Melanie Milburne - The Future King's Love-Child

Cassie felt a small smile tug at her mouth. ‘She was rather intent on landing herself a rich husband, if I recall.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ Sebastian said with a small laugh. ‘She was good fun. I liked her. She was very no-nonsense if you know what I mean. What you saw was what you got.’

‘Unlike me.’ Cassie wasn’t sure why she had said it, much less how she was going to deal with it now it was said. She looked away from his suddenly penetrating gaze, and, picking up her fork with a tiny rattle against the plate, resumed eating, but with little appetite.

‘Tell me about it, Cassie,’ he pressed her gently. ‘Tell me what happened that night.’

Cassie stared at one of the octopus curls on her plate and wished herself a thousand miles away. Why couldn’t he leave the past where it belonged? What good did it do to haul over the ice-cold coals of regret? She couldn’t change anything. That had been the problem in the first place.

She couldn’t change anything.

‘I’d rather not talk about it,’ she said, and put her fork down with another little clatter against the edge of the plate.

‘Did you have an argument or something?’ he asked.

‘Or something,’ she said with a curl of her lip. ‘I said leave it, Sebastian. It’s done with. I don’t like being reminded of it.’

‘It must have been terrifying for you to be carted off to prison like that,’ he said, clearly determined to keep pressing her.

Cassie gave him a resentful look. ‘I didn’t happen to see you in the crowd to offer me your support.’

His expression darkened. ‘Would you have accepted my support if I had offered it?’ he asked. ‘You told me never to contact you again, remember? In any case I went abroad for several months after you ended our affair. I didn’t hear much about what was going on and no one in my family thought to tell me because they didn’t even know of our involvement. By the time I got back my father had already warned Lissa never to contact you and had packed her off to university in Paris before she could utter a single word of protest.’

‘So when you did get back you let me rot in prison because you didn’t want your father to find out we’d had an affair,’ she said bitterly.

‘Wrong!’ He was only a decibel or two away from shouting the word at her. ‘Cassie, why can’t you see this from my point of view?’

Cassie got up from the table, pushing in her chair with such force it sent a shock wave through his wineglass, the alcohol spilling over the edges and onto the crisp white tablecloth. ‘Oh, I can see this from your point of view, all right,’ she snipped at him. ‘A few months ago I was just yet another nameless person locked away in prison. Someone from your past you didn’t dare speak about, much less step forward and defend. Now you find I am one of the key players at the orphanage you want to support, so you think it might be timely to pour oil over troubled waters to mollify me enough to maintain your reputation in case I spill all to the press about our little clandestine affair.’

‘I care nothing for my reputation,’ he ground out with a flintlike flash of his dark eyes. ‘It is my family I am concerned about. I owe it to the generations of Karedes who have gone before me to act in a manner fitting for a future king.’

She rolled her eyes at him. ‘So I guess that’s why we aren’t having lunch where everyone can see us, right, Sebastian? To maintain your family’s honour.’

His brow was still deeply furrowed. ‘I was thinking of your safety. I told you last night there are still many people in the community who think you should have got life in prison.’

‘I did get life!’ Cassie said, closer to tears than she had been in years. ‘Do you think this is ever going to go away? I am marked for life as the daughter who killed her father. I see the way people look at me. They even cross to the other side of the road rather than look me in the eye. Don’t tell me I haven’t already been punished enough. Just don’t tell me.’

He stepped towards her but she moved away, holding up a hand like a barrier to ward him off. ‘Please…’ She was close to begging and hated herself for it. ‘Give me a moment… please …’

Sebastian clenched his hands to stop them reaching for her. He wanted to comfort her, to tell her things would improve now she was free, but he wasn’t sure she wanted to hear such platitudes from him. In any case, he wasn’t entirely sure they held any truth. But he’d also wanted to tell her how deeply shocked he had been to hear of her father’s death and the charge of murder she had been landed with. He could not believe his Caz could have done such a thing. But then he hadn’t thought her capable of the black-hearted deceit she had informed him of the day prior to her father’s death.

She had gone from his bed to one of her many lovers, probably laughing about him behind his back the whole time. His gut still churned thinking about it, even after all this time. She wasn’t the person he had fallen in love with. He realised in hindsight the person he had loved was a fantasy he had constructed in his head. He had been a fool not to see her for what she was. She had acted the part of the devoted lover so easily and he had fallen for it. She was like a chameleon, changing constantly to fit in with the company or each situation she found herself in.

But who was Cassandra Kyriakis now? She had spent five years in prison and another eleven months on parole, an experience any young woman would find life-changing, hopefully even reforming in some way. In any case, her days of living off her father’s wealth were long gone. Theo’s estate had been divided up between distant relatives, leaving Cassie virtually penniless. While her father had been alive, Cassie had spent his money as if entitled to every euro of it.

Each time Sebastian had dared to bring up the subject of her taking a career or job of her own she had laughed in his face, telling him she was having a perfectly fine time living the life of a socialite.

Cassie appeared to enjoy her work at the orphanage now, but what would happen when her parole period was up? Sebastian had had enough trouble adjusting to living constantly in the public eye, but how much worse would it be for Cassie with the shame of her father’s death hanging over her?

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