Royally Bedded, Regally Wedded

‘I’m…I’m sorry,’ she heard herself saying, her throat tight suddenly.

For just a moment the expression in his eyes changed, as if just for the briefest second they were both feeling the same emotion, the same grief at such loss. Then, like a door shutting, it was gone.

‘I’ve…I’ve never known who Ben’s father was.’ Lizzy’s voice was bleak. ‘My sister never regained consciousness. She stayed in a coma until Ben was full-term, and then—’ She broke off. Something struck her. She looked at the man who looked so much like Ben, who was his uncle. ‘Did…did you know about Ben?’

The brows snapped together. ‘Of course not. His existence was entirely unknown. That might seem impossible, given the circumstances of his parents’ death, which seem to have concealed even from you the identity of his father. However, thanks to the mercenary investigations of a muck-raking journalist, about which thankfully I have been recently informed, his existence is unknown no longer. Which is why—’ his voice sharpened, the initial impatience and imperiousness returning ‘—he must immediately be removed from here.’ His mouth pressed tightly a moment. ‘We may have located you ahead of the press, but if we can find you, so can they. Which means that both you and the boy must leave with us immediately. A safe house has been organised.’

‘What journalist? What do you mean, the press?’

A frown darkened his brow.

‘Do not be obtuse. The moment the boy’s location is discovered, the press will arrive like a pack of jackals. We must leave immediately.’

Lizzy stared uncomprehendingly. This was insane. What was going on?

‘I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this. Why would the press come here?’

‘To find my nephew. What do you imagine?’ Impatience and exasperation were snapping through him.

‘But why? What possible interest can the press have in Ben?’

He was staring at her. Staring at her as if she were completely insane.

Across the hall, Ben’s piping voice came from the living room, talking about his trainset.

‘This is the level crossing, and that’s the turntable.’

His voice faded again.

The man who was Ben’s uncle was still staring at her. Lizzy started to feel cold seep through her.

‘We haven’t done anything.’ Her voice was thin. ‘Why would any journalist be interested in Ben? He’s a four-year-old child.’

That look was still in his eye. He stood, quite motionless.

‘He was born. That is quite enough. His parentage ensures that.’ Exasperated anger suddenly bit through his voice. ‘Surely to God you have intelligence enough to understand that?’

Slowly, Lizzy took another careful step backwards. She did not like being so physically close to this man. It was overpowering, disturbing. Her heart was hammering in her chest.

What did he mean, Ben’s parentage? She stared at him. Apart from his being so extraordinarily, devastatingly good-looking, she did not recognise him. He looked like Ben, that was all. A dark version. Very Italian. He must be quite well-off, she registered. The four-by-four was a gleaming brand-new model. And he was wearing expensive clothes; she could see that. He had the sleek, impeccably groomed appearance of someone who wore clothes which, however deceptively casual, had cost a lot of money. And he had that air about him of someone who was used to others jumping to do his bidding. So he could easily be rich.

But why would that bring the press down in droves? Rich Italians were not so unique that the press wrote stories about them.

A frown crossed her face. But what about his brother, Paolo? His dead brother who was Ben’s father. Had he been someone the press would be interested in?

He’d said that surely she must know that Paolo was dead. But how should she? She knew nothing about him.

Carefully, very carefully, she spoke.

‘My sister was not a supermodel, she was just starting out on her career—just making a name for herself. No journalist would be interested in her. But your brother—the man she…she had a child by. Was he—I don’t know—someone well known in Italy? Was he a film star there, or on the television? Or a footballer, a racing driver? Something like that? Some kind of celebrity? Is that what you mean by Ben’s parentage?’

She stared at him, a questioning look on her face. Slowly, it changed to one of bewilderment.

He was looking at her as if she were an alien. Fear stabbed her again.

‘What—what is it?’

His eyes were boring into her face. As if he were trying to penetrate into her brain.

‘This cannot be,’ he said flatly. ‘It is not possible.’

Lizzy stared. What was not possible?

He was holding himself in; she could see it.

‘It is not possible that you have just said what you said.’ His expression changed, and now he was not talking to her as if she were retarded, but as if she were—unreal. As if this entire exchange were unreal.

‘My brother—’he spoke, each word falling as heavy as lead into the space between them ‘—was Paolo Ceraldi.’

Nothing changed in her expression. She swallowed. ‘I’m sorry—the name does not mean anything to me. Perhaps in Italy it might, but—’

A muscle worked in his cheek. His eyes were like black holes.

‘Do not, Miss Mitchell, play games with me. That name is not unknown to you. It cannot be. Nor can the name of San Lucenzo.’

Her face frowned slightly. San Lucenzo? Perhaps that was where Ben’s father had come from. But, even if he had, why the big deal?

‘That’s…that’s that place near Italy that’s like Monaco. One of those places left over from the Middle Ages.’ She spoke cautiously. ‘On the Riviera or somewhere. Lots of rich people live there. But…but I’m sorry. The name Paolo Ceraldi still doesn’t mean anything to me, so if he was famous there, I’m afraid I just don’t—’

The flash in his eyes had come again. With cold, chilling courtesy he spoke, but it was not civil.

‘The House of Ceraldi, Miss Mitchell, has ruled San Lucenzo for eight hundred years,’ he said sibilantly.

There was silence. Complete silence. Some incredibly complicated arcane equation was trying to work itself out in her brain, but she couldn’t do it.

Then the deep, chilling voice came again, icy with a courtesy that was not courteous at all.

‘Paolo’s father is the Ruling Prince.’ He paused, brief and deadly, while his eyes speared hers. ‘He is your nephew’s grandfather.’

CHAPTER TWO

MIST was rolling in, like thick cotton wool. She felt the room start to swirl around her. Instinctively, she grabbed out with her hand and caught the edge of the kitchen table. She clung on to it.

Not true.

Not true. Not true. Not true.

If she just kept saying it, it would be true. True that it was not true. Not true what this man had just said. Because of course it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. It was absurd. Stupid. Impossible. A lie. Some stupid, absurd, impossible lie—or joke. Maybe it was a joke. That must be it. Just a joke. She threw her head back to suck in deep draughts of air. Then she steadied herself, forcibly, and made herself look across at the man who had just said such a stupid, absurd, impossible thing.

‘This isn’t true.’

Her voice was flat. As flat, she realised, with a hideous, gaping recognition in her guts, as his had been when she’d said she had no idea who…

Ben’s father. Ben’s father was.

‘No.’ She’d spoken out loud. Her legs were starting to shake. ‘No. This is a joke. It’s impossible. It has to be. It’s just not possible. I haven’t understood it properly.’

‘You had better sit down.’ The voice was still chill, but less so. Lizzy gazed at him with wide, shock-splintered eyes. Her eyebrows shot together in a frown.

That complicated, arcane equation was still running in her head.

He had just said that Ben’s father had been the son of…she forced her mind to say it…the son of the Prince of San Lucenzo. But he had said he was Ben’s uncle. His dead father’s brother. Which meant that his father was also…

She stared. It wasn’t possible. It just wasn’t possible.

He let her stare. She could see it. Could see he was just standing there while she clung to the edge of the table in the kitchen in her tiny little Cornish cottage where, a few feet away, from her stood.

‘I am Enrico Ceraldi,’ he enlightened her.

She sat down. Collapsing on the kitchen chair with a heavy thud.

He cast a look at her.

‘Did you really not know who I was?’ There was almost curiosity in his voice. And something flickered in his eyes.

‘Of course I bloody didn’t.’ The return burst from her lips without her thinking. Then, as if she’d just realised what she’d done, her face stiffened.

‘I’m sorry,’ she spoke abruptly. ‘I didn’t mean to be—’ She broke off. Something changed in her face again. She lifted her chin, looking directly into his eyes. ‘I didn’t mean to speak rudely. But, no,’ she said heavily, yet still with her chin lifted, ‘I did not recognise you. I’ve heard of you—it would be hard not to have.’ Her voice tightened with disapproval. ‘But not with the surname, of course. Just your first name and…’ she paused, then said it ‘…your title.’

She got to her feet. The room swayed, but she ignored it. A bomb had exploded in her head, ripping everything to shreds. But she had to cope with it. She straightened her spine.

‘I find this very hard to deal with. I’m sure you understand. And I am also sure you understand that I have a great many questions I need to ask. But also—’ she held his eyes and spoke resolutely ‘—I need time to come to terms with this. It is, after all, quite unbelievable.’

She looked at him directly. Refusing to look away.

Long, sooted lashes swept down over his dark eyes. Eyes, she realised, with the now familiar hollowing still going on inside her stomach, that were more used to looking out of photographs in celebrity magazines and the gossip pages of newspapers.

I didn’t recognise him. I simply didn’t recognise him. He’s all over the press and I never recognised him.

But why should I? And why should I think that someone like him could turn up here and tell me that…that Ben is…

Shock kicked through her again.

She bowed her head. It was too much. It was all too much.

‘I can’t take any more.’

She must have spoken aloud, defeat in her voice.

For one long, hopeless minute she just stared blankly into the eyes of the man standing opposite her. The brother of Ben’s father. Who was dead. Who had been the son of the Reigning Prince of San Lucenzo. Who was also the father of the man standing opposite her.

Who was therefore a prince.

Standing in her living room.

‘I can’t take any more,’ she said again.

Rico shifted his head slightly, and glanced behind him as the occasional dazzle of other traffic on the motorway illuminated the interior of the vehicle.

She was asleep. So was the boy. She was holding his hand, reaching out to him in the child seat he was fastened into.

His mouth pressed together and he looked away again, back out over the glowing stream of red tail-lights ahead of him. Beside him, Falieri drove steadily and fast, the big four-by-four eating up the miles.

Rico stared out over the motorway.

Paolo’s son. Paolo’s son was sitting in the car. A son that none of his family had known about.

How could it have happened?

The question seared through him, as it had done so often since Jean-Paul had told him the story that was set to break in the press. It seemed impossible that Paolo’s son should have disappeared, without anyone even knowing of his existence. And yet, in the nightmare of that motorway pile-up in France all those years ago, with smashed cars and smashed bodies, he could see how rescue workers, finding the female occupant of Paolo’s car still alive and clearly pregnant, had cut her free first and rushed her to hospital. A different hospital from the one where Paolo’s mangled body had been taken hours later, when all those still living had been dealt with.

Cold horror chilled through him. In the carnage no one had made the connection between the two—the dead Prince Paolo Ceraldi and the unknown young woman, comatose and pregnant.

Never to regain consciousness.

Never to tell who had fathered her child.

And so no one had known. No one until some get-lucky hack had decided to see if there was any mileage in a rehash of the tragedy of Paolo’s death, and his investigations had turned up, against all the odds, a French fireman who’d mentioned he had freed a woman from the wreckage of the very type of sports car that the journalist knew Paolo Ceraldi had been driving. From that single item the hack had burrowed and burrowed, until he had pieced together the extraordinary, unbelievable story.

How Prince Paolo Ceraldi, dead at twenty-one, had left an orphaned son behind.

The story would blaze across the tabloids.

‘Get the boy.’

Luca’s urgent command echoed in Rico’s head. He’d phoned Luca the moment he’d hung up on Jean-Paul.

‘We have to get the boy before the press does,’ Luca had said. ‘Get Falieri on to it tonight. But, Rico, it’s essential we look as if we don’t know about the story. If they think we are trying to stop it, they’ll run with it immediately. In the meantime—’ his voice had hardened ‘—I will contact Christa. Maybe for once I will, after all, exact a favour from her father…it won’t stifle the story, but it may just delay it. Buy us some time. Enough for Falieri to get the child safely out of their reach.’ He’d paused, then gone on, his voice dry. ‘It seems, just for once, Rico, that your close proximity to the press has come in handy.’

‘Glad to be of use,’ Rico had replied, his voice even drier. ‘For once.’

‘Well, you can really be of use now,’ Luca had cut back. ‘I can’t leave this wedding, if I did it would simply arouse suspicion, so I’m stuck here for the duration. I’m counting on you to hold the fort. But Rico?’ His voice had held a warning note in it. ‘Leave it to me to tell our father about this debacle, OK? He’ll take it a lot better from me.’

Rico hadn’t stuck around to find out how his father had taken the news that the Ceraldis were about to face their biggest trial by tabloid yet. He’d had only one imperative. To find Paolo’s son.

Emotion buckled him. He’d been holding it back as much as he could, because there had been no time for it. No time to do anything other than get hold of Falieri and track down the child his brother had fathered.

He felt his heart squeeze tightly. It was incredible that here, now, just in the seat behind him, his brother’s son was sleeping. It was almost like having Paolo back again.

Debacle, Luca had called it. And Rico knew he was right. He loathed the thought of all the tabloid coverage that was inevitably going to erupt, even with the boy safely with him now, but far more powerful was the sense of wonder and gratitude coursing through him.

He turned in his seat, his eyes resting on the sleeping form of the small boy.

His heart squeezed again. Even in the poor light he could see Paolo’s features, see the resemblance. To think that his brother’s blood pulsed in those delicate veins, that that small child was his own nephew.

Paolo’s son. His brother’s child. The brother who had been killed so senselessly, so tragically.

And yet—

He had had a son.

All these years, growing up here, in this foreign country, raised by a woman who was not even his own mother, not knowing who he was.

We didn’t know. How could we not have known?

A cold, icy chill went through him.

For a long moment his eyes watched over the sleeping boy, seeing his little chest rise and fall, the long lashes folded down on his fair skin.

Then, slowly, they moved to the figure beside the child seat.

His expression changed, mouth tightening.

This was a complication they could do without.

His gaze rested on her. A frown gathered between his brows. Had she really not realised who he was? It seemed incredible, and yet her shock had been genuine. His frown deepened. He had never before encountered anyone who did not know who he was.

He dragged his mind away. It was irrelevant that his reaction to her evident complete ignorance of his identity had…had what? Irritated him? Piqued him? No, none of those, he asserted to himself. He was merely totally unaccustomed to not being recognised. He had been recognised wherever he went, all his life. Everyone always knew who he was.

So being stared at as if he were the man in the moon had simply been a new experience for him. That was all.

Dio, he dismissed impatiently. What did he care if the girl hadn’t realised who he was? It was, as he had said, irrelevant. She knew now. That was all that mattered. And once she’d accepted it—not that the look of glazed shock had left her face until she’d fallen asleep in the vehicle—it had at least had the thankful effect of making her co-operate finally. Silently, numbly, but docilely.

She’d made sandwiches and drinks for herself and Ben, telling him while he ate that they were going on an adventure, and then heading upstairs to pack. Ben had shown no anxiety, only curiosity and excitement. Rico had done his best to give him an explanation he could understand.

‘I…’He had hesitated, then said it, a shaft of emotion going through him as he did so. ‘I am your uncle, Ben, and I have only just found out that you live here. So I am taking you on a little holiday. We’ll need to leave now, though, and drive in the night.’

It had seemed to suffice.

He had fallen asleep almost instantly, the car having only gone a few miles, and it had not taken a great deal longer for the aunt to fall asleep as well. Rico was glad. A car was not the place for the next conversation they must have.

He glanced at her now, his face tightening in automatic male distaste at the plain-faced female, with her unflattering frizzy hair and even more unflattering nondescript clothes.

She couldn’t be more different from Maria Mitchell. She possessed not a scrap of her sister’s looks. Maria had been one of those naturally eye-catching blondes, tall and slender, with wide-set blue eyes and a heart-shaped face. No wonder she’d become a model. The photos Falieri had dug up of her had shown exactly how she must have attracted Paolo.

They would have made a golden couple.

Pain bit at him, again. Dio, both of them wiped out, their young lives cut short in a crush of metal. But leaving behind a secret legacy.

Rico’s eyes went back to his nephew, softening.

We’ll take care of you now—don’t worry. You’re safe with us.

Oblivious, Ben slept on.

Lizzy stirred. Even as the first threads of consciousness returned, she reached automatically across the wide bed.

It was all right. Ben was there. For a moment she let her hand rest on the warm, pyjama-covered back of her son, still fast asleep on the far side of the huge double bed. They were in some kind of private house, at which they’d arrived in the middle of the night—specially rented, and staffed by San Lucenzans flown in from the royal palace, or so she had been told by Captain Falieri. A safe house. Safe from prying journalists.

Disbelief washed through her, as it had done over and over again since that moment when she’d stared at the man who had invaded her cottage and realised who he was.

She was still in shock, she knew. She had to be. Because why else was she so calm? Partly it was for Ben’s sake. Above all he must not be upset, or distressed. For his sake she must treat this as normal.

Impossible as that was.

What’s going to happen?

The question arrowed through her, bringing a churning anxiety to her stomach.

Was the Prince still here? Or had he left her with Captain Falieri. She hoped he was gone. She was not comfortable with him.

She shifted in her bed. Even had he not been royal, let alone infamous in the press—what did they call him? The Playboy Prince? Was that it?—she could never have been comfortable in his company. No man that good-looking could make her feel anything other than awkward and embarrassed.

Just as, she knew with her usual searing honesty, a man like that could never be comfortable with her around. Men like that wanted to be surrounded by beautiful women—women like Maria. Females who were plain and unattractive, as she was, simply didn’t exist for them. Hadn’t she learnt that lesson early, knowing that for men she was simply invisible? How many times had male eyes slid automatically past her to seek out Maria?

She jerked her mind away from such irrelevancies, back to what she did not want to think about. The paternity of her son.

And his uncle. Prince Enrico Ceraldi.

He won’t be here still, she guessed. He’ll have left—returned to his palace and his socialite chums. Why would he hang around? He probably only came to the cottage in person because he wanted to check out that Ben really did look like his brother.

She opened her eyes, looking around her. The bedroom was large, and from what she could tell the house was some kind of small, Regency period country house. Presumably sufficiently remote for the press not to find Ben. How long would they need to stay here? she wondered anxiously. The sooner the story broke, the better—because then the fuss would die down and she and Ben could go home.

She frowned. Would Ben be upset that this mysteriously arrived uncle had simply disappeared again? She would far rather he had not known who he was. Her frown etched deeper. Why had he told Ben? It seemed a pointless thing to do. The news story would just be a nine-day wonder, and, although she could understand why the Ceraldi family would want to tuck Ben out of sight while it was going on, there was no need to have told Ben anything.

She’d have to tell Ben that even though Prince Enrico was his uncle, he lived abroad, and that was why he wouldn’t see him again.

Even so, it seemed cruel to have told him in the first place. Ben had asked about his father sometimes, and all Lizzy had been able to do was say that it had been someone who had loved the mummy in whose tummy he had grown, but that that mummy had been too ill to say who his daddy was.

For the hundredth time since the bombshell about Maria’s lover had fallen, Lizzy felt disbelief wash through her. And a terrible chill. With all the horror of having to rush out to France, to the hospital her mortally injured sister had been taken to, the news that the pile-up had claimed the life of the youngest prince of San Lucenzo had simply passed her by. She had made no connection—how could she have?

And yet he had been Ben’s father. Maria had had an affair with Prince Paolo of San Lucenzo. And nobody had known. No one at all.

It was extraordinary, unbelievable. But it was true.

I have to accept it. I have to come to terms with it.

She stared bleakly out over the room. Deliberately, she forced herself to think instead of feel.

It makes no difference. Once all the fuss in the news has died down, we can just go back home. Everything will be the same again. I just have to wait it out, that’s all.

Beneath her hand, she could feel Ben start to stir and wake. A rush of emotion went through her.

Nothing would hurt Ben. Nothing. She would keep him safe always. Nothing on this earth would ever come between her and the son she adored with all her heart. Ever.

CHAPTER THREE

‘GOOD morning.’

Rico walked into the drawing room. Ben was sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, occupied with a pile of brightly coloured building blocks. His aunt was beside him. He nodded brief acknowledgement of her, then turned his attention to Ben.

‘What are you making?’ he asked his nephew.

‘The tallest tower in the world.’ Ben announced. ‘Come and see.’