Royal Babies: Claiming His Secret Royal Heir / Pregnant with a Royal Baby! / Secret Child, Royal Scandal

‘I don’t understand.’

‘My mother sold me out for generous alimony and a mansion in Beverly Hills. She played my father like a fine fiddle—conned him into believing she would do anything to keep custody of me, would be devastated to lose me. At the time he was still worrying about his popularity—many people hadn’t got over the way he’d married my mother mere weeks after his first wife’s death. He wanted to hurt her by taking me away—however, he didn’t want to come across as the totally cruel husband again, so he offered her a generous settlement and she skipped all the way to the bank.’

‘But...’ Disbelief lined her face, along with a dark frown. ‘How could she?’

‘With great ease, apparently. Hey, it’s OK. I came to terms with it long ago. I didn’t tell you because I want to discuss it, or because I want sympathy. I told you because I want you to know that I could never take Amil from you. I know first-hand that a child needs his mother. From my own experience and my siblings’. Stefan, Barrett, Emerson—they have all been devastated by the custody battles and having their mothers torn from them. I would not put you or Amil through it. You have my word, and that word is not meaningless.’

‘Thank you.’ Shifting on the branch so that she faced him, she cupped his face in her hands, her fingers warm against his cheeks. ‘Truly. Thank you for sharing that—you didn’t have to. And I do believe that right here, right now, you mean what you promise.’

‘But you don’t believe I’ll make good?’

‘I...’ Her hands dropped to her sides and, leaning forward, she dabbled her fingers in the soil of the forest floor, trickled it through her fingers and then sat up again. ‘I don’t know.’

She shrugged.

‘Perhaps it’s my turn to share now. I told you how my father left when he found out my mother was pregnant. He promised her that he loved her, that they had a future.’ She gestured back the way they’d come. ‘Maybe he said those words at the falls. Hell, maybe they even sat here, in this very forest. But that promise meant nothing. And, you see, that wasn’t the only promise he made.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘He came back.’ Her eyes were wide now, looking back into a past that he suspected haunted her. ‘When my mother found out she was terminally ill she managed to track him down. She had no one else. And he came, and he agreed to take me in. He explained that he was married, with two other daughters, but he promised—he swore that I would be welcomed, that I would have a family, that he would love and cherish me. He said that he was sorry and that he wanted to make it up to her and to me.’

The pain in her voice caused an ache that banded his chest and he reached out to cover her hand in his own, hoped that somehow it would assuage her hurt.

‘So, after she died...’ Her voice caught and her fingers tightened around his. ‘He came to bring me to England—to my new family.’

Perhaps he should say something, Frederick thought. But he couldn’t think of anything—couldn’t even begin to contemplate how Sunita must have felt. The loss of her mother, the acquisition of a father she must have had mixed feelings about, the total upending of her life. All he could do was shift closer to her, show his comfort.

‘It didn’t work out. Turned out his promises didn’t materialise.’

‘What happened?’

‘My stepmother and my sisters loathed me—I knew that from the instant I walked into the house.’

A house that must have felt so very alien to her, in a country that must have felt grey and cold and miserable.

‘In a nutshell, he pitched me into a Cinderella scenario. They treated me like I was an inferior being.’ She made a small exasperated noise. ‘It sounds stupid, because it is so difficult to explain, but they made me feel worthless. I ate separately from them, my clothes were bought from charity shops, while my half-sisters’ were new, I ended up with loads of extra chores so I could “earn my keep”, and there were constant put-downs, constant reminders that I was literally worthless.’ Another shrug. ‘It all sounds petty, but it made me feel like nothing—worse than invisible. I was visible, but what they could see made them shudder.’

‘It doesn’t sound petty—it sounds intolerable.’ Anger vibrated through him, along with disbelief that people could be so cruel. ‘Was your father involved in this?’

‘He was more of a bystander than a participant. He was away a lot on business. I did try to explain to him that I was unhappy, that I felt my stepmother didn’t like me, but he simply said that I must be imagining it or, worse, he would accuse me of base ingratitude. Which made me feel guilty and even more alone.’

No wonder Sunita found it hard to take people at their word. Her own father, who had promised to care for her, had instead treated her like muck and allowed others to do the same.

‘I’m sorry. I wish I could turn back time and intervene.’

‘You can’t change the past. And even if you could perhaps the outcome would be worse. Because in the past I got out, I escaped, and I’ve come to terms with what happened. I can even understand a little why my stepmother acted as she did. She was landed with a strange girl—the daughter of a woman her husband had been unfaithful with, the woman who probably was the love of his life. The gossip and speculation in the community must have been beyond humiliating for her and my half-sisters. So they turned all that anger and humiliation on to me.’

‘That doesn’t excuse their behaviour, or explain your father’s.’

‘I think my father was weak and he felt guilty. Guilty over the way he’d treated my mother...guilty that he had betrayed his wife in the first place. And that guilt translated into doing anything for a quiet life. That worked in my favour later on. I got scouted by a model agency when I was sixteen and my father agreed to let me leave home—my stepmother was happy to see me go, sure I’d join the ranks of failed wannabes, so she agreed. I never looked back and I never went back. I never saw them again. The second I could, I sent my father a cheque to cover any costs he might have incurred over the years. As far as I am concerned we are quits. I don’t even know where he is.’

So much made sense to Frederick now—her lack of trust, her fears over Amil, her need to be in control. Admiration burned within him that she had achieved so much, was such an amazing parent herself.

These were all the things he wanted to say, but didn’t quite know how. So instead he did what he had promised himself he wouldn’t do and he kissed her—right there in the middle of the rainforest, with the smell of the monsoon in the air, and the pounding of the waterfall in the distance. He kissed her as if his life and soul depended on it.

Her resistance was brief—a nanosecond of surprise—and then, as if she too were tired of words, of this walk down a memory lane that was lined with sadness, her resistance melted away and her lips parted beneath his.

He tasted the sweet chili tang left by the sandwiches and heard her soft moan. Their surroundings receded. The call of a hornbill, the rustle of the monkeys in the trees above all melted away and left only them, encased in a net of yearning and need and desire.