‘Yep, we’re a world away from your world,’ she said brusquely.
What the…? ‘Will you stop that?’
‘What?’ she asked, all innocence.
‘Mind reading.’
‘Not if it works. It’s fun.’ She rose and started clearing dishes. He noted the limp again but, almost as he noted it, it ceased. Zoe was visibly wilting. ‘Zoe, poppet, you go take a nap. Unless…’ She paused. ‘Unless Stefanos wants us to drive him into town now.’
‘I need to talk to you,’ he said.
‘There you go,’ she said equably. ‘I mind read that too. So, Zoe, pop into bed and we’ll take Stefanos home when you wake up.’
‘You won’t get angry again?’ Zoe asked her, casting an anxious look across at him.
And he got that too. This child’s mental state was fragile. She did not need angry voices. She did not need anyone arguing about her future.
This place was perfect for an injured child to heal, he thought. A tropical paradise.
He had another paradise for her, though. He watched with concern as Elsa kissed her soundly, promised her no anger and sent her off to bed.
There was no choice. He just had to make this…nanny…accept it.
She washed.
He wiped.
She protested, but he was on the back foot already-the idea of watching while she worked would make the chasm deeper.
They didn’t speak. Maybe the idea of having a prince doing her wiping was intimidating, he thought wryly, and here it was again. Her response before he could voice his thought.
‘An apron beats tassels for this job any day. I need a camera,’ she said, handing him a sudsy breadboard to wipe. ‘No one will believe this.’
‘Aren’t you supposed to rinse off the suds?’
‘You’re criticising my washing? I’m more than happy to let you do both.’
‘I’m more than happy to do both.’
She paused. She set down her dishcloth and turned to face him, wiping her sudsy hands on the sides of her shorts.
She looked anxious again. And territorial.
And really, really cute.
‘Why the limp?’ he asked and she glanced at him as if he was intruding where he wasn’t wanted.
‘It’s hardly a limp. I’m fine. Next question?’
‘Where’s Mr Murdoch?’ he asked, and her face grew another emotion.
‘What?’ she said dangerously.
Uh-oh. But he couldn’t take the question back. It hung between them, waiting for an answer.
‘My researchers said Zoe’s nanny was a Mrs Elsa Murdoch.’
‘Ms,’ she said and glared.
‘So never a Mrs?’
‘What’s that to do with the price of eggs?’
‘It’s merely a polite question.’
‘Polite. Okay.’ She even managed a…polite…smile. ‘So where’s your Princess?’
‘Sorry?’
‘I’m Mrs so there has to be a Mr. I believe I’m simply reversing your question. Is there a matching Princess?’
‘Why would you want to know that?’
‘Exactly,’ she said, and smiled-a smile that confounded him as she turned back to her washing. Only there was nothing left to wash. She let the water out and wiped the sink with care. She waited for him to dry the last glass, then wiped his part of the sink as well, as if it was vital that not a speck of anything remained.
This woman confounded him-but he had to focus on their future. He must.
‘Zoe’s needed back on Khryseis,’ he said, and Elsa’s hand stilled mid-wipe. She couldn’t disguise the fear sweeping over her face.
‘She stays here.’
‘I believe I’m her nearest living relative,’ he said mildly. ‘As such I can challenge your guardianship.’
She didn’t move. Her hand seemed suddenly to be locked on the sink. She was staring downward as if there was something riveting in its depths.
‘Oh…’ He couldn’t mistake the distress on her face. ‘No!’
But it had to be said. Like it or not, the stakes were too high to allow emotion to hold sway.
‘I’m her cousin,’ he said, gently but as firm as he needed to be. ‘It’s obvious you’re struggling to care for her. I can…’
‘You can’t.’ She whirled to face him at that. Her voice was low enough not to disturb Zoe, but loud enough to make him feel her fury. And her fear. ‘She’s been with me for four years. I’m her godmother and her guardian. Her mother was my best friend and I promised Amy I’d care for her. Her father was a colleague and I loved him too. You…did you know any of them?’
‘I knew Christos.’
‘Yeah, close family,’ she mocked. ‘He never mentioned you. Not once. He said royalty on Khryseis was a shambles, the King was concerned only with himself, the King controlled all three of the Diamond Isles and the original royal families of each island were helpless. Christos was frightened of the royal family. He came here to escape what he saw as persecution. He hated them.’
Okay, he thought. Stick to facts. Get over this patch of ground as fast as possible and move on.
‘King Giorgos gave Christos a dreadful time,’ he told her, keeping his voice as neutral as he could. ‘Christos and his mother left Khryseis when he was seventeen. Did he tell you he was first in line to the crown of Khryseis’s original royal family?’
‘No.’
‘He was. That’s why Giorgos made life hell for him. He made life hard enough for me and I was only second in line. So we both left and made our lives overseas, but when Giorgos died…’
‘Giorgos is dead?’
‘Without an heir. So Christos should be Crown Prince. It’s taken weeks to get this far. To find he was dead. No one on Khryseis knew he’d died.’
‘His mother wasn’t well when her son died.’ He could see facts and emotions swirling, fighting for space as she took in his words. ‘I guess…I imagined it was up to her to tell others if she wanted. But she was frail already, and her son’s death made things…Well, she died three months later.’
‘So Zoe lost her grandmother as well.’
Her eyes flew to his. She hadn’t expected that response, he thought, and wondered what she had expected.
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you for recognising that. It did make things much harder.’
‘So then you stepped in.’
‘There was no one else.’
‘And now we have a mess,’ he said, choosing his words with care. ‘Yes, Christos hated the royal family, but it was King Giorgos he feared and Giorgos’s line is finished. The three Diamond Isles have splintered into three principalities. As Christos’s only child, Zoe’s the new Crown Princess of Khryseis. She’ll inherit full sovereign power when she’s twenty-five but until then, like it or not, I’m Prince Regent. Whether I want that power or not, the island’s desperate for change. The infrastructure’s appalling but I only have power for change if Zoe lives on Khryseis for at least three months of every year. Otherwise the power stays with an island council that’s as impotent as it is corrupt. Elsa, she has to come home.’
She didn’t say a word.
She was a really self-contained woman, he thought. He’d shaken her out of her containment but he’d done it with fear of losing Zoe. She had her self-containment back now, and he had no idea what was going in her head. He wouldn’t be privy to it until she decided to speak again.
She poured two tumblers of water. She walked outside-not limping now, he thought, and found he was relieved. He could cope with an injured child-but not an incapacitated nanny as well. There were two ancient deckchairs on the porch. She sank into one of them and left it to him to decide whether to sit on the other.
The chairs were old and stained and the one left vacant looked to be covered in cat fur.
His trousers were jet-black with a slash of crimson up the side. Ceremonial uniform.
‘It brushes off,’ she said wryly, not looking at him. Gazing out through the pa
lms to the sea beyond.
He sat.
‘You have a cat?’ he asked, feeling his way.
‘Five,’ she said, and as he looked around she shook her head.
‘They won’t come near when you’re here. They’re feral cats. Cats are a huge problem up here-they decimate the wildlife. Only Zoe loves them. So we’ve caught every one we can. If they’re at all approachable we have them neutered. We feed them really well at dusk and again in the morning. We lock them up overnight where we feed them-in the little enclosure behind the house. That way they don’t need to kill wildlife to eat. Apart from our new little black one, they’re fat and lazy, and if you weren’t here they’d be lined up here snoozing their day away.’
‘You can afford to feed five cats?’
Mistake. Once again she froze. ‘You’re inordinately interested in my financial affairs,’ she said flatly. ‘Can you tell me why they’re you’re business?’
‘You’re spending Zoe’s money.’
‘And you’re responsible for Zoe how? You didn’t even know she existed.’
‘Now I do know, she’s family.’
‘Good, then,’ she said. ‘Go talk to Zoe’s lawyers. They’ll tell you we put her money in a trust fund and I take out only what’s absolutely necessary for us to live.’
‘And the cats?’
She sighed. ‘We catch fish,’ she said. ‘I cook the heads and innards with rice. That’s my cat food for the week. So yes, I waste rice and some fish heads on our cats. Shoot me now.’
‘I’m not criticising.’
‘You are,’ she said bluntly. ‘You said I’m struggling to care for her. Tell me in what way I’m struggling?’
‘Look at this place,’ he said before he could stop himself-and her simmering anger exploded.
‘I’m looking. I can’t see a palace, if that’s what you mean. I can’t see surround-sound theatre rooms and dishwashers and air-conditioning. I can’t see wall to wall carpet and granite bench tops. So how does Zoe need those?’
‘It’s falling down.’
‘So if it falls down I’ll rebuild. We have isolation, which Zoe needs until she gets her confidence back. We have our own private beach. We have my work-yes, I’m still doing research and I’m being paid a stipend which goes towards Zoe’s medical costs, but…’
‘You’re paying Zoe’s medical costs?’
‘Your investigator didn’t go very far if he didn’t find that out. Her parents hadn’t taken out medical insurance,’ she said. ‘In this country the basics are covered but there have been so many small things. The last lot of plastic surgery was on her shoulder. The surgeon was wonderful-that’s why we used him-but he only operates on private patients so we had to pay.’
‘You had to pay.’
‘Whatever.’
‘You can’t keep doing that.’
‘Try and stop me,’ she said, carefully neutral again. She’d obviously decided it was important to keep a rein on her temper.
‘Where does that leave you?’
‘Where I am.’
‘Stuck in the middle of nowhere, with a damaged child.’
She put her drink carefully down on the packing case that served as their outdoor table. She rose.
‘You know, I’m not enjoying myself here and I have work to do. I correct assignments online and I try to do it while Zoe’s asleep. When she wakes we’ll drive you back into town. But meanwhile…Meanwhile you go take a walk on the beach, calculate cat food costs, do whatever you want, I don’t care. I believe any further dialogue should be through our lawyers.’
And she walked deliberately inside and let the screen door bang closed after her.
CHAPTER FOUR
S HE was true to her word. She wouldn’t speak to him until Zoe woke up. He took a walk on the beach, feeling ridiculous in his ridiculous uniform. He came back and talked for a while to a little black cat who deigned to be sociable. Finally Zoe woke, but even then Elsa only spoke when necessary.
‘I’ll give you the address of my lawyer,’ she said.
‘I already know who your lawyer is.’
‘Of course you do,’ she said cordially. ‘Silly me.’
‘You’re being…’
‘Obstructive?’ she said. ‘Yes, I am.’
‘What’s obstructive?’ Zoe asked.
‘Not letting your cousin Stefanos have what he wants.’
‘What does he want?’
‘You might ask him.’
Zoe turned to him, puzzled. ‘What do you want?’
‘To get to know you,’ he said, refusing to be distracted by Elsa’s anger. ‘Your papa was a very good friend of mine. When he left Khryseis we didn’t write-he wanted a clean break. I should have made more of an effort to keep in touch and I’ll be sorry for the rest of my life that I didn’t. That he married and had a little girl called Zoe…that he died…it breaks my heart that I didn’t know.’
‘It makes you sad?’
‘Very sad.’
But apparently Zoe knew about sad-and she had a cure.
‘When I’m in hospital and I’m sad, Elsa tells me about the fish she’s seen that day, and shells and starfish. Elsa keeps saying the sea’s waiting for me to get well. She brings in pictures of the beach and the house and the cats and she pins them all over the walls so every time I wake up I can see that the sea and this house and our cats are waiting for me.’
His gaze flew to Elsa. She was staring blankly ahead, as if she hadn’t heard.
But she had heard, he thought. She surely had.
And he knew then…As he watched her stoical face he realised that he was threatening her foundations. He was threatening to remove a little girl she loved with all her heart.
He’d never thought of this as a possibility. That a nanny could truly love his little cousin.
He’d come here expecting to meet Mrs Elsa Murdoch, paid nanny. Instead he’d met Elsa, marine biologist, friend, protector, mother to Zoe in every sense but name.
After the shock of learning of Zoe’s existence, his plan had been to rescue his orphaned cousin, take her back to Khryseis and pay others to continue her care. Or, if Zoe was attached to this particular nanny, then he could continue to employ her to give the kid continuity.
It had to be option two.
Only if he broached it now Elsa might well lock the door and call the authorities to throw him off her land.
So do it when? He had so little time.
‘I need to go back to Khryseis tomorrow,’ he told Zoe and glanced sideways to see relief flood Elsa’s face. ‘Elsa’s said she’ll drive me into town now. But I’ve upset her. She thought I might want to take you away from her, and I’d never do that. I promise. So if you and Elsa drive me into town now, can I come and visit again tomorrow morning?’ He looked ruefully down at his ceremonial trousers-now liberally coated in cat fur. ‘If I’m welcome?’
‘Is he welcome?’ Zoe asked Elsa.
‘If you want him to come,’ Elsa said neutrally. ‘Stefanos is your cousin.’
Zoe thought about it. He was being judged, he thought, and the sensation was weird. Judged by an eight-year-old, with Elsa on the sidelines doing her own judging.
Or…it seemed she’d already judged.
‘If you come you should bring your togs,’ Zoe said.
‘Togs?’
‘Your swimming gear-if you own any without tassels and braid,’ Elsa said, still obviously forcing herself not to glower. ‘As a farewell visit,’ she added warningly. ‘Because, if you really are Zoe’s cousin, then I accept that she should get to know you.’
‘That’s gracious of you,’ he said gravely.
‘It is,’ she said and managed a half-hearted smile.
The drive back to town started in silence. Elsa’s car was an ancient family wagon, filled in the back with-of all things-lobster pots. There was a pile of buoys and nets heaped on the front passenger seat, so he was forced to sit in the rear seat with Zoe.
She could
have put the gear in the back, he thought, but she didn’t offer and he wasn’t pushing it. So she was chauffeur and he and Zoe were passengers.
‘You catch lobsters?’ he said cautiously.
‘We weigh them, sex them, tag then and let them go,’ she said briefly from the front.
‘You have a boat?’
‘The university supplies one. But I only go when Zoe can come with me.’
‘It’s really fun,’ Zoe said. ‘I like catching the little ones. You have to be really careful when you pick them up. If you grab them behind their necks they can’t reach and scratch you.’
‘We have lobsters on the Diamond Isles,’ he told her. ‘My friend Nikos is a champion fisherman.’
‘Do you fish?’ Zoe demanded.
‘I did when I was a boy.’
They chatted on. Elsa was left to listen. And fret.
He was good, she conceded. He was wriggling his way into Zoe’s trust and that wasn’t something lightly achieved. Like her father before her, Zoe was almost excruciatingly shy, and that shyness had been made worse by people’s reaction to her scars.
Stefanos hadn’t once referred to her scars. To the little girl it must be as if he hadn’t noticed them.
The concept, for Zoe, must be huge. Here was someone out of her papa’s past, wanting to talk to her about interesting stuff like what he’d done on Khryseis when he was a boy with her papa.
She shouldn’t be driving him back into town. She should be asking him to dinner, even asking him to sleep over to give Zoe as much contact as she could get.
Only there were other issues. Like the Crown. Like the fact that he’d said that Zoe had to return to Khryseis. Like crazy stuff that she couldn’t consider.
Like asking a prince of the blood whether he’d like to sleep on her living room settee, she thought suddenly, and the idea was so ridiculous she almost smiled.
He was leaving tomorrow. He’d stopped talking about the possibility of Zoe coming with him. Maybe he’d given up.
She glanced into the rear-view mirror and he looked up and met her eyes.
No, she thought, and fear settled back around her heart. Prince Stefanos of Khryseis looked like a man who didn’t give up-on anything.
Crowned: The Palace Nanny Page 3