Marion Lennox - The Prince’s Captive Wife

‘So it’s Spain tomorrow. While Alex honeymoons.’

‘He’ll be back. He knows his place.’

‘And he even enjoys it.’

‘Enjoyment doesn’t come into it. Family does.’

‘Right.’

‘You’re not thinking-’

‘Of course I’m thinking,’ Andreas snapped, shrugging off his brother’s hand. ‘I’m thinking so hard my head hurts. I need to get some rest.’ He paused and a glimmer of a smile returned behind his eyes. ‘Even my wife says I’m tired. My wife.’

‘It’s a marriage of convenience.’

‘Yes,’ he said and closed his eyes. ‘A marriage of convenience. Family…Hell, Sebastian, let me be. Spain tomorrow. Duty calls.’

She bathed away the dust of the day, she picked at the truly excellent dinner Honey put before her, and then she wandered down through the home paddock to the Munwannay gum tree. To sink on the grass round her little son’s grave. To close her eyes and let pain wash over her in waves so great she thought they’d overwhelm her.

‘I can do this,’ she whispered. ‘I can go on.’

For whom?

‘There’s no choice,’ she told the little boy buried deep under the leaf litter. ‘I love Munwannay. It’s my home.’

‘Your home’s with your husband,’ she told herself.

‘He doesn’t need me.’ She knew that. ‘He even agreed I should be here.’

‘It’ll be better when Deefer’s here,’ she whispered but no one answered. No one agreed.

Her little son was gone. Her husband was in another world.

She was alone.

The first of the cattle arrived the day Deefer’s quarantine expired. There was nothing Holly wanted more than to fly down to Perth and fetch him, but these cattle were the beasts she’d chosen herself.

Bluey was good but he’d stayed at Munwannay while she’d attended the sales so he didn’t know what she was expecting. Cattle had been switched before. She had to be here when they arrived, to check they were the beasts she’d bought, to welcome the beginning of Munwannay’s rebirth as a prosperous cattle station.

They started arriving at dawn, in a string of road-trains, huge trucks loaded with bewildered beasts. Every truck had to be checked, cattle ticked off individually as they were unloaded, trucks directed to individual paddocks. The cattle would be held in the near paddocks and hand-fed until they settled, then gradually assimilated into a life of freedom, roaming the vast open landscape around them. These were magnificent breeding stock. She’d got it right, Holly thought in satisfaction as she worked on. It’d be okay. She could do this.

And if she worked really hard she might be able to put Andreas out of her mind.

She worked on all through the day, ceaselessly checking cattle, giving orders, working side by side with Bluey and the two other men they now employed. They needed more staff yet, she thought. A couple of jillaroos or jackaroos. They needed more cattle, too.

And tomorrow she’d fly to Perth to collect Deefer. That should make her the happiest of women. She had nothing left to complain about.

So why did she feel so empty?

At seven that night she saw the last of the trucks drive off the property. Even Bluey was beat. He headed back to his quarters with Rocket beside him and Holly watched them go and thought wistfully that tomorrow she’d have her own dog.

Honey had set up a trestle table of food out under the gums. Holly and the men had eaten intermittently during the day, grabbing sandwiches in passing. Honey was there now, clearing away. She glanced up at Holly, who was standing on the veranda looking into middle distance.

‘You want something else to eat, love?’

‘No, thanks. I might just have a bath and hit the cot.’

‘You might want to rethink that,’ Honey said and glanced at her watch. ‘You’re expecting a visitor.’ She shaded her eyes and stared up into the western sky. ‘Speaking of the devil…’ She smiled. ‘Right on cue.’

‘Who…?’

‘He rang before,’ Honey said. ‘When you were down the bottom paddock. He reckoned he’d be here at seven. “Make sure she’s home,” he told me, and where else would you be? I asked him. So here he is. Do you reckon he’ll need a sandwich?’

‘I…who?’

‘Who do you think?’ Honey said and beamed and collected a pile of plates and walked up the veranda steps. ‘Who do you think, indeed?’ she repeated as she walked past Holly and through the door into the kitchen. ‘Some wife you make.’

For it was him. Of course it was him. The chopper settled in the same dusty paddock it had landed that first day, carrying Sebastian’s thugs. Georgiou stepped out first and for one awful moment Holly expected the other three men to follow.

But she needn’t have worried. Georgiou hauled open the door to the rear, and it was Andreas who stepped lightly out onto the dust and looked up to the house.

Andreas. And in his arms…

Deefer.

‘Deefer,’ Holly whispered as if it were the little dog who mattered most and not the man holding him.

‘Call him,’ Andreas yelled as the sound of the motor died to nothing. Holly was already moving numbly down the veranda steps, her legs operating without any conscious thought.

‘Deefer,’ she called as if in a dream, and Andreas set the little dog down and he barrelled across the paddock so fast he was a black and white blur. He didn’t check until he reached her. She stooped a little but not much-she didn’t need to-for he was leaping high, with one bound flying straight into her arms. His rough little tongue was licking her from chin to forehead and his whole body was wriggling in ecstasy.

‘Deefer. Oh, Deef,’ Holly said and would have burst into tears. But there was no room for tears for Andreas was striding across the gap between them, almost as fast as Deefer. Before she knew it she was gathered into his arms, held in a grip of iron with Deef somehow sandwiched in between.

‘What…? What…?’

‘You said you couldn’t collect Deefer yourself,’ he said, and smiled down at her with a look of such tenderness that something melted deep inside. That he look at her like this…

It’d only be a flying visit. She had to get hold of herself. She couldn’t afford to melt.

She couldn’t.

‘You planned this.’

‘I hoped it’d work out. I couldn’t promise, because I’ve just come back from France.’

So it was a flying visit. A reassurance to his people that there was a marriage. She could barely make herself speak. How could she bear it? That he come and go again at will?

‘How…how long are you staying?’ she whispered and she could barely get the words out. Her face was muffled against his chest and a fair bit of Deefer was interfering with her ability to speak as well.

He laughed and set her back from him. His black eyes gleamed, with laughter and with something else. Something she’d never seen before.

Assurance? Strength? He truly was a royal prince, she thought. Until this moment she’d never thought of him as truly royal-he’d just been her Andreas who she loved with all her heart. But there was that about him now that spoke of absolute assurance. As if his entire lineage of royal ancestry was right behind him, making him who he was.

‘I’m staying for as long as you want me,’ he told her and her heart stilled within her chest.

‘As long…’

‘As long as you’ll have me, my heart,’ he told her and he bent and kissed her with such tenderness that she could scarcely bear it.

She must have misheard. There must be some sort of catch. But she wasn’t releasing him. He was kissing her and she was kissing him back with such fierce possessiveness that surely he couldn’t let her go.

But finally he did, setting her back, holding her shoulders in his hands and smiling down into her eyes.