The Greek's Duty-Bound Royal Bride / Her Boss's One-Night Baby
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His gaze washed over her, taking in every detail of her sumptuous attire. She wanted to say something—anything! To make some light-hearted remark—something about Cinderella arriving for the ball, maybe, or something about a fairy-tale—whatever she could think of to say with a smile.
But she couldn’t. She couldn’t say a word as his blazing eyes devoured her. The breath had gone from her lungs, her head had emptied of anything at all except his gaze feasting upon her.
And then, dimly, she became aware that her mother and stepfather were waiting to be introduced to the man she was going to marry.
She had to make a huge effort but she drew back her hand, wishing it weren’t quivering like a leaf in autumn. ‘Leon, may I present you to my mother?’ she murmured, trying to stop her voice quivering helplessly.
As if he were also coming to himself, Leon’s expression changed, becoming formal. He turned towards her mother. ‘Lady Constance,’ he said, ‘I’m delighted to meet you at last,’ he said.
‘And I you, Mr Dukaris,’ Ellie heard her mother reply, with an assessing note in her voice.
‘Leon, please...’ he replied immediately.
‘Then you had better call me Connie,’ she invited.
There seemed, Ellie thought, to be a warmer note in her mother’s voice now, and wondered at it, but was grateful, too.
‘Lady Connie,’ Leon compromised, his smile coming again as he turned to Ellie’s stepfather.
Ellie performed the requisite introduction, and was glad that Leon’s demeanour acknowledged that her stepfather was a man of some renown in his field.
As Leon made graceful reference to his work, and Malcolm made a jovial reply in his usual bluff and forthright manner, Ellie glanced around her. She frowned. The only people in the huge Edwardian-style atrium apart from some senior hotel staff were, she realised from their black-suited, discreetly tough-looking appearance, Security.
Leon had clearly seen her glance at them, and he took her arm and ushered them all towards the grand staircase sweeping up to the first-floor ballroom.
‘The hotel is in lockdown until we are in the ballroom,’ he said. ‘Just a precaution, given both your family and the people on the guest list.’
Ellie just nodded. It wasn’t just a precaution—she knew that. But she did not say so, for what would be the point? It was so the world could see and know that Leon Dukaris was marrying royalty, and that royalty were not like other mere mortals on this earth.
It was why, too, he went on addressing her mother as Lady Connie—highlighting that even on her mother’s side, there was ancient nobility—albeit not royal. Her uncle, the Earl of Holmsworth, would be at the wedding, and his two young daughters were to be her flower girls, his ten-year-old son her page boy.
But before the wedding there was tonight’s ball to get through.
Leaning on Leon’s arm slightly more heavily than she’d thought she would need to, because of the sudden weakness in her limbs caused by his presence at her side, she processed with him up the sweeping staircase, then entered the vast, ornate ballroom, festooned with flowers and ablaze with light from a dozen crystal chandeliers, to receive another smattering of applause from the assembled guests.
Ellie smiled about her, but Leon was heading towards the far end, where her father and stepmother were. Two large gilded chairs had been procured, and the Grand Duke and Duchess were presiding over the whole affair.
Dutifully, Ellie curtsied when she reached them, her skirts billowing out in a cloud of blush-pink. Her father, splendid in white tie and tails, stood up and came forward to kiss her, then shook Leon’s hand as he bowed. Behind him the Grand Duchess dipped her head in regal acknowledgement of their arrival, and beside her Marika—looking enchantingly pretty in pale blue—gave her a little wave.
The Grand Duke held up his hand, then announced to the assembled company that he was welcoming them all to the betrothal ball of his daughter and her chosen husband-to-be.
‘The first dance is theirs!’ he declared, and resumed his seat as the orchestra, placed on a raised platform to one side of the room, struck up.
It was a Strauss waltz, and with a strange little catch in her throat, finding it impossible to resist such familiar and lilting music, Ellie went into Leon’s arms. She raised her left hand to his shoulder, had her right clasped in his firm grip. For a moment, as his arm came about her waist and he drew her closer to him, she felt her legs weaken further, felt heady at his closeness, and then, as the music sounded, he whirled her across the polished floor.
She gave a little gasp, her eyes darting to his. She held his gaze, unable to break the hold of it—for it was the fulcrum around which she was turning, around which the whole world seemed to be turning. Everything was becoming a blur but not the deep, dark eyes holding hers. And in them—not in their depths, but at the blazing forefront of his gaze—was molten gold. Pure molten gold...
And she melted into it. Just melted...
Suddenly, out of nowhere, the significance of the evening became clear—here she was, in this utterly over-the-top concoction of a ball gown, bedecked with jewellery, her satin slippers twirling her body around, caught in the arms of this impossibly devastating man, whose dark looks and planed face and sable hair were so ludicrously flattered by the white tie and tails that moulded his powerful body like a glove.
It’s like a fairy-tale! A fairy-tale of mythical princesses and handsome heroes!
But it wasn’t a fairy-tale!
It was true—all of it!
She was waltzing to the music of Strauss, the Waltz King, and she was Princess Elizsaveta of Karylya, and Leon Dukaris was—Oh, he was the most handsome man who had ever walked the earth!
She was enchanted, beguiled and enthralled, spinning around and around to music that no soul on earth could resist, to the music that whirled in her blood, carrying her slippered feet across the ballroom...
And she could not take her eyes from Leon. Not for anything in heaven and earth. Not while the music played, and she danced and she danced in his arms...
With a crescendo of sound, the music stopped. The waltz was over and she was standing there, heart pounding, the blood singing in her veins, exhilaration, wonder and enchantment consuming her.
She was still gazing up at Leon, and he was still holding her in his dancer’s hold, his hand at her waist. Then she felt her hand released, and hers fell to her side, nerveless with exhaustion. She could feel her heart beating so strongly—with the exertion of the dance, and with so much more than that.
She drank him in—the chiselled planes of his face, the sculpted mouth, the dark, drowning gaze of his eyes holding hers. She felt his other hand slip from her waist and she swayed, as if he alone had been holding her steady. And then, with a catch in her throat, she felt him cup her face with his long, strong fingers, tilting it up towards him, the touch of his hands catching at her breath. Her lips parted...helpless, breathless...
‘My Princess...’
His voice was low, and warm, and for her and her alone. And his lips, when they touched hers, were warm and for her and her alone. And his kiss was warm and slow and for her and her alone.
She felt her eyes flutter shut, felt the soft, sensuous glide of his mouth on hers, felt a liquefying rush go through her as if every cell in her body was dissolving. It seemed to go on and on, that kiss...on and on and on...
When his mouth lifted from hers she could only stare, dazed, helpless, her lips still parted. She kept on gazing up at him as his hands slid from her face and he smiled down at her.
‘My Princess...’ he said again, his voice husky.
Then he was tucking her limp hand that suddenly seemed to weigh half a ton into the crook of his arm and he was leading her off the dance floor. And she had to lean into him because she had no strength left in her body...not the slightest bit of strength.
Her mind was a daze, her thoughts a whirl, and the orchestra was striking up again. She was aware that other couples were taking to the floor now, and that Leon was leading her back to where her family sat, her mother and stepfather beside the royal couple, though on less ornate chairs. Marika was being led out onto the dance floor by someone Ellie vaguely recognised as one of the junior members of the British royal family, and seemingly very happy.
But she had no thoughts to spare for her sister or her parents, or for the throng of glittering guests here tonight to see Leon Dukaris present his royal bride-to-be to the world. She had no thoughts at all for anyone at all who was not the man who had swept her onto the dance floor and kissed her like the Princess in a fairy-tale...
Who had taken her, with that waltz and that kiss, to an enchanted realm she never wanted to leave...
CHAPTER SIX
LEON STOOD UNDER the rose-decked silk canopy as the celebrant threw him an encouraging smile. Yet for all that he could feel tension netting him. This was the day, the moment, when he would marry. Would marry his princess bride.
From that original fancy over a year ago, when the idea of marrying a princess had first come to him, to this moment now, when it was actually about to happen, seemed a blur.
Was he mad to do this? To truly go ahead with it?
Marriage was not an affair—it was unknown territory...
Unease flickered in his consciousness. Even with all the safeguards he had placed around what he was doing, ensuring that no delusions of love could come anywhere near this marriage, and that he and the woman he was to wed were doing so for reasons that had nothing to do with any such illusory notions, still unease flickered within him.
Memories, toxic and cruel, plucked at his mind.
Almost he gave them admittance.
Then, with a sudden rustle of movement amongst the serried ranks of guests behind him, he heard the music, up to this moment low and forgettable, start to swell, switching into full volume to herald the arrival of his bride.
He turned.
He could not stop himself.
And as his eyes lit upon her all doubts fled...
Ellie took a breath, pressed her hand on her father’s arm. The music was swelling—the Royal Anthem of Karylya, insisted on by her father. And who was she to deny him this small comfort, when he did not even have his royal regalia any longer, and had to walk his daughter down the aisle in nothing more than commonplace morning dress.
The guests were getting to their feet with a scraping of chairs on the paved ground of the Viscari roof terrace. The unreliable English weather was blessedly clement, so that recourse to the glass conservatory along one side of the rooftop would be unnecessary—except for the serving of the wedding breakfast to follow.
An arbour of roses arched across the aisle and their scent caught at her, adding to the scent from the thousands more blooms arranged to beautify the already stunning landscape architecture of this green oasis high above the city, enclosed and private, far above the masses on the streets below, where the London traffic was quite inaudible.
She could see the celebrant, waiting for them at the far end of the aisle. A civil ceremony was what she had stipulated to Leon—yet even so she still felt a hypocrite as she stepped towards the man waiting to marry her.
The words she’d so bluntly put to Leon echoed in her head.
‘Leon, you’re marrying me for my title, and I’m marrying you because you’re rich enough to bankroll my father and his family.’
Everything—all this extravaganza of a wedding, the guest list crammed with aristocrats and royalty, leaked to the press and the media by Leon for maximum coverage—was for that reason alone.
Yet even though she knew it she felt again the magical brush of Leon’s lips on hers, the enchantment of his kiss whispering of reasons that had nothing to do with her father’s exile, her bridegroom’s ambitions...reasons that fluttered like a butterfly seeking the sweetest nectar...
She felt her hand tremble on her father’s arm, and he patted it reassuringly as they processed forward. Nerves plucked at her, but she knew she must not let them show. Must be as composed, as calm, as perfect a princess bride as she could be.
Do her family proud.
Do Leon proud by being the perfect princess bride for him.
Beneath her veil her eyes went to him, and she was glad of the veil to hide the sudden heating of her cheeks. An air of unreality pressed upon her, as if she could not believe this was truly happening. But all her training came to the fore—as it must.
They reached the celebrant, the anthem ended and the congregation resumed their seats. Leon stepped forward to stand beside her. Her father stepped back to join his wife. Her mother and stepfather flanked them. Behind her Marika, her bridesmaid, took her allotted place, ushering the little flower girls to theirs, their older brother bringing up the rear.
The celebrant began to speak...
She heard the words but did not hear them. Heard her own voice but did not hear it. Heard Leon’s but did not hear it. Let Leon take her hand, slide the wedding band on her nerveless finger, his touch cool. She said more words, and so did he, and then the celebrant was speaking again, to them both.
Joining them in matrimony.
And she was Leon’s princess bride.
‘Where are we going?’ Ellie asked her new husband with mild enquiry.
Leon moved into the London traffic, shifting gear in the million-pound, brand-new supercar delivered that very morning—an enjoyable present to himself for his wedding day.
‘Wait and see,’ he answered.
He had told her nothing about his plans for a honeymoon, and wanted it to be a surprise. A pleasing one, he hoped...
They had been waved off amidst laughter and an easily foiled attempt by his new bride’s brother—finished now with his schooldays—and some of the younger males among the wedding guests to attach rattling tin cans to the bumper. Instead they had contented themselves by spraying ‘Just married!’ in shaving foam on the gleaming rear end of the car.
His bride’s flower girls—Ellie’s cousins Lady Emily and Lady Rose—had excitedly festooned them, and the car bonnet, with flower blossoms, giggling madly as their brother, the young Viscount, had vigorously popped streamers into the car’s interior.
Leon had tolerated it all with smiling equanimity. These harmless aristocratic antics were, after all, what he was paying for. Just as he was paying for his bride’s father and his family to enjoy their exile in luxury at his expense.
And in exchange...
His eyes slid to his bride. No longer in her wedding finery, she had changed into an ivory silk couture number and five-inch heels—which, Leon noticed with wry amusement, she was now kicking off into the spacious footwell with a sigh of relief.
‘That bad?’ he said sympathetically, nodding at the discarded killer heels.
‘Not my thing,’ she answered feelingly.
‘You looked fabulous in them, though,’ Leon said, as he headed down Piccadilly towards Hyde Park Corner.
‘Well, that was the idea,’ Ellie answered easily.
The shoes were part of her brand-new couture wardrobe, wearing which she would grace the arm of her billionaire husband when he showed off his princess bride to the world. Already engagements had been set, and they had a crammed social diary that would take them to one upper-crust event after another across Europe and beyond. They would be doing the Season—all the Seasons—and being seen at the best places with the best people, a high-flying, jet-setting couple who combined royalty and riches in a dazzling display.
It wouldn’t be the life Ellie was used to. As Ellie Peters her only international travel was to jungle and tundra with Malcolm and her mother. Even as Princess Elizsaveta of Karylya she had usually stayed only in her homeland, accompanying her stepmother and sister to whatever royal functions they were involved with.
But if her husband wanted them to jet around the world in a glittering swirl of royalty and aristocracy, then that was what they would do. It was what she had signed up to.
Was that what he was intending for their honeymoon? Some ultra-fashionable luxury location half the world away? she wondered as they headed out of London.
But when Leon told her the drive would be a couple of hours, Ellie started to relax. The day had been long, with an early start for all the preparations needed to turn her into a royal bride in all her finery, and the lavish wedding breakfast had seemed to go on for ever. Now, in the late afternoon, she felt tiredness wash over her, and the smooth motion of the powerful car began to cradle her into drowsiness...
At her side, Leon watched her translucent eyelids flutter shut, her breathing slow.
He let her sleep.
Who knew how long the night ahead would be? And all the nights to come thereafter...
Pleasurable anticipation started to fill him. At last this most breathtakingly beautiful woman was his—and their honeymoon awaited...
Ellie stirred, blinking. ‘Where are we?’ she asked, looking around. Then, as she took in her surroundings, she gave a little gasp of pleasure.
Beyond the small gravelled parking area the reed-edged waters of a lake beckoned, girdled by broad-leaved forest all around. It was totally private, totally remote.
Leon cut the engine, turning to her. ‘Do you like it?’ He smiled.
‘Oh, yes!’
She was slipping her shoes on, opening her car door and stepping out, and Leon did likewise.
Satisfaction was filling him—her reaction was just what he wanted.
He led the way forward, through screening willows and alders, to gain the wooden boardwalk edging the lake that glittered darkly in the late sunshine. The only sign of habitation was a cottage set a little further on.
‘It’s like a gingerbread house!’ Ellie exclaimed pleasurably as she spotted it.
A manservant was emerging from the cottage, and Leon exchanged a few words with him. He would fetch their luggage and then leave them entirely in peace unless summoned.
Inside the cottage, tea had been set out in a comfortably appointed sitting room, whose wide bi-fold doors opened directly on to a broad deck flooded with sunshine.
Ellie turned to him. ‘Oh, Leon, this is absolutely lovely!’ She smiled warmly, her eyes lighting up. ‘Ah, tea!’ she exclaimed gratefully, sinking down on one of the two sofas, easing her feet out of her killer shoes again before reaching for the teapot and pouring for them both.
‘So, what do you think of it?’ Leon asked, taking the cup she held out for him.
‘It’s delightful!’ she said warmly. ‘And quite a surprise. I thought—’ She broke off, stirring milk into her tea.
‘Yes?’
Leon’s prompt was pointed. She made a slight face and looked up at him.
‘Well, I thought you would want somewhere more...public. Glitzy. You know, to—’ She broke off again.
An eyebrow rose quizzically. ‘To show you off? My royal bride?’
Was there an edge in his voice? He hadn’t intended it, but perhaps it was there all the same.
She was looking straight at him now. ‘Well, yes,’ she answered frankly. ‘After all, there’s no point marrying a princess and then hiding her away, is there?’ She spoke lightly, as if determined not to make too big a deal of it but not to shirk from it either.
He sat back, crossing one long over the other. ‘I’m not sure that I want to share you with anyone right now,’ he murmured, and he let his eyelids half close as his eyes rested on her. ‘I think I want you all to myself...’
He saw a gratifying flush of colour stain her cheeks—only a swift wash, but it was revealing, and that was what he wanted.
He gave a laugh, to lighten the moment. ‘And anyway, we’ve been on show the whole day—I think we deserve some relaxing time “offstage”, don’t you? And...’ his eyes went to the deck beyond the open bi-folds ‘...this certainly seems to fit the bill for that!’
‘Oh, it does!’ The warmth was back in her voice. ‘I’m so looking forward to exploring! Can we do that?’
‘We can do anything we want,’ Leon returned. ‘It’s our honeymoon, and we get to choose.’
He saw her eyes flicker again and knew why. It was the H word that had done it.
Because ours is not the kind of honeymoon an ordinary couple would be having...
But a honeymoon it was, for all that. And it would bring all the pleasures every honeymoon should bring...
He would ensure it.
Ellie sat at the old-fashioned, chintz-skirted, kidney-shaped dressing table in her bedroom and stared at her reflection. The gingerbread cottage was far too homely for a couture outfit, so she’d donned one of her own well-worn favourites—a mauve knee-length dress in fine jersey, with a boat neck and three-quarter sleeves. She fastened her hair with a simple barrette, then slipped her feet into comfortable low-heeled sandals and headed downstairs.
Her mood was strange—uncertain. Up to this point all her energies—mental and physical—had been focussed exclusively on making her wedding happen. And now it had. And she was here with Leon.
Alone with Leon—
She felt her heart rate start to skip, conscious of her quickening pulse and an air of nervousness as she headed down the narrow flight of stairs to the small sitting room. She thought there was something she ought to be thinking about—that she ought to have thought about for quite some time, but she had been too swept up in all the wedding preparations.
She felt it hovering at the back of her mind...knew it was time to bring it to the forefront. Face the implications of it...
But not right now. Her mind skittered away from it, not wanting to confront it.
I’ll think about it later.
For now she would simply deal with the evening immediately ahead.
Leon’s words to her over tea floated across her mind.
‘I think we deserve some relaxing time...’
It was a sentiment that appealed.
In the sitting room, Leon was already there. A table-lamp had been lit against the night gathering outside, giving it a cosy feel. He turned from the drinks trolley, and as his eyes fell on her Ellie felt again that quickening of her pulse, that consciousness of his looks and masculinity that she always felt.
‘An aperitif before dinner?’ he asked pleasantly.
‘Please,’ she answered, opting for a sweet martini.
As she took it from him she thought she saw his gaze flicker over her, and was suddenly conscious that perhaps the jersey dress was just a little too softly draped over her body. But then her eyes flickered to him in turn, and she was conscious of how comfortably informal Leon was looking, too, with an open-necked shirt, turned back cuffs and a cashmere sweater slung casually over his shoulders. He looked, as ever, effortlessly drop-dead gorgeous...