began to examine Sebastian, the other shone a torch in Sabrina’s eyes. She pushed his hand away. ‘Can you walk?’ She nodded.
‘Great.’ He draped a foil blanket over her shoulders and shouted out, ‘A walking wounded over here, guys.’
She lifted her chin. ‘No, I’m not leaving him.’ She’d let them take Chloe away but enough, she decided, was enough. ‘I’m staying with him.’
The tired-looking paramedic sounded irritated by her attitude. ‘Look, there are people here who actually do need my help and—’
The young woman crouched beside Sebastian, adjusting the line she had just put in his arm, looked up. ‘Have a heart, man, can’t you see that they just got married?’ She indicated Sabrina’s torn and dirty wedding dress.
‘This is your wedding day?’
‘It was meant to be,’ she answered truthfully, thinking that it seemed like a lifetime ago since she had put on her wedding dress.
He swore in sympathy and looked down at his colleague, who was still kneeling beside Sebastian. ‘That one ready to move?’
She nodded. ‘He’s stable, and sats are up to ninety-five...tough guy.’
The man with Sabrina took her arm. ‘You can go with him.’
‘Thank you,’ Sabrina said. Her gratitude even greater when, on the way to the hospital in the back of the ambulance, Sebastian regained consciousness twice and each time it was the sound of her voice that stopped him fighting to free himself from the safety restraints before they had a chance to administer sedation.
Sabrina had not expected their anonymity to last. Admittedly her face, even without the walking-wounded look, was less well known but it seemed inevitable that someone would at some point make the connection between the anonymous injured figure who lay, his famous features swathed in bandages, on the stretcher and their Prince.
But so far no one had and, as it was hard to imagine that their treatment could have been better if the hospital staff had realised they were treating their Prince, it hadn’t seemed a priority to explain or correct the myth that they were a newly married couple, which had obviously followed them to the casualty department. While she waited to be seen herself, she was kept up to date with Sebastian’s progress. Sabrina knew she would not have been told the results of his CT or any of the other tests if they had known the truth.
As someone who was not his wife or family she would have been told nothing, so she silenced the twangs of conscience, and took comfort from the technicality that she hadn’t lied—yet. Unless staying silent could be counted as lying. Should she reveal that under the dirt, blood and injuries the man they were treating was their Prince?
People were kind even rushed off their feet. The staff she asked took time to try and find details about Chloe for her, though on each occasion they had not been able to locate her sister in the system, but then the system had to be at breaking point.
The island boasted some pretty impressive medical facilities, but a major disaster had stretched their resources to the limit.
It remained frustrating that nobody seemed to be able to tell her where her sister was, but her own injuries were minor. She hadn’t even known she had any, but the blood seeping from the head wound had caught the attention of a passing nurse. It needed stitching and they insisted on keeping her in overnight.
‘I hope you don’t mind sharing,’ the nurse said as she manoeuvred Sabrina’s bed into place beside the occupied one in the room obviously only ever intended to hold one bed.
‘Of course not.’
The nurse smiled. ‘Not really the way you intended to spend your honeymoon, but we thought...’
Sabrina’s eyes flew to the person lying in the bed next to hers.
It was Sebastian, looking much better than when she had last seen him despite the livid bruises visible around the dressing that covered the wound on his face. His hands above the sheet were swathed in bandages too.
‘Is he in pain?’ she whispered, knowing full well they would have pumped him up with painkillers but needing the reassurance of hearing someone say it.
‘No, he’s dosed up to the eyeballs so he might be a bit groggy when he wakes up,’ the nurse warned. ‘The drip is just giving him fluids,’ she went on to explain.
Sabrina nodded, glancing at the label on the bag.
The nurse gave her hand an encouraging squeeze. ‘He was lucky really. The surgeon who repaired your husband’s face is one of the best plastic surgeons there is—not that we don’t have good doctors here, but Mr Clare is the man. And he was only on the island for the royal wedding, apparently. I wonder how that went. Anyhow, he just turned up here and offered to help out after he heard about what had happened.
‘I just thought you should know that your husband had the very best care. I’m sure a doctor will be along to fill you in later but, as you can imagine, we are a bit stretched.’
‘Thank you. His hands...?’
‘Superficial.’
Her lowering of tension was fleeting as she asked a moment later, ‘My sister, Chloe, did anyone...?’
Sabrina read bad news in the girl’s hesitation so she was prepared as much as she could be for bad news when it came.
‘That would be Lady Chloe Summerville?’
Sabrina nodded.
The girl’s eyes widened. ‘So you’re...?’
‘I’d kind of prefer to stay below the radar for now.’
The nurse responded to the appeal with a nod and a smile. ‘They airlifted your sister to a specialist burns unit on the mainland. I believe your parents went with her...’ The girl laid a buzzer on the bed beside her. ‘You just ring if you want anything, La—Sabrina.’
Sabrina looked at the buzzer. What she really wanted was to go back to that moment on the staircase when she could have gone, no, should have gone back. But that wasn’t going to happen because the world was not fair. If it were she would be the one living with the consequences of her actions, not Chloe, not Sebastian.
If she could have swopped places she would have in a heartbeat.
That’s easy to say, Brina, mocked the voice in her head, when you know you can’t.
Nurses came in and out during the night to record Sebastian’s observations and when they saw she was awake all they told her was that he was doing fine.
She lay there counting down the hours on the clock on the wall opposite. It was two in the morning when a dapper man she recognised as the King’s private secretary appeared.
He didn’t seem to notice Sabrina at first, he was so transfixed by the sight of Sebastian.
He shook his head and gasped, ‘Lady Sabrina! You here, this is...well, it is simply intolerable to expect either you or His Highness to share a room with anyone at all.’
‘It’s
