Crowned: The Palace Nanny

Yeah, great. She shoved that thought as far back in her head as she could. She’d like to be rid of it completely- the ache to follow her own dreams.

But Zoe came first. Zoe was more important than dreams. And maybe those dreams could still be resurrected. If Zoe was unhappy they’d come home.

Catch-22. She didn’t want Zoe to be unhappy.

‘But we can make it a game,’ she’d whispered to Zoe as she’d watched her little charge drift towards sleep. ‘You being a princess in a castle.’

‘With a prince,’ Zoe had said sleepily. ‘Isn’t he nice?’

He is nice, Elsa admitted. Um…all things considered, he’s very nice.

Which was why she had to remember that he was a prince and she was a nanny. A nanny with a sliver of a career left as a marine biologist, who could maybe be happy with starfish.

Certainly a nanny with no interest whatsoever in a prince. Even if he was as drop-dead gorgeous as Stefanos.

Especially if he was as drop-dead gorgeous as Stefanos!

She closed her eyes. Two seconds later the hostess was beside her. ‘Can I make your bed up for you, ma’am? Here are your pyjamas.’

She handed her a pair of pink silk pyjamas.

There was a well-known Australian politician sitting in the seat diagonally in front of her-she recognised him from the newspapers. He was wearing blue silk pyjamas as he read the financial pages.

What a shame Stefanos wasn’t with them, she thought. He’d look really cute in blue pyjamas.

See, she told herself sternly. That’s what nannies are paid not to think.

What are nannies paid to think?

Not about lost careers. Not about lost dreams.

And not about drop-dead gorgeous Prince Regents.

Stefanos paced the palace balcony and waited for them, feeling ridiculous. The staff were beside themselves with excitement, so much so that he’d given in and done the dress-up thing again. He’d done it twice now, once in Australia at the formal reception and again today. Hopefully there wouldn’t be too many more occasions where he had to feel so ridiculous.

But maybe there would be.

This whole situation was crazy, he told himself, for maybe the thousandth time since he’d heard the news of Christos’s death. He was automatically Prince Regent-island ruler until Zoe turned twenty-five-but, although the Regency gave him some powers, the thing he wanted most was denied to him.

He wanted the island to be a democracy, but as Regent he had no power to change the constitution. Democracy would have to wait for Zoe to turn twenty-five.

Since he was a kid he’d dreamed of Khryseis being a great and wonderful place to live. But now…he’d fallen in love with his medicine. He was good at his job. His research was vitally important, and he loved what he did.

What could he do here but tinker round the edges, protect the islanders from the worst of the excesses they’d endured in the past, then-what?-try and remember his general medicine so he could treat the islanders’ minor ailments until Zoe came of age? In what, seventeen years?

Then he’d go tamely back to the States and pick up where he’d left off? To a career that was waiting for him?

Yeah, and pigs would fly.

He had no choice. He had to care for the island. He had to care for Zoe.

And Elsa?

She needed care as much as Zoe, he thought. Elsa had stood up to him with the air of a battered warrior, a woman accustomed to having her world shift and accepting those shifts with as much dignity and grace as she could muster. He’d seen how much the thought of losing Zoe terrified her, but once she’d realised how needful it was she’d simply got on with it.

He had the feeling that even if he hadn’t offered her a generous salary, she’d still be doing exactly what she was doing. Taking care of Zoe, no matter what life threw at her.

What had life thrown at her?

He needed to find out more about her-and her husband. Why was he no longer on the scene? She still wore a wedding ring.

Um…why was that relevant?

He should have found out. His enquiries had been professional. It had seemed wrong to pry.

But he wanted to know.

He did already know some things. For one…She seemed loving. For some dumb reason that phrase had been playing in his head since he’d met her. Her fierce devotion to Zoe was touching something in him that he’d learned to ignore a long time ago.

He didn’t do emotion. Since he’d left this island as a teenager he’d been totally committed to his medicine. Yet here he was, not only realising he’d have to abandon the work he was passionate about but, in the stillness of the night, as he lay trying to find a way he could sort all his commitments, Alexandros’s idle teasing kept rising up to taunt him.

Wife. Family.

No!

He remembered the horror of his father’s death, and his mother’s anguish as she’d insisted he take a scholarship to the US to keep him safe. He remembered grief and homesickness, and his mother’s death had cemented his knowledge that love caused nothing but pain. Work had been his salvation then, as it could be his salvation now-whether or not it was the work he desperately wanted to do.

‘If you please…’ A delicate cough sounded behind him and he jumped a foot. The old palace butler moved like a cat. One of these days the old guy was going to give him a heart attack.

He turned and tried to look as if he hadn’t had a fright. ‘Yes?’

‘I believe they’ve arrived, sir,’ the old man said gravely.

He glanced out at the magnificent formal driveway. An ancient Rolls-Royce was proceeding in state down the avenue, the flag of Khryseis flying proudly from the grille.

The butler was beaming with pride and anticipation. That was what this was all about, Stefanos thought grimly. Giving the islanders back their identity.

Which was why he was wearing this ridiculous uniform.

But there were other imperatives hammering at him. Back in New York he had a surgical list still waiting. He couldn’t let those kids down. He’d have to return before he could finally commit himself to this place.

The car had pulled to a halt and the driver stepped out. He must be eighty as well-half the retainers in this household were in their dotage-but, like most of the staff, he was also wearing the imposing uniform of the Khryseis royal household.

Since Giorgos’s death, since the islanders had discovered they could revert to their own royal family, the excitement had been building. The Isle of Sappheiros now had its own royal family in its palace. So did the Isle of Argyros. Khryseis, the smallest of the islands, was last to revert to rule by its original royal family, and the islanders were looking to Stefanos to make this good.

And they were also looking to this one little girl, coming home. A child who must be protected.

At least he could share that responsibility, he thought, once more feeling grateful for Elsa. Ruling the island might be his duty but with Elsa here he didn’t need to commit emotionally. If he kept Zoe safe and her nanny happy, then that was the extent of his obligations.

The Crown Princess was loved by a woman called Elsa. Which meant the love bit could be shelved as not his business.

Elsa and Zoe climbed from the Rolls-Royce and if they weren’t quite clutching each other they came awfully close.

‘This is really scary,’ Zoe whispered, and Elsa couldn’t agree more.

It was a palace. A real, honest to goodness palace, vast and ancient. Turrets, battlements, spires and flags,