By Royal Demand

But, kindness or not, Sara reminded herself that her future depended on delivering a plan for the rooms that would outdo those submitted by other decorators.

A cool shiver of foreboding tightened her skin. She looked around and noticed a casement open to the evening air.

‘Stop dramatising everything!’ she ordered herself sternly, and leaned out.

It was still light; even now, ten years after she’d left Fala’isi, she found the slow twilights of Europe enchanting. The tropical nights of the Pacific had crashed down like a pall, snuffing out the hot, brilliant colours of the island within minutes.

The air was pure, scented with a ripeness that hinted at harvest and full barns. Because the room was above the ramparts, she could look out across the valley. Small dim clusters of lights marked villages, and high on the bulk of the surrounding mountains the few pinpricks must be from isolated farmsteads.

Craning, she saw several windows glowing in one of the castle towers; as she watched, someone walked across them, pulling the curtains closed.

Some primal instinct made her cringe back. Eyes wide and strained, she watched the unknown man—probably the uncommunicative manservant—extinguish the squares of golden light.

Above her glittered stars, the constellations alien. Growing up, she’d learned every star—and had known almost every palm tree and person on the island, she thought wistfully.

Homesickness and something more painful washed over her. However much she loved Fala’isi, there was nothing there for her now, and this was her last chance to retrieve the career that Gabe had ruthlessly derailed.

Her mouth twisted into a grimace. Not that she could trace the swift extinction of her career directly to him—he was far too subtle. But although the nouveau riche might have flocked to patronise a woman who’d been engaged to such a powerful man, any hint that she was a thief would have sent them fleeing.

And hint there must have been. The theft of the necklace, the famous Queen’s Blood, had never reached the media, but her employer had sacked her the moment Gabe had broken their engagement.

The necklace had blighted everything she’d worked for, everything she’d loved. The most precious heirloom of Gabe’s family for a thousand years. For her, she thought starkly, it was cursed.

The only time she’d worn it, at the very grand wedding of a cousin of Gabe’s, a superstitious shudder had iced her spine.

Gabe had put it on her himself, and even the touch of his hands on her shoulders hadn’t been able to warm her. She’d asked too quickly, ‘Who made it?’

‘No one knows. Some experts say it originated from a Scythian hoard,’ Gabe had said, eyes narrowed and intent as he’d settled the heavy chain on her shoulders. ‘They were a nomadic people from the steppes, noted for their cruelty and their magnificent work in gold. The rubies are definitely from Burma.’

She’d watched herself in the mirror, half entranced by the necklace’s beauty, half repelled by its bloody history. It had a presence, an aura made up of much more than the fact that it was beyond price, so rare it couldn’t be insured.

And in spite of her heartfelt, desperate protests, Gabe had been so certain she’d stolen it he’d broken off their engagement in the cruellest way. She’d learned of it from his press release.

Even now she felt sick at the memory of the resulting media uproar, the flashbulbs, the sickening innuendoes, the lies and gossip and jokes. For three months she’d frantically searched for a new job and watched her savings dwindle.

Yet nothing had been as nightmarish as realising that the man who’d wooed her with a savage tenderness that had swept her off her feet had ruthlessly used his power and influence to ruin her life.

She’d loved Gabe so much, and, fool that she was, she’d let herself be convinced that this magnificent man loved her, too. But at the first test of his love it had been revealed to be an illusion. Her only buttress against collapse had been her pride.

And her skill as an interior designer, she reminded herself. She was good, damn it!

Fala’isi was as distant to her as the stars, part of a life long gone. Fortunately, after several months of desperate endeavour, one decorator had agreed to give her a chance. She owed it to him to do this properly, even though he’d made it more than clear that if there was ever the smallest slip-up she’d go. So far he’d watched her closely, but the fact that he’d let her off the leash now must mean that he was learning to trust her.

A knock on the door jerked her out of her unhappy thoughts. ‘Come in,’ she called.

The manservant brought in her suitcase and placed it on a stand.

‘Thank you,’ she said, smiling at him.

He gave a stiff nod. ‘If you need anything, madam, there is a bell-pull,’ he said, and left, closing the door silently behind him.

Rebuffed, Sara caught sight of herself in a mirror and shuddered. She needed a shower and she needed it now. Mourning the forlorn mess her life had become wasn’t getting her anywhere; better to summon her energies and make this a success. And the first thing to go, she thought, should be the bell-pull, long and gold and tasselled in the most vulgar way.

The bathroom was just as depressing as the bedroom, an abomination in mock-Victorian style with gilded taps and a marble tub. And the plumbing—well, it needed first aid.

No, surgery—a major transplant, in fact. Grimly Sara washed in water that was barely lukewarm.

Back in the room she looked around, her frown deepening as she realised that her suitcase had disappeared. Heart thumping, she went across to a large armoire against one wall and, yes, there were her clothes, either stacked on the shelves or hanging. Someone—not the man who’d shown her in, she hoped—had been busy while she’d showered.

Prominently displayed on a hook inside the door were her sleek, ankle-length black skirt, a jetty silk camisole and her discreet, long-sleeved textured top, its transparent black webbed by silver mesh.

Obviously castle owners dressed for dinner. She hadn’t brought high heels, but the skirt was long enough to hide the tops of her black ankle boots.

‘Thank you, whoever you are,’ she said devoutly to the unknown person who’d taken pity on her and hinted at suitable gear.

Once dressed, a quick glance in the mirror revealed that she looked suitably anonymous. She made up with restraint, settling on a faint darkening of her eyes and berry-coloured lipgloss rather than the full armour. She couldn’t afford, she thought cynically, to look like a woman on the make!

Carefully she pulled back her hair, pinning it into a neat, classic chignon at the back.

A tactful knock at the door set her heart slamming in her chest. Calm down, she told herself sternly. No Igor, no vampires; this is a job—and your future depends on it, so go out there and do your best.

The manservant stood back as she came through. ‘This way, madam,’ he said, and took her down in the lift, although not all the way to the bottom floor, then escorted her along another stone corridor.

‘To the parlour,’ he told her in his colourless voice. ‘It is less formal than the drawing room.’

Oh, good, so this wasn’t going to be a formal occasion.

Trying to regulate her heartbeats, she gazed discreetly around for clues to the taste of the owners. In spite of her American client, the original ancestors were still in residence; Sara met the painted eyes of one haughtily beautiful woman and wondered who she was, and why she seemed strangely familiar.

Her companion stopped outside a door and flung it open, announcing, ‘Miss Milton.’

And Sara walked into the nightmare that had haunted her dreams for the past year.

After the tasteless kitsch of her bedroom, the elegant, panelled study came as a shock—but not as much a shock as the man who stood beside the marble Renaissance chimneypiece.

Gabe Considine, the man she’d loved and had been going to marry. Tall, lean, yet powerfully built, clad in the formal black and white of evening clothes, his boldly chiselled features and slashing cheekbones exuding an uncompromising impression of power and authority.

And although not a muscle in his lean, handsome face moved when he saw her, Sara sensed a dark, formidable satisfaction in him that chilled her through to her bones.

For a terrified second every muscle in her body locked into stasis, holding her frozen to the floor.

‘Thank you, Webster,’ Gabe said, his voice cool and autocratic. He waited until the door closed behind the man, then smiled, and drawled, ‘Welcome to my ancestors’ castle, Sara.’

Pride stiffened her spine; pride, and the sick knowledge that a trap had been sprung.

After swallowing, to ease her arid throat, she said thinly, ‘I won’t say it’s a pleasure to be here.’

‘I didn’t expect you to.’ Eyes the colour and warmth of polished steel raked her face, summoned scorching heat to her skin as his gaze drifted downward.

Cynically, Gabe decided that she’d dressed carefully for this. Although her clothes were outwardly demure, the neckline revealed the lovely lines of her throat and her every breath subtly called attention to the curves of the breasts beneath the silver mesh.

As for the straight black skirt, so simple and straight—until she took a step, and the skirt opened just above the knee to showcase a long, elegant leg.

A cold haze of jealousy clouded his brain. According to the firm that was running surveillance on her, she hadn’t gone out with anyone else in the past year, but her salary wasn’t enough to buy clothes like this. Second-hand? Probably; whatever, it didn’t matter.

The classic hairstyle revealed her perfect features, cool and composed except for the luscious mouth, and even that she’d toned down with a mere film of rosy colour. She wore no jewellery at all, yet the overall effect was of a woman confident of her body and her sexuality.

Unbidden memories swamped his mind—of her beneath him, soft and warm and silken, of her little gasping cries as she climaxed around him, the scent of her skin and the silken cloak of her hair, the way her voice changed from crisp confidence to an enchanting husky shyness when he made love to her, the way she laughed—

Ruthlessly Gabe reimposed control over his unruly body.

‘You look well,’ he said smoothly. ‘Cool, sophisticated, yet businesslike. But then, image is your talent.’

He watched the colour fade from that exquisite magnolia skin. No sign of blusher, he noted.

‘I hope my talent is a little more substantial than that,’ she said, crisply turning the unspoken insult from herself to her work. ‘I like to feel that interior decorating does more than create a pretty background. This, for example—’ looking around his study ‘—bears no resemblance to the bedroom you’ve given me. I’m sure I don’t need to ask you which room you feel most comfortable in.’

A quick rally; but then, people who made a living from conning others had to have instant recovery when they were caught out.

‘I chose to meet you here in the study because this is how I want the rest of the castle to be,’ he said smoothly. ‘Appropriate is probably the best word to use. Would you like a drink?’

To his surprise she accepted, although her eyes widened when he poured champagne. She’d noticed that it was an extremely good vintage, and she was wondering what he was celebrating. Good; he wanted her unsettled.

And he’d succeeded. When she took the glass her fingers tightened for a betraying few seconds around the fragile stem.

Gabe waited, then said, on a note of caustic appreciation, ‘Here’s to reunions.’

Her lashes drooped over the tilted grey-green eyes, and his pulses leapt. She was, he thought with savage self-contempt, the only woman who could override his common sense with one sideways glance.

She took a swift sip of the wine, then set the glass down and turned her head to gaze into the leaping flames in the fireplace. Her hair gleamed rich mahogany against the matt satin of her skin.

‘Why did you bring me here?’ she asked, her voice level and toneless.

He didn’t answer straight away, and after a moment she glanced back at him.

She’d lost weight, he thought with an irrational spurt of concern. ‘I thought it was time we discussed things without the unnecessary complication of emotions.’

Had he got over her so soon? A swift glance at his implacable face convinced her. Of course he no longer loved her…if he ever had.

Probably their relationship had been a temporary aberration on his part. He couldn’t have felt anything true or lasting.

After all, what could the scion of a princely house, a man who moved confidently in the upper regions of power and influence, have in common with a woman like her? No money, no family—no idea of her father’s name, even—and no status.

She hid her pain with another sip of the champagne. But he could have been kinder—well, no. Her lips sketched a cynical little smile. He thought she’d conned him out of his most precious possession, and the huge media fall-out from their break-up would have rubbed his pride raw.

‘I don’t know why you set this up,’ she said evenly. ‘I have nothing to say to you, beyond that I don’t know where the necklace is. If I’d known you were here I would never have come.’

He lifted a mocking brow. ‘I find that hard to believe. You once told me that you researched your clients well before you started a job. And you knew I had links to Illyria.’

‘I knew you were a cousin of the Prince, but I had no idea that you owned a thumping great castle here!’ she countered. ‘Anyway, you’re meant to be in—’

His cold smile stopped the betraying words.

‘Don’t lie, Sara.’ Like her Polynesian friends in Fala’isi, he pronounced her name with a long vowel—Sahra…

She’d always loved the way he said it, the two syllables falling lazily, sensuously, from his tongue like an endearment, his tone a seduction in itself.

Not now, though. He’d turned it into a hard, subtly insolent epithet.

Bitterness and anger shortened her words into sharp little arrows. ‘Of course I made sure that you wouldn’t be in Illyria. Why aren’t you in South America at the United Nations conference?’

‘Because I arranged for you to come here.’

CHAPTER THREE

GABE came towards her, silent and formidably graceful as the wolf his ancestors had been called. Only a tough involuntary pride stopped Sara from taking a backward step, and she lifted her chin to meet his eyes with as much defiant composure as she could produce. She would not be intimidated.

She’d done nothing wrong.

‘I won’t be here for long,’ she retorted smartly.

‘You’ll stay until I send you away, Sara.’

‘You can’t do that!’ She dragged in a sharp breath, but it failed to deliver enough oxygen to energise her stunned brain.

‘I can do anything I want with you.’ He waited, drawing out the silence before finishing softly. ‘No one knows you’re here.’

‘My boss…’

His smile chilled her blood. ‘He won’t help.’ He waited with speculative dispassion while she struggled with the implications of that confident statement.

Sara’s hand clenched on the stem of her glass and a huge emptiness hollowed out her insides. Stonily she asked, ‘Are you implying that you arranged my job for me?’

‘Of course. I wanted you where I could keep an eye on you.’ He spoke casually, as though it was the most natural thing in the world for him to have done.

And, of course, it was.

Sara’s mouth dropped open. Stunned, she gazed at him in stupefied disbelief.

The unexpected offer of a job from a respected interior designer had literally given her something to live for. To learn that Gabe had organised it, and that her work meant nothing, hurt her so deeply she couldn’t speak.

She should have known, Sara thought as humiliation ate into her, leaving her cold and shaky. Gabe didn’t take betrayal lightly; he was famous for his long memory and his insistence on fair play. He’d want revenge. And he had the power and the money to seek it cold, to organise it with ruthless efficiency, so that she had no way of protecting herself.

Struggling to keep a clear mind, she fought back a sense of debilitating helplessness. He’d played with her life as though she were a puppet. It hurt, and it frightened her.

Nevertheless, she wasn’t going to surrender. He’d enjoy that; it would satisfy his desire to humiliate her. ‘I suppose I’m no longer working for him?’

‘That depends entirely on you,’ he said, watching her with coldly speculative eyes. ‘I want the Queen’s Blood, Sara. Tell me where it is and your life will be your own again.’

Her own? She could almost have laughed if his dispassionate tone hadn’t bruised so painfully. Gabe might have been able to cut her out of his life with merciless precision, but her heart was not so easily placated; it still trembled when she looked at him, longing for a commitment that had only ever existed in her wishful thinking.

If he’d loved her, he’d have at least given her a hearing when she’d tried to see him. But, no—he’d accepted the word of his grandmother’s maid rather than listen to the woman he’d been planning to marry!

Knowing it was hopeless, she said in a brittle voice, ‘If I knew where the rubies are, believe me, I’d have told you.’

‘Listen to me,’ he said forcefully, his eyes hooded and dangerous. ‘It occurred to me that you might be afraid. That’s why I brought you here—where you’ll be completely safe.’

‘Not from you!’ she retorted.

His wide shoulders moved in a slight negligent shrug. ‘Of course you’re safe from me—I’m not a barbarian.’

‘You threatened me about half a minute ago!’ He wasn’t going to get away with deliberately trying to intimidate her. She matched his hostile stare with one of her own, eyes glinting green as grass beneath her slim winged brows.

Another shrug underlined his Mediterranean heritage, from those warlike warriors whose blood had mingled with that of princesses from all over Europe to give him arrogantly handsome features and stunning colouring—hair like ebony, eyes as cold and blue as the sheen on a scimitar, and skin of warm bronze.

‘I knew you wouldn’t be intimidated,’ he said coolly. ‘But planning and executing a heist as successful as the Queen’s Blood is one thing—selling the thing is another. That involves criminals, and where this amount of money is involved the criminals are not loveable rogues. Stop hedging, Sara—it’s not getting you anywhere. Tell me where the Queen’s Blood is and I’ll let you go without fear of prosecution.’

The last tiny flicker of hope died. How could he be so intelligent in every other respect, yet so bone-headedly convinced that she’d stolen the necklace? Sara snatched another look at his face and saw beneath his amused contempt an unsparing determination.

Mindless panic roiled starkly beneath her ribs. She hid it by snapping, ‘You meant it when you said you could do whatever you liked with me.’

His black brows drew together in a forbidding frown that revved her heart-rate up into the stratosphere. ‘Oh, yes, I meant it. I could.’ His voice turned sarcastic. ‘But do try to restrain your vivid imagination. I don’t intend to hurt you.’

‘Why should I believe you?’ she demanded, realising too late that attacking his credibility was hardly the best way to get him to reconsider this crazy scheme and let her go.

Anyway, it wouldn’t work. Oh, Gabe definitely had a temper, but it was all the more intimidating for being so tightly controlled. More steadily she finished, ‘You didn’t believe me.’

‘Did I ever hurt you?’

‘I—no,’ she admitted reluctantly. Not physically, anyway. Indeed, he’d always been exquisitely tender with her.

Her heart-rate picked up as she remembered just how tender—and how she’d gloried in his strength and his potent male sexuality.

‘So stop pretending to be scared of me,’ he said crisply. ‘And don’t try to evade the subject. If you’re worried about your safety, be assured that no one can reach you here—no army has ever taken the castle by force.’

Sara remained stubbornly mute. Anything she had to say would only make things worse.

He waited, and when she didn’t fill the silence, went on relentlessly. ‘Give me the details of the theft and who else was involved. I promise you’ll be safe.’

As he’d once promised to love her?

‘I don’t know what happened to the wretched necklace,’ she told him, each word emerging with mechanical precision. ‘I gave it to the maid—to Marya—to put in the safe, and to the best of my knowledge she did just that.’

His response was unexpected. Instead of the chilling disbelief she’d had to endure when she’d tried to convince him of this a year before, he nodded. ‘And she swears that she did that, too. But about an hour afterwards she realised that she hadn’t put your engagement ring there, so she slipped down from her bedroom to do that. When she got there, the safe was empty. It had been opened by someone who knew the combination, which, as you set the combination when you arrived to stay with Hawke, means that you took it.’

A raw edge in his voice alerted her. She glanced up sharply, shock freezing her brain when she saw the dangerous glitter in his eyes. Stubbornly she retorted, ‘Or Marya.’

Holding her gaze, he said on a lethal note, ‘Marya is completely trustworthy.’

‘You’re so sure of that?’ she asked impetuously, knowing even as the words tumbled from her lips that she was on a hiding to nothing.

She hadn’t stolen the necklace, so the thief had to be Marya. Why, she didn’t understand, but there was no one else.

‘I’m sure,’ he said, his handsome, autocratic face hardening. ‘And, as the Queen’s Blood hasn’t yet appeared on the market—’

‘How do you know?’

Wide shoulders lifting in the slightest of shrugs, he kept his steel-blue gaze fixed on her face. She felt as though she had diamond lasers boring through the outer layer of skin and bone, right into her brain.

But if he could do that, he’d see her innocence.

He said, ‘The jewellery world is small, and it’s been under surveillance ever since the Queen’s Blood was taken. Apart from the value of the gold and the stones, the necklace is priceless as an artefact; an ancient, solid gold chain studded with perfectly matched cabochon rubies could only be sold to a collector. He’d have to be very rich and very unscrupulous, and have more money than sense.’

She frowned. ‘Why more money than sense?’

‘Because it could never be worn, never be shown—not for generations, if ever. It’s so well known that it would immediately be claimed by me, or my heirs. And if my line fails, Illyria would be entitled to the thing because it was originally found here.’ He stopped for a few measured seconds before adding deliberately, ‘But it hasn’t been bought by any collector, Sara.’

Eyes as cold and hard as ice searched her face. He thought she already knew all this; he was humouring what he considered to be her sly treachery.

Pain cramped her into rigidity. A year hadn’t been long enough to chisel him from her heart. She’d loved him so much….

Without emotion, he continued, ‘It could have been broken up and sold discreetly, stone by stone, on the black market. When the tyrant took over Illyria, my grandfather gave the necklace to someone to hide. After the usurper was assassinated, the only person who knew the hiding place brought it to me. I had each gem in the necklace measured and profiled, and its signature is stored. Burmese rubies the size of those in the Queen’s Blood and of the very best quality and colour—pure red with the faintest undertone of blue—haven’t been found for centuries. If even one such ruby turned up on the market I’d know within a few hours. It hasn’t happened.’

‘Because Marya doesn’t want to sell it.’

Without moving a muscle, he said, ‘Can you give me one good reason why Marya, who was my grandmother’s maid, would want to steal the Queen’s Blood?’