The Future King's Love-Child. Melanie Milburne
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to contact you again, remember? In any case I went abroad for several months after you ended our affair. I didn’t hear much about what was going on and no one in my family thought to tell me because they didn’t even know of our involvement. By the time I got back my father had already warned Lissa never to contact you and had packed her off to university in Paris before she could utter a single word of protest.’
‘So when you did get back you let me rot in prison because you didn’t want your father to find out we’d had an affair,’ she said bitterly.
‘Wrong!’ He was only a decibel or two away from shouting the word at her. ‘Cassie, why can’t you see this from my point of view?’
Cassie got up from the table, pushing in her chair with such force it sent a shock wave through his wineglass, the alcohol spilling over the edges and onto the crisp white tablecloth. ‘Oh, I can see this from your point of view, all right,’ she snipped at him. ‘A few months ago I was just yet another nameless person locked away in prison. Someone from your past you didn’t dare speak about, much less step forward and defend. Now you find I am one of the key players at the orphanage you want to support, so you think it might be timely to pour oil over troubled waters to mollify me enough to maintain your reputation in case I spill all to the press about our little clandestine affair.’
‘I care nothing for my reputation,’ he ground out with a flintlike flash of his dark eyes. ‘It is my family I am concerned about. I owe it to the generations of Karedes who have gone before me to act in a manner fitting for a future king.’
She rolled her eyes at him. ‘So I guess that’s why we aren’t having lunch where everyone can see us, right, Sebastian? To maintain your family’s honour.’
His brow was still deeply furrowed. ‘I was thinking of your safety. I told you last night there are still many people in the community who think you should have got life in prison.’
‘I did get life!’ Cassie said, closer to tears than she had been in years. ‘Do you think this is ever going to go away? I am marked for life as the daughter who killed her father. I see the way people look at me. They even cross to the other side of the road rather than look me in the eye. Don’t tell me I haven’t already been punished enough. Just don’t tell me.’
He stepped towards her but she moved away, holding up a hand like a barrier to ward him off. ‘Please…’ She was close to begging and hated herself for it. ‘Give me a moment…please…’
Sebastian clenched his hands to stop them reaching for her. He wanted to comfort her, to tell her things would improve now she was free, but he wasn’t sure she wanted to hear such platitudes from him. In any case, he wasn’t entirely sure they held any truth. But he’d also wanted to tell her how deeply shocked he had been to hear of her father’s death and the charge of murder she had been landed with. He could not believe his Caz could have done such a thing. But then he hadn’t thought her capable of the black-hearted deceit she had informed him of the day prior to her father’s death.
She had gone from his bed to one of her many lovers, probably laughing about him behind his back the whole time. His gut still churned thinking about it, even after all this time. She wasn’t the person he had fallen in love with. He realised in hindsight the person he had loved was a fantasy he had constructed in his head. He had been a fool not to see her for what she was. She had acted the part of the devoted lover so easily and he had fallen for it. She was like a chameleon, changing constantly to fit in with the company or each situation she found herself in.
But who was Cassandra Kyriakis now? She had spent five years in prison and another eleven months on parole, an experience any young woman would find life-changing, hopefully even reforming in some way. In any case, her days of living off her father’s wealth were long gone. Theo’s estate had been divided up between distant relatives, leaving Cassie virtually penniless. While her father had been alive, Cassie had spent his money as if entitled to every euro of it.
Each time Sebastian had dared to bring up the subject of her taking a career or job of her own she had laughed in his face, telling him she was having a perfectly fine time living the life of a socialite.
Cassie appeared to enjoy her work at the orphanage now, but what would happen when her parole period was up? Sebastian had had enough trouble adjusting to living constantly in the public eye, but how much worse would it be for Cassie with the shame of her father’s death hanging over her?
CHAPTER FOUR
CASSIE composed herself with an effort and resumed her seat at the table as if nothing had happened. She picked up her glass of water and drank several mouthfuls, conscious of Sebastian looking at her with a frown beetling his brows.
She set her glass back down. ‘You said you had something to discuss with me over lunch about the orphanage,’ she reminded him coolly, and pointedly looked at her watch, making it clear she was on a strict time line, and, more to the point, he was not important enough to her to adjust it to accommodate him.
He came back to the table and sat down, his expression still brooding. ‘You switch it on and off like magic, don’t you, Cassie?’ he said.
She sent him an indifferent look without answering.
‘Damn it, Cassie, for once in your life show me you’re human,’ he growled at her. ‘You never let anyone get close to you.’
Cassie clenched her hands into hard fists of tension in her lap and glared at him across the table. ‘What do you want me to do, Sebastian? Weep and wail and gnash my teeth? Would that make you feel better? To think I’m an emotional wreck, crippled by guilt and unable to resume my place in the world?’
His eyes travelled over her face, pausing for a moment on the tight line of her mouth before locking on her flinty gaze. ‘I am not sure what I want from you, to tell you the truth,’ he said heavily.
‘Perhaps that’s why you invited me here,’ Cassie went on in the same resentful and embittered tone, ‘to have a gawk at me, a real-life prisoner. I guess not too many prince regents get the opportunity to have a private meeting with an ex-criminal.’
His mouth tightened. ‘It’s not like that at all, Cassie,’ he said.
‘Then what is it like, Sebastian?’ she asked. ‘Why am I here?’
He held her feisty look, his dark gaze sombre. ‘I wanted to see you again. To make sure you are all right.’ He released a breath in a small sigh and added, ‘I guess to see if you had changed.’
Cassie cocked one eyebrow at him. ‘And what is your verdict?’
He surveyed her features for several seconds, each one seeming like an eternity to Cassie under his ever-tightening scrutiny.
‘It’s hard to say,’ he said at last. ‘You look the same, you even sound the same, but something tells me you are very different.’
‘The correction services people will be very glad to hear that,’ she quipped without humour. ‘What a waste of public money if my incarceration hadn’t had some effect on my rebellious character.’
His eyes held hers for another moment or two. ‘You still don’t like yourself, though, do you, Cassie?’
Cassie forced herself to keep her gaze trained on his, but it cost her dearly. She felt her defences crumbling and hoped she could hold herself together until she was alone. ‘I am quite at home with who I am,’ she said. ‘Like a lot of people, I have things I don’t like about myself, but no one’s perfect.’
‘What don’t you like about yourself?’
She chewed on her bottom lip and then, realising he was watching her, quickly released it. ‘I don’t like my…er…feet,’ she said, suddenly stuck for an answer. ‘I have ugly feet.’
His mouth tilted in a smile. ‘You have beautiful feet, agape mou,’ he said. ‘How can you think they are not?’
‘I think they’re too big,’ she