Crowned: The Palace Nanny

CHAPTER FOUR

SHE was 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.’

‘Maybe you should check your trousers,’ Elsa said, and there was suddenly laughter in her voice. ‘Cat fur isn’t a great look for a Royal Prince.’

‘Thanks very much,’ he said, and smiled.

And, unaccountably, she smiled back.

Hers was a gorgeous smile. Warm and natural and full of humour. If he’d met this woman under normal circumstances…

Maybe he’d never have noticed her, he thought. She didn’t move in the circles he moved in. Plus he liked his women groomed. Sophisticated. Able to hold their own in any company.

She’d be able to hold her own. This was one feisty woman.

He needed to learn more about her. He needed to hit the phones, extend his research, come up with an offer she couldn’t refuse.

Unaccountably, he didn’t want to get out of the car. The battered family wagon, loaded with lobster pots, smelling faintly—no, more than faintly—of fish, unaccountably seemed a good place to stay.

He thought suddenly of his apartment in Manhattan. Of his consulting suite with its soft grey carpet, its trendy chrome furniture, its soft piped music.

They were worlds apart—he and Mrs Elsa Murdoch.

But now their lives needed to overlap, enough to keep the island safe. The islanders safe.

Zoe safe.

Until today he’d seen Zoe as a problem—a shock, to be muted before the islanders found out.

Now, suddenly that obstacle was human—a little girl with scars, attached to a woman who loved her.

They were waiting for him to get out of the car. If he left it any longer a media vehicle might come this way. One cameraman and Zoe would run, he thought, and it’d be Elsa who ran with her.

Elsa wasn’t family. It wasn’t her role to care for Zoe.

Forget the roles, he told himself sharply. Now he must protect the pair of them. He climbed from the car and tried to dust himself off. He had ginger cat fur on black trousers.

Suddenly Elsa was out of the car as well, watching as he shrugged on his jacket.

‘Do your buttons up,’ she said, almost kindly. ‘You look much more princely with your buttons done up. And hold still. If a car comes I’ll stop, but let’s see what we can achieve before that happens.’

And, before he knew what she intended, she’d twisted him round so she could attack the backs of his legs and the seat of his trousers.

With a hairbrush?

‘It’s actually a brush Zoe uses for her dolls,’ she told him, sweeping the cat fur off in long efficient strokes. ‘But see—I’ve rolled sticky tape the wrong way round around its bristles. It’s very effective.’

He was so confounded he submitted. He was standing on a headland in the middle of nowhere while a woman called Mrs Elsa Murdoch attacked his trousers with a dolls’ hairbrush.

She brushed until she was satisfied. Then she straightened. ‘Turn round and let me look at you,’ she said.

He turned.

‘Very nice,’ she said. ‘Back to being a prince again. What do you think, Zoe? Is he ready for the cameras?’

‘His top button’s undone,’ Zoe said.

‘That’s because it’s hot,’ he retorted but Elsa shook her head.

‘No class at all,’ she said soulfully. ‘I don’t know what you modern day royals are coming to.’ She carefully fastened his top button while he felt…he felt…He didn’t know how he felt; he was only aware that when the button was fastened and she stepped back there was a sharp stab of something that might even be loss.

‘There you go, Your Highness,’ she said, like a valet who’d just done a good job making a recalcitrant prince respectable. ‘Off you go and face the world while Zoe and I get back to our cats and our lobster pots.’

And she was in the car, turned and driving away before he had a chance to reply.

His first task was to get his breath back. To face the media with some sort of dignity.

His second task was to talk to the hotel concierge.

‘I need some extensive shopping done on my behalf,’ he said. ‘Fast. Oh, and I need to hire a car. No, not a limousine. Anything not smelling of fish would be acceptable.’

Then he rang Prince Alexandros back in the Diamond Isles. As well as being a friend, Alexandros was Crown Prince of Sappheiros, and Alex more than anyone else knew what was at stake—why he was forced to be in Australia in royal uniform when he should be in theatre garb back in Manhattan.

‘Problem?’ his friend asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘What don’t you know?’

‘The child’s been burned. She’s dreadfully scarred.’

There was a sharp intake of breath. ‘Hell. Is she…’

‘She’s okay. It’s healing. But my idea of leaving her on the island…She’ll have special needs.’

‘You were never going to be able to leave her anyway.’

‘I don’t have a choice,’ he snapped. ‘You know I can’t leave my work yet—I can’t break promises. But there’s a nanny. A good one. A Mrs Elsa Murdoch. She’s not like any Mrs Elsa Murdoch I’ve ever met.’

There was a lengthy silence on the end of the phone. Then, ‘How many Mrs Elsa Murdochs have you met?’ Alexandros asked, with a certain amount of caution.

Uh-oh. Alex and Stefanos had known each other since they were kids. Maybe Alex had heard something in his voice that he didn’t necessarily want to share.

‘Just the one,’ he said.

Another silence. ‘She’s young?’ Alex ventured.

‘Yes.’

‘Aha.’

‘There’s no aha about it.’

‘There’s a Mr Elsa Murdoch?’

‘No.’

‘I rest my case,’ he said. ‘Hey, Stefanos, like me, you’ve spent so much of your life pushing your career…avoiding family. Maybe it’s time you did a heads up and noticed the Elsa Murdochs of this world.’

‘Alex…’ He couldn’t think what to add next.

‘You want something more?’ Alex asked. ‘Something specific? If not…my wife’s waiting for me. Not a bad thing for a prince to have, you know. A wife. Especially if that prince needs to care for a child with injuries.’

‘This isn’t a joke.’

‘I don’t believe I was joking,’ Alex threw back at him. ‘Okay, so this Mrs Elsa Murdoch…You want to tell me about her?’

How had he got himself into this conversation? He didn’t have a clue.

‘I’ll leave you to your wife,’ he said stiffly.

‘Excellent,’ Alex said. ‘I’ll leave you to your Mrs Elsa Murdoch. And your little Crown Princess. Steve…’

‘Yes?’

‘Take care. And keep an open mind. Speaking as a man who’s just married…it can make all the difference in the world.’

Elsa lay awake far into the night, staring at a life she’d never envisaged. A life without Zoe.

She’d never thought of it.

Four years ago she’d been happily married, full of plans for the future, working with Matty and her good friends and their little girl.

One stupid drunken driver—who’d walked away unscathed—and she was left with nothing but the care of Zoe.

Up until today she’d thought Zoe depended totally on her. Up until now she’d never really considered that the reverse was true as well.

Without Zoe…

No. She couldn’t think it. It left a void in her life so huge it terrified her.

He’d backed off. He’d said he was leaving tomorrow.

Zoe’s needed back on Khryseis.

She reran his words through her mind—she remembered almost every word he’d uttered. He hadn’t backed off.

Zoe’s needed back on Khryseis.

She was Zoe’s legal guardian. But if it came to a custody battle between Elsa, with no blood tie and no means of giving Zoe the last operations she so desperately needed—or Stefanos, a royal prince, a blood relative, with money and means at his disposal, able to give her every chance in life…

What choice was there?

She felt sick and tired.

A letter lay on her bureau. She rose from her tumbled sheets—lying in bed was useless anyway—and read it for the thousandth time.

It was an outline of costs for cosmetic plastic surgery to smooth the skin under Zoe’s chin and across her neck.

She’d sold everything she had. There was no money left.

Stefanos.

Not if it meant losing Zoe. Not!

Who was she protecting here? Herself or Zoe?

Damn him!

She should be welcoming him, she thought. Knight on white charger with loaded wallet.

Not if it meant giving up Zoe.

To watch them go…

To watch him go.

Where had that thought come from? Nowhere. She did not need to think he was sexy. The fact that he was drop-dead gorgeous only added to her fear. She did not need her hormones to stir.

They were stirring.

She walked outside, stood on the veranda and stared into the dark.

Prince Stefanos of Khryseis. Cousin to Zoe.

A man about to change her life.

A man about to take her child.

Fifteen miles across the water, Stefanos was doing the same thing. Watching the moonbeams ripple across the ocean. Thinking how his life had changed.

Because of Zoe.

And…Elsa? A barefoot, poverty stricken marine biologist of a nanny?

He had a million other things to think about.

So why was he thinking of Elsa?

It was mid-morning when he arrived and they hadn’t left for the beach yet. There was a tiny seeping wound under Zoe’s arm. It was minuscule but they’d learned from bitter experience to treat small as big. This was a skin graft area. If it extended Zoe could lose the whole graft—an appalling prospect.

Elsa had found it while she was applying Zoe’s suncream and now she was hovering between wait and see or ring the local medical centre and get it seen to now.

Only it was Sunday. Their normal doctor would be away. Waratah Cove had a small bush-nursing hospital, manned by casual staff over the weekend. Less experienced doctors tended to react to Zoe’s injuries with fear, dreading under-treating. If she took Zoe in, she’d be admitted and transferred to hospital in the city. Simple as that.

And they were both so weary of hospitals.

Her worry almost made her forget Stefanos was coming—but not completely. The sound of a car on the track made her feel as if the world was caving in, landing right on her shoulders.

She hated this. She just hated it.

She tugged a T-shirt over Zoe’s scarred little body and turned to welcome him. And almost gasped.

This was a different Stefanos. Faded jeans. T-shirt. Scuffed trainers.

Great body. Really great body.

A body to make her feel she was a woman again.

She had to do something about these hormones. They were doing things to her head. She’d married Matty. His picture was still on the mantel. Get a grip.

‘Hi,’ he said, and smiled at the two of them and Elsa couldn’t resist. She had to smile. It was as if he had the strength to change her world, just by smiling.

‘Hi,’ Zoe said shyly and smiled as well, and Elsa looked at Zoe in astonishment. Two minutes earlier the two of them had been close to tears.

Stefanos’s smile was a force to be reckoned with.

‘I thought you’d be at the beach,’ he said, and then he looked more closely—maybe seeing the traces of their distress. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘We thought we wouldn’t go to the beach this morning,’ Elsa said repressively. Zoe loathed people talking about her injuries. She’d had enough fuss to last one small girl a lifetime.

Stefanos had never mentioned her scars. Maybe he hadn’t even noticed. Or…not.

‘Why not?’ he said gently, and suddenly he was talking to Zoe, and not to her. As if he’d guessed.

‘There’s a bit of my skin graft come loose,’ Zoe said.

Once again it was as much as Elsa could do not to gasp. Zoe never volunteered such information.

She’d had the best doctors—the best!—but almost every one of them talked to her and not to Zoe. Oh, they chatted to Zoe, but in the patronising way elders often talked to children. For the hard questions—even things like: ‘Is she sleeping at night?’—they turned to her, as if Zoe couldn’t possibly know.

So what had Stefanos done different?

She knew. He hadn’t treated her as an object of sympathy, and he’d talked directly to her. Simple but so important.

‘Whereabouts?’ Stefanos asked, still speaking only to Zoe.

‘Under my arm at the back.’

‘Is it hurting?’

‘No, but…it’s scary,’ Zoe said, and her bottom lip wobbled.

‘Can I ask why?’

‘Elsa will have to take me to hospital and they’ll make me stay there, and I don’t want to go.’ Her voice ended on a wail, she turned her face into Elsa’s shirt and she sobbed.

‘Zoe,’ Stefanos said, in a voice she’d not heard before. Gentle, yet firm. He squatted so he was at her eye level. ‘Zoe, will you let me take a look? I don’t know if I can help, but I’m a doctor. Will you trust me to see if I think you need hospital?’

He was a doctor?

There was a loaded silence. Zoe would be as stunned as she was, Elsa thought.

You still can’t have her, she thought, her instinctive response overriding everything else, but she had the sense to shut up. The last thing Zoe needed was more fear.

Because, astonishingly, Zoe was turning towards him. She was still hard against Elsa but he’d cut through her distress.

‘You’re a doctor?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you’re a prince.’

‘People are allowed to be both.’

‘My papa was a doctor,’ she said. ‘But a doctor of science. He studied shellfish.’

‘Did Christos get his doctorate?’ he said with pleasure. ‘Hey, how about that. I wish I’d known.’ Still he was talking to Zoe. ‘Your papa and I used to be really good friends. He taught me where to find the best shells on Khryseis. Only I always wanted to find the pretty ones or the big ones and he wanted to look for the interesting ones. Sometimes he’d pick up a little grey shell I didn’t think at all special and off he’d go, telling me it was a Multi-Armpit Hairy Cyclamate, or a Wobblysaurus Rex, or something even sillier.’

Zoe stared in astonishment—and then she giggled.

You could forgive a lot of a man who could make Zoe giggle, Elsa conceded. And…a man who could make her giggle as well?

‘Will you let me see what the problem is?’ he asked gently, and Zoe lifted her T-shirt without hesitation. Which was another miracle all by itself.

And here was another miracle. He didn’t react. Zoe’s left side was a mass of scar tissue but Stefanos’s expression didn’t change by as much as a hair’s breadth. He was still smiling a little—with Zoe—and she was smiling back. His long fingers probed the scar tissue with infinite gentleness, not going near the tiny suppurating wound but simply assessing the situation overall.

He had such long fingers, Elsa thought. Big hands, tanned and gentle. She wouldn’t mind…

Um…whoa. Attention back to Zoe. Fast.

‘What sort of medical supplies do you have here?’ he asked, still speaking only to Zoe, and Elsa held her breath. This was a question every doctor or nurse she knew would address to her, but this whole conversation was between the two of them.

‘We have lots of stuff,’ Zoe volunteered. ‘Sometimes when I’m just out of hospital the nurses come here and change my dressings. It costs a lot though, ‘cause we’re so far out of town, so Elsa keeps a lot of stuff here and she’s learned to do it instead.’

‘Well, good for Elsa.’ And, dumbly, Elsa found she was blushing with pleasure. ‘Can I see?’ he asked.

‘I’ll get it,’ she said and headed for the bathroom—and even that was a minor miracle. For Zoe to let her leave the room while a strange doctor was examining her…Definitely a miracle.

She didn’t push it, though. She was back in seconds, carrying a hefty plastic crate. She set it down and Stefanos examined its contents and whistled.

‘You have enough here to treat an elephant,’ he said. ‘You don’t have an elephant hidden under a bed somewhere, do you?’

Once again Zoe giggled. It was the best sound. It made her feel…It made her feel…

No. She would not get turned on because this man made a child giggle.