Betrothed: To the People’s Prince

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ANNIA was standing in her kitchen, white-faced and tearful. They walked in, she stepped straight into Nikos’s arms and sobbed out her horror on his chest.

Then she tugged back from Nikos and hugged Athena. And then Joe came lumbering in, looking like a dog who’d been kicked. Before Thena knew it, Joe was a part of the hug.

Family.

Despite her terror, here was a glimmer of comfort. She let herself be hugged, she let herself be wept on and if she wept too, it didn’t matter.

The hugs were fast; there were too many imperatives to indulge in emotion, but it steadied her. For this moment she’d take comfort where she could find it.

There were more men entering the kitchen now, summoned by Joe-big men, determined, grave-faced. Not knowing what to do.

She held Nikos and Nikos held her. Who was holding who up? It didn’t matter. They were facing this as one.

But there was nothing to do. The consensus was that all their hope had to be in Alexandros and his helicopter. It was the only thing fast enough to locate a boat so powerful.

She was trying so hard to think. How to think when you were enmeshed in panic? She must.

‘What…what would Demos do with them?’ she managed, speaking to the room in general, and the unsayable had been said.

Annia gave one heartrending sob and ended up held again by Nikos.

But Athena wasn’t thinking like that. She met Nikos’s gaze over his mother’s head. She saw his terror, and inexplicably it steadied her.

She knew her cousin. He was a weak-willed man, greedy for riches. Desperate even. But he wasn’t completely stupid.

‘He wouldn’t hurt them,’ she said, and the words themselves steadied her, for she knew they were the truth. ‘Not deliberately. Yes, he tried to kill Nicky and me, but that was aimed at the two of us, staged to be an accident. Think of all he’d lose by hurting them now. He’s been seen. He knows that. If he’s known to have hurt them, he could never claim this Crown. Plus, this world doesn’t hold a hiding place deep and dark enough if he touches my Nicky.’ She shook her head, still puzzled. ‘And I don’t understand how he got them both onto his boat. Was there only him?’

‘Yes,’ Joe said. ‘He had them in the boat by the time I saw them.’

‘If he’d grabbed Christa, Nicky might have decided to stay with her,’ Nikos said doubtfully, following her train of thought. ‘Was it Nicky who screamed?’

‘It surely was,’ Joe said. ‘I heard him screaming from here, and by the time I reached the beach I could still hear him.’

‘If Demos came up here and grabbed them…why didn’t he scream here? You’d surely have heard if he had.’

Joe had no answers.

It made less and less sense. She knew her Nicky. ‘For Demos to creep in here and grab them without alerting you…And to get him into the boat…Was he holding him? Why didn’t he jump out?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe Demos tied him up. I couldn’t see.’

‘He’ll be trying to blackmail you into giving up the throne,’ Nikos said.

‘He must be.’ But she’d steadied. She’d heard enough now to be less panicked. ‘And if he is then he’ll contact us.’ She forced herself to say what they all knew they had to do. ‘We have to wait.’

But Nikos’s face was still strained to breaking.

‘Christa has a heart condition,’ he said numbly to the room in general, and she felt his wash of absolute fear. Her normally daredevil lover was jelly in the face of a threat to his daughter. ‘She’s on medication. She has to have it. If we don’t find her…’

‘He can’t have her,’ Annia said fiercely. ‘He’d never love her. Oh…’

‘It’s okay, Mama,’ Nikos said, hauling himself together again in the face of his mother’s terror. ‘Demos doesn’t want her and, like Thena said, he can’t afford to hurt them. We’ll find her.’

Oscar was at Thena’s feet. She knelt and hugged him while Nikos held his mother. ‘Why didn’t you bite him, Oscar?’ she whispered.

There was no answer.

Her terror had faded a little. This had to be an attempt at blackmail, she thought. But…in her confused mind she found room for more questions. What had Annia said? ‘He can’t have her. He’d never love her.’

Why would Demos want Christa? There were undercurrents here she didn’t understand.

She straightened and Nikos’s arm came round her waist and held. He was more afraid than she was, she thought.

How serious was Christa’s heart condition?

Now wasn’t the time to ask. Now it seemed all they could do was wait, and to wait seemed the hardest thing in the world.

‘I’ll make…I’ll make coffee,’ Annia said, but subsided into her handkerchief instead.

And then Nikos’s phone rang.

He flipped it open and listened.

He had the absolute attention of everyone in the room. Even Oscar was looking up, though that probably had more to do with the time and the absence of dinner.

But Oscar’s dinner was doomed to wait. Nikos flipped the phone closed again. Frowning.

‘Alexandros himself is flying the chopper,’ Nikos told them, speaking slowly, thinking it through as he spoke. ‘That was Alex now. Demos and the children are indeed in the boat, and they seem fine. But, according to Alexandros, they’re going nowhere. Their boat’s stopped. He thinks it must have run out of petrol. It’s floating half a mile off the northern end of the island. Alexandros is holding position until we can reach them.’

He took a deep breath. Moving on.

‘We’ll take my runabout. It’s faster than the bigger boats,’ he snapped. ‘Let’s go. I’ll radio as soon as we know. Can you guys bring one of the bigger boats after us?’

He grabbed Athena’s hand, and they were gone.

It took fifteen long minutes to get there. Fifteen minutes with the runabout’s motor roaring at full throttle. Smashing through the swells with sickening thumps.

If Demos had restarted the engine…Or if they’d tipped the boat…

She glanced at Nikos and his face was grim as death.

He’d do whatever it took.

She’d never doubted it. Not for a minute. He’d do whatever he must to keep these children safe. To keep the islanders safe.

To keep her…

And suddenly her thoughts were lurching with the boat. Taking her beyond her present fear.

This man had betrayed her. Or she’d thought he had. But…as she watched him at the tiller, as she saw the bleakness behind his eyes, she felt the sense of betrayal finally leave her, and all that remained was the knowledge of his honour.

He’d lost his father when he was twelve. He’d been on the boat with him-his father had a heart attack and by the time twelve-year-old Nikos had managed to get their fishing boat back to harbour his father was dead.

From that day on he’d taken on responsibilities too heavy for a boy. He’d been desperate to care for everyone, to make sure nothing like his father’s death happened again.

And Marika…Christa’s mother. Nikos’s short-term wife. She’d never been able to think of Marika without the pain of betrayal overwhelming her. But, given these moments of enforced thought, the scene they’d just left came back to her. And Annia’s words, speaking of Christa.

‘He can’t have her,’ Annia had said fiercely. ‘He’d never love her.’

Marika had been older than she was and a bit…reckless. She’d been infatuated by Demos, desperate to get away from her bully of a father and away from the island. Her mother was one of Nikos’s relations-almost family-but her father was a thug. If her father had found out Marika was pregnant…She shuddered to think of his reaction.

The germ of an idea-the germ of truth she’d discovered back in Annia’s kitchen-was suddenly turned to full blown certainty.

But now wasn’t the time to be talking of this with Nikos. Nikos was sick with worry. She should be sick with worry too-but still things didn’t quite fit. She knew her son.

He was very, very like his father.

Dare you…

Nicky knew who Demos was. He’d seen his portrait. He’d understood the threat from the boat.

And now the boat was stranded, according to Alexandros, floundering just outside the reef.

‘They’ll be okay,’ she said, steadily and strongly, to Nikos, and Nikos looked back at her with despair.

‘How can you know?’

‘Because my son is resourceful and clever and brave,’ she told him. ‘Because my son will do whatever it takes. Because my son is just like his father.’

And there they were, right where Alexandros directed them. His helicopter was still hovering overhead.

As Alex had told them, there were three people in the boat. Demos. Christa. Nicky.

Demos was leaning over the side.

‘He might be armed,’ Nikos warned her as they approached but she looked ahead at her cousin and she shook her head.

‘He’s seasick.’

‘He still might be dangerous.’

‘You mean he might shoot me? Not Demos.’ She shook her head scornfully. ‘With Alexandros in the helicopter watching? With the entire Argyros fishing fleet bearing down behind us? When he’s totally occupied with his stomach?’

And she was right. Demos was beyond caring. They ran the runabout up beside the speedboat and he barely looked up at them.

Nikos had the two boats fastened together in seconds. He steadied, and then he lifted Christa over.

Thena took her and hugged her close, and Nicky clambered over himself and sat down in the middle and grinned at his mother and grinned at Nikos. He didn’t look the least bit worried. He looked supremely pleased with himself.

‘Hooray, you came. I knew my plan would work,’ he said with smug satisfaction.

‘You knew…’ Nikos said faintly.

Other boats were approaching now. The bigger fishing boats were slower than Nikos’s runabout, but the fishermen of Argyros had gunned their motors as fast as they could to be in the action.

There wasn’t a lot of action. Demos was bent over the side. Their villain didn’t look the least bit menacing.

The fishing boats were forming a circle. Even if he got the motor going, there was no longer anywhere to run.

‘He was all right until the motor stopped,’ Nicky said scornfully, as they all looked at Demos. ‘But as soon as it stopped, the boat started rolling up and down and up and down and…’

‘Do you mind?’ Athena said faintly. ‘Not so much with the ups and downs. So can you take us back to dry land?’ she asked, hugging Christa and looking a plea to Nikos.

Nikos hadn’t heard. He was still watching Demos. But Demos was no longer a threat to anyone. He was a bundle of abject misery.

‘Tell us what happened,’ he said to Nicky, and the little boy’s eyes gleamed. He was mischief personified. Just like his father.

‘We saw him on the beach from Yia Yia’s kitchen window,’ he said, and the islander’s word for Grandmama resonated with pride. Here, then, was another association Nicky was proud of. ‘I knew it was him ’cos of the boat, and ’cos of the picture. He pulled the boat up on the beach, really fast into bushes and I knew he was trying to hide. Then he came up the cliff path. I said to Christa, I know how to stop his boat going again, so we snuck down the cove past the craypots and Joe didn’t even see us going. And when we got to the boat it was just like the picture in the book-only it said sometimes the fuel tank’s locked-but it wasn’t so we opened it up and put a whole lot of sand in. But it was hard getting the top back on ’cos it got sandy and I just got it on when Demos came back. He saw me and tried to grab me but I ran away. But then he grabbed Christa. So I had to go with him.’

‘Oh, Nicky…’ Athena said, torn between pride and horror. ‘You shouldn’t have…’

‘I couldn’t let him just take Christa, could I?’ he said, stung by implied criticism of such a great plan. ‘She’s my sister. He pushed her into the boat and he said he’d hurt her if I didn’t come too, and I knew the sand was in the engine so I hopped in anyway. He said you had to agree to ab…to abdicate. He said he’d hurt me if you didn’t. So I did get a little bit scared. I thought the boat would stop really fast or not go at all but it went for ages. It sounded sicker and sicker though, but then it stopped and he got sick. And he had a gun, but while he was sick I grabbed it from his belt and threw it into the water. And he tried to hit me but he started being sick again. And then the helicopter came and the man up there waved and I knew you’d come. So it was okay, wasn’t it, Mama?’

‘Yes,’ she said and she found she was laughing. Through tears. Her son.

Her men.

And she looked at Nikos and on his face she saw a mixture of pride and love and hope…and awe. Awe, pure and simple.

And in that moment she knew what she had to do.

These were her men.

This was her family.

She was the Crown Princess of Argyros. It was up to her to claim them.

As dusk settled over the island they returned to the Palace. The Eagle’s Nest was a hideaway for when there was a threat, but there was no longer a threat. And Athena knew-they all knew-that now was the time to lay claim to the throne so it could never be disputed.

Annia and Mrs Lavros took the children to be bathed and fed and put to bed. When Athena came downstairs it seemed half the men of Argyros had come to tie the threads together. Nikos and Alexandros were seated at the head of the long table in the ancient meeting room, where decisions on the rule of this island had been made for generation upon generation.

Nikos signalled that she sit between them. But she couldn’t. Not yet. There were things she had to sort in her own mind first.

There were words she had to find. For now she’d leave the speaking to Nikos.

‘We found the thugs who nearly killed the Princess Athena and Prince Nicholas.’ Nikos was talking to everyone in the room, but he was watching her. ‘They were guns-for-hire from Athens. Alexandros traced the boat, he found them, and we had the link we needed to Demos. But Demos obviously took fright. He’s had an informer on the island. We know now who he is-a man my mother thought of as a friend, a man who forfeited that friendship for pay. He’s already fled to Greece, but before he left he told Demos that today the children would be with my mother.’

The men in the room were silent. Shocked. As was Nikos, Thena thought. He still looked gaunt-the terror of this afternoon would probably stay with him for ever-but he had himself in hand, her Prince of the People.

‘We know it all now,’ Nikos said, and managed a wry smile. ‘It seems that seasickness is better than torture for getting information. The men who towed Demos to shore told him he’d stay in his boat until he told us everything, and now he has.’

‘He wrote it down,’ Alexandros added gravely. ‘We handed him pen and paper and he wrote and signed a confession. Jail’s looking pretty good to Demos. Anywhere where the ground’s solid.’

He smiled, but Nikos didn’t return the smile. The events of the day had shaken him too deeply for humour.

‘He wasn’t as unprepared as he seemed,’ Nikos said heavily. ‘He had a gun. Nicky described it to me, and…’

He broke off, his voice cracking. Alexandros put his hand on his friend’s shoulder and Athena thought blindly, these two men cared deeply for each other.

Her mind steadied. Focused. Knew what had to be done.

‘Enough,’ Nikos said and forced himself to go on. ‘So…Demos beached the boat, he went up to the cottage and found no one. He returned to the boat-furious-to find the children, seemingly waiting for him.’

He hesitated, and Thena could see him repress a shudder. ‘Maybe…maybe that was the best thing that could have happened. For if Joe had been in the garden and Annia had been at home…there could well have been a bloodbath as he seized Nicky and decided to eliminate witnesses.’ He closed his eyes.

Alexandros took over. ‘We know now that Demos has a king-sized gambling problem,’ he added. ‘He’s been gambling on the assumption he’d have access to all the Argyros diamond mines. He was desperate enough to do anything to get his hands on that stream of wealth.’

Athena shivered. She was standing by the door, leaning against the wall. She’d said she wanted to be able to leave easily if the kids needed her. But in reality she just needed to watch, listen and figure what had to be said. And how she was going to say it.

‘So he’s in jail,’ Alexandros said, and glanced across at Athena. ‘If it’s okay by you, Princess Athena, I’ll take care of him on Sappheiros.’

The men were all watching her now. Waiting for her to speak. She took a deep breath. She looked at Nikos’s haggard face. She knew what had to be said.

‘Thank you for your offer, Alexandros,’ she said, forcing her voice to be steady. Forcing her words to be clear enough to be heard the length of the great room. ‘But Demos will be tried here. We’d be thankful if you’d hold him for us until we have the facilities for a full and fair trial. But Prince Nikos and I will build this island’s court system as one of our earliest priorities.’

‘Prince Nikos,’ Alexandros said blankly.

‘Prince Nikos,’ she repeated.

‘If you abdicate, Nikos can’t…’ he began.

‘I have no intention of abdicating.’

Maybe she should have dressed in her royal gear again, she thought. She’d dressed neatly this morning, for the lawyers, in smart casual trousers and a crisp white blouse. But since then she’d been hammered by the sea. Oscar had jumped up on her when they’d docked and she was covered in sand. Her hair was a wild tangle from the wind. She’d abandoned her soaked shoes and she was still barefoot-and she didn’t care.

She was Crown Princess Athena and it was time for her to claim what was hers.

‘Ten years ago Nikos Andreadis asked me to marry him,’ she said, and she left the relative obscurity of her alcove near the door and walked deliberately around the table to its head. She stood between the two men-the two princes-and she looked out over the men of power from this island. Her people.

‘Ten years ago there were misunderstandings and threats,’ she said. ‘I left this island because I believed harm would come to it’s people if I stayed. Nikos let me go because he thought I was intent on a career. For ten years there’s been misunderstanding and grief. But no more. This day is a watershed for this island. This day I say to you all-to the entire island-that I’m here to stay. That ten years ago Nikos asked me to marry me. I accepted his offer, and now, if he’ll have me, I’d like to hold him to that contract. I would like Nikos and I to rule this island as man and wife. Prince Nikos and Princess Athena of Argyros.’

She turned and looked at Nikos. Who was looking…stunned.

‘Nikos, you’re a man of honour,’ she said. ‘I know-we all know-that you would never ask me to marry you if there was a hint that your offer would be taken as a desire to rule this island yourself. Everyone in this room knows you’re an honourable man. Everyone in this room knows the island is your home, your heart. Is there any man in this room who would say Prince Nikos shouldn’t take what I see as his rightful role? As ruler beside me?’

There wasn’t a sound. Not a sound.

Nikos was staring at her blindly, as if he couldn’t believe what she’d just said. The silence stretched on and on.

And then one lone person, far up the back of the long hall, started to clap. And then another started beside him. And then another.

And then the whole room was clapping. They were on their feet, cheering, shouting, clapping each other on the back.

And Nikos was simply staring at Athena. Saying nothing.

The applause died. Athena watched the men regain their seats.

Still Nikos said nothing.

‘I believe,’ she said softly into the silence, ‘that you’ll have to excuse us. Nikos and I have a few things to discuss.’

There was a delighted roar of laughter. Nikos was looking as thrown as a man could be, and their audience was loving it.

‘So can we call this meeting closed?’ she said. ‘I think we’ve achieved everything we wished for. Oh, and when the council next meets…I want this room to hold at least as many women as it does men.’

‘You’ll be under petticoat rule now,’ someone called to Nikos.

‘And he’ll love it,’ someone else called.

‘Our Princess isn’t one for petticoats as far as I can see,’ someone else added. ‘I’m thinking climbing trees and saving kids and making us proud of her is where she is. That’s where they both are. Our royal couple.’

But Athena wasn’t listening. She was watching Nikos.

‘Well?’ she said softly. ‘How about the beach? Is it private enough? Or should we go back to our sky dome?’

‘Thena…’

‘Your call, but we have to talk,’ she said, and he stared at her for a long moment-and then he smiled, that wonderful heart-twisting smile she loved so much. He rose and he took her hand.

And the men of the island council rose again and cheered as one, as the people’s Prince led his Princess from the room.