it was time to wing it.
‘Sabrina, stop!’
She heaved a sigh, grabbed the wooden balustrade and tilted her head back to view her sister, who stood resplendent in the sea-green silk froth of her bridesmaid dress.
‘Sabrina, what are you doing?’
‘I don’t know.’ Her expression blank, she looked at the piece of crumpled paper in her hand—actually, she felt blank inside. She cleared her throat. ‘It was getting a bit...hot in there for me. I need some fresh air.’
‘Outside is probably not the best place to be. There are several hundred guests being—’
‘Told the groom has bolted before the stable door closed and, speaking of stables, I think this staircase leads to the stables. There aren’t going to be any guests there.’
‘It does, but you should come back. They are—’
Sabrina shook her head, cutting her sister off. ‘Whatever they want me to do the answer is no. Just for today I want a day off from doing and saying the responsible thing.’
Chloe, her skirt hitched high, skipped lightly down the stairs to join her. ‘Fair enough. Well, I’d be delighted to tell them to go and stuff it, or I could run away with you. Are you up for this?’
‘Why not?’
Her sister’s eyes widened. ‘I never expected you to say yes,’ she admitted.
‘So you didn’t mean it?’
Chloe laid a hand on her arm. ‘Oh, I meant it!’ She took the next step herself and paused. ‘Mum is sorry, you know, that she yelled. She just panicked.’
‘Like Luis—actually, not like Luis. I don’t think he panicked. I think he came to his senses. He loves someone else.’
‘Fair enough, and, for the record, in your place I wouldn’t be so understanding. If he was going to come to his senses why didn’t he do it last week or last year or even yesterday? Why leave it until now? It’s—’
‘A total nightmare,’ Sabrina agreed, thinking guiltily of the light at the end of the tunnel.
‘Did you guess that he was going to?’
Sabrina shook her head. ‘I didn’t have a clue.’ She expelled a sigh. ‘I just need some breathing space.’
‘I can do better than that.’ Chloe made a grand-reveal gesture as they walked around the corner. ‘I always have an escape route. I had a date with a couple of friends last night...after Mum’s curfew. We parked here. You fancy a drive?’
‘They are not cars,’ Sabrina said, looking at the two shiny monsters sitting there. It didn’t even occur to her to ask where the owners were as she stared at the dazzling chrome.
‘Didn’t I tell you I’ve been learning?’ Chloe picked a helmet off the first motorcycle and began to clip it on. ‘It’s actually quite easy.’
‘You want me to sit on the back of that wearing this?’ She gestured down at the acres of fitted white silk moulded to her body.
Chloe, hitching up her green skirt, was already clambering onto the first machine. She tossed her sister a set of keys and nodded to the second helmet. ‘No, I expect you to follow me on that one,’ she retorted, revving the engine of the bike she had climbed onto.
‘That’s mad, Chloe.’
‘True, but if you’re not going to be mad today when are you going to be mad, Brina? Come on!’
Sabrina stood there, shaking her head. ‘I couldn’t.’ Her eyes lifted to her sister. ‘Could I?’
‘Last night we went for a swim at a little beach just along from the Roman ruins where you opened that yawn-a-minute exhibition on Saturday.’
‘Swimming?’
She knew there had to be several dozen legitimate reasons that this was a bad idea but at that moment her brain could only come up with one. ‘I don’t have a swimsuit.’
Chloe grinned. ‘We didn’t have swimsuits last night. It is a very private beach.’
* * *
His father had made it as far as the door when his breathing got a lot worse. The doctor, called against his father’s wishes, said that bed rest was called for as a precaution.
It was half an hour later when Sebastian, deputising for the King, a first, was leaving the room when he encountered someone he vaguely recognised as the Duke’s aide, a man who bowed excessively and smiled a lot.
‘Highness.’ The man sounded breathless, his bow perfunctory and big politician’s smile absent. ‘Are they here?’
‘Are who here?’
‘Lady Sabrina and Lady Chloe? We have no idea where they have gone and the Duchess is quite distressed. She has decided they have been kidnapped.’
‘Considering the level of security here I seriously doubt it. I have an idea, though. Leave it to me,’ he said, leaving the gasping man standing there staring after him as he strode off purposefully down the corridor, punching in the number of the head of security as he walked.
It was picked up immediately.
‘The delicate security breach we discussed last night?’
‘Lady Chloe and the other bridesmaids reached their rooms safely, sir. They remained unaware of the security presence.’
‘And you left the motorbikes where they were?’
‘We did. Is there a problem?’
One problem? Now that really would be a luxury, Sebastian thought as he took the staircase on his left. It led directly to the stables, where last night Chloe and her friends had naively imagined they had foiled the palace security.
The oil spots on the floor showed where the motorbikes had stood and the wheel treads in the dusty straw the direction they had gone.
Jaw clenched in frustration, he closed his eyes, but before the curse could leave his lips a muffled sound brought his eyes open. Head tilted to one side, he waited and was rewarded by another noise. It took him a few seconds to track the sound to its source.
He found a piece of torn silk before the rest of the dress and the person wearing it. His initial flare of gut-tightening alarm faded as he realised that Sabrina, who stood beside a motorbike that was lying on its side, having first collided with a wall, was not injured. The same could not be said of the motorbike.
‘I hope you’re insured?’
Sabrina jumped as though she’d been shot and spun round, brushing the sections of her hair that had escaped the carefully constructed top knot from her eyes as she adopted a defensive attitude. ‘It’s not mine,’ she said, fighting the weirdest compulsion to walk straight into his arms. Skinny dipping was one thing, giving into that impulse would have been
