A convenient marriage deal...

Sealed in the royal bed!

Princess Elizsaveta must walk down the aisle. It’s the only way to save her exiled family from bankruptcy. For duty, she’ll accept brooding Greek Leon’s bargain: her royal status in exchange for his financial support. And she’ll bury her dreams of a real relationship...

Ellie’s wholly unprepared for the all-consuming chemistry that ignites between them! But although his touch is addictive, falling for Leon’s masculine appeal is deeply dangerous. He’s always been clear: his heart is under lock and key. Unless Ellie can change his mind...

JULIA JAMES lives in England and adores the peaceful verdant countryside and the wild shores of Cornwall. She also loves the Mediterranean—so rich in myth and history, with its sunbaked landscapes and olive groves, ancient ruins and azure seas. ‘The perfect setting for romance!’ she says. ‘Rivalled only by the lush tropical heat of the Caribbean—palms swaying by a silver sand beach lapped by turquoise water… What more could lovers want?’

Also by Julia James

Securing the Greek’s Legacy

The Forbidden Touch of Sanguardo

Captivated by the Greek

A Tycoon to Be Reckoned With

A Cinderella for the Greek

The Greek’s Secret Son

Tycoon’s Ring of Convenience

Heiress’s Pregnancy Scandal

Billionaire’s Mediterranean Proposal

Irresistible Bargain with the Greek

Mistress to Wife miniseries

Claiming His Scandalous Love-Child

Carrying His Scandalous Heir

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

The Greek’s Duty-Bound Royal Bride

Julia James

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09802-1

THE GREEK’S DUTY-BOUND ROYAL BRIDE

© 2020 Julia James

Published in Great Britain 2020

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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For Ilona—and the cultural heritage you gave me.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

LEON DUKARIS GLANCED at the invoice on his desk and then, with an indifferent shrug of one broad shoulder, initialled the hefty sum for payment.

The Viscari St James was one of London’s most expensive and exclusive hotels, and the coup that had ejected Mikal of Karylya from his Grand Duchy in the heart of central Europe had happened with lightning speed less than two weeks ago, so it was not surprising that the Grand Duke was finding it difficult to adjust his royal lifestyle to that of impoverished former ruler, with none of the wealth of his small but highly prosperous fiefdom at his disposal any longer.

It was a difficulty that suited Leon—bankrolling the Grand Duke’s exile was not largesse on his part in the slightest. He gave a tight smile, accentuating the strong planes of his face and indenting the deep lines around his well-shaped mouth, sharpening the gold flecks in his eyes. It was, rather, an investment.

One that he fully intended to pay out handsomely.

His eyes darkened. Suddenly he was not seeing the expensively furnished office, towering over the City of London far below, the private domain of a billionaire and his working environment. His vision went way beyond that—way back into the past. The bitter, impoverished past...

The line for the soup kitchen in the bleak Athens winter, holes in the soles of his shoes, shivering in the cold, queuing for hot food to take back to the cramped lodging where he and his mother had to live now they’d been evicted from their spacious apartment for non-payment of rent. He is all his mother has now—the husband who professed to love her for all eternity has run out on her, abandoning her and him, their young teenage son, to the worst that the collapse of the Greek economy in the great recession over a dozen years ago can do to them...

And the worst had been bad—very bad—leaving them in an abject poverty that Leon had vowed he would escape, however long it took him.

And he had escaped. His success, doggedly pursued, his focus on nothing else, had lifted him rung by rung up the ladder of financial success. He had taken risks that had always paid off, even if he’d had to steel his nerves with every speculative gamble he pulled off. It had been a relentless pursuit of wealth that had seen him become a financial speculator extraordinaire, spotting multi-million-euro opportunities before others did and seizing them, each one taking him further up into the stratosphere of billionairedom.

But now he wanted his money to achieve something else for him. His smile widened into a tight line of satisfaction. Something that had now come within his reach, thanks to the coup in Karylya that had ousted its sovereign.

The gold glint in Leon’s night-dark eyes came again at the thought. A princess bride to set the seal on his dizzying ascent from the lines for the soup kitchen.

Grand Duke Mikal’s daughter.

‘Ellie! There is news about your father! Bad news!’

In her head, Ellie could hear the alarm in her mother’s voice, echoing still as she emerged from the tube station at Piccadilly Circus, hurrying down St James’s and into the Hotel Viscari.

A stone’s throw from St James’s Palace, Clarence House and Buckingham Palace itself, it was often frequented by diplomats, foreign politicians and even visiting royalty.

Including deposed visiting royalty.

Deposed.

The word rang chill in Ellie’s head and she felt her stomach clench. The coup causing her father and his family to flee their fairy-tale palace in Karylya had turned the Grand Duke into nothing more than a former sovereign in exile. Ellie’s glance swept the Edwardian opulence of the Viscari’s marbled lobby. Albeit a very luxurious exile...

She hastened up to the reception desk. ‘Grand Duke Mikal’s suite, please!’ she exclaimed, breathless from hurrying and agitation.

‘Whom shall I say?’ asked the receptionist, lifting her phone.

She sounded doubtful, and Ellie could understand why. Her work-day outfit, crumpled from an overnight transatlantic flight, was more suited to the life she lived in rural Somerset with her mother and stepfather, where she had been since an infant, than to someone who had an entrée to a royal suite at a deluxe London hotel.

‘Just say Lisi!’ she replied, giving the Karylyan diminutive of her name.

Moments later the receptionist’s attitude had changed and she was briskly summoning a bellhop. ‘Escort Her Highness to the Royal Suite,’ she instructed.

As she sped upwards in the elevator Ellie wished her identity had not been guessed—she never used her title anywhere outside Karylya, except on rare state occasions with her father. Instead she used the English diminutive and her British stepfather’s surname—the name on her passport. Ellie Peters. It made life a lot simpler. And it was also considerably shorter than her patronym.

Elizsaveta Gisella Carolinya Augusta Feoderova Alexandreina Zsofia Turmburg-Malavic Karpardy.

She must have been named after every single aunt, grandmother and other female member of every European royal house her father claimed kin with!

From Hapsburgs to Romanovs, and any number of German royal houses, not to mention Polish, Hungarian and Lithuanian ones, and even an Ottoman or two thrown in somewhere for good measure, the nine-hundred-year-old dynasty had somehow, by luck, determination, shrewd alliances and even shrewder marriages, clung on to the mountain fastness that was the Grand Duchy of Karylya, with its high snow-capped peaks and deep verdant valleys, its dark pine forests and rushing rivers, glacial lakes and modern ski slopes.

Except now—Ellie felt her stomach clench in dismay and disbelief at the news her mother had announced—that nine-hundred-year possession had suddenly, devastatingly, come to an end...

The elevator’s polished doors slid open as the car came to a halt and Ellie stepped out into the quiet, deserted lobby of this exclusive floor of suites and residences. One of the doors opposite was flung open and a figure came hurtling through, embracing her as she hurried forward.

‘Oh, Lisi, thank heavens you are here!’

It was her younger sister, Marika—her half-sister, actually, one of her two half-siblings, offspring of her father and his second wife. Although Marika was here with her parents, Ellie knew from the fractured phone call she’d made from the airport that her younger brother, Niki, her father’s heir—his former heir, she realised now, with a start of dismayed realisation—was still at school in Switzerland, in the throes of critically important university entrance exams.

How he had taken the grim news Ellie didn’t know—but Marika, as was clear from her heartfelt cry now, was not coping well.

‘I can’t believe this has happened!’ she heard herself cry back, answering her sister in the Karylyan Marika had used.

‘It’s like a nightmare!’ Marika said, drawing Ellie into the suite.

‘How is Papa?’ Ellie asked, her voice sombre.

‘Shell-shocked. He can’t take it in. No more can Mutti—’ Marika gave a shuddering sigh. ‘Come on...come in. Papa’s been waiting and waiting for you.’

Ellie hurried forward into the spacious reception room beyond the suite’s hallway. Absently, she took in the luxury of the place—though, of course, compared with the palace it was nothing at all...

Inside, she saw the room was crowded—her father, his wife the Grand Duchess, and several of the palace staff were there. Her father was standing immobile by the plate glass window that opened on to a private terrace, staring out over the rooftops. He turned as Ellie came in, and instinctively she rushed to hug him.

A sharp voice stilled her. ‘Elizsaveta! You forget yourself!’

It was the Grand Duchess, her stepmother, admonishing her. Realising what she was being called to do, she took a breath, dropping an awkward curtsy in her knee-length skirt. But as she did so she felt her stomach hollowing. Her father was no longer a reigning sovereign...

He came forward now, to take her hands and press them in his cold ones. ‘You finally came,’ he said. There was both relief and a tinge of criticism in his tone.

Ellie swallowed. ‘I’m sorry, Papa—we were in Canada...far in the north. Filming with Malcolm. Communication was difficult, we were so remote, and then I had to get back here and—’

She stopped. In the disaster that had befallen him her father would hardly be concerned about her mother and her stepfather, a distinguished wildlife documentary filmmaker, whose work took him all over the world and for whom her mother had left her royal husband when Ellie had been only a baby.

‘Well, you are here now, thankfully,’ her father said, his voice warmer. Then he turned to one of the nearby members of staff. ‘Josef—refreshments!’ he commanded.

Ellie bit her lip. She’d always believed her father’s stiffly imperious manner had contributed to his growing unpopularity in Karylya. And her unspoken thoughts had been echoed in all the political analyses she had read since the news had broken, giving the reasons for the coup.

That and his intransigent refusal to entertain any degree of constitutional, fiscal or social reform in order to defuse the potentially toxic and historically fraught ethnic mix of the population, whose internecine rivalries had always required careful and constant balancing against each other to prevent any one minority feeling slighted and ignored.

Ellie sighed inwardly. The trouble was her father lacked the astute political management skills and charismatic, outgoing personality of his own father. Grand Duke Nikolai had successfully steered Karylya through the diplomatic minefield of the Iron Curtain decades, maintaining the duchy’s precarious independence against huge foreign pressures and gaining the great prosperity the duchy now enjoyed. Her father’s reserve and awkwardness had, in the ten years of his reign, only managed to alienate every faction—even those traditionally most supportive of him.

Which had left none to support him when the coup, led from the High Council by the leader of the ethnic faction with the strongest perceived grievances, had erupted.

Now her father and his Grand Duchess were harbouring a deep and, she allowed, understandable anger and resentment at their fate. It was evident in their condemnation of all who had contributed to their ignominious flight. For her part, Ellie merely murmured sympathetically—it was obvious her father and stepmother needed to vent their understandably strong emotions. More rational discussion could take place later—she hoped. And all the awkward questions could be asked later, too.

Finally taking refuge in Marika’s bedroom, Ellie asked the question which was most concerning her, which she could not possibly have asked in front of any member of the remaining royal staff, however loyal they were.

‘Marika, what’s happening about Papa’s finances? What has the new government agreed to? It must have been quite a generous settlement...’ She glanced around her at the luxuriously appointed bedroom. ‘This place doesn’t come cheap, that’s for sure!’

But her sister was looking at her with an expression that struck a chill through her. And her features were strained.

‘Papa isn’t paying for this hotel, Lisi! He can’t afford it—oh, Lisi, he can’t afford anything at all! We’re completely penniless!’

The blood drained from Ellie’s face. ‘Penniless?’ she echoed in a hollow voice.

Her sister nodded, her features still contorted. ‘He’s been told by the new head of government that he won’t get any kind of financial settlement at all, and that all the royal assets have been frozen!’

‘Nothing?’ Ellie gasped disbelievingly. Then her eyes went around the luxuriously appointed bedroom again. ‘But...but this place...? You’ve been here nearly a fortnight already...’

Consternation was flooding through her as Marika’s expression changed. Now awkwardness was vivid in her pretty features.

‘Like I said, Lisi... Papa isn’t paying for this suite—someone else is.’

Ellie stared, dismay filling her like cold water. ‘But who?’ she demanded.

Marika’s answer was fractured and disjointed. ‘He’s called Leon—Leon Dukaris—and he’s a billionaire—Greek. He was in Karylya last summer, on business. He came to the summer opera gala that Mutti is patroness for. He was introduced to us—and Papa invited him to a garden party at the palace. Then he came to a reception and a dinner, too—I didn’t really pay any attention. It was a business affair with some of the ministers and other foreign investors. He was mostly talking to them and Papa. I... I don’t really know much more, except that when we arrived in London he got in touch with Papa and told him he would underwrite our expenses...’

Ellie was still staring. ‘But why? Why should this...this Leon Dukaris care about Papa? Let alone fork out for this place! If he wants to do business in Karylya it’s not Papa he should be making up to,’ she finished bitterly.

A tide of colour washed up her sister’s face, and something about Marika’s expression curdled Ellie’s blood.

‘Marika, what is it?’ she asked urgently.

Her sister was twisting her hands, a look of anguish in her face. ‘Oh, God, Lisi—there’s only one reason he’s paying for everything! He wants...’ She swallowed. ‘He wants to marry me!’

Ellie’s eyes widened in total disbelief. ‘Marry you? You can’t be serious!’

‘He’s making it obvious!’ Marika cried. ‘He’s been here several times, always very attentive to me. Way more than just being polite! I do my best to put him off, but I know Mutti is hoping I’ll encourage him. She’s worried sick about what’s going to happen to us now, and if he really wants to marry me—’

She broke off, her voice choking. Ellie’s dismay doubled. It was bad enough learning that her father was penniless, and that he was being bankrolled by some unknown Greek billionaire...but that her sister should believe the Greek billionaire wanted to marry her...?

Surely Marika was imagining it? Upset and overwrought as she so obviously was right now by the disaster that had befallen their family?

In a macabre attempt at humour, at a time when humour was absolutely impossible, Ellie heard herself blurt out, ‘Just please don’t tell me that this Leon Dukaris is some creepy, lecherous old man with a fat gut and piggy eyes!’

‘No, not exactly,’ Marika answered in a shaky voice. But then her eyes welled with tears. ‘Oh, Lisi, it doesn’t matter what he looks like or who he is!’ Her tears spilled over into open weeping. ‘I’m in love with someone else!’ she cried. ‘So I can’t marry Leon Dukaris! I just can’t!’

Leon vaulted from his limo, now drawn up in the entrance sweep of the Viscari St James, and strode into the lobby. It was time to visit the royal family again.

He had called upon the Grand Duke several times since his abrupt arrival in London two weeks ago—ostensibly to give him his assurance that all his expenses would be underwritten by himself for the duration of his stay, until such time as he had decided where to live out his exile and do whatever it was that former monarchs did when their countries no longer wanted them. But the real reason for his visits was quite different.

He was trying to decide whether he was truly going to go ahead with claiming a princess for his bride—the ultimate prize.

Thoughts played across his mind as the elevator doors to the penthouse floor slid shut. Was he simply being fanciful in even giving house room to the idea? It had come to him the previous summer, when he had been visiting Karylya on business, being invited to the palace, socialising with the royal family, meeting Princess Marika...

At the time he had given it no serious thought, but the idea had grown on him during the intervening months. The girl, though a brunette, and quiet in her manner, was very pretty, and if his own tastes actually ran to blondes—well, for the sake of a princess bride surely he could change his tastes...

Nor was she unintelligent, from what he could judge of her, and that was another key advantage. His features hardened momentarily. So was the crucial fact that, as a princess, she’d be perfectly open to the idea of marrying for practical reasons. Love—his mouth tightened—would not get to taint their marriage...

He snapped his mind away from his darkening thoughts. No, there was nothing to rule Princess Marika out of his consideration...and now that events had taken such a disastrous turn for the Karylyan royal family, from the princess’s point of view—and her parents’—there was every incentive for her to consider his proposal seriously.

If he were to make one, of course...

But should I?

That his suit would be favoured by her parents was obvious—what could be more desirable than a very wealthy son-in-law to keep on bankrolling their exile indefinitely? As for the princess herself... He knew without vanity that he was highly attractive to women—his life, even while he had still been in the process of making his huge fortune, had been filled with eager females demonstrating that undeniable fact to him. Now, in his thirties, he was done playing the field. He would be perfectly happy to settle down with one agreeable female and he would make the princess a good husband.

And theirs would be an honest marriage. He wouldn’t delude and deceive his bride with hypocritical declarations of undying love and endless mouthing of romantic flummery that meant nothing when the chips were down.

Leon’s dark eyes hardened with harsh memory. His father had made such endless declarations—Leon had grown up hearing him telling his mother how devoted he was to her, how much he loved her, how she meant the world to him, how she was the moon and the stars and all the other romantic verbiage he had lavished upon her.

It had counted for nothing.

When the Greek economy had crashed his father had taken off with another woman—conveniently wealthy—leaving his heartbroken wife and his teenage son to cope on their own. Abandoning them totally.

His mother had been devastated by the betrayal—Leon had been only angry. Deeply, bitterly angry. And contemptuous of the man who had abandoned them.

I will never be like him—never! I will never do to a woman what my father did to my mother! Because I will never tell a woman I love her. Because I will never fall in love. Because love doesn’t exist—only meaningless words that lie...and destroy.

The elevator glided to a halt, the doors sliding open, and Leon shook his dark memories from him. The miseries of his teenage years were gone and he would not be haunted by them. He had made his life on his own terms—and those were the terms he would make any marriage on. Terms that would never include what did not exist—would never include love...

His wife, when he married—whoever she was, princess or not—would get respect, regard, friendship and companionship.

And, of course, desire. That went without saying...

It was a word he should not have admitted into his thoughts at that moment. Because as he strode out of the elevator the door to the royal suite opened and a woman emerged.

Instinctively his eyes took her in, in one comprehensive sweep.

Tall, blonde, slender, with grey-blue eyes and her hair caught back in a ponytail. Not wearing any make-up. Her clothes non-descript—certainly not couture or designer. Yet that didn’t matter in the least. Because she was, without doubt, breathtakingly, stunningly beautiful... Instantly desirable.

He felt a rush of adrenaline quicken in his bloodstream.

Who is she?

He had never seen her before—no woman that stunning would have escaped his eye.

He realised she was gazing at him, stopped in her tracks just as he was. For a moment—an enjoyably adrenaline-fuelled moment—Leon allowed himself the pleasure of meeting her gaze full-on, letting her see just how pleasurable it was for him to look at her...

Then, abruptly, her eyes peeled away from his and he saw colour flare across her high-cut cheekbones. Dipping her head, she hurried forward, veering around him to dive into the waiting elevator behind him. He gave a low laugh. Whoever she was, if she had joined the entourage of the Grand Duke, in whatever capacity, he would at some point see her again. And that would suit him very well...

His thoughts cut out. Realisation slammed into him. Hell, no, it would not suit him to see the breathtaking blonde again!

Taking an incised breath, he strode forward again, heading for the door of the royal suite. The breathtaking blonde, whoever she was, could be no concern of his. He had a princess to woo...

CHAPTER TWO

ELLIE SLUMPED BACK against the wall of the elevator car, feeling weak. Her heart was thumping like a sledgehammer. Oh, sweet heaven, what had just happened?

She had issued from her father’s suite and, without the slightest warning that it was about to happen, had all but rushed right into the most devastating male she had ever set eyes on in her life...

Talk about tall, dark and handsome!

She felt weakness flush through her again, her heart-rate quicken. It had lasted only a handful of moments—a silent gasp from her, a sweep of night-dark eyes. That was all she’d needed to take in his Savile-Row-tailoring, his six-foot-plus height, broad shoulders and lean hips, his planed features... And those night-dark eyes, looking her over, liking what he was seeing, making no secret of it.

She shook her head angrily, as if to dissipate the after-burn on her retinas. Oh, what did it matter who that man had been? She had far more important things to think about.

Disbelief was still uppermost—surely her sister was just imagining what she’d told her? That some unknown Greek billionaire thought he could marry her? It was outrageous—just outrageous!

She’s upset, that’s all. Upset, shocked and distraught after what has happened.

And then she remembered what Marika had gone on to say.

‘I’m in love with someone else!’

Ellie heard her sister’s tearful voice as the elevator plummeted to ground level. And when she’d learned just who it was that Marika was in love with, her heart had sunk yet further.

A man Marika’s parents would never allow her to marry...

Leon was bowing over the Grand Duchess’s regally outstretched hand.

‘Herr Dukaris.’ She smiled with an air of stately graciousness, her Germanic accent courtesy of her long lineage of Austrian aristocracy.

‘Highness...’ Leon intoned dutifully, having already made a brief bow to the Grand Duke.

He himself did not stand on ceremony, but what was the point of paying the exorbitant bills of European royalty if he did not acknowledge royal protocol? After all, either they were royal, and marrying into their family would set the glittering seal on his worldly success, or they were simply penniless refugees in a turbulent world, seeking a new life in a less troubled spot.

His eyes went to the royal couple’s daughter. She looked drawn and anxious, and Leon could understand why. Two weeks ago she’d been a princess in a fairy-tale castle in a fairy-tale realm—now she was just a penniless young woman with no prospects other than those an accident of birth had conferred upon her.

Well, if he did marry her, her fortunes would be restored and she would smile again.

He let his gaze rest on the princess with a warmth he hoped she might find encouraging. She was, he acknowledged, very attractive in her own way, with soft features and dark eyes, dark hair and a tender mouth. Yet before he could stop himself memory flashed in his head of that fleeting encounter just now in the penthouse lobby. Now, if that stunning blonde had been the woman now sitting beside the graciously smiling Grand Duchess...

He tore his inappropriate thoughts away again, warming his smile for Princess Marika. But she remained stubbornly woebegone, as if his smiling alarmed her. He gave an inward frown. But then the Grand Duke was relating, with understandable schadenfreude, how the new regime in his homeland was having difficulty getting endorsement from other governments.

‘Perhaps when there has been an election, as promised?’ Leon ventured.

It was the wrong thing to say.

A snort came from the Grand Duke. ‘A stage-managed, propaganda-fuelled plebiscite in order to elect a dictator! That’s all it will be!’

Leon made no reply. Like too many small countries in that highly volatile area of Europe, Karylya was a complicated cocktail of historic rivalries that still ran deep, despite the duchy’s new prosperity as a financial hub for the emerging economies of the former Eastern Bloc. ‘The Luxembourg of Central Europe’—that was the way the country was usually described, which was why he’d visited the place last summer.

And thereby made the personal acquaintance of the royal family and the princess...

His eyes rested on her now, their expression veiled, his thoughts inward. Was he seriously thinking of marrying Princess Marika?

Again the image of that breathtaking blonde out in the lobby fleeted across his consciousness. How could he be considering marriage to one woman if he was still capable of having his attention caught by another one?

Wariness filled him suddenly. Though he would never declare love for a woman, he would never be disloyal to any woman he married. Not like his despised father.

Where his father was now, he had no idea—and he did not want to know. His boyish idealisation of his father, his wanting only to grow up like him, had crashed and burnt to ashes the day he’d deserted him and his mother. His father had put his own selfish interests first, abandoning his heartbroken wife, making a mockery of all those endless romantic declarations of eternal love—and abandoning his own son, betraying his paternal responsibility towards him. Thinking only of himself.

He dragged his thoughts back to the present. Whatever he decided to do now, he must not, out of decency, lead the princess or her parents to hope he would offer for her and then not.

I have to decide.

But to decide meant getting to know her better—and that, after all, was what he was doing here in the Grand Duke’s suite.

‘I was wondering, Highness,’ he said now, addressing Princess Marika’s mother, ‘knowing your love of the opera, whether you might permit me to invite you to Covent Garden tonight? It is very short notice, and I apologise, but Torelli is to sing Turandot—and I recall from last summer that you hold her in some admiration.’

‘Turandot!’ exclaimed the Grand Duchess promptly. She bestowed her gracious smile upon Leon. ‘How very kind. It will help to divert my daughter at this distressing time—will it not, Marika?’

The princess managed a smile, albeit a wan one.

‘Then I will make the arrangements,’ Leon said.

He would hardly get Princess Marika to himself, but it would be a start, and being seen conspicuously in public with the Karylyan royal family would begin the process of associating himself with them. And, of course, he added cynically, them with him.

Satisfied, he took his leave. Only as he headed back towards the elevator did he find himself wondering, yet again, just who that breathtaking blonde had been. And trying not to wonder whether he would ever see her again. Trying not to want to see her again...

Sternly he admonished himself.

I’m here to marry a princess—not have my head turned by another woman!

Like it or not, he had better remember that.

Ellie was hurrying again—this time into the foyer of Covent Garden’s Royal Opera House. It was difficult in high heels and a full-length gown. Unlike her mother, who relished no longer having to meet the formal dress codes required of her when she had been Grand Duchess, Ellie’s stepmother had insisted on evening dress tonight.

‘It was quite bad enough you arriving the way you did, dressed like some sort of servant! It’s out of the question that you should not remember your position from now on. Especially now.’

The Grand Duchess had said no more, but Ellie had got the message.

Especially now that her father had been deposed and sent into exile...

Well, she’d done her best this evening, but her couture wardrobe had not made it out of Karylya with her father, and all she’d had on hand at Malcolm’s London flat was the outfit she’d worn to the last TV awards bash she’d attended with her mother and stepfather.

Much to Ellie’s relief, her father had agreed she could stay there, since the suite at the Viscari was already crowded, and it would have required taking yet another room, running up yet another hefty bill.

The pale blue evening gown was perfectly respectable, but it was not couture, and since her Karylyan jewellery had also not made it out of the duchy and into exile, she was wearing only a pearl necklace of her mother’s. She’d dressed her hair simply, applied her make-up likewise, and she knew perfectly well that no one would take her for a princess just by looking at her.

No more than that man did in the penthouse lobby.

She pushed the memory out of her head. Pointless to remember it—pointless to think about the man. Even more pointless to remember her inability to tear her eyes from him... No, it was far more important to focus on this evening.

Marika’s text had elaborated on her stepmother’s summons.

Lisi—you must come! Leon Dukaris will be there. Please, please, please try and keep him away from me!

Ellie’s expression grew grimmer as she gained the almost deserted lobby. The performance was about to begin. She would do her very best to keep Marika’s unwanted suitor from her, but her thoughts were troubled all the same as she was hurriedly shown up to the Dress Circle. For all that the man her sister had fallen in love with was someone utterly impossible for her to marry, Ellie had nothing but sympathy for Marika.

Of course Marika wanted only to marry for love!

Just as I do—and always have done!

In this day and age, after all, even a princess was allowed to believe in marrying for love...

Her face clouded. It was all very well believing that, and all very well trying to protect her sister from an unwanted suitor—but this unknown billionaire was all that stood between her father and penury. It was a sobering and unwelcome thought...

The house lights were already dimming as she was shown into the box reserved for them, and as they dimmed she made out the regal figures of her father and stepmother, already seated, another masculine figure silhouetted beside them, and beside him the slight figure of her sister.

Marika turned a grateful glance on Ellie as she hurriedly sketched a cursory curtsy to the Grand Duchess, who had thrown her an admonitory stare at her late arrival, before sitting down on the nearest chair, just behind her sister.

Busying herself with easing her skirts as she sat down, she dipped her head to smooth the fabric, missing the turning of the head of the masculine figure beside her sister until she raised her eyes, just as the conductor lifted his baton and the curtain rose on the opening scene of Turandot. But as she did so Ellie froze. The breath stilled in her lungs and her lips parted in shock.

The man who’d turned his head to see who was arriving so late was the same man who’d been crossing the penthouse suite lobby that afternoon. The man she had not been able to tear her eyes from.

She gave an audible gasp—she was sure of it—and for the slightest second it seemed she met that dark gaze again, head-on. Then, still in shock, she twisted her head so that her eyes were doggedly on the stage below. But she was sure that colour had run up into her cheeks and her heartbeat had grown ragged—and not just from the rush of getting here!

This was the unknown Greek—the nouveau riche billionaire bankrolling her father and setting his sights on her sister?

Her own words to Marika that morning replayed in her head now, as the opening scene of the opera got underway below her.

Old, fat and piggy-eyed...

She wanted to give a semi-hysterical choke—dear Lord, she couldn’t have been further from the truth!

What had Marika said? She racked her brain to recall her sister’s reply to her dismayed exclamation.

‘Not exactly...’

The hysterical flutter came again—no, definitely ‘not exactly’!

In fact, he was whatever was the total and absolute opposite of her scathing description.

She felt a rush go through her that was nothing to do with her hurried arrival and everything to do with the man sitting just in front of her. Her heart thumping in her chest, she thanked heaven she had the duration of the first act of the opera to recover her composure. Time, more importantly, to dwell on what Marika had told her.

It doesn’t matter that he’s like every woman’s fantasy male—he can’t seriously think he can marry Marika just like that! She must be imagining it—she must!

But then why was Leon Dukaris bothering to pick up the sky-high tab for her father’s hotel bill? What did he think was in it for him by doing so?

Cold chilled through her veins. Her eyes rested on him now—on the broad back, the well-shaped head silhouetted against the bright lights of the stage, where the main characters were singing their hearts out, completely ignored by her right now, for there was a drama going on right here in this box that outweighed anything going on down there on the stage...

She could see he’d crossed one long leg over the other, in a kind of negligent pose, and from her angle behind him she could make out half his profile. Apparently he was focused on the stage, but she fancied he was not particularly riveted by the scene or the singing.

She could see a square-palmed hand resting on one powerful thigh, the other laxly holding a programme. There was something about the way he was sitting that made her realise his body was very slightly inclined towards her sister, as if to indicate a nascent intimacy with her, making himself at ease in her body space.

An ease that was being entirely repudiated by her sister.

Marika was, Ellie could see, sitting ramrod-straight, tension in every line of her slight body. With a tightening of her mouth, she dragged her eyes away from her sister and the man beside her, back down on to the stage—where, she realised with a belated start of realisation, a princess was vowing never to marry and her unwanted suitor was determined she should do just that...

It mustn’t happen—it just mustn’t!

The words formed in Ellie’s head and it was not the drama on the stage that she meant.

Leon let his gaze rest on the stage below, but all he was aware of was the woman sitting behind him. He still could not believe it. She was the breathtaking female who’d stopped him in his tracks that afternoon.

Who is she?

The question burned for an answer, but the best he could come up with, having taken her in at a single brief glance, was that she was some kind of lady-in-waiting. She’d dropped a curtsy to the Grand Duchess, who’d frowned at her, and the gown she was wearing was no couture number, like the duchess’s and the princess’s. So, yes...lady-in-waiting would be the most likely role, wouldn’t it?

He could feel emotions conflicting within him—his overpowering visceral reaction to her clashing totally with his purpose to make Princess Marika his bride. This blonde might be a fatal distraction. He was feeling that distraction even now, fighting the urge to turn and look at her.

It seemed to take for ever before the curtain finally fell on the first act, to tumultuous applause, but suddenly the Grand Duchess was addressing him as the house lights came up.

‘Torelli is in perfect voice!’ she exclaimed approvingly.

‘Outstanding!’ Leon heard himself agree politely.

Then, forcing himself, he smiled at the princess beside him, who was still looking as stiff as she had all through the first act. Leon wished she would relax a little more.

‘What did you think?’ he asked in a kindly tone that he hoped was encouraging.

‘She was very good,’ Princess Marika said faintly.

Grand Duke Mikal was getting to his feet. ‘It was a damned long first act!’ he exclaimed.

Leon, who privately agreed, only gave a light laugh, getting to his feet as well. No sitting when royalty stood, he made himself remember. The Duchess was remaining seated, as was her daughter, but behind him Leon could hear the blonde lady-in-waiting standing up, with a slight rustle of her skirts.

Taking it as a signal, Leon finally allowed himself to turn, feeling it like the release of a bowstring drawn too tight to bear the tension much longer.

And there she was.

He felt his blood surge again as his eyes latched on to her. She was not looking at him, but he did not care. Was content just to drink her in.

She was as breathtakingly, stunningly beautiful as she’d been that first moment—even more so. She was wearing make-up now, enough to accentuate her eyes and mouth, to sculpt her cheekbones, and her hair was in a simple but elegant pleat. Her only jewellery was a single row of pearls, which added to the translucence of her fair skin. The style of the pale blue gown, albeit non-couture, complemented her slender beauty with its plissé bodice, cap sleeves and narrow skirt.

He felt desire, raw and insistent, spike through him. He tried to fight it back, knowing he should not indulge it—not if he was seriously considering marriage to Princess Marika.

But how can I think of such a thing when I’m reacting to another woman like this? Impossible! Just impossible!

As impossible, he recognised with a plunging realisation, as seeking to have anything to do with this unknown lady-in-waiting—even if he were to abandon the whole idea of marrying the Grand Duke’s daughter. Any such liaison would be out of the question for Their Highnesses...

Frustration bit at him from every side, but still he could not tear his eyes from her. Not yet—and not when, even though she was still not looking at him, he could tell with every masculine instinct that she was acutely aware of him, responding to him as strongly as he was to her, just as she had in their initial brief encounter in the penthouse lobby.

He wanted her to look at him, but behind him he heard the Grand Duke step forward, and the blonde dropped him a slight curtsy, murmuring something in Karylyan that Leon took to be an apology for her late arrival.

The Grand Duke said something admonitory, then turned to Leon. ‘You must allow me, Dukaris,’ the Grand Duke announced in English, in his heavy, formal manner, ‘to make another introduction to you.’

He paused, and Leon could not deny himself the veiled pleasure of letting his eyes go back to the blonde, because that was the only place he wanted his gaze to go. Back to feast on her pale, fine-sculpted beauty, her slender, full-breasted form. He wanted to breathe in the elusive, haunting scent of her perfume...even if she could never be his...

She was standing very stiffly, still not looking his way, but a tell-tale pulse was beating at her throat.

Then the Grand Duke was speaking again, the formality of his style even more pronounced. ‘My elder daughter,’ he was saying now, ‘the Princess Elizsaveta.’

CHAPTER THREE

LEON FELT HIS expression freeze. Felt everything in him freeze. Then, like a sudden thaw across a frozen lake, he felt everything un-freeze—melt into the wash of sheer, gratifying release of every last fragment of the frustration he’d felt just a few moments ago.

He felt his features lighten—everything inside him lighten. Because everything now was just perfect.

As perfect as she is!

His eyes rested on her, his gaze brilliant.

‘Princess...’

He heard his voice husky on her title. Without conscious awareness he reached for one of her hands, saw her eyes flare as he did so, and her lips part as if she was taking in an urgent breath of air.

Then, with absolute deliberation, Leon raised her hand to his mouth and gave the slightest bow of his head. With the same absolute deliberation he let his lips brush the back of her hand, infinitely lightly. He felt it tremble in his.

He relinquished her hand, letting his glance linger on her. He heard her murmur his name—a low ‘Mr Dukaris...’ that was even fainter than her sister’s voice. But Leon could see the colour flaring out along those delicate cheekbones, and that was enough for him. And he saw the speed with which she had clasped the hand he’d just kissed, as if to stop it trembling.

Satisfaction filled him. And something much, much more than satisfaction.

He turned his head now to his guests, the Duke and Duchess. His smile flashed broadly. ‘Champagne?’ he invited.

Expansively he gestured towards the back of the box, where the requisite bottles were nestling in their ice buckets by a little table holding flutes on a silvered tray.

Champagne was exactly what was needed now. He’d never been more sure of that in his life.

Ellie was trying to hold on to the shreds of her composure—but it was impossible, just impossible! She should be used to hand-kissing—it was nothing out of the ordinary in Karylya for a female royal. Old-fashioned, perhaps, and somewhat formal as a deferential greeting. But nothing to set her fighting for composure the way she was now.

But then, never had a man as outrageously attractive as Leon Dukaris kissed her hand.

She gave a silent gulp, hoping her colour had returned to normal.

‘Princess...?’

Their host for the evening, who was paying for the champagne he was now offering her with a polite smile, who was paying for this box at the opera—she dreaded to think how expensive that was—who was paying for the astronomically expensive suite at the Viscari St James, and paying for Ellie dared not think how much more, was standing in front of her, holding a flute brimming with gently beading champagne.

She took it, murmuring her thanks and adopting an expression of extreme graciousness that would have befitted her ultra-gracious regal stepmother. It gave her the protection she urgently needed. She took a sip from the flute, hearing Leon Dukaris speak again, asking her if she was enjoying the opera. His English was accented, she noted, but not much—less so than her father’s.

There was a slight smile on his mouth—beautifully sculpted, with deep lines incised around it—and she felt another silent hollowing of her stomach. The planes of his face were strong, his nose bladed, his jaw edged. There was a toughness, a determination, underlying the relaxed slanting smile that invited her to respond to his conversational gambit.

‘Torelli is as outstanding as ever,’ she replied, echoing her stepmother’s viewpoint readily enough, ‘but the role is hardly endearing. Turandot can’t be anyone’s favourite heroine.’

She was making small talk, nothing more, and had done so a thousand times in Karylya when in princess mode.

She saw a faint frown on Leon Dukaris’s face.

‘No? But she’s a very strong woman,’ he replied. ‘Insisting on not marrying just because that’s what everyone expects her to do.’

Ellie felt her face harden. ‘Strong? She’s brutal! She has her suitors murdered and her rival tortured!’ she bit out.

His rejoinder was immediate. ‘The slave girl, Liu, could have avoided her fate any time she wanted, simply by telling Turandot the name of the unknown Prince.’ There was a sardonic note in his voice.

‘Whom Turandot would then have had killed!’ Ellie shot back. ‘Liu refuses to betray him—she loves him!’

Leon Dukaris lifted his flute to his mouth, taking a mouthful of champagne before he answered her. ‘Much good it does her—he rejects her for another woman who’s a better proposition than a mere slave girl!’

That sardonic note was more pronounced—harder. With something underlying it that for a moment Ellie wondered at. Then she realised that she suddenly had an opening to move the conversation away from a fictitious drama to the reality that she and her family were facing—a reality she must confront, for there was no other option but to do so if she were to protect Marika from an unwanted suitor.

‘Well, yes,’ she murmured, taking a sip of her champagne, pitching her voice carefully, ‘Turandot is a princess—and there are, indeed, men who would like to marry a princess...’

She let her eyes rest on Leon Dukaris, mindful of her expression, nervous after her impetuosity in making so pointed an observation. Would it draw him out—make him say something that could give her any indication at all as to whether Marika’s fears were justified or not?

Almost immediately, his expression was veiled. She saw his long lashes—ridiculously long lashes, inky dark and lush, she found herself noting with complete irrelevance—dipping down over those amazing dark eyes of his, tautening the muscles of her stomach.

‘Well, that depends...’ he replied.

And now there was no trace of any sardonic note in his voice—rather, she realised, with another pull on her heightened awareness of him, a trace of amusement...and, more than amusement, a sensual drawl that did things to her they should not...must not.

‘On the princess in question...’

‘Indeed,’ she returned. ‘And therefore perhaps you should be aware, Mr Dukaris, that my sister is in love with another man.’

She spoke in a low voice, for only him to hear. But even as she spoke she feared she had said too much—assumed too much.

What if Marika’s fears were entirely groundless, the product of fear and distress? Well, it was too late now. She’d all but warned off Leon Dukaris from getting any ideas about her sister—ideas he might never have entertained in the first place.

It took all her training to keep her expression composed, as if she had said nothing out of the ordinary at all.

For a moment nothing changed in his expression. Then, as tension clawed in her, she saw his stance ease, a wash of relaxation go through him, and in his dark, dark eyes glints of sheer gold suddenly gleamed like buried treasure.

He raised his flute and quite deliberately tilted it to touch hers with a crystalline click of glass.

‘I wish her as well as can be expected,’ he said.

There was a carelessness in his voice, and again that underlying sardonic note that Ellie had heard before but had no time now to pay any attention to. For now all she had attention for was the way his eyes were holding hers, the expression in them, the way she could not move in the slightest.

‘But I fear you have misunderstood the situation, Princess. I have not the slightest interest in your sister.’

He paused, and in that pause she could not breathe, for Leon Dukaris was dominating her body space, dominating her consciousness, smiling down at her with that smile that was not a smile, that smile that had nothing to do with humour in the least and everything to do with the complete lack of breath in her lungs and the bonelessness of her limbs, the hot rush of blood to her body.

‘I would far prefer,’ he said, and there was a sudden intimacy in the way he spoke to her, a sudden huskiness in his voice that weakened her boneless limbs, ‘you to be my bride...’

He touched his glass once more to hers. Raised it to his mouth and, smiling still, drank from it. Then, as if he had said nothing more to her than that he hoped she would enjoy the evening, despite disliking the heroine of the opera, he turned and strolled towards his other guests.

Behind him, Ellie felt her cheeks burst into flame, and the hand holding her champagne flute shook.

He couldn’t have just said what he had.

He couldn’t!

But he had.

She waited to feel the outrage she surely must feel—but it did not come. And she could only stare after him, motionless, hearing his outrageous words echoing in her head.

Leon stood by the plate glass picture window of the apartment above his offices. It was his London pied-à-terre, and furnished in ultra-modern, ultra-expensive style by top interior designers. He did not care for it, but it was prestigious enough for the business entertaining he did—and from time to time for the personal entertaining of those women he selected for the interludes in his life which had punctuated the years of his adulthood.

He made it crystal-clear to each and every woman that their affair would be brief, would be a passing mutual, sensual pleasure—nothing more. Never would he deceive any woman and pretend that he was offering any more than that.

His thoughts flickered as he took a meditative mouthful of cognac, staring out unseeing over the City skyline, glittering like jewels in the night at this late hour.

He was done with this lifestyle. Of that he was sure. It had served its purpose over the years of accumulating his vast wealth, but it had run its course. He wanted something different now.

Someone different.

His expression changed. How had it happened? That extraordinary confluence of two quite separate desires? The fanciful notion that had beguiled him last year in the fairy-tale Grand Duchy of Karylya, that he could crown his achievements with the most glittering prize of all—a royal bride... Then encountering a woman who, in his very first glimpse of her, had set his senses afire in an indelible instant—and then, in a veritable gift from the gods, to discover that she might be the royal bride he sought...

The woman I desire and the princess I aspire to marry—one and the same... The alluringly beautiful Princess Elizsaveta.

Dismissing the lovelorn Princess Marika from his thoughts for ever, he let the syllables of her older sister’s name linger in his head, let memory replay every moment of their encounter, their conversation. He did not mind that he had declared his hand—he welcomed the opportunity she’d given him to do so. It cut to the chase—made things crystal-clear.

She was the princess bride he wanted.

Now all that remained was for her to agree...

And why should she not?

A slow, sensual smile pulled at his mouth, and his eyes glinted gold with reminiscence. The breathtaking blonde who had so incredibly fortuitously turned out to be a princess had not been able to hide from him the fact that she returned his attraction—her responsiveness to him had blazed in every glance, in her shimmering awareness of him as a man.

She desires me even as I desire her.

And added to that desire, which curled even now, seductive and sensual through his bloodstream, all the worldly advantages that would accrue with their marriage, for both of them—how could there be any argument against it?

It was the perfect match.

And, best of all, both of us will know the reasons we are marrying—and that the meaningless charade of ‘love’ has nothing to do with it!

And never would.

He lifted his cognac glass, toasting the one and only royal bride he wanted—the beautiful, the breathtaking Princess Elizsaveta.

The week that followed was the most tormented of Ellie’s life. Her head ached with it. Had Leon Dukaris really meant what he’d so outrageously declared at the opera? Or had it been only a flippant remark in riposte to her warning him off Marika? If he’d actually needed warning off?

But if he wasn’t entertaining such ambitions, then why was he forking out a fortune on keeping her family in horrendously expensive luxury?

His intentions remained impossible to determine.

When he invited the royal family to luncheon, two days after the evening at Covent Garden, to be taken in a salon privé at the hotel, she could detect nothing in his manner beyond formal civility. For herself, though she called on her training in royal etiquette to remain outwardly composed, it was a quite different matter.

The visceral impact Leon Dukaris made on her the moment he entered the room had strengthened, not lessened—she was even more hopelessly aware of him than ever—and it was the same yet again when, the day after, he took herself and Marika to afternoon tea at Meredon, her stepmother having graciously approved the outing for her confined daughter.

As they sat on the terrace of the ultra-prestigious country house hotel just outside London, overlooking the green sward stretching down to the River Thames, Ellie was burningly conscious of their host. Doggedly, she pursued safe conversational topics—from the history of the politically powerful Georgian family who had once owned Meredon to the flood protection measures needed for the River Thames in a warming world.

Marika was little help, merely picking at the delicious teatime fancies while staring off forlornly into the distance.

For his part Leon Dukaris, sporting a pair of ultra-fashionable designer shades that made him look even more devastatingly attractive than ever, kept the conversation going by asking lazily pertinent questions and giving the impression that his heavy-lidded gaze, screened by his dark glasses, was resting steadily on her...

As if, she thought wildly, he were assessing her...

For what? For my role as his royal bride?

A bead of hysteria formed in her throat, but she suppressed it. Suppressed all her emotions until finally, after a stroll through the manicured grounds, and a short excursion along the river in the hotel’s private launch, she and Marika were finally returned to the Viscari St James.

She thanked Leon with what semblance of composure she could muster, only to have him glance a slanting smile at her, his long lashes dipping in a way that brought a flush of colour to her cheek.

‘The pleasure was all mine, Princess,’ he murmured.

He helped himself to her hand, bowing over it, and Ellie was sure he was doing so to remind her of how he had kissed her hand that night at the opera. There was something about the glint in his eyes that told her so...

Colour ran into her cheeks again and she turned away, glad that her stepmother was making some remark to him. Whatever it was, Ellie caught only his reply.

‘Alas, Highness, I am scheduled to be out of the country for several days on business, but when I return I would be delighted if you would permit me to invite you to dine with me—and the princesses, too, of course.’

He swept a benign smile over Ellie and Marika—who was busying herself with her phone, frantically texting in a way that sank Ellie’s heart. The distant beloved, no doubt. Distant and utterly ineligible...

She dragged her mind away from her sister’s hopeless predicament, her eyes going to her father and his wife. With their visitor gone, she could see that they were allowing the front they’d put on for him to collapse. Her father looked old and tired—her stepmother tense and strained. They might not say anything to her or Marika, but it was evident that the stress of their precarious situation was eating into them. They knew, even if they did not say it, how grave their predicament was.

If Leon Dukaris pulls the plug on them what will happen to them?

Impossible to imagine—just impossible! A penurious exile? But where? Where would they go? What would they live on?

Fear bit at her, and she could feel it resonating in the room. Could hear, leaping into life yet again, that other question circling in her head.

A princess bride—is that what Leon Dukaris expects for the money he’s spending on us? Can he truly be thinking that?

And what if he were? She felt emotion clutch at her. What answer could she possibly give?

What on earth do I tell him if he really, truly wants to marry me?

The only sane answer was no—no, no and no! How could she possibly contemplate even entertaining such an idea? To marry a stranger...a man she barely knew...

Everything in her revolted. All her life she had vowed to marry only for love. Hadn’t her own parents’ sad example shown how vital that was? Her mother was very open about how she’d felt so pressured by her father—flattered that his daughter was being wooed by a prince, he’d pressed her into a marriage that her royal husband had wanted only to please his own father and beget an heir to the throne.

It was a marriage that had never worked for either of them, and they’d parted from each other with relief, each of them glad to find love and happiness in their second marriages.

‘Never do what I did, darling,’ Ellie’s mother had warned her all her life. ‘Only marry for love—nothing else!’

She felt her emotions twist inside her, tearing her to pieces, making sleep impossible as she lay tensely staring up at the ceiling in Malcolm’s flat that night. For herself, it would be easy to reject Leon Dukaris’s ambitions for a royal bride. As Ellie Peters her own situation was perfectly secure—a home in Somerset with her mother, a modest salary working for her stepfather’s production company. The freedom to marry for love and only for love...

But she was more than just her mother’s daughter—more than just Ellie Peters.

I am also Princess Elizsaveta, daughter of the Grand Duke of the House of Karpardy, and I have duties and obligations and responsibilities that are not mine to evade.

And the difference was everything.

She took a deep, decisive breath. Resolution filled her. No more endless circling, no more questioning, no more confusion. She must embrace the responsibilities of her royal heritage. Her face tautened. And if that meant setting aside her own personal desires and marrying a man she barely knew—well, so be it.

Decision made, she felt a kind of peace—a feeling of resignation and resolve—come over her. Sleep, long delayed, made her eyelids flutter shut. And as it did, it brought dreams with it—dreams of a strong-featured face, of heavy-lidded, night-dark eyes resting on her. Desiring her... Impatient to make her his bride. His princess bride.

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