The Price of Royal Duty

The Price of Royal Duty
PENNY JORDAN

Runaway Royal’s Romp with Rajah! Santina’s rebellious princess Sophia made a shock exit from her brother’s engagement party last night following the surprise announcement of her own arranged marriage. It seems Sophia did not favour the match…instead boldly stowing away on the magnificent Maharaja of Naipur’s private jet!Staff insiders to the masterful Maharaja, Ashok Achari, aren’t denying the pair spent a wild night together before being caught by the press on arrival in Mumbai…Scandal is the last thing the Santina royals need right now – might this maharaja be persuaded into taking Santina’s runaway princess as his wife?

‘Don’t you think you’re being a tad dramatic?’ Ash asked her in a wry voice.

‘I’m not being dramatic,’ she defended herself. ‘Surely I should have some say in my own fate, instead of having to endure marriage to a man who has simply agreed to marry me because he wants an heir, and to whom my father has virtually auctioned me off in exchange for a royal alliance. I can’t bear the thought of this marriage.’

Her panic and fear was there in her voice; even she could hear it herself, so how much more obvious must it be to Ash?

She must try to stay calm. Not even to Ash could she truly explain the distaste, the loathing, the fear, she had of being forced by law to give herself in a marriage bed in the most intimate way possible when … No, that was one secret that she must keep no matter what, just as she had already kept it for so long.

‘Please, Ash, I’m begging you for your help.’

THE

SANTINA CROWN

Royalty has never been so scandalous!

STOP PRESS—Crown Prince in shock marriage

The tabloid headlines … When HRH Crown Prince Alessandro of Santina proposes to paparazzi favourite Allegra Jackson it promises to be the social event of the decade —outrageous headlines guaranteed!

The salacious gossip … Mills & Boon invites you to rub shoulders with royalty, sheikhs and glamorous socialites. Step into the decadent playground of the world’s rich and famous …

THE SANTINA CROWN

THE PRICE OF ROYAL DUTY – Penny Jordan

THE SHEIKH’S HEIR – Sharon Kendrick

THE SCANDALOUS PRINCESS – Kate Hewitt

THE MAN BEHIND THE SCARS – Caitlin Crews

DEFYING THE PRINCE – Sarah Morgan

PRINCESS FROM THE SHADOWS – Maisey Yates

THE GIRL NOBODY WANTED – Lynn Raye Harris

PLAYING THE ROYAL GAME – Carol Marinelli

About the Author

PENNY JORDAN is one of Harlequin Mills & Boon’s most popular authors. Sadly Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixty-five. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over one hundred million books around the world. She wrote a total of one hundred and eighty-seven novels for Harlequin Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan: ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters’ and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.

Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire, and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and continued to live there for the rest of her life. Following the death of her husband she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her much-loved Crighton books.

Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be published authors. Her significant contribution to women’s fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

We hope you enjoy The Price of Royal Duty which launches the new continuity, The Santina Crown. Penny’s final original novel, A Secret Disgrace, will be available in June 2012.

The

Santina Crown

The Price of Royal Duty

Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

CHAPTER ONE

‘ASH.’ Sophia Santina, youngest daughter of the King and Queen of the island of Santina, breathed the name silently to herself, almost reverentially. Just the feel of the nearly silent breath that whispered his name and caressed her throat was enough to raise erotic pinpricks of desire within her flesh. Ash. How the whispering of his name was enough to unleash within her an aching echo of the tumultuous teenage desires he had once aroused in her. The very air was electric with the reckless sensual excitement that wantonly flooded her, even though she had sworn she would not, positively not, allow herself to experience it.

She had known, of course, that he had been invited to her eldest brother’s engagement party here at the castle that was their family home, but knowing that and actually seeing him with that strikingly sensual maleness of his that she remembered so well were two very different things.

She would have recognised him anywhere, just as she had done now merely from her brief glimpse of the back view of him as he walked into the ballroom and then turned to refuse a glass of champagne. Just the turn of his head, just the thick dark sheen of his hair and the way it curled into the nape of his neck, was enough to conjure up old memories. Memories of longing recklessly for the right to bury her fingers in its softness, curl them around its strands and then urge his mouth down to her own. A shudder of sensual awareness jolted through her. Some things never changed. A certain kind of need, a certain kind of desire, a certain kind of love.

First love? Surely only a fool believed that first love was an only love, and she prided herself on not being that. No, Ash had killed that tremulous, tender love when he had rejected her, telling her that she was a child still who was putting herself in danger by offering herself to a man of his age, that she was fortunate that his own sense of honour and the repugnance he felt at the very thought of taking what she offered meant that she was protected from him taking advantage of her naivety. Telling her that even if she had been older he would not have wanted her because he was wholly committed to someone else.

She had promised herself then that in future her love would only be given to a man who was worthy of it and who valued it and her. A man who loved her as much as she did him. And because of that promise to herself, she needed Ash’s help now, no matter how much her pride reacted angrily against that need.

Putting down her virtually untouched drink, she started to walk towards him.

Standing in the packed ballroom in the castle on the Mediterranean island of Santina, the official residence and home of the royal family of Santina, Ashok Achari, Maharaja of Nailpur, frowned as his grim, obsidian gaze swept the scene in front of him. Beyond the open doors to the stunningly elegant ballroom with its crystal chandeliers and antique mirrors stood footmen wearing the livery of the royal family. An impressive dress-uniformed group of the king’s own personal guard had been standing motionless in front of the castle in honour of the occasion and the guests. As a fellow royal, Ash had seen them salute him as the limousine that had picked him up from the airport had swept up to the main entrance. It was plain that no expense was being spared to celebrate the engagement of the king’s eldest son and heir.

His fellow guests milled around him, and laughter and the sound of conversation filled the air.

Ash had gone to school with the groom-to-be, Alex, and they were still close friends. Even so, he hadn’t wanted to attend this engagement party as he had more pressing matters to deal with at home, but duty was important to Ash—far more so than any personal desires—and duty had compelled him to accept.

He had, though, ordered his pilot to have his private jet standing ready to fly him back to Mumbai where he had an important business meeting in the morning.

A sixth sense had him turning round just as an exquisitely beautiful petite brunette came hurrying towards him.

Sophia.

A woman now, not the girl she had been the last time he had seen her in person. Where he had remembered a girl trembling on the brink of womanhood, innocent and eager, in need of protection from herself, he was now being confronted by a woman who clearly knew all about her sexuality and its power and how to both use it and take pleasure from it. That his body had recorded and registered that information in the time it had taken him to exhale and breathe again pointed to a weakness within himself of which he had previously been unaware.

The shock of his instant male awareness of Sophia as a woman had caught him totally off guard and Ash did not like that. That kind of thing was not something he permitted himself to do. It smacked too much of a hidden repressed need and Ash did not allow himself to have hidden repressed needs—needs that could make him vulnerable. Besides, the very idea of him being vulnerable to Sophia was laughable. She wasn’t his type. No? So why then was his body reacting to her as though it had never seen a woman before?

A momentary lapse. He was a man, she was a woman, and his bed had been empty since he had dismissed his last mistress. If he was aroused by the sight of Sophia then it was probably completely natural. After all, from the luxuriant tumble of long, dark brown waves via the stunning beauty of her delicately shaped face with its dark eyes and soft full lips to the voluptuous curves of her sensationally sensually shaped body, Sophia Santina was an instant, irresistible magnet for male attention—and his own body was reacting just like any other heterosexual man’s would. Wasn’t it?

Yes. He would be a fool if he allowed that reaction more importance than it merited. To be caught off guard by a surge of physical desire so strong that he was glad of the packed floor of the ballroom and the darkness of his dinner suit to conceal the evidence of his reaction to her was an alien experience for him and added aggravation to what he was already experiencing. He had no desire whatsoever to be aroused by any woman right now, never mind Sophia Santina.

But he couldn’t deny the fact that he was. Not with that arousal already straining at the expensive fabric of his suit, despite the ferocity of the mental control with which he was attempting to prevent it.