How on earth had she got it here so fast?
Lily was at work already. She’d wriggled under the bow of the dinghy and was prodding each plank in turn, while everyone else watched from the sides.
‘It’s a great project to start with,’ she was saying to Spiros. ‘This’ll keep us happy until we get the materials to start bigger projects.’
‘Lily.’
She hadn’t seen him enter. He saw her freeze at the sound of his voice. Her expression became almost defiant—and then she went back to what she was doing.
‘We can restore it exactly as it was,’ she said, only the faintest of tremors acknowledging his presence. ‘See these joins? See how they slot together? That’s real craftsmanship. The guys who built this really knew their stuff. I need to do some research before we start.’
‘We have an Internet connection at the palace,’ Alex said loudly into the silence.
‘That’s right,’ she responded, as if he were just another voice from the outside. ‘I’ll need an Internet connection at my house.’ She was being as businesslike with him as she was with Spiros.
‘You won’t need anything at your house. We need to live at the palace.’
He was ignored. ‘My laptop’s a bit old but it should be okay. Can we get broadband at the harbour?’
‘I said we’ll live at the palace.’
Finally she acknowledged him. She hauled herself out from under the boat, pulled herself upright and dusted herself off.
‘No,’ she said simply, ‘I’ll not live at the palace.’
‘Why not?’
‘My mother’s living at the palace. Haven’t you seen the papers?’
He shook his head. ‘She won’t be.’
‘She said…’
‘No matter what she said.’
This conversation should be private, but first he had to break through this icy indifference. ‘There’s a generous lifetime allowance allocated to Mia as Giorgos’s widow,’ he told her. He told them all. ‘I’m the administrator. This morning I converted part of it into a permanent travel fund for your mother. She’s been handed first class air tickets to Dubai, and hotel vouchers. The travel allowance will be ongoing. Wherever Mia moves, the funds will pay for flights and luxurious accommodation so your mother and Mia can stay together for ever.’
There was a deathly hush. The onlookers didn’t understand.
Lily understood. Her anger faltered. She gazed at him in awe. And…magically, the beginning of laughter.
‘They’ll kill each other,’ she whispered at last.
‘Excellent.’ He ventured a smile.
Which was maybe a mistake. ‘Don’t you dare smile at me,’ she snapped. She was obviously trying to haul herself together. Remembering where she was—remembering her grievances. ‘What you’ve done for my mother…it’s all very well, but if you think you can buy me…’
‘I never thought I could buy you.’
‘You’re going to Manhattan. While I stay in the palace? No way.’
‘We need to talk about that.’
‘We don’t,’ she said crossly.
‘I have to talk to you.’
‘So who’s going to make me?’ she said softly.
There was a stifled laugh from the onlookers. This was an impossible conversation to have in public.
‘Please, Lily. I need to talk to you alone.’
‘I’m busy.’
‘Mending my boat.’
‘Don’t you want it mended?’
‘Yes, but…’
‘There you go then. Can we send you the account? Spiros, this can be our first local commission.’
‘Lily!’
‘Yes…Your Highness?’ she said, raising her brows in mute enquiry. ‘Was there anything else you wanted?’
‘I want you!’
‘I don’t see why.’
She turned her back on him, talking to Spiros. ‘Let’s write up a list of materials we need,’ she said. ‘You want to do it in your office? Eleni, can you take care of Michales for a few more minutes? If you’ll excuse us…’
He moved, barring her way. She was back in her bib-and-brace overalls and her baseball cap. Did she have any idea how cute she looked? Did she have any idea how desperate she made him feel? Or how inadequate. ‘Lily, I need to talk to you. Now!’
‘Maybe you’d better listen,’ Eleni said uneasily. ‘His Highness has been very good to us.’
‘To you. Maybe not to me.’
‘He brought you to this place,’ Eleni said. ‘He’s making you a princess.’
‘I don’t want to be a princess.’
‘Every girl wants to be a princess,’ Eleni said.
‘Would you want to be a princess?’ Lily demanded, rounding on Eleni. ‘If it meant not being married to Spiros.’
Eleni gazed at her in confusion. ‘Spiros is…different.’
‘How different?’
‘He’s Spiros,’ she said, looking at her rotund and balding husband with affection. ‘He loves me,’ Eleni said. ‘This isn’t a fair comparison.’
‘It’s not, is it,’ Lily agreed. She turned back to Alex. ‘See? Spiros loves Eleni. There’s no negotiation there. They went to America together. They came here together.’
‘You’re saying you want to go to Manhattan?’
She shook her head, looking angry. ‘You don’t want me in that part of your life,’ she said flatly. ‘And the islanders don’t want me in their face either. But it’s okay. The realtor’s been here and he’s shown me the perfect house. Two bedrooms, so Michales and I don’t have to share unless we want, and it overlooks the harbour. We’ll live happily ever after. Now, if we could get on…’
‘Lily, talk to me,’ he said through gritted teeth, and Eleni grinned and gave Lily a push in the small of her back.
‘Go with him before he explodes,’ she advised. ‘He’s very close to exploding. I can see this.’
‘It doesn’t matter if he does explode.’
‘It’d make a mess,’ Eleni retorted. ‘As did hauling in this boat. Why you had to tell Spiros about it today…You knew he wouldn’t rest until he had it. So off you go, the pair of you. Spiros,’ she said sharply, ‘help me.’
And suddenly Spiros was behind Alex, Eleni was behind Lily and they were being propelled out of the boatshed. They were outside before they had a chance to argue, and the boatshed doors were slammed shut behind them.
So they were suddenly out on the docks. The berths were all empty. A lone seagull was preening itself on a bollard. Water lapped against the pilings.
There was no one in sight.
‘Where…where are all the fishing boats?’ Lily asked, sounding desperate, looking desperate.
‘Out fishing. Lily, you can’t do this.’
‘I can,’ she said gamely. ‘I will. My house is over there.’ She pointed across the harbour. ‘It’s the one with window boxes. It’s not only you who’ll have a garden.’
‘Do you really want to live alone?’
‘With Michales. But yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m not about to follow my mother’s and my sister’s example. I hadn’t realised it until I saw the newspapers—how much damage they did. But do you think I can stay around as your wife now?’
‘Of course you can.’
‘When you’re not here?’
He was trying his hardest to figure this out.
He’d thought he had it figured on the way here. He did have it sorted. He loved this woman. They could do this. But the explanations he’d prepared seemed to have disappeared into confusion.
‘I will need to leave you sometimes,’ he said slowly. He wasn’t about to lie to her now. ‘If you have your boatbuilding…I need something. I can’t only be a prince.’
‘That’s just it,’ she said, indignation fading. ‘I have no right to expect anything. It’s a token marriage.’
He shook his head. ‘How can it be a token marriage when we share a bed? Whe
n you’ve asked me to be faithful and I’ve taken the same promise from you?’
‘I shouldn’t have done either. Alex, please, I’ve been out of control for too long. What I want is to get my life together. I had this notion back at your lovely house that I could sink into your life—make it my own. Only, of course, that’s dumb. I don’t want the people of the Diamond Isles looking at me the same way they look at Mia and my mother. I have to carve my own way.’
‘And I fit in where?’
‘Nowhere,’ she said forlornly. ‘Not as your wife. I’ve been trying to figure it out and I can’t see it. For you to be a part-time prince and leave me as a full-time princess…’
‘You do want me to stay here all the time?’
‘I don’t want you to do anything.’ She was close to tears. ‘I have no right to want anything of you, other than support for Michales. I need nothing.’
‘You deserve everything.’
‘I have everything,’ she said, flatly but surely. She tilted her face so the sun shone full on it. ‘I have my son. I have my life. I have a career I love, in one of the most beautiful settings in the world. What more can I ask for?’
‘Me.’ It was an egotistical answer—maybe dumb—but it was what he needed to say. He wanted her to want him.
He wanted this woman.
But she was shaking her head. ‘I daren’t ask that,’ she whispered. ‘Because if I let myself ask…’
‘I might just give?’
‘Would you?’ she asked. ‘How much would you give?’
He was struggling here, trying to work out where she was going. Trying to understand. This morning he’d woken up beside her and the world had been at his feet. But now…
He’d pushed it too hard. He knew he had. But how to get it back?
She looked…scared, he thought. Angry and defiant but, deep down, terrified.
Should he back off?
How could he back off? What would happen if their marriage was simply in name only?
He’d be gutted.
A marriage of convenience…
What the hell was he doing?
A memory came back, piercing into his conscience from a time he’d tried desperately to block. His mother, lying on a bed of pillows on one of the ledges jutting out from a rock path leading to the sea. She’d been back on the island for such a short time before she’d become ill. They’d planned their garden together, and he was building it. It was all he could do for her.
He’d been planting the rock wall with scented geraniums. She’d called down to him. He’d looked up, his hands covered with loam—filthy, happy, the sun on his face, where he most wanted to be in the world.
‘Mama?’
‘I love you,’ she’d said, so softly he hardly heard. ‘No, don’t stop what you’re doing. It’s just…I thought it and I needed to tell you…It’s the only important thing and you need to remember it. I love you.’
Two months later she was dead, and somehow the message she’d given him had been…not forgotten exactly, for it had helped mould who he was. But he hadn’t thought of that love as extending from what he and his mother had shared.
Only of course it had extended. As love must.
Loving. He had it, right here, in this woman before him—his Lily, looking at him now, troubled, battered by her mother’s betrayal, confused and hurt by what he’d done this morning but, even in her confusion, looking to the future. Trying to make the best of what he’d given her.
This woman was his wife. What was he doing, messing with it?
Start with Lily, he told himself, feeling dazed.
‘Alex, what is it?’
‘I wasn’t going to Manhattan to work on a project,’ he told her. ‘I never was.’
‘You were going…’
‘To wind up the company. To put it into the hands of a couple of competent employees, and to offer to keep a role as offshore consultant. I thought I might be able to go over occasionally…but not often.’
‘There’s no need…’
‘There is a need,’ he said softly. ‘I should have told you. And I should have asked you, too. Lily, will you marry me?’
Marry…
He obviously wasn’t making sense. She stood in the afternoon sun and she stared at him as if he were speaking an unknown language.
Maybe he was.
‘I’ve already married you,’ she whispered.
‘Yes, but it wasn’t right.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘I think you do.’ He caught her hands and held. ‘It wasn’t true. This time I want to stand before a priest I know and love, beside a woman I know and love, and I want to make my vows and keep them.’
‘But…why…?’
‘Your illness…’
‘No,’ she snapped and the sudden flare of hope in her face disappeared to nothing. ‘Don’t you dare feel sorry for me.’
She tried to drag her hands away but he wasn’t releasing them.
‘No, Lily, wait. I’m not saying this because I feel sorry for you. How can I feel sorry when I’m so proud I’m close to bursting with pride? That a woman like you would stoop to marry me…Lily, we did this the wrong way round. I married you as a royal bride. I stood before the islanders and said you were my wife. And then I took you home to a place which can’t be our home. It’s a place where we can stay hidden, it’s a place for time out, but now’s not the time for hiding.’
‘But I don’t want…’
‘You don’t want to be a princess by yourself,’ he said, still sure that he was right. ‘But what if you weren’t by yourself? What if you were half of a whole…half of the ruling royal couple of Sappheiros…?’
‘The islanders would never agree.’
‘They never will if you stay hidden. Lily, I’m asking you again. I want to marry you, but this time I want it to be between us. I want to declare my love for you. And then I want to start making reparation for both of us.’
‘Both…’
‘We’ve been robbed,’ he said slowly. ‘It’s taken me a while to see it but now I do. Royalty robbed me of my childhood. My mother had to leave me behind and I’ve blamed more than Giorgos for that loss. I blamed this role. I blamed royalty. I wanted desperately to help the islanders, to rule so I could set things right, but I didn’t want to commit myself. That’s how I married you.’
‘So what’s changed now?’
‘You,’ he said softly and tugged her in so her breasts rested against his chest. ‘I nearly had it. I thought this morning that I’d head to Manhattan and close things up there, then come back and see what I could do. Only I should have told you, asked you to come with me. I had a hell of a day with financiers and that was daft, too. You know why? Because I had Nikos there, trying desperately to be a friend, to understand. Only he has problems of his own on Argyros. You know who should have been there? You.’
‘You think I could understand financiers?’ She was bewildered, he thought. He wasn’t explaining this right.
‘No,’ he said lovingly. ‘No one could understand that lot. I’ve set my lawyers onto them. But they had to talk to me first and I came away hornswoggled…’
‘Hornswoggled…’
‘Hornswoggled,’ he repeated. ‘Great word. Pity it’s not Greek. But I wanted to be hornswoggled with you, and the only person I had was Nikos—and he was busy telling me I’d done everything wrong. But, Lily, I’m losing track here. I love you. Will you marry me?’
He was holding her at arm’s length so he could watch her face. He was watching her confusion. He was aching for it to disappear.
‘I guess I don’t have to ask you to marry me,’ he conceded. ‘Not officially, for you’ve already done that. But what I want now…I want more. I want you to trust me.’
She nodded. The confusion was fading. She was as serious as he was. ‘That’s a very different thing.’
‘So?’
‘I think I already do trust you,’ she whispered but he sho
ok his head.
‘You don’t trust me to care for you. You don’t trust me to be beside you, whatever life throws at either of us. You’ve been alone all your life. You expect more of the same. You say you want to live down at the harbour. Do you really want to live on your own?’
‘No, but…’
‘But if you live with me, you’ll be fearful that it’ll be on my terms.’
‘That’s reasonable. You don’t want…’
‘It’s not reasonable,’ he said. ‘I’ve just figured it out. I want you to live with me, but on your terms.’
‘Alex, you’re a prince.’
‘I am a prince,’ he said softly. ‘But what does that mean? I need to earn the respect of my people, as I need to gain your respect and trust. Can I start with you and work my way out? Can we marry for real?
‘For we’re not properly married,’ he said. ‘You didn’t walk down the aisle with Spiros to give you away. We didn’t get married in front of Father Antonio. And we didn’t go straight to the palace and stand on the balcony and wave and kiss each other in front of the whole island and I didn’t say to the world I’m so proud of you that if anything, anyone, even implies that you’re not totally perfect I’ll have them tossed into a good deep dungeon for high treason.’
‘A dungeon,’ she said faintly. ‘Do we have dungeons?’
‘I’ll have them dug on the off chance,’ he said grandly. ‘Lily, what do you say?’
‘I…’
‘I love you, Lily,’ he said hurriedly, before she had a chance to answer. ‘This is the most important moment in my life. I stared at those newspaper headlines this morning and I thought that if I were you I’d walk away and never come back. And I wouldn’t blame you. I might have known you’d do the noble thing instead. Move out, stay married, take the flak but get on with your own life as best you could. Lily, please, could you include me?’
‘Um…okay,’ she ventured and he held her back at arm’s length so he could look into her eyes.
‘Just okay?’
‘Okay, Your Majesty?’ she tried.
‘Not…okay, my love?’
‘You want me to be a princess.’
‘Not a princess. My princess.’
‘You’ll be my prince.’
‘That’s the idea.’
Claimed: Secret Royal Son Page 15
