Read Online Crowned: The Palace Nanny by Marion Lennox - Free Book Online

blue leather, the other pink.
    Suitcases. A wave of nausea swept over her so strongly that she rose and made a move towards the bathroom.
    Stefanos dumped the suitcases and stopped her.
    â€˜Elsa, no,’ he said softly. ‘I told you before, you have nothing to be afraid of.’
    â€˜You’re taking Zoe away.’ She hadn’t meant to say it. To say it in front of Zoe was unforgivable, but her terror was too raw, too real for her to disguise it.
    â€˜I do need to take Zoe to Khryseis,’ he said, still in that gentle, reassuring tone that must surely be a learned bedside manner. Yes, we are going to elongate your ears and swap your legs for your arms, but trust me, I’m a doctor .
    â€˜Trust me,’ he said now, as Zoe rose, her panic matching Elsa’s. ‘I want to take you both to the Diamond Isles. Zoe is the Crown Princess of Khryseis. Khryseis needs Zoe, and Zoe needs you. So I need you both. Thus I’m asking if you’ll both come home with me.’
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    It was important—really important—to get her expression right. Zoe was staring at her and she’d seen terror. Stefanos was Zoe’s cousin. This was Zoe’s life, not hers. She had to get fear off her face and show courage.
    â€˜You…you scared me,’ she managed at last, and to her relief her voice came out calm. ‘I saw the suitcase and I thought you might be wanting Zoe to go away today. She doesn’t even have a passport.’
    â€˜It will take a few days to get the documentation through.’ His gaze was holding hers. ‘Zoe, I think I frightened Elsa,’ he said, rueful. ‘How can we stop her being scared?’
    You could go away, Elsa thought, but she knew Zoe wouldn’t say that. Zoe was entranced with her big new cousin, and why shouldn’t she be?
    Stefanos was a prince, Zoe was a princess, and he’d pulled Zoe onside simply by acting as if the two of them needed to reassure her. Prince and princess together.
    â€˜Hey, Elsa, it’s okay,’ he said and reached to take her hand. His hold was strong and firm and…reassuring? How could touch be reassuring? How could his touch warm her when she was so cold she was beginning to shake?
    She should pull away.
    She couldn’t.
    â€˜Does Khryseis have a beach?’ Zoe asked, and Elsa knew right then that this was a done deal. ‘Elsa likes beaches,’ the little girl told her cousin. ‘We looked at Khryseis on the computer and Elsa said she bet there were more fish than we could count. And more starfish.’
    â€˜Starfish?’ he said, bemused, and his hand was still holding hers. She should pull it away, but how could she? How could she find strength to pull from such a touch?
    â€˜The real name for starfish is echinoderms, or asteroidea,’ Zoe was saying importantly. ‘They have two stomachs. They use one stomach to digest food while the other stomach turns inside out to pull its food in. But the really cool thing is that if they lose an arm they can grow another one. If I was a starfish I could grow another finger. And if you find just oneleg of a starfish still joined to just a little bit of its body, a whole new starfish can grow. How cool is that?’
    â€˜Really cool,’ he said, sounding stunned.
    â€˜It’s what me and Elsa are working on,’ she told him, sounding about twenty years older than her eight years. ‘And the Internet says Khryseis has some really weird starfish.’ She turned to Elsa, her eyes shining with small girl excitement. ‘Elsa, can we go?’
    No, she wanted to scream. No!
    Instead she took a deep breath. She tried a tug on her hand but it wasn’t released.
    â€˜Sweetheart, maybe we could work things out so you could go,’ she whispered. ‘I need to work.’
    Zoe’s face fell. ‘I can’t go without you,’ she said, her bottom lip wobbling. ‘I’d be scared.’
    So