Georgie gestured between the two men and told Max, “Xan has been terrorizing the council for weeks. I’m just glad you got back here before ‘the cousins’ rebelled against him.”
Xan. She’d called him Xan.
Dree tried not to hyperventilate.
Max lifted one eyebrow at Xan. “‘The cousins?’ Did you form a cabal?”
“I had to do something. After Uncle Rainier died and your brother shot himself—”
Georgie shot a dark look at her husband and enunciated clearly when she told Max, “Our condolences for your loss.”
Maxence waved his fingers in the air and lowered his eyes, acknowledging her sympathies.
Alexandre continued, “And then you were next in the line of succession. But no one could find you, so they started coming after me. I rounded up the cousins and emphasized the importance of acting together.”
Georgie snorted. “I can’t believe how afraid they are of him.”
“They can’t form a quorum without us,” Xan Valentine said. “I held the fort, and we Grimaldi have always known the importance of holding the fortress on the headlands.”
Maxence smiled wryly and nodded. “Just so.”
Dree wrote down a list of sheep breeds. She asked, “Who’s number three?”
Oops, she hadn’t meant to say that aloud. She was, after all, just a secretary, hardly a step up from transcribing software.
Maxence turned to Dree and explained, “It isn’t a line of succession so much as an order of precedence. Traditionally, the Council nominates and confirms the next in line to the throne. In any case, the major problem is that they are likely to offer it first to me and then to you, Alexandre, and we don’t want the damn thing.”
Alexandre turned to Georgie, accidentally making eye contact with Dree for just a second before he spoke to his wife, “And the third person in line is Christine, who has repeatedly and loudly said that she would rather sit on a pineapple than the throne.”
Georgie whispered to Dree, “Christine is his younger sister.”
Dree wrote down, #3 = Christine, sister of Alexandre, so also M’s cousin. Also does not want.
And then she erased it and wrote, Merino wool is really good.
Georgie shook her head. “I can’t see Christine as a head of state. She deliberately doesn’t practice her violin enough to get first chair in the orchestra, so she doesn’t have to perform solos. Who’s in line after that?”
Maxence sighed. “This is where it gets tricky. Traditionally, next in line would be the previous sovereign’s next male sibling, who is our uncle Jules.”
The evil racist who looked like Santa’s Head Elf.
Georgie’s expression became more pained. “Oh, him.”
Xan nodded. “Unfortunately.”
Dree wrote 4. Jules G and drew a line through his name. So, Monaco had three people who didn’t want the job, and then a guy who absolutely shouldn’t have it.
Yeah, this was going to be tricky.
Dammit. She wrote, Merino wool can be expensive.
Alexandre lowered his voice and told his wife, “I went to Jules when I was seven because I thought I could trust him. He told my violin instructor I had tattled and to make sure I didn’t tell anyone again.”
Georgie grabbed his hand. “Jesus, Xan.”
Huh. Xan, again. Dree doodled a KV next to his name.
Maxence said, “Jules hit on Flicka when she came home from boarding school with Christine one summer.”
Alexandre frowned. “How old was she?”
“Fourteen.”
Everyone recoiled.
Ew. Dree drew another line through Jules’s name.
Maxence looked up from under his thick eyelashes at Alexandre. “So, we’re agreed? Whomever we recruit to be the next ruler, it can’t be us, and it can’t be Jules.”
Alexandre stared back at Maxence and blinked then shook his head. “Right. Almost anyone but Jules. I was already advocating against him, and that’s the hill I’ll die on. Quite honestly, I’d rather do it myself than let him have it, and I’d rather disembowel myself than take the job.”
“I’m sure it won’t come to that.” Maxence leaned back in his chair. He said, a wistful note in his voice, “Jules would abuse that power in the worst ways possible.”
Georgie said, “But if they’re going to offer it to people in order—”
Alexandre said to her, “They don’t have to do it in order. Traditionally, that’s how we’ve always done it, but it was to prevent a civil war when every nobleman had a personal army. With a country as small as Monaco, a civil war could have killed every adult in an afternoon.”
Georgie chuckled, though Dree thought it was a little grim. Georgie said, “I need to read up on the finer points of Monegasque constitutional law.”
“There isn’t much,” Maxence said. “The constitution is that the prince is the head of state of the principality. He appoints the ministers to the government bureaus, and he states what the laws are. It’s one of the few true absolute monarchies left in the world.”
“Wow,” Georgie said. “So this matters. It’s not like other countries where the king or queen is just a figurehead who opens the parliament and presides over parties and knightings.”
“Our monarch does that, too,” Maxence said, “Rainier put in eighteen-hour days for decades. Okay, so after Jules, next in line is Marie-Therese, and then our uncle Albert II. He’s a quiet guy. He’s the type who would think it was his duty and do a solid job of it. He might be a good choice.”
Alexandre shook his head. “He’s a great guy, but he hasn’t been politicking and drumming up support. He’s too quiet. Albert would be an uphill battle. And now we’re off in the weeds. At that point, if Christine, you, and I refuse it and we make sure Jules doesn’t get it, it’s a free-for-all. Anyone could put themselves forward for a vote.”
Maxence nodded. “That’s what I thought, too. I talked to Nico. He’s less than thrilled with the idea of a scrum for the position.”
“I’m not sure an open field would be a bad idea,” Georgie said. “Rather than trying to figure out how to get around you two, Jules, and Christine, we should be figuring out who you can elect. What’s wrong with Marie-Therese, anyway?”
Alexandre shook his head and shrugged. “She wouldn’t want it any more than we do. If we foisted it upon her, Jules is her father. He would manipulate her and rule through her.”
Maxence nodded. “In some ways, that might be worse. If she was a figurehead, Jules would have the ultimate deniability. He could enact truly heinous policies, and she would take the blame.”
Before Dree thought about what her place was in that particular room, she blurted, “Would Jules do that to his own daughter?”
She clapped her hand over her mouth. She should not be asking questions of all the royal people.
Maxence nodded. “I wouldn’t put anything past Jules.”
Well, she’d gotten away with asking a question, maybe she could say more. “He seemed so nice when we met him on the helipad.”
Oh, jeez. She sounded like a naïve ninny. They were going to laugh at her.
But they didn’t.
Alexandre and Maxence nodded slowly, almost sadly.
Georgie said quietly to her, “Psychopaths always seem like really nice people. One of my best friends is working on her Master’s in behavioral psychology. Rae wants to work with autistic kids, but she did a clinical rotation in a prison. She facilitated a therapy group for some inmates who scored high on the psychopathy scale. She said you never knew what they were thinking. Inside, they didn’t have any real emotions other than irritation and rage, so they pretended to show whatever emotion would be the right one. They had all become really good at hiding that they had no positive emotions at all, not friendship, not affection, not love, not even pity.”
Dree blinked, and her fingers clutching the stylus felt cold. “Back in the hospital I worked at, I think some of the surgeons were like that
.”
Georgie nodded. “They say surgeons, CEOs, and certain politicians score high on the psychopathy scales, especially those who use hate and fear to get you to vote for them.”
Dree tried not to recoil, but her back curled as she shrank in the chair.
Alexandre said, “Jules will doubtlessly use negative emotions like hate and fear to garner votes for himself in the Council of Nobles.”
Maxence asked Alexandre, “And so the question remains, whom do we put forth as our candidate?”
Alexandre shrugged. “Christian? Andrea Casiraghi?”
Dree almost snorted. Well, would you look at that? Alexandre pronounced Andrea wrong, too. Ahn-DRAY-uh. How funny.
Georgie said, “I would think your first bet would be to figure out who wants it. You don’t want to go through all these negotiations and political theater to get everybody to vote for your candidate, and then your candidate renounces and runs away to Nome, Alaska.”
“You find somebody,” Alexandre said to Maxence. “I pulled together the coalition to keep Jules from getting elected in the first place. You find somebody who wants to go to all the bother of being the prince of this postage stamp.”
Dree took a few notes for the rest of the meeting, but it seemed like after that, everybody just gossiped about the escapades of relatives instead of making any plans.
But she did write in the document: Maxence’s job is to find a candidate for the prince/princess.
And then she erased the prince/princess part and wrote breed of sheep.
Georgie kept drawing Dree into the conversation and whispering background on the people they were gossiping about, so Dree talked too much.
Max didn’t scowl, though. He just ordered a cup of tea for her, too.
Later, after Georgie and Xan Valentine had left the office, Quentin Sault tucked a small notepad into the pocket on the inside of his suit jacket as he followed them out.
Dree turned back to Max. “So, you and Alexandre, were you two an item?”
Maxence startled and looked up from the tablet he was reading. “What?”
She shrugged. “I mean because, you know, he’s cute.”
Max squinted at her. “He’s my cousin.”
“Evidently, he’s your kissin’ cousin,” she giggled.
Maxence frowned. “No. He’s my first cousin. Our fathers were full-blooded brothers. We grew up together like brothers at boarding school even though he’s a few years younger than I am.”
“Doesn’t seem like that was a problem for most kings and queens, marrying their cousins and nieces and stuff.”
Maxence flicked his hand. “That was how the European royal families acquired their problem with hemophilia, which has never impacted us. And, no. And,” the side of his upper lip lifted, the opposite side from his raised eyebrow, “No. We have enough DNA in common that Alexandre could give me a kidney. We are not that kind of cousins.”
Everybody had lines they wouldn’t cross, Dree supposed.
“Besides,” Maxence said, his eyes returning to what he was reading, “he’s not my type.”
Opening.
“Who is your type?” Dree asked.
Maxence’s eyes slid to the side, and he smiled at her.
Oh, she knew that diabolical smile.
He swiveled his chair to the side and pointed at the floor in front of him. “Come here, pet.”
A thrill ran up her back, an almost-automatic response as she remembered all the times in Paris when he’d called her pet.
Now, this was why she’d come to Monaco, which was not to be a secretary.
Dree stood and placed the tablet on his desk. The black dress Chiara had selected for her was structured like a corset inside, and it kept her posture erect as she strutted around the desk, her legs pointing like a ballet dancer’s in the high heels.
He didn’t take his eyes off of her, and his smile became darker.
When Dree was standing in front of Maxence, he raised one eyebrow and pointed to the floor at his feet.
Instead, she braced her hands on the corners of the high back of his manager’s chair and pushed it, tilting him backward. She settled her knee on his thigh, parting her legs, and leaned toward him.
His fingers found her knee and slowly traveled up the inside of her thigh.
She lowered her head, letting her blond curls brush his cheek, and whispered in his ear, “Not until you call your buddy the Pope and have him revoke your Holy Orders.”
“What?”
Dree shoved herself backward, away from his fingers that had crawled up to the sensitive center of her thigh, and backed up. “When we were in Nepal, I thought I was having one last night with a man I was falling in love with but couldn’t spend my life with. But this? This isn’t one last night. This isn’t a game. This is something else. You keep telling people you’re going to take the next step of Holy Orders to be a priest. I don’t sleep with priests.”
Maxence folded his hands on his stomach, and his eyebrows pinched together. “I can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
“I can’t be laicized right now.”
She squinted at him, analyzing everything from his composed posture to his resting respiration rate. “You said you could, that your vows were written to be broken.”
He shook his head. “I’d be dead within a day.”
His absolute calm was convincing. He wasn’t lying to himself or her. He believed it.
Even though something in Dree’s mind wanted to become hysterical at the conflicting winds buffeting her, she clasped her hands in front of her and drew a deep breath. “Like, what? Like some sort of an assassin-priest will knock you off for wanting to back out?”
He shook his head again. “Not Rome.”
“You’re still an ordained deacon in the Church, and it bothers me that we’ve had relations when you’re not supposed to, and yet I don’t want to stop myself.”
Maxence spread his knees a little wider and patted his thigh. “Sit.”
“You’re just going to tell me some sophisticated argument that I’m not going to understand, and it’s gonna make my head spin around and I’m going to have sex with you anyway, and then I’m going to feel like this again.”
“Sit.” His voice was lower this time.
Dree sat on his leg.
As soon as she did, her body curled, and his strong arms encircled her and drew her down to lean against his shoulder. Her nose tucked beside his chin, where the faint scents of a clove-studded orange and fresh wood rose from under his collar and his skin, and a whiff of lavender emanated from his crisp shirt.
He smelled so good that she wanted to crawl inside his clothes.
Warmth floated around him, the fabric of his clothes saturated with the heat from his muscled body underneath.
As she wrapped her arms around him, Dree’s hand slid over his stomach, her fingers tracing the solid cobblestones and sinews of his strong abdomen under the soft fabric of his shirt.
His lips pressed against her temple.
Oh, when he did stuff like that, she melted like a big ol’ scoop of ice cream dropped on the hot sidewalk in August.
Maxence whispered near her ear, “It’s my problem, not yours. I made those vows, and it’s my soul that is tormented and in jeopardy, not yours.”
“Pretty words,” she said.
“Men have been blaming women for ‘tempting them to sin’ for far too long. Everything I do is my decision.”
“You shouldn’t keep making wrong decisions.”
He sighed, “You’re right.”
Dree pushed on his chest to prop herself up so she could look him in the eyes. “I am?”
“My loyalties have always been divided. I was born a prince of Monaco, and that comes with certain responsibilities. I chose to be ordained as a deacon even though I knew I was conflicted. I should’ve waited until Pierre had had legitimate children, so I could be free. Because I wasn’t and everyone knew I wasn’t free to make that vow,
Pope Vincent de Paul ordained me with an altered sacrament. It’s not valid. It can’t be valid. In a baptism, if a priest says ‘we baptize you’ instead of ‘I baptize you,’ the baptism isn’t considered valid. I’ve been desperately playing at this because I wanted so much to believe, because I wanted so much to belong.”
Dree tried to wrap her head around it. “I can’t believe he did that. It seems like he was cheating you or like he was mocking it.”
Maxence’s eyebrows twitched upward, but the shake of his head was rueful. “I don’t think he was mocking it. Monarchs have been getting away with mortal sins and crimes for millennia. Whenever they wanted to invade somewhere or get a divorce, past popes rubber-stamped it.”
“Except for Henry VIII.”
Maxence grunted a laugh. “And that’s why he was so pissed that Pope Clement VII wouldn’t grant him the annulment and divorce from his first wife. He didn’t have a male heir. The last time England didn’t have a direct male heir, they had a civil war for a hundred years. There were a lot of politics going on there, just like here.”
It was a good thing that her brother wanted to take over the family sheep farm, and she was happy being a nurse. At least the sheep wouldn’t be caught up in inheritance issues. “And now you’re the next male heir.”
Max nodded. “And that’s why my uncle wouldn’t budge. Both Pope Vincent and Pope Celestine VI, the current Pope Emeritus, were exceedingly good friends with my uncle and my grandfather before him. When you’re one of the last Catholic monarchies in the world, you tend to be on first name terms with the Pope. I think they gave me something so they wouldn’t lose me.”
Dree grabbed his hand and held on. “Lose you?”
His shoulder moved under the fine fabric of his shirt. “I can’t remember how many times I’ve threatened to abdicate and renounce everything. That was always my ace in the hole, to walk away to where they couldn’t get me. I’ve debated cardinals, insisting that if I walked away from Monaco, that there would be no reason why they couldn’t give me Holy Orders. It always came down to the fact that Pope Celestine VI had commanded me not to renounce my place in the line of succession, so if I did, I would be disobeying a papal order. We can’t have priests doing that, so I didn’t. Pope Vincent de Paul ordained me as a deacon so I wouldn’t leave everything. So, I’m both, and here, my loyalties are divided. When I’m here, my vows during my diaconate ordination say I’m a royal in the line of succession first.”
Prince: Royal Romantic Suspense (Billionaires in Disguise: Maxence Book 5) Page 7