Avoiding Mr Right

by Sophie Weston

  If she had expected Luc to come after her in some attempt at reconciliation, she was disappointed. Almost as soon as she had banged out, he left the yacht.

  ‘Will His Highness be back for the party?’ Christina asked the Princess when she served lunch.

  ‘He’ll be back all right,’ said his sister grimly. ‘How else is he going to keep an eye on me?’

  Christina prudently did not answer that one, though she sympathised. Instead, mindful of her promise to Karl, she said, ‘The guest list has increased so much—do you think it would be an idea to hire someone apart from me to hand round drinks?’

  The Princess was supremely uninterested. ‘Go ahead.’

  Christina did not have time to go ashore again but she called the hotel on the mobile phone. Karl was nearly incoherent with gratitude.

  ‘I’ll remember you in my will,’ he promised.

  ‘Just turn up looking like a waiter, not a surfer,’ Christina begged.

  She could hear his grin down the phone. ‘You got it.’

  Karl did indeed look remarkably tidy and sober when he arrived in dark trousers and a waist-length white jacket borrowed from one of the waiters at his hotel. It set off his tan. With his flowing hair clipped into a neat queue at the back of his neck, he looked positively handsome. A number of the female guests paid him more than passing attention, Christina saw.

  The trouble was that Luc saw it too. He had returned late from wherever he had been and disappeared immediately to change for the party. The first time Christina caught sight of him he was observing Karl narrowly. His expression was forbidding.

  Perhaps it was because his own companion was one of those who had shown her appreciation of Karl’s athletic presence, Christina thought. It was a painful reflection but she could not dismiss it. Stuart Define had come on board accompanied by his glamorous co-star.

  As soon as she saw Luc, Juliette Legrain detached herself from the actor and took up residence at Luc’s side. Christina heard her shrieks of delight even though she could not see her over the heads of the other guests. As soon as she could see them, she found Luc was looking down into the beautiful, vivid face with undisguised affection.

  He never looked at me like that, Christina thought with an odd little stab of pain under her heart. For a moment the tray of exquisite canapés tilted dangerously. She looked down, shaken by the strength of her feelings. She righted it at once and resumed circulating among the guests. But she felt dazed—as if something about seeing Luc arm-in-arm with Juliette Legrain had the effect of a blow on the head.

  What is wrong with me? Christina peered at the cracked mirror in the galley. She was too busy for self-analysis but she still could not get it out of her head that something momentous had happened. In spite of the warmth of the Italian night, and the lights and companionable noise of conversation on deck, Christina felt as if she was somewhere dark and cold and empty. She had never felt so alone in her entire life.

  Eventually the party was down to a few assorted stragglers. Luc dealt competently with them while the family congregated in the stateroom. The Princess came down to the galley. Karl leaped to his feet politely. In spite of her strange detached feeling, Christina straightened.

  ‘Dinner?’ she asked professionally.

  The Princess looked faintly horrified. ‘Good heavens, no. You’ve done quite enough work for one evening. Kay and I will take everyone out for a meal,’ she said. ‘I’m just going to organise a table now.’

  Behind her shoulder Luc appeared. He was looking coolly, elegantly in control, just as he had all evening.

  ‘I hope you will be able to join us,’ he said to Christina with distant courtesy.

  It did not sound like an invitation. It sounded like an order. Christina could not find anything to say. The silence became embarrassing.

  The Princess looked startled but she said quickly, ‘Christina must be exhausted—’

  ‘Not too exhausted to eat,’ Luc said flatly.

  Yes, definitely an order. Christina stared at him in indignation. ‘There’s a lot of clearing up to do...’ she began.

  But Karl had seen the chance of a real opportunity to question his hero. ‘I’ll help. It won’t take long,’ he said eagerly. ‘We could be ready in fifteen minutes.’

  There was a sharp little silence. Luc’s eyes flickered.

  If Karl had not been an obsessional student he would have noticed that there was no rush to include him in the invitation. But he did not. He just said he would start by getting the dirty glasses from the upper deck. He went.

  The Princess sent her brother a speculative look. ‘He is so helpful, isn’t he? You must bring him along too, of course, Christina.’

  Luc said nothing. There was a small, nasty pause. Then the Princess announced that she would go and call a restaurant and followed Karl.

  Left alone with Luc, Christina busied herself with the dishes. She could feel him watching her but he said nothing. She did not look at him.

  At last he said in a curt voice, ‘My sister tells me the boy is a particular friend of yours.’

  Christina did not look round. She shrugged, stacking glasses.

  ‘Is it true?’

  She straightened then and turned to face him. ‘I’ve known him a long time.’

  Luc’s smile slashed into his think cheek. It did not reach his eyes. ‘By which you mean several summers, I take it. You play together in the sun before going your own way, isn’t that it?’ He sounded angry.

  ‘There isn’t a lot of call for my sort of crewing in the winter,’ Christina agreed levelly.

  ‘Does he know where you go in the winter?’ Luc shot at her suddenly.

  Momentarily Christina was blank. ‘What?’

  ‘Nobody else seems to.’

  She looked at him in dawning comprehension. Indignation sparked. ‘Your private detective still on the case?’ she enquired with dangerous pleasantness.

  Luc’s smile was equally dangerous. When he spoke it was in his official voice, reporting facts without emotion. ‘He got as far as Milan. Then he said it was a wall. No address, just a post office box. No employer. No regular associates.’

  Christina gave sudden thanks for her itinerant studentship. She had never had any reason to cover her tracks but it was a small triumph that there was something at least in which she could get the better of the Prince of Kholkhastan.

  ‘Frustrating,’ she observed politely.

  Luc’s eyes bored into her. ‘Well?’

  Christina braced herself against the sink behind her and faced him squarely. ‘I work for you for another ten days,’ she said. ‘Then I’m gone.’

  ‘That’s not good enough.’

  ‘Oh, but it is,’ she flashed. ‘You’ve done your best to turn my life upside down from the moment I met you. You have no scruples at all. It’s only the merest chance that—’

  She broke off. She had been going to say that it was only by chance that she had not made love to him when he’d set out so blatantly to seduce her. But from the way his eyes. gleamed suddenly she realised that that was exactly what he expected her to say. Wanted her to say.

  So she wouldn’t.

  Instead she finished carefully, ‘That I haven’t been badly hurt by all your lies.’

  In spite of his cool command of himself he flinched at that. Christina saw it and felt better.

  ‘When I leave your employment I want to be very certain that you have no way of finding me ever again,’ she told him flatly.

  Luc’s eyes darkened. He stood there for a moment, not speaking. Then suddenly he gave a quick, angry grimace and turned on his heel.

  As the door closed behind him, Christina let out a long breath that she did not even know she had been holding. She felt she had won some obscure battle that she had not realised she had been fighting. She also felt the war was not over.

  For the rest of the evening, however, Luc did not come near her. The restaurant was a jolly, informal affair, with tables set outsi
de under a vine. The Princess had taken the precaution of asking Karl herself. Unaware of the tensions, he sat next to her, thoroughly enjoying himself. The Princess seemed to know a good many of the diners at the other tables. As a result, the comings and goings between the tables was enough to disguise the fact that Luc neither looked at Christina nor spoke to her. He spoke to Karl, though, at length.

  In fact, after an initial chilly hauteur, he seemed rather to take to Karl, Christina saw. The power of flattery, she thought cynically. Presumably Karl had told Luc about his thesis. He must have been flattered to find himself figuring as the hero of an academic study.

  Karl was quite simply delighted. It made her feel excluded, but she disguised it when she said goodnight to Karl.

  ‘Thank you for your help at the party,’ she said, giving him a quick kiss. ‘I hope the Prince lived up to expectations.’

  Karl hugged her. ‘He did, he did. In fact he’s promised me more. Exclusive stuff. This thesis could turn into a full-scale book.’ He grinned. ‘My writing career is about to begin, thanks to you.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘You’d better let me know where to send you a copy when it’s finished. Autographed, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ Christina said, laughing.

  She told him her address in Milan. He looked disappointed.

  ‘But that’s a box number.’

  ‘I travel a lot,’ she said. ‘It’s safer waiting at the post office to be claimed.’

  ‘Well, give me a phone number at least. I might come through Milan on my great lecture tour. When the book is published the universities of the world are going to be clamouring for me,’ Karl said complacently.

  Christina shook her head at his vanity but gave him the number of the flat in Milan. When she was away she called in every day to pick up the messages on her answering machine. He scribbled it down in a battered address book.

  ‘Thanks. I’ll definitely call you, even if I don’t make the best-seller lists,’ Karl said. He gave her a swift hug. ‘Look after yourself. Kay is a great guy.’

  He went before Christina could ask what he meant by that odd rider. Eventually she concluded that sheer exuberance at getting the interview he wanted had made him chatter. She had known Karl through enough summer seasons to know that nothing was as important to him as his university career.

  She could not quite put the final remark of his out of her mind, though. Several times during the busy preparations of the next morning she came within a whisker of demanding an explanation from Luc. Was it only his UN experience that he had talked about to Karl?

  But in the end she stayed away from Luc. He was busier than any of them, with his telephone and fax. He looked remote and somehow curbed, as if it would take very little for him to explode into a truly terrible temper. Christina thought it was definitely better to avoid him in that mood. She watched the Princess and the children walking carefully round him and decided that she was not the only one who sensed the impending explosion either.

  They got to the villa without mishap. Well, it was not so much a villa, more a medieval castle with palatial additions, she saw wryly. There was even an older statesman of a butler in what she took to be Kholkhastani dress presiding over the household. As she had expected, the staff was plentiful and efficient. She was going to be wholly superfluous. She did approach Luc then.

  ‘You don’t need me here,’ she said. ‘You know you don’t. Why don’t I just go back to Athens?’

  He fixed her with a glare like a laser.

  ‘You manifestly don’t know what I need.’ Luc’s voice was level but his eyes glittered dangerously.

  They were in his study, surrounded by a strange mixture of ancient, leather-bound books and modern computer hardware. She had interrupted him at his work. He looked up from his desk, his face thin with suppressed emotion of some kind.

  Or maybe it was just exhaustion. Although she had only known him as the Prince for three days, Christina was already appalled by the amount of work he seemed to do. He was still a lying, unscrupulous seducer, of course, but she was revising her other earlier opinions. This was no playboy.

  Which made his dealings with her all the more incomprehensible. And unforgivable, she assured herself.

  ‘Why don’t you admit it? I’m here just because once you’ve taken somebody onto the payroll you just have to get every last minute of work in the contract out of them,’ she flashed.

  A wintry amusement invaded his expression. ‘You really don’t think much of me at all, do you, Christina?’

  ‘I tell things the way I see them,’ she said sturdily.

  He was thoughtful. ‘Not much of me. Not much of yourself.’

  She shook her head violently. ‘That’s not true. I’m happy with who I am. The only thing I’m unhappy about is dictatorial strangers telling me what’s wrong with me.’

  His mouth tilted. ‘I’ll be happy to explore the matterbut at some future date, I’m afraid. There are things which need my attention now.’

  Christina could have stamped her foot. She only refrained because it would have deepened his amusement. She went to the door but turned in the doorway for a parting shot. ‘I will be wasting my time here. And you know it.’

  He gave a soft laugh. ‘That depends on what you mean by wasting your time. With a bit of give and take, it could be quite productive.’

  Christina’s pulses leaped. She calmed them. ‘I will not be doing the giving,’ she announced, nose in the air.

  His amusement died. ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

  The telephone beside him rang. He picked it up at once. ‘Yes? Oh, it’s you, Richard. About time.’

  He gave a nod of dismissal to Christina. She went, half-relieved, half-frustrated.

  As she closed the door behind her, she heard him say grimly, ‘I appreciate that but I have my own life, you know. It’s in serious need of my attention just at the moment.’

  Christina went in search of the Princess. Since she was ostensibly there to take care of the children, she would demonstrate that there was not a job for her by appealing to their mother.

  The Princess was walking up and down on a colonnaded terrace which overlooked a formal garden full of fountains. She was talking to the butler. In his white trousers and high-necked jacket he looked serene and supremely distinguished. The Princess looked worried.

  ‘Oh, there you are, Christina,’ she said.

  Her companion turned and bowed courteously. But Christina had the impression that he was not entirely pleased.

  The Princess was oblivious. ‘Simon seems to have taken off,’ she said abruptly. ‘You haven’t seen him, have you?’

  ‘Not since we arrived. He said he was going to swim,’ said Christina, puzzled.

  The Princess’s frown intensified. ‘That’s what I thought too, but Sir Goraev—’ She indicated the elderly butler ‘—says there’s no one at the pool. And I know he’s not in his room because I looked.’

  Christina looked at the green landscape stretching down the hill in formal gardens and lemon groves. It shimmered in the afternoon sun. The bark of the olive trees looked almost silver; the lemon-tree leaves turned to gold where the sun reflected off them. It was idyllic.

  ‘Perhaps he’s gone for a walk.’

  The Princess looked as if she was going to cry.

  Sir Goraev said, ‘He knows it is not permitted. There is a lot of land slippage on the hillside. Also—well, we have received no threats, thank God, but this is the country of political kidnap.’

  The Princess shuddered, but she said sharply, ‘Don’t be so pessimistic, Sir Goraev. Kidnappers would have no interest in an ordinary English boy.’

  He bowed his head politely but was patently unconvinced. ‘We must not forget he is also the nephew of His Highness.’

  ‘We must not forget, either, that we have received no threats. Or that he is a disobedient little toad with no common sense at all,’ said his fond mother with asperity. ‘He
’s much more likely to have caught his foot in a rabbit hole. The first thing is to get the gardeners to search the woods. And tell my brother.’

  Sir Goraev bowed. ‘His Highness cannot be disturbed at the moment. I will inform him when he is at leisure.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘He is speaking to Kholkhastan,’ he said with finality.

  The Princess looked mutinous. But she did not argue. ‘Very well, then. Organise a couple of search parties and then report back to me,’ she said curtly.

  He bowed again and left the terrace in a stately manner. The Princess glowered after him.

  ‘That man gets more and more insufferable,’ she muttered. ‘If I were Kay, I’d sack him.’

  Christina was startled at the venom in her voice. ‘Who is he? I remember Pru telling me he ran things. I thought he was a sort of butler,’ she confessed.

  The Princess gave a harsh laugh. ‘If only he were. No, he’s more of a Lord Chamberlain, I suppose. When my grandfather was ill, Goraev developed a lot of power in Kholkhastan. He’s trying to hold onto it. As soon as Kay went home, Goraev moved in on him, telling him what to do, who to see, what to say.

  ‘I can’t stand it. Kay’s been an international negotiator all his working life. He knows more about diplomacy than Goraev ever will. He could have pensioned him off but he was too kind. So the old man even comes on private holidays like this, reminding Kay of work all the time. He never has any fun any more. It’s all duty, duty, duty. It makes me mad.’

  ‘His Highness certainly seems to work very hard,’ Christina agreed neutrally.

  ‘Too hard. What he needs is to get rid of all the ceremony nonsense and find himself a wife and a few children. That would give him a normal perspective again.’ The Princess propped herself against one of the columns, looking down the heat-misted valley. ‘Oh, where is Simon?’ she burst out.

  ‘He seems to know the place very well,’ said Christina, who had sat next to Simon during the drive and listened to his tales of former holidays at the villa. ‘Surely he couldn’t get lost?’