right.’
She’d been bereft, lost, foundering. Calls to her mother had gone unanswered. She’d never felt so alone in her life.
Then came the night of the ball. She might as well attend, she’d thought, rather than sit in her bedroom and think about a future that terrified her.
And so she’d met Alex. When Alex had smiled at her, when he’d asked her to dance, she’d found herself falling into his arms. Doing a Mia for once. Living for the moment.
And for two glorious days he’d made her forget reality. He’d smiled at her and she’d let herself believe that all could be right in her world. She’d blocked out the terror. She’d lost herself in his smile, in his laughter, in his loving…
And in his body.
And now here he was, looking at her as if he really cared, and she was lost all over again.
She couldn’t be lost. Not when her world was so close to being whole again.
‘I always had it,’ she said, still too fast, searching for the quickest way to tell him what he had to know. ‘Okay, potted history. You probably know my father was a Scottish baronet, a childless widower. My mother was a distant relation of the Greek royal family, fearsomely ambitious. She set her cap at my father’s money and title, even though he was forty years her senior. Mia and I were born, two years apart.’
‘I know this. The country’s been told this.’
‘Yes, but as Mia’s story. This is mine.’
‘Okay,’ he said, cradling the almost sleeping Michales. His eyes never left her face. ‘You want to sit down and tell me the rest?’
She cast him a scared look. Scared and resentful. Sure she wouldn’t be believed.
‘No one’s pushing you into a chair,’ he said gently. ‘There’s no naked bulb swinging eerily above your head as you spill state secrets. Just tell me.’
She nodded. She closed her eyes. She opened them again and somehow found the strength to say what needed to be said. ‘When I was six I started getting headaches,’ she told him. ‘I was diagnosed with a tumour, benign but inoperable.’ She shrugged. ‘I guess that was the end of my parents’ marriage. My mother loathed that I was sickly. It was almost an insult—that any daughter of hers could be less than perfect. And then Dad’s money ran out.’
She paused. This was too much information. Dumb.
She didn’t want this man’s sympathy.
Alex’s silence scared her, but she had to go on.
‘So my mother left, taking Mia with her. Dad and I muddled through as best we could. When Dad died my mother’s uncle, a man as different from my mother as it was possible to be—took me in. He was a boat-builder in Whitby in the north of England, and I learned my passion for boats from him. When he died, Spiros, my uncle’s friend, persuaded me to go to the States and work for him. So that’s what I did. My headaches were a nuisance I’d learned to live with. I made great boats. I was… content.’
‘You didn’t come to Mia’s wedding.’
‘I wasn’t invited. We’d hardly seen each other since our parents separated and, believe me, I wasn’t fussed. Would you have liked to be Mia’s bridesmaid?’
She tried a smile then, but she didn’t get one in return. His gaze made her feel he was trying to see straight through her. It left her feeling so exposed she was terrified.
Get on, she told herself. Just say it.
‘Then the headaches got worse,’ she said, trying to get to the point where Alex could stop looking… like he scared her. ‘I was getting increasingly dizzy. Increasingly sick. Finally I had tests. The doctors told me the tumour had grown. They thought… unless there was a miracle I had less than a year to live.’
His eyes widened in shock. ‘Lily!’ His hand reached out towards her but she shook her head. She stepped even further back.
No contact. Not now.
‘So I was in a mess,’ she said, trying to sound brisk and clinical and knowing by the look on his face she was failing. ‘My mother didn’t want to know about me. I didn’t want to burden Spiros. You’ve already figured his boatshed looks prosperous but it’s struggling. But I had to talk to someone. So, stupidly, I came to the palace to try to talk to Mia. I arrived just in time for the King’s celebrations to mark forty years on the throne. That’s when I met you.’
Her words had the power to change his world. That was how he felt. As if his world had shifted.
The first time they’d met they’d been surrounded by glittering royalty, the royal ball in full swing. Giorgos had been flaunting his young glamorous wife, taunting him. Telling him there was no way he’d inherit the throne.
But as his uncle had walked past Lily the King’s corset had creaked. Lily’s lips had twitched. They had, it seemed, a shared sense of the ridiculous.
Intrigued, he’d asked her to dance.
She’d laughed about the chandeliers. She’d gently mocked his tuxedo.
She’d felt like a breath of wind against his heart.
That was the start. They’d laughed and talked for two days. They’d become as close as two people could get.
That she’d had this threat hanging over her…
‘So… ’ He was struggling to find his voice.
‘So I slept with you.’ Her chin tilted upward in that wonderful, defiant way he was learning to know. ‘It was crazy, but crazy was how I felt that night. Crazy wonderful. Yes, we took precautions but maybe I wasn’t as careful as I should have been. It was like nothing was real.’
She smiled then, a real smile, with real humour. Making him remember why he’d wanted her. Making him remember why he’d thought she was different. ‘It’s okay,’ she said softly. ‘It was great that night. It was fantastic.’
He didn’t feel like smiling. ‘I wasn’t as careful as I should have been,’ she’d said. How careful had he been?
Not careful enough.
‘I got you pregnant.’
She nodded. ‘You can’t imagine how I felt when I found out. I couldn’t work. I had no money. I was having a baby and the headaches were getting more and more frequent. Nevertheless, even after I phoned you… I couldn’t consider abortion. I had tests and it was a little boy and he was so real. I wanted… I so wanted… ’
She shook her head, seemingly shaking away a memory that held nothing but despair. Moving on. ‘Well, finally I contacted Mia again,’ she whispered. ‘She gave me the same dumb line. It was my business. Not hers. But then she phoned back. Excited. It seemed Giorgos was infertile. They’d been quietly trying to arrange an adoption, but they’d so much rather it was my baby. I know her reasons now—Giorgos’s reasons. But by then I was so sick I couldn’t enquire and even if I’d known maybe I wouldn’t have cared.
