The Prince's Chambermaid

by Sharon Kendrick

  Cathy froze. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I think he may be prepared to overlook your—’

  ‘No!’ She felt the colour blanch from her cheeks as she saw his startled expression, but suddenly she didn’t care if her interruption had been an outrageous breach of protocol. ‘I am not having this conversation,’ she said, in a low voice. ‘Has Xaviero picked you out as some sort of broker—to say to me what he hasn’t got the nerve to say himself? To ask me to make some kind of unnecessary apology in order to pander to his pride?’

  ‘He doesn’t know what I’m saying,’ Casimiro ground out. ‘Well, my mind is made up.’ Because a lot of people had dud childhoods in some sort of way, didn’t they? But that didn’t mean they should behave like emotional ice cubes for the rest of their lives. And deep down Cathy knew that it didn’t matter what Casimiro said. The only person who might have persuaded her to stay was his brother—and he had walked away as if her going had meant nothing to him. Because she didn’t mean anything to him. And it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough now—and time would only make it worse. The balance of love was completely unequal—and she could not imprison him in a marriage which was no longer necessary. She would be living on tenterhooks, waiting for him to tire of her—before seeking a royal mistress and leaving his grieving and unloved wife at home. She rose to her feet. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘So you are both as proud and as stubborn as each other!’ Casimiro snapped.

  ‘So it would seem,’ said Cathy. ‘And now I must beg your leave, Your Majesty. The car will be arriving for me shortly. I am so happy that you are well again, sire.’ Her voice wavered a little at this. ‘And I wish you a long and glorious reign.’

  With this she gave a quick curtsey before hurrying back to her rooms, but inside she could feel a mixture of anger and indignation bubbling up. The King expected her to go and seek forgiveness from his brother, but for what? For trying to love a man who had no love to give her in return.

  Her hands were trembling as she threw a few ill-chosen items of clothing in her case before slamming it shut, but at least the fury she now felt helped dull some of the pain.

  But there was no formal line-up of staff as she went down the sweeping marble staircase into the lavishly tiled marble entrance hall. Just Flavia, whose own smile of farewell was as cool as if Cathy had been introduced to her only minutes before. But Flavia was an aide who had spent all her life defusing emotion—because that was what royal life demanded of its players. Cathy knew that. It was the downside to all the jewels and fawning. And I never wanted that, she told herself fiercely. All I ever wanted was Xaviero—and he comes at too high a price.

  Outside sat the limousine, its powerful engine giving a soft roar of life when she appeared, and Cathy gave one last look around the beautiful courtyard, trying to imprint it on her memory. The succulent plants. The bright, fragrant blooms. The fountain which plumed out its rainbow spray. And always the bright blue sky and soft heat of the sun—as golden as the eyes of a man she would never forget.

  Grateful for the sunglasses which shielded her brimming eyes, Cathy slid into the back seat as the car pulled away. She could just sink back into its air-conditioned luxury and say nothing until they reached the airfield and the plane which would take her back to England.

  And then?

  She didn’t know and, at this moment, she didn’t particularly care. She felt like a small animal which had wandered into a trap and escaped with wounds which might never heal.

  Painfully, she watched the city walls retreating, the wide roads leading to the airport growing suddenly narrower, and she frowned. The driver was obviously taking a different route from the one by which she’d arrived.

  She didn’t know when exactly it was that she began to get alarmed—maybe when the car began to bump its way up a dusty road which looked as if it led to nowhere, and then stopped completely. What was going on?

  Pressing the intercom connecting her with the driver, she found herself hoping that he spoke English—though surely even with her rudimentary Italian she could manage to convey that she was supposed to be catching a plane.

  ‘Scusi, signor…’ But then the words died on her lips as she saw the driver getting out of the car and opening her door. This was completely unprecedented! Her heart gave a leap of fear—and then a leap of something else entirely as she removed her dark shades. Because he was now pulling off the peaked cap which had hidden his ebony hair and shaded the remarkable gleam of his golden eyes.

  And she found herself looking into the oddly forbidding face of her husband.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘XAVIERO!’ Cathy gasped out. ‘What…what on earth are you doing here?’

  Dropping his chauffeur’s cap into the dust, he moved towards her with sinuous grace. ‘I am stopping us both from making the biggest mistake of our lives.’

  ‘You mean you’re playing another of your games of pretending to be ordinary? Today, a driver—tomorrow, who knows? A painter and decorator again?’

  ‘This is no game—this is the real thing.’ But a note of admiration had entered his voice. How feisty she was! ‘My brother is still reeling from the fact that you marched out of his office without being given permission! He said that it was the most imperiously royal gesture he had ever witnessed!’ His golden eyes raked over her face as if he had never quite seen it before. ‘Oh, Cathy, what have I done?’ he groaned, and then pulled her into his arms and started to kiss her.

  For several sweet moments she gave into that kiss, feeling herself begin to melt beneath its sensual onslaught before summoning up every ounce of power she possessed to tear her mouth away from his and to push uselessly at his chest. ‘Don’t,’ she whispered. ‘Just don’t.’

  Something in the defeated little tone of her voice stilled him. ‘But you want me to.’

  Frustratedly, she shook her head. ‘Of course I want you to! I’ve always wanted you to—that’s been part of the problem. But the attraction I feel for you has blinded me to the truth. And it’s no good, Xaviero. Not any more.’

  Lifting a finger, he caught hold of a bright golden strand of hair which had fallen over her eyes and pushed it away from her flushed face. ‘Why not?’ he questioned softly.

  ‘Because it’s just…just sex.’

  ‘I thought you liked sex.’

  ‘You know I do.’ She looked up at him. ‘But it’s not enough. I thought it could be, but it can’t. You wanted me compliant—and maybe I was, but not any more. I seem to have changed—when you think about it, I suppose it was inevitable I would. And I can’t just be what you want me to be—not any more. Can’t you see that? I am not the same person. I’m no longer just someone you can mould—so I no longer fit the bill of what you really want from a wife.’

  Xaviero’s heart twisted and his breath felt hot and harsh in his throat. He knew what she wanted from him—but couldn’t she at least meet him halfway? Because there was a sense that if he let go—really let go—and told her what he knew deep down she needed to know, he would make himself weak in the process. That he would lay himself open to all that terrible pain he’d experienced when he’d discovered that love made you vulnerable.

  And yet, did he really have an alternative? Because hadn’t the pain of knowing that she was going to walk out of his life been more than he could bear? He had tried to ignore it and then to block it—but it had kept coming back at him like a persistent mosquito in the dead of night. Did he somehow think he was immune to all the emotional stuff that other people had to deal with—that he could get away with behaviour which would be tolerated simply because of his royal status? Yes, he did. And up until now, he always had.

  But then he had discovered that, for all his protestations about wanting to be treated like any other man—the truth was that he wanted it both ways. All ways. That he donned the protection of his royal mantle whenever it suited him.

  ‘And if I told you that I think I was fooling myself all along?’ he grated. ‘What the
n?’

  ‘That kind of admission doesn’t sound like the Xaviero I know,’ she answered quietly.

  ‘No. It doesn’t feel like the Xaviero I know, either. Maybe you aren’t the only one to have changed, Cathy.’ He gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘When I gave you that cold-blooded list of requirements for a wife I thought I was being completely honest with you—and I’ve since discovered that honest was the very last thing I was being.’

  Cathy frowned. ‘You mean you didn’t want someone—’

  ‘I mean that there were a million women out there who would have fitted the bill for a marriage of convenience—even at such short notice. Pure women. Aristocratic women. Heiresses who would have found royal life no great challenge. I could have picked up a list of my exlovers and any one of them would have come running.’

  ‘But you didn’t do that,’ said Cathy slowly.

  ‘No. That’s right. I didn’t. I chose the most unsuitable woman of all—but she was the one who happened to make me feel stuff. The one who provided an oasis of calm in her simple little home. The one who had wanted me just as much when I walked into the hotel covered in mud and sweat from a hard morning’s riding as when she discovered who I really was.’ He looked at her, his eyes full of question.

  ‘Sometimes I wanted that man more,’ she admitted. ‘I wanted you without all the trouble of the trappings.’

  ‘I know,’ he said simply. ‘And can you understand how much that means to me? To be wanted for who you are, rather than what you are? I’ve never had that before. It made me feel…emotion.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘And that’s why I fought it, just like I’d fought it all my life.’

  When, as a lonely and bereaved little boy, he had sought comfort in his horses. She pictured the isolated little figure he must have been—brave and handsome and lonely as hell. ‘Xaviero,’ she whispered.

  ‘No.’ His voice was husky, thick with emotion. ‘Say nothing. Just hear me out. What I have given you and what I have offered you has not been enough—not nearly enough. In fact, it makes me ashamed to think of how little I was prepared to give you. I know you’re not into jewels or palaces, or fast cars or fancy planes, but I wondered if there was something else which would win your heart and persuade you to stay with me?’

  Cathy held her breath as she stared at him, her heart missing a beat as she dared not hope. But her fingernails dug painfully into her palms all the same. ‘Th-that depends what you’re offering,’ she said shakily.

  ‘I’m offering love,’ he said simply. ‘How does that sound?’

  Cathy couldn’t speak for the lump in her throat, trying to swallow it down, trying to tell herself he was still playing games with her. Yet the look of intensity blazing from the golden eyes suggested the very opposite—she had never seen such a blaze of burning emotion on Xaviero’s face before. Those hard, stern features had softened into the expression of a man who was feeling something, who was calling out to her. And she felt the answering call of her own heart.

  But she was scared. Too scared to clutch at something and then find that it had all been some ghastly mistake. And now she needed to be brave—because she could no longer hide behind her feelings, either. She needed to know exactly where she stood—and if the foundations weren’t solid enough, then she would move on. ‘L-love would be enough,’ she said shakily. ‘If…if it was meant.’

  He drew a deep breath. He spoke three languages fluently, but in that moment he felt like a child uttering its first words. And he knew that he must make his intentions unmistakable, because this might be his last chance to hold onto the most precious thing in his life.

  ‘I love you, Cathy,’ he whispered. ‘I love you so much that if you leave me now I don’t know if I could bear it. I love you in a way I never thought I could love—and it’s scaring the hell out of me.’

  Xaviero scared? She looked into his golden eyes, and her heart turned over—because wasn’t she scared herself? Terrified. Maybe it was the same for every couple who were teetering on the brink of love, no matter who they were or what their circumstances. Instinct told her to believe him—and something else reinforced that instinct. The same something which had brought her out to his Mediterranean island in the first place.

  Faith. But not blind this time—because she could read in his eyes the only thing she wanted from Xaviero. The only thing she had ever really wanted from him. Just love.

  Her smile was tremulous but she was having to blink back the sudden onset of tears. The first time she had ever tasted the tears of joy.

  ‘I believe you and I love you,’ she said softly, and then her head fell to his shoulder and she began to cry.

  EPILOGUE

  THEY honeymooned in South America, where the lush green foothills of the Andes took Cathy’s breath away. On a sleek white yacht which drifted from island to stunning island off the coast of Brazil, they basked in the sun and sipped caipirinhas as potent as they were delicious. And once, in glorious anonymity, they daringly tangoed on the streets of Buenos Aires, while their security mingled with the crowd, having nightmares.

  Then they criss-crossed across vast sweeps of land to track down some of the very finest horses in the world. Cathy had decided that if she was going to live a fulfilled married life with her darling Xaviero—then she wanted to learn all about his passion.

  Just as he wanted to learn about hers. For when they returned from their six-month idyll to England, it was to find the hotel transformed into a beautiful home—exquisite in every way except for one thing.

  ‘They haven’t touched the gardens!’ said Cathy as she stared in dismay at weeds which had encroached even further onto the neglected flowerbeds.

  ‘That’s because I want you to redesign them,’ said Xaviero softly.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Absolutely you.’

  ‘But I don’t have any formal training,’ Cathy protested.

  His fingers tangled themselves in the golden silk of her hair. ‘Maybe not—but you have a natural instinct and an eye for beauty which no amount of teaching could provide.’ Briefly he touched his lips to hers. ‘I want my polo school to offer scholarships to talented youngsters from all backgrounds, all over the world, Cathy. But I want more than to make them talented riders. I want to bring them here, where they can experience the kind of calm which you weave around you wherever you go. So create a beautiful oasis of a garden, my love,’ he urged softly. ‘A place where people can come and be at home with their senses.’

  Cathy swallowed, dizzy with the sense of joy his words always provoked—words which pierced her heart with their beauty. Because with Xaviero’s declaration of love for her, it seemed that a true poet had been liberated.

  Even her projected scenario of the press mocking a chambermaid princess hadn’t materialised. It seemed that she had struck some kind of chord and the world was delighted with the marriage. And despite her turning down countless interviews, there were abundant articles on what the magazines were calling ‘The Cinderella Syndrome’. Cathy didn’t mind a bit. She wanted all women to realise that anything was achievable. That it didn’t matter who you were or where you came from—that love truly could conquer all.

  From his new hotel in the south of France, Rupert had written a sycophantic letter offering them free use of the honeymoon suite—and Xaviero had given a shout of laughter as he’d hurled it straight into the bin.

  Even Peter, now married and with his own little parish somewhere along the east coast of Scotland, had written offering his tentative congratulations and had mentioned that his church was badly in need of a replacement roof. And Cathy, feeling expansive, had sent him a cheque to pay for it and wished him every happiness in his new life.

  Back on Zaffirinthos Casimiro was fully recovered and back at the helm, though seeing his brother’s obvious joy had made him seem a little wistful.

  ‘Perhaps he needs a Queen,’ said Cathy hopefully and Xaviero laughed.

  ‘You want the whole world to feel like we do, i
s that it, mia tesoro?’

  She rose up on tiptoe and brushed her lips over his. ‘Mmm. You think that’s possible?’

  ‘No,’ he answered thickly, before pulling her closer. ‘I don’t. I think what we have is unique.’

  And of course, it was. No two people were the same as them, nor ever would be. But to Cathy, Xaviero was not a prince or a world-class polo player or next in line to an island kingdom. He never had been. He was simply her man—her gorgeous golden-eyed man—and she loved him with every fibre of her being.

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

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  First published in Great Britain 2009