Royally Bedded, Regally Wedded

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 of 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?’