Читать книгу By Royal Demand - Robyn Donald - Страница 6

GABE came towards her, silent and formidably graceful as the wolf his ancestors had been called. Only a tough involuntary pride stopped Sara from taking a backward step, and she lifted her chin to meet his eyes with as much defiant composure as she could produce. She would not be intimidated.

She’d done nothing wrong.

‘I won’t be here for long,’ she retorted smartly.

‘You’ll stay until I send you away, Sara.’

‘You can’t do that!’ She dragged in a sharp breath, but it failed to deliver enough oxygen to energise her stunned brain.

‘I can do anything I want with you.’ He waited, drawing out the silence before finishing softly. ‘No one knows you’re here.’

‘My boss…’

His smile chilled her blood. ‘He won’t help.’ He waited with speculative dispassion while she struggled with the implications of that confident statement.

Sara’s hand clenched on the stem of her glass and a huge emptiness hollowed out her insides. Stonily she asked, ‘Are you implying that you arranged my job for me?’

‘Of course. I wanted you where I could keep an eye on you.’ He spoke casually, as though it was the most natural thing in the world for him to have done.

And, of course, it was.

Sara’s mouth dropped open. Stunned, she gazed at him in stupefied disbelief.

The unexpected offer of a job from a respected interior designer had literally given her something to live for. To learn that Gabe had organised it, and that her work meant nothing, hurt her so deeply she couldn’t speak.

She should have known, Sara thought as humiliation ate into her, leaving her cold and shaky. Gabe didn’t take betrayal lightly; he was famous for his long memory and his insistence on fair play. He’d want revenge. And he had the power and the money to seek it cold, to organise it with ruthless efficiency, so that she had no way of protecting herself.

Struggling to keep a clear mind, she fought back a sense of debilitating helplessness. He’d played with her life as though she were a puppet. It hurt, and it frightened her.

Nevertheless, she wasn’t going to surrender. He’d enjoy that; it would satisfy his desire to humiliate her. ‘I suppose I’m no longer working for him?’

‘That depends entirely on you,’ he said, watching her with coldly speculative eyes. ‘I want the Queen’s Blood, Sara. Tell me where it is and your life will be your own again.’

Her own? She could almost have laughed if his dispassionate tone hadn’t bruised so painfully. Gabe might have been able to cut her out of his life with merciless precision, but her heart was not so easily placated; it still trembled when she looked at him, longing for a commitment that had only ever existed in her wishful thinking.

If he’d loved her, he’d have at least given her a hearing when she’d tried to see him. But, no—he’d accepted the word of his grandmother’s maid rather than listen to the woman he’d been planning to marry!

Knowing it was hopeless, she said in a brittle voice, ‘If I knew where the rubies are, believe me, I’d have told you.’

‘Listen to me,’ he said forcefully, his eyes hooded and dangerous. ‘It occurred to me that you might be afraid. That’s why I brought you here—where you’ll be completely safe.’

‘Not from you!’ she retorted.

His wide shoulders moved in a slight negligent shrug. ‘Of course you’re safe from me—I’m not a barbarian.’

‘You threatened me about half a minute ago!’ He wasn’t going to get away with deliberately trying to intimidate her. She matched his hostile stare with one of her own, eyes glinting green as grass beneath her slim winged brows.

Another shrug underlined his Mediterranean heritage, from those warlike warriors whose blood had mingled with that of princesses from all over Europe to give him arrogantly handsome features and stunning colouring—hair like ebony, eyes as cold and blue as the sheen on a scimitar, and skin of warm bronze.

‘I knew you wouldn’t be intimidated,’ he said coolly. ‘But planning and executing a heist as successful as the Queen’s Blood is one thing—selling the thing is another. That involves criminals, and where this amount of money is involved the criminals are not loveable rogues. Stop hedging, Sara—it’s not getting you anywhere. Tell me where the Queen’s Blood is and I’ll let you go without fear of prosecution.’

The last tiny flicker of hope died. How could he be so intelligent in every other respect, yet so bone-headedly convinced that she’d stolen the necklace? Sara snatched another look at his face and saw beneath his amused contempt an unsparing determination.

Mindless panic roiled starkly beneath her ribs. She hid it by snapping, ‘You meant it when you said you could do whatever you liked with me.’

His black brows drew together in a forbidding frown that revved her heart-rate up into the stratosphere. ‘Oh, yes, I meant it. I could.’ His voice turned sarcastic. ‘But do try to restrain your vivid imagination. I don’t intend to hurt you.’

‘Why should I believe you?’ she demanded, realising too late that attacking his credibility was hardly the best way to get him to reconsider this crazy scheme and let her go.

Anyway, it wouldn’t work. Oh, Gabe definitely had a temper, but it was all the more intimidating for being so tightly controlled. More steadily she finished, ‘You didn’t believe me.’

‘Did I ever hurt you?’

‘I—no,’ she admitted reluctantly. Not physically, anyway. Indeed, he’d always been exquisitely tender with her.

Her heart-rate picked up as she remembered just how tender—and how she’d gloried in his strength and his potent male sexuality.

‘So stop pretending to be scared of me,’ he said crisply. ‘And don’t try to evade the subject. If you’re worried about your safety, be assured that no one can reach you here—no army has ever taken the castle by force.’

Sara remained stubbornly mute. Anything she had to say would only make things worse.

He waited, and when she didn’t fill the silence, went on relentlessly. ‘Give me the details of the theft and who else was involved. I promise you’ll be safe.’

As he’d once promised to love her?

‘I don’t know what happened to the wretched necklace,’ she told him, each word emerging with mechanical precision. ‘I gave it to the maid—to Marya—to put in the safe, and to the best of my knowledge she did just that.’

His response was unexpected. Instead of the chilling disbelief she’d had to endure when she’d tried to convince him of this a year before, he nodded. ‘And she swears that she did that, too. But about an hour afterwards she realised that she hadn’t put your engagement ring there, so she slipped down from her bedroom to do that. When she got there, the safe was empty. It had been opened by someone who knew the combination, which, as you set the combination when you arrived to stay with Hawke, means that you took it.’

A raw edge in his voice alerted her. She glanced up sharply, shock freezing her brain when she saw the dangerous glitter in his eyes. Stubbornly she retorted, ‘Or Marya.’

Holding her gaze, he said on a lethal note, ‘Marya is completely trustworthy.’

‘You’re so sure of that?’ she asked impetuously, knowing even as the words tumbled from her lips that she was on a hiding to nothing.

She hadn’t stolen the necklace, so the thief had to be Marya. Why, she didn’t understand, but there was no one else.

‘I’m sure,’ he said, his handsome, autocratic face hardening. ‘And, as the Queen’s Blood hasn’t yet appeared on the market—’

‘How do you know?’

Wide shoulders lifting in the slightest of shrugs, he kept his steel-blue gaze fixed on her face. She felt as though she had diamond lasers boring through the outer layer of skin and bone, right into her brain.

But if he could do that, he’d see her innocence.

He said, ‘The jewellery world is small, and it’s been under surveillance ever since the Queen’s Blood was taken. Apart from the value of the gold and the stones, the necklace is priceless as an artefact; an ancient, solid gold chain studded with perfectly matched cabochon rubies could only be sold to a collector. He’d have to be very rich and very unscrupulous, and have more money than sense.’

She frowned. ‘Why more money than sense?’

‘Because it could never be worn, never be shown—not for generations, if ever. It’s so well known that it would immediately be claimed by me, or my heirs. And if my line fails, Illyria would be entitled to the thing because it was originally found here.’ He stopped for a few measured seconds before adding deliberately, ‘But it hasn’t been bought by any collector, Sara.’

Eyes as cold and hard as ice searched her face. He thought she already knew all this; he was humouring what he considered to be her sly treachery.

Pain cramped her into rigidity. A year hadn’t been long enough to chisel him from her heart. She’d loved him so much….

Without emotion, he continued, ‘It could have been broken up and sold discreetly, stone by stone, on the black market. When the tyrant took over Illyria, my grandfather gave the necklace to someone to hide. After the usurper was assassinated, the only person who knew the hiding place brought it to me. I had each gem in the necklace measured and profiled, and its signature is stored. Burmese rubies the size of those in the Queen’s Blood and of the very best quality and colour—pure red with the faintest undertone of blue—haven’t been found for centuries. If even one such ruby turned up on the market I’d know within a few hours. It hasn’t happened.’

‘Because Marya doesn’t want to sell it.’

Without moving a muscle, he said, ‘Can you give me one good reason why Marya, who was my grandmother’s maid, would want to steal the Queen’s Blood?’

During the last year Sara had cudgelled her brain, trying to think of just such a reason, and the only one she could come up with was that the Illyrian woman had believed an upstart nobody to be completely unsuitable for her lord’s wife.

She was probably right.

The flames in the fireplace sprang high, then collapsed, and a faint, familiar scent reminded Sara of apples. Prunings from the orchards she’d seen beneath the helicopter, she thought, clinging to that simple sweetness in a room filled with fear and tension.

Oppressed by the weight of centuries of history, of death and war and disillusionment within the walls of the castle, she said flatly, ‘I’m sorry it was stolen, but I had nothing to do with it.’

Gabe drank some wine, then put his glass down with a sharp movement that set the golden liquid surging in the flute. ‘I don’t believe Marya took it because she was the one who hid the necklace when my grandparents abandoned the castle.’

Astonished, she stared at him. She knew the story. The general of the revolutionary army—a man whose violence had been legendary—had threatened to kill every person in the valley if the castle was defended. Gabe’s grandparents had slipped away in the night and joined the partisans, fighting in the mountains until they eventually died in an ambush.

In a thin voice she said, ‘Is that why you wanted her to be my maid?’

‘Partly. She asked if she could be when she heard that we were engaged. I suggested it to you because she was my grandmother’s maid, and I suppose it satisfied something in me to have her take care of you and your clothes.’

Sara bit her lip.

‘Yes,’ he said sardonically, answering her unspoken response. ‘You chose the wrong person to frame, Sara. Marya would never have stolen the necklace because she spent forty years protecting it at huge personal cost to herself and her family. She endured everything because she was loyal and because she understands the necklace’s enormous symbolic value.’

‘Is that why you’re so determined to find it?’ At least she could now understand why Gabe was so sure of Marya’s innocence. Not that it helped. ‘Does it confer some sort of divine right to rule on whoever holds it?’

‘No,’ Gabe said deliberately, surveying her with hooded, scornful eyes. ‘I’m trying to explain why I know Marya didn’t steal it. Whereas you lied to me and betrayed me. Give me one reason why I should believe you.’

Humiliation leached the colour from her skin. She stumbled over her next words, then caught her breath and forced herself to repeat stubbornly, ‘I didn’t lie or betray you.’

‘All I want is the Queen’s Blood,’ Gabe responded indifferently, making it more than obvious he didn’t believe her.

So what else was new?

He went on, ‘It’s an heirloom of my house, and I want it back again. Then you’ll be free to go.’

The beautiful, fabulous object, rich with history and tragedy and glamour, had shattered her heart. Gabe valued it more than he’d valued her, and his so-called love hadn’t withstood the suspicion that had swirled around her after the necklace had disappeared.

Sara dragged in a slow, jagged breath. ‘I wish you had it,’ she said, pain thinning her voice, ‘but I don’t know what happened to it and I can’t tell you where it is. I’m sorry.’

‘Won’t tell me.’ His voice was controlled and impersonal, as though he was discussing a business deal. ‘I’m prepared to pay you the value of the Queen’s Blood for information about its whereabouts.’ He named an amount that horrified her.

Sara closed her eyes. Just how far would he take this? ‘I don’t know where it is,’ she repeated dully.

‘The offer stands. It’s considerably more than you’ll get from breaking up the necklace and selling the stones on the black market. And much more than you’ll get from a collector who knows you don’t dare offer it legally.’ He picked up his glass and drank some of the champagne, his long fingers tanned and strong against the delicate transparency of the crystal stem.

They’d always been exquisitely gentle on her body. Sara turned away as memories exploded in intimate, painfully acute clarity. She tried to wall them off, but her skin tightened at the recollection of the heat of his sleek, bronzed hide against hers, the power and the rapture of impassioned hours locked in his arms, and the transcendent ecstasy of his possession.

A subtle, hidden softening deep inside her shocked her into awareness of her danger. Bitterly she forced the seductive images to the back of her mind. Oh, he’d been a magnificent lover, but he’d instantly believed that she’d stolen the necklace.

Now she understood why, but his reasons simply underlined the fragility of their relationship. For all its fire and flash and transient ecstasy, love had opened her to an anguish that would scar her for life.

‘I can’t help you. I’ll leave now,’ she said quietly, clutching at a composure so brittle she was afraid it would splinter at his next insulting word.

‘You’re not going anywhere.’ His reasonable tone warred with the determination she saw in his handsome face.

Tension knotted inside her. Her tongue felt thick in her mouth when she said, ‘You can’t keep me here, and you know it.’

‘You’ll stay here until I find out what you’ve done with the necklace,’ he told her with uncompromising decision. His implacable eyes kindled, and she realised with a cold clenching of her heart that he meant it.

Dry-mouthed, she protested, ‘That’s kidnapping.’

‘You can go as soon as the necklace is in my hands.’

She cast him a glance of mingled shock and distrust. ‘I don’t imagine your cousin would be happy to learn that you’re holding me prisoner.’

His expression darkened, but he said coolly, ‘I’ll worry about Alex if and when I have to.’

‘You’re being completely crazy!’ She tried to infuse her voice with crisp scorn. ‘And I’m not going to put up with it. Your ancestors might have been able to shut up anyone who offended them in the dungeons, but this is a different world.’

Back held so stiffly she thought she could feel her spine cracking, she swung on her heel and set off for the door. She’d only taken two steps when he stopped her with a hand on her upper arm, one smooth, decisive movement swinging her around to face him.

Every treacherous sense quivered at the faint, intensely masculine scent that was solely his, an evocative sexual promise that set her heart racing. Her stomach clenched as she shivered at the electricity that poured through her, destroying defences she’d been so sure would never be breached again.

In a cracked voice she muttered, ‘Gabe, be sensible! You can’t do this!’

‘Who’s going to stop me? You?’ His smile was a masterpiece of cold irony.

Before she could formulate an answer he bent his head and kissed her, his mouth demanding the response she dared not give. But although she could keep her lips clamped tightly together, she couldn’t control the spontaneous, involuntary betrayal of her body.

Of course he understood each sensual signal. He knew her too well not to recognise the quickening pulse-rate, the heat that stung her lips and skin, the bemused, sultry droop of long lashes over dazed green eyes as she fought her reckless surrender.

And his body reciprocated with fierce awareness, a forceful tension that sent more electricity sizzling through her. Whatever he thought of her, believed her to be, he wasn’t immune to the dangerous primal chemistry that raged between them.

The kiss hardened into urgency, and her willpower snapped. On a muffled groan she lifted her arms and reached for him, desperate to enjoy for a few seconds more that sense of utter security she’d always felt when he’d held her, as though nothing and nobody could ever hurt her again.

He pulled her into the powerful planes and angles of his big, lithe body, imprinting her with his need while his mouth plundered hers in a blaze of carnal pleasure.

For a few precious moments she let herself savour the potent sensation of her breasts crushed against him, the strong arm that held her hips clamped to his. And then he lifted his head.

Muttering something in a harsh, jagged voice, he dropped his arms and stepped back, a slash of colour along his barbaric cheekbones contrasting with the ice-blue of his narrowed eyes.

He’d spoken in Illyrian, but the words and tone didn’t need any translation. Swallowing to ease her dry throat, she said hoarsely, ‘I couldn’t agree more. Not one of your better ideas.’ Although her lips felt tender, and her body throbbed with unappeased need, she met his eyes defiantly. ‘What were you trying to prove?’

‘Don’t push your luck,’ he said roughly. ‘You have no power here, Sara.’

She shrugged and turned blindly away, only to trip over the edge of a chair. Instantly he caught her by the arm.

‘Are you all right?’ She didn’t answer, and his grip tightened to give her a slight shake. ‘Answer me, Sara.’

When she winced theatrically he loosened his grip, but didn’t let her go. Adrenalin pumped through her and her muscles tightened as she weighed up her chances of getting away if she kneed him in the groin or clawed at his eyes.

A metallic gleam in his eyes warned her that he knew what she was thinking. In spite of her fitness she had no hope of matching his lean, virile strength.

‘Try it,’ he invited softly. ‘Try me, Sara.’

His words ricocheted around her brain, momentarily silencing her. Mesmerised, she stared at him while time stretched; she could sense his readiness, his formidable confidence. Tension hummed like electricity between them, taut with unspoken hunger.

She had to get out of this! She searched for words, but when they came they were thin and ineffectual. ‘You tried me, Gabe, and condemned me without a hearing.’

‘I heard a pack of lies,’ he said indifferently. ‘Try me with the truth.’

She closed her eyes, then forced them open to glare at him. ‘You wouldn’t accept the truth if it hit you in the face! Eventually you’ll have to let me go.’

‘Why?’

When she stared at him he lifted a black brow and smiled.

‘Who would miss you?’ he asked, in a voice that sent chills scudding the length of her spine.

‘Don’t be so stupid! Of course I’d be missed! I have friends….’She lifted her chin and met his implacable gaze, pitiless and unforgiving as Arctic seas. ‘Besides, you don’t want me here.’

‘I think I’ve just shown why I might want you here, always ready, always waiting for me.’

Shock almost robbed her of speech. He was toying with her, she thought valiantly, cruelly manipulating her with his implied threats.

‘Then you’ll have to kill me eventually, because when you let me go the first thing I’ll do is go to the police. And if the police here are so delighted to have their wolf back that they refuse to do anything about it, I’ll contact Interpol. And the press.’

‘Would anyone believe you if you tried to lay charges?’ he asked, burnished eyes opaque and unreadable. ‘No one knows why our engagement was broken; if anyone gets wind of your presence here, they’ll assume we’re trying again. Everyone loves a fairy story, and our engagement had all the right ingredients.’

The fingers on her arm relaxed, slid down to grip her elbow; he urged her across the room, releasing her only to hand back the glass of champagne she’d abandoned.

Sara clutched the glass as though her life depended on it. Hoarsely, she said, ‘This is the twenty-first century and you’re a modern man, not some medieval despot who can get away with murder.’

‘I don’t plan to murder you,’ he said with insulting patience. ‘I intend convincing you that your freedom depends on telling me where the necklace is. Once you’ve done that you can go.’ His mouth compressed into a straight line. ‘And you’ll be rich enough to do what you want, provided you keep out of my way.’

He still had the power to hurt her so badly she could barely breathe. Goaded into defiant indiscretion, she hurled back, ‘I can’t think of anything I’d enjoy more. But I don’t know where the wretched necklace is!’

And had to cope with another of those killer silences, seething with unspoken thoughts and hidden emotions.

When he finally spoke it was with a slight sardonic twist to his beautiful mouth. ‘Of course, if money doesn’t work there are always other ways to find out.’

Other ways? One glance at the smouldering depths of his eyes told her what he meant. Now he knew that he could use their potent mutual attraction to seduce her.

And he would, she thought, sickened and horrified. He hated her, but he’d make love to her because he wanted to find the necklace so badly.

Sara panicked. Without thinking, she flung the contents of her glass into his face.

The champagne broke against the granite angles of his face. Appalled at her stupidity, she watched him wipe the liquid away with a handkerchief.

On a broken little gasp she muttered, ‘Oh, hell, I’m sorry,’ and set her glass down.

Gabe balled up his handkerchief and threw it into the grate. Dispassionately he watched it burn, then smiled, and her heart shuddered.

‘It amuses me, the contrast between your elegant, composed face and that passionate, sensuous mouth,’ he said urbanely, his perfect control of English subtly affected so that the sentence had an alien intonation. ‘You look every inch an aristocrat—serene, well-bred, completely in control—and I liked knowing that in my arms, in my bed, you turned into a wildcat—reckless and sexy and elemental.’

Stunned by his words, she stared into his face. Their eyes clashed in primeval combat. Gabe smiled, his dark face compelling in its vengeful strength, and came towards her. Sara’s breath stopped in her throat as she tried to struggle free of the dark spell he’d always been able to cast.

But she left it too late. Even as she twisted to run, his hands closed over her shoulders, and he pulled her into his aroused body.

Heat engulfed her—heat and fire and an untamed, erotic craving that terrified her.

‘It’s still there, damn you,’ he said between his teeth, and he lowered his head and kissed her again.

And she fought him again, furious at her body’s betrayal of her mind and her heart, until the unsparing mastery of his lips summoned a reckless need that consumed everything else in its clamour for satisfaction.

He slid one hand up behind her head, strong fingers working smoothly against her sensitive scalp as he gentled the kiss, and she sighed into his mouth, shivering with pleasure. The smooth touch of his fingers on the back of her head sent arrows of intense delight through every cell in her body; too late, she realised that he was loosening the pins that held her sleek chignon in place. Her hair fell in a warm, heavy mass around her neck and shoulders, adding a sensuous friction to the explosions along her nerves already caused by his addictive mouth and deft hands.

He moved slightly, accommodating her eager body in the cradle of his hips. The appetite he’d unleashed in her increased exponentially at the hard evidence of his arousal. She had to grit her teeth and jerk her head away to stop herself from pressing against him and giving up on the futile struggle to keep her sanity.

Each kiss, each caress, was an exercise in power, she thought frantically: he was showing her how easily he could have her.

Desperately she gasped, ‘No!’