A Ring To Secure His Crown

‘So how is the blushing bride?’

‘Fine... I guess.’

‘You guess? You mean you didn’t spend the night saying hello?’ Sebastian said, immediately imagining himself saying a very long hello.

‘I only just arrived and she...we... She doesn’t blush.’

Sebastian’s brows lifted. ‘Oh?’ he said, remembering the delicious rosy tinge that had washed over Sabrina’s pale skin.

‘Not that that is a bad thing.’

Sebastian’s eyes narrowed in his brother’s face. ‘Which means that you think it is.’

Luis looked guilty. ‘She just isn’t always what you’d call very spontaneous.’

Sebastian cloaked his expression as he heard the echo of that soft little mewling cry as she’d opened her mouth to him. His body hardened helplessly at the memory of her soft breasts pushing into his ribcage.

The effort of fighting his way free of those intrusive memories delayed his response. ‘Spontaneity can be overrated.’ It could also be great...she would be great in bed.

Never going to find out, Seb.

He was a bastard but not that much of a bastard.

‘Exactly, especially when your every move is being scrutinised. She has all the qualities to make the perfect Queen.’

The speculative furrow between Sebastian’s dark brows deepened as he listened to his brother, sounding very much like a man who was trying desperately to convince himself that he believed in what he was saying.

‘I’m sold,’ he murmured drily. ‘How about you?’

Luis dodged the soft question and his brother’s speculative stare. ‘Marriage is all about teamwork.’

‘So I hear.’ He had never given marriage much thought aside from concluding fairly early on that it was not for him, about the same time that he had nearly made a fatal error. ‘I nearly proposed once,’ he remembered, a rueful smile tugging the corners of his mouth upwards as he tried and failed to visualise the face of the woman who he had decided, at nineteen, was the love of his life.

‘You!’ His brother’s jaw hit his chest before he recovered. ‘You’ve been in love?’ Luis shook his head. ‘Who? When? What happened?’

‘What always happens—the glitter rubs off. I found out she snored and her laugh grated, but for a while I believed that she was perfect. Actually, I’ve believed quite a few were perfect since, the difference being I no longer expect it to last.’

In Sebastian’s opinion, if you were looking for a formula for unhappiness it would be hard to come up with a more sure-fire method than tying yourself to one person for life based on a short-lived chemical high.

‘Perfect? Like you, you mean?’

Sebastian winced and grinned, watching as Luis, his expression growing distracted, moved to one of the two chairs arranged at the foot of the bed. Sebastian held up a warning hand.

‘I wouldn’t do that. I made the same mistake. The leg dropped off. I’ve propped it.’

Luis made a detour to the other chair.

Sebastian’s gaze moved around the room of faded grandeur. ‘It’s not what I was expecting. They really are strapped for cash. No wonder,’ he observed cynically, ‘they are so willing to sell their daughter off to the highest bidder.’

‘They’re not selling her!’ Luis protested. ‘Sabrina understands. She respects—’

‘Our mother understood,’ Sebastian interrupted, wondering if the anger he felt would ever go away. Anger at the system that had trapped his mother in a marriage that had, in the end, destroyed her. ‘And that didn’t turn out so well.’

‘It’s not the same!’ his brother protested, flushing as he surged to his feet.

Sebastian arched a brow. ‘From where I’m standing it looks like a classic case of history repeating itself.’

Luis’s horrified rebuttal was immediate. ‘I’m not like...him.’

Then break the blasted cycle!

Sebastian didn’t voice his thought. What would be the point? He knew his brother would never challenge their father, and, if the positions were reversed, was he so damned sure that he would? Easy to criticise from where he stood.

‘I wonder, Seb. What do you think he’d do if he knew...?’

Sebastian’s irritation slipped away as he walked across to where his brother stood and laid a hand on Luis’s shoulder. ‘He won’t,’ he said firmly. ‘We burnt the letters. No one knows they ever existed.’

The young brothers had not known at the time they discovered the love letters hidden under a floorboard that despite breaking off the affair after she discovered she was carrying her lover’s child she had continued to see him after the child she had conceived with him had been born.

The irony was that they were right, there was a royal bastard, only it wasn’t the son that the scandal-mongers had identified.

‘As far as the world is concerned, the affair only started the year I was born.’ Sebastian could see no reason anyone should ever know. ‘We are the only two people who know, unless you plan on telling him?’

Luis shuddered. ‘I stood by and watched you being bullied at school and then at home when we both know that you should be King. I have no legitimate claim to the throne. I’m not even his son.’

Sebastian shook his head. ‘Be glad of that every day. Be glad of it, Luis!’ he said, his voice gruff with ferocious sincerity. ‘You’ve escaped the taint that I carry. I’m the son the bastard deserves. You will make a better King than I ever could be. You’re the one who has made all the sacrifices...and you are still making them.’ Sebastian straightened up, relaxing the grip on his brother’s shoulders. ‘You don’t have to marry her, you know. You could say no.’

Luis shook his head and dodged his brother’s gaze. ‘Easy for you to say. I’m not—’

‘Selfish as hell?’ Sebastian thought of where being unselfish had got his mother. He’d choose selfish every time.

Luis’s gaze lifted, just as his brother vanished into the bathroom. ‘I’m not a rebel like you. I need to... I care about what people think about me.’

Sebastian re-emerged with a fresh towel, which he rubbed vigorously over his damp hair.

‘And this marriage isn’t about me, it’s about bigger things. I’m realistic about it.’

‘So how does she feel about it?’

Luis gave an uncomprehending shrug. ‘How do you mean?’

‘I mean what does Sabrina expect from this marriage? Is she realistic too?’ He gave a sudden shrug, annoyed with himself for wasting time on a subject that was none of his business. ‘Is the warm glow of doing the right thing enough for her too?’ He began to vigorously rub his already towel-dried hair, asking himself where this swell of outrage was coming from. She’d made her bed and she seemed happy to lie in it...with his brother. ‘Hell, Luis, do you two even talk?’

‘We have a lifetime to talk,’ Luis responded, not sounding as though the life he saw stretching ahead filled him with joy. ‘But you mean sex, don’t you? It’s not like you to be so squeamish. Actually no, I haven’t slept with her.’

‘That’s not what I meant, but as you’ve shared aren’t you taking this untouched virgin bride stuff a bit too far, Luis?’

Luis laughed. ‘Even father doesn’t expect that.’