style="font-size:15px;"> ‘As I said, he’ll love your muffins.’
‘So when will you next see him?’
‘Back in Europe,’ Ramón said, and sighed. ‘He’ll have to surface then, but not now. Not yet. There’s three months before we have to face the world. Do you think we can be happy for three months, cariño?’ And he tugged her back down to him.
‘If you keep calling me cariño,’ she whispered. ‘Are we really being paid for this?’
He chuckled but then his smile faded once more. ‘You know it can’t last, my love. I will need to move on.’
‘Of course you will,’ she whispered, but she only said it because it was the sensible, dignified thing to say. A girl had some pride.
Move on?
She never wanted to move on. If her world could stay on this boat, with this man, for ever, she wasn’t arguing at all.
She slept and Ramón held her in his arms and tried to think of the future.
He didn’t have to think. Not yet. It was three months before he was due to leave the boat and return to Bangladesh.
Three months before he needed to tell Jenny the truth.
She could stay with the boat, he thought, if she wanted to. He always employed someone to stay on board while he was away. She could take that role.
Only that meant Jenny would be in Cepheus while he was in Bangladesh.
He’d told her he needed to move on. It was the truth.
Maybe she could come with him.
The idea hit and stayed. His team always had volunteers to act as manual labour. Would Jenny enjoy the physical demands of construction, of helping make life bearable for those who had nothing?
Maybe she would.
What was he thinking? He’d never considered taking a woman to Bangladesh. He’d never considered that leaving a woman behind seemed unthinkable.
Gianetta…
His arms tightened their hold and she curved closer in sleep. He smiled and kissed the top of her head. Her curls were so soft.
Maybe he could sound her out about Bangladesh.
Give it time, he told himself, startled by the direction his thoughts were taking him. You’ve known her for less than two weeks.
Was it long enough?
There was plenty of time after Auckland. It was pretty much perfect right now, he thought. Let’s not mess with perfection. He’d just hold this woman and hope that somehow the love he’d always told himself was an illusion might miraculously become real.
Anything was possible.
‘How do you know he’ll sail straight to Auckland?’
In the royal palace of Cepheus, Sofía was holding the telephone and staring into the middle distance, seeing not the magnificent suits of armour in the grand entrance but a vision of an elderly lawyer pacing anxiously on an unknown dock half a world away. She could understand his anxiety. Things in the palace were reaching crisis point.
The little boy had gone into foster care yesterday. Philippe needed love, Sofía thought bleakly. His neglect here—all his physical needs met, but no love, little affection, just a series of disinterested nannies—seemed tantamount to child abuse, and the country knew of it. She’d found him lovely foster parents, but his leaving the palace was sending the wrong message to the population—as if Ramón himself didn’t care for the child.
Did Ramón even know about him?
‘I don’t know for sure where the Prince will sail,’ the lawyer snapped. ‘But I can hope. He’ll want to restock fast to get around the Horn. It makes sense for him to come here.’
‘So you’ll wait.’
‘Of course I’ll wait. What else can I do?’
‘But there’s less than two weeks to go,’ Sofía wailed. ‘What if he’s delayed?’
‘Then we have catastrophe,’ the lawyer said heavily. ‘He has to get here. Then he has to get back to Cepheus and accept his new life.’
‘And the child?’
‘It doesn’t matter about the child.’
Yes, it does, Sofía thought. Oh, Ramón, what are you facing?
They sailed into Auckland Harbour just after dawn. Jenny stood in the bow, ready to jump across to shore with the lines, ready to help in any way she could with berthing the Marquita. Ramón was at the wheel. She glanced back at him and had a pang of misgivings.
They hadn’t been near land for two weeks. Why did it feel as if the world was waiting to crowd in?
How could it? Their plan was to restock and be gone again. Their idyll could continue.
But they’d booked a berth with the harbour master. Ramón had spoken to the authorities an hour ago, and after that he’d looked worried.
‘Problem?’ she’d asked.
‘Someone’s looking for me.’
‘Debt collectors?’ she’d teased, but he hadn’t smiled.
‘I don’t have debts.’
‘Then who…?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, and his worry sounded as if it was increasing. ‘No one knows where I am.’
‘Conceivably the owner knows.’
‘What…?’ He caught himself. ‘I…yes. But he won’t be here. I can’t think…’
That was all he’d said but she could see worry building.
She turned and looked towards the dock. She’d looked at the plan the harbour master had faxed through and from here she could see the berth that had been allocated to them.
There was someone standing on the dock, at the berth, as if waiting. A man in a suit.
It must be the owner, she thought.
She glanced back at Ramón and saw him flinch.
‘Rodriguez,’ he muttered, and in the calm of the early morning she heard him swear. ‘Trouble.’
‘Is he the boat’s owner?’
‘No,’ he said shortly. ‘He’s legal counsel to the Crown of Cepheus. I’ve met him once or twice when he had business with my grandmother. If he’s here…I hate to imagine what he wants of me.’
Señor
