Claiming His Christmas Consequence

by Michelle Smart

  Nathaniel crouched over him. ‘Next time it will be your face.’

  He stood, took hold of Catalina’s hand, and led her away from her groaning brother. ‘We need to leave.’

  ‘We can’t.’

  ‘Lina, we need to go now. We haven’t got much time.’

  She shook her hand from his and stopped. Looking back over her shoulder, she could see her brother rising.

  ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ she whimpered, suddenly terrified. ‘There will be consequences.’

  ‘Which is why we need to leave now.’ He took her hand again and tugged. ‘Come on.’

  ‘There’s something I need to do first,’ she said, panic setting in.

  ‘If it’s to do with handing your passport to your father then you can forget about it.’

  ‘You know?’

  He nodded grimly. They were now at the wide palace door, which was still open to allow late arrivals to slip through. ‘Dominic mentioned it to me when your father bore me off. He couldn’t resist telling me they had you back under control. You’ve got the passport here.’ It wasn’t a question.

  ‘He’ll have you arrested.’ She stopped at the top of the concrete steps. ‘Don’t you understand that? He doesn’t trust me at all. If I don’t give him my passport he’ll have you locked up for the rest of your life.’

  ‘He’ll have to find me first.’

  Still holding her hand tightly but without the malice of her brother’s hold, he led her down the steps. Once in the courtyard, Catalina had to run to keep pace with him.

  A long sleek car flashed its lights at them.

  Only when they were settled in the back and his driver had put his foot down did Nathaniel allow himself to breathe.

  No sooner had his lungs started working than Catalina rounded on him.

  ‘What did you think you were doing hitting him?’ she demanded, her voice shrill. ‘Dominic could have you killed.’

  It took him a few good lungfuls of air before he found his voice. ‘I don’t care what he does to me. How long has he been abusing you?’

  The way her body stiffened told him the gut feeling he’d had these past few months had been correct.

  ‘Catalina?’ he said, when she seemed to shrink into herself. ‘I asked you a question. Seeing as I’ve just added a charge of treason to my other so-called crimes in this country, the least you can do is tell me the truth.’

  ‘It’s hard for me to talk about it,’ she said, her words barely more than a whisper. ‘It feels disloyal.’

  ‘Forget loyalty. Your family don’t know the meaning of it.’

  Another long silence stretched out but then she gave a sharp nod. ‘Dominic... Yes. He does on occasion strike me. But rarely anything that will leave a mark,’ she added, as if that excused it.

  ‘Does your father know?’

  ‘I don’t know. Dominic has loathed me since I was born and father rarely did anything to stop his cruelty when we were children.’ A sad smile lifted the corners of her mouth. ‘Dominic resented me being born and taking our mother’s attention away from him. Don’t get me wrong, Dominic’s never beaten me. I suppose I’ve always taken it because I accepted it as his right. Women of the House of Fernandez are supposed to be submissive to the will of their men. But it isn’t his right. When I return to the palace, I will put a stop to it.’

  ‘How?’ He delivered the word like a bullet.

  ‘I will scream. I will scratch his eyes out. He’s not used to me answering or fighting back.’

  ‘You will do none of those things because you are never setting foot in that palace again.’

  He had suspected something like this but having his suspicions confirmed still hit him like a punch to the gut.

  The House of Fernandez was more poisonous than he could ever have dreamt.

  Was it any wonder she’d grabbed her first chance at freedom and run away? She’d been a prisoner in the palace, constantly on edge about putting a foot out of line, paraded in front of the public, who loved her like a performing puppy, then forced into marriage with a man—him—who’d treated her with indifference. The future looming ahead would have seen her returned to the palace and forced into a second indifferent marriage... She should have run further. She should have run to the ends of the earth to escape that fate.

  And here she was, preparing to accept that very fate in order to save him.

  ‘I have to,’ she said. ‘Or you will lose everything.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t want our baby raised here. How can you...?’

  She shook her head so violently that tendrils of hair fell from where they had been so elegantly pinned. ‘You’re going to raise our child.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve thought it all out.’ She spoke quickly, urgently. ‘My father still expected us to stay together until the baby was born. He would have had my passport but that was because he didn’t trust me not to run away again. That wouldn’t stop you leaving the country. I would have had our baby here and then I was going to get you to take him or her as far away from Monte Cleure as you could get.’

  Such disbelief ran through him that he couldn’t get a thought or a word to form.

  ‘And now you’ve ruined everything.’ With that, she burst into tears. ‘Why did you hit him? He wouldn’t have hurt me, not with all those guests around.’

  ‘You were going to give me our child?’ That was all he could think. She had been planning to hand their child over to him.

  Her cheeks sodden with tears, she nodded. ‘It was the only way to be sure you would both be safe.’

  In the distance came the sound of sirens. He didn’t know if they meant they were being pursued but it was enough to snap him into action. He pressed the button to drop the partition dividing them from his driver.

  ‘Take us to the heliport,’ he snapped. ‘Quickly.’ Then he called the company he always chartered helicopters from and offered a quarter of a million euros if they could get a pilot there to take them into France within the next ten minutes.

  Fortune was on his side. A pilot had landed only fifteen minutes before and hadn’t yet left for home.

  Then he called Alma and told her to get the staff together to gather his and Catalina’s personal belongings, get onto his jet, and meet him in Marseille. Right now. No questions.

  When Dominic had so gleefully mentioned Catalina’s passport, her strange mood had suddenly made sense. He’d known in that moment he had to get her out of the country.

  Once his private audience with the King, who’d wanted only to put on an act of establishing dominance, was complete, he’d called his driver and told him to prepare to take them into France.

  Now there was no chance of reaching the border; not now he’d punched the heir to the throne in his own palace.

  For months Nathaniel had wondered about Catalina’s relationship with her brother, but seeing the evidence right there before his eyes, the way Dominic’s fleshy fingers had bitten into her smooth flesh, the evil radiating from his eyes...

  He’d snapped.

  The pilot was ready for them and they were in the air as soon as they were safely strapped in.

  When they were a couple of hundred feet in the air, Nathaniel looked out of the window to see half a dozen sirens flashing, making their way to the heliport.

  He didn’t release another full breath until they were in French airspace.

  During all of this, Catalina hadn’t uttered a word. She sat rigid, her usual poise gone, tears streaming silently down her face.

  ‘We’re safe,’ he said softly.

  She blinked and rubbed her eyes. ‘We’re never going to be safe.’

  ‘Your father’s power only exists within Monte Cleure.’

  She looked away again, her fin
gers playing with the fabric of the skirt of her dress.

  Nathaniel closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. Unsurprisingly, he had a headache forming.

  ‘Where do you want to go?’ he asked after another ten minutes had passed.

  She stared at him blankly.

  ‘Name a country. Any country. Of all the places in the world you’ve wanted to go to or have been to and really enjoyed. Name one.’

  ‘America,’ she whispered after a long pause. ‘New York. I’ve always wanted to go there.’

  ‘New York with a loft apartment?’

  She nodded, another tear streaking down her face.

  ‘Then New York it shall be.’

  Alma had arranged for a car to meet them in Marseille. In silence they drove to the airport.

  Catalina stared out at streets and roads she had travelled past only a few days before, wondering how she came to be here again.

  Had all that really happened?

  Had Nathaniel really punched Dominic?

  Terror took great big bites out of her stomach, acid burning through her throat.

  What had he done? Nathaniel would never be able to set foot on Monte Cleure again. Everything they’d been fighting for him to keep...he’d lost it.

  And it was all her fault.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE HOUSEHOLD STAFF were at the airport waiting for them in a private room. They were all white-faced.

  As soon as they walked in, Nathaniel went straight to Clotilde. ‘You’re to fly with Catalina to New York.’

  Clotilde nodded solemnly.

  He addressed the others. ‘We’ll stay in my hotel here for the night then when the jet returns we’ll fly to...’

  He felt a sharp tug on the sleeve of his dinner jacket. Catalina, paler than anyone, her eyes red-rimmed, said, ‘Aren’t you coming with me?’

  His nostrils flared as he looked at her. He shook his head. ‘I’m going to Agon.’

  ‘I can go with you.’

  ‘No. This is where we part company. If you’re not happy in New York we will find somewhere else for you to live.’

  ‘Part company? What do you mean?’

  He closed his eyes before fixing them back on her. ‘This is where we put our plan into action. Everything we talked about. This, mon papillon, is where you get your freedom. I know it’s rather more dramatic than we’d anticipated but things have developed in a way neither of us could have predicted.’

  ‘But what about you? My father hasn’t given you back the deeds yet. He hasn’t revoked that statement of fraud against you.’

  He shrugged. None of that mattered any more. ‘I haven’t a hope in hell of getting anything back now, and I don’t care. Your safety and that of our baby are all that matter. Do you have the credit card I gave you?’

  She nodded blankly.

  ‘It’s got unlimited credit on it. Buy whatever you need—I mean it, Lina, whatever you need.’

  ‘You can come with me,’ she whispered. ‘We can be a family.’

  His heart banged ferociously beneath his ribs as a sudden vision of him, Catalina and their baby together forced its way into his mind.

  It was an image he’d refused to see before, too fantastical for him to allow it.

  And then he looked back to her sweet, tear-stained face and felt a pain in his chest so deep and dark that it ripped right into his core.

  He’d loved his family with all his pure, innocent heart and then he’d lost them.

  He’d loved his uncle, who had done his best to treat him like a son, but had betrayed his love in the most heinous way and lost him too.

  Everyone he’d ever loved he’d lost.

  He breathed deeply and shook his head, denying the words that fought on his tongue, denying the clamouring of his heart trying to jump from his chest and into hers.

  He didn’t deserve her. He would rather die than hurt her.

  ‘I will be in touch in a few days. Clotilde can reach me if need be.’

  It took an age for it to penetrate Catalina’s brain that this meant goodbye. That this was where they went their separate ways. That in future she would only speak to him to discuss things to do with their baby, that she would only see him for baby visitations or handovers. That the wishes she’d kept so deep within herself and never allowed herself to dream of, not even in her private imaginings, had at last been vocalised and rejected.

  By the time the facts had really had sunk in, Nathaniel had left the private room. Only Clotilde remained with her. The others had gone with him, whispering goodbyes she had been too shell-shocked to acknowledge.

  ‘Where’s he gone?’ she asked, whipping her head round to face Clotilde, who could only shake her head.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she mouthed.

  Catalina pushed the door open and gazed around.

  The airport was busy but not heaving. She could see individuals clearly. But she couldn’t see him.

  Her lungs opened up before her brain knew what they were doing, her vocal cords opening with them to scream his name. ‘Nathaniel!’

  People stopped to stare at her. He wasn’t one of them.

  She began to run, screaming his name over and over, pushing past people, sending luggage flying until a pair of arms took hold of her and wrapped around her waist, and she cried harder than ever to find that it wasn’t him but Clotilde, who was sobbing too as she tried so hard to restrain her.

  Catalina’s bodyguards—she hadn’t even known they were there—materialised and, with a kindness that belied their size and power, took the distraught women into their arms and guided them back to the private room to await their flight.

  * * *

  New York was okay. Now she was finding her feet, Catalina quite liked it there.

  When they’d landed, a fresh security crew had been there to meet them. They’d been whisked straight to a loft conversion in lower Manhattan with the tightest of security. Catalina had been told that if she didn’t like it, there were a dozen other lofts for her to look at.

  She’d been so tired she hadn’t been able to think straight and had decided to bed down there for the night. The late winter sun had awoken her the next day and, although she was jet-lagged and heartsick, she’d felt a kind of peace steal over her. She’d decided to stay.

  That had been a month ago.

  Everywhere she went, security followed but they managed to be unobtrusive. There were times she would walk around Times Square or Central Park and forget they were there.

  Her ‘abduction’ had been headline news. So crazy had the rumours been—fuelled of course by the palace—that she’d called and left a message for her father, telling him in no uncertain terms that if he didn’t stop the stories and drop the allegations against Nathaniel, she would sell her story to the press and bare all the House of Fernandez’s dirty laundry with it. For good measure, she’d then walked into one of the major New York newspaper offices and issued a statement. It had been filmed for authenticity. In it she had insisted she’d left Monte Cleure of her own free will and vehemently denied that her husband was capable of any kind of fraud. He was, she’d insisted, a good man. To the rumours that they’d gone their separate ways, she would only say that she wished him nothing but the best.

  What she’d left unsaid was that there was a hole in her heart that she didn’t know how to begin repairing.

  Returning to her loft after a wander around the National Museum, where even the magnificent artefacts had failed to hold her interest for longer than a few minutes at a time, she called out to Clotilde but received no reply.

  That was strange. Clotilde had snapped back into her usually cheerful mood on their first full day in New York. The younger woman had been a godsend and Catalina would be grateful for ever that Nathanie
l had insisted she travel with her.

  Oh, but she didn’t want to think about him. Thinking about him made the hole in her heart rip a little bit wider. Some days she would look out of her bedroom window just as her mother had done when she’d been too ill to leave her room. Her mother had stood there looking for Juan, desperate to catch a glimpse of him. And Juan would often sit under the cherry tree her mother’s window overlooked, eating his lunch, pretending not to be staring right back at her, desperately needing her but knowing to make an attempt to see her would seal both of their fates.

  Their fates had been sealed anyway. Cancer had taken care of that first and then the blackness Juan had fallen into had finished the job.

  Whatever happened, Catalina was determined not to fall into the same despondency. She had a baby to think about. She’d felt a quickening in her stomach only that morning and a burst of excitement had cut through her, stripping the darkness away for a few, brief magical moments.

  She’d felt her baby move. Soon she could expect to feel it kick. Her little miracle of life she would do anything, anything to keep safe. Even if she’d had to give it up.

  Because she would have done. And she would be grateful to Nathaniel for ever because now she didn’t have to.

  He’d lost so much so that she could be a mother to their child and they could both live in freedom. He’d never get his development or the Ravensberg building back but at least the criminal charges against him had been dropped. It still made her furious that, in the aftermath of their escape from the palace, her family had dragged his name through the mud so much so that now his name was mud. He didn’t deserve that.

  ‘Clotilde?’ she called again, then thought she might be having a heart attack when she saw the man rising to his feet from his place on the sofa.

  It seemed to take for ever for her brain to comprehend what her eyes were seeing.

  ‘Nathaniel,’ she whispered.

  She hadn’t seen him since the airport. Or spoken to him. They’d communicated in other ways though. Somehow he’d arranged the purchase of this loft for her and opened a bank account in her name, all without actually speaking to her.