Marion Lennox - Crowned - The Palace Nanny

And she walked deliberately inside and let the screen door bang closed after her.

S HEwas true to her word. She wouldn’t speak to him until Zoe woke up. He took a walk on the beach, feeling ridiculous in his ridiculous uniform. He came back and talked for a while to a little black cat who deigned to be sociable. Finally Zoe woke, but even then Elsa only spoke when necessary.

‘I’ll give you the address of my lawyer,’ she said.

‘I already know who your lawyer is.’

‘Of course you do,’ she said cordially. ‘Silly me.’

‘You’re being…’

‘Obstructive?’ she said. ‘Yes, I am.’

‘What’s obstructive?’ Zoe asked.

‘Not letting your cousin Stefanos have what he wants.’

‘What does he want?’

‘You might ask him.’

Zoe turned to him, puzzled. ‘What do you want?’

‘To get to know you,’ he said, refusing to be distracted by Elsa’s anger. ‘Your papa was a very good friend of mine. When he left Khryseis we didn’t write-he wanted a clean break. I should have made more of an effort to keep in touch and I’ll be sorry for the rest of my life that I didn’t. That he married and had a little girl called Zoe…that he died…it breaks my heart that I didn’t know.’

‘It makes you sad?’

‘Very sad.’

But apparently Zoe knew about sad-and she had a cure.

‘When I’m in hospital and I’m sad, Elsa tells me about the fish she’s seen that day, and shells and starfish. Elsa keeps saying the sea’s waiting for me to get well. She brings in pictures of the beach and the house and the cats and she pins them all over the walls so every time I wake up I can see that the sea and this house and our cats are waiting for me.’

His gaze flew to Elsa. She was staring blankly ahead, as if she hadn’t heard.

But she had heard, he thought. She surely had.

And he knew then…As he watched her stoical face he realised that he was threatening her foundations. He was threatening to remove a little girl she loved with all her heart.

He’d never thought of this as a possibility. That a nanny could truly love his little cousin.

He’d come here expecting to meet Mrs Elsa Murdoch, paid nanny. Instead he’d met Elsa, marine biologist, friend, protector, mother to Zoe in every sense but name.

After the shock of learning of Zoe’s existence, his plan had been to rescue his orphaned cousin, take her back to Khryseis and pay others to continue her care. Or, if Zoe was attached to this particular nanny, then he could continue to employ her to give the kid continuity.

It had to be option two.

Only if he broached it now Elsa might well lock the door and call the authorities to throw him off her land.

So do it when? He had so little time.

‘I need to go back to Khryseis tomorrow,’ he told Zoe and glanced sideways to see relief flood Elsa’s face. ‘Elsa’s said she’ll drive me into town now. But I’ve upset her. She thought I might want to take you away from her, and I’d never do that. I promise. So if you and Elsa drive me into town now, can I come and visit again tomorrow morning?’ He looked ruefully down at his ceremonial trousers-now liberally coated in cat fur. ‘If I’m welcome?’

‘Is he welcome?’ Zoe asked Elsa.

‘If you want him to come,’ Elsa said neutrally. ‘Stefanos is your cousin.’

Zoe thought about it. He was being judged, he thought, and the sensation was weird. Judged by an eight-year-old, with Elsa on the sidelines doing her own judging.

Or…it seemed she’d already judged.

‘If you come you should bring your togs,’ Zoe said.

‘Togs?’

‘Your swimming gear-if you own any without tassels and braid,’ Elsa said, still obviously forcing herself not to glower. ‘As a farewell visit,’ she added warningly. ‘Because, if you really are Zoe’s cousin, then I accept that she should get to know you.’

‘That’s gracious of you,’ he said gravely.

‘It is,’ she said and managed a half-hearted smile.

The drive back to town started in silence. Elsa’s car was an ancient family wagon, filled in the back with-of all things-lobster pots. There was a pile of buoys and nets heaped on the front passenger seat, so he was forced to sit in the rear seat with Zoe.

She could have put the gear in the back, he thought, but she didn’t offer and he wasn’t pushing it. So she was chauffeur and he and Zoe were passengers.

‘You catch lobsters?’ he said cautiously.

‘We weigh them, sex them, tag then and let them go,’ she said briefly from the front.

‘You have a boat?’

‘The university supplies one. But I only go when Zoe can come with me.’

‘It’s really fun,’ Zoe said. ‘I like catching the little ones. You have to be really careful when you pick them up. If you grab them behind their necks they can’t reach and scratch you.’

‘We have lobsters on the Diamond Isles,’ he told her. ‘My friend Nikos is a champion fisherman.’

‘Do you fish?’ Zoe demanded.

‘I did when I was a boy.’

They chatted on. Elsa was left to listen. And fret.

He was good, she conceded. He was wriggling his way into Zoe’s trust and that wasn’t something lightly achieved. Like her father before her, Zoe was almost excruciatingly shy, and that shyness had been made worse by people’s reaction to her scars.

Stefanos hadn’t once referred to her scars. To the little girl it must be as if he hadn’t noticed them.

The concept, for Zoe, must be huge. Here was someone out of her papa’s past, wanting to talk to her about interesting stuff like what he’d done on Khryseis when he was a boy with her papa.

She shouldn’t be driving him back into town. She should be asking him to dinner, even asking him to sleep over to give Zoe as much contact as she could get.

Only there were other issues. Like the Crown. Like the fact that he’d said that Zoe had to return to Khryseis. Like crazy stuff that she couldn’t consider.

Like asking a prince of the blood whether he’d like to sleep on her living room settee, she thought suddenly, and the idea was so ridiculous she almost smiled.

He was leaving tomorrow. He’d stopped talking about the possibility of Zoe coming with him. Maybe he’d given up.

She glanced into the rear-view mirror and he looked up and met her eyes.

No, she thought, and fear settled back around her heart. Prince Stefanos of Khryseis looked like a man who didn’t give up-on anything.

The township of Waratah Cove had two three-star hotels and one luxury six-star resort out on the headland past the town.

Without asking, she turned the car towards the headland and he didn’t correct her.

Money, she thought bleakly. If she could have the cost of one night’s accommodation in this place…

‘Can you stop here?’ Stefanos asked and she jammed her foot on the brake and stopped dead. Maybe a bit too suddenly.

‘Wow,’ Zoe said. ‘Are you crabby or something?’

‘Or something,’ she said neutrally, glancing again at Stefanos in the rear-view mirror.

‘Your nanny thinks I spend too much money,’ he said, amused, and she flushed. Was she so obvious?

‘Elsa’s not my nanny,’ Zoe said, amused herself.

‘What is she?’

‘She’s just my Elsa.’

My Elsa. It was said with such sureness that he knew he could never break this bond. If he was to take Zoe back to Khryseis, he needed to take them both.

He had to get this right.

‘So why did you want me to stop here?’ Elsa asked.

‘Because the ambassador to the Diamond Isles leaked to the media that I was coming here,’ he said bitterly. ‘That’s why I had to find myself a uniform and attend the reception. I’ve already had to bribe-heavily-the chauffeur they arranged for me so he wouldn’t tell anyone my location. I imagine there’ll be cameramen outside my hotel, wanting to know where I’ve been, and I don’t want a media circus descending on Zoe. I can walk the last couple of hundred yards.’