that it had, probably when Sebastian had been young. Oh, but she hated bullies! An image of Sebastian as a child floated into her head.
Had Luis been defending him then, too?
There was warmth in her eyes as she flashed her future husband a smile. She had really admired the way he had defended his brother and if she was honest she’d been surprised by it. She felt a little ashamed that she’d had such low expectations of him.
‘What happened to the pearls, Sabrina?’ her mother pushed for details. ‘You haven’t lost them?’
‘Of course not, they need restringing.’ She closed her mouth, not intending to say anything but her wretched imagination had taken hold and that image in her head just wouldn’t go away. Two brothers united in fear of their father, and she couldn’t stop herself. ‘You must be really proud...’
During the seconds it took the King to realise she was talking to him, Sabrina felt her mother’s alarm and deliberately didn’t look her way.
‘Proud of your sons,’ she clarified with another brilliant smile that hid not just her anger but the fact that she wished she had not started this. It wasn’t as if Sebastian weren’t big and beautiful enough to look after himself.
He hadn’t always been big but that he’d always been beautiful was a given. As hard as it might be to imagine now, she could see the boy he had been without the armour he possessed now taking what amounted to mental abuse from his father, who somehow and unfairly blamed him for his mother’s infidelities. There was no excuse in Sabrina’s mind.
‘And what they have achieved.’
Despite you, she thought, meeting his icy glare and, realising that if she let him think he could intimidate her she’d set the pattern for the next years of her life, she didn’t look away. ‘They are a credit to you,’ she said, daring him to deny it.
After a pause during which it felt as if the entire table held their collective breath, though that might have only been her because she had realised that in challenging the King she might just have caused a diplomatic incident, the King nodded his head and grunted.
So no diplomatic incident, just a very, very unfriendly look... It could have been worse, though maybe not much.
‘My mother,’ the Duchess said, her voice bright. ‘My mother always wore those pearls. They were her signature. Really, Sabrina, you should have taken more care. Are you sure you didn’t lose any?’
By the time the subject of the pearls had been exhausted the King’s colour had returned to normal and the rest of the meal passed without incident, though the King quite pointedly did not address his younger son. Not that the silent treatment seemed to bother the object of his disapproval.
The meal over, it seemed like an age to Sabrina before the King rose and gestured to Luis. ‘A word,’ he instructed, before nodding to his hosts and sweeping out, leaving the Queen behind.
* * *
As he was about to leave Luis leaned in. ‘I wonder if you’d take a walk in the rose garden with me later, Sabrina?’
So I can sign away the rest of my life and become an invisible helpmate and mother of your children—why not? Then she felt guilty because Luis looked as miserable and tense as she felt.
‘That would be lovely,’ she said politely.
This is not about you, Brina. This is about more important things like the future, schools, people’s jobs.
And it could work. They could skip the entire ‘falling out of love’ part so often involved in marriage by never being in love to begin with.
Her father’s voice broke into her introspection. ‘Shall we leave the ladies, Sebastian? I have an excellent brandy in my study.’
Sabrina was surprised; her father’s study was his sanctuary. She couldn’t recall him inviting anyone into it. He must have taken a liking to the black sheep, or more likely he was trying to compensate for the way Sebastian’s father had treated him. Perhaps like her he had noticed how quiet Sebastian had been for the remainder of the meal.
* * *
The tension that hummed inside Sebastian as he left the room behind the Duke had nothing to do with his father’s open hostility but the fact that Sabrina had stood up to the King, defending both him and Luis.
Nobody had ever done that, and in doing so she had probably made herself a target. His jaw clenched. Didn’t she see that men like his father responded to flattery, not a challenge to their authority? Chloe knew that, the Duchess knew that, yet Sabrina had just stuck out her chin. Did she think he needed a champion? Did she think he couldn’t look after himself?
He’d seen her shaking, whether from anger or fear he’d been unable to tell, but she’d been pretty damned magnificent. An idiot, but a beautiful, brave idiot!
* * *
Sabrina went to get herself a wrap before she ventured out into the gardens. She had not reached the rose garden when Luis appeared on the path ahead.
‘I didn’t actually find the rose gardens. I got a bit lost.’
‘That’s fine, it’s over that way, beyond the tennis courts, but we really don’t have to go that far. Here is fine, unless you are really that interested in the roses? Or am I making an assumption?’
Luis lowered his gaze from her direct look. ‘No, you’re not,’ he admitted, dragging a hand through his fairish hair. He had inherited his mother’s colouring.
She tried to visualise him in ten, twenty years’ time and found she couldn’t, though oddly she could see Sebastian. Perhaps a few more lines around his eyes, a little more cynicism in their depths, maybe a strand of grey or two, but his incredible bone structure virtually guaranteed that he would look essentially the same.
You are about to be proposed to by one brother and you’re thinking about the other, Sabrina.
‘We’ve never...’ She stopped, realising she couldn’t ask him to kiss her so she could forget being kissed by his brother. ‘Can I ask you to do something for me?’
She watched a look of caution drift across his face.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to say you love me.’ His flush suggested she had correctly interpreted his alarm, but this wasn’t about love. She didn’t love either of the Zorzi brothers.
With Sebastian it was simply sex, or it would be, and with Luis it was respect. Respect lasted longer and was, she told herself, a much sounder basis for marriage.
‘Sorry, I’ve never been proposed to before and I’m—Oh, no—look you don’t have to—’ She stopped because Luis had already dropped to his knees.
‘Will you do me the honour of—?’
‘For God’s sake, yes—get up, please! Sorry, I—’ On his feet, Luis held out a ring in a velvet-lined box. The diamond looked bigger than most continents as it flashed in the moonlight. ‘Wow, how...very...large. I’m—’ She stopped as the ring was slid onto her finger. ‘I suppose as it’s already there I should say...well...
