’
‘They will be scars, and, unlike your husband’s, they will not be sexy ones. And while we all know that it’s what you’re like inside that counts, back in the real world, well...’ She gave a sudden deep sigh and wiped her hands across her eyes. She smiled. ‘Ignore me, Brina. I’m just having a self-pity day, but Sebastian is a good man, you know, and we have kind of bonded over our scars.’
Sabrina stayed for half an hour before reluctantly leaving her sister.
* * *
The sight of the streaks left by dried tears on Sabrina’s cheeks when she returned to the car elicited an involuntary stab of protective warmth in Sebastian’s chest.
‘How is Chloe?’ he asked.
‘Being brave, but I think she’s in pain, though she says not. She thanked you for the fruit.’
He gave a grunt of assent and nodded.
‘I’m grateful, Sebastian.’
He stiffened. ‘I do not want your gratitude.’
She could almost feel the dignity and calm that she had fought hard to retain all day slipping like sand through her fingers. Except her fingers were clenched so tightly into fists that nothing could have escaped them.
‘You don’t want a wife,’ she blurted, hearing the heavy thud of her pulse like a hammer in her temples as her suppressed anger surged hotly.
Even as she acknowledged it she realised that she had no legitimate right to feel this way. It was no more rational to feel angry now than it had been to imagine that they had made some sort of connection that night when they had shared a hospital room.
What had happened since had shown pretty clearly that the only time they were ever going to be connected was when he was heavily medicated. She smothered a hysterical bubble of laughter and coaxed some calm into her manner.
‘But you’ve got one. Me, actually, and it’s kind of obligatory to talk to her.’
He closed the laptop, the tension of the day and the days that had preceded it stretching the skin tight across his perfect bone structure, a perfection that was emphasised not marred by the scar, already fading to silver, along the right side of his face.
He read the unhappiness and anger in her face and felt a fresh surge of the guilt that had been his ever-present companion over the last weeks. Weeks when he had been the recipient of an immersion programme in all that being the heir apparent involved, and, in the process, feeling a new respect for his brother.
At least he now knew what he was letting himself in for. Sabrina? She was totally unprepared for what was coming, just as his mother had been, and yet had he warned her? Had he opened the door of the golden cage that had now closed? He felt a fresh surge of loathing; he was no better than his father.
‘What do you want me to say?’ He could have said he wanted her, that he had wanted her from the outset more than he had ever wanted another woman, but wanting did not excuse the fact he had taken advantage of her ignorance. Because he didn’t want to do this alone. He felt a flash of guilt.
Pride brought her chin up, but the coldness in his voice hurt more than she was prepared to admit. It was becoming pretty obvious that he didn’t require anything from her.
‘I think you’ve said enough.’
Sabrina glanced his way occasionally during the rest of the journey; his stillness was as impregnable as his profile, the shadows as they travelled through the darkness adding emphasis to the strong, sculpted planes as he stared out of the window.
What was he thinking?
It was impossible to tell. Nothing seeped through his mask, only the occasional Arctic-wolf flicker in his arresting blue eyes reminding her of the man he had been two months before. Two months being the time that had finally been considered a decent interval between being dumped by one brother and getting married to the next.
She found herself wondering what had happened to, and amazingly feeling a stab of nostalgia for, the Playboy Prince who was guaranteed to be in the right place saying the wrong thing for the cameras, smiling as he put two fingers up to the world in general and the press in particular.
Had that man, the one whose life choices kept the damage-control experts in work, gone for ever? She recalled the soft words he had murmured for her ears only when he had observed her hand shaking while they waited for the registrar’s arrival.
‘Relax, just treat this day like any other, no different than yesterday, no different than tomorrow. Don’t have any expectations—I don’t. I expect nothing of you.’
He might not but others did. The King’s senior advisor, who had taken her to one side just before the actual ceremony, had reminded her that the fate of a nation was pretty much on her shoulders.
‘Prince Sebastian is an unknown factor. He is making an effort but we all know that he is volatile, his history... I know we can trust you, Lady Sabrina, to be a steadying influence.’
‘I think it might be better if you trusted the Prince. I will not mention your comments on this occasion, but in future...’ She had taken some pleasure from the aide’s embarrassed retreat and hoped the message had reached the King that if he wanted to undermine his son she would not be party to it.
The words of an article she had read the previous week profiling the men with power in Europe came back to her. The new Crown Prince was complex, the smitten writer had claimed, referring to the glimpses of the barbaric pagan behind the urbane exterior.
Pagan? Not helping, Sabrina, she told herself, pushing away the words. The car suddenly turned off the minor road they had been travelling on for several miles and through big gates that swung open at their approach. The uneasiness in her stomach gave an extra-hard kick as the gates closed behind the car that had travelled at a discreet distance behind them since they’d left London.
The driveway, illuminated at ground level by rows of lights, seemed to go on for miles. Sabrina didn’t mind; she was in no hurry to arrive!
Finally they stopped, the uniformed driver pulling up in front of a building with a Georgian façade. This was a private house, not a hotel. Someone had told her who the house belonged to—not that the owners would be here for the duration of their stay. They had been guests at the small ceremony today. Sabrina had been introduced but she couldn’t remember their faces or names; it was all part of the blur.
For a full thirty seconds nobody moved except the man who was sitting beside the driver, who spoke into a device attached to his wrist, then he nodded and it seemed as though dark suited and booted figures appeared from everywhere.
Sebastian was already being greeted at the porticoed entrance when someone eventually came and opened the car door for her. By that point, aside from the alert-looking suited figures either side of the entrance, the security presence had vanished.
As she made her own exit she imagined them hidden in the bushes. It wasn’t a particularly comforting thought. As she approached the house the feeling that had been with her all day persisted. A weird sense of out-of-body disconnection, as though this were happening to someone else and she were watching. And now she was listening to someone else’s
heels crunching on the gravel, someone else was feeling the evening breeze carrying the tang of the sea on her face.
But it hadn’t been someone else that had said I do today. That had been her.
Inside the hall of the house, a magnificent marble-floored space dominated by a great sweeping staircase and lit by several chandeliers, stood her husband, his back turned to her. He was deep in conversation with three other men and a woman who was taller than two of the men, and striking with close-cropped white blonde hair set off dramatically against the black trouser suit she wore.
Sabrina could not hear what they were saying but it didn’t seem to make Sebastian happy, though he heard them out before he fired off a staccato stream of sentences.
Weirdly she almost envied them—at least he was communicating with them in entire sentences, not gruff monosyllables.
Fighting was better than indifference; she was beginning to wonder if she had ever imagined that he had been attracted to her. It made the fact that just looking at him made her tremble all the more hard to come to terms with—to live with on a daily basis.
Maybe that was what it was. She represented the duty that he resented and there was nothing attractive about duty. She didn’t know and quite frankly she was tired of trying to figure it out. Her head ached with the constant questions whirling around inside it.
Suddenly her patience, worn paper-thin, snapped. She was done with waiting. She cleared her throat. ‘Sebastian.’ Her voice, pitched low, carried.
There was a perceptible pause before Sebastian turned around long enough for her cheeks to begin to burn at the prospect of being humiliated.
An unexpected rush of anger-fuelled adrenaline kept the tears she felt burning behind her eyelids at bay.
She watched, the sinking feeling not improving as he said something that made the trio with him nod, and he began to walk towards her, his dark hair gleaming glossy blue under the light cast by the chandeliers, his scar made to appear darker by the same trick of the light.