A Ring To Secure His Crown. KIM LAWRENCE

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СКАЧАТЬ she snored and her laugh grated, but for a while I believed that she was perfect. Actually, I’ve believed quite a few were perfect since, the difference being I no longer expect it to last.’

      In Sebastian’s opinion, if you were looking for a formula for unhappiness it would be hard to come up with a more sure-fire method than tying yourself to one person for life based on a short-lived chemical high.

      ‘Perfect? Like you, you mean?’

      Sebastian winced and grinned, watching as Luis, his expression growing distracted, moved to one of the two chairs arranged at the foot of the bed. Sebastian held up a warning hand.

      ‘I wouldn’t do that. I made the same mistake. The leg dropped off. I’ve propped it.’

      Luis made a detour to the other chair.

      Sebastian’s gaze moved around the room of faded grandeur. ‘It’s not what I was expecting. They really are strapped for cash. No wonder,’ he observed cynically, ‘they are so willing to sell their daughter off to the highest bidder.’

      ‘They’re not selling her!’ Luis protested. ‘Sabrina understands. She respects—’

      ‘Our mother understood,’ Sebastian interrupted, wondering if the anger he felt would ever go away. Anger at the system that had trapped his mother in a marriage that had, in the end, destroyed her. ‘And that didn’t turn out so well.’

      ‘It’s not the same!’ his brother protested, flushing as he surged to his feet.

      Sebastian arched a brow. ‘From where I’m standing it looks like a classic case of history repeating itself.’

      Luis’s horrified rebuttal was immediate. ‘I’m not like...him.’

      Then break the blasted cycle!

      Sebastian didn’t voice his thought. What would be the point? He knew his brother would never challenge their father, and, if the positions were reversed, was he so damned sure that he would? Easy to criticise from where he stood.

      ‘I wonder, Seb. What do you think he’d do if he knew...?’

      Sebastian’s irritation slipped away as he walked across to where his brother stood and laid a hand on Luis’s shoulder. ‘He won’t,’ he said firmly. ‘We burnt the letters. No one knows they ever existed.’

      The young brothers had not known at the time they discovered the love letters hidden under a floorboard that despite breaking off the affair after she discovered she was carrying her lover’s child she had continued to see him after the child she had conceived with him had been born.

      The irony was that they were right, there was a royal bastard, only it wasn’t the son that the scandal-mongers had identified.

      ‘As far as the world is concerned, the affair only started the year I was born.’ Sebastian could see no reason anyone should ever know. ‘We are the only two people who know, unless you plan on telling him?’

      Luis shuddered. ‘I stood by and watched you being bullied at school and then at home when we both know that you should be King. I have no legitimate claim to the throne. I’m not even his son.’

      Sebastian shook his head. ‘Be glad of that every day. Be glad of it, Luis!’ he said, his voice gruff with ferocious sincerity. ‘You’ve escaped the taint that I carry. I’m the son the bastard deserves. You will make a better King than I ever could be. You’re the one who has made all the sacrifices...and you are still making them.’ Sebastian straightened up, relaxing the grip on his brother’s shoulders. ‘You don’t have to marry her, you know. You could say no.’

      Luis shook his head and dodged his brother’s gaze. ‘Easy for you to say. I’m not—’

      ‘Selfish as hell?’ Sebastian thought of where being unselfish had got his mother. He’d choose selfish every time.

      Luis’s gaze lifted, just as his brother vanished into the bathroom. ‘I’m not a rebel like you. I need to... I care about what people think about me.’

      Sebastian re-emerged with a fresh towel, which he rubbed vigorously over his damp hair.

      ‘And this marriage isn’t about me, it’s about bigger things. I’m realistic about it.’

      ‘So how does she feel about it?’

      Luis gave an uncomprehending shrug. ‘How do you mean?’

      ‘I mean what does Sabrina expect from this marriage? Is she realistic too?’ He gave a sudden shrug, annoyed with himself for wasting time on a subject that was none of his business. ‘Is the warm glow of doing the right thing enough for her too?’ He began to vigorously rub his already towel-dried hair, asking himself where this swell of outrage was coming from. She’d made her bed and she seemed happy to lie in it...with his brother. ‘Hell, Luis, do you two even talk?’

      ‘We have a lifetime to talk,’ Luis responded, not sounding as though the life he saw stretching ahead filled him with joy. ‘But you mean sex, don’t you? It’s not like you to be so squeamish. Actually no, I haven’t slept with her.’

      ‘That’s not what I meant, but as you’ve shared aren’t you taking this untouched virgin bride stuff a bit too far, Luis?’

      Luis laughed. ‘Even father doesn’t expect that.’

      ‘How incredibly liberal-minded of him.’ Sebastian was still struggling with the implication of some of Sabrina’s unguarded comments. Was it really possible that Sabrina had not had a lover, out of fear of falling in love?

      ‘What if you’re not compatible? Have you thought of that?’

      Luis for once looked annoyed. ‘For God’s sake, Seb, this isn’t about how good she is in bed!’

      As the comment unlocked a stream of graphic images that flowed relentlessly through his head, Sebastian lowered his eyelids to half-mast. His jaw clenched as he struggled to stem the flow and pretended an amusement he was a long way from feeling. ‘But it would help.’

      It would help him even more, Sebastian mused darkly, if he could stop thinking of unfastening glossy honey hair and watching it fall over bare shoulders, pushing it back to reveal small firm breasts...

      Oblivious to the tension underpinning his brother’s taut delivery, Luis laughed. ‘I really like her.’

      ‘Like?’

      Luis tipped his head in acknowledgment. ‘She’s sweet,’ he began with the attitude of a man who was clutching at straws.

      ‘And,’ he ploughed on with determination, ‘she has a lot of common sense.’

      Were they even talking about the same woman? Sebastian wondered, thinking about the woman who had attempted to punch her way out of his locked car just to avoid being shut in there with him.

      He recognised she’d been driven to this drastic move by desperation and fear and he had fully intended saying something to soothe her, but the expression on her face when she’d recognised him, the fact that she’d looked as though she had just discovered she had jumped into a car beside the СКАЧАТЬ