NO. THE word echoed quietly in Marianne’s head. She didn’t understand why hearing Seb actually say she wasn’t ‘suitable’ should make her feel better, but it did. Almost like a wound that had been lanced.
Years of supposition and, finally, she knew. And she’d been right all along. She was fine for a holiday romance…Fine to make love to as long as no one actually knew anything about it…
‘So you married Amelie of Saxe-Broden?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you love her?’
‘I liked her. Still do. And I was grateful that she was prepared to take me on…but no, I didn’t love her.’
Marianne swallowed hard. ‘Did she know that when she married you?’
‘Amelie didn’t love me either. It was a marriage that made…sense,’ he said, pulling that word out with difficulty.
‘We’d been brought up in the same kind of circles, but she didn’t stand to inherit anything herself. She was the right age.’
His was a completely different world. Hateful, actually. He’d selected Amelie as though she’d been a brood mare.
‘What would have happened if you hadn’t been able to find anyone suitable to marry you?’
‘Then I would have forfeited my right to succession and my cousin Michael would be the sovereign prince of Andovaria now.’
‘I see.’ Marianne shivered and pulled the wrap closely about her shoulders.
‘I never intended to hurt you, Marianne. And…I’m really glad your life has turned out so well…and that…you’re happy and…’
Pride was an incredibly powerful thing, she thought. Marianne forced a smile. ‘You know, you could have told me the truth. Even as a little girl I never thought being a princess was much of a career plan.’
Seb’s dark eyes took on a sexy glint. ‘Not even when you were five?’
‘I think I wanted to be an astronaut when I was five—certainly not a princess. My parents are very educationally orientated and they bought me all the books…’ Seb laughed and her stomach flipped over.
‘I wish I could do it differently.’ He walked back to the table and sat down. ‘Meeting you…becoming close to you was so unexpected. I hadn’t planned any of it—’
That was true for them both, then. Falling in love with him hadn’t been on her agenda either. Marianne picked up her wine glass and took another sip, determined that she would keep herself under tight control.
‘—and everything happened so fast between us. There was scarcely time to think. I was in too deep to do anything about it before I’d even realised I’d begun.’
Marianne let her hands curve around the ball of her wineglass. Perhaps not the correct thing to do to a crisp white wine, but she liked the feel of the cold glass against her palm.
Their relationship had ended as fast as it had begun. That bothered her far more than the speed of the start. One moment she’d been little more than a child on her first big adventure, and the next she’d been yanked into adulthood.
It had been different for Seb. Meeting her hadn’t altered the course of his life. After he’d left her in that Paris hotel room his world had continued on its preordained trajectory.
For her nothing had ever been the same again. If it hadn’t been for her Aunt Tia contacting Eliana she wouldn’t have survived. She’d have been pregnant and homeless. Her relationship with her parents fractured beyond repair.
Marianne bit her lip. What would Seb have done if he’d known they’d created a baby together? No doubt his family would have been horrified if he’d presented them with a pregnant girlfriend. They’d have probably been even more convinced of her ‘unsuitability’ and brokered some suitable ‘arrangement’ to hide his ‘indiscretion’.
‘There’s no excuse for the way I treated you. I was young, a little rebellious, but I knew what was expected of me as the crown prince. I’d always known. I probably shouldn’t even have spoken to you that first day…and I certainly shouldn’t have persuaded you to let Nick and me join you.’
‘Why did you?’
Why? Seb sat back in his chair and watched the way the breeze caught at the single curl on her forehead. The answer was simple—because he’d wanted to.
As simple as that.
He’d wanted to be with her.
It was probably the last occasion he’d acted without any consideration of the possible consequences. He’d wanted to talk to her…. Then he’d wanted to spend time with her…. Then…
Maybe the pivotal mistake had been going to find somewhere to buy lunch that first day. He’d been blown away by her.
And it hadn’t just been her beauty that had drawn him in. He’d fallen in love with her shy smile. The way she’d blushed when he’d teased her. The way she’d laughed. Talked. Moved.
He’d never met anyone like her. That lunch had been the turning point. From that moment on everything else had been inevitable.
‘I liked being with you.’
Her eyes flicked up and away again. There wasn’t time to read her expression. ‘Why did you agree Nick and I could join you?’
Seb watched her swallow and then search for her reply. ‘I…don’t know.’
‘You’ll have to do better than that.’
Marianne gave a slight shrug. ‘Because you were so insistent? I don’t know.’
There was probably more than a grain of truth in that, Seb thought. He had pushed hard to be allowed to join them. And Beth and Nick had followed on almost as a matter of course.
Marianne had been very young. A few weeks past her eighteenth birthday when they’d met. Innocent. And she’d made him feel important. That she seemed to like him without knowing he was a prince had done a lot for his ego too. For the first and only time in his life he’d had a taste of what it was like to be ordinary. Normal.
‘Were you and Nick really on holiday?’
‘Oh, yes. We’d escaped.’ Seb picked up his wine and swirled it in his glass, his mind anywhere but on the liquid. ‘I don’t think I’d been anywhere before without some kind of protection in tow. It was a heady experience.’
‘Even at school?’
‘Even there. Of course, we hadn’t escaped.’ Seb smiled across at her. ‘My parents were completely aware of where I was and what I was doing. They’d merely decided to let the leash out a little and they pulled me back in when they needed to.’
Marianne set her glass down on the table and carefully lined up the base with the edge of her coaster. ‘Did they know about me?’
‘I think they probably knew your shoe size.’
Had they known she was pregnant? For a moment Marianne felt quite panicked and then she calmed down. Surely her patient notes were entirely confidential. And perhaps she’d ceased to be of much interest when she’d disappeared so quietly.
From the sitting room there was the sound of laughter. Marianne looked over her shoulder. ‘We shouldn’t be much longer.’
‘Perhaps not. How’s your headache?’
‘Gone. Almost.’ She took a final sip of wine. Talking had helped. She hadn’t actually learnt anything materially different from what she’d already known, but she felt…respected by his telling her. It changed nothing. And yet it changed everything.
Perhaps the most healing thing was that he hadn’t acted consciously. When she’d seen the first photographs of him with his fiancée she’d wondered whether he’d deliberately set out to have some kind of final fling. Been almost certain that he had. She looked up as a new thought burst into her head. ‘You’re not married now. I thought it was a requirement.’ She frowned. ‘Or does it all work the same way as if you were widowed?’
Seb shook his head. ‘I’ve no heir. I needed to change the constitution.’
He changed the constitution. If it was that easy, why hadn’t Seb’s father changed the constitution and prevented his son being forced into a marriage he didn’t want?
‘It was a lengthy process, but it was necessary before Amelie and I could be granted an annulment. There hadn’t been anything like it in eight hundred years of continuous rule so there were constitutional implications. It took five years of legal wrangling before everyone was satisfied.’
Which meant at some point he’d be expected to marry again. Someone suitable. But until then he was free to date Hollywood actresses and glamorous models. And she’d be able to read all about it.
Marianne shivered again.
Why did they settle for that? Surely the knowledge they’d slept with a prince didn’t make it hurt any less to know they were only a body to him? It had hurt her.
‘Still feeling cold?’
‘A little.’
‘Perhaps we should rejoin the others.’
Marianne nodded. She stood up and the chair grated against the paving. The comparative warmth of the sitting room hit her immediately she entered.
‘How’s your headache?’ the professor asked.
‘Much better.’ Marianne smiled, though it didn’t feel quite natural. Her emotions seemed balanced on a knife edge. ‘The fresh air was a good idea.’ She carefully unwound her wool wrap and folded it neatly on the chair.
‘Excellent.’
His attention quickly returned to Dr Leibnitz. It seemed quite incredible to Marianne that it wasn’t immediately obvious to the two other men she’d changed somehow.
She sat herself on the edge of the sofa and glanced over at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was late—and she wanted nothing more than to go back to the Cowper Hotel. Her feet were aching and she’d lied when she’d said her headache was better. It was sitting behind her left eyeball just waiting to explode.
How much longer was the professor going to be? Her mind seemed to be buzzing, incapable of following their conversation. Then, quite suddenly, it was over.
‘I’ll give you a few days to discuss everything with your wife,’ Seb said, standing up, ‘and then I’ll ask you for your decision.’
The professor nodded. ‘Yes, indeed.’
‘Perhaps you could talk directly with Johann von Renzel, my chief of court. Assuming your decision is in the positive, he’ll be able to organise accommodation and your travel arrangements.’
In her heart of hearts Marianne knew there was no decision to make. And, incredibly, the thought of going to Andovaria was no longer such an ordeal. Seb hadn’t set out to hurt her. She believed that—so she couldn’t hate him any more.
If she ever really had. There was a part of her that would always love him. A part that was angry. And a part of her that felt sorry for him. He might live in a gilded cage, but it was a cage nevertheless. His whole life defined by an accident of birth and he hadn’t had the courage to break out.
‘You’re very quiet,’ the professor observed as he settled himself in the back of the taxi.
Marianne turned her head to look at him. ‘You’ve already made your decision, haven’t you? You’ve decided to accept.’
He closed his eyes, looking more tired than he’d ever admit. ‘If we pick our team carefully…’
Marianne looked out of the window at the Randall before the taxi slipped out into the London traffic.
Seb shrugged off his jacket and dropped it on the nearest chair, untying his bow-tie at the same time. He walked over to the window and stood, one arm resting on the frame, looking out across the terrace.
That had been, perhaps, the hardest conversation of his entire life.
Good, though. It was as though a loose end had been finally tied.
‘Will that be all, sir?’
Seb turned. ‘Yes, thank you, Warner.’ The butler had started to move away when Seb noticed Marianne’s pink wrap lying on the chair just inside the door. ‘No, wait.’ He strode over and picked it up, amazed that the light rose perfume she’d worn that evening still clung to the fibres. He hadn’t even been aware he’d noticed her perfume.
‘Could you see that this is packaged up and delivered to Dr Chambers at the Cowper Hotel?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I believe they’ll be checking out by ten o’ clock tomorrow.’
‘Yes, sir. I’ll see that it’s delivered tonight.’
The door shut behind him and Seb turned back and idly fingered the selection of books the Randall had provided. Crime, thrillers, non-fiction, classics…Nothing on the shelf grabbed his attention.
In fact, he felt…restless. Hell only knew why. The evening had gone well. He was almost certain that Professor Blackwell would accept…which was, in the main, what he’d stopped over in London for. Viktoria would be delighted. But, still…he felt dissatisfied.
It was probably remembering. Practically a full decade of royal responsibility since he’d last seen Marianne. The last time he’d acted solely in line with his own inclination.
Seb lay down on the sofa and rested his head back on the armrest. Five weeks. That was all they’d had. Five weeks before his life had been turned upside down and he’d been thrust relentlessly into the limelight.
Tabloid fodder. That’s what she’d called him. For the first time he paused to wonder what she’d thought when she’d first discovered he was the crown prince of Andovaria.
It wasn’t comfortable thinking.
He rubbed a hand over his tired eyes. And he was ‘tabloid fodder’. Every last thing he did was reported somewhere. He only had to speak to some woman for rumours of their affair to be circulating round the better part of Europe by the morning. It probably took a week for the same information to reach the States.
Seb sat up abruptly and swung his legs down to the floor. He reached out for the phone and keyed in a nine to obtain an outside line.
‘Nick?’ he said as soon as a sleepy voice answered. ‘Have I woken you?’
‘No, but I’d just about given up on you. Are you still coming over?’
He leant forward and rested his elbows on his knees. ‘I’ll be with you by lunchtime tomorrow. Just don’t put me in the room with the leaking roof again,’ he said, waiting for the crack of laughter which wasn’t long in coming.
‘How long are you staying this time?’
‘Just the weekend. I’ve got to be in Vienna by Monday lunchtime for a meeting with a trade delegation and then I’m off to the States straight after that.’
‘How long for?’
‘Six weeks, all but a couple of days.’ Seb sat back again and briefly contemplated telling Nick he’d seen Marianne. He brushed a tired hand across his face. Somehow it felt too difficult—and he wasn’t ready to be questioned about her. He didn’t know how he felt.
But he was fairly certain he knew how Marianne was feeling.
She’d heard him out—and, perhaps, that had been more than he’d deserved. But she still felt he’d let her down and, damn it, he had.