Castiglione's Pregnant Princess

Of course, it had already been a most unsettling morning. Vitale had been disconcerted when his father, Charles Russell, had asked both him and his two brothers to meet him at his office. It had been an unusual request because Charles usually made the effort to meet his sons separately and Vitale had wondered if some sort of family emergency had occurred until Charles had appeared and swept his eldest son, Angel, off into his office alone, leaving Vitale with only Zac for company. Not a fun development that, Vitale reflected before studiously telling himself off for that negative outlook.

After all, it wasn’t Zac’s fault that he had only met his father the year before and was still very much a stranger to his half-brothers, who, in spite of their respective parents’ divorces, had known each other since early childhood. Unhappily, Zac with his untamed black hair, tattoos and aggressive attitude simply didn’t fit in. He was too unconventional, too competitive, too much in every way. Nor did it help that he was only a couple of months younger than Vitale, which underlined the reality that Zac had been conceived while Charles Russell had still been married to Vitale’s mother. Yet Vitale could understand how that adulterous affair had come about. His mother was cold while his father was emotional and caring. He suspected that while caught up in the divorce that had devastated him Charles had sought comfort from a warmer woman.

‘Then let’s make a bet,’ Zac suggested irrepressibly.

Vitale was tempted to roll his eyes in comic disbelief but he said nothing.

‘I heard you and Angel talking earlier about the big palace ball being held in Lerovia at the end of next month,’ Zac admitted softly. ‘I understand that it’s a very formal, upmarket occasion and that your mother is expecting you to pick a wife from her selection of carefully handpicked female guests...’

Faint colour illuminated Vitale’s rigid high cheekbones and he ground his even white teeth. ‘Queen Sofia enjoys trying to organise my life but I have no current plans to marry.’

‘But it would be a hell of a lot easier to keep all those women at bay if you turned up with a partner of your own,’ Zac pointed out without skipping a beat, as if he knew by some mysterious osmosis how much pressure Vitale’s royal parent invariably put on her only child’s shoulders. ‘So, this is the bet... I bet you that you couldn’t transform an ordinary woman into a convincing socialite for the evening and pass her off as the real thing. If you manage that feat, I’ll give you my rarest vehicle but naturally I’ll expect an invitation to the ball. If your lady fails the test, you hand over your most precious car.’

Vitale almost rolled his eyes at that outrageously juvenile challenge. Obviously he didn’t do bets. He raked his black glossy hair back from his brow in a gesture of impatience. ‘I’m not Pygmalion and I don’t know any ordinary women,’ he admitted truthfully.

‘Who’s Pygmalion?’ Zac asked with a genuine frown. ‘And how can you not know any ordinary women? You live in the same world I do.’

‘Not quite.’ Vitale’s affairs were always very discreet and he avoided the sort of tacky, celebrity-chasing women likely to boast of him as a conquest, while Zac seemed to view any attractive woman as fair game. Vitale, however, didn’t want to run the risk of any tabloid exposés containing the kind of sexual revelations that would dishonour the Lerovian throne.

In addition, he was an investment banker and CEO of the very conservative and respectable Bank of Lerovia, thus expected to live a very staid life: bankers who led rackety lives made investors unprofitably nervous. Lerovia was, after all, a tax shelter of international repute. It was a small country, hemmed in by much larger, more powerful countries, and Vitale’s grandfather had built Lerovia’s wealth and stability on a secure financial base. Vitale had had few career options open to him. His mother had wanted him to simply be the Crown Prince, her heir in waiting, but Vitale had needed a greater purpose, not to mention the freedom to become a man in his own right, something his autocratic mother would never have willingly given him.

He had fought for his right to have a career just as he now fought for his continuing freedom of choice as a single man. At only twenty-eight, he wasn’t ready for the responsibility of a wife or, even more depressingly, the demands of a baby. His stomach sank at the prospect of a crying, clinging child looking to him for support. He also knew better than anyone how difficult it would be for any woman to enter the Lerovian royal family and be forced to deal with his domineering mother, the current Queen. His unfortunate bride would need balls of steel to hold her own.

At that point in Vitale’s brooding reflections, Angel reappeared, looking abnormally subdued, and Vitale sprang upright with a question in his eyes.

‘Your turn,’ his older brother told him very drily without making any attempt to respond to Vitale’s unspoken question for greater clarification.

Angel was visibly on edge, Vitale acknowledged in surprise, wondering what sensitive subject Charles Russell had broached with his eldest son. And then Vitale made a very good guess and he winced for his brother, because possibly their father had discovered that Angel had an illegitimate daughter he had yet to meet. That was Angel’s biggest darkest secret, one he had shared only with Vitale, and it was likely to be an inflammatory topic for a man as family-orientated as their parent. It wasn’t, however, a mistake that Vitale would ever make, Vitale thought with blazing confidence, because he never ever took risks in the birth-control department. He knew too well how narrow his options would be in that scenario if anything went wrong. Either he would have to face up to a colossal scandal or he would have to marry the woman concerned. Since the prospect of either option chilled him to the bone, he always played safe.

A still-handsome middle-aged man with greying hair, Charles Russell strode forward to give his taller son an enthusiastic hug. ‘Sorry to have kept you waiting so long.’

‘Not a problem,’ Vitale said smoothly, refusing to admit that he had enraged his mother with his insistence on travelling to London rather than attending yet another court ceremonial function. Even so, his lean muscular length still stiffened in the circle of the older man’s arms because while he was warmed by that open affection he was challenged to respond to it. Deep down somewhere inside him he was still the shrinking little boy whose mother had pushed him away with distaste at the age of two, telling him firmly that it was babyish and bad to still seek such attention.

‘I need a favour and I thought you could deal with this thorny issue better than I could,’ Charles admitted stiffly. ‘Do you remember the housekeeper I employed at Chimneys?’

Vitale’s eloquent dark eyes widened a little in disconcertion, lush black gold-tipped lashes framing his shrewd questioning gaze. He and Angel had spent countless school vacations at their father’s country house on the Welsh border and Vitale had cherished every one of those holidays liberated from the stuffy traditions and formality of the Lerovian court. At Chimneys, an Elizabethan manor house, Vitale had been free as a bird, free to be a grubby little boy, a moody difficult adolescent, free to be whatever he wanted to be without the stress of constantly striving to meet arbitrary expectations.

‘Not particularly. I don’t really remember the staff.’

His father frowned, seemingly disappointed by that response. ‘Her name was Peggy. She worked for me for years. She was married to the gardener, Robert Dickens.’

A sliver of recollection pierced Vitale’s bemused gaze, a bubble of memory about an old scandal finally rising to the surface. ‘Red-haired woman, ran off with a toy boy,’ he slotted in sardonically.

His tone made his father frown. ‘Yes, that’s the one. He was one of the trainee gardeners, shifty sort with a silver tongue,’ he supplied. ‘I always felt responsible for that mess.’

Vitale, who could not imagine getting involved or even being interested in an employee’s private life, looked at the older man in frank astonishment. ‘Why?’

‘I saw bruises on Peggy on several occasions,’ Charles admitted uncomfortably. ‘I suspected Dickens of domestic abuse but I did nothing. I asked her several times if she was all right and she always assured me that she was. I should’ve done more.’

‘I don’t see what you could have done if she wasn’t willing to make a complaint on her own behalf,’ Vitale said dismissively, wondering where on earth this strange conversation could be leading while marvelling that his father could show visible distress when discussing the past life of a former servant. ‘You weren’t responsible.’

‘Right and wrong isn’t always that black and white,’ Charles Russell replied grimly. ‘If I’d been more supportive, more encouraging, possibly she might have given me her trust and told me the truth and I could have got her the help she and her daughter needed. Instead I was polite and distant and then she ran off with that smarmy little bastard.’

‘I don’t see what else you could have done. One should respect boundaries, particularly with staff,’ Vitale declared, stiffening at the reference to Peggy’s daughter but striving to conceal that reality. He had only the dimmest memory of Peggy Dickens but he remembered her daughter, Jazmine, well but probably only because Jazz figured in one of his own most embarrassing youthful recollections. He had little taste for looking back to the days before he had learned tact and discretion.

‘No, you have to take a more human approach, Vitale. Staff are people too and sometimes they need help and understanding,’ Charles argued.

Vitale didn’t want to help or understand what motivated his staff at the bank or the palace; he simply wanted them to do their jobs to the best of their ability. He didn’t get involved with employees on a personal level but, out of respect for his father, he resisted the urge to put his own point of view and instead tried to put the dialogue back on track. ‘You said you needed a favour,’ he reminded the older man.

Charles studied his son’s lean, forbidding face in frustration, hating the fact that he recognised shades of his ex-wife’s icy reserve and heartless detachment in Vitale. If there was one person Charles could be said to hate it would have to be the Queen of Lerovia, Sofia Castiglione. Yet he had loved her once, loved her to the edge of madness until he’d discovered that he was merely her dupe, her sperm donor for the heir she had needed for the Lerovian throne. Sofia’s true love had been another woman, her closest friend, Cinzia, and from the moment Sofia had successfully conceived, Charles and their marriage as such had been very much surplus to requirements. But that was a secret the older man had promised to take to the grave with him. In the divorce settlement he had agreed to keep quiet in return for liberal access arrangements to his son and he had only ever regretted that silence afterwards when he had been forced to watch his ex-wife trying to suck the life out of Vitale with her constant carping and interference.

‘Yes...the favour,’ Charles recalled, forced back into the present. ‘I’ve received a letter from Peggy’s daughter, Jazmine, asking for my help. I want you to assess the situation and deal with it. I would do it myself but I’m going to be working abroad for the next few months and I don’t have the time. I also thought you would handle it better because you knew each other well as children.’

Vitale’s lean, strong, darkly good-looking face had tensed. In truth he had frozen where he stood at the threat of being forced to meet Jazz again. ‘The situation?’ he queried, playing for time.

The older man lifted a letter off the desk and passed it to him. ‘The toy boy ripped Peggy off, forged her name on a stack of loans, plunged them into debt and ruined their financial standing!’ he emphasised in ringing disgust. ‘Now they’re poor and struggling to survive. They’ve tried legal channels and got nowhere. Peggy’s ill now and no longer able to work.’

Vitale’s brow furrowed and he raised a silencing hand. ‘But how is this trail of misfortune your business?’ he asked without hesitation.

‘Peggy Dickens has been on my conscience for years,’ Charles confided grudgingly. ‘I could have done something to help but I was too wary of causing offence so... I did nothing. All of this mess is on me and I don’t want that poor woman suffering any more because I failed to act.’

‘So, send her a cheque,’ Vitale suggested, reeling from the display of guilt his father was revealing while he himself was struggling to see any connection or indeed any debt owed.

‘Read the letter,’ his father advised. ‘Jazmine is asking for a job, somewhere to live and a loan, not a cheque. She’s proud. She’s not asking for a free handout but she’s willing to do anything she can to help her mother.’

Vitale studied the envelope of what was obviously a begging letter with unconcealed distaste. More than ever he wanted to argue with his father’s attitude. In Vitale’s opinion, Charles owed his former employee and her daughter absolutely nothing. By the sound of it, Peggy Dickens had screwed up her life; however that was scarcely his father’s fault.

‘What do you want me to do?’ Vitale asked finally, recognising that how he felt about the situation meant nothing in the face of his father’s feelings.

Yet it amazed Vitale that his father could still be so incredibly emotional and sentimental and he often marvelled that two people as ridiculously dissimilar in character as his parents could ever have married.

‘I want you to be compassionate and kind, not judgemental, not cynical, not cold,’ Charles framed with anxious warning emphasis. ‘And I know that will be a huge challenge for you but I also know that acknowledging that side of your nature will make you a better and stronger man in the process. Don’t let your mother remake you in her image—never forget that you are my son too.’

Vitale almost flinched from the idea of being compassionate and kind. He didn’t do stuff like that. He supported leading charities and always contributed to good causes but he had never done anything hands-on in that area, nor had he ever felt the need to do so. He was what he was: a bred-in-the-bone royal, cocooned from the real world by incredible privilege, an exclusive education and great wealth.

‘I don’t care what it costs to buy Peggy and her daughter out of trouble either,’ his father added expansively. ‘With you in charge of my investments, I can well afford the gesture. You don’t need to save me money.’

‘I’m a banker. Saving money and making a profit comes naturally,’ Vitale said drily. ‘And by the way, my mother is not remaking me in her image.’

Charles vented a roughened laugh. ‘It may be graveyard humour but I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if you find yourself engaged by the end of that ball next month! Sofia is a hell of a wheeler dealer. You should’ve refused to attend.’

‘I may still do that. I’m no pushover,’ his son stated coldly. ‘So you want me to stage a rescue mission in your name?’

‘With tact and generosity,’ the older man added.

Exasperation leapt through Vitale, who used tact every day of his life because he could never be less than courteous in the face of the royal demands made of him. But no matter how onerous the demand Charles had made struck him, there was, nevertheless, a certain pride and satisfaction to the awareness that his father was trusting him to deal with a sensitive situation. He realised that he was also surprisingly eager to read Jazz’s letter.

Jazz, a skinny-as-a-rail redhead, who had developed a massive crush on him when she was fourteen and he was eighteen. He had been wildly disconcerted that he rather than the friendlier, flirtier Angel had become the object of her admiration and he had screwed up badly, he acknowledged reluctantly, cracking a wounding joke about her that she had sadly overheard. But then Vitale had never been the sensitive sort and back then he had also essentially known very little about women because he had stayed a virgin for many years longer than Angel. But, not surprisingly, Jazz had hated him after that episode and in many ways it had been a relief to no longer be the centre of her attention and the awful tongue-tied silences that had afflicted her in his presence. In the space of one awkward summer, the three of them had travelled from casual pseudo friendship to stroppy, strained discomfiture and then she and her mother had mercifully disappeared out of their lives.