.
Wait, Maria almost said, but what would be the point? There was something intimidating about being delivered to the massive front doors of a mansion where she knew no one, but getting back into the car beside a man who’d just kissed her senseless wasn’t much of an alternative.
She could hear the purr of the big car’s engine as it went down the drive. She took a deep breath, raised a hand toward the bell. The doors swung open before she could touch it and a small woman dressed head to toe in crisp black cotton stood looking at her.
Wonderful. This had to be the housekeeper. Did she bear more than a passing resemblance to the one in that old movie about Young Frankenstein? Then the woman smiled, dipped a knee, and was instantly transformed from wicked witch to a welcoming committee of one.
“Kalimera, Keeria. Onomázome Athenia.”
“I’m afraid I don’t speak Greek—”
“Of course. Forgive me. Good morning, madam, and welcome. I am Athenia. The prince has told me to make sure you are comfortable.”
Did he leave the same orders for all his mistresses?
“Thank you.”
Athenia clapped her hands. A manservant appeared, inclined his head to Maria and scooped up her suitcase.
“Really,” Maria said, with a little laugh, “no one has to bow to me. I’m not a royal or anything like that.”
“You are the prince’s guest and the lady who is to create a beautiful gift for our beloved queen. We are honored by your presence, keeria.” The housekeeper stepped back. “Please, won’t you come in?”
What would happen to Athenia’s warm welcome if she knew that Alex’s esteemed guest had also made a devil’s bargain with him? There was no sense in thinking about it. She was here, and she would do what had to be done.
“Thank you,” Maria said again, and stepped into a cool, slate-floored entryway. One quick glance assured her this house would never be confused with Bluebeard’s castle.
“Would you like something to drink? Something to eat? I know you have had a long journey.”
Just the mention of food and Maria’s belly did a nasty little flip-flop.
“No,” she said quickly, “no, thank you. I’m not hungry.”
“Then, would you like me to show you to your room?” Athenia nodded toward a spiraling staircase that seemed suspended in the air. “Or would you prefer to see your workshop first?”
Her room? What the housekeeper meant was the prince’s room. Unbidden, a tremor of what surely had to be apprehension danced along Maria’s skin.
“Uh, no,” she said, a little breathlessly. “I mean… I mean, my workshop will be here?”
“It will. I hope you will like it. His Highness gave very specific orders but we had so little time …”
The Prince of Arrogance’s specialty, Maria thought grimly. Handing out orders. Giving people little time to obey, much less question. And why would she be working here? What had he done? Put a bench in the basement? Hung a work light over it?
She’d have everything she needed, he’d said.
“If you would please come this way …?”
Maria followed the housekeeper through a series of magnificent, high-ceilinged rooms. Despite her irritation, the artist in her could not help but see the house’s incredible beauty.
The lifestyles of the rich and famous, she thought wryly. Always and forever amazing.
She knew how they lived. She was a New Yorker; her life and those of the fantastically wealthy were completely separate but, in Manhattan, you brushed shoulders all the time even if it was only at the Bobbi Brown counter at Saks. And if you knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody who could get you into a promotional party for Vogue or Vanity Fair—and she did—you could even get up-close-and-personal glimpses of that kind of storied existence. An old classmate from FIT, a guy who now designed incredible floral displays, had edged her onto a couple of those guest lists, though attending the parties had never snagged her a client.
Still, nothing she’d seen compared to this.
Maria tried not to stare as she followed Athenia through Alex’s home. The mansion was spectacular but she had to give him grudging credit. It had not been built to impress, though it surely did, but to celebrate the wooded setting, the sapphire bay, the white sand beach. Walls were made of glass. Almost all the rooms had terraces or balconies, and the water from an enormous infinity pool seemed to spill into a sea that stretched to the horizon.
Athenia led her out a pair of glass French doors. Apparently, her workshop was not in the house. Maybe the mighty prince thought she could make his mother’s birthday gift in the garage, Maria thought irritably as they made their way along a flagstone path that wound through a dormant garden.
The housekeeper turned to her and smiled.
“Your workshop, keeria.”
Maria blinked in surprise.
Ahead, in a grove of firs, stood a perfect miniature of the main house. Wood. Glass. Soaring rooflines, terraces, white sand and blue water a dizzying distance below.
“This is normally a guesthouse but the prince was very specific about your needs. We worked quickly to meet them, but if anything is not to your liking …”
Not to her liking? Maria almost laughed as they stepped inside.
The guesthouse had three rooms. A bedroom. A marble bathroom. And a main room, big and high-ceilinged and brightly lit, a room that had been filled with oak worktables and benches, with shelves that held tools she had dreamed of buying but only in a distant, far more affluent future. A quick glance revealed heated presses, torches, hand tools and protective gear, all of it straight out of a jewelry maker’s dreams.
And there were cabinets.
Cabinets with drawers and cubby-holes and shelves. Cabinets that opened to reveal all the things she could possibly need to create Queen Tia’s necklace. Waxes. Molds. Polishes. Trays of bright gold and platinum and silver.
And one special tray that made her heartbeat quicken.
“Shall I leave you here, miss?” Athenia said.
Maria nodded. And reached for that special tray. Lined in black silk, its small compartments burned with the fire of the brilliant white and pink diamonds she had so carefully described in her proposal as the only ones suitable for the queen’s gift.
The stones glittered with life.
Carefully matched white diamonds from a mine in the Canadian Yukon, where there was no danger of them having been involved in the blood conflicts of the world. And two magnificent pink diamonds, so exquisite they could only be from the fabulous mines of Calista.
Maria lifted the pink stones from their silken compartments. She would only use one as the centerpiece of the necklace. In her proposal, she’d pointed out that pink diamonds, that all diamonds, had slight differences in color.
Obviously, King Aegeus had decided to provide her with two stones so she could choose the one she preferred. The implications of such wealth were almost beyond comprehension.
The pinks were easily forty karats each, just as she had requested. She had determined the size she’d need by estimating that the Stefani diamond, in its original form, was said to have weighed approximately one hundred and ninety carats, meaning it had been even bigger than the fabled Darya-ye Noor, a pale pink diamond that had been mined in India hundreds of years ago and then became part of the Persian crown jewels.
Thus, the half of the Stefani pink diamond now in the Aristan crown would weigh somewhere around eighty carats, since some material would have been lost when the stone was split. The pink diamond