Royally Bedded, Regally Wedded Read online

  The question seared through him, as it had done so often since Jean-Paul had told him the story that was set to break in the press. It seemed impossible that Paolo’s son should have disappeared, without anyone even knowing of his existence. And yet, in the nightmare of that motorway pile-up in France all those years ago, with smashed cars and smashed bodies, he could see how rescue workers, finding the female occupant of Paolo’s car still alive and clearly pregnant, had cut her free first and rushed her to hospital. A different hospital from the one where Paolo’s mangled body had been taken hours later, when all those still living had been dealt with.

  Cold horror chilled through him. In the carnage no one had made the connection between the two—the dead Prince Paolo Ceraldi and the unknown young woman, comatose and pregnant.

  Never to regain consciousness.

  Never to tell who had fathered her child.

  And so no one had known. No one until some get-lucky hack had decided to see if there was any mileage in a rehash of the tragedy of Paolo’s death, and his investigations had turned up, against all the odds, a French fireman who’d mentioned he had freed a woman from the wreckage of the very type of sports car that the journalist knew Paolo Ceraldi had been driving. From that single item the hack had burrowed and burrowed, until he had pieced together the extraordinary, unbelievable story.

  How Prince Paolo Ceraldi, dead at twenty-one, had left an orphaned son behind.

  The story would blaze across the tabloids.

  ‘Get the boy.’

  Luca’s urgent command echoed in Rico’s head. He’d phoned Luca the moment he’d hung up on Jean-Paul.

  ‘We have to get the boy before the press does,’ Luca had said. ‘Get Falieri on to it tonight. But, Rico, it’s essential we look as if we don’t know about the story. If they think we are trying to stop it, they’ll run with it immediately. In the meantime—’ his voice had hardened ‘—I will contact Christa. Maybe for once I will, after all, exact a favour from her father…it won’t stifle the story, but it may just delay it. Buy us some time. Enough for Falieri to get the child safely out of their reach.’ He’d paused, then gone on, his voice dry. ‘It seems, just for once, Rico, that your close proximity to the press has come in handy.’

  ‘Glad to be of use,’ Rico had replied, his voice even drier. ‘For once.’

  ‘Well, you can really be of use now,’ Luca had cut back. ‘I can’t leave this wedding, if I did it would simply arouse suspicion, so I’m stuck here for the duration. I’m counting on you to hold the fort. But Rico?’ His voice had held a warning note in it. ‘Leave it to me to tell our father about this debacle, OK? He’ll take it a lot better from me.’

  Rico hadn’t stuck around to find out how his father had taken the news that the Ceraldis were about to face their biggest trial by tabloid yet. He’d had only one imperative. To find Paolo’s son.

  Emotion buckled him. He’d been holding it back as much as he could, because there had been no time for it. No time to do anything other than get hold of Falieri and track down the child his brother had fathered.

  He felt his heart squeeze tightly. It was incredible that here, now, just in the seat behind him, his brother’s son was sleeping. It was almost like having Paolo back again.

  Debacle, Luca had called it. And Rico knew he was right. He loathed the thought of all the tabloid coverage that was inevitably going to erupt, even with the boy safely with him now, but far more powerful was the sense of wonder and gratitude coursing through him.

  He turned in his seat, his eyes resting on the sleeping form of the small boy.

  His heart squeezed again. Even in the poor light he could see Paolo’s features, see the resemblance. To think that his brother’s blood pulsed in those delicate veins, that that small child was his own nephew.

  Paolo’s son. His brother’s child. The brother who had been killed so senselessly, so tragically.

  And yet—

  He had had a son.

  All these years, growing up here, in this foreign country, raised by a woman who was not even his own mother, not knowing who he was.

  We didn’t know. How could we not have known?

  A cold, icy chill went through him.

  For a long moment his eyes watched over the sleeping boy, seeing his little chest rise and fall, the long lashes folded down on his fair skin.

  Then, slowly, they moved to the figure beside the child seat.

  His expression changed, mouth tightening.

  This was a complication they could do without.

  His gaze rested on her. A frown gathered between his brows. Had she really not realised who he was? It seemed incredible, and yet her shock had been genuine. His frown deepened. He had never before encountered anyone who did not know who he was.

  He dragged his mind away. It was irrelevant that his reaction to her evident complete ignorance of his identity had…had what? Irritated him? Piqued him? No, none of those, he asserted to himself. He was merely totally unaccustomed to not being recognised. He had been recognised wherever he went, all his life. Everyone always knew who he was.

  So being stared at as if he were the man in the moon had simply been a new experience for him. That was all.

  Dio, he dismissed impatiently. What did he care if the girl hadn’t realised who he was? It was, as he had said, irrelevant. She knew now. That was all that mattered. And once she’d accepted it—not that the look of glazed shock had left her face until she’d fallen asleep in the vehicle—it had at least had the thankful effect of making her co-operate finally. Silently, numbly, but docilely.

  She’d made sandwiches and drinks for herself and Ben, telling him while he ate that they were going on an adventure, and then heading upstairs to pack. Ben had shown no anxiety, only curiosity and excitement. Rico had done his best to give him an explanation he could understand.

  ‘I…’He had hesitated, then said it, a shaft of emotion going through him as he did so. ‘I am your uncle, Ben, and I have only just found out that you live here. So I am taking you on a little holiday. We’ll need to leave now, though, and drive in the night.’

  It had seemed to suffice.

  He had fallen asleep almost instantly, the car having only gone a few miles, and it had not taken a great deal longer for the aunt to fall asleep as well. Rico was glad. A car was not the place for the next conversation they must have.

  He glanced at her now, his face tightening in automatic male distaste at the plain-faced female, with her unflattering frizzy hair and even more unflattering nondescript clothes.

  She couldn’t be more different from Maria Mitchell. She possessed not a scrap of her sister’s looks. Maria had been one of those naturally eye-catching blondes, tall and slender, with wide-set blue eyes and a heart-shaped face. No wonder she’d become a model. The photos Falieri had dug up of her had shown exactly how she must have attracted Paolo.

  They would have made a golden couple.

  Pain bit at him, again. Dio, both of them wiped out, their young lives cut short in a crush of metal. But leaving behind a secret legacy.

  Rico’s eyes went back to his nephew, softening.

  We’ll take care of you now—don’t worry. You’re safe with us.

  Oblivious, Ben slept on.

  Lizzy stirred. Even as the first threads of consciousness returned, she reached automatically across the wide bed.

  It was all right. Ben was there. For a moment she let her hand rest on the warm, pyjama-covered back of her son, still fast asleep on the far side of the huge double bed. They were in some kind of private house, at which they’d arrived in the middle of the night—specially rented, and staffed by San Lucenzans flown in from the royal palace, or so she had been told by Captain Falieri. A safe house. Safe from prying journalists.

  Disbelief washed through her, as it had done over and over again since that moment when she’d stared at the man who had invaded her cottage and realised who he was.

  She was still in shock, she knew. She had
to be. Because why else was she so calm? Partly it was for Ben’s sake. Above all he must not be upset, or distressed. For his sake she must treat this as normal.

  Impossible as that was.

  What’s going to happen?

  The question arrowed through her, bringing a churning anxiety to her stomach.

  Was the Prince still here? Or had he left her with Captain Falieri. She hoped he was gone. She was not comfortable with him.

  She shifted in her bed. Even had he not been royal, let alone infamous in the press—what did they call him? The Playboy Prince? Was that it?—she could never have been comfortable in his company. No man that good-looking could make her feel anything other than awkward and embarrassed.

  Just as, she knew with her usual searing honesty, a man like that could never be comfortable with her around. Men like that wanted to be surrounded by beautiful women—women like Maria. Females who were plain and unattractive, as she was, simply didn’t exist for them. Hadn’t she learnt that lesson early, knowing that for men she was simply invisible? How many times had male eyes slid automatically past her to seek out Maria?

  She jerked her mind away from such irrelevancies, back to what she did not want to think about. The paternity of her son.

  And his uncle. Prince Enrico Ceraldi.

  He won’t be here still, she guessed. He’ll have left—returned to his palace and his socialite chums. Why would he hang around? He probably only came to the cottage in person because he wanted to check out that Ben really did look like his brother.

  She opened her eyes, looking around her. The bedroom was large, and from what she could tell the house was some kind of small, Regency period country house. Presumably sufficiently remote for the press not to find Ben. How long would they need to stay here? she wondered anxiously. The sooner the story broke, the better—because then the fuss would die down and she and Ben could go home.

  She frowned. Would Ben be upset that this mysteriously arrived uncle had simply disappeared again? She would far rather he had not known who he was. Her frown etched deeper. Why had he told Ben? It seemed a pointless thing to do. The news story would just be a nine-day wonder, and, although she could understand why the Ceraldi family would want to tuck Ben out of sight while it was going on, there was no need to have told Ben anything.

  She’d have to tell Ben that even though Prince Enrico was his uncle, he lived abroad, and that was why he wouldn’t see him again.

  Even so, it seemed cruel to have told him in the first place. Ben had asked about his father sometimes, and all Lizzy had been able to do was say that it had been someone who had loved the mummy in whose tummy he had grown, but that that mummy had been too ill to say who his daddy was.

  For the hundredth time since the bombshell about Maria’s lover had fallen, Lizzy felt disbelief wash through her. And a terrible chill. With all the horror of having to rush out to France, to the hospital her mortally injured sister had been taken to, the news that the pile-up had claimed the life of the youngest prince of San Lucenzo had simply passed her by. She had made no connection—how could she have?

  And yet he had been Ben’s father. Maria had had an affair with Prince Paolo of San Lucenzo. And nobody had known. No one at all.

  It was extraordinary, unbelievable. But it was true.

  I have to accept it. I have to come to terms with it.

  She stared bleakly out over the room. Deliberately, she forced herself to think instead of feel.

  It makes no difference. Once all the fuss in the news has died down, we can just go back home. Everything will be the same again. I just have to wait it out, that’s all.

  Beneath her hand, she could feel Ben start to stir and wake. A rush of emotion went through her.

  Nothing would hurt Ben. Nothing. She would keep him safe always. Nothing on this earth would ever come between her and the son she adored with all her heart. Ever.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘GOOD morning.’

  Rico walked into the drawing room. Ben was sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, occupied with a pile of brightly coloured building blocks. His aunt was beside him. He nodded brief acknowledgement of her, then turned his attention to Ben.

  ‘What are you making?’ he asked his nephew.

  ‘The tallest tower in the world.’ Ben announced. ‘Come and see.’

  Rico did not need an invitation. As his eyes had lit on his nephew, his heart had squeezed. Memories flooded back in. He could remember Paolo being that age.

  A shadow fleetingly crossed his eyes. Paolo had been different from Luca and himself. As his adult self, he knew why. Luca had been born the heir. The firstborn Prince, the Crown Prince, the heir apparent, destined to rule San Lucenzo just as their father, Prince Eduardo, had been destined to inherit the throne from his own father a generation earlier. For eight hundred years the Ceraldis had ruled the tiny principality, which had escaped conquest by any of the other Italian states, or even the invading foreign powers that had plagued the Italian peninsula throughout history. Generation after generation of reigning princes had kept San Lucenzo independent—even in this age of European union the principality was still a sovereign state. Some saw it as a time-warped historical anomaly, others merely as a tax haven and a luxury playground for the very rich. But to his father and his older brother it was their inheritance, their destiny.

  And it was an inheritance that would always need protection. Not, these days, against foreign powers, or any territorial interests of the Italian state—relations with Italy were excellent. What made San Lucenzo safe was continuity. The continuity of its ruling family. In many ways the principality was the personal fiefdom of the Ceraldis, and yet it was because of that that it retained its independence. Rico accepted that. Without the Ceraldis it would surely have been merged into Italy, just as all the earlier duchies and city states and papal territories had been during the great Risorgimento of the nineteenth century, that had freed Italy from foreign oppression, and united it as a nation.

  The Ceraldis were essential to San Lucenzo, and for that reason, it was essential that every reigning prince had an assured heir apparent.

  And—Rico’s mouth tightened—that the heir apparent had a back up in case of emergency.

  The traditional ‘heir and a spare’—with himself as the spare.

  It was what he had been all his life, growing up knowing that he was simply there in case of disaster. To assure continuity of the Ceraldi line.

  But Paolo—ah, Paolo had been different. He had been special to his parents because he’d been an unexpected addition, coming several years after their two older sons. Paolo had had no dynastic function, and so he had been allowed merely to be a boy. A son. A golden boy whose sunny temper had won round even his strait-laced father and his emotionally distant mother.

  Which was why his premature death had been all the more tragic, all the more bitter.

  Rico hunkered down beside his nephew, taking scant notice of the way his aunt immediately shrank away. Yes, Paolo’s son. No doubt about it. No DNA tests would be required; his paternity was undeniable, blazing from every feature. Perhaps there might be a little of his birth mother about him, but one look at him told the world that he was a Ceraldi.

  Benedict. That was what he’d been called. And it was a true name for him.

  Blessed.

  His heart gave that familiar catch again. Yes, he was blessed, all right. He didn’t know it yet, but he would. And he was more than blessed—he was a blessing himself.

  Because, beyond all the publicity and press coverage and gossip that was going to explode at any moment now, the boy was going to be seen as the blessing he was.

  The final consolation to his parents for the son they had lost so tragically.

  Lizzy moved backwards across the carpet and lifted herself into a nearby armchair. She had hoped, at the fact that she and Ben had had the breakfast room to themselves, that it meant Prince Enrico had gone.

  She wished he had.


  She felt excruciatingly awkward with him there. She tried not to look at him, but it was hard not to feel intensely aware of his presence in the room. Even without a drop of royal blood in him he would have been impossible to ignore.

  By day he seemed even taller, outlined against the light from the window behind him, and his startling good looks automatically drew her eyes. He was wearing designer jeans, immaculately cut, and an open-necked shirt, clearly handmade. Immediately she felt the full force of just how shabbily she was dressed in comparison. Her cheap chainstore skirt and top had probably cost less than his monogrammed handkerchief.

  At least, apart from that brief initial nod in her direction, he wasn’t paying any attention to her. It was all on Ben, or helping him build his tower.

  Resentment and embarrassment warred within her.

  Ben was chattering away confidently, without a trace of shyness, his smiles sunny. He was like Maria in that, Lizzy knew. Hindsight over the years since her terrible death had made things clearer to her. It had been a miracle that Maria’s sunny-tempered nature had not been warped by her upbringing. Despite the way her parents had doted on her, obsessed over her, she really had seemed to escape being spoilt. And yet, for all her sunny nature, she had known what she wanted, and what she’d wanted was to be a model, to live an exciting, glamorous life. And that was what she’d done, smiling happily, ignoring her parents’ dismay, and waltzing off to the life she’d wanted.

  And the man she’d wanted.

  Disbelief was etched through Lizzy for the thousandth time. That Maria had actually had an affair with Prince Paolo of San Lucenzo and none of them had known. Not even his family, let alone hers.

  How had they managed it? He must have been very different from his brother. Even though she hadn’t recognised Enrico, she’d still heard of him—and of his reputation. The Playboy Prince. Her covert gaze rested on him a second. He certainly had the looks for it, all right. Tall, broad-shouldered, sablehaired, with strong, well-cut, aristocratic features.