Impulse (17 page)

‘Trust me on this, Randy. I'm really worried about you.'

I stared into her wide, terrified eyes and shivered. Could what she was saying be true? Could Marko be lying to me? I shuddered at the thought.

‘I'll ask Marko tonight, then.' Before I left, I gave Lauren a smile of reassurance. ‘Don't worry; it'll all be okay.'

‘Come back and tell me what he says.'

‘I will. And then you won't have to move out of the castle.'

She shook her head, her face deadly serious, her blue eyes scarily crystal-clear and free of tears.

‘No, Miranda. It'll be the both of us leaving the castle.'

M
Y INSIDES CLENCHED
as I re-entered the ballroom, the music blasting my ears. What was I going to say to Marko? How on earth could I question him about Lauren's rumours just when we were starting to have a proper relationship?

‘Miranda,' called a soft voice over my shoulder. I spun around to find Robbie, grinning beneath his mask.

I gasped.

He leaned in. ‘Don't act so surprised to see me. I know these guards very well. Some of them I grew up with. The one at the door told me you'd returned and gave me directions.'

‘But what if a rogue guard is here; one of Damir's men?'

‘You needn't worry. Those two guards at the door right there can be trusted. They'd step in if there was trouble. Their sister's been missing for a month now and they think Damir's involved somehow. Anyway, no-one is going to recognise me with my mask on.' He swept me up in a dance.

‘I've been to see Lauren.'

‘Did she tell you things? Things about Marko?' From across the room, I spied Marko. Though he was speaking
with a couple of jellyfish, his eyes were scanning the dance floor the entire time. When he found me, his shoulders visibly relaxed beneath his golden costume. However, when he rested his gaze on Robbie his body stiffened again.

‘Yes. She said some things.'

Robbie, surprisingly, moved me about the floor with the ease of someone with full sight. But, I supposed, we only needed to graze another couple for him to right himself. Our fellow dancers were like a safety buffer.

‘Don't believe a word she says,' Robbie said.

‘I don't.'

Robbie squeezed my hand as if he knew how much it had hurt to hear Lauren say those things.

‘Marko would never do such a thing.'

‘Excuse me.' A man with a flamingo mask—possibly the partner of the lady flamingo who'd given me a mouthful of feathers when we'd first arrived—complete with a humungous nose-like beak, tried to cut into our dance, but Robbie dragged me away and continued to lead me across the floor. I explained what the suitor was wearing, and Robbie laughed.

‘Losing some of my sight has its benefits. I thought he was a pig.'

It was a beautiful thing to see Robbie smile.

‘I'm glad you're here. You're like my guardian angel.' I fingered the feathers on his back. ‘You look gorgeous, tonight, by the way. I think Lauren has a bit of a thing for you.'

He half smiled, but not for long. ‘It makes me so mad that I can't truly look out for you, or Marko—especially now. I feel so useless.' At that moment he tripped against my foot and stumbled forward. I seized his arm and prevented him
from falling but, when he righted himself, his mask was askew and his hair rumpled.

‘Are you okay?'

‘I'm fine! Thank you.' He let me go and shrugged free from my grasp before straightening his mask. ‘I think it's time I left. People are starting to stare.' His eyes were dark and shiny beneath the mask as he gazed down at me. ‘Please, take care of yourself.' He turned and started to walk away, his movements stiff and short, as he tried to gauge his position in the room.

‘Wait.' I followed him, thinking to guide him to the door, when somebody crossed his path and sent Robbie stumbling to the floor.

‘Are you alright?'

He lay there, unmoving, his face to the floor and then I realised that his mask had come undone and had slid across the ballroom.

Hurriedly, before anyone else got to it, I snatched it from the floor and returned to Robbie's side, where I knelt beside him and slid it over his face.

‘Are you hurt?' I asked, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder.

He shook his head, the ends of his light brown hair brushing against my fingers. The two brothers whom he had said I could trust appeared at Robbie's side and helped him to his feet before they led him out, wobbly on his feet, through the doors.

People had started gathering, to stare, to point and to laugh. I wanted to scream at them to leave him alone; but it would garner too much attention, so I held my tongue.

‘Who was that?' demanded Sylvia.

‘Yes, who was it?' asked Marko, his mask drawn up and resting on the top of his head. The worry in his eyes, as he
stared after Robbie, told me that he maybe already knew. ‘Is everything alright?'

Everyone was staring at me.

‘A man fell…and I…helped him to his feet. That's all.' I got to my feet and stared down at my shaking hand. Somehow I'd ended up with a single white feather from Robbie's suit. ‘I'm really tired,' I said to Marko, as people started to move away from us. ‘Can we please leave now?'

Marko nodded and, after saying our goodbyes, we left.

‘You seem tense. Different, somehow,' Marko said when we reached my room. He hovered by our adjoining door, his glittering mask in his hand.

Lauren's words of warning bounced around against my skull. But then Robbie's reassuring voice entered my head, much louder than Lauren's. Marko would never have done the things Lauren had said.

‘I'm fine. It's nothing.'

He shook his head and stared down at the mask in his hand.

‘No. There is something. You seemed different when you returned from changing your shoes.' His eyes moved over my feet. ‘Which you didn't, in fact, change at all.'

Avoiding the question, I came away from the door and started to remove my earrings.

‘Where did you go for so long?'

In the dresser mirror I could see his face. The light in the room had cast a shadow across his eyes, as though he was still wearing a mask; but I didn't need to see his face to know how he was feeling. I could hear the emotion in his voice. ‘Please tell me.'

‘It's nothing, but it's something.' I sighed. ‘And I don't believe any of it anyway.'

Marko entered the room and put his mask on my dresser, beside mine.

‘Don't believe what, exactly?'

‘Somebody said something, tonight…about you. But I didn't believe them so it doesn't matter.'

I watched for his reaction, but he offered none and kept his eyes fixed on me.

‘Tell me what was said.'

The lid to the jewellery box snapped shut. This wasn't going to be easy.

‘They said that you had been seeing somebody, romantically, while I was gone last year.' I shrugged and played with a pearl necklace that rested in a polished, scallop-shell dish, making tiny clinking noises. ‘I mean, it's none of my business anyway.' My cheeks burned. ‘And I don't really care.'

‘You don't care?' Marko edged away from me. ‘You really don't care?' He shook his head and gazed across the room, looking pissed off, disappointed and then slightly amused all at once. ‘I don't know if I should be happy or angry about that.'

‘So, you want me to explode in a jealous rage? Throw this book at your head?' I pointed to the huge hardback resting on the nearby bookcase.

Marko rubbed the back of his neck, a half-smile on his lips, and said, ‘Maybe something a little lighter; but, yes, I'd at least want a reaction of some sort. I'd like to think you would hate the idea of me being with someone else,' he said, and paused, his hands clenching and unclenching by his sides, ‘as much as I'd hate the idea of you loving another.'

‘Oh. Okay.' I nodded, my heart thumping crazily against my ribcage at the way he was looking at me. ‘Let's not talk about it anymore, then.'

‘I'm not finished, yet,' Marko said, coming to stand right behind me, before placing his hands on my shoulders and turning me to face him. ‘First things first: I did not see anyone after you left, even though I doubted you'd choose to return. I tried to keep busy, to forget you, but I couldn't. You haunted me in a way. And as your eighteenth birthday loomed, I dreaded finding an empty beach. I wasn't sure how I'd deal with the loss of you forever.' He rested his hands back on my waist and sighed, his eyes deep and dark and soft. ‘But you chose to return.' He shook his head. ‘There has never been anyone but you, Miranda. You have to believe me.'

It was hard not to tilt my face, to not press my lips to his. Because, right then, kissing Marko and holding on to him as tightly as possible, was all I wanted to do. But there was more we needed to discuss, and it needed to be now.

With willpower like iron, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before disentangling myself from Marko's embrace.

‘There is something else. Somebody has been going around saying that you are doing wrong by the people of Marin and that…that you're using me just so that you can…' My face exploded with heat. ‘Just so you can have an heir.'

Marko froze. Even his chest, which had been heaving, stopped moving.

‘I would never do that to you,' he said, his voice quiet and low. ‘And if…' he shook his head and sighed angrily, ‘convincing you means never touching you again, then so be it.' He jerked away from me.

‘Of course I don't believe it. You don't have to stop touching me.' I reached out and took his hand in mine; but he kept his head down, his eyes focusing on the fringe of the large rug at the centre of the shiny stone floor.

‘I shouldn't have told you. It's all lies anyway.'

He finally looked at me.

‘Don't be sorry.' He sighed and scratched the back of his neck. ‘This is all my fault.'

‘How is people spreading lies your fault?'

He shrugged. ‘Having Damir in the dungeons, in the castle, is a big mistake. He has grown even more powerful in here.' He snorted and stared down at the daggers sheathed to the insides of his long, black boots. ‘I should have killed him when I had the chance.'

‘But maybe that's what makes you the better king. You're not cruel and heartless like him.'

Marko half smiled at me, his eyes sad.

‘And yet Anne and many others still love him more than they love me.'

‘Not me.' I gave his hand a squeeze. ‘Where is Anne now, anyway?'

‘She's leaving the castle, to live in the city with her parents.'

‘Good.' I nodded and gave him a reassuring smile. ‘So Anne is safe, and now Damir has no access to her. That's one problem solved. Now we just have to find out who else is helping Damir by spreading these horrible lies about you.'

Marko shook his head and tugged me into his arms. He buried his face in my hair, stroked my back and held me close.

‘Not who, Miranda,' he sighed into my neck, ‘but how many.'

The next morning I woke up late. I'd hardly slept the entire four days of my incarceration, so it was good to finally get
some rest. I scoffed my breakfast and finished my coffee, and headed straight out to see Robbie. I couldn't bear the thought of him on his own, nursing his injured pride, after he'd taken the trouble to come and see me at Sylvia's party.

But when I asked after him at the greenhouses, the old man there shook his head.

‘Didn't come in today. Something about a sore leg. He'd be home, at his cottage, resting it off.' He pointed out towards a couple of hills in the distance. ‘You'll find it nestled between those hills.' The man frowned. ‘Robert normally doesn't get so many visitors.'

‘Err, thanks,' I said, and began walking towards the cottage, wondering what the man had meant by ‘so many visitors'. Perhaps Marko had recognised Robbie at the party and had come to ask him why he'd turned up there, and perhaps to see if he was injured during the fall.

Eventually I arrived at the base of the hills, where a cobblestone path, fringed with dark-green ferns, led me to a neat, welcoming little house with a red roof and green door.

‘Robbie?' I knocked and waited. ‘It's only me, Miranda,' I called when he didn't answer. Maybe he couldn't get to the door with his bad leg.

I jiggled the door handle, but it was locked so I knocked again. Still no response.

The guard who had been trailing me was still chatting to the greenhouse man. I could just make out his black uniform behind me in the distance.

‘Robbie. Open up. I need to see you.'

Light, quick footsteps, not those of somebody blind and injured, came to the door before it swung open.

Bright blue eyes and long blonde hair greeted me.

‘Lauren?' I stepped back. ‘What are you doing here?'