LOW-KEY, IT HAD been agreed, was appropriate under the circumstances, and the civil ceremony was just that, a handful of people beyond the immediate family. There were photographs, which would be released along with an official statement to be issued later that week.
So she was married. Sabrina could not decide if she was meant to feel different. She glanced to the man, her husband, who sat beside her. There was a remote, untouchable quality about him that even had she wanted to make conversation would have made her think twice. Sabrina didn’t want to.
They were physically inches apart but in every other way worlds apart; the journey passed in total silence, not the companionable variety. He was making no effort to change that.
The only time he had spoken was when they’d got in the car and she had told him that she wanted to go to the hospital to see Chloe. He’d nodded and issued a curt instruction to the driver. Then, when they’d arrived at the hospital, he’d pulled out a laptop.
‘I’ll wait here.’
So Sabrina had gone into the private London hospital her sister had been transferred to, flanked by two security men, to the room where her sister had spent the last few weeks. Chloe had been scheduled to leave before the wedding, but an infection had meant that the skin grafts on her leg that had sustained injury had not taken and the entire painful process had had to begin all over again.
The amount of suffering her sister had endured made her own situation seem insignificant. She took a deep breath before she went in, donning a smile along with a sterile gown. The guilt she felt was her problem. It was not something she was about to burden Chloe with; her sister had enough to contend with but Sabrina knew it was her fault. If she hadn’t run away Chloe would not be lying in a hospital bed.
‘Hello, you!’
Chloe was lying in bed, her lower body beneath a cradle arrangement that held the sheet off her skin, her face a little thinner than it had been a few months ago and a lot paler, but her smile was just as bright.
‘So, how did it go?’
Sabrina pulled up a chair and did her best to soften the truth with humour.
‘Oh, you know—your usual shotgun wedding atmosphere. Without the pregnancy, of course. Lots of glaring and suspicion and a man…actually, four…guarding the door to stop anyone from legging it.’
‘Sounds a laugh a minute.’
‘It was pretty much what I’d expected and this time the groom turned up, which most people seemed to think a plus,’ Sabrina added drily.
‘Well, I think you had a lucky escape. Imagine living your life with a man who was in love with someone else.’
The way Chloe was talking it was almost as if she believed that Sebastian loved her. If it made her happy Sabrina saw no reason to correct her.
‘So where is the man himself? I forgot to thank him for the fruit basket he brought this morning, so send my love.’
‘You saw Sebastian this morning?’
‘Didn’t he say?’
Say? She swallowed a bubble of hysteria in her throat. ‘He must have forgotten.’ She was not about to tell her sister that they barely communicated at all.
Had it really been two months since that strange twenty four hours when they had shared a hospital room the night after the accident? She had barely been alone with Sebastian since.
‘He comes most mornings—has all the nurses drooling. You do know that if you hadn’t married him I would have had him myself, don’t you? If he hadn’t got me off that cliff I couldn’t have held on any longer.’ She shuddered. ‘I know that nowadays it would be sympathy sex, but—’
‘Chloe, don’t say that!’ Sabrina said, her voice husky with tears. ‘The doctors say that the scars will be—’
‘They will be scars, and, unlike your husband’s, they will not be sexy ones. And while we all know that it’s what you’re like inside that counts, back in the real world, well…’ She gave a sudden deep sigh and wiped her hands across her eyes. She smiled. ‘Ignore me, Brina. I’m just having a self-pity day, but Sebastian is a good man, you know, and we have kind of bonded over our scars.’
Sabrina stayed for half an hour before reluctantly leaving her sister.
* * *
The sight of the streaks left by dried tears on Sabrina’s cheeks when she returned to the car elicited an involuntary stab of protective warmth in Sebastian’s chest.
‘How is Chloe?’ he asked.
‘Being brave, but I think she’s in pain, though she says not. She thanked you for the fruit.’
He gave a grunt of assent and nodded.
‘I’m grateful, Sebastian.’
He stiffened. ‘I do not want your gratitude.’
She could almost feel the dignity and calm that she had fought hard to retain all day slipping like sand through her fingers. Except her fingers were clenched so tightly into fists that nothing could have escaped them.
‘You don’t want a wife,’ she blurted, hearing the heavy thud of her pulse like a hammer in her temples as her suppressed anger surged hotly.
Even as she acknowledged it she realised that she had no legitimate right to feel this way. It was no more rational to feel angry now than it had been to imagine that they had made some sort of connection that night when they had shared a hospital room.
What had happened since had shown pretty clearly that the only time they were ever going to be connected was when he was heavily medicated. She smothered a hysterical bubble of laughter and coaxed some calm into her manner.
‘But you’ve got one. Me, actually, and it’s kind of obligatory to talk to her.’
He closed the laptop, the tension of the day and the days that had preceded it stretching the skin tight across his perfect bone structure, a perfection that was emphasised not marred by the scar, already fading to silver, along the right side of his face.
He read the unhappiness and anger in her face and felt a fresh surge of the guilt that had been his ever-present companion over the last weeks. Weeks when he had been the recipient of an immersion programme in all that being the heir apparent involved, and, in the process, feeling a new respect for his brother.
At least he now knew what he was letting himself in for. Sabrina? She was totally unprepared for what was coming, just as his mother had been, and yet had he warned her? Had he opened the door of the golden cage that had now closed? He felt a fresh surge of loathing; he was no better than his father.
‘What do you want me to say?’ He could have said he wanted her, that he had wanted her from the outset more than he had ever wanted another woman, but wanting did not excuse the fact he had taken advantage of her ignorance. Because he didn’t want to do this alone. He felt a flash of guilt.
Pride brought her chin up, but the coldness in his voice hurt more than she was prepared to admit. It was becoming pretty obvious that he didn’t require anything from her.
‘I think you’ve said enough.’
Sabrina glanced his way occasionally during the rest of the journey; his stillness was as impregnable as his profile, the shadows as they travelled through the darkness adding emphasis to the strong, sculpted planes as he stared out of the window.
What was he thinking?
It was impossible to tell. Nothing seeped through his mask, only the occasional Arctic-wolf flicker in his arresting blue eyes reminding her of the man he had been two months before. Two months being the time that had finally been considered a decent interval between being dumped by one brother and getting married to the next.
She found herself wondering what had happened to, and amazingly feeling a stab of nostalgia for, the Playboy Prince who was guaranteed to be in the right place saying the wrong thing for the cameras, smiling as he put two fingers up to the world in general and the press in particular.
Had that man, the one whose life choices kept the damage-control experts in work, gone for ever? She recalled the soft words he had murmured for her ears only when he had observed her hand shaking while they waited for the registrar’s arrival.
‘Relax, just treat this day like any other, no different than yesterday, no different than tomorrow. Don’t have any expectations—I don’t. I expect nothing of you.’
He might not but others did. The King’s senior advisor, who had taken her to one side just before the actual ceremony, had reminded her that the fate of a nation was pretty much on her shoulders.
‘Prince Sebastian is an unknown factor. He is making an effort but we all know that he is volatile, his history… I know we can trust you, Lady Sabrina, to be a steadying influence.’
‘I think it might be better if you trusted the Prince. I will not mention your comments on this occasion, but in future…’ She had taken some pleasure from the aide’s embarrassed retreat and hoped the message had reached the King that if he wanted to undermine his son she would not be party to it.
The words of an article she had read the previous week profiling the men with power in Europe came back to her. The new Crown Prince was complex, the smitten writer had claimed, referring to the glimpses of the barbaric pagan behind the urbane exterior.
Pagan? Not helping, Sabrina, she told herself, pushing away the words. The car suddenly turned off the minor road they had been travelling on for several miles and through big gates that swung open at their approach. The uneasiness in her stomach gave an extra-hard kick as the gates closed behind the car that had travelled at a discreet distance behind them since they’d left London.
The driveway, illuminated at ground level by rows of lights, seemed to go on for miles. Sabrina didn’t mind; she was in no hurry to arrive!
Finally they stopped, the uniformed driver pulling up in front of a building with a Georgian façade. This was a private house, not a hotel. Someone had told her who the house belonged to—not that the owners would be here for the duration of their stay. They had been guests at the small ceremony today. Sabrina had been introduced but she couldn’t remember their faces or names; it was all part of the blur.
For a full thirty seconds nobody moved except the man who was sitting beside the driver, who spoke into a device attached to his wrist, then he nodded and it seemed as though dark suited and booted figures appeared from everywhere.
Sebastian was already being greeted at the porticoed entrance when someone eventually came and opened the car door for her. By that point, aside from the alert-looking suited figures either side of the entrance, the security presence had vanished.
As she made her own exit she imagined them hidden in the bushes. It wasn’t a particularly comforting thought. As she approached the house the feeling that had been with her all day persisted. A weird sense of out-of-body disconnection, as though this were happening to someone else and she were watching. And now she was listening to someone else’s heels crunching on the gravel, someone else was feeling the evening breeze carrying the tang of the sea on her face.
But it hadn’t been someone else that had said I do today. That had been her.
Inside the hall of the house, a magnificent marble-floored space dominated by a great sweeping staircase and lit by several chandeliers, stood her husband, his back turned to her. He was deep in conversation with three other men and a woman who was taller than two of the men, and striking with close-cropped white blonde hair set off dramatically against the black trouser suit she wore.
Sabrina could not hear what they were saying but it didn’t seem to make Sebastian happy, though he heard them out before he fired off a staccato stream of sentences.
Weirdly she almost envied them—at least he was communicating with them in entire sentences, not gruff monosyllables.
Fighting was better than indifference; she was beginning to wonder if she had ever imagined that he had been attracted to her. It made the fact that just looking at him made her tremble all the more hard to come to terms with—to live with on a daily basis.
Maybe that was what it was. She represented the duty that he resented and there was nothing attractive about duty. She didn’t know and quite frankly she was tired of trying to figure it out. Her head ached with the constant questions whirling around inside it.
Suddenly her patience, worn paper-thin, snapped. She was done with waiting. She cleared her throat. ‘Sebastian.’ Her voice, pitched low, carried.
There was a perceptible pause before Sebastian turned around long enough for her cheeks to begin to burn at the prospect of being humiliated.
An unexpected rush of anger-fuelled adrenaline kept the tears she felt burning behind her eyelids at bay.
She watched, the sinking feeling not improving as he said something that made the trio with him nod, and he began to walk towards her, his dark hair gleaming glossy blue under the light cast by the chandeliers, his scar made to appear darker by the same trick of the light.
In profile during the journey it had been hidden, but now, full face, the thin angry line on the left cheek of his lean face was revealed. The sight made her shiver as it always did, not because she found the blemish on his perfect face repulsive but because of how he had received it.
Her fault.
She straightened her spine, the reaction involuntary as he walked towards her with the long strides of someone who possessed natural athletic grace. Power refined and controlled that sent a visceral little shudder through her body.
He paused a few feet away and swept her face with his gaze. She thought she saw emotion move beneath the azure surface before his long dark lashes half lowered, making it impossible to read any further clues, and when he spoke his voice held no discernible inflection.
‘You look tired.’ The edge of roughness to the husky texture of his voice added depth to the velvet.
Realising after a lengthening silence that the comment hadn’t been rhetorical and he expected her to respond, Sabrina tipped her head. ‘Yes,’ she agreed. Tired hardly came close to describing the bone-deep weariness she felt.
‘You should go up.’ His eyes moved beyond her and a woman appeared, as if by magic, smartly dressed in a blouse and tweed skirt. She dipped her head deferentially towards Sabrina.
‘Mrs Reid will show you to your room if you need anything…? I will join you presently.’
Her liquid dark brown eyes flickered wider at the statement, alarm bleeping briefly through the horrible flatness of her emotions. Then it was gone and so was he, moving towards the waiting group. She could see that he had already dismissed her from his mind.
Simultaneously recognising the tightness in her chest as hurt, utterly irrational given their circumstances, she asked herself if she’d prefer he acted a part? Yes, actually she would. She was all for pretence if it stopped someone feeling wretched.
‘I hope you like your rooms. His Highness usually has the West Wing suite when he stays with us. He said it would be fine.’
‘What?’ Sabrina paused, the light-headed feeling made her wonder if she had eaten anything today. The woman with her paused too, as had the group in the hall. Her husband was the only one not watching their progress.
What were they all thinking?
Were they asking themselves what sort of marriage this was where the husband needed to be reminded that his wife was there? She experienced a sudden flash of anger.
He could, with a minimum of effort, have made this day slightly less awful.
She hadn’t been expecting him to serenade her or carry her over the threshold, even. But would it be too much to ask that he acknowledged her existence, show some degree of basic courtesy instead of behaving with the charm and charisma of an adolescent being forced to attend a family function when he would rather hang out with his friends? Of course, Sebastian was not an adolescent and the friends he probably wished he were hanging out with were six-foot blondes in tiny bikinis, but essentially the situation was the same. He was clearly, ‘Sulking.’
She could almost hear her elocution teacher, the poor man who had been brought in by her parents when her first attempt at public speaking had not only brought her out in hives but been inaudible, applauding her projection.
Her stomach clenched in horror, the rest of her froze, as thanks to the excellent acoustics the angry accusation echoed once, twice, three times before fading away.
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.