The Royal's Obsession (4 page)

“Yes, this one please.”

When she reached for her purse, Augustine waved her off. He handed the woman a large handful of cash, making her eyes widen. She started to speak with him in Greek, something forceful and stern, but he waved her off with a grin. She scowled, picking up the cloth that he had indicated as well as another one, one that was dyed black.

He laughed, and accepted them, turning to Anastasia.

“Here. Apparently, I was generous enough that she wanted you to have this one as well. I hope you like black.”

“Oh,” said Anastasia, examining the dark fabric closely. “Look, it isn’t black at all.”

“Oh?”

What she had thought was black was actually a deep, deep blue. Unlike the wave pattern that was woven into the other cloth, this one was woven to create a pattern of wheels. The result was a richly textured fabric that she couldn’t stop running her fingers over. When Augustine touched it, he hummed with approval.

“It is amazing work, and if I am totally honest with myself, I got a bargain to say the least. Once upon a time, young Greek girls would come out to places like Santa Olivine to buy their wedding linens. This is what I imagine they came to buy.”

Anastasia grinned up at him.

“Well, now that you have bought them, does this make you a young Greek ready for his wedding?”

He looked at her sharply for a moment and then shook his head.

“You know, I think you are the first person to ask me that honestly and without ulterior motives.”

He started to walk along the vendor stands, and without thinking about what she was doing, she trotted along after him.

“How do you mean?”

He shrugged. “I am, after all, royalty. Just because I am not the heir does not mean that there aren’t…certain expectations. People have been speculating about who I am going to marry for almost ten years now.”

She laughed a little at that. “That must have been so irritating when you were a teenager. My parents are much the same way.”

He blinked at her, frowning a little. “Are your parents very concerned about your prospects?”

“Well, they’re most concerned about my lack of prospects. Everyone they think is ‘suitable’ for me in New York is, well, kind of terminally uninteresting.”

He laughed. “And like any American girl, you want to get married for love.”

“Well, of course, but there’s more to it than that.”

“He needs to have a healthy bank account?”

Her laugh this time was a little more uneasy.

“That never hurts, does it? No, the truth is that someone who marries me needs to be passionate. They need to be concerned about the same things that I am concerned about, and they need to be…” She shrugged.

“All I am saying is that you are not the only one with expectations about who you should marry,” she said. “Are you going to marry for love?”

Augustine was silent for a moment, and then he shrugged.

“I don’t know. My brother did, and even if it’s more than a little shocking how he went about it, it seems to have worked out for the best, no?”

“He and Trinity do seem very happy.”

“My grandparents, though, they only knew each other through public meetings and events before they married. Until their wedding night, they never spent any time at all alone.”

Anastasia thought about it for a moment. What would it be like to come straight from the arms of her family into a marriage with a man that she didn’t know at all? What would a young bride feel as the doors closed behind them and she was finally alone with the man who she was meant to live with for the rest of her life?

She glanced at Augustine, who was studying a painted blue ceramic pot carefully. What would it be like if the man who was suddenly watching her from across the marriage bed was him?

“That sounds frightening,” she murmured, coming to stand beside him. “I…I’ve never been someone who was too concerned with control, but losing that much control feels terrifying. Suddenly…suddenly you are just in a new life, with new expectations and someone who has…an incredible amount of access to you.”

Augustine’s glance was amused but he nodded.

“No, but my grandparents beat the odds. They were together for some fifty years, they raised my father and my uncles with love and care, and up until the end of their lives, they would still walk hand in hand through the royal garden in Athens. Everyone should be so lucky.”

“Did they have an easy beginning?”

He laughed at that.

“Not at all. Family legend has it that when they fought, the entire palace could hear it. Once, she became so angry that she threw a gravy boat that was more than three hundred years old at him, shattering it to pieces. They fought, but as my grandfather told it much later, they were only fighting because they did not know how to be in love.”

Anastasia thought about what Augustine was saying. She could imagine the early tempestuous days of his grandparents’ love. She could think about what it might be like to fight, first for yourself, and then for the love that was possible.

“They were very lucky,” she said, “and very brave as well. I wish I were that brave.”

Augustine looked at her for such a long time that she started to fidget. Finally he smiled a little, shaking his head.

“You are a strange one, pretty Anastasia. I like hearing the truth from you.”

She shrugged it off, a blush on her face.

“I think I just want to avoid trouble,” she said as candidly as she could. “But look, there’s a stand there selling honey…”

The honey stand was a simple wood counter arranged under a bright and cheerful yellow-orange banner. The woman, sensing a sale, offered them both paper cups with plastic spoons stuck in them.

“What’s this?” Anastasia asked in confusion, looking at the small solid bits that seemed trapped in the honey.

“Honeycomb,” replied Augustine, already eating his. “Eat it, it’s good for you. If it was in bigger pieces, you would chew it like gum and spit it out when it lost its flavor, but right now, as small as those pieces are, you can just swallow them.”

Dubiously, Anastasia spooned a small portion of the honey into her mouth. The honey itself was dark and sweet, bursting with flavor in the a way that the honey back home simply didn’t. She had had buckwheat honey and orange blossom honey before, but this was something different. The small pieces of honeycomb in the honey itself were slightly crunchy but with a darker flavor that made it the perfect complement.

“This is amazing,” she said with a sigh. “I should get some and send it back to my parents.”

She ended up buying two jars of the superior dark honey, but when the woman gave them to her, it upset her little paper cup. She caught it before it fell, but a dribble of honey ended up on her hand.

Without thinking of what she was doing, she leaned down to lap at it with her tongue. When Anastasia looked up, it was to see that Augustine was watching her with those intent dark eyes.

“Well, waste not, want not, I guess,” she said with a slightly guilty laugh.

Augustine tore his eyes away from her as if he were suddenly embarrassed to be caught staring.

“Look, there’s Apolo and Trinity. Let’s see what they’ve been up to.” His tone was completely serious and genuine, but there was something to it that made Anastasia wonder what was really going through his mind.

Apolo and Trinity had found their own treasures, and the four of them made their way to a beautiful little tavern that didn’t look as if it had changed substantially over the last few hundred years. The wood was lovingly worn to a gorgeous polish, and from the rear wafted the scent of roasted meat. It made Anastasia’s mouth water.

Their waiter was a narrow teenage boy with a wide grin and an easy manner. He flirted outrageously with Anastasia and Trinity, complimenting Apolo and Augustine on their great good taste.

Apolo and Trinity took it in stride, but Augustine scowled.

“He should keep his feet on the ground and his eyes away from women he doesn’t know,” he growled. “Not so long ago, he would be in a world of hurt if someone caught him talking like that about their wife or their sister.”

“How lucky it is that he lives in this modern era,” said Trinity cheerfully. “I for one never grow tired of hearing how beautiful I am.”

The food, when it came, was delicious. Lamb seasoned to perfection was served on a bed of greens with a pile of fresh-baked flat bread to one side. Anastasia had had Greek food before, of course; it was part of her legacy as a New Yorker. This was the first time she had had it so close to the source, however, and the revelation in taste was incredible.

Anastasia knew that she would remember the meal for a very long time. The food was delicious, the company was dear to her, and once, just once, she caught Augustine glancing at her with a slight smile that warmed her from the bottom of her spirit.

As she ate, she watched and listened to the easy play between Apolo and Trinity. Their story, once she heard it, was mind-boggling. Apolo had been signed up for a reality show, and rather than getting out of it and sacrificing more than he wanted to to the network, he had found himself a ready-made bride in Trinity, a struggling actress. From the lies that they told the press and the play-acting that had formed the start of their acquaintance had come something beautiful. When she looked at them now, she saw a couple deeply in love, where one person completed the other.

“I wonder if I’ll ever have what you two have,” she remarked wistfully. “You are amazing together.”

Trinity squeezed her friend’s hand gently.

“Of course you will,” she said. “Love is a strange thing. It seems like it finds you when it finds you, and there will be no rushing it.”

Apolo nodded his agreement.

“It’s true. I wasn’t expecting love when I met Trinity. I wasn’t thinking about love at all. Then suddenly there she was, and it was dumped on my lap whether I wanted it or not. I chose to run with it, and after that, well, here we are.”

Anastasia laughed a little. “That sounds amazing. I hope…that is, maybe someday something like that will happen to me.”

“The odds are against it.”

Anastasia felt as if she had been doused in cold water. Blinking with surprise, she turned to Augustine, who had finished his meal and was leaning back in his chair. He watched the rest of the table with a kind of sardonic humor, and suddenly she was reminded of the man who had shown her such scorn when she wandered into the solarium. This was not a man who cared about love or anything that went with it. He regarded her with a kind of amusement that made her feel as if she were about an inch tall.

“What do you mean?” she couldn’t stop herself from asking. She knew that she should have laughed it off. Fashionable people did not talk about love and what they wanted in relationships in front of the public. However, she hadn’t thought that she was in public. She thought she was with her friends.

He shrugged, unconcerned. “Exactly that. Love is the goal that we have been sold all our lives. Of course the ideal is to find your Prince Charming, to have the connection that is shared by Apolo and Trinity here. But you have eyes and you are a fairly intelligent woman, Anastasia. How many true connections of this sort have you ever seen? If you are honest with yourself, you know that the number is something that can easily be counted on one hand.”

Anastasia swallowed hard, aware that Apolo and Trinity were watching her for her response. She felt a high blush burning on her cheeks, but she refused to back down.

“I have known lots of people with lots of different kinds of relationships,” she said, but he cut her off.

“Of course. There are many different types of relationships. Some of them are parasitic, with one partner feeding off the other. Others are simply relationships of convenience. Still others exist because people hate the idea of being alone. What I am getting at, Anastasia, is that you can hope all you want for a relationship that will stand the test of time, but for the most part, you might as well hope for stones that fly. I am only telling you the truth as I know it to be.”

There was a slight smile on his face as he said this last, and it occurred to Anastasia that this topic meant very little to him. In his mind, he was merely correcting the errant waywardness of a young woman. Still, she couldn’t help but feel it was cruel of him.

“I don’t care if it is a fairytale,” she said, standing up from the table. “I don’t care. What I do know is that I am going to wait for it, and that I am going to know it when I see it. Anything else…would be a lie.”

For some reason, she felt as if there were tears lodged in the back of her throat. It was pure foolishness, of course. She didn’t know Augustine well enough for him to offend her or to make her cry. She didn’t care a single bit for his opinion. That’s what she told herself anyway.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I…I think I am going to make my way to the ship.”

Feeling as fragile as a newborn fawn, she picked her way to the door. She didn’t know what she might do all alone on the yacht, but she knew that she couldn’t stand to be there any longer.

For a moment, the table was utterly silent in the wake of her absence. Finally, Trinity turned to Augustine with a look of fury on her fine-featured face.

“What the hell was that?” she asked, glaring. “Did she irritate you by stating something that she wanted? What brought that on?”

“I was only being honest,” Augustine said, but there was less conviction in his tone than there might have been. He gazed out the swinging door where she had gone, feeling just a little stunned.

Apolo snorted. “You love the truth when it serves some purpose, brother, but I cannot see what purpose it has served here. She wasn’t someone who was pestering you or trying to push you into something that you did not want to do.”

Augustine looked like he was going to respond to that, but then he glanced down to see that she had left the weavings and the honey that she had purchased next to her seat.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, feeling oddly hollow. “Someone should bring her her things. She will be missing them. Trinity, could you…?”