Tycoon's Ring of Convenience

by Julia James

  Back in the drawing room, Princess Fatima was settling down on a sofa. The other woman was standing by the windows looking out, almost as if on guard.

  The Princess turned to Diana. ‘How very good it is to be here,’ she said warmly. ‘Please do be seated,’ she invited.

  Diana sat down on the sofa opposite, her limbs nerveless, and Princess Fatima launched into an enthusiastic panegyric of the charms of Greymont, then graciously accepted the arrival of Mrs Hudson with the tea tray.

  ‘Ah, scones. Delicious!’ she exclaimed enthusiastically, and Diana murmured her thanks to the housekeeper for having baked them in record time.

  The Princess ate as enthusiastically as she praised, chattering all the while—to Diana’s abject relief, for she felt utterly unequal to conversing. She told Diana about the progress being made on the English country house that her brother the Sheikh had bought for her, and expressed absolute delight in the gift Diana had made to her of a historic costume—a mid-eighteenth-century heavily embroidered silk gown with wide panniers—that she planned to display in her private sitting room.

  As she expressed her delight shadows fleeted across the polite expression on Diana’s face. Memory as vivid as poison stung through her, of she and Nikos discussing what gift she should make the Princess as they returned from the royal palace.

  Pain twisted inside her. It was hard, brutally hard to see the Princess again, to be reminded with bitter acid in her veins of the wedding gift she and Nikos had been given. The gift of the Sheikh’s desert love-nest.

  More memory seared inside her—unbearable yet indelible.

  Had the Princess caught that fleeting shadow? All Diana knew was that as they finished their repast the Princess gave a brief instruction to the veiled woman—servant, lady-in-waiting, chaperone, female bodyguard?—and the woman bowed and left the room.

  Only then did the Princess turn to Diana and, in a voice quite different from her gay chatter, asked, ‘My dear, what is wrong?’

  Diana tensed. ‘Wrong, Your Highness?’ She tried to make her voice equable, as it had been during their social chit-chat just now.

  But Princess Fatima held up an imperious hand, her rings and bracelets flashing in the afternoon sunlight. ‘There is a sadness in your face that should not be there. It was not there when we first met. What has put it there?’

  Her dark eyes held Diana’s grey ones, would not let them go.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said. It was half an invitation—half a command. ‘I insist.’

  And Diana, to her horror and mortification, burst into tears.

  * * *

  Nikos’s expression closed like a stone as he stared down at the gilt-edged card in his hand, read the name on it.

  ‘We have nothing to say to each other,’ he bit out.

  He made to walk away, but his arm was caught.

  ‘But I have much to say to you!’ the other man said.

  There was hauteur in his voice, but there was something else as well. Something that made Nikos stop.

  The man’s eyes—almost as dark as Nikos’s, and as long-lashed—bored into his. Refusing to let Nikos go. The next words the man spoke turned him to stone.

  ‘Our mother wishes to see you—’

  Instantly Nikos’s face contorted. ‘I have no mother.’ The savagery in his voice was bitter.

  Emotion flashed in the other man’s eyes. This man who was his half-brother—son of the woman who had given birth to Nikos, a bastard child, unwanted and unacknowledged, thrust away from her unloving arms, given away to foster parents, spurned and discarded.

  The other man was implacable. ‘That may soon be truer than you know,’ he said, his voice grim. He took a breath, addressed Nikos squarely. ‘She is about to have an operation that is extremely risky. She may well not survive. For that reason...’ Something changed in his voice—something that Nikos recognised but would not acknowledge. ‘For that reason I have agreed to seek you out. Bring you to her.’

  Nikos’s expression twisted. ‘Are you insane?’ he said, his voice low, enraged. ‘She threw me out when I tried to see her. Refused to accept me. Refused even to admit that she was my mother!’

  Pain flashed across the other man’s face. His own half-brother. A stranger. Nothing more than that.

  ‘There are things I must tell you,’ he said to Nikos. ‘Must make clear to you. Mostly they concern my father.’ He paused. ‘My late father.’

  Dimly Nikos’s mind clicked into action. The card that this man—this unknown half-brother—had given him.

  He lifted it to glance at it again. Read what it said in silvered sloping engraved script.

  Le Comte du Plassis

  He frowned. But if this man was the Count—?

  ‘My father is dead,’ his half-brother told him. ‘He died three months ago. And that is why...’ He paused, looked at Nikos. ‘That is why everything has changed. Why there are things I need to tell you. Explain.’ He took a breath. ‘Where can we talk in private?’

  He took another breath—a difficult one, Nikos could tell.

  ‘It is essential that we do so.’

  For a long, timeless moment Nikos looked at him. Met the dark eyes that were so familiar in the face that was as familiar as his own. Slowly, grimly, he gave his assent.

  Inside his chest his lungs were tight, as if bound in iron bars.

  * * *

  Diana was still sobbing. She was appalled at herself, but could not stop. The Princess had crossed from her sofa to plump herself down beside her, pick up her hands and press them.

  ‘Oh, my dear friend—what is wrong?’ She patted Diana’s hands, her dark eyes huge with sympathy and concern.

  Helpless to stop herself, Diana let all her anguish pour out in a storm of weeping. Gradually it abated, leaving her drained, and she reached for a box of tissues from a magazine holder by the fireplace, mopped at her face mumbling apologies.

  ‘I’m sorry. So sorry!’ Dear God, how could she have burst into tears like that in front of the Princess? Was she insane to have done such a thing?

  But Princess Fatima did not seem either offended or bemused. Only intensely sympathetic. She leant back, indicating that Diana must do the same. Then poured her a new cup of tea with her own royal hands and offered it to Diana, who took it shakily.

  ‘You must tell me everything,’ the Princess instructed. ‘What has gone wrong between you and your handsome husband? No, don’t tell me it hasn’t. For I will not believe you. No new wife weeps for any other reason.’

  Yet still Diana could not speak. Could only gulp at her tea, then set it down again with still shaky hands. She stared at her royal guest with a blank, exhausted stare.

  The Princess took a delicate sip of her own tea and replaced the cup with graceful ease on the table. Then she spoke, slowly and carefully, looking directly at Diana, holding her smeared gaze.

  ‘Here in the west,’ she began, her tone measured, but meaningful, ‘I am well aware that it is the custom for marriages to be based on emotion. Love, as you would call it. It is the fashion, and it is the expectation. But for all that it is not always the case, is it?’

  Her eyes were holding Diana’s fixedly.

  ‘You will forgive me for speaking in a way that you Europeans with your propensity for democracy might find old-fashioned, but for those who are born into responsibilities greater than the acquisition of their own happiness such a custom may not always be appropriate.’

  She smiled, exchanging another speaking glance with her hostess.

  ‘Perhaps we are not so unalike, you and I? At some point I must make a marriage for reasons greater than my own personal concerns—and perhaps that is something that you yourself can understand? Something you have also done?’

  She patted Diana’s hand again, holding her gaze questioningly as she did so.

  ‘I teased you when you visited me,’ she reminded Diana, ‘about having so handsome a husband that surely he must be the most important aspect of your life—m
ore important than anything else. But perhaps...’ She paused, then went on, glancing around her. ‘Perhaps that is not so? You gave me reason to suppose that when you answered me...’

  Diana’s eyes dropped and she stared into her lap. Spoke dully as she replied. With heaviness in her voice.

  ‘I thought I was saving my house...my home. It is dearer to me than anything in the world. I thought—’ she gave a little choke ‘—I thought I would do anything to save it.’

  She lifted her eyes, met those of the Princess who, perhaps alone of anyone she knew, would understand.

  ‘Even marry for it.’ She took a breath, felt it as tight as wire around her throat. ‘So that’s what I did. I married to save my house, my home, my inheritance. To honour what my father had done for me.’

  She gave the Princess a sad, painful smile.

  ‘My mother left my father when I was a child, but he chose never to remarry. It was for my sake. You will not need me to tell you that in England it is the tradition for sons to inherit family estates, not daughters—unless there is no son. My father knew how much I loved Greymont, how important it had become to me. It gave me the sense of security, of continuity, I so desperately needed after my mother abandoned and rejected me. So he gave up his chance of happiness to ensure mine.’

  She sighed.

  ‘When he died, and I found I needed so much money to honour his sacrifice for me, I made the decision to marry money. Forgive me,’ she said tightly, ‘for such vulgar talk—but without money Greymont would eventually decay into a ruin. You know that, Your Highness, from your own house that you are saving.’

  The Princess nodded. ‘So you married the handsome man who just happened to have the wealth that you required for this?’ She gestured all around her. She paused, then, ‘It does not sound so absurd a decision. It was a marriage that made sense, no? Your husband ensured the future of your home and you, my dear Mrs Tramontes, provided the beauty that any husband must treasure!’ She paused again, her eyes enquiring. ‘So, what is it that has gone so very wrong?’

  She searched Diana’s face.

  Diana, filled with misery, crumpled the sodden tissue in her hands, meshing her fingers restlessly.

  ‘I thought... I thought he married me out of self-interest. Just as I had married him! Because we were useful to each other. I—I thought,’ she said, her voice faltering, ‘that was the only reason and that it would be enough. But then—’ She broke off, gave a cry. ‘Oh, Your Highness,’ she said in anguish, ‘your kindness, your brother’s generosity, worked magic that was disastrous for me! Disastrous because—’

  She felt silent. Incapable of admitting what had happened out under the scorching desert sun in the Arabian Nights fantasy she had indulged in so recklessly. So punishingly stupidly...

  The Princess took her writhing hands. Stilled them. ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘Tell me why it was so disastrous for you.’

  There was kindness in her voice, and command as well—but not the command of a princess, but that of a woman, knowing the ways of women. The mistakes they made—mistakes that could ruin lives. Devastate them.

  And with a faltering voice, stammering words, Diana told her.

  There was silence. Only the sound of birdsong through the open window and the sound, very far off, of a lawn being mowed beyond the rose garden.

  ‘Oh, my poor friend.’ The Princess’s voice was rich with sympathy, with pity. ‘My poor, poor friend.’

  * * *

  The small café was all but deserted. Nikos sat with an untouched beer, his half-brother likewise.

  ‘My father,’ said Antoine, ‘was not an easy man. He was considerably older than our mother. A difficult, demanding man whom she should never have married. That no woman should have married,’ he said dryly. ‘But there it was—too late. She was his wife. His comtesse. And required to behave in a manner he considered appropriate. Which demanded, above all, her producing an heir.’

  Antoine’s voice was dryer still.

  ‘Myself. And so I duly made my appearance.’ His eyes grew shadowed. ‘Did my mother love me? Yes—but she was not allowed to spend much time with me. I had nurses, nannies, a governess—eventually a tutor, boarding school. Then university, military academy—the usual drill.’

  He shrugged with an appearance of nonchalance.

  ‘In the meantime my mother was lonely. Her life sterile. When she met your father...’ his eyes went to Nikos’s now, unflinching ‘...despite his philandering reputation she believed she had met the love of her life. His betrayal of her—his repudiation of any loyalty to her after their affair had resulted in the disaster that was your conception—broke her. And then...’

  His voice hardened, with a harshness in it that Nikos recognised—recognised only too well.

  ‘And then my father broke what was left of her.’

  Antoine reached for his drink now, took a long swallow, then spoke again. The harshness was still in his voice.

  ‘He made her choose. Choose what she would do with the remainder of her life. She was entirely free, he told her, to fly to Greece that same day—to throw herself at the feet of the philandering seducer who had amused himself with her. Or, indeed, she was entirely free to raise her bastard child as a single parent on her own, anywhere in the world she wanted. But if she did then consequences would follow.’

  He looked at Nikos, with dark, long-lashed eyes.

  ‘She would never set eyes on me again and I would be disinherited of everything but the title. My father could not take that from me when the time came, but everything else would be sold on the day of his death. My entire inheritance—the chateau, the ancestral lands, all the property and wealth of our name. I would be landless, penniless.’

  Nikos saw his half-brother’s hands clench, as if choking the life-force from an unseen victim.

  ‘She would not do it. Would not leave me to the tender mercies of my father...’ His voice twisted. ‘To grow up knowing that nothing but an empty title would be his legacy to me. Knowing that she had abandoned me.’

  A shadow went across his eyes.

  ‘She felt her responsibility was to me rather than you. That you would be better off raised in a foster home, never knowing her. Thought it would give you some form of stability at least, however imperfect.’

  Nikos watched him take another deep draught of his beer, feeling emotion swirl deep within him, turbid and muddied, as if sediment that had long sunk to murky depths was being stirred by currents sweeping in from unknown seas.

  Antoine was speaking again, his glass set down.

  ‘When you came to see her all those years ago, as a young man, she knew that nothing had changed and nothing could change. Oh, I was an adult then myself, of course, and even my father could not have kept me apart from her, but still he held the threat of disinheriting me over her head. She knew you were financially protected—that your biological father had settled a large amount of money on you, to be given to you when you came of age.’

  ‘He can rot in hell too!’ Nikos heard his own voice snarl. ‘I never took a penny of that money. He’d disowned me from birth!’

  For a moment Antoine held his half-brother’s gaze. ‘We have not had good fathers, have we?’ he said quietly. ‘But...’

  He held up a hand, and in the gesture Nikos saw a thousand years of aristocracy visible in the catching of light on the signet ring on his brother’s finger.

  ‘But I do not think that of our mother.’ He was silent a moment, then spoke again. ‘Come to her, Nikos.’

  It was the first time he’d used his half-brother’s name.

  ‘She has a serious heart condition. This operation is risky, and requires great skill from a top surgeon. She deferred the operation deliberately for years, waiting for her husband to die. Only now, with my inheritance assured, can she take the risk.’ He took a breath that was audibly ragged. ‘The risk that she might die before seeking to make what peace she can with you.’

  Antoine gave a long
sigh.

  ‘You blame her—I can understand that. I too would be bitter. But I hope with all my heart that perhaps you can at some point bring yourself if not to forgive her, to understand her. To accept the love she has for you despite all she did.’

  Nikos closed his eyes. He could not speak. Could not answer. Could only feel, deep in that part of him he never touched any longer, where the sediment of bitterness, of anger, had lain for so long, that there could now be only one answer.

  His eyes flashed open. Met those of his half-brother.

  ‘Where is she?’ he said.

  * * *

  Diana stood at the wide front entrance to Greymont, with the lofty double doors spread to their maximum extent. Dusk was gathering in the grounds and she could hear rooks cawing in the canopy, an early owl further off, and she caught the subliminal whooshing of a bat.

  The warmth of the evening lapped around her, but she could not feel it. Her eyes were watching the slow progress of the two-car cavalcade driving away, down towards the lodge gates.

  Princess Fatima was leaving.

  But not without leaving behind a gift that was priceless to Diana.

  A gift she had immediately, instantly demurred over.

  ‘Highness, I cannot! It is impossible. I cannot accept.’

  An imperious raised hand had been her answer. ‘To refuse would be to offend,’ the Princess had said. But then her other hand had touched the back of Diana’s. ‘Please...’ she’d said, her voice soft.

  So, with a gratitude she had been able to express only falteringly, Diana had taken the Princess’s gift. And now, as she watched her uninvited but oh-so-kind guest take her leave, the same profound gratitude filled her.

  The black cars disappeared down the long avenue and Diana went back indoors. Went into the estate room—her office—sat down at the desk and withdrew her chequebook. With a shaky hand she wrote out the cheque she had longed with all her being to be able to write for so many long, punishing months.