by Kendrick, Sharon; Lawrence, Kim; Crews, Caitlin; Milburne, Melanie
‘If he is going to speak to the press I need to know.’
‘You mean you need to silence him.’
‘I mean to reason with him through an intermediary. I might be willing to continue his generous allowance. Not everyone is as pig-headed as you are, Sebastian.’
CHAPTER SIX
SABRINA STOOD IN a corner.
Her mother stood in the middle of the room in floods of tears and Chloe was providing a shoulder to cry on. Queen Katherine was offering her a glass of brandy, almost as large as the one she was drinking herself.
Her father was standing, his back turned to her, deep in conversation with Luis’s private secretary and a group of palace officials. The conversation was not private; her father’s comments could probably be heard a mile away.
People seemed to have forgotten she was there.
She really wished she weren’t. She closed her eyes and imagined herself in the mountains, the wind in her face, the… A throb of pain in her hand dragged her back to the moment.
Her fingers, which were curled in a death grip around the scrunched-up paper, were white. She lifted her hand to her chest and flexed them to encourage blood back into the cold extremities.
With no pockets in her wedding dress to tuck the letter into, she transferred it to her other hand. She had read it three times before it had made any sense. Actually it still didn’t, but she had finally gone to her mother’s room and announced that the wedding was off, would someone tell the guests?
‘Last-minute nerves, darling. I remember it well. Oh, my, you look beautiful and that shade of lipstick really suits you. The flowers will be—’
‘No, Mum, it’s really off. Luis has left—there’s a letter. He loves someone else apparently and he can’t live without her.’ She didn’t add that Luis had revealed the secret of his parentage, that he and not Sebastian was the bastard.
‘Don’t be silly, darling.’
‘He’s abdicated.’
The word seemed to penetrate. It had done the same for Sabrina when it had leapt out from the page; it had made her go back and read it again. The shocking contents evoked a multitude of emotions; humiliation was there and with it relief, a relief that made her feel guilty. She had been given her life back, her freedom, but at what cost?
‘But he can’t do that. You’re going to be the next Queen.’ Her voice rose with each successive word until Queen emerged as a screech that hurt Sabrina’s ears. And not just her ears; belatedly aware of the open-mouthed audience, Sabrina got to her feet, shooing away the team of make-up artists who were putting the finishing touches to the Duchess’s face.
Her mother didn’t react to their expulsion. ‘Dame Olga is singing at the service. She turned down a concert at the Met to be here. Call your father—let him sort things out.’
‘I don’t think it can be sorted out, Mum.’
‘What did you do?’
The unexpected attack made Sabrina back away.
‘What did you say to make him do this? Did you say you wanted to carry on working? I knew it! I said to your father that it was a mistake to allow you to have a career… Here he is now.’ She gave a sigh of relief as the door opened.
Her father, flanked by senior members of his staff, stood in the doorway. The expression on his florid, good-natured face was grim.
The Duchess’s wail was muffled by the hands she pressed to her face.
‘Pull yourself together, Olivia,’ her husband snapped unsympathetically. ‘We need to limit the damage. Where is…? Oh, there you are, Sabrina. At least one person isn’t falling apart,’ he approved. ‘We can’t talk here. Come down to the…?’ He raised a stern questioning brow at one of the palace staff that had entered with him.
‘The King instructed me to make the south salon available, Your Grace.’
* * *
So here they all were in the south salon and after half an hour all the talk was going pretty much nowhere.
Sabrina looked at the clock ticking away in a corner, her eyes fixed on the hypnotic swing of the pendulum. She knew she should be feeling more; she was after all the person who had been humiliated. Something she was not likely to forget as her mother kept screeching the information at her every few minutes.
Would anyone even notice if she weren’t here?
She unclipped the veil—a family heirloom—and dropped it to the floor. She would have stripped off her finery there and then if she could have but then someone might notice she was there. A naked woman in the room generally got attention.
She fought the temptation to tear at the tiara that felt heavy on her head, and the saucy blue garter, her sister’s contribution, had slipped down her thigh. It was all so wrong, even before Luis had followed his heart.
And now, even though she knew it would be considered treasonous by many to even think it, she admired him for having had the guts to walk away. His dumped bride was probably the only person in the room who felt some sympathy for his decision.
But then she knew what it felt like to agree when you wanted to scream no. She knew what it felt like to do your duty. Luis had done what she hadn’t had the strength to do. He’d been honest, but how would he live with the guilt?
Suddenly the need to escape the room became overwhelming. If she stayed in it any longer she’d explode!
The men stationed outside the door continued to look ahead as she slipped past.
She wanted to go home.
‘Sabrina!’
She ignored the voice and began a perilous descent of the spiral steps, going far too fast for someone wearing three-inch heels.
The palace was a maze and built on a massive scale but she was pretty sure that she was headed for the stables. After that her plan was a little hazy but so far plans had not worked out so well for her—maybe it was time to wing it.
‘Sabrina, stop!’
She heaved a sigh, grabbed the wooden balustrade and tilted her head back to view her sister, who stood resplendent in the sea-green silk froth of her bridesmaid dress.
‘Sabrina, what are you doing?’
‘I don’t know.’ Her expression blank, she looked at the piece of crumpled paper in her hand—actually, she felt blank inside. She cleared her throat. ‘It was getting a bit…hot in there for me. I need some fresh air.’
‘Outside is probably not the best place to be. There are several hundred guests being—’
‘Told the groom has bolted before the stable door closed and, speaking of stables, I think this staircase leads to the stables. There aren’t going to be any guests there.’
‘It does, but you should come back. They are—’
Sabrina shook her head, cutting her sister off. ‘Whatever they want me to do the answer is no. Just for today I want a day off from doing and saying the responsible thing.’
Chloe, her skirt hitched high, skipped lightly down the stairs to join her. ‘Fair enough. Well, I’d be delighted to tell them to go and stuff it, or I could run away with you. Are you up for this?’
‘Why not?’
Her sister’s eyes widened. ‘I never expected you to say yes,’ she admitted.
‘So you didn’t mean it?’
Chloe laid a hand on her arm. ‘Oh, I meant it!’ She took the next step herself and paused. ‘Mum is sorry, you know, that she yelled. She just panicked.’
‘Like Luis—actually, not like Luis. I don’t think he panicked. I think he came to his senses. He loves someone else.’
‘Fair enough, and, for the record, in your place I wouldn’t be so understanding. If he was going to come to his senses why didn’t he do it last week or last year or even yesterday? Why leave it until now? It’s—’
‘A total nightmare,’ Sabrina agreed, thinking guiltily of the light at the end of the tunnel.
‘Did you guess that he was going to?’
Sabrina shook her head. ‘I didn’t have a clue.’ She expelled a sigh. ‘I just need some breathing space.’
‘I can do better than that.’ Chloe made a grand-reveal gesture as they walked around the corner. ‘I always have an escape route. I had a date with a couple of friends last night…after Mum’s curfew. We parked here. You fancy a drive?’
‘They are not cars,’ Sabrina said, looking at the two shiny monsters sitting there. It didn’t even occur to her to ask where the owners were as she stared at the dazzling chrome.
‘Didn’t I tell you I’ve been learning?’ Chloe picked a helmet off the first motorcycle and began to clip it on. ‘It’s actually quite easy.’
‘You want me to sit on the back of that wearing this?’ She gestured down at the acres of fitted white silk moulded to her body.
Chloe, hitching up her green skirt, was already clambering onto the first machine. She tossed her sister a set of keys and nodded to the second helmet. ‘No, I expect you to follow me on that one,’ she retorted, revving the engine of the bike she had climbed onto.
‘That’s mad, Chloe.’
‘True, but if you’re not going to be mad today when are you going to be mad, Brina? Come on!’
Sabrina stood there, shaking her head. ‘I couldn’t.’ Her eyes lifted to her sister. ‘Could I?’
‘Last night we went for a swim at a little beach just along from the Roman ruins where you opened that yawn-a-minute exhibition on Saturday.’
‘Swimming?’
She knew there had to be several dozen legitimate reasons that this was a bad idea but at that moment her brain could only come up with one. ‘I don’t have a swimsuit.’
Chloe grinned. ‘We didn’t have swimsuits last night. It is a very private beach.’
* * *
His father had made it as far as the door when his breathing got a lot worse. The doctor, called against his father’s wishes, said that bed rest was called for as a precaution.
It was half an hour later when Sebastian, deputising for the King, a first, was leaving the room when he encountered someone he vaguely recognised as the Duke’s aide, a man who bowed excessively and smiled a lot.
‘Highness.’ The man sounded breathless, his bow perfunctory and big politician’s smile absent. ‘Are they here?’
‘Are who here?’
‘Lady Sabrina and Lady Chloe? We have no idea where they have gone and the Duchess is quite distressed. She has decided they have been kidnapped.’
‘Considering the level of security here I seriously doubt it. I have an idea, though. Leave it to me,’ he said, leaving the gasping man standing there staring after him as he strode off purposefully down the corridor, punching in the number of the head of security as he walked.
It was picked up immediately.
‘The delicate security breach we discussed last night?’
‘Lady Chloe and the other bridesmaids reached their rooms safely, sir. They remained unaware of the security presence.’
‘And you left the motorbikes where they were?’
‘We did. Is there a problem?’
One problem? Now that really would be a luxury, Sebastian thought as he took the staircase on his left. It led directly to the stables, where last night Chloe and her friends had naively imagined they had foiled the palace security.
The oil spots on the floor showed where the motorbikes had stood and the wheel treads in the dusty straw the direction they had gone.
Jaw clenched in frustration, he closed his eyes, but before the curse could leave his lips a muffled sound brought his eyes open. Head tilted to one side, he waited and was rewarded by another noise. It took him a few seconds to track the sound to its source.
He found a piece of torn silk before the rest of the dress and the person wearing it. His initial flare of gut-tightening alarm faded as he realised that Sabrina, who stood beside a motorbike that was lying on its side, having first collided with a wall, was not injured. The same could not be said of the motorbike.
‘I hope you’re insured?’
Sabrina jumped as though she’d been shot and spun round, brushing the sections of her hair that had escaped the carefully constructed top knot from her eyes as she adopted a defensive attitude. ‘It’s not mine,’ she said, fighting the weirdest compulsion to walk straight into his arms. Skinny dipping was one thing, giving into that impulse would have been taking recklessness to another level.
Still, she’d thought about it, which was bad enough.
I am clearly in a worse condition than I thought, she realised, because any woman who thought safety and comfort lay within those strong arms needed therapy and lots of it!
‘Chloe said it was easy.’ She sniffed, casting a look of loathing at the motorbike. ‘It isn’t. I can’t do anything right, not even run away…’ Her voice quivered with self-pity as she felt an angry splash of tear on her cheek. She swiped it away with a hand and glared at him.
His lips twisted into an ironic half-smile. ‘You just thought you’d slip quietly away on the back of a motorbike wearing that?’
Following the direction of his gaze, Sabrina looked down and felt a stab of guilt when she thought of the skilled women who had sewn the thousands of seed pearls onto the acres of white silk. The beautiful dress was trashed! There were several smears of dirt, oil or both on the bodice and a massive rip in the skirt from when she had tried and failed to mount the motorbike before it had taken off without her.
‘Chloe managed it.’ Her dismay spiked again when she thought of her sister. ‘She’s going to be wondering where I am. She’ll be worried. She’ll think I’ve done something stupid.’
‘As opposed to riding on a motorbike in your wedding dress? Don’t worry, I’ll send someone to tell her you’re all right.’
Sabrina shook her head, her lips firming into a mutinous line. ‘I don’t want to send someone. I want to go with her. I know they’ve sent you to take me back.’ She folded her arms across her heaving chest and looked up at him, defiance shining in her brown eyes. ‘But I won’t go.’
He studied her, reading the determination in her tear-stained face, and felt a strong beat of sympathy.
‘Did you know?’ she asked suddenly. ‘That he was going to do it?’
‘No, I got a note.’
She nodded. ‘So did I.’ She held out the crumpled piece of paper. ‘Did you know there was someone else?’
His jaw tightened. ‘No.’
‘Ah, well,’ she sighed. ‘It’s over now.’
Maybe it was a blessing that she actually believed that; he doubted she could cope with the truth. The question was, could he? ‘Come on,’ he heard himself say.
She blinked. ‘Where?’
‘Where did you plan to run away to with Chloe?’
‘The beach…the one past the Roman dig. We were going swimming.’
‘OK.’
She blinked. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean,’ he said, ‘that I will take you to join Chloe.’ He spread his hands wide as she continued to look at him with suspicion. ‘No catch.’ Without waiting to see if she followed him, he headed for the row of garages where his brother kept his cars. The doors were open and he approached the first one.
He pulled the dust cover off a sporty two-seater. ‘It’s Luis’s,’ he said without turning. He had heard the sound of her heels on the cobbles behind him. ‘He never locks it.’ Sebastian had no compunction about taking it. Luis had gifted him his life and his bride, not that she realised it yet, so he supposed the car was his too.
As she followed Sebastian the irresponsibility of this course of action was beginning to hit home. Running away achieved nothing.
He turned and arched a brow. ‘You coming?�
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She rocked back a little on her spiky heels as they sank into the gravel. ‘I should really go back.’
He didn’t proffer an opinion, just stood there looking at her. She took a deep breath and made a choice of the middle ground. ‘All right, we’ll go and find Chloe and then come back.’
The engine purred into life while she was still manoeuvring herself into the low seat and she released a small squeal as it sped off as she closed the door.
Avoiding the chaos that it seemed safe to assume surrounded the main entrances to the palace, Sebastian drove through the unguarded stable entrance, past the neatly fenced paddocks, empty today while the staff were attending the celebrations.
Sabrina stayed silent until they reached the hairpin bends that surrounded this part of the island’s coast. ‘Luis said something in his letter.’
His blue eyes flickered briefly her way.
‘Is it true? The King isn’t his father?’
‘Does it matter now?’ He dismissed the question with a curt flick of his head. ‘And Luis was an idiot for telling you and…telling anyone,’ he condemned.
She was bemused by his attitude. She had seen with her own eyes how his father behaved towards him and she could imagine what effect the headlines about his mother’s affair and the rumours of his birth had had on the life of a boy at public school.
‘But people said things about you, wrote things. You could have told them the truth.’
‘I have a thick skin and I totally believe the old adage what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. It doesn’t bother me what people say, or think. They will always find something to write. It would have been harder for Luis.’
She shook her head and wondered if he had told himself that so many times he actually believed it.
‘What’s happening?’ she asked, sliding down in her seat, feeling conspicuous in her white wedding dress as the car slowed to a crawl. Before Sebastian responded to the question they came to a complete standstill.
‘I’m not sure,’ Sebastian admitted, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel before he opened the window and leaned out. That was when he smelt the smoke…acrid and unmistakable.