by Kendrick, Sharon; Lawrence, Kim; Crews, Caitlin; Milburne, Melanie
‘A slight mishap,’ she managed finally, unable to stop her glance flickering towards Sebastian. There had been no mishap involved in the King’s attempt to belittle his son. Sebastian might not need looking after now, but he didn’t deserve—nobody deserved—his parent trying to humiliate him in public, and there was no doubt that that was what the King had been trying to do.
It hadn’t worked but she could imagine a time in the past that it had, probably when Sebastian had been young. Oh, but she hated bullies! An image of Sebastian as a child floated into her head.
Had Luis been defending him then, too?
There was warmth in her eyes as she flashed her future husband a smile. She had really admired the way he had defended his brother and if she was honest she’d been surprised by it. She felt a little ashamed that she’d had such low expectations of him.
‘What happened to the pearls, Sabrina?’ her mother pushed for details. ‘You haven’t lost them?’
‘Of course not, they need restringing.’ She closed her mouth, not intending to say anything but her wretched imagination had taken hold and that image in her head just wouldn’t go away. Two brothers united in fear of their father, and she couldn’t stop herself. ‘You must be really proud…’
During the seconds it took the King to realise she was talking to him, Sabrina felt her mother’s alarm and deliberately didn’t look her way.
‘Proud of your sons,’ she clarified with another brilliant smile that hid not just her anger but the fact that she wished she had not started this. It wasn’t as if Sebastian weren’t big and beautiful enough to look after himself.
He hadn’t always been big but that he’d always been beautiful was a given. As hard as it might be to imagine now, she could see the boy he had been without the armour he possessed now taking what amounted to mental abuse from his father, who somehow and unfairly blamed him for his mother’s infidelities. There was no excuse in Sabrina’s mind.
‘And what they have achieved.’
Despite you, she thought, meeting his icy glare and, realising that if she let him think he could intimidate her she’d set the pattern for the next years of her life, she didn’t look away. ‘They are a credit to you,’ she said, daring him to deny it.
After a pause during which it felt as if the entire table held their collective breath, though that might have only been her because she had realised that in challenging the King she might just have caused a diplomatic incident, the King nodded his head and grunted.
So no diplomatic incident, just a very, very unfriendly look… It could have been worse, though maybe not much.
‘My mother,’ the Duchess said, her voice bright. ‘My mother always wore those pearls. They were her signature. Really, Sabrina, you should have taken more care. Are you sure you didn’t lose any?’
By the time the subject of the pearls had been exhausted the King’s colour had returned to normal and the rest of the meal passed without incident, though the King quite pointedly did not address his younger son. Not that the silent treatment seemed to bother the object of his disapproval.
The meal over, it seemed like an age to Sabrina before the King rose and gestured to Luis. ‘A word,’ he instructed, before nodding to his hosts and sweeping out, leaving the Queen behind.
* * *
As he was about to leave Luis leaned in. ‘I wonder if you’d take a walk in the rose garden with me later, Sabrina?’
So I can sign away the rest of my life and become an invisible helpmate and mother of your children—why not? Then she felt guilty because Luis looked as miserable and tense as she felt.
‘That would be lovely,’ she said politely.
This is not about you, Brina. This is about more important things like the future, schools, people’s jobs.
And it could work. They could skip the entire ‘falling out of love’ part so often involved in marriage by never being in love to begin with.
Her father’s voice broke into her introspection. ‘Shall we leave the ladies, Sebastian? I have an excellent brandy in my study.’
Sabrina was surprised; her father’s study was his sanctuary. She couldn’t recall him inviting anyone into it. He must have taken a liking to the black sheep, or more likely he was trying to compensate for the way Sebastian’s father had treated him. Perhaps like her he had noticed how quiet Sebastian had been for the remainder of the meal.
* * *
The tension that hummed inside Sebastian as he left the room behind the Duke had nothing to do with his father’s open hostility but the fact that Sabrina had stood up to the King, defending both him and Luis.
Nobody had ever done that, and in doing so she had probably made herself a target. His jaw clenched. Didn’t she see that men like his father responded to flattery, not a challenge to their authority? Chloe knew that, the Duchess knew that, yet Sabrina had just stuck out her chin. Did she think he needed a champion? Did she think he couldn’t look after himself?
He’d seen her shaking, whether from anger or fear he’d been unable to tell, but she’d been pretty damned magnificent. An idiot, but a beautiful, brave idiot!
* * *
Sabrina went to get herself a wrap before she ventured out into the gardens. She had not reached the rose garden when Luis appeared on the path ahead.
‘I didn’t actually find the rose gardens. I got a bit lost.’
‘That’s fine, it’s over that way, beyond the tennis courts, but we really don’t have to go that far. Here is fine, unless you are really that interested in the roses? Or am I making an assumption?’
Luis lowered his gaze from her direct look. ‘No, you’re not,’ he admitted, dragging a hand through his fairish hair. He had inherited his mother’s colouring.
She tried to visualise him in ten, twenty years’ time and found she couldn’t, though oddly she could see Sebastian. Perhaps a few more lines around his eyes, a little more cynicism in their depths, maybe a strand of grey or two, but his incredible bone structure virtually guaranteed that he would look essentially the same.
You are about to be proposed to by one brother and you’re thinking about the other, Sabrina.
‘We’ve never…’ She stopped, realising she couldn’t ask him to kiss her so she could forget being kissed by his brother. ‘Can I ask you to do something for me?’
She watched a look of caution drift across his face.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to say you love me.’ His flush suggested she had correctly interpreted his alarm, but this wasn’t about love. She didn’t love either of the Zorzi brothers.
With Sebastian it was simply sex, or it would be, and with Luis it was respect. Respect lasted longer and was, she told herself, a much sounder basis for marriage.
‘Sorry, I’ve never been proposed to before and I’m—Oh, no—look you don’t have to—’ She stopped because Luis had already dropped to his knees.
‘Will you do me the honour of—?’
‘For God’s sake, yes—get up, please! Sorry, I—’ On his feet, Luis held out a ring in a velvet-lined box. The diamond looked bigger than most continents as it flashed in the moonlight. ‘Wow, how…very…large. I’m—’ She stopped as the ring was slid onto her finger. ‘I suppose as it’s already there I should say…well… I suppose…yes.’
Not exactly a ringing endorsement but her husband-to-be looked satisfied, or that might have been relief that it was all over. ‘That’s great. We can make this work, can’t we, Sabrina?’
She met his earnest gaze, noticed the beads of moisture along his upper lip. ‘Everyone needs to work at marriage.’
‘That’s true,’ he said, acting as though her clenched response were actually wisdom and not desperation. ‘Would you like to come with me while I tell my father?’
‘I’ll wait here.’ She caught his arm
as he turned to go. ‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’
He looked bemused.
‘A kiss?’ She had been half joking but Luis’s expression became serious.
‘Of course.’ He took her shoulders and leaned in.
Sabrina closed her eyes and held her breath. The brush of his lips across her mouth hardly constituted a kiss. She opened her eyes and endured an awkward pause.
‘We really should go and tell the families together, present a united front.’
‘You go ahead. I’ll… I’ll just take a moment.’ A moment to appreciate that she was marrying a man whose kiss had had absolutely no effect on her—unlike the response a kiss from his brother had drawn. She expelled a long sigh, her glance drifting to the ring on her finger.
Her dark eyes flickered wide as the full implication of its presence there sank in, or rather seeped out from the pit of her stomach until her entire body was ice cold.
Now it was just a matter of waiting for someone to realise how not up to the task she was.
She stood there breathing through the moment of sheer panic, willing calmness to flow through her body.
Then her chin lifted. ‘Time to step up, Sabrina.’
* * *
‘For a woman who is about to live every little girl’s dream, you don’t sound very happy.’
He was here, of course he was here. She must have done something very bad in a previous life and she was paying for it now.
Heart thudding heavily, she turned around just as Sebastian appeared, a dark shadow surrounded by the darker shadow of the undergrowth.
‘Happiness is not a right and I am not a little girl.’
He stopped being shadow and stepped forward into the light.
At some point since he’d left the table he had discarded his jacket, his unfastened tie hung around his neck and the top three buttons of his shirt were open. She could see the faint shadow of dark chest hair and it made her insides quiver.
Stop, she told herself firmly. There was no point wanting something you couldn’t have. And she should be glad of it; he’d have used her as he used all women, except, maybe she wanted to be used?
Unwilling to deal with the sight of him standing there, the sheer physicality of his presence, she took refuge in spitting anger.
‘How long have you been standing there?’ If he had seen the awful, miserable proposal she would die.
‘Relax,’ he drawled. ‘It’s not like I saw you making mad, passionate love in the shrubbery.’ His eyes drifted over her head to the stone wall with clematis clinging to it. ‘Or up against the wall.’
The suggestive rasp in his voice sent a deep shudder through Sabrina’s body. ‘How dare you spy on me?’ she squeaked, making the mistake of telling herself she wouldn’t think about the wall. So obviously that was all she could think of…being pressed up against it, his hands on her body, on her skin.
‘Spy? I almost drifted off. How was I to know my brother would not bother to go more than two steps from the back door to propose?’ The indents between his eyebrows deepened as his dark brows drew together in a straight line above his heavy-lidded eyes. ‘If that actually constituted a proposal!’
His flaying scorn at least threw cold water on the fantasy images in her head.
‘Your brother is worth ten of you!’
‘Oh, more, angel, much, much more.’
‘And just because he treats me with some respect and doesn’t grope me.’
‘If memory serves, you groped me right back.’
She compressed her lips. ‘Go to hell!’
‘Language…’
‘What can I say? I was taught by nuns.’
‘They must be very proud of how you’ve turned out. Actually, hell is a bit warm for me at this time of year. I thought Paris, you know what they say, Paris in the springtime…though it’s bit late for that.’
His contemptuous attitude stung. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand the concept of duty. I wouldn’t expect you to understand anything except your own selfish—’ Breathing hard, she broke off. ‘I have no idea why I’m even trying. Have you ever in your life done anything that wasn’t selfish?’
‘My lifestyle is not the issue. It’s the thought of yours that is scaring you. You can see the rest of your life stretching out in front of you and you don’t like it. This is your choice, cara, so don’t blame me!’
Her chin went up and she took a step towards him. ‘My life will be a hell of a lot more fulfilling than yours, unless of course you count chasing anything in a skirt fulfilling. And I will have a husband I can respect!’
He clenched his jaw, the tension causing a quiver of muscles under the surface of his skin as he held his breath until the stab of pain that felt like a dull blade sliding between his ribs became a manageable dull ache.
Acknowledging it as jealousy would take him to a place he didn’t want to go, so instead he turned his frustration on the woman standing there.
‘And Luis is going to respect you right back. Every girl’s dream, I suppose, but then a crown is worth a few compromises.’ Even as he tossed the accusation at her he recognised the unfairness of it. He was probably one of the few people in a position to understand how trapped she was. ‘I pity you.’
She clenched her teeth. ‘Don’t you dare feel sorry for me!’ she blazed up at him, her dark eyes flashing.
‘I don’t feel sorry for you! I feel…’ The waste of it, he thought, his eyes sinking to her mouth. All that passion and fire and, despite the alarm bells ringing in his head, he stepped in closer. The moment coincided with the lights from the room that had illuminated the paved area where they stood being switched off.
The moon was behind a cloud and the darkness was total.
Sabrina blinked in the darkness. It was like being wrapped in inky velvet. A thrill of illicit excitement made her stomach clench and raised a rash of goosebumps on her skin.
She made herself think past her thudding heart, recognising the danger. Darkness gave a sense of anonymity; people did things in the darkness that they would not in the light. Except for Sebastian, who did what he liked, when he liked.
What would it feel like, she wondered, to be like that?
‘Are you all right?’ His deep voice was huskily concerned.
The disembodied question drew a sharp laugh from her. All right? So now he was concerned after throwing her into an emotional tsunami, after making her question things that she had never questioned? He had made her want what she could not have ever.
Suddenly the fight drained out of her, as she realised she would never be happy, or at least content, until she let go of that tiny grain of irrational hope that the marriage wouldn’t really happen, that there would be a last-minute reprieve.
She just had to accept it and not fight, not want more.
‘I’m fine. I’m going in. Luis is expecting me to join him.’
‘I’ll see you in.’
He was closer.
‘So suddenly you’re the perfect gentleman,’ she mocked unsteadily.
Sebastian’s eyes had adjusted to the light and her face was a pale blur, her body less distinct. The compulsion to reach for her in the darkness was so strong the effort of fighting it made him quiver like someone with a fever. ‘I deserved that, but you deserved a better proposal.’
‘Not everyone has your way with words. I suspect the only proposals you have any working knowledge of are of the indecent variety.’
‘I may not know much about duty, but you have now agreed to marry my brother so you are totally out of bounds. Even to a total sleaze like me, so you can stop looking at me like that.’
‘You don’t know how I’m looking at you.’
‘I know those big hungry eyes. Just go inside while you still can.’
‘You are killing me, you know that, don’t you?’
She felt a tide of hot shame wash over her. ‘Sorry.’
‘Me too.’ He heard the swish of her dress as she turned and ran away in the darkness. ‘See you at the church, cara,’ he called softly after her.
CHAPTER FIVE
SEBASTIAN ARRIVED AT the cathedral early. The place was empty but for a group putting the final touches to the flower arrangements that filled the massive space with the overpowering fragrance of orange blossoms.
He hated the pervasive smell but it was better than the alternative—being outside for the orgy of meet-and-greet, hand-wringing, air-kissing formality to be endured when the guests ranged from obscure European royalty to heads of state and the elite of Europe.
For one day the eyes of the world were focused on Vela Main, though not ones in helicopters. The capital had been designated a no-fly zone for the duration. The security was so extreme that he was surprised the sun got to shine without a permit. This was a day that might have looked to have been miraculously thrown together in two weeks, but in reality it had been planned in the minutest of details for the past five years. The only thing they’d needed was a date for the wedding machine to swing into action. There was a contingency plan for everything, including the possibility that the bride might have put on a hundred pounds or was six months pregnant.
The only point of friction was the presence of the television cameras. Just how much did they want to share with the world’s media? How much of an air of mystery did they want to retain? In the end a compromise had been reached—it had been decided the cameras would not be allowed to film the service itself. A small blessing considering they would film everything else.
His head lifted from his contemplation of the floor and his private reflections on the general awfulness of weddings, and this one in particular, when a side door closed behind the last of the florists.