LITMIR.BIZ

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the room halfway through and sat as a silent observer. Hadn’t he seen how well he’d done?

      ‘These meetings are for your brother. They’re part of his training. One day he will be King, our people will look to him. He needs to stand on his own feet. Do you think he did that today?’

      ‘No, Father. Actually I’d prefer to play cricket anyway. Poor Luis, I expect he’d prefer that as well.’ He’d made himself believe it because lying to himself was better than envying his brother.

      Well, he hadn’t been playing cricket for the last two weeks, but he had thrown himself wholeheartedly into enjoying the pleasures his brother could not. He had made a point of being photographed falling out of exclusive night spots in several time zones.

      The media had loved it: headlines spoke of his debauchery; there had been two kiss-and-tell stories that he had been asked to confirm or deny. The truth was, neither of the enterprising ladies in question had made it as far as his bed, and neither had any of the other women snapped falling out of nightclubs and climbing into the back of limos with him.

      Sebastian had slept solo, despite the seething sexual frustration that dominated his every waking moment.

      The more he tried not to think of Sabrina, the more she dominated his thoughts. Her face, her lips, her body. Under normal circumstances the solution would have been simple, but, as taking her to bed was not an option, instead he focused on her faults, calling her dedication to duty an inclination towards martyrdom, her innocent air artificial, her stubbornness infuriating. But the exercise simply made him more aware of his own faults—the difference being his were real.

      She was a person ruled by duty and he was a person ruled by selfishness.

      It would have made life a lot easier if he could have seen what Luis appeared to when he looked at Sabrina. The problem was he didn’t see what Luis saw—in fact his brother’s blindness was another source of frustration. The man had been handed a gift and he acted as if he were some sort of victim. There was a black irony—his brother did not appear to really want her, while he... He shook his head. It really didn’t matter what he wanted; the bottom line was he couldn’t have it.

      ‘Sir?’ So deep in his own thoughts, Sebastian hadn’t heard the door open.

      He turned his head and saw one of his brother’s newer aides standing there. He read nothing into the man’s worried frown. For all he knew impending doom might be the man’s natural expression.

      ‘Your brother asked that I should deliver this to you by hand.’

      Sebastian looked at the handwritten envelope the man was holding out to him.

      ‘Thank you.’ A note from Luis? When he would be here soon? He glanced at his watch and realised that his brother should be here now.

      Refusing to acknowledge the stirrings of unease in the pit of his stomach, Sebastian slid a finger under the seal and withdrew the single piece of paper.

      By the time you read this I will be married. It is better that you don’t know where I am.

      Sebastian’s eyes moved rapidly over the handwritten lines, his emotions shifting from disbelief to shock to fury.

      White under his tan, a pulse beating like a sledgehammer in his temple, he got halfway through the rest of the letter before a growl escaped the confines of his throat. He screwed the paper up and tossed it away and stood there, eyes closed, his breath dragging in and out. Only respect for where he was keeping the litany of curses inside his head as he clawed his way back to some sort of control.

      His brother had skipped town!

      Sebastian’s gaze went to the altar, where moments before he had imagined his brother kneeling beside a veiled Sabrina.

      He felt a stab of guilt. He had wanted it not to happen and now it wasn’t, but the cost of his wishes coming true was Sabrina’s humiliation.

      Sabrina! Did she know? Had his brother sent her a handwritten note too? He was suddenly ready to punch his brother, except Luis was somewhere else, with the love of his life, leaving the rest of them to pick up the pieces.

      He bent to pick up the rejected missive, uncreased the paper before he read it again, skimming over the initial sentences.

      Better that he didn’t know? Better for you, thought Sebastian, because if I did know I would follow you and throttle you, brother!

      He skimmed over the next section, which basically praised and defended the woman his brother had eloped with.

      Gretchen is a marvellous woman—you’d love her—but people will tell you things about her. She’s had a hard life...the drugs were her escape from abuse. She has never tried to hide anything from me.

      Pity, Sebastian thought, directing his silent response to his absent brother, you cannot say the same! But of course there had been clues. It no longer seemed incomprehensible that Luis had seemed determined to find fault with Sabrina when clearly she was everything a man could wish for.

      His brother, his dutiful brother, had been clinging to his forbidden love. Ironic really, he’d been guilty as hell for having feelings he wasn’t allowed for his brother’s bride while his brother had been pining for another woman. Presumably more than pining.

      I didn’t want to hurt anyone, but in the end it was simple. I can’t live without her. By now Dad will have received my letter of official abdication. He’ll need you.

      I’ve told him, Seb, that I’m not his biological son. I hope that will make it easier for him. For both of you.

      I know you never understood how I’d begun to forgive him for the way he treated Mother, but I didn’t forgive him. I forgave myself for not being able to protect her—you never did.

      Abdication. The word jumped out at him from the page as Sebastian felt a totally unexpected stab of sympathy for his parent. His father was going to be devastated. Luis had always been the real son, the one he had put all his hopes for the future in.

      Everything I do is an act, it always has been, and I can’t do it any more. I would have made a terrible king, it always should have been you, and now it is.

      You can stop pretending that you can’t do everything better than me. I’ve been pretending. But so have you, Seb.

      Sebastian’s chest heaved even after he had read the words. He hardly took in the full implication of his brother’s letter, not realising even now that his own life was about to change for ever. Instead what struck him was the omission in the note.

      Sebastian turned the page over, unable to believe that his brother had not spared a single sentiment of regret about Sabrina, the woman he had left very publicly standing at the altar.

      * * *

      ‘Highness.’

      Sebastian turned to find one of his father’s private secretaries standing in the place that had moments earlier been occupied by his brother’s staffer.

      ‘Your father wishes to speak to you.’

      Sebastian got to his feet. ‘He knows?’

      The man tipped his head.

      ‘And how is he?’

      ‘He is most...distressed.’

      * * *

      The last occasion he had been summoned to his father’s offices Sebastian had been left to cool his heels in an outer office for half an hour. On this occasion the doors to his father’s rooms were open and he was shown straight in.

      Sebastian struggled to contain his shock. King Ricard had always worn his sixty years comfortably, and, other than the thickening around his middle and the grey showing in his neatly trimmed beard, he looked much as he had done twenty years ago, but he seemed to have aged visibly since the previous evening.

      ‘Luis—’

      ‘I no longer have a son called Luis,

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