by Julia James
And those eyes.
Dark, long-lashed, with flecks of gold in them if you looked deeply. Not that she could—or would.
She looked away. It was completely irrelevant what he looked like. It was nothing to do with her. All she had to be concerned about was how long she and Ben would have to hide here before they could go back home.
Ben had paused in his tower-building. He was looking curiously at his helper.
‘Are you really my uncle?’
Immediately Lizzy stiffened.
‘Yes,’ he answered. He spoke in a very matter of fact way. ‘You can call me Tio Rico. That means Uncle Rico. My brother was your father. But he died. It was in the car crash with your mother.’
Ben nodded. ‘I was still growing in her tummy. Then I came out, and she died.’
The Prince’s eyes were carefully watching his nephew. Lizzy could see as she held her breath.
Please, please don’t say anything about the royalty stuff. Please.
There was no point Ben knowing. None at all. It wouldn’t make sense to him, wouldn’t mean anything. One day, when he was much older, she would have to tell him, but till then it was an irrelevance.
Then, to her relief, Ben himself changed the subject.
‘We’ve finished the tower,’ he announced. ‘What shall we make next?’
He seemed to take it for granted his helper would stick around.
But the Prince got to his feet.
‘I’m sorry, Ben. I don’t have time. I have to leave very soon, and first I must talk with your aunt.’
He flicked his gaze across to the figure sitting tensely in the armchair. She got to her feet jerkily. Rico found himself regarding her without pleasure.
How could any female look so dire? No figure, no face, and hair like a bush. His eyes flicked away again, and he did not see her face mottle with colour.
‘Please come this way,’ he said, as he headed towards the door.
He went through into a room that was evidently a library, courteously holding the door open for the aunt, who walked hurriedly past him. He took up a position in front of the fireplace. She stood awkwardly in the middle of the room.
‘You had better sit down.’
His voice was cool and remote. Very formal.
Lizzy tensed even more. The ease of manner he’d displayed towards Ben had disappeared completely.
What did he want to talk to her about? Hopefully it would be to tell her how long she and Ben had to stay here. She hoped it would not be long. This was so unsettling for Ben. She wanted to get him home again. Back to normal. Back to the cottage, where she could try to forget all about who Ben’s father had been.
She took a seat on the long leather sofa facing the fire about ten feet away. The Prince went on standing. He seemed very tall. Lizzy wished she had remained standing too.
He started to speak.
‘I hope you have begun to come to terms with what has transpired. This has been a considerable shock; I acknowledge that.’
‘I still can’t really believe it,’ Lizzy heard herself say, giving voice to her thoughts. ‘It just seems so impossible. How on earth did Maria get to meet a prince?’
Prince Enrico arched an eyebrow. ‘Not as impossible as you might think. Your sister’s career as a model would have taken her into the social circles frequented by my brother.’
She could read his expression quite clearly. Maria’s life had been a world away from her own.
‘However, now that you are aware of the situation, clearly you will appreciate that the first priority must be Ben’s wellbeing.’
Lizzy’s expression tightened. Did he think she didn’t know that?
‘How long are we going to have stay here?’
The question blurted from her.
There was a pause before the Prince answered her. Lizzy didn’t care if she’d offended him, or annoyed him by asking a question of him like that. Simply being in the same room with him was just too embarrassing for her to want anything but to minimise the time she had to endure it. Besides, she didn’t want to leave Ben on his own any longer than she had to.
‘It is expected that the news story will break any day,’ Prince Enrico informed her tersely. ‘I doubt that it can be put off any longer. As for how long the story will run—’ He took a sharp intake of breath. ‘That depends on how much the press are fed.’
Lizzy’s eyes sparked. Was that some kind of sly remark about whether she would talk to any journalists when she got back home again?
But the Prince was speaking still.
‘The press feed off each other, each trying to outdo the other, rehashing each other’s stories, then seeking to add their own exclusive “revelation” to milk the story as much as they can, for as long as they can. It’s cheap copy.’
There was a bitter note in his voice she would have had to be deaf not to hear. It was obvious he was speaking from experience. For a moment she felt a tinge of sympathy for him, then she pushed it aside. Prince Rico of San Lucenzo had not had his playboy lifestyle forced upon him, and if he didn’t like being hounded by the press he shouldn’t live the way he did. But Ben was innocent, a small child.
She could feel her fiercely protective maternal instincts take over. Ben was not responsible for his parentage. So Prince Paolo of San Lucenzo had taken a shine to Maria, had an affair with her, and got her pregnant—well, that was not Ben’s fault.
‘How long will we have to stay here?’ she urged again.
‘As long as is necessary. I can say no more than that.’ His expression changed. ‘I am returning to San Lucenzo this morning. I must report on the situation to my father. You and my nephew will stay here. You will be well looked after, naturally, but you will not be allowed to leave the house and gardens.’
Lizzy frowned. ‘You don’t imagine I want to run into any journalists, do you?’
‘Nevertheless.’ There was a note of implacability in the Prince’s voice.
Lizzy looked at him. Did the Ceraldis think that she wanted this nightmare to be true? Did they really think she would do anything to make what was already a horrible situation worse by talking to the press?
Well, it didn’t matter what Prince Rico or any of the Ceraldi family thought about her intentions. Right now she was in no position to do anything other than accept that she and Ben could not be at home, and she might as well be relieved—if not actually grateful—that the Ceraldis had moved so swiftly to get her and Ben away.
‘However—’ The Prince had started speaking again, addressing her in that same terse, impersonal tone, but he broke off abruptly. ‘Si?’
His head swivelled to the door, which had opened silently. A man stood there, quite young, but tough and muscularlooking, despite his sober dark suit. He looked like a bodyguard, Lizzy realised. He said something in low, rapid Italian, and the Prince nodded curtly. Then he turned back to Lizzy.
‘I am informed my plane is on standby and has air traffic clearance. Excuse me. I must leave.’
Lizzy watched him go. It was frustrating not to know how long she would have to stay here, but presumably not even the San Lucenzan royal family could know exactly what the press would do, or how long it would take for the story to die away.
Her mouth tightened. Had Prince Enrico really implied that she might try and talk to the press herself? It was the very last thing on earth she’d do.
She gave a mental shrug. There was no point her getting angry over it. Royals lived in a goldfish bowl; their wariness was understandable.
She went back to Ben, next door. He seemed to be taking all this in his stride, and she was grateful. Nor did he seem bothered by their enforced incarceration.
He seemed to take the following days in his stride too. They were left very much to themselves. Captain Falieri and the man who was probably Prince Enrico’s bodyguard had disappeared as well, and she saw no sign of anyone else in the house except for the efficient Italian-speaking staff.
She was glad o
f the time to herself. Her mind seemed completely split in two. On the one hand she was as normal as she could be with Ben—playing with him, reading to him, taking him swimming, to his huge excitement, in the covered swimming pool built into a conservatory-style annexe off the main house—but inside her head her thoughts teemed with emotion.
She was still reeling from it all, but she did her best to hide it from Ben. He was, thank heavens, far too young to understand. He took what had happened at face value, absorbing it into his life as naturally as he had anything else, just as when they’d moved to Cornwall. The centre of his life was her, not his surroundings, and providing she was there, everything, for him, was as it should be.
It was inevitable, however, Lizzy acknowledged, that Ben would ask questions about the man who had so unnecessarily told him that he was his uncle.
‘Where has he gone?’ Ben asked.
‘To Italy.’ Lizzy told him. ‘That’s where he lives.’
‘Will he come back?’
‘I don’t think so, Ben.’
Inwardly she cursed the man. Why had he gone and told Ben he was his uncle? Obviously a child would be interested—especially one who had no other relations. But what possible concern was Ben to Prince Enrico, other than being the unfortunate target of a salacious news story which threatened scandal to the San Lucenzan royal family?
Ben frowned. ‘Well, what about Captain Fally-eery? Will he come back? He played trains with me.’
Lizzy shook her head. ‘I don’t think he’ll come back either, Ben. He lives in Italy too.’ Deliberately, she changed the subject. ‘Now, shall we go and have our tea?’
Ben looked at her. ‘Is this a hotel, Mummy, where they cook for you?’
She nodded. ‘Sort of.’ It seemed the easiest explanation to give.
‘I like it here,’ said Ben decidedly, looking around him approvingly. ‘I like the swimming pool. Can we swim again after tea?’
‘We’ll see,’ said Lizzy.
Rico stood at one of the windows of his apartments in the palace. It gave a dazzling view over the marina, with its brightly lit-up yachts, and the elegant promenade beyond. Paolo’s apartments had been nearby, and had enjoyed similar views. His eyes shadowed.
To think that Paolo’s young son was alive in England. That he had been there all along, brought up by a woman who did not even know who he was. It seemed incredible.
His thoughts went back to that ramshackle cottage he’d extracted his nephew from. His eyes darkened. It had shocked him to find Paolo’s son living in such conditions.
Paolo’s son.
He had known it the instant he had set eyes on him. And so he had told Luca.
‘There won’t be any need for DNA tests,’ he’d told him.
‘Well, they’ll be done anyway. It’s necessary.’
Rico had shrugged. He could understand it, but he also knew that when his family saw Ben in the flesh they would know instantly he was Paolo’s child.
‘And this aunt? What about her?’ Luca had gone on.
‘Shocked. That’s understandable. She really seemed to have no idea at all.’ He’d decided not to tell his brother that she’d failed to recognise him. Luca would find that darkly humorous.
‘Can’t believe her luck, more likely. She’s got it made now.’ There had been a cynical note in Luca’s voice, and Rico frowned in recollection. Ben’s aunt had given no indication of any emotion other than disbelief, and dread of the impending news story.
Then Luca had picked up one of the modelling shots of Maria Mitchell that was in the dossier Falieri had compiled, and glanced at it.
‘Blonde bimbo like the sister?’ he’d asked casually.
Rico had snorted. ‘You’re joking. Utterly plain.’
His brother had laughed sardonically. ‘Well, at least that should stop the press being interested in her, and that’s all to the good. She won’t make good copy if she’s nothing to look at.’
Rico, his attention half taken by the latest version of a particular super-car that he liked to drive, which was wending its way along the edge of the marina, found himself frowning again at Luca’s comment. It was a cruel way to speak about the girl, even if it was true.
He shifted his mind away from her. Ben’s aunt was a complication that would be sorted out very soon now.
His father, during a brief interview with him, had made his wishes clear. And his instructions.
‘I leave you to handle the matter,’ his father had said.
Rico’s mouth twisted. He need not take it as a compliment. As Luca had pointed out, ‘It has to be you, Rico. You’re the only one of us that can come and go freely. And besides—’ the sardonic glint had been clear in his brother’s eye ‘—if there’s a female in the equation you’re the expert—just as well she’s plain, mind you. You’ll be immune to her.’
He stepped away from the window. The woman who was his nephew’s aunt was of no concern to him.
Only his nephew.
The news story on Paolo Ceraldi’s unknown son broke the following morning. The lurid exclusive in a French tabloid was instantly picked up, and exactly the kind of media feeding frenzy ensued that his father so deplored. As Rico knew too well from personal experience, when he had been the subject of press attention.
There was nothing to be done about it except ignore it. His father ordered a policy of silence, and to carry on as if nothing had happened. The royal family’s public life was not altered in any way. Rico’s mother attended her usual opera, ballet and philharmonia performances, his father carried out his customary duties and Luca his. As for himself, he flew down to southern Africa to participate in a gruelling long-distance rally, as he always did at this time of year.
‘No comment,’ became his only words in half a dozen languages during the checkpoints, and he couldn’t wait to get back into the driving seat and head out across the savannah again.
But there was something else he couldn’t wait to do either. Get back to his nephew again. He was counting the days.
CHAPTER FOUR
LIZZY walked into the breakfast room and stopped dead. Prince Enrico was sitting at the table.
She’d had absolutely no idea that he was here.
At her side, Ben showed only pleasure.
‘Tio Rico! You came back.’
Lizzy watched the Prince lever his long frame upright.
‘Of course. Especially to see you.’
Ben’s expression perked expectantly.
‘Will you play with me?’
‘After breakfast. Would you like to go swimming later?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Good. Well, let’s have breakfast first, shall we?’
He waited pointedly while Lizzy took her place, Ben beside her, before resuming his.
Lizzy watched as Ben chatted to his uncle. Tension laced through her instantly. He must have arrived back late last night. She had heard nothing.
But then she did not stay up late. In the strange, dislocated days she had spent here she had always retired with Ben, after supper, and once he was bathed and asleep she would spend the time in their room reading. The house came with a wellstocked library, and she was grateful for it. She had made a point of not watching television, quite deliberately. She had not wanted to catch anything of whatever the press might be saying by now about her sister and Ben. She didn’t want to think about it.
But now, with Prince Enrico sitting at the head of the breakfast table, it all suddenly seemed horribly real again.
Her eyes had gone to him immediately as she’d entered the room—but then it would have been difficult for them to do otherwise, prince or no prince. He was the kind of man that drew all eyes instantly. She felt again that squirming awkwardness go through her, and wished that she and Ben had got up earlier, and so missed this ordeal.
Not that Ben thought it was an ordeal, evidently. He was chatting away with his uncle, and Lizzy felt her mouth tighten with disapproval.
‘Ther
e is a problem?’
The accented voice was cool. Lizzy realised that Prince Enrico was looking at her.
‘Why are you here? Has something happened? Something worse?’
Her voice was staccato, and probably sounded abrupt. She didn’t care.
A frowning expression formed on his face.
‘Is there more bad news?’ Lizzy persisted.
‘Other than what was expected? No. Did you not see any of the coverage?’
‘No. It was the last thing I wanted to do. But in which case, if nothing worse has happened, why are you here?’
He looked at her. He had that closed expression on his face. Obviously he wasn’t used to being spoken to like that, thought Lizzy. But she didn’t care. Tension bit in her.
‘I am here at the behest of my father. For reasons that must be obvious even to yourself, Miss Mitchell.’
His words were terse.
She looked blank. ‘I don’t understand.’
His mouth pressed together tightly, and he looked impatiently at her.
‘We will discuss this matter later.’ He turned his attention back to Ben. Shutting her out.
Dismissing her.
Anxiety and tension warred within her.
How she got through breakfast she did not know. She could not relax, and, although she deplored it, she knew she was grateful that Ben was chattering away to the Prince, making it possible for her to swallow a few morsels of food through a tight throat.
The moment Ben had finished, she got to her feet.
‘Come along, Ben,’ she said.
‘Tio Rico said we’d go swimming,’ Ben protested.
‘Not straight after eating,’ she said quietly. ‘You’ll get a sore tummy. And anyway, you need to brush your teeth,’ she added, steering him out of the room.
As she gained the large hallway, she felt her stomach sink. Oh, God, now what? Why had he come back here? And why should it be obvious to her? Nothing was obvious to her. Nothing. Only that she was desperate for all this to be over, and for her to be able to go home with Ben.
But it seemed that she would have to get through another morning here.