LITMIR.BIZ

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as his father’s barely concealed antagonism was hot.

      ‘I was asked for my opinion and I gave it, Father,’ Sebastian responded calmly. ‘I have no idea if it influenced the advice you were given, but I thought and I still do think that though a gagging injunction might have prevented the book being published in the UK, it would have been nothing more than a delay. And with people being able to access the details and the book online it would simply have been good publicity for the author.’

      ‘Why did the lawyers ask you?’ Chloe, who had been listening with curiosity to the interchange, asked.

      The King gave a laugh and, ignoring his wife’s speaking look, nodded to have his wine glass filled. ‘Good question, young lady.’

      ‘It was a field that I worked in for a while.’

      ‘You’re a lawyer? Why didn’t I know that?’ Chloe asked the table in general. ‘I thought I’d read everything there was to know about you.’

      Sabrina, who had felt the tension that had been building in Luis while his brother and father faced off, was less surprised than the others when he replied to Chloe’s question.

      ‘You tend to read about my little brother falling out of nightclubs, Chloe, but before he became the playboy of the western world he graduated top of his class at Harvard law and worked for the best legal firm in New York. He was even offered a partnership.’

      Glancing towards Sebastian, Sabrina glimpsed an expression that on anyone else she would have labelled embarrassment.

      The King, looking annoyed at the interruption, took over the story. ‘But he chose to risk everything and—’

      ‘I’m not really a team-player, Father,’ Sebastian interrupted.

      ‘You’re a gambler!’ his father condemned.

      ‘Father!’ Luis protested.

      ‘It’s all right, Luis, stock speculators are frequently called worse.’

      ‘Gamblers lose money, Seb, you don’t. And,’ Luis added, addressing his remark to the rest of the table, ‘Sebastian does pro bono work for at least one charity that helps...’

      His heated defence came to a stumbling halt when the King, whose normally florid colouring had taken on an alarming purplish hue, cleared his throat loudly and drawled contemptuously, ‘I’m sure we feel honoured to have a financial genius and altruist in our family.’

      The Queen reached out and laid her hand over her husband’s. ‘Not the time, Ricard,’ she murmured softly.

      The effort to respond to her warning glance deepened the unhealthy ruddiness another couple of shades before the table was engulfed in a painfully awkward silence, broken after a few uncomfortable moments by the Duchess.

      ‘Sabrina, I thought you were wearing your grandmother’s pearls earlier?’

      Sabrina shook her head as the knot of anger in her chest grew. She struggled, and failed, to dampen the tide of righteous fury that was making her head spin. She took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly through flared nostrils. King Ricard, in her opinion, was a poor excuse for a parent—he was in fact a bully!

      ‘A slight mishap,’ she managed finally, unable to stop her glance flickering towards Sebastian. There had been no mishap involved in the King’s attempt to belittle his son. Sebastian might not need looking after now, but he didn’t deserve—nobody deserved—his parent trying to humiliate him in public, and there was no doubt that that was what the King had been trying to do.

      It hadn’t worked but she could imagine a time in the past 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

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