by Kendrick, Sharon; Lawrence, Kim; Crews, Caitlin; Milburne, Melanie
In the hall you could hear in the pin-drop silence Sebastian’s voice sounding tersely impatient. ‘So does anyone have the financial projections I asked for?’
In her head Sabrina could hear her mother’s voice as she coaxed her out from the cupboard she had retreated to after she’d admitted to her best friend that she fancied the captain of the football team, unaware that she was standing close enough to the live mic to have the entire assembled school hear her.
‘You have two choices when you make a public faux pas, Brina—you can either make a joke of it or act as though it never happened.’
Sabrina went for the latter and turned to the woman who was escorting her, comforting herself with the fact her new husband had the sort of attention span that meant unless you were six feet and blonde—and she was five six and fairish—he had pretty much deleted you from memory five seconds after you went out of his line of vision.
She lifted her chin. She would not vie for his attention but she would not be treated as though she were invisible either.
She produced a smile that said she was actually interested. ‘I’m sure the rooms will be perfect, thank you. This is a beautiful house.’
She’d said the right thing. The housekeeper was very proud of her employers’ historic home. She went on to regale Sabrina with a history that revolved mostly around the famous and infamous figures who had stayed there over the centuries.
CHAPTER NINE
THEY RESPONDED TO his question in a respectful way, even though they had just given the said information to him ten seconds earlier. Still, the respect was as yet only skin deep. He was perfectly well aware that he had yet to earn this. They, and in fact the world, were still waiting and maybe, in some cases, hoping that the day would come when he’d roll up for a scheduled conference late, hungover or possibly both.
Sometimes their doubts, never voiced, felt like a shout, but he knew that he could not allow self-doubt to creep in, so the extra hours he put in were not to prove anything to the doubters, but to himself.
‘This could wait until the morning if you prefer, Highness,’ said Ramon, the accountant.
‘You have somewhere else you’d prefer to be, Ramon?’
The man adopted an expression that suggested he wanted nothing more than to discuss a report on the financial benefits to be gained from amalgamating the tourist boards of both sides of the reunified island!
‘Fine, I believe there is coffee provided for us in the study.’
Sebastian could feel their resentment as they filed past him. They all had places they would prefer to be, whereas he had a place he did not want to be.
Keeping his libido on a leash around her was driving him closer to the edge on the occasions when he was unable to avoid contact, but as hard as it was, as much as he wanted her, his guilt—or was that his pride?—would not allow him to act on it.
He didn’t want her available or willing or dutiful. Sebastian wanted her mad, crazy, hungry for him. In his dreams she begged him to come to her and he would wake up bathed in sweat and aching.
Sebastian’s jaw clenched as he lost his battle not to look towards the staircase in time to see her vanish from view.
* * *
‘Highness, is there anything I can get you?’
The form of address dragged Sabrina’s wandering thoughts back from the dark place they had drifted to. She was barely aware that they had reached the suite of rooms that they had been allocated. The woman walked her through them, opening the doors to two en-suite bedrooms that opened off a large, comfortable central sitting room.
‘Would you like a fire lit?’
Sabrina’s eyes went to the fireplace. ‘No, that’s fine, thank you,’ she murmured, waiting until the woman had left before leaning against the closed door.
She stood there, eyes closed for a few moments, before levering herself away from the surface and giving herself a mental shake before she looked around the room. Even without an audience she found herself feigning an interest she was far from feeling, a lifetime’s training kicking in.
They were only scheduled to spend one night here but someone had gone to a lot of trouble. Or more likely an army of ‘someones’ had. There were the welcoming touches, like the flower arrangements, the iced champagne. Opening one of the doors that led off the sitting room, Sabrina stared at the neatly turned down four-poster that took centre stage. The bed in the second, equally grand bedroom was turned down too. Not letting her mind go there, she continued to deal with the moment and not think beyond it, preferring to deal with each situation as it arose before moving on to the next hurdle.
Hurdle—was that what her married life was going to be?
She frowned. If you started thinking of yourself as some sort of helpless victim, inevitably you became one. She turned her back on the bed and opened one of the numerous fitted cupboards that lined one wall, where she found a selection of her own clothes hanging neatly on hangers, along with a row of shoes.
It wasn’t until she opened it fully and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror-lined door that she saw she was still clutching a sad-looking bouquet in her gloved hand.
Peeling off her silk gloves, she walked back into the sitting room and sat down, loosening the top button of the blouse she wore beneath her cream silk suit. It didn’t help the restricted feeling in her chest. There was still that cold, heavy weight behind her breastbone that she had spent the day pretending wasn’t there.
Sitting upright again, she kicked off the heels she wore and flexed her fingers, staring as she did at the rings that felt cold, the wide gold band above the square-cut emerald engagement ring, and fought a sudden compulsion to tear them off.
The act would have been both pointless and childish and now was the moment to behave like an adult, so instead, to distract herself from the feelings that were building inside her, she reached for the TV remote, pressed the on button and began to scroll through the channels.
She closed her eyes and let her head fall back. She allowed the husky diction of a well-known female newsreader to wash over her.
The woman actually had quite a pleasant voice, soothing, until that one phrase made her jolt into a tense upright position—Princess Sabrina!
On the screen the newsreader’s face was replaced by a scene of the wedding guests, the camera zooming in close-up on a few famous faces.
‘It is believed that after being left quite literally at the altar last June by the then Crown Prince Luis, his jilted bride, Lady Sabrina Summerville, has married his brother, Prince Sebastian, at a private ceremony. The couple and the bride’s sister were both involved in the tragic accident on Vela Main on the day of the wedding.’
The images of the wedding guests vanished and in their place was footage of helicopters circling and ambulances with wailing sirens, their flashing lights illuminating wreckage strewn across a road.
Sabrina stared transfixed at the nightmare scene of twisted metal and bodies, unaware as the remote slipped from her nerveless fingers.
She hoped that Chloe was not watching this.
She gave a sigh of relief as the crash scene vanished, though the tension climbed straight back into her shoulders as Sebastian appeared on the screen, tall and tanned, looking like the hero of an action movie. Over one broad shoulder he carried skis while the other shoulder was occupied by the fashionably tousled blonde head of a leggy soap actress who had both her arms around his middle as she smiled for the cameras that surrounded them. Sebastian looked down at her with an expression of amused indulgence before turning to the camera crews as he made a gesture that ensured the photo being plastered over front pages the next day.
‘Sabrina…’
She leapt at the touch of his hand on her shoulder and fumbled for the remote.
‘What rubbish are you watching?’ he asked, soun
ding impatient.
‘I’m not watching,’ she denied, annoyed with herself for feeling inexplicably guilty, then almost immediately embarrassed as a picture of herself looking solemn with pigtails and no front teeth, one from the family album, filled the screen.
Her fingers had closed over the remote but just as she was about to press the off button Count Hugo appeared, looking sincere as he stared into the camera.
‘What the…?’
Behind her Sebastian drawled, ‘I think it might be a good idea to watch this.’
‘You realise, Count,’ said the man holding the microphone, ‘that many will believe this marriage is one of political expedience? Prince Luis was a popular figure both sides of the border. Many question his brother’s ability to fill his shoes, and this marriage today—this rather low-key marriage—is it not true to say that it is nothing more than a cynical stunt to shore up crumbling support for the reunification project?’
The Count, who had continued to smile benignly into the camera through the comments, remained unflustered as he posed his own question.
‘Donald, I ask you, if it was a “stunt”, as you call it, would it be low-key? One can never silence the cynics, but the facts are, whether you choose to believe them or not, that the Prince and his bride have known one another for years, and have been…close in the past. After the events of last June the respect they have always felt for one another has turned into love.’
The newsreader’s face appeared as the Count vanished.
‘You can see the full report tomorrow night at nine, when the reunification is discussed by a panel of experts—but here is a—’
Sabrina pressed the ‘off’ button and turned, her expression accusing as she faced her husband.
‘Did you know about this?’
‘No…’
She arched a sceptical brow. She could not believe that the Count would have gone ahead with something like that without running it past Sebastian first.
‘But I’m not exactly surprised, and I’m not really sure why you are.’
‘You’re not surprised to hear that you’re one half of one of the greatest love stories of the decade?’ She folded her arms across her chest and glared up at him. ‘Well, it came as news to me.’
Sebastian reacted to the spiky sarcasm in her voice with a negligent shrug. ‘The question is, did he have you convinced? I thought he came across as surprisingly sincere,’ he mused, tugging off the tie that was looped around his neck.
‘Does it not bother you that he was lying his head off?’ she squeaked incredulously.
Sebastian gave a cynical smile. ‘Yes, he was lying. He is a diplomat. It is what he does.’
‘And he just goes ahead and does it? He doesn’t run it past anyone?’
‘He has a level of autonomy.’
She could tell that was only half the story. ‘You’re just as bad as he is!’ she accused. But Sebastian was much better to look at. ‘Is there some special class where they teach you how to dodge a question?’
‘Actually, yes.’ He removed his eyes from the pouting outline of her lips. ‘I asked him to handle the press. I don’t micromanage but I think the brief I gave him was too…broad.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Finally! And you’re all right with what he did?’ Her voice shook with the sense of outrage she felt.
He gave her a very direct look and a surprisingly straight answer. ‘I am not happy.’
Something in the clipped delivery made her look at him. Sabrina became aware for the first time that he was actually pretty angry. She felt an unexpected stab of sympathy for the Count.
Sebastian glanced at the blank screen of the television. ‘It was…tasteless. He overstepped the mark, but that’s politics for you.’
She subsided with a sigh into a chair. ‘I don’t like politics.’
He flashed a bleak grin. ‘It’s not going to go away any time soon.’ He walked across to the table and picked up the bottle from the ice bucket. ‘You look like you need a drink.’
She shook her head automatically and wrapped her arms around herself, squeezing tight until her fingers dug into her ribcage, hard enough to bruise. Her chin rested against her chest as she closed her eyes.
‘Well, I do.’ He put both the champagne flutes he had filled down on the polished surface.
‘Do you ever have flashbacks…?’ she asked. He looked at her as she shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
His frown deepened. ‘How do you mean flashbacks?’
‘The accident.’
‘Do you?’
‘It’s got better. The therapist said—’
‘You have seen a therapist?’
‘My parents insisted.’
‘Does anyone else know this?’
‘Anyone?’ she countered, her brow pleating into a puzzled frown.
‘Anyone other than your parents?’ he pressed. ‘Did you discuss it with friends or—?’
Her sudden shocked laugh cut him off. ‘You think there is some sort of stigma attached to having counselling for post-traumatic stress?’
‘What I think is not relevant.’
She felt her anger and, yes, disappointment, swell a tight knot in her chest. ‘Actually I think it’s very relevant.’
‘In our position it pays to be aware, anticipate the effect our actions will have. We must always be conscious of how the public perceive them. From this point on our lives, everything we do, is going to be scrutinised.’
‘What do you mean,’ she asked, ‘from this point on? You have spent your life playing for the cameras.’
Spasms of irritation flickered across his face. ‘Mental health is a sensitive issue and the press can spin—’
‘You’re afraid that people will say you’ve married someone unstable? You know something, Sebastian? I actually don’t care what you think,’ she shouted. How much simpler her life would be if that were true! ‘I had a problem. I couldn’t sleep and I got help.’ She drew a slicing motion with her hand. ‘End of story.’
‘Don’t overreact!’
His dismissive attitude made her jaw quiver. ‘I’m not the one overreacting. You can’t deal with it—tough, Sebastian! But you know what I think? You’re the one with the problem,’ she charged, her brown eyes sparking with contemptuous accusation.
He watched, jaw clenched, his anger slipping away as Sabrina bent and picked up the slingback heels she had been wearing, pulling the silk across her deliciously rounded bottom tight before she straightened up and flung him a look of contempt over her shoulder. Then, shoes dangling from the fingers of one hand, her slender back rigid, she flounced in a dignified fashion from the room.
He winced at the sound of the door slamming.
Eyes squeezed closed, he lifted one of the glasses he had filled to his lips. The fizz slid smoothly down his throat but didn’t produce any lightening of his mood as the bubbles seeped into his bloodstream.
With a curse he slammed the glass down, before he began to pace across the room. He was furious with her for being unforgivably right. He exhaled, his chest lifting as he came to a halt, eyes closed, a low grunt of self-directed anger rumbling in his chest.
She was right and he had never felt more ashamed of himself. What the hell was wrong with him? He had responded to her confidence like the sort of narrow-minded bigot he despised. She wouldn’t be doing any confiding in him again in a hurry.
Maybe that was why he’d done it, as another way to push her away?
How many times had he sneered when his father had adopted a similar attitude? Truth was disposable; unfairness could always be spun in your favour.
After a moment he walked towards the recently closed door.
The room was empty. One lamp beside the bed was switched on, illuminating the d
arkness. He could hear the sound of running water in the bathroom. Calling Sabrina’s name, he walked across the room. The bathroom door was open and she stood barefooted in a silk slip at the marble washbasin, her hands under the running tap as she stared at her reflection in the mirror.
‘Sabrina.’
She reacted to the sound of her name like a startled deer and spun around, wary-eyed, to face him. Their eyes connected and her chin lifted to a haughty angle, despite the blue-veined pulse he could see leaping at the base of her creamy throat. ‘Do you mind knocking before you come into my room?’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact I do, and I’m damned if I’m going to start off this marriage with sulks and closed doors.’
She switched off the water and stalked past him. ‘Fine, next time I’ll lock it. And I’m not sulking.’
‘I’m sorry…’
She had been ready to counter anything he threw at her except that…an apology! It crossed her mind she had misheard him. ‘What did you say?’
‘I’m sorry. That was…’ He hefted a sigh and dragged a hand back and forth across his already mussed hair. ‘I’m so busy pretending to be the Prince everyone wants that it’s hard to switch off.’
That was the way he operated. He focused on the task at hand. It had never mattered what the task was; he gave all the same commitment and he didn’t carry baggage to weigh him down. Because he had shrugged off the accident it had not even crossed his mind to consider that it might not be so easy for Sabrina.
Her dark eyes widened. ‘You don’t have to prove anything to anyone.’
He shrugged, an ironic half-smile quivering the corners of his mouth. ‘Only myself maybe. You must be aware that people are waiting for me to fail?’
She shifted uneasily, feeling an unexpected stab of sympathy for Sebastian as she remembered the comments earlier that day of his father’s aide.
Her fingers playing with the thin spaghetti strap of her silk slip drew his eyes to the smooth curve of her shoulder.
‘Well, you have worked pretty hard at establishing yourself as the Playboy Prince, haven’t you?’
