Читать книгу The Royal House Of Karedes Collection Books 1-12 - Кейт Хьюит, Шантель Шоу - Страница 46

IT WAS four days before he could leave. The corruption enquiry was reaching its zenith and, as head of the investigative committee, Andreas had to work through the mess of corrupt officialdom while trying to figure when he could get to Eueilos.

Maybe Holly would be better off with time to calm down, he decided, but only he knew how hard it was to concentrate on the issues at hand. When he finally left it was with a sense of relief—but also apprehension.

The island of Eueilos, an idyllic hideaway given to him on his coming of age by his father, King Aegeus, had long been his refuge. From childhood, Andreas had shown a distaste for the pomp and splendour of royalty. He was caught in the royal web. To walk away was an impossibility instilled in him from birth, but Eueilos was his. His wife had never liked it. Christina had loved the bright lights of the city, and even the capital of Aristo was too quiet for her, so he’d always been free to do with his island as he wished.

He’d built a pavilion—a whim, fashioned on the desert tents used by his royal cousins on the neighbouring island of Calista. From a distance it looked like a series of vast marquees, joined together in a circle. As a visitor grew closer he’d realize the ‘tents’ were in fact made from whitewashed timber panels. Every wall could be drawn back, opening almost the entire pavilion to the sea breezes that blew softly all year round.

In the centre of the pavilion, exposed when the walls were drawn back, was a vast swimming pool, large enough to classify as a lagoon. The island’s beaches were wide and golden, the sea always inviting, so the swimming pool was pure luxury, for when one was simply too lazy to walk the hundred yards or so to the shore.

He came as often as he could, when the demands and public spotlight of royalty became overpowering. He had a discreet couple as housekeeper and groundsman, and that was his total staff.

He loved it, as once he’d fallen for Holly’s home, he thought as his plane came in to land. He was flying himself—a small Cessna he’d learned to fly on Holly’s farm. Holly herself had taught him the rudiments, and every time he flew he…

No. He didn’t think of her. Hell, he’d been married, divorced—so much had happened since he’d last seen her.

He was about to see her now.

His hand came up to touch his face in remembrance. His dark skin didn’t show a bruise, but he still felt the imprint of her slap. Had she calmed down yet?

She must have calmed down sufficiently to answer his questions. There was no choice. He was here to stay until his questions were answered.

And until Sebastian’s outrageous suggestion was dealt with?

Sophia, his housekeeper, met him at the entrance to the pavilion. She’d been baking, and the smell of baklava assailed his senses, making him smile as this place always did. Sophia had been his nanny until he was ten. When he’d been granted the island he’d gone to find her. She and her husband, Nikos, ran this place and their comfortable presence always had the capacity to make his cares seem less.

But: ‘She’s not here,’ Sophia said and his cares came flooding back.

‘What?’

‘She’s at the beach on the far side of the island,’ Sophia told him, watching his face. ‘It’s the furthest place from this house. Georgiou told her you would come. She says to tell you not to bother, unless it’s to arrange her flight away from here.’ She frowned at him. ‘Andreas, this woman… Holly. she is very angry.’

‘Not as angry as I am,’ Andreas said grimly.

‘I didn’t raise you to take revenge on women,’ Sophia said, and folded her arms across her bosom and glared up at him. She was five feet nothing compared to his six feet one, but height was nothing. She’d box his ears if she thought it necessary, he thought ruefully. Of all the people in his life, Sophia was the only one who didn’t treat him as a royal prince. Rather she treated him as a boy, to be indulged but also to be brought into line as necessary.

‘She’s a good girl,’ Sophia added, still aggressive. ‘And she’s frightened. I’ve told her there’s nothing to be frightened of while I’m on this island. I don’t know why you’ve brought her here, Your Majesty, but you touch her and you’ll answer to me.’

Sophia only ever called him Your Majesty when she was in the presence of others—or was really troubled. Andreas forced a smile to reassure her.

‘I won’t hurt her.’

‘You already have. There are bruises on her wrists.’

‘That wasn’t me.’

‘It was Georgiou and that’s the same thing.’

‘It’s not.’

‘Don’t give me this,’ she said, and she stood on her tiptoes and poked him in the chest. ‘You go and see her and you treat her gently. And know that you’ll answer to me if you don’t. And, no, there’s no baklava for you until you make things right with Holly. She’s borrowed swim clothes—that you have such a collection here for women to wear makes her more angry, by the way. As it makes me angry. You’ll need to tread on eggshells to make your peace with that one.’

He walked across the island to find her. He could have taken one of the Jeeps but he needed time to collect himself. To figure out how to approach what came next.

It seemed that ever since the reporter had come to him with the news about Holly, he’d been moving on autopilot. He’d been trying to get answers fast, but now it behoved him to move a little more cautiously. Sophia was right. Nothing would be gained by having Holly as hysterical as when he’d last seen her.

Mind, it was hard for him to stay calm. The words of the reporter still bit deep.

‘Did you know there’s a child’s grave on her property? The gravestone says “Adam Andreas Cavanagh. Died 7th October 2000 aged seven weeks and two days. Cherished infant son of Holly. A tiny angel, loved with all my heart.”’

Adam Andreas Cavanagh. The name—what the reporter was suggesting—had generated a pain he’d never thought he was capable of feeling. Even before he’d worked back through the dates, he’d known the truth. For he remembered her saying:

‘Your home’s Adamas? I love that. Adam’s such a strong name. If I ever have a son I’d love him to be called Adam.’

They’d been lying in thick grass on a rocky verge that looked out over her home. Normally the outback cattle station was dry and dusty, but the rains had come just before he’d left. The change to Munwannay had been almost miraculous, dust turning to verdant green almost overnight.

So they’d made love that last time on a bed of soft grass and wildflowers. She’d clung to him with fierce passion, she’d talked of naming a son—hypothetically, he’d thought—and then he’d left to get on with his real life.

Leaving behind… Adam Andreas Cavanagh. He had no doubt that the reporter’s suspicions were right. Holly had been a virgin when he’d met her. It had to be…

But if it was, it was a disaster.

‘I must have left an impression, then,’ he’d joked to the reporter. ‘For Holly to give her son one of my names. Maybe she hasn’t met many royal princes. You’d think the baby’s father might have been a bit resentful.’

It had been a remark meant to avert suspicion, but he wasn’t sure whether the reporter had swallowed it. With the current scandals rocking the royal family, anything more could cause descent into chaos. The press knew it and was actively looking for trouble.

Holly was trouble. Holly screaming her head off because he’d had her brought here. Did she realize she might have the power to bring down the throne?

He walked round the final sand-hill before the beach Sophia had said she was on, and he stopped dead.

She was lying not ten yards away. She was wearing the bottom of a tiny, crimson bikini. Nothing else. She was lying face down but she was propped up on her elbows, reading, and he could see the generous curve of her lovely breasts. Her fair curls were tangled down her shoulders. She’d been swimming and her hair was still damp. She looked… free, he thought suddenly; free in a way he could never be. And quite extraordinarily beautiful.

The knot of anger and tension that had been clenched inside him for weeks dissolved, just like that. It was replaced by a sensation so strong he had to fight to stand in the one spot. She hadn’t noticed his approach. He could just walk forward and lie down beside her, let his body touch hers, take her in his arms as he’d taken her all those years ago.

Right. He was here to avert calamitous gossip—not make more.

‘Get yourself decent,’ he growled in a voice he scarcely recognized, and her head jerked up and she hauled herself upright in fright, reaching for her discarded bikini top. She clutched it, hauling it against her but not before he’d seen what lay beneath.

She was almost ten years older than last time he’d seen her. She had a woman’s body now. A full, sensuous collection of curves that together could make a man…

‘What are you doing here?’ she snapped, cutting across his thoughts. She frantically retied her top, then reached down and grabbed her towel, wrapping it round herself tightly and hanging on to it for dear life.

‘I own the island,’ he said mildly and waited for her reaction.

It didn’t come. She didn’t say anything.

‘I need to speak to you,’ he said at last. ‘That’s why I brought you here.’

‘You could have telephoned. We aren’t exactly in the Dark Ages.’

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘But telephones are bugged.’

‘Yours?’

‘Yours.’

She gasped at that, incredulous. ‘Why would anyone bug my telephone?’

‘Because my entire kingdom wants to know what happened with us.’ He hesitated. ‘Let’s go back to the house.’

‘If you want to drag me back screaming.’

‘Holly, cooperate.’

‘Give me one good reason why I should.’

‘You owe me the truth!’ It was said with such passion that it brought her up short. Her eyes widened and there was suddenly a trace of uncertainty in her eyes.

‘I owe you nothing,’ she whispered.

‘You bore my son.’

It was said with such heaviness, such dull certainty that it hurt. He saw her flinch. The fingers that had been clutching her towel so tightly loosened. It was as if she suddenly had nothing more to protect.

‘I did,’ she whispered. Her gaze met his, steady, unapologetic, but behind the defiance he saw a hurt that ran bone deep.

‘You never told me.’ The roughness had gone from his voice. The confused fury that had driven him for the last weeks had unexpectedly weakened.

‘No.’ It was a flat negative, nothing more.

He said nothing. There was almost perfect stillness around them—the faint lapping of the water on the golden sand but nothing, nothing, nothing.

Nothing to distract them from this thing that was between them. This awful, immutable truth.

‘I believe I had the right to know,’ he said at last, heavily, and he watched as the anger flashed back into her eyes.

‘As I had the right to receive the letters you told me you’d write. Not a phone call, Andreas. Nothing. One polite note to my parents thanking them for their hospitality, written on royal letterhead—typed by some palace secretary—and that was it.’

‘You know I couldn’t…’

‘Extend the relationship? Of course I did. You were engaged before you came to Australia. But we were kids. I was a teenager, Andreas. I’d never had a boyfriend. You had no right to take advantage…’

‘It wasn’t all one way!’

‘It wasn’t, was it?’ she said, and he thought he saw a faint trace of a smile behind her eyes. ‘But I was still a kid.’

That was the problem. He knew it. They both knew it. She’d been seventeen when he first met her. Seventeen. Not eighteen.

It made all the difference in the world.

‘Did you know you were pregnant when I left?’ he asked, trying to focus on the personal, rather than the political, ramifications of what had happened.

‘Yes,’ she said, and he flinched. Suddenly the personal was all that mattered.

‘So that last time…’

‘Oh, I didn’t know for sure,’ she said. ‘My home is hardly the place where you can pop down to the supermarket for a pregnancy test. But I guessed.’

‘Then why…’

‘Because you were engaged to be married,’ she said, sounding out each syllable as if she were talking to a simpleton. ‘Andreas, I don’t want to talk about this. Tell me, what would you have done if you’d discovered I was pregnant?’

‘Married you.’

It was said with such certainty that she blinked. But then she smiled drearily and shook her head.

‘No. That’s air-dreaming. We talked about it—don’t you remember? How we loved each other and wanted to be together for always. How you’d take me to Aristo and I’d be a princess. How my parents would cope without me and your father would forgive you eventually. Only there was already a princess, Andreas. Christina was waiting in the wings, and your marriage was meant to help to strengthen international ties. You talked about defying your father but you never once said you could break your engagement to Christina.’

‘We were promised as children,’ he said and he knew it sounded weak. It had sounded weak then, too. Holly hadn’t understood how such marriages worked. How Christina, five years older than he, had been raised from childhood to see herself as his wife. Christina would never have looked at another man. To tell Christina—aged twenty-five—that he no longer intended to marry her, would have been personally devastating to her, as well as politically disastrous.

He had a duty and he’d known it. Holly had known it, too.

She shivered and her towel dropped. She bent to retrieve it but he was before her, wrapping it round her shoulders, ignoring her involuntary protest.

‘I’m getting sunburned,’ she said, flinching at the feel of his hands on his shoulders, stepping away from him, her voice flat and dull. ‘I need to go back to the house. If that’s all you want to say to me… well, you’ve said it. Can you arrange transport back to Australia immediately?’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘Why not?’ She hauled away from him, turning toward the path. She was turning her back on him? She shouldn’t do that, he thought. To turn your back on royalty…

He could have her put in prison for insubordination.

But she was already walking away. He watched her and thought she looked tired. She shouldn’t be tired. She’d had time here to rest.

There was a long, ragged scar running from the back of her knee almost to her ankle. It showed white against her tan. That hadn’t been there before.

She was a different woman from the girl he’d fallen in love with. But the girl he’d fallen in love with would never have been afraid of accusations of insubordination. Some things hadn’t changed.

She wasn’t waiting for him. She was simply ignoring him, trudging slowly back to the pavilion. He caught up with her in a few long strides and fell in beside her.

‘What happened to your leg?’

‘I don’t have to—’

‘Tell me? No, you don’t. But I’d like to know. It’s a nasty scar and I hate to think that you’ve been hurt.’

She cast him a look that was almost fearful. ‘You think a cut on the leg can hurt me? That’s a minor cut, Andreas Karedes. You have no idea what can really hurt. And don’t you turn on the royal charm to me,’ she snapped. ‘I’m impervious.’

‘Are you?’ He smiled and she gasped and turned deliberately to face ahead.

‘Leave me alone. You seduced me once. If you think you’re seducing me again…’

‘I just asked what happened to your leg. It’s hardly a come-on.’

‘I cut it on some fencing wire.’

‘You were fencing?’

‘Yes, if you must know.’

‘Your father would never have allowed you to fence.’

‘While you were around, no,’ she said. ‘There was a lot that didn’t happen when you were around.’

‘I don’t understand.’

She turned on him then, her colour high. ‘We were broke,’ she said, through teeth that were suddenly chattering. ‘I didn’t know. No one knew. Our neighbours, our friends. No one. He hid it, my father. Our homestead was grand and imposing, and the landholding vast. You know my mother was minor European royalty? She never lost her love of luxury, and my father indulged her. They both assumed things would come right. They didn’t, but that didn’t stop them spending. My father borrowed and he borrowed and he borrowed.’

‘He was rich,’ Andreas said, stunned.

‘He wasn’t,’ she snapped. ‘So when I turned seventeen they hatched some crazy plan to have me marry wealth. My mother used her connections. She wrote to every royal house in Europe; every billionaire she’d ever heard of, offering a home-stay for young men before they took over their duties. You were the first who came.’

‘There was money…’

‘It was a façade. You remember the balls, the picnics, the splendour… Until then I was a kid being home-schooled because we couldn’t afford boarding school. I worked on the farm, but as soon as you arrived I was off duty. I was a young lady. I was free to spend every minute of every day with you if I wanted. And of course it went to my head. I was free for the first time in my life and my parents were pushing me into your arms for all they were worth. Only then I got pregnant and you left and the whole pack of cards came tumbling down. My father was left with a mountain of debt. My mother simply walked out, and there I was. Pregnant. Desperate. And even lovesick, if you must know.’

‘Lovesick,’ he said faintly, but she responded with a look of scorn.

‘Leave it. You want to hear the story? I’m telling you.’ Her words were almost tumbling out, as if she was trying hard to get this over as fast as possible. ‘SO, pregnant or not, I had to work, and yes I have scars but the outward ones are the least of it. No, I didn’t tell you I was pregnant even when my parents… Well, there was no way I was letting them coerce you into marriage. So I had my baby and I loved him so much he changed my world.’ She faltered but then forced herself to continue.

‘But… but when he was almost two months old he got meningitis and he died. That’s it. End of story.’ She closed her eyes for a fraction of a second and then opened them again. Story almost over. The hard part done. ‘So there it is. I got myself a university degree by correspondence so I could teach. I taught School of the Air like I’d always intended and that’s the only money that’s been coming into the farm for years. My father was incapacitated with depression but he wouldn’t hear of selling the farm and I couldn’t leave him. Six months ago he died. I put the place on the market, but it’s too run down. It hasn’t sold and I was planning to walk away when your thugs arrived. So what are you planning to do with me now, Andreas? Punish me more? Believe me, I’ve been punished enough. My Adam died.’

Her voice choked on a sob of pure fury, directed at him, directed at the death of her baby, directed at the whole world. She wiped her face desperately with the back of her hand.

He moved towards her but she backed away. ‘No!’

‘You called him Adam,’ he said, hating to hurt her more, but knowing he might never get answers at any other time than now. Now when her defences were smashed. When she was so far out of control…

‘Adam Andreas,’ she whispered. ‘For his father. He even looked like you. You should have seen… I so wanted you to see…’ She gasped and it was too much.

He moved then, like a big cat, lunging forward to grasp her shoulders. She wrenched back but he hauled her in against him and held, whether she wished it or not.

He simply held.

She was rigid in his grasp, but he could feel her shoulders heaving. ‘No… no.’

‘Let it go, Holly,’ he said, and held her tighter still and let his face rest on her lovely curls.

For a moment he thought she wouldn’t let herself succumb to his attempts at comfort. The stiffness in her body felt even more pronounced.

And then, so suddenly he almost let her go, he felt the tension release. She let her body slump against him. He tugged her into him. Her face buried into his shoulder and he felt her weep.

It lasted thirty seconds at the most. He held her close, the most primeval of emotions coursing through his veins, all to do with protection, desire, possession, and then he felt her stiffen and pull away. This woman would not give in to tears easily, he thought as she hauled herself back from him and swiped her face angrily on her towel. He remembered her refusal to weep when he’d left. He’d seen the glimmer of tears and had watched her simply shut them down, hold them back.

She did so now. Her eyes, when she finally raised them to meet his, were cold and defiant.

‘You have no right to make me feel like this,’ she whispered. ‘You have no rights at all.’

‘I had the right to know my son.’

The words shocked them both. They were said with such a harshness that both of them knew it for an inviolate truth. She stared at him for a long moment, and then simply turned her back on him. Again.

‘I know you did,’ she said, starting to trudge again toward the pavilion. ‘If he’d lived I’d have told you. I should have told you straight away. But I didn’t attempt to hide him. If you’d contacted me… But of course you didn’t. And you need to understand. The moment you left my world fell apart. The socializing we’d done had pushed us over the limit. The debt collectors pulled the place apart. They even took Merryweather.’ Her voice broke and she paused, trying to regroup. She kicked the sand out before her in anger and she trudged on.

Merryweather.

‘Your horse,’ he said, stunned, thinking back to the beautiful mare she’d loved almost as an extension of herself.

‘She was the least of it,’ she said, hauling herself back under control with an obvious effort. ‘She was a fantastic stock-horse and she was in foal to a brilliant sire. She and her foal were worth far too much to keep. My mother walked out, and my father went on a drinking binge that lasted for years. I kept my pregnancy from my father until I was six months gone, and by then you were married. By then my father knew that no amount of child support would save the farm, and I saw no point in destroying your marriage. I told my parents if they tried to blackmail you then I’d deny the baby was yours. I… I was just so tied up with putting one foot after another that I had no time to think of you.

‘Or not very much,’ she admitted. ‘I had to keep the cattle alive. I had to keep my father from self-destruction. And maybe there was also depression at play as well. I told myself I’d write to you after the birth, but I was barely over the birth when… when…’

She stopped walking but she didn’t turn. She took a deep breath, forcing the words out as if they still had the capacity to cut her to the heart. ‘When Adam died,’ she said, squaring her shoulders, every inch of her rigid with tension.

Andreas tried to imagine what that must have been like for her. He’d never had anything to do with babies. He thought of her holding a tiny child—the wild girl he’d fallen in love with, suddenly transformed into a woman. Holly breastfeeding. Holly sleeping with a baby beside her. Suddenly it was there, a mental image so strong it was as if he’d been there. Holly as a mother. The mother of his son.

‘I don’t know this… meningitis.’

‘Lucky you,’ she said drearily. ‘It happened so fast… He woke in the night with a fever. I rang the flying doctor service at six a.m. They arrived at eight and he died on the plane to the city. They said it was so appalling a case that it wouldn’t have mattered if we’d lived right by the hospital—there was simply no time for the antibiotics to work.’

‘Was your mother …?’

‘Nowhere. Back in Europe. If I wouldn’t acknowledge you as Adam’s father she washed her hands of me.’

‘But your father took care of you?’ The thought of her facing her baby’s death alone seemed insupportable.

‘Are you kidding? He’d gone on a bender the day my mother walked out and was still drunk. God knows where he was the day I buried my baby but he wasn’t with me.’ She shook her head. ‘Leave it. I’m on my own. I buried my little boy myself and I’ve taken care of myself since. Now is that all? I don’t know why you’ve brought me here, Andreas, but you might as well let me go. There’s nothing left between us but a dead baby, and that’s the truth. Let me go and be done with me.’