[Montacroix Royal Family Series 02] - The Prince & the Showgirl (24 page)

"I love you," he repeated slowly, purposefully. "And I want you to be my wife."

Music was floating on the soft night air; Sabrina imagined she could hear the strident sound of the palace clock striking twelve.

Pulling free of his light touch, she backed away. "This is a mistake."

His body was hyperventilating, but Burke managed, just barely, to keep his growing desperation from showing. "On the contrary. The reason I've never asked a woman—any woman—to marry me before is because, having witnessed the love my father and stepmother shared, I did not want to make a mistake."

He moved slowly, purposefully toward her. Sabrina kept backing up until her beaded skirt was pressed up against the stone balustrade.

Burke framed her pale face between his palms and gave her a long look that was meant to reassure. "This is not a mistake."

"Yes." She closed her eyes and prayed for strength. "It is. Because I can't be what you want me to be."

"I love you." He said the words as if they were all that mattered.

Sabrina wished they were. "That's not enough."

"Of course it is." His low tone was calm and sure, reminding her that Eduard and Chantal weren't the only ones in the family possessing the Giraudeau tenacity. Prince Burke possessed it as well. In spades.

"Oh, Burke." She sighed, her gaze misting as she looked up at him. "I'd make a miserable wife. I have a terrible temper, I can be horrendously moody, you'd never know who you were living with because I have a horrible habit of becoming whatever character I'm playing, sometimes I'll go an entire week without hanging up my clothes—"

"I love you."

She wasn't getting through. Finally, desperate, Sabrina took a deep breath and said, "I can't have children."

She watched the shock move across his handsome face in waves. Then, she had to admire the speed with which he recovered.

"Can't?" he inquired on that same steady, reasonable tone. "Or won't?"

"Can't." The word hung between them, irrevocable and final. "I had an infection last year. Since I was performing five nights a week, along with Wednesday and Sunday matinees, I kept putting off making time to go to the doctor."

She dragged her hand through her hair and took a deep, shuddering breath. "When I finally collapsed onstage, they rushed me to the hospital and performed emergency surgery."

His dark brow crashed down and he took her ice-cold hand in his. "You were in danger?"

He was getting off track, but she answered anyway. "I almost died."

He cursed. "I should have been there."

If he had been, Sabrina knew, she wouldn't have waited so long before seeking medical help. He would have cared enough to insist she go to the doctor. While Arthur, on the other hand, had impatiently brushed her symptoms aside, accusing her of being just another temperamental artist seeking attention.

"The doctors saved my life. But the operation left me unable to have children." There. She'd said it. Sabrina stood still, every nerve end poised for Burke's rejection.

"There are specialists."

"I've been to the best specialists in New York City. They all agree. I'm barren." Such an old-fashioned word, Sabrina thought. Such a hateful word. But unfortunately, it fit.

Once again Burke surprised her. "It doesn't matter," he decided implacably. "Because I love you."

"It does matter." The tears that had been threatening at the back of her lids broke free. "Dammit, don't you see? I can't give you an heir, Burke. And without an heir, Montacroix returns to France." Single-handedly, she would achieve that unwelcome goal the horrid cadre of rebels had failed to accomplish.

"I have one question."

"What?" She was crying openly now, tears spilling down her cheeks in shining wet ribbons.

"Do you love me?"

She knew the safe thing, the prudent thing, would be to lie. But Sabrina couldn't do it. Not after all they'd shared.

"Of course I do," she cried. "But don't you see? It's not enough." She couldn't—wouldn't—be responsible for the dissolution of a two-hundred-year-old monarchy.

Somewhere, deep inside her, a self-protective anger flared. "Besides, in case you have forgotten, I'm not some silly female with nothing to do but sit around, eating bonbons while waiting for Prince Charming to carry me off. I have a career, Burke. One I've worked damn hard to establish."

"And then there's the tour. What makes you think I could just drop everything, leaving Dixie in the lurch, just because you had a whim for a royal wedding?"

Pushing past him, she raced down the stone steps, her beaded skirt billowing behind her. Burke didn't follow. Instead he stood there all alone in the dark, his arms folded across his chest and watched her run away.

He'd give her time to get used to the idea, Burke decided reluctantly. He would also permit her to finish this tour, which was so important to her father's honor.

But the day the Darling sisters gave their last performance, Sabrina Darling was going to be his.

Forever.

13

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Twelve weeks later, Sabrina stood on the stage of the Las Vegas casino, drinking in the audience applause. It was, finally, the last night of the tour. Although they'd fallen short in their goal to earn the entire three million dollars that the government had claimed Sonny owed, for some reason, at the last minute, the IRS auditors had proved remarkably agreeable, settling for what they had earned and marking their father's debt paid in full. An additional surprise had been the reversal of the ruling that the government could seize her parents' Tennessee farm.

As the shiny silver curtain closed for the last time and the enthusiastic audience began filing from the vast dinner theater, Sabrina knew she should be ecstatic.

During these past three months, her lingering anger toward her father for not being perfect had vanished, and she could accept the fact that Sonny Darling, like everyone else, including herself, was flawed.

Indeed, Sabrina no longer blamed him for leaving behind so many problems. Instead she remembered the warm and generous love he'd always had for his family and his friends.

So, her duty to her father done, tomorrow morning she'd return to New York to meet with a producer who wanted her to star in his new play.

The play, entitled
Command Performance
, was a marvelous modern romantic musical takeoff on the classic Cinderella tale, bound to garner accolades from both critics and theatergoers.

Her career was at a turning point; she knew this play would establish her as a credible actor, an actor with range. And, as a bonus, she'd even get to sing.

Still, Sabrina felt let down. She tried telling herself that the grinding nine months of the tour had left her depressed. But she knew the real reason was that she missed Burke. Horribly.

Raven joined Sabrina in the wings. Together they watched the last of the audience leave. "Well, that's that," Raven said. "We can all return to our own lives."

"I suppose so," Sabrina murmured unenthusiastically.

"Yep," Raven said, "this time tomorrow, Ariel will be in Hollywood, I'll be in Atlanta and Mom'll be back on the farm."

When Sabrina didn't comment, Raven gave her a long, considering look. "So, where are you going to be?"

"New York," Sabrina answered promptly. "You know I've got a meeting with that producer."

"I thought, perhaps you'd change your mind."

"Why on earth would I do that? It's a marvelous part."

"I thought you might prefer to take on another role."

Sabrina understood Raven's meaning all too well. "Whatever there was between Burke and me was over three months ago. In case you haven't noticed, I haven't heard a word from him."

"That's not exactly true," her mother's voice entered the conversation. Sabrina briefly closed her eyes, praying for patience, as Dixie and Ariel joined them. "What about the flowers that have been delivered before every show?"

"You and Raven and Ariel get flowers, too."

"True, but your arrangements are always larger," Ariel who noticed such things, correctly pointed out.

"And what about Sonny's collection?" Dixie asked.

The antique Western guns had begun arriving at the farm a week after the Darlings' departure from Montacroix. Yesterday, Dixie had received a call from the housekeeper that the Winchester, the last of the collection, had been delivered.

"That doesn't count," Sabrina argued. "When you called Montacroix and asked Burke if he was behind the purchases, he told you he bought them back because he valued family tradition."

"What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing." Sabrina shrugged her bare shoulders. "In fact, it just drives home the point that his own family traditions make it impossible for us to be together."

"Why, I do declare," Ariel drawled. "You are acting every bit as dim-witted as Katie Stuart, when she let me steal her husband. And all because having come from a family of sharecroppers, she didn't believe she was good enough to be the wife of a Georgia state senator."

"Read my lips," Sabrina said slowly, as if speaking to someone who did not understand her language, "
Southern Nights
is a soap opera. Not real life."

"Actually," Dixie considered thoughtfully, "lately, real life has seemed a lot messier than any daytime television drama." She patted Sabrina's arm comfortingly. "It was obvious to everyone that you and Burke were in love, darling."

"So," Raven said, "since boy loves girl and girl loves boy, what's the problem?"

"How about the little fact that I can't give him an heir?"

Sabrina had told her mother and sisters the truth about her condition the day they'd left Montacroix. Although they'd responded with sympathy—and anger at Arthur Longstreet—none of them had been able to convince her that her inability to have a child was not an insurmountable barrier.

"You told us Burke said it didn't matter," Ariel reminded her.

"It was the moonlight talking."

"From what I saw of the prince, I doubt if he's ever— in his entire life—uttered a word he didn't mean," Raven said.

"I don't want to talk about Burke anymore," Sabrina insisted. "And if you don't all mind, I think I'd like to be alone for a little while."

"Of course," Dixie answered quickly. A bit too quickly, Sabrina considered. "We'll be upstairs, in our suite." She gave her stepdaughter a hug overbrimming with maternal comfort. "Come along girls, you can help me pack. I don't know why I always save it until the last minute," she complained as the trio disappeared behind the rows of stage curtain.

Alone at last, Sabrina walked back onto the stage and stood there, staring out at the empty theater, remembering the heady sound of applause that had rocked the rafters.

This was where she belonged, she reminded herself firmly. Onstage. Not locked away in some gilded tower like Rapunzel.

"Wrong fairy tale, Sabrina," she muttered out loud, her voice echoing in the vast emptiness. Exhaling a long weary sigh, she turned to leave, when suddenly, the red velvet-draped doors at the back of the theater burst open.

"I don't believe it!"

Sabrina couldn't decide whether to laugh or to cry as Burke came galloping down the aisle on that same black stallion he'd ridden the day they'd made love in the gamekeeper's cottage.

"Good evening, milady," he greeted her as he reined the horse in just below the stage.

His wonderful, all-too-familiar deep voice shattered her last thought that this might be a hallucination, born of her desperate, lonely thoughts.

"You've obviously gone stark raving mad," Sabrina accused, even as her out-of-control heart sprouted gossamer wings.

"Mad about you," Burke agreed easily. He held out his arms for her perusal. "What do you think? Do I live up to your image of Prince Charming?"

Oh, he did. In fact, he surpassed every romantic daydream she'd ever had. "The horse is supposed to be white."

"Surely a remarkably talented performer such as yourself would have heard of literary license," Burke countered easily. His tone was mild, but as he took in the sight of Sabrina dressed in a strapless, beaded red gown that fit like a lover's caress, heat rose in his eyes.

"I also had to leave most of the shining armor at home." He placed a hand against his gleaming chest plate. "Men were a great deal smaller back in the good old days of the Round Table. And the helmet's impossible to see out of."

"You look very dashing," Sabrina assured him.

"That's exactly what I wanted to hear. You, of course, look as delectable as ever."

The feelings were there, so strong Sabrina was surprised that the air wasn't lit with electrical sparks. But even as she wanted to fling herself into his arms, to cover his handsome, smiling face with kisses, she reminded herself that nothing had changed.

"What are you doing here, Burke?" she asked softly.