Betrothed: To the People's Prince. Marion Lennox

little girl. ‘He’ll be back soon,’ she said gently.

      ‘Papa.’

      ‘There’s a little zoo just near here. Do you like animals?’

      The little girl considered. ‘Big?’ she asked.

      ‘Little. Funny animals. Friends.’

      ‘Friends,’ Christa said and put out a hand for Athena to help her to her feet. She smoothed her dress, tucked a sticky hand into Athena’s and had another lick of her ice cream. ‘Friends.’

      There were so many questions…Where to start? An inquisition could be a good way to send Nicky straight back to his mother.

      ‘Where do you go to school?’ he asked, and then thought, great, very insightful. Not.

      ‘Over there,’ the little boy told him, pointing south east.

      Good. That got him places. ‘Do you like school?’

      ‘Sometimes. I hafta go to Greek lessons after school, too.’

      ‘You speak Greek?’

      ‘Mama does. She makes me.’

      He needed time to take that one in.

      They walked along. Kicking stones. Nikos suddenly realised…He was kicking stones in front of him. So was Nicky. With his left foot.

      ‘You’re left-handed?’

      ‘Mmm,’ Nicky said.

      ‘Your mama’s right-handed.’

      ‘Mmm.’

      Riveting stuff. Both being left-handed. It meant nothing.

      It meant everything.

      ‘Has your mother told you about Argyros?’

      ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Are you a fisherman?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘I like boats.’

      ‘Have you been on boats?’

      ‘Twice. I don’t get seasick. Mama does. This is the place where a Beatle was shot.’

      ‘Right,’ Nikos said. He gave up. There were too many questions for one small boy to handle.

      There were too many questions for him to handle.

      They were sitting right where he’d left them, only Christa had replaced her ice cream with a hand puppet. A squirrel.

      She wiggled it as they approached, her face lighting up as she saw him.

      ‘Thena bought…me…squirrel.’ He grinned and swung her up into his arms. No matter what else was happening here, this mustn’t touch her. That had been his mantra for almost ten years and he wasn’t budging now.

      ‘Thank you,’ he said gravely to Athena.

      ‘We didn’t get all the way round,’ Nicky said. ‘We caught another buggy. Nikos says John was his favourite Beatle. He was yours too, wasn’t he, Mama?’

      ‘Yes,’ she said, sounding repressive.

      ‘Imagine,’ he said softly and watched her wince.

      It had been the last night they’d been together. ‘I have to go away,’ she’d said, but she’d sobbed and clung.

      He hadn’t understood why she had to leave. She’d completed her university degree by correspondence, far younger than most. Her writing was brilliant. Everyone said so. She could take a job with the local paper and write the novel to end all novels. They’d agreed. She could stand by him in his battle with Giorgos.

      That was what they’d planned, but suddenly she was crumpled, broken, sobbing about having to leave.

      ‘I need to go. I just need to go. Please, Nikos, don’t make it any harder.’

      He’d thought it was her writing that was driving her. ‘You’ll come back?’

      ‘I don’t know. I can’t. Nikos…’

      She’d run out of words. He’d been angry, shocked, bewildered.

      That night in his family’s boatshed…Their last night. He’d played music by John Lennon on his tinny little sound system.

       Imagine…

      He thought now: Nicky must have been conceived that night.

      No matter. He had to get rid of the white noise. There was only one absolute. ‘You need to come home,’ he told her.

      ‘No.’

      ‘Then Demos wins.’ He made an almost superhuman effort to rid himself of his emotional tangle and concentrate on what was important. ‘I need to go home tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I thought I had a week to persuade you, but Demos has already contacted mining companies. He’s acting as if he owns the place. I daren’t stay longer. But it’s your birthright, Athena. And,’ he added, ‘it’s your son’s.’

      ‘And your…’

      ‘And my daughter’s,’ he finished for her, harshly. For maybe she was going places he wasn’t ready to go just yet. ‘Our children’s. You must come home.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Think about it,’ he said briefly, harshly. ‘There’s so much happening here I can’t take it in. Whatever’s gone on in the past…’ He glanced at Nicky and felt as if he was on a shifting deck, unsure of his footing, unsure of anything. ‘For now we need to put that aside. If you don’t come home, then some time soon I’ll be back here to…sort what’s mine. But my priority right now has to be the islanders. Thousands of livelihoods, Thena. Princess Athena. They’re your people. You answer to them and not to me. Except…’

      He hesitated and then said the words that had to be said. The words that had been in his head for the entire tour of the park.

      ‘Except on the question of my son,’ he said.

      She gasped. ‘That’s not fair.’

      ‘Life’s not fair. Get over it, Athena, and come home. Princess.’

      Nicky had been listening on the sidelines, troubled, not understanding but trying. ‘You said my son,’ he pointed out, trying to be helpful. ‘Did you mean your daughter?’

      Nikos nodded. Grave as Nicky. ‘I must have,’ he agreed. ‘But I’m a bit upset right now. I need your mama to come back to the island where she was born.’

      ‘You called her a princess.’

      ‘She is a princess.’

      ‘She’s my Mama.’

      ‘She can be both. I bet your mama says you can be anything you want if you try hard enough.’ He turned and faced Athena straight on. She was lovely, he thought. In her casual sweatshirt, her jeans, her tumbled curls tied back with a piece of red ribbon…She was a mature version of the girl he’d fallen for ten years ago. Longer. The girl he’d loved for ever.

      He couldn’t think that.

      ‘Your mama can do anything she wants,’ he said to Nicky, but he kept right on looking at Athena. ‘I think it’s time for your mama to do just that. Because I think she wants the island of Argyros to be safe just as much as I do.’

      CHAPTER THREE

      SOTWO weeks later…Maybe she was out of her mind, but she was going back to a place she’d thought she’d never set foot on again. Argyros. The Silver Island of the Diamond Isles.

      If Giorgos had had a son this never would have happened.

      Generations of islanders had ached for the islands to revert to the three