CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER FIVE
R OSIE HAD PRESUMED he meant a week of coffee dates, or private lunches. A week of short but important conversations, filled with the kind of information exchange a longer acquaintance would have naturally shaken out.
She had not expected the car that had arrived at the palace that morning, nor the hastily communicated explanation from Laurena: ‘His Highness is taking you away for the week. No, I don’t know where. I’ve packed a range of things to cover all eventualities. He did say there would be no risk of press intrusion.’
Rosie’s first instinct had been to refuse to go. She had a job and a life here that could not easily be put aside.
But wasn’t he just trying to fulfil her request? And wasn’t it better to take a whole week and really get to know one another before entering into parenthood? Besides, she had presumed he would be taking her to one of the many palaces in the country, somewhere familiar, from which she could continue with her work remotely, and see him in between times.
How wrong she’d been.
The car had conveyed her to the royal airstrip, where a private jet had been waiting. Not bearing the royal crest of Cavalonia, but rather emblazoned with Al Morova in big, bold golden letters down one side. The tail was painted a glossy black.
She stared at the plane, and the flurry of activity surrounding it, with a strange feeling in her chest. Her heart was both sinking and fluttering, and a thousand butterflies seemed to be battering the lining of her stomach. Her fingers fidgeted at her sides as she walked towards the steps; Sebastian was waiting at the top, in conversation with the pilot.
As she approached, he nodded once. Not exactly a gesture of friendship nor affection, but a sign of approval that Rosie found somehow warming. Oh, how low her expectations were!
‘Where are we going?’
He smirked. ‘You’ll see.’
‘A surprise?’
‘Sure.’
‘I didn’t expect that.’
He gestured into the plane—every bit as lavishly decorated as the royal fleet—and indicated for her to take a seat.
Getting to know one another was sensible and wise. Why then did she have an immediate instinct to back right out of this whole thing? Suddenly, despite the enormity of the plane’s surrounds, the grandeur and space, she felt as though all she was conscious of was her husband. And for almost half a year, she’d accepted him as exactly that—her husband—and found she was quite capable of ignoring him. Of minimising the importance of that role.
Now he was all she saw and deep down, that scared her.
He moved with an athleticism that was almost feral, a confident gait that would have been at home in a jungle. He was pure muscle and instinct, and though he’d spent most of his life in America, when she looked at him, she could not mistake his rich Cavalonian heritage: that he was the by-product of two of the oldest, most noble families in the land. She couldn’t pretend his features weren’t carved by the same hand that had been carving the features of the royal family for as far back as the country had existed. When he took a seat opposite her but pulled out a large tablet and began to work silently, Rosie was glad. Glad that she could sit back and be ignored—even when she wasn’t capable of doing the same to him.
Except, the reprieve barely lasted. They were not in the air long enough. Forty minutes at most. The plane lifted, cruised south, and then tacked west, towards the ocean, before beginning a descent just rapid enough to convince Rosie her stomach had been surrendered somewhere at the edge of a dreamy cloud.
‘Nervous flyer?’ he asked, when she pressed a hand to her blouse.
‘Not usually.’ She flashed him a tight smile. ‘I used to be, but I have to travel more and more these days. I’m used to it.’ She leaned forward, towards the windows, craning to get a view of where they were, and realised she didn’t recognise it. In fact, there was very little to recognise. An island that was covered in so much wild vegetation it looked almost untouched, surrounded by glimmering sea.
‘Where are we?’
‘It’s called Vedrina,’ he said.
‘Serenity?’
He nodded. ‘I didn’t name it. The island was called this when I bought it.’
‘You bought an island?’
His expression was implacable, his mouth grim. ‘Some years ago.’
She let out a low whistle but said nothing more. Curiosity, though, fluttered in her breast, and she stepped off the plane with anticipation, looking around to have her first impression confirmed. An airstrip had been carved into the earth, but it was surrounded on all sides by a lush and thick forest. Her eyes chased the trees, looking for a hint of the ocean that she knew to be just beyond it, and seeing nothing.
In contrast to the way she’d been brought to the airport in the Cavalonian capital city, a simple black four-wheel drive was waiting on the tarmac, and there was a distinct lack of staff. Staff was something Rosie mostly took for granted. Even before her marriage, she’d existed in the palace bubble, and it was not uncommon to walk into a room and have up to ten members of the household milling about, carrying on with their duties. Now that she was a princess, she was seldom alone. From the women who took care of her personal requirements, to her office staff, to the king’s team, she was often with people. Many people.
She glanced up at Sebastian, wondering if he perceived the absence of staff as strange, but didn’t see anything in his features to give that away. Besides which, not having an army of servants waiting at the airport didn’t mean his home wouldn’t be well staffed. She doubted someone like him did many—if any—of the domestic duties on his own.
‘What are you waiting for, wife?’ he asked, but just like on the plane, that simple word, the reminder of their state of being married, set something off in her pulse that was impossible to quell. A tremble, a rushing, like water racing towards the edge of a cliff and then over it, bubbling and babbling the whole way down.
‘I’m not waiting,’ she denied, looking around once more, hoping to see someone else—anyone. But there was only the attendant from the plane, busily pushing their bags into the back of the car, before returning to the aircraft.
‘This is the only car?’
‘Do you see another?’
She tilted him a glance, her tone wry when she spoke. ‘That’s what worries me.’
‘Why should you be worried?’ He was close enough that she could reach out and touch him if she wanted to. She didn’t. But a light breeze lifted off the Ionian Sea and fanned her hair across her face. They both reached for it at the same time, their fingers brushing, and she startled from the jolt of electricity.
‘Sebastian...’ She heard her voice, heard the plea in it, hadn’t realised she’d been going to do any such thing.
‘Come on,’ he responded, tone gruff. She swallowed past a strange thickness in her throat. ‘Let’s get this over with.’
It was like being doused in ice-cold water. Whatever flutterings and rushings of her pulse she’d been convinced she felt a moment ago, she now experienced nothing but disbelief that she’d gotten herself into this situation. Every so often, she thought back to the fateful afternoon when the king had presented her with this plan, had begged her to help him. He wanted to bring his daughter and grandson home but couldn’t do it without her. She was the only person he trusted to ensure the kingdom would be in good hands. His request alone would have been enough to ensure her compliance, but he’d sweetened the deal with just the right lures. Rosie had found herself agreeing even before she’d contemplated the way Sebastian seemed to have broken all of her previously held thoughts about men and masculinity. He was unlike anyone she’d ever known, and she’d felt that, strongly, from the first moment they’d met.
He hadn’t been wrong, when he’d suggested she favoured a more cerebral type.
And while Sebastian was intelligent, he was so much more, and it was the more that set her nerves on edge. Rosie liked to be in control of every aspect of her life, but she’d known from the first moment of meeting Sebastian that he would never be controlled by anyone.
He was his own man, running on his own instincts.
She spun her wedding ring on her finger as she walked towards the car. To her surprise, Sebastian strode ahead of her and opened the front passenger door.
He ruined the effect of the chivalrous gesture with a slightly mocking, ‘Princess,’ as she swept past him and into the seat. She threw him a glare, and would have pulled the door shut, but before she could do any such thing, he reached for the seatbelt and drew it across her, buckling it into place. It was so unexpected. His body was so close to hers, his face just an inch above. A small gasp escaped her before she could stop it, and her eyes widened. He glanced at her, something in his features that made her pulse race.
She could tell that he wanted to mock her. To tease her. To say something condescending. But whatever flames were igniting Rosie’s bloodstream were also firing through Sebastian.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he muttered. ‘Not here.’
‘Not here?’ she repeated, mainly because she couldn’t think of anything else coherent to offer.
‘Do not look at me like that, when we are here on my island, completely alone.’
‘We’re not alone,’ she said, thinking of how warm his breath was against her cheek. ‘There’s your pilot and flight crew.’
‘They’re not staying.’
‘Oh.’ Her tongue darted out, tracing a line over her lower lip. She asked the question that had been plaguing her since they touched down. ‘Your staff?’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘Not here.’
‘Oh.’
‘We’re alone.’ He lifted his thumb and brushed it over her lower lip. ‘And it does not matter to me that you and I don’t like one another—if you look at me as though you’re imagining me naked, I will make love to you as soon as we get to the house.’
Her eyes widened, her heart speeding up. ‘I—’
He dropped his hand from her lips to her breast, his fingers running over her with possessive heat.
‘And while I would enjoy that immensely, it’s not why we’re here.’
‘It’s not?’ she asked, almost petulant sounding, and she could have kicked herself for revealing how much she did want to be ravaged by him.
His lips tilted into a half smile. ‘We’re getting to know one another, remember?’
Can’t we do both? She bit back the question just in time.
‘Disappointed?’ he asked, moving his hand lower still, over her stomach, towards her thigh. He traced a circle there, eyes latched on hers.
She shook her head a little, but knew he’d seen through her response.
Sure enough, he grinned. ‘Are you sure?’ His hand moved towards her sex. She drew in a sharp breath as he ruched her skirt up and nudged aside the lace of her thong, so his fingers could glance across her most intimate flesh.
‘Sebastian,’ she cried out, the touch so welcome and so overwhelming at the same time. ‘You can’t—the pilots—’
But his body was shielding hers from sight, and besides, the windows were heavily tinted. She groaned then and told herself not to say another word. Not to say anything that might cause him to stop what he was doing.
‘God, Sebastian,’ she groaned, pressing back into the seat as he moved his finger faster, his body so close, he was invading every single one of her senses: filling her eyes, her nostrils, her soul. She cried out as pleasure built, so hard and fast, wrapping around her, making her nerve endings reverberate and dance with jubilant need until finally the banks of her pleasure burst, and she was saying his name over and over, her eyes filling with stars now, her whole body trembling.
He pulled away from her a little, removing his hand but leaving her skirt ruched at her thighs, so she saw her legs and felt a strange sense of being out of her own body at how unfamiliar and exposed she was.
‘I did not see this coming,’ he said darkly. ‘But it works. We work. And I’m glad about it. There should be some silver lining to this farce of a marriage, shouldn’t there?’ He leaned down and then pressed a hard, brief kiss to her mouth, a kiss that was also a promise of more to come. Her stomach twisted and her breath burned in her lungs.
A moment later, he was gone, out of her personal space, closing her car door and coming around to the driver’s side. He climbed in as though nothing had happened, but an errant glance in his direction showed the clear evidence of his desire for her, his beige trousers doing little to hide the force of his physical response. Heat flushed her cheeks, and she forced her gaze to the windscreen, and the forest beyond them.
The island was beautiful, but not in the ways Rosie might have expected. It was a tribute to the natural world. Everything had been preserved, and as they drove, and Rosie recovered from the orgasm she’d just delighted in, Sebastian enumerated the species that were home to the island. From the bird life to the monkeys to the seals that had a habitat on the western side of the island, in the ancient caves there, he spoke about the place with a passion that had Rosie finding it impossible to look away.
‘You come here often?’ she guessed, because he seemed to know everything about it.
‘I used to.’
‘Used to?’
‘Before returning to Cavalonia.’
She frowned. ‘Is it not part of Cavalonia?’
‘No. It’s in Italian jurisdiction, despite its proximity to Cavalonia.’
Before she could comment, the forest began to clear, and a house came into view. The most beautiful house Rosie had ever seen, and placed right on the edge of the beach, so the bottom steps were covered in a light film of sand.
‘Oh...’ She exhaled a small sigh.
The house was large and built in a traditional style of stone, which had been rendered a pale terracotta colour. The roof was red, the doors were a glossy white, and there were terraces on many windows. More greenery was here, though flowers formed a border around a grove of citrus trees, sitting beside what looked to be a potager.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.
Sebastian eyed the building and then looked beyond it, his eyes landing on the horizon. Rosie followed his gaze, to the land mass clearly visible, across the expanse of sea. ‘Cavalonia?’
He turned to face her, eyes hiding his feelings. ‘For a long time, I thought my mother would never be granted access to her home. And so I bought this place. If she couldn’t be there, at least she could see it.’
Rosie’s heart stammered at his thoughtfulness—at how kind he had been to the mother he clearly adored. She toyed with her necklace, sliding the pendant from side to side. ‘You must have wanted to come to Cavalonia very badly.’
‘Not really.’
She glanced at him, raising a brow.
‘I was very angry with my grandfather.’
‘You’re still angry with him,’ Rosie said gently.
He turned to face her. ‘Wouldn’t you be?’
It was a simple—but unnerving—question. Rosie had heard all about the estrangement, from King Renee. She knew that Maria al Morova had been married at a young age and in a lavish, fairytale ceremony that all of Europe had tuned in to watch. According to the king, Maria’s husband had been older but doted on her, and his ancient bloodline and experience in government meant their relationship was just what the country needed. But Maria had fallen in love with a visiting American diplomat, and their affair had been in all the scandal sheets across the country.
Renee had begged her to break it off—she had a son to consider—but Maria had been determined. A week later, she’d been exiled and on her way to America, the little boy then pictured clutching her hand now returned to Cavalonia as an angry prince.
‘I don’t know,’ she answered honestly. ‘Maybe.’
His lip twisted. ‘Are you close to your father, Rosalind?’
She bit down on her lip, eyes clouding. ‘That’s...complicated.’
Sebastian scanned her face. ‘Would you forgive him, if he were to push you out of his life? Is there anything you could do that would cause him to cease seeing you?’
‘I don’t know,’ Rosie answered honestly.
‘Yes, you do. It is not how it’s supposed to be. A parent loves their child and advocates for them, no matter what. That, at least, has been my experience.’
‘With your mother, but what about your own father?’
Sebastian’s eyes narrowed and his face jerked a little, as though she’d hit him. ‘What about him?’
‘You don’t see him, nor speak to him.’
‘When my mother left, he told her we were dead to him and left the country. He has been true to his word. At no point in the past twenty-five years has he attempted any communication with me.’
‘Then not all parents fight for their children,’ she pointed out, but sympathy took the sting out of her words. She reached over and put a hand on his leg. ‘I’m sorry about your father. He sounds like a piece of work.’
‘I don’t remember him,’ Sebastian said without emotion, and yet she felt something in the depths of his words, something he was hiding from her, wishing her not to see. ‘To all intents and purposes, Mark was my father.’
‘He died quite recently?’ she prompted, even though she wanted to avoid hurting Sebastian. They were here to get to know one another, and this seemed like something she should understand.
‘Almost two years ago.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly.
‘He was sick and seeing him like that was—’ Sebastian’s eyes probed hers, as if he might find the word he sought buried in her gaze. ‘Difficult. In the end, his death was a relief.’
She flinched a little, though she understood the sentiment. Grieving a mother who lived in a comatose state brought with it a deep understanding of life, death and the grey area in between.
‘Mark raised me, taught me how to ride a bike and shoot hoops, how to drive a car, how to use my mind to win just about any argument I want. He taught me to be patient when I was bursting at the seams with excitement about something, he taught me to appreciate things like art and classical music because, he said, they were a link to history and the past, and the best way to understand ourselves and our futures. And he showed me every day of his life that his family—my mother and I—was his reason for living. He was the very best of men—the fact my grandfather couldn’t see that just shows how blinkered his vision was.’
A lump had formed in Rosie’s throat at this description of his childhood, and yet his criticism of the king made it hard for her to say anything other than, ‘We’ll have to agree to disagree.’
‘You are truly going to keep defending him on this?’
‘I don’t need to defend his actions,’ she demurred.
‘And yet you do, constantly.’
She sighed. ‘I think his commitment to his country is admirable. I think he’s sacrificed a lot, personally, because of his position as king. I think he made hard decisions that cost him dearly, but which he felt were right for the people of Cavalonia.’
‘He was wrong,’ Sebastian replied flatly.
‘The scandal—’ Rosie murmured, but Sebastian interrupted her.
‘Would have blown over. They always do. Look at Fabrizio’s life—he was plagued by scandals and bad behaviour, and yet he was not disinherited.’
‘He was the only heir remaining.’
‘There was me,’ Sebastian contradicted with an intensity to his voice that pulled at Rosie. ‘There was my mother.’
Their eyes locked and the air between them sparked with emotional energy, zap zap zip .
Rosie bit into her lip again, not sure what to say to that. Perhaps Sebastian was right, perhaps the king was. ‘It’s ancient history,’ she said, earning a wry half smile from Sebastian.
‘That was Mark’s point. History is a part of us. You and I are married because of this “ancient history”, and now we are cementing that by trying to fall pregnant. Imagine if my mother had been free to stay, to raise me here, for me to grow as the assumed heir.’
His eyes scanned her face, his expression thoughtful. ‘Imagine if she’d been here all along, a part of Fabrizio’s life. If Mark had been a part of his life, if I had been. Would Fabrizio have turned into such a foolhardy, headstrong, risk-taking man?’
Rosie’s lips pulled to the side. ‘We’ll never know.’
‘I know.’ He pressed his fingers to the centre of his chest. ‘I know that my grandfather threw a blade through many, many lives when he chose cruelty towards his own daughter instead of offering understanding.’
She shook her head slowly, wanting to deny that, to argue on the king’s behalf. But the more Sebastian spoke, the more she saw some sense in what he was saying. ‘I think we’re both right,’ she said after a pause. ‘You think he threw a blade through everyone’s lives, well, I suppose he did. But isn’t it also true that he did so because he believed it was right for the country?’
Sebastian’s lips compressed. ‘You cannot honestly believe that.’
‘Why not?’
His nostrils flared as he expelled a sharp breath. ‘He does not deserve the faith you have in him.’
‘Or maybe it’s just what he deserves.’
‘No.’ He reached over, a frown on his face. ‘You’re far too good for him, and if you are not careful, he will ruin your life as he did my mother’s.’ His frown deepened. ‘Perhaps he already has.’
It was a cryptic comment that hung between them for a second, but when Rosie went to respond, Sebastian turned and pushed out of the car.
Sebastian didn’t want to think of Mark. Of the man who’d raised him to be the best version of himself, who he feared he might be letting down by being back here in Cavalonia. Had he thrown his mother to the wolves by returning? Or had he done what Mark would have wanted?
On his deathbed, Mark had spoken of how hard it had been for Maria. He’d intimated that he regretted having been the catalyst for her exile, even though their marriage had been so happy.
And then he’d died, and Sebastian had been abandoned again, floundering in a way he’d thought was far behind him, grief-stricken like he had been as a child. Not rejected this time by choice but abandoned all the same. It had been a salient reminder about the transient nature of connections, about the importance of protecting himself from that kind of loss, and it was a lesson he intended to keep firmly in his sights.
Even if he became a father?
The thought flooded his veins with ice, because to become a parent was to assume an obligation of love, wasn’t it? And what then? Risk was inherent in that; risk was everywhere. Sebastian wouldn’t allow himself to be weakened by their child. This baby would be a means to an end, just as Rosalind was. It was all about the kingdom, nothing more. But nor would he abandon his baby. Never would he allow them to feel insecure or unwanted. Sebastian would not have the mistakes of the past be repeated—he was not the king, and he was not his father. Mark lived on in Sebastian in a way that had little to do with biology and everything to do with the sheer force of Mark’s will, and his desire to mould Sebastian into a man who was better than the king, better than his birth father.
Sebastian could only hope that Mark’s faith was not misplaced, that this marriage and potential pregnancy weren’t a betrayal of the values Mark had instilled.
But of course, they weren’t. If Rosalind didn’t comprehend the nature of their marriage, if she secretly harboured a desire for more than he would offer, then he might have seen a problem. But she was as pragmatic about all this as he was, and for that he was very grateful.