by Olivia Gates
Dread had won out then. It won out again now. Weakness, too. She’d snatched at his offer without coming clean, and she still couldn’t do that now. And in an hour’s time they’d meet the man who could reveal the secret he’d made her keep. She dreaded Durante’s reaction, but at least she’d finally breathe easy that it was out.
For now she was powerless to do anything but let him clasp her to him. “It is strange that I never came here.”
Stranger than she could let on, with her lifelong relationship to King Benedetto.
“But it was your connections to this land that led you to find me. And this convinces me. Someone out there must really want to reward me. I wonder what I ever did to deserve that much? I must have done something huge. Why else did I find you? Why else do you love me? But even if I didn’t deserve you before, I’ll do everything I can, for the rest of my days, to deserve the gift of you.”
Awe and gratitude deluged her. She clung harder, until she felt as if she were submerged in his flesh, his love. “Don’t start me on correcting you about who’s the gift here.” After an endless moment of supercharged communion, he looked away as if compelled, watched the scenes going by. “You miss it. It’s been five years?”
“Months,” he muttered. “I came back after Padre’s stroke.”
“But you said…”
“I couldn’t stay away. I stayed until he was out of danger. Paolo and Clarissa have been supplying me with constant reports of his condition ever since. But I swore them to secrecy. Needing to make sure he is all right has nothing to do with forgiving him, as they both seem to have done.”
“But you’re willing to give him a chance now.”
He seemed to struggle for an answer. He had pledged it to her, but it was tearing him up. King Benedetto had better have something solid to put Durante’s mind to rest, or she would be the first one to tell Durante that the king didn’t deserve his turmoil.
She stroked his hair until he moaned his enjoyment. “Don’t say anything, amore mio. Whatever happens, I just want you to be at peace.”
“I am, now that I have you. And I want you to be at peace, too. Remember when I told you not to worry about…anything?”
She nodded slowly. She’d almost forgotten. She’d been pulling her company back into the black just by working to full capacity the past three weeks. The news of Durante’s book was also restoring stockholders’ faith with a vengeance.
“The moment I realized that the recession in Castaldini wasn’t temporary, I started making plans to put an end to it. I slowed down their implementation when Leandro came into the picture, giving me time to perfect them instead of rushing in without every long-term outcome accounted for. Then I met you, and I felt I owed it to our love to consider nothing else but us for those short weeks. Now everything is in place, so you have nothing to worry about, but my plans have to wait a bit longer while I give you a wedding and a honeymoon like no bride has ever had.”
She turned in his arms. “But the simplest wedding is all I want, and every day with you is like a hundred honeymoons. Don’t you worry about my company. You’ve done way more than enough and we’re going to be fine. It’s Castaldini that needs you now, and I can’t have you putting off any work because of me or I would have failed in my most basic function as your lover and wife—to give you the peace of mind that will make you even more productive and effective.”
He let out a shuddering sigh. “It’s hopeless. I’ll never find words or deeds enough to express how much I love you.” Suddenly his lips crooked. “Now have mercy and let me give you what I need to give you without exhausting me. I need all my stamina for all that work ahead of me.”
She melted into him, deluged by another wave of love and wonder. “I called it right the first time I saw you. Sietto un uomo cattivo.”
Jawara was very much what its Moorish name said it was. A jewel of a city, glittering bright and unique under the perfect heat and illumination of the Mediterranean sun. It nestled between the banks of a river, which Durante informed her was the Boriana, and an imposing, vegetation-covered mountain, the Montalbo. The rolling plains to its north and south looked like a carpet.
Durante had warned her that the past decade had taken its toll on the city’s former flawlessness. But Gabrielle couldn’t see the deterioration that he as a native discerned. The place looked pretty incredible to her. She’d been to almost every European and North African capital in the last few years, and Jawara was the only one that didn’t have one building younger than the seventeen hundreds. It looked like an ancient city transplanted into the twenty-first century, a mixture of Gothic, Moorish and Baroque architecture and influences that she’d never imagined could mingle in homogeneity, but that here was simply breathtaking.
As they came to the first cobblestone street, the royal palace came into view, crouching like a gigantic, ancient creature on a hill that dominated the oldest part of the city.
On entering the palace grounds, a complex of enormous buildings surrounding the central palace, Durante pointed out the National Library, the Royal Museum, the ceremony halls and government offices. He said it would take some time to get to the Royal Apartments, because they were at the end of ten miles of grounds and he wasn’t asking Giancarlo to drive faster over the cobblestones and risk giving her a headache. When they drove past the central palace itself, she gaped, comparing it to a twilight zone episode in which someone passed a never-ending building. Durante laughed, said it was just another of his family’s pretentiously sized places. It did lie over four-hundred-thousand square feet.
Then the car stopped. In seconds she was smiling up at Durante as he opened her door even as her heart stampeded.
In a few minutes they’d see King Benedetto. And her horrible burden would be lifted. And then…?
“If it isn’t the prodigal prince returning.”
The deep drawl had Durante relinquishing his smile and turning on his heel. She followed his gaze and did a triple take.
Strolling toward them was a man who, while looking nothing like Durante in features or coloring, made almost his same impact, in size and height and in sheer radiation of power and charisma. It took her a moment to realize who he was. Prince Leandro D’Agostino, the one-time rebel, once-exiled prince, now regent of Castaldini.
“Leandro! My regent!” Durante exclaimed as he strode toward him with open arms.
Durante pulled his cousin into a rough embrace, one Leandro reciprocated, adding thumps on his back before drawing back to grin widely. “You’re looking absolutely radiant.”
Durante guffawed. “I thought the term was reserved for brides. Preferably our brides.” He looked back at her, elation turning his beauty from breathtaking to heartbreaking, before he looked at the woman Gabrielle noticed coming up behind Leandro with tranquil steps. He turned to Leandro with a quirked eyebrow. “But then, you’re absolutely glowing.”
“Indeed, I am. Any wonder with such a power source?” Leandro put his arm around the woman’s shoulders, gathered her to him in a gesture so eloquent with tenderness, possessiveness and dependence that it sent a frisson of emotion through Gabrielle, at how much it mirrored what Durante blessed her with. The woman—who must be Phoebe Alexander, the sister of Durante’s sister-in-law and Leandro’s brand-new bride—smoldered reciprocation into her husband’s adoring eyes.
Phoebe was the first truly silver-eyed person Gabrielle had ever seen. She was gorgeous, with all that glossy black hair and creamy skin. She looked blissful. And pregnant. The fact that she was showing meant she’d been already pregnant before the wedding.
Something hot and overwhelming stormed through Gabrielle, lodging into her womb. She’d never thought of having a baby. Until Durante. How she yearned to have his. She prayed to God she could.
“So miracles do happen.” Phoebe was looking at her in candid and benign interest. “I never thought the day would come when anyone softened the inflexible Durante.”
Gabrielle took her hand, grinned
conspiringly at her. “So you’re a power source, and I’m some sort of softener. We must put our disparate abilities together in an unstoppable collaboration.”
Leandro sighed, winking at Durante. “We’re doomed.”
Durante looked heavenward. “From your lips.”
They all laughed as they started walking into the palace, the men falling into step with each other, as she did with Phoebe.
The conversation flowed with bantering ease, to her immense relief. Phoebe was going to be a constant presence in her life and it would have been a source of unneeded strife if they hadn’t hit it off. But she felt they’d only like each other better on deepening exposure. It felt so good, looking forward to this unexpected bonus. A woman her age, in her same unusual situation, becoming an ally, a friend. Something she sorely needed.
Suddenly they both fell silent. It seemed Phoebe’s ears had pricked like hers on hearing the turn in conversation their men had taken.
“He isn’t in good shape, Durante. Take it easy on him.”
“I am taking it easy on him. I came back, didn’t I?”
“Not enough, amico mio. Give him a chance. Let him talk this time. Maybe he has something to say.”
“If he did, he would have said it years ago.”
“You already tried thinking the worst and it ate up five years of both of your lives. Why not try giving other possibilities a chance? I would have thought you incapable of relenting on this one, but because you are here, I am hopeful that miracles indeed do happen.”
After a moment’s silence, Durante turned, caught her eyes in a searing look of passion and tenderness and whispered, “They do.”
Gabrielle almost cried out with the slam of emotion.
And she prayed. For this miracle of his love to overpower whatever ugliness there was, even if there was no hope of erasing it. To overlook the unwilling deceit she’d perpetrated.
“Durante. You came back.”
Durante looked at the man who’d once been his hero. The father he’d idolized. He almost didn’t recognize him.
Pain seared his heart. He refused to give in to it. “Sì. But not for you. For Gabrielle.”
He held out his hand to her. Her gaze was frozen on his father’s face as she unsteadily came to his side. “Gabrielle Williamson, my bride-to-be. We’re getting married here in a week’s time. It’s for love of her, for needing to give her a future untainted by the shadows of the past that I’m here, Padre. But I’ve also met you halfway. Now it’s your turn. Tell me the truth.”
“The only truth, Durante…” His father’s weakened voice revved sickness and regret behind his sternum. He gritted down on the weakness. “…is that there was no villain or victim.”
“So you didn’t have a mistress?”
“No, I did have a mistress.” Gabrielle lurched at his side. He barely stopped himself from exhibiting his own shock at having all his doubts validated. “And she was the only woman I ever loved. She was the one, Durante. Like your Gabrielle is to you.”
The lava of betrayal and hatred and anger rose in him, obliterating all his intentions to give peace a chance. “And of course you discovered this after you married a woman who gave you her heart and life and children.”
“I loved that woman before I ever met your mother. I banished her over insane and wrong suspicions and married your mother on the rebound.”
Every word was prodding skewers deeper into his wounds. “So not only was my mother your victim, but the other woman, too.”
“Your mother was my queen. But I was not in love with her. Neither was she with me. She married me to become queen. I thought she was what the crown needed. When I renewed my relationship with the woman I loved, I kept it a secret for many reasons, your mother’s feelings not being among them. She wouldn’t have cared.”
“Why did she write all that, then? If she wasn’t going literally insane with jealousy over your loving another?”
His father seemed to shrivel back into his bed. “I…I don’t know. But there’s nothing to be gained from digging up skeletons.”
Accumulated heartache and confusion and disappointment erupted through him like a geyser. He lunged forward, wanting to shake his father and roar for him to put him out of his misery. He was hiding things. Things that would make everything make sense.
Then he felt it. Gabrielle’s hand trembling on his arm.
He cursed himself. He’d sworn he’d never distress her again, and here he was, forcing her to witness him resurrecting his family tragedy.
He pulled her into him, looked his entreaty for forgiveness into her reddened, teary eyes, his heart compressing at having caused her such anguish.
Then he turned and almost wept himself at seeing the devastation on the face of a man he’d thought indomitable. He had to believe at that moment that his father might also prove to be not as heartless as Durante believed him to be.
“We’ll leave skeletons in the past, Padre, even if they come out of the closet sooner or later. Now, the future and all I am belong to Gabrielle.”
As he supported the almost-collapsing Gabrielle and turned to lead her out, his father’s thick, tear-filled rasp stopped him. “Gabrielle.”
Gabrielle lurched in his hold as if she’d been shot. Durante almost had to support her full weight as he turned them around.
His father was smiling, a smile distorted by the devastation his stroke had left in its wake. It twisted Durante’s heart. And that was before his father rasped, “Thank you for bringing my son home…figlia mia.”
Fourteen
The wedding was tomorrow.
And Gabrielle was going insane.
King Benedetto had pretended he didn’t know her. She’d been so shocked that she’d gone mute.
Then Durante had taken her to his apartments, drowned her in his passion until she’d forgotten that a world outside him existed. Before she could remember, he’d swept her into the whirlwind of preparations and one chance to tell him after another slipped by.
She needed to see King Benedetto before she could reveal the truth to Durante. This was the first day he’d been allowed visitors since they’d seen him. His health had taken a turn for the worse after his confrontation with Durante.
She waited until the king’s valet had left them alone before she blurted out her agitation and fear. “Why didn’t you tell Durante of our relationship? It’s been killing me, keeping my word, but I believed you finally would. He might…would have understood then, that it was never my intention or idea to hide facts from him. Now, after that stunt you pulled, I’m dreading the worst.”
The king struggled to sit up in bed, reached a trembling hand to her. “No, Gaby. He loves you so much he’d give his life for you. He wouldn’t blame you for abiding by the promise I made you give me. But I can’t tell him of our relationship and neither can you.”
“But this is ridiculous. It’s bound to come out sooner or later, and then what would you have me say? Oops, I forgot to tell you, your father was my family’s benefactor?”
“It’s imperative that Durante never find out.”
“Why?” she cried out in confusion.
The king seemed to age another twenty years before her eyes. Then he finally slumped back in bed and whispered, “Because if he finds out, he’ll put two and two together and realize that my mistress, the only woman I ever loved, was your mother.”
The world receded, her vision narrowed. Cold flooded in on her from all sides. Her heart lost momentum, stuttered, stalled.
The king’s voice became distorted. “I wanted to take our secret to my grave as she did. We never wanted you of all people to find out. But I have to tell you now.”
She felt her heart bleeding. “Not true…Mom loved Dad…”
“She did, but it was nothing like the love she had for me or I for her. She met him in my court, married him years after I left her in heartache and misery. It was almost as soon as she had you that your father’s depression began to manifest.
Then I found proof that my suspicions—which had led me to break both of our hearts—had been unfounded. I sought her out, begged her forgiveness for the way I’d treated her. When I offered them my support, it felt as if your father suddenly let go with me around to carry the burden. She’d suffered so much, I had to offer her solace and then it was beyond us not to succumb to our love. Your father wasn’t there by then, either mentally or emotionally, to notice let alone care.
“We kept our relationship a secret so that we wouldn’t hurt our children, but we were deeply in love and perfectly happy. Then she started to suffer from her rheumatoid arthritis and I started to let go of my own life and duties as I suffered her suffering. She chose to die without me around to witness it. Getting the news of her death, knowing that I wasn’t there for her in her last days, was almost a deathblow. I held on until I attended her funeral, made sure that everything was in order with her legacy and with you before I broke down. The only reason I’m still hanging on now is, I need to hand over Castaldini to a new king.
“I always wished Durante would be that king. But the laws were against it. Then he came to despise me so much he wouldn’t have accepted becoming my crown prince even if the laws changed. Then everything changed after your mother died, after I almost did. After Leandro turned down the crown, I had my chance to finally change the laws, to make Durante eligible despite his being my son. But the hard part was getting Durante himself back here. That’s when it finally came to me—the one thing that could bring him back, to me, to himself. You.”
“How did you know that?” she wailed. “God…why me?”
“Because, although I risked exposing everything by bringing you together, I had to try to give you what I and your mother could have had if I hadn’t spoiled it for us. I sent you to him because you’re so like your mother and he’s so like me, I was certain you’d fall as madly in love as we had. And you did.”
Durante stared down at the report in his hand.