Claiming His Secret Royal Heir

by Nina Milne

  Sunita tipped her face up and let it gush over her, revelling in the sheer force of Nature as it provided one of life’s essentials.

  Mere moments later the rain ceased. Blue skies replaced the grey, and sudden shafts of bright golden sunshine shot down, illuminating the droplets of water that hung everywhere. The smell of wet earth permeated the air and it seemed impossible not to smile.

  ‘It’s as if someone switched the tap off and the lights on,’ Frederick said, a note of wonder in his voice as he looked round.

  ‘That would be Varuna, the god of water. Nanni says that he listens to what the frogs say, and when they croak enough he gives us rain.’

  ‘I think I’m going to like Nanni.’

  ‘Of course you are.’

  ‘So I take it your mother’s family eventually relented and took her and you back in?’

  ‘No...’ Sunita sighed, feeling the familiar ache of regret and sadness. ‘I wish that was how it had played out, but it didn’t. They didn’t relent.’

  Even when they knew her mother was dying.

  Anger was suddenly added to the mix. Her grandfather hadn’t even told Nanni that their daughter was ill—hadn’t given her the chance to say goodbye.

  ‘I met Nanni for the first time when I was pregnant with Amil.’ She glanced across at him. ‘I don’t expect your sympathy, but when I found I was pregnant I felt very alone.’

  His expression hardened slightly, but to her surprise she could see an element of frustrated sympathy in his creased brow. ‘So you decided to find your mother’s relatives?’

  ‘Yes. My mother had left enough information that it wasn’t too hard. It turned out my grandfather had died two years before, and Nanni agreed to see me.’

  That first meeting was one she would never forget—her grandmother had simply stared at her, tears seeping from her brown eyes, her hands clasped as if in prayer. And then she had stepped forward and hugged Sunita, before standing back and touching her face as if in wonder, no doubt seeing not just her granddaughter but her daughter as well.

  ‘She was overjoyed and so was I. She has never forgiven herself for not standing up to my grandfather, for letting my mother go, and I think she sees me and Amil as her second chance.’

  ‘It isn’t always easy to stand up to a partner if he or she has all the power. Your Nanni shouldn’t be too hard on herself.’

  ‘I’ve told her that. My mother didn’t blame her either. Nanni was totally dependent on her husband—money, clothes, food, everything—and he made sure she knew it. If she had left with my mother he would have cut her off from the rest of her family, her children...everyone.’ She paused and then turned to him, willing him to understand. ‘I won’t ever let myself get into that position.’

  ‘You won’t. Our marriage will be nothing like that.’

  ‘I understand that, but I did mean what I said yesterday—I intend to resume my career. You saw what happened to your mother, your stepmothers. I’ve seen what happened to Nanni—I will not be dependent on you.’

  ‘You won’t be. We can set up a pre-nup.’

  ‘In a principality where your word is law? Any pre-nup I sign wouldn’t be worth the paper it was written on.’

  ‘OK. You will be paid a salary that goes directly into your personal account—you can move that into another account anywhere in the world.’

  ‘A salary essentially paid by you—one you could stop at any moment?’

  His lips thinned. ‘You really do not trust me at all, do you?’

  There was a hint of hurt in his voice, but it was something she could not afford to listen to.

  ‘I can’t trust anyone. Think about it, Frederick. What if I decided to take Amil and leave? Would you still pay my salary? What if you turn out to be like your father? What if you fall in love with another woman?’ Life had taught her there could never be too many ‘what ifs’ in the mix. ‘Then I’ll need money of my own.’

  The easy warmth in his hazel eyes vanished, and now his brow was as clouded as a monsoon sky. ‘None of those things will happen.’

  ‘That’s what you say now, but times change—we both know that.’

  A shadow flickered across his face and she knew her point had gone home.

  ‘So I must make sure myself that I have enough money in the bank for whatever life throws at me.’

  To ensure there was always an escape route—that she would never be trapped like her grandmother had been, as she had been as a child.

  ‘That is non-negotiable.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘Also, I want to leave Amil with my grandmother when we go back to Lycander.’

  ‘Why?’ The syllable was taut. ‘Because you think I will snatch him the minute we land on Lycander soil?’

  ‘No. But I won’t risk taking him there until we have worked out how our marriage will be received. Also, I can get things ready for him; it will be a big change for him and I’d like to make his transition as easy as possible.’

  The idea of not having Amil with her hurt, but she could not—would not—risk taking him to Lycander until she was sure of his reception there.

  ‘I’ll come back to Lycander with you, and then I’ll get Amil.’

  ‘OK. But we will get Amil.’

  She nodded and then there was a silence, broken by a roar in the not so far distance.

  ‘Dhudsagar Falls,’ Sunita said. ‘We’re close.’

  By tacit consent they quickened their pace.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE SOUND OF the monsoon-inflated waterfalls pounded his eardrums, but even as Frederick anticipated the sight his brain couldn’t banish Sunita’s expression, the realisation that she still didn’t trust him.

  Not that he blamed her—after all, his father had used his wealth and power to grind his wives to dust in the courts. All except his mother, who had played Alphonse at his own game and duped him—an act his father had never forgiven her for. Never forgiven Frederick for, come to that. But he wished that Sunita did not think so badly of him. Enough. Her opinion shouldn’t matter, and in truth she couldn’t judge him more harshly than he deserved. But...

  His train of thought was broken by her gasp from next to him. ‘Any minute now,’ she whispered, as they emerged through a tunnel and onto a railway bridge already populated by a few other visitors.

  But they had no interest in Sunita and Frederick—because it was impossible to focus on anything other than the waterfalls, both mighty and terrible. No image could do them justice as the four tiers cascaded and roared in torrents of milky-white water, leaping from the edge of towering cliffs and gusting and gushing down the slippery rock slopes.

  The spray drenched him but he didn’t move, utterly mesmerised by the power and glory of Nature’s creation, cloaked in a rising mist that mixed with the shafts of sunlight to create a rainbow of light.

  ‘It’s beyond description.’

  Frederick nodded and moved by awe, on instinct, he reached out and took her hand in his. He wasn’t sure how long they stood there, but it was long enough that the other tourists dispersed, long enough that another group came and went.

  And then Sunita shook her head, as if coming out of a trance. ‘We’d better go.’

  He wondered what she’d been thinking all that time—perhaps she’d imagined her parents standing in the same spot, their thoughts and emotions, their hopes and dreams as they’d gazed at the might of the waterfalls.

  They continued their trek along the railway tracks in a silence that he instinctively respected until he motioned to the adjacent forest. ‘Shall we explore in there—it looks peaceful?’

  ‘Good idea.’ She glanced up at him. ‘Sorry I’ve been lost in thought—it was just such an awe-inspiring sight.’

  ‘It was.’ He reached i
nto his backpack. ‘Time for food—or is that too prosaic?’

  ‘Nope. I’m starving. And this looks idyllic—if a little damp.’

  ‘I’ve brought a blanket, and if we spread it here, over this branch, we can perch on it.’

  ‘Perfect.’

  She accepted the wrapped sandwiches.

  ‘Goan green chutney,’ Frederick informed her. ‘I promised Ashok to tell you the exact ingredients. Coriander leaves, coconut, chili and a little sugar and salt.’

  Sunita took a bite. ‘Glorious. That boy is talented.’ She surveyed him. ‘So you went to the kitchen yourself? I’m surprised that was allowed.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning your staff seem to think you shouldn’t lift a finger for yourself.’

  ‘I’ve noticed. I am trying to re-educate them—in fact I’ve given them all the day off today. The problem is my father expected to be waited on hand and foot, and that is what all Lycander staff seem conditioned to do. I even have someone who chooses all my clothes.’ He grinned. ‘Though, to be fair, Kirsten does a better job of it than I could.’

  ‘Well, for the record, no one is choosing my clothes for me. That would drive me nuts. I need to fit my clothes to my mood.’

  They ate in companionable silence and then Frederick leant forward, unsure why he felt the need to say his next words, but knowing he had to take heed of the urge to show her that their hopes and dreams didn’t have to be built on an altar of falsehood and misunderstanding.

  ‘Sunita?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She turned her head and his heart did a funny little jump. Dressed in simple khaki trousers and a red T-shirt, with her hair pulled back in a high ponytail, her features make-up free, she looked absurdly young and touchingly vulnerable.

  ‘I understand why you want to go back to your career, and I understand your need for independence, but let’s not go into this marriage expecting the worst. We’ll be OK,’ he said, even as he realised the ridiculous inadequacy of the words.

  ‘You can’t know that.’ She lifted her shoulders in a shrug. ‘But I appreciate the sentiment.’

  ‘There are some things I do know, though. I won’t turn into my father.’ Please God! ‘I won’t fall in love with someone else and take Amil away from you.’

  ‘You can’t know that either.’

  ‘I don’t do falling in love, and that will not change. As for Amil, I will not take him from you. You have my word.’

  ‘Words are meaningless.’

  Her fierce certainty told him that someone had lied to her with devastating consequence, and increased his need to show her that he would not do the same.

  ‘Sunita, I couldn’t do it.’ The words rasped from his throat. ‘I would have done anything to have a mother. I witnessed first-hand what my father did to his wives, how it affected my brothers. I could not, I will not let history repeat itself.’

  Her whole body stilled, and then she rose and moved towards him, sat right next to him, so close a tendril of her hair tickled his cheek.

  ‘I’m sorry—I know what it’s like to lose a mother through death, but for you it must have been pain of a different type...to know she was out there. And your poor mother...to have lost you like that—I can’t imagine how it must have felt. Not just your mother but Stefan’s and the twins’.’

  For a moment the temptation to let her believe the fiction touched him. To let her believe the false assumption that his mother had been wronged, had spent years in grief and lamenting, that his mother had loved him. After all, he had no wish to be an object of pity or allow the ugly visage of self-pity to show its face.

  But as he saw the sympathy, the empathy on her face, he realised he couldn’t let her waste that compassion. ‘My mother didn’t suffer, Sunita.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘My mother sold me out for generous alimony and a mansion in Beverly Hills. She played my father like a fine fiddle—conned him into believing she would do anything to keep custody of me, would be devastated to lose me. At the time he was still worrying about his popularity—many people hadn’t got over the way he’d married my mother mere weeks after his first wife’s death. He wanted to hurt her by taking me away—however, he didn’t want to come across as the totally cruel husband again, so he offered her a generous settlement and she skipped all the way to the bank.’

  ‘But...’ Disbelief lined her face, along with a dark frown. ‘How could she?’

  ‘With great ease, apparently. Hey, it’s OK. I came to terms with it long ago. I didn’t tell you because I want to discuss it, or because I want sympathy. I told you because I want you to know that I could never take Amil from you. I know first-hand that a child needs his mother. From my own experience and my siblings’. Stefan, Barrett, Emerson—they have all been devastated by the custody battles and having their mothers torn from them. I would not put you or Amil through it. You have my word, and that word is not meaningless.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Shifting on the branch so that she faced him, she cupped his face in her hands, her fingers warm against his cheeks. ‘Truly. Thank you for sharing that—you didn’t have to. And I do believe that right here, right now, you mean what you promise.’

  ‘But you don’t believe I’ll make good?’

  ‘I...’ Her hands dropped to her sides and, leaning forward, she dabbled her fingers in the soil of the forest floor, trickled it through her fingers and then sat up again. ‘I don’t know.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Perhaps it’s my turn to share now. I told you how my father left when he found out my mother was pregnant. He promised her that he loved her, that they had a future.’ She gestured back the way they’d come. ‘Maybe he said those words at the falls. Hell, maybe they even sat here, in this very forest. But that promise meant nothing. And, you see, that wasn’t the only promise he made.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘He came back.’ Her eyes were wide now, looking back into a past that he suspected haunted her. ‘When my mother found out she was terminally ill she managed to track him down. She had no one else. And he came, and he agreed to take me in. He explained that he was married, with two other daughters, but he promised—he swore that I would be welcomed, that I would have a family, that he would love and cherish me. He said that he was sorry and that he wanted to make it up to her and to me.’

  The pain in her voice caused an ache that banded his chest and he reached out to cover her hand in his own, hoped that somehow it would assuage her hurt.

  ‘So, after she died...’ Her voice caught and her fingers tightened around his. ‘He came to bring me to England—to my new family.’

  Perhaps he should say something, Frederick thought. But he couldn’t think of anything—couldn’t even begin to contemplate how Sunita must have felt. The loss of her mother, the acquisition of a father she must have had mixed feelings about, the total upending of her life. All he could do was shift closer to her, show his comfort.

  ‘It didn’t work out. Turned out his promises didn’t materialise.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘My stepmother and my sisters loathed me—I knew that from the instant I walked into the house.’

  A house that must have felt so very alien to her, in a country that must have felt grey and cold and miserable.

  ‘In a nutshell, he pitched me into a Cinderella scenario. They treated me like I was an inferior being.’ She made a small exasperated noise. ‘It sounds stupid, because it is so difficult to explain, but they made me feel worthless. I ate separately from them, my clothes were bought from charity shops, while my half-sisters’ were new, I ended up with loads of extra chores so I could “earn my keep”, and there were constant put-downs, constant reminders that I was literally worthless.’ Another shrug. ‘It all sounds petty, but it made
me feel like nothing—worse than invisible. I was visible, but what they could see made them shudder.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound petty—it sounds intolerable.’ Anger vibrated through him, along with disbelief that people could be so cruel. ‘Was your father involved in this?’

  ‘He was more of a bystander than a participant. He was away a lot on business. I did try to explain to him that I was unhappy, that I felt my stepmother didn’t like me, but he simply said that I must be imagining it or, worse, he would accuse me of base ingratitude. Which made me feel guilty and even more alone.’

  No wonder Sunita found it hard to take people at their word. Her own father, who had promised to care for her, had instead treated her like muck and allowed others to do the same.

  ‘I’m sorry. I wish I could turn back time and intervene.’

  ‘You can’t change the past. And even if you could perhaps the outcome would be worse. Because in the past I got out, I escaped, and I’ve come to terms with what happened. I can even understand a little why my stepmother acted as she did. She was landed with a strange girl—the daughter of a woman her husband had been unfaithful with, the woman who probably was the love of his life. The gossip and speculation in the community must have been beyond humiliating for her and my half-sisters. So they turned all that anger and humiliation on to me.’

  ‘That doesn’t excuse their behaviour, or explain your father’s.’

  ‘I think my father was weak and he felt guilty. Guilty over the way he’d treated my mother...guilty that he had betrayed his wife in the first place. And that guilt translated into doing anything for a quiet life. That worked in my favour later on. I got scouted by a model agency when I was sixteen and my father agreed to let me leave home—my stepmother was happy to see me go, sure I’d join the ranks of failed wannabes, so she agreed. I never looked back and I never went back. I never saw them again. The second I could, I sent my father a cheque to cover any costs he might have incurred over the years. As far as I am concerned we are quits. I don’t even know where he is.’

  So much made sense to Frederick now—her lack of trust, her fears over Amil, her need to be in control. Admiration burned within him that she had achieved so much, was such an amazing parent herself.