The Disgraced Princess

by Robyn Donald

  Did she have the courage to do that—to love unreservedly, knowing she’d have to walk away from him without a backward glance?

  She dragged in a ragged breath.

  Yes. Loving him would give her the strength to say farewell—and mean it in both senses of the word. She wished him nothing but good in his future.

  Surely, if she could do that, she’d be able to leave him behind emotionally as well as physically.

  Because people did recover from shattered hearts and unrequited love. They picked them selves up and went on, and eventually they were happy again.

  Mind made up, she got ready for a month of bittersweet joy.

  The next couple of days passed in a haze of pleasure. As each golden evening slid into the passionate darkness of night Rosie discovered how happiness tasted, how it coloured her world, what a difference loving Gerd and knowing that he wanted her made. Most of the time she could ignore the nagging knowledge of future grief and gave herself over to pleasure, to a deep, intense delight in his presence that she’d never allowed herself before.

  She’d never imagined a person could be so happy, she mused dreamily, waking up on the third morning. The only flaw was that so far she’d slept alone; Gerd made love to her and then left her.

  In some way his refusal to share a bed with her seemed to symbolise the distance between them—a distance that not even their passion could bridge.

  Once up she straightened her shoulders. No whining; she’d accept the bitter with the sweet. And nothing was sweeter than making love with Gerd…

  A cool shower revived her and she had just dressed in shorts and a T-shirt when someone knocked on the bedroom door.

  Excitement funnelled through her, catching her breath and imparting an extra radiance to her smile. ‘Come in,’ she called.

  Her heart swelled when she saw him. ‘Gerd—New Zealand style,’ she teased, eyeing his long, tanned legs and the casual cotton shirt—although, knowing Gerd, she suspected both had been made to fit his rangy, lean body.

  ‘I could say the same.’ His smile tightened as he let his gaze roam from her sunny curls to her bare feet. ‘In Regency England they’d have called you a pocket Venus, and a diamond of the first water.’

  She gave a theatrical sigh and came towards him. ‘Typical,’ she said. ‘Trust me to be born into a time when the fashion is for narrow hips and no waist.’ She laughed up at him. ‘How do you know so much about Regency England?’

  ‘It’s a period I find interesting—the infiltration of the old aristocracy by up-and-coming industrialists. Not many countries dealt with the resultant power shift so creatively as the British.’

  She said thoughtfully, ‘Does it have relevance for Carathia?’

  ‘I think it does.’ He changed the subject. ‘Would you like to go sailing?’

  ‘Now?’

  He smiled down at her. ‘Why not? There’s food on the yacht—Maria has stocked it with enough to feed an army. Along the coast there’s a bay with the ruins of a Greek temple to Aphrodite overlooking it. It’s in remarkably good repair, probably because the Romans took it over, and then in the Christian era the islanders simply dedicated the temple to the Virgin.’

  Intrigued, she asked, ‘So it’s a church now?’

  ‘It was never used for actual worship—or not in modern times, anyway. Maria says that lovers still make pilgrimages to it with offerings of flowers in the hope that the goddess will guarantee them a happy romance.’

  A sacrifice to love. Perhaps she should try that.

  ‘I’d like to see it,’ she told him.

  He held out his hand. ‘Come on, then.’

  The yacht was quite small, easily handled by two. Remembering the burly man who’d ridden with them the night they went out to dinner, Rosie said, ‘You obviously don’t need security here.’

  He gave her a keen glance, but his answer was delivered in a non-committal voice. ‘Not here, no.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ she said, and then wished she hadn’t said that. If Gerd realised how much she loved him he might call a halt to their relationship. So she added airily, ‘I felt rude talking to you and ignoring both him and the chauffeur.’

  ‘They wouldn’t have been able to hear,’ he said, loosening the main sheet.

  ‘I know, but although my mother is a stickler for manners she didn’t actually instruct me in the correct way to treat body guards.’

  ‘It’s quite simple—you let them do their jobs without interference. Can you get my sunglasses? They’re on a shelf in the saloon.’

  Not particularly luxurious, the saloon sported a table beside the neat, efficient galley area, and some very comfortable seating. A door led to another cabin further forward that probably held a bed.

  It intrigued her that Gerd, who’d forged a worldwide business before his thirtieth birthday, chose this yacht instead of something huge and opulent.

  Handing the sunglasses over, she said as much, and he shrugged, donning them so she couldn’t discern his expression.

  ‘I enjoy sailing,’ he said as though that explained everything.

  Rosie decided his words and actions were explanation enough. Clearly he relished the physical effort of hauling on ropes and sails, and the mental contest with the wind and the waves around the rocky coastline.

  ‘I can do that,’ she said at one stage, scrambling to haul in a jib sheet after they went about.

  He watched her pull it in until the sail stopped flapping. ‘Thanks. Although you don’t need to—it’s set up for single-handed sailing.’

  Which meant he sailed it by himself.

  Or that the other women he brought here to visit the love goddess’s temple weren’t sailors, she thought realistically.

  That hurt, but she ignored it. Live for the moment was her new mantra, and she intended to follow it without obsessing about what had gone before, or regretting what would come after.

  Even though living for the moment meant living dangerously.

  But she’d lived safely for years, and it had got her nothing but emptiness.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE temple took Rosie’s breath away. Still creamy-white after more than two thousand years on the headland, its perfect proportions and clean lines were as elegant as they had been when it was first built.

  ‘It’s—truly sublime,’ she breathed.

  Gerd gave a final tug to the anchor chain, and turned. She hadn’t actually been talking to him; the words had come unconsciously. She was perched on the cockpit seat so that her legs were displayed to their best advantage, and a surge of lust gripped him so that he had to turn away to hide his physical response.

  Although the top of her head barely reached his shoulder, she was strong; every cell in his body recalled the clamp of those legs around his hips, and he wanted her with a fierceness that clenched his hands by his sides. As elegantly curved as Aphrodite herself, her skin gleaming ivory-gold in the sunlight, she could have posed for a statue of the goddess.

  Hell, he wanted to take her there and then. Perhaps the goddess was having a sly joke at his expense?

  Leashing his unslaked appetite, he told her abruptly, ‘They built her temple here because Aphrodite was born of the sea.’

  Her upwards glance held a certain restraint that echoed in her tone. ‘She’s certainly got a great view of it from there. Can we climb up from the beach?’

  ‘If you don’t mind scrambling in the heat.’

  ‘Will my shoes be suitable?’

  Gerd checked her slender feet, sensibly enclosed in boat shoes. ‘They’ll be fine.’

  The path wound up from the bay, steep but mostly shaded by the silvery leaves of ancient olives. Before they started Gerd said, ‘If you think it will be too steep we can come here in the car one day.’

  ‘No,’ she said, looking amused. ‘I’m sure I can cope, but if I can’t then you can carry me. Although perhaps it would be a bit much to expect.’

  He laughed, eyes gleaming as he said, ‘If you can’
t get there I’ll be more than happy to carry you.’

  Her look sizzled with invitation, but she went on, ‘I forgot to bring my camera, and I’d like to photograph this, so yes, it would be great to come again.’

  And cope she did, scrambling up in front of him so that he was tormented by the sight of golden legs and the seductive sway of her hips.

  ‘You’re fit,’ he observed.

  She cast him a sly, laughing glance over her shoulder. ‘So you don’t need to stay behind me in case I fall or fade. My landlady has a dog—a fairly large mutt. Mrs Harley is elderly and although she takes him for a nice, gentle walk to the shops every day he needs more than that, so I do a morning and evening shift, and we walk up One Tree Hill and back down again.’

  He recalled the extinct volcano, one of many that dotted Auckland. High and grass-covered, its terraced slopes revealing its past as a Maori fortress—it reared above the city, an excellent workout for both dog and handler.

  Gerd asked casually, ‘Do you ever think of leaving Auckland?’

  She sent him a startled glance. ‘If I had a good enough reason I would,’ she said after a moment. ‘Not that I dislike Auckland. I love Kiwinui. That’s always been my ideal.’

  Because Kelt lived there? The thought goaded Gerd into silence. Once at the top he watched as she turned to examine the building with wide, awed eyes, and answered her questions as best he could, intrigued by her quick curiosity and interest in everything.

  Why had he asked her to come to his coronation? Oh, he’d told her it was because he saw her as family. It hadn’t been exactly a lie—more a convenient half-truth.

  Admitting that he felt there was unfinished business between them would have given her invitation too much importance.

  She interrupted his reluctant admission by pointing towards a distant hillside village. ‘I presume the grassed-over track from there used to be the route to the temple.’

  ‘Yes, the ancient processional way. When we come by car I’ll leave the vehicle in the village and we’ll walk up that path.’

  ‘I’m amazed it’s still visible after all these centuries,’ she said reflectively, her tone quiet and solemn.

  ‘It was probably used quite regularly until fairly recently.’

  ‘What are the bushes growing in that gully?’

  Amusement tinged his words. ‘Actually, a very distant relative of the pohutukawa that grows by your beaches. It’s a myrtle and is sacred to Aphrodite. It’s flowering now, in fact—they’re creamy-white, and sweetly scented.’

  An underlying note in his voice lifted the hair on the back of Rosie’s neck. She didn’t know how to deal with this, she thought despairingly. They weren’t touching, but she was so aware of him her skin felt taut and stretched, as though he had the power to affect her physically from a distance.

  It was too much—sensory overload. Turning abruptly, she gazed at the temple again, a monument to the power and strength of physical love, and thought how incredibly appropriate that was.

  Did Gerd make a habit of bringing his lovers here…?

  ‘Is it safe to explore inside?’ she asked brightly, pushing the ugly query into the back of her mind and refusing to allow it to hurt.

  ‘It’s in good condition. There have been tactful repairs made these past few years.’

  She cast him a swift look. ‘Did you have anything to do with that?’

  ‘I’ve set up a foundation to care for the ancient monuments of Carathia,’ he said, and began to tell her of the statue that had been found near by, a magnificent thing of creamy Parian marble lost so long ago its existence had become a myth, only half-believed until it was found by a peasant in his olive grove. ‘It had been buried so carefully that it was remarkably intact.’

  ‘Where is it?’ she asked, looking around the empty expanse of the temple.

  ‘In a museum in the biggest town over on the mainland coast,’ he told her, and answered the query in her glance. ‘For security. It was almost stolen.’

  She said, ‘I suppose that’s a constant fear.’

  ‘It is,’ he said grimly. ‘There are extremely rich men who’d enjoy nothing more than to gloat over something as beautiful and rare.’

  Rosie nodded. ‘I’ve read about that, but to me it sounds sick.’

  ‘You could say it shows a commendable love of beauty.’

  ‘But you don’t believe that,’ she said swiftly.

  ‘No.’ The flat, lethal tone of his voice revealed more than his dispassionate words. ‘Like you, I think it shows a sick desire to own something no one else can enjoy.’ He gestured at a marble podium. ‘She stood there.’

  Rosie said, ‘Oh—look.’

  On the ancient stone someone had put flowers—a white-ribboned posy made up of the golden daisies that dotted the processional way and the fringed, delicately perfumed flowers that had to be myrtle.

  ‘An offering,’ Gerd told her. ‘Someone wants something from the goddess.’

  ‘Or is thanking her.’

  ‘That possibly,’ he agreed. ‘Come and see the view from the front.’

  It was as tonishingly beautiful, a great spread of violet-blue sea dotted by islands, all over looked by a sky as brilliant and clear. While the soft wind swirled and played amongst the golden flowers Gerd named each island, and showed her the darkness to the north that was the mainland of Europe.

  ‘Greece and Asia lie to the east,’ he said, ‘and Italy to the west.’

  She said soberly, ‘For some strange reason it makes me horribly homesick.’

  He surveyed her quizzically. ‘Both have sea,’ he agreed, ‘and an island shelters the Kiwinui coastline. Apart from that I don’t see much resemblance. Kiwinui is lush and green, every gully thick with bush and flax, and it looks out on to thou sands of miles of open ocean. And although the myrtle is a vague connection to pohutukawa, it really doesn’t look like it.’

  ‘I think that’s the problem—it’s so completely different.’ She gave an ironic smile and shrugged. ‘But this is glorious. I can see why you like to come here for holidays.’

  He took her hand and laced her fingers in his, his eyes direct and cool and too perceptive. ‘I think you need something to drink. We’ll go back to the boat and have lunch.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said automatically, her breath catching in her throat as she met his eyes. Anticipation heated her blood, and she looked away again, feeling the slow pulse of desire throb through her body.

  On the yacht he insisted on organising the meal, moving deftly around the area that served as a kitchen, and while she drank the glass of champagne he’d given her he downed a beer, and told her stories of the island that made her laugh and occasionally sigh.

  After lunch he waited until she drained the coffee he’d made for her before asking, ‘Do you want to go ashore again?’

  ‘I—no,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Good, because I don’t either,’ he said, and bent his head and kissed the place where her neck and shoulder met.

  His lips were warm and seeking, and slow, hungry tremors coursed through her when he bit the skin there lightly. Rosie made an in articulate little noise and turned her head into his shoulder.

  ‘What is it?’ His voice was harsh.

  She looked up and saw passion darken his eyes, but although he wanted her she knew it wasn’t in the all-consuming way she longed for him. ‘Nothing,’ she whispered.

  And yielded to his practised caresses and her own urgent passion. This time it was languid, yet intense; he kissed her with his desire held well in check until she was gasping and aching, her body on fire and her voice gone.

  The other cabin did contain a bed, and there, rocked by the tiny wavelets, they reached the agonised rapture of delight.

  This time the climax was so sweet and prolonged Rosie had to close her eyes to hide the tears, but perhaps he noticed. As she started the slow down wards glide he began again, driving her mercilessly on into an ecstasy that left her shaking and mindl
ess, her whole world narrowed to this man, to Gerd, to this moment in his arms, linked to him in the only way he would allow.

  And when they finally slid into sleep, he was still with her, still keeping everything but joy at bay.

  When she woke she was still in his grip, her body moulded to his, the regular rise and fall of his chest telling her he hadn’t wakened.

  This was the first time he’d stayed with her, the first—and probably the only—time she’d ever wake in his arms…

  Forcing up heavy eyelids, she took the rare chance to scan his beloved face without the fear of him catching her at it. Such perfect features, she thought, eyeing the arrogant blade of his nose, his strong jaw, the masculine beauty and strength that was his mouth…

  Memories of what his mouth could do to her made her shiver deliciously.

  Silently she adored his skin’s golden sheen, the long, powerful lines of his body—the body that could take her on an erotic journey to paradise, that rapturous nirvana where her very sense of self was cut loose and she could only surrender to the dark enchantment of Gerd’s magnetism.

  Her heart started to pick up speed and her breasts bloomed, the nipples tight buds of excitement—waiting for his mouth, for his touch…

  Without thinking she stretched out tentative fingers and skimmed his flat, muscled midriff, only to snatch back her hand at his movement. She froze, but almost immediately he sank back into sleep.

  Slowly her gaze drifted down, past lean hips…

  Her breath came faster when she realised he was aroused. Heat smouldered into life within her, moistening the passage that longed for him, contracting internal muscles she’d barely learned how to use.

  Barely able to breathe in a mixture of shyness and reckless hunger, she touched him, her fingers lingering as she explored. Silky and hot, yet hard and—getting harder, she realised.

  She glanced up, but his eyes were still closed, and she realised that, although his breathing had quickened, he was still asleep.

  Curious, excited, she tightened her hand gently around him.