by Penny Jordan
His last thought as he had begun to lose consciousness had been that he loved them both almost beyond bearing.
It had therefore been a shock to arrive at the hospital, still barely conscious himself from his loss of blood, to be told there was a grave danger that Natalia might lose the baby—all the more so because of his own only just discovered feelings. ‘You must save the baby,’ he had told them as they had worked to cleanse his wound—not, fortunately, as deep as it had first looked and not having damaged any vital organs despite the flow of blood.
‘We will do our best,’ they had assured him, not knowing his concern was not because the child was his heir, but because he knew how distraught Natalia would be if she were to lose it, and how he couldn’t bear it if neither she nor the baby ever got to know how wrong he had been and how much he loved them both.
In her hospital bed, Natalia stared anxiously up at the consultant.
‘My husband—how is he?’ she asked him, realising even now when she was still in shock that, as Niroli’s Crown Prince, Kadir’s safety was paramount for his people and she surely must remember that.
‘The Crown Prince is fine apart from a small flesh wound,’ the consultant assured her. ‘He is waiting outside to see you now.’
Natalia nodded her head, and then looked at him. ‘You are sure…about…about the baby?’ she pleaded with him, tears filling her eyes. They had already removed the drip they had used to replace fluids and she’d also been mildly sedated to keep her calm whilst they fought to prevent her from losing her child. ‘There’s no mistake…?’ she begged him.
‘No, there is no mistake,’ the consultant confirmed tiredly. It had been a long night and they had been anxious to save the Crown Prince, the Princess and their baby.
The door to her room was opening. The consultant gave Kadir a small bow, before leaving them alone together.
‘Thank you for…for saving my life.’
Kadir grimaced. He looked tired and drained. The blood-soaked shirt he’d been wearing had been replaced by a clean one; the wound Zahra had inflicted was now cleaned and dressed.
‘If I saved you, then it was only right that I should have done so since I was the one who put you both at risk in the first place. I had no idea about Zahra…she never showed any signs…When I told her that there was no point in her trying to remain here on Niroli, and reinforced that by reminding her that you are my wife and that you were to have a child, I never imagined for one moment…’
Something in the obvious sincerity of his shocked and earnest demeanour broke through Natalia’s protective distance. She wanted to reach out and touch him, tell him, but how could she now when she knew what he must be thinking about the baby? He probably would have wanted her to lose it, even if he was not prepared to admit as much to her. She knew that. How could she not after the way he had refused to accept that the baby was his? ‘You weren’t to know. I expect she wasn’t even aware that she was suffering from a mental illness herself. It’s sad really…poor woman…’ Natalia told him emotionlessly. ‘But there’s no reason for you to blame yourself.’
‘On the contrary, there is every reason. You are my wife, it is my duty to protect you, I should have realised…’
‘Have they told you yet about…about the baby?’ Natalia asked him in a low voice.
Kadir nodded his head.
‘I expect you think that it would also have been for the best if I had lost it, as they feared I would.’
She could not bring herself to look at him. Throughout the long hours when she had lain sedated whilst her baby had fought so hard to hold onto life she had known that Kadir must have been hoping equally hard that it would not. That hurt her far more than anything that Zahra had done to her.
‘Natalia…’
The door to her room opened and an aide stood there. ‘Your Highness,’ he began, obviously flustered. ‘The king…King Giorgio is here. He will not accept that you are alive and well until he has seen you for himself…’
The king was here? The king who never left his palace and who expected others always to dance to his will? Natalia’s eyes widened. She had seen for herself the way in which his love for Kadir had softened the king’s arrogance and warmed his heart, but this was evidence indeed of how much Kadir had come to mean to him.
‘You must go to him,’ she told Kadir quickly, reminding him, ‘He is an old man, Kadir, and he must have been badly frightened.’
Kadir inclined his head. ‘Very well,’ he told her, ‘but I shall return as soon as I can.’
No sooner had Kadir gone than the consultant returned carrying an envelope.
‘These are copies of the scans we did of the baby,’ he told her with a small smile. ‘As you know, we do not advocate the use of our wonderful new scanner merely as a means of detecting a child’s sex before its birth so that the parents can know what colour to decorate the nursery, but, since we had to do these scans to check that the baby was okay, I wondered if you might wish to have them?’
Smiling through the sudden emotion of her tears, Natalia took them from him.
‘I did ask the Crown Prince if he would like to see them but he refused…’
‘Yes,’ Natalia agreed quietly. ‘He would.’
‘He said that you should be the first to see them,’ the consultant told her, oblivious to the true meaning of her quiet and very sad words. ‘You might not want to see them if you don’t want to find out the sex of the baby—it is quite clear from these images.’
‘No, that’s okay, I’d love to know.’
‘But, either way, it is good to know that the future King of Niroli values a daughter as much as a son. When I offered him the chance to discover the sex of the child you are carrying he said that its sex did not matter, only that it should live.’
Natalia stiffened in disbelief. ‘I can’t imagine…that is…he didn’t really want…’
As though he had guessed some of what she was feeling and could not say, the consultant told her gently, ‘The whole of Niroli knows that your marriage is a matter of state, but no one seeing the Crown Prince with you during these last worrying hours could doubt that, whatever might have been, he is now a man very much in love with and devoted to his wife. You were his first concern when you were all brought here. He begged us to attend to you first and he has remained here outside your room throughout the night. In fact at one time my nurse was forced to report to me that he had disobeyed my instructions and that she had found him sitting here with you watching over you whilst you were unconscious. Now, please promise me that you will accept that you need have no more fears for the safety of your baby. I do assure you that all is well and the crisis safely past.’
Natalia nodded her head. Kadir had said that to the consultant? He couldn’t have meant it though—could he? She stifled a sleepy yawn. The consultant had warned her that she would feel tired for several days after all that she had been through and that her body would compel her to sleep to give both her and her baby a chance to recuperate fully. She looked at the envelope the consultant had left for her and then opened it slowly, studying the three-dimensional images inside it, her tears blurring her gaze as she saw her beautiful baby looking back at her. The baby she could so easily have lost…the baby she could so easily never have conceived in the first place.
Natalia was asleep when Kadir returned to her room and settled himself on the chair beside her bed. He looked down at the smooth bedclothes covering her still-flat body. His father’s emotions as he had held him and reassured himself that he was truly alive had touched a well spring of responsive emotion within himself. He reached out and placed his hand on Natalia’s body. He didn’t need to struggle to recall how he had felt during the long hours of the night fearing with every heartbeat that she might lose the child she was carrying. That memory would remain with him for ever.
‘I have prayed for you, little one,’ he murmured softly, ‘and my prayers have been answered. Be assured that you shall have my love for
always and that I shall be a true father to you, just as you are already a true son to me, the son of my heart, as well as of my body, loved and held in my heart for always. You and your mother shall have the greatest gift I can give you and that is the gift of my love for the whole of your lives.’
‘Kadir.’ Natalia’s voice was thick with tears. She had heard him come in but she had not opened her eyes, not realising that he would think she was still asleep.
‘I mean it,’ he told her, reaching out for her hand and clasping it between his own. ‘I do mean it, Natalia. I love you. You, Natalia Carini, you, the bold, exciting woman who showed me her pride in her sexuality and shamed my own foolish blindness to the real reason I fought so hard against my love for you. Fear is a terrible thing, all the more so when that fear belongs to a man who refuses to accept that he can feel it, and gives it other names instead. Natalia, my wife, my love, my life, you are my love, even if I have refused until now to fully recognise that love.’ He took a deep raw breath of air. ‘When I saw Zahra with that knife and realised what she was going to do, it wasn’t just your life I knew I had to protect, it was the child’s, as well. You need have no fear that this child, this son, who I now freely accept as being my own child, will not suffer as I did. He shall be my son and I shall be his father, my first-born son, I love him as that already.’
‘Your son?’ Natalia asked him softly. She could barely keep the smile back from her lips or out of her voice. Her happiness was welling up inside her like champagne bubbles.
‘Well, I don’t want to disappoint you, Kadir, but actually this son you plan to love is going to be a daughter…’ Still smiling, she handed him the scan pictures.
She might know now that Kadir was prepared to accept that their child was his, but somehow she knew that Kadir would fall totally and besottedly in love with his daughter in a way he would not have done with a son. Later, fate willing she would present him and the people of Niroli with a male heir, but for now to know she carried this precious wonderful gift of a daughter was almost more happiness than she could bear.
‘A daughter…’ Kadir marvelled as he looked at the images, his eyes bright with emotion.
‘I thought we might name her for your mother…’ Natalia suggested hesitantly. ‘I…I thought about her when I was afraid and alone with Zahra and I prayed…’
Kadir’s hand covered hers. ‘I, too,’ he told her thickly. Silently they looked at one another and then Kadir leaned towards her. ‘Oh, my love, my dearest, dearest love. If I should have lost you.’
‘But you didn’t and you won’t,’ Natalia assured him as she lifted her face for his kiss.
A nurse coming to check on Natalia opened the door and then quickly withdrew. Who would have thought that a royal couple could behave like that—just like everyone else, holding one another and kissing so passionately that they were oblivious to her unwitting interruption?
‘You know, I really think that she does have a look of my mother,’ Kadir told Natalia judiciously later as they studied the scans together for the umpteenth time.
‘No, she definitely has your nose,’ Natalia corrected him firmly.
EPILOGUE
‘THE Fierezza genes are astonishingly vigorous,’ Natalia heard Emily Fierezza, the wife of Prince Marco, saying laughingly to the women of the family gathered in the courtyard. They were preparing to leave for the cathedral where Kadir was to be formally crowned and anointed as Niroli’s new King.
‘I’ve lost count of how many new babies have arrived or are about to arrive. You will tell me if you start feeling tired, won’t you?’ Emily pressed Natalia. ‘Only Kadir made me swear that I would watch over you like a hawk.’
‘You and the countess and pretty much the rest of the royal household.’ Natalia laughed as she waited to enter her carriage, one of several that would form the coronation procession that would escort Kadir to the cathedral as Niroli’s Crown Prince and then back again as its new King.
‘I can’t get over the change in King Giorgio. I never thought I’d see him looking so happy and relaxed. Marco says it’s like discovering a grandfather he never knew he had, and it’s all thanks to you and Kadir. Marco says that, between you, you’ve humanised him.’
‘I haven’t done anything,’ Natalia protested. ‘I think it’s more that King Giorgio has come to realise how important a loving family is and that one has to give love in order to receive it.’
‘Kadir will make Niroli a wonderful King, Natalia,’ Emily told her warmly. ‘We all think so.’
Tears pricked at Natalia’s eyes. ‘You know how much it means to Kadir to have so much family support.’
‘He and Marco have such a lot in common. They are both very determined and independent, true Fierezza men.’
They certainly were, and her own Fierezza man had that extra something very special that came to him via his mother’s blood, Natalia acknowledged. A small secret smile curled the corners of her mouth, her gaze hazing with sensual memories. Initially Kadir had insisted on reining in his passionate desire for her because of their baby, but last night he had been swept away by her on the full tide of her own longing for him, and her assurances that it was perfectly safe. He had loved her with tenderness and intimate sensuality, in such a way that her body still ached a little from their shared pleasure. Her skin still remembered the heat of the kisses he had lavished on it, every sensitive place visited and then revisited until she had not been able to stop herself from crying out to him in hot, sweet arousal. He was so very much a man. Her man, and, as she had whispered to him last night as she had re-voyaged over that territory she had explored the first time she had touched him, she truly did believe that something in her at some deep, little understood level had recognised him as her soul mate.
‘Once I would not have believed you,’ he told her in turn. ‘But now, how can I deny it when every breath I take is witness to my love for you? I am so very blessed, Natalia,’ he told her as he kissed her throat and then her jaw, his deliberate slowness making her ache for the feel of his mouth on her own. ‘I have you, and our child…a father who loves me, a country that, with you at my side to guide me, has taken me into their hearts. Truly I am indeed blessed.’
And then he kissed her and Natalia knew that nothing in the world could possibly ever mean more to her than this man and the child he had given her. Just thinking about last night was making her body ache with longing for Kadir. But now that ache was edged with the delicious eroticism of anticipation instead of the pain of doubt. Tonight she would hold him and touch him and show him…
‘Princess, it is time,’ the countess announced importantly, bringing her out of her secret sensual daydream by gesturing to the waiting maids to pick up the train of Natalia’s coronation gown.
There had not been such an occasion in the whole lifetime of many of the people gathered in the square and along the streets, lining the way to the cathedral, and Natalia could hear their cheers of encouragement and delight as the old fashioned horse-drawn coaches bowled past them.
She would merely be an observer at this, the formal handing-over of the crown by King Giorgio to Kadir, but later she and Kadir planned to renew their vows to one another, in front of their people.
The cathedral was packed, its lofty spires reaching up into the bright blue sky, the hum of excited voices filling its cavernous interior.
But there was still, too, that quiet sense of spirit and belief; that awareness of times past and vows made, Natalia recognised as she joined the procession entering the cathedral.
At its head was King Giorgio escorting Kadir, but they were too far away for Natalia to be able to see Kadir’s face, even though she could see the royal-blue velvet of his ceremonial cloak and the dark sheen of his bared head.
The sound of choir voices filled the air, rising on it like the most perfect notes of the most perfect scent. Today Kadir was wearing her special gift to him, a cologne she had made for him combining the most rare and special of ingredien
ts to reflect the depths of her love for him and the beyond-price gift that he was giving to the people of Niroli in committing himself to them.
The king and Kadir had reached the two thrones waiting for them.
Natalia joined the other close members of the family in their designated pews.
The Archbishop of Niroli began the service of dedication. The ebb and flow of the solemn words of the ritual filled the ancient building, the reverence and awe of what was happening reflected in the radiance shining from the faces of the people as they said a respectful farewell to the king who had served them for so long and then turned with hope and confidence to the son who would, with his blessing, take his place.
‘May you be blessed with many years in which to enjoy the fruits of your labours, King Giorgio,’ the Archbishop prayed.
‘And no doubt many years to interfere in the lives of the fruits of his loins,’ Emily whispered ruefully to Natalia with fond affection.
They had grown especially close since it was the generosity of Marco, Emily’s husband, and the worrisome health at one stage of their own now perfectly healthy child, that had led them to give the scanner to Niroli’s maternity wing.
‘He has grown very tired these last months,’ Natalia whispered back, ‘and, although he is far too proud to admit it, I think he would have been in despair if he still hadn’t found an heir.’
They both fell silent as the choir stopped singing and King Giorgio rose from his throne to take the crown and place it on Kadir’s head.
A hush filled the cathedral as though everyone there held their breath, and not just those inside the cathedral, but those outside in the square who were watching the ceremony on the giant TV screens that had been erected there.
The old king’s hands trembled visibly but the crown held fast. There was a collective release of breath as the archbishop began the prayer of ordination and then asked Kadir the three requisite times if he accepted the Crown of Niroli.