The Prince’s Royal Love-Child by Trish Morey

7

Rafe peered at the screen and at the two dark smudges amid a sea of light, smudges that proved beyond doubt he would become a father not just once but twice over in a few short months from now, a feeling of pride so huge in his chest that he wanted to howl like the Beast of Iseo itself. What fortune had brought Sienna to the island? Providence couldn’t have dealt him a better hand.

‘Twins?’ he heard her say, her voice shaky as if she couldn’t believe the news herself. ‘It can’t be...’

He lifted her hand then and pressed his lips against it. ‘We will marry as soon as possible,’ he said. ‘There can be no delay.’

Rafe insisted they celebrate the news and took her to dinner that night to a harbour-front restaurant. A private room had been set up for them, furnished with gilt mirrors and lush curtains, and on an upstairs terrace that overlooked the lights of the harbour front and the marina. It was the first time she’d been to Velatte City, and she loved its vibrancy and colour and the handsome people, their features a blend of the best the Mediterranean could offer.

Carmelina had proven her worth as Sienna’s wardrobe manager, selecting without hesitation a gown shaded from

lilac through to a rich jewel-shade of amethyst that sat snug over Sienna’s bustline before falling in soft, almost toga-like folds to the floor. With her hair coiled in wide ringlets and gathered up behind her head loosely for the ends to trail down, Sienna felt like she’d stepped out of ancient Greece.

Not that Safe was any slouch in the looks department. In a dark tuxedo and crisp white shirt he was magnificent, the Lombardi-crested cufflinks at his wrists, a burgundy tie at his throat. He looked like a man who had everything he wanted in the world, and if she had one tiny pang of regret about this whole so-called celebration, it was that she knew that the babies she was carrying were a large part of it.

She thought back to when Rafe had first seen her tonight - when he’d taken one look at her and paused, his eyes darkening, and he’d told her she looked like a goddess. She’d felt such a pang of wanting then - a yearning for this all to be real. But it could never be real. Here they were, all dressed up, acting out being the perfect couple. She wasn’t here because of who she was. It was because of the babies she carried. Rafe’s babies.

She’d done a lot of thinking about those babies herself today, and a lot of it centered around her fears for what might happen if she did marry Rafe, and on the flip-side, the quality of life she could offer them if she didn’t.

One baby she believed she could cope with. She’d have to get a nanny, but she made decent money when she could fly. It would be hard to be a single mother, but at a stretch she would cope. Women did, all around the world, every day. Why couldn’t she?

But knowing she was carrying twins had changed things, had tipped the balance. What kind of life could she offer them? What hope had she of being able to afford their care while she worked and what hope of giving them the family life they deserved? Would they grow up resenting her because she couldn’t give them the lifestyle they would have had with their father?

But marriage without love? The one thing she feared more than anything.

How could he expect it of her?

The vibrant waterfront buzzed below, negating the need for conversation, and the warm breeze tugged at her hair as they enjoyed their entrees. Violin music drifted up from the main restaurant downstairs, local music that was filled with life and hope and passion.

The first hint of the helicopter making its way across the harbour snared Sienna’s attention like a magnet, even before the whump of the rotors became noticeable, and a familiar yearning surged anew. She followed its spotlight-lit path across the harbour, to where it landed atop one of the palace-like casinos lining the foreshore. She sighed as it set down perfectly, her entree forgotten as she imagined herself behind the controls. God, she missed flying, missed the feeling of soaring through the air like a bird, or skimming across the water like an insect. Missed the endless sky.

‘What made you become a pilot?’

Sienna turned to him, thinking it was odd that she was having his babies, that he fully intended to many her, and yet they knew so very little about each other. ‘The only thing I inherited from my father,’ she started, ‘was a love for travel. We lived on his boat my first few years, travelling the world, stopping in ports anywhere and everywhere. Until it was time for me to go to school and we dropped anchor in Gibraltar.’

‘Sounds like a wonderful childhood.’

She gave a brief, harsh laugh, the sound of her father’s constant taunts loud in her ears. ‘I suppose it could have been.’

‘It wasn’t?’

‘My father never wanted me. Always blamed me for ruining his life, for giving him responsibilities and putting an end to his wanderlust days. Ironic that I should inherit his love of travel, in that case, don’t you think?’

Across the table, Rafe frowned, looking thoughtful. ‘But boats never appealed?’

‘God, no! Not after... Well, not after that. I used to lie on the deck and watch the birds wheeling above. I used to imagine myself up there with them, it was the only way I could see to escape...’ Her words trailed off. She’d said too much, revealed far too much of herself. She picked up her glass, swirling the sparkling water. ‘Anyway, that’s the dreary story of why I became a pilot.’

‘No,’ he said, squeezing her hand. ‘Not dreary. Interesting. They must be proud of you.’

She looked out over the harbour and breathed in the smell of the sea and salt, finding a memory that brought a smile to her face. ‘Mum was. She was ever so proud when I got my licence.’ She turned and saw die question in his eyes. ‘She died a few years back.’

‘And your father?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen him for years. He stayed in Gibraltar. We left.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘It’s okay. Really. But can we talk about something a little more upbeat? Tell me about your sister. Where is she now?’ Rafe nodded as he sipped at his wine, and she couldn’t tell if he was happy to accede to her request to change the topic, or just happy to think about his sister. ‘She’s fun. Where I was the serious one in the family, Marietta was always the hopeless romantic, the dreamer. She’s a jewellery designer, and a seriously good one, now working in New Zealand. You’ll like her, I know.’

She smiled. ‘I think I will.’

A waiter came and topped up his wine, poured Sienna more lemon-flavoured mineral water and hovered just a moment too long to go unnoticed. Rafe looked up at him. ‘Was there something else?’

‘Mi scusi, per favore,’the red-faced waiter said with a nod, before rattling off a burst of language so fast and furious that Sienna had no hope of keeping up. Rafe answered, his smile genuine as he rose from his seat to shake the man’s hand, only to be wrapped in an embrace that had the waiter looking mortified with embarrassment before he bowed again and again as he made his exit. ‘Grazie. Grazie.’

‘What was that all about?’

Rafe gave a shrug as he sat down, as if it had been nothing. ‘The waiter’s father works as a teller at one of the casinos; his mother is a cleaner there. He had been frightened that they would all lose their jobs when they saw Carlo and Roberto being arrested.’

‘That’s not all, though,’ she said, sensing more in the exchange from the odd word she’d picked up than he was letting on. ‘He was thanking you for coming back, wasn’t he?’ He gazed out over the harbour, rather than at her, as if he was uncomfortable with how much she had interpreted of the exchange. ‘Apparently so.’

She thought about the people who’d greeted and served them tonight with smiles and warmth. She’d taken them for granted—wouldn’t they meet their Prince in such a way anyway? But, looking back, there’d been a genuine warmth in their welcome, as if the people of Montvelatte had embraced their new Prince with joy. And Rafe’s reaction to the waiter’s comments seemed to echo those sentiments. ‘You really care about these people, don’t you?’

He flicked his serviette back onto his lap. ‘Does that surprise you?’

She shrugged, embarrassed that she’d made so obvious her prejudgment. ‘But you never had anything to do with Montvelatte before. You grew up in Paris, in exile with your mother and sister.’

‘You are right, of course. All I really knew was from my mother’s stories, or from the books she always encouraged us to read. But being back here in Montvelatte, living here, getting to know the people, it surprised me too how comfortable it felt. I am glad I decided to come back.’ He reached across the table and wrapped one of her hands in his own, and she felt the sincerity of his words in his touch.

‘Was there ever any doubt?’ she asked, liking the way her hand felt in his, the way his fingers stroked the skin of her hand into sensual awareness. ‘I thought you had decided that night, as soon as the reports came in, that this was your destiny.’

He shook his head. ‘I wasn’t planning to come at all—not at first Not until Yannis called.’ He broke off suddenly to explain. ‘Yannis Markides, my business partner but more than that, my lifelong friend. It was Yannis who made me see sense. But when I did decide to come, it wasn’t because I felt some inexplicable link with the island or its people.’

‘Then why?^’

His thumbs made lazy circles on her hand, lazy circles that sent busy signals vibrating through her veins. ‘Two things. One part of me wanted to prove that a bastard son, the son his father had rejected, could make something of himself, could prove himself to be a worthy ruler.’ He fixed her with eyes full of meaning. ‘It seems that I, too, was blessed with a father who didn’t want me.’

Sienna bristled under his gaze, not at all sure she was comfortable having something in common with him, let alone a reason to empathise with him. ‘And the other?’

‘Because of my mother. She loved her Mediterranean island home and hated being exiled like some criminal simply because she’d borne the Prince a bastard son and daughter. Do you understand? By coming back, I could try to make things right for her. That was my motivation. But I had no idea when I made that decision just how right it would come to feel.’ Sienna shivered, picking up on his use of past tense. His mother was dead. She recalled reading that in a magazine article after Rafe’s coronation. But it hadn’t occurred to her then that it was something else they shared.

She picked up her glass of water in her free hand, desperate for something to do to hide her confusion. She hated being wrong about things, hated knowing she’d made judgements based on assumptions that were misplaced. She’d assumed Rafe had embraced his new role because he’d imagined himself bom to rule. Had believed it, considering the way he’d treated her. But given his story and the way the people here seemed to react to him, maybe she’d been wrong about that. Maybe he wasn’t the beast she imagined him to be...

‘I have something for you,’ he said, interrupting her thoughts while he reached into his pocket.

She sat up straight, suddenly defensive, interlocking both hands under the table in case he was about to make some kind of engagement ring gesture. Despite their more civilised conversation tonight, and despite her shifting thoughts, she wasn’t ready for anything like that yet. ‘What is it?’

The ruby-red box looked worn, the velvet scuffed at the comers. ‘It’s my mother’s favourite piece of jewellery. I thought you should have it.’

Sienna shook her head, while he pressed the box towards her until it would have been churlish not to raise her hands and accept it. ‘But it was your mother’s. Shouldn’t it go to your sister?’

‘Open it,’ he urged. She gasped as the case snapped open, revealing the stunning jewels within, gemstones of every hue and shade, suspended at intervals from a diamond-set necklace.

‘It’s beautiful,’ was her first reaction. ‘I can’t accept this,’ was her second. But he was already on his feet, taking the necklace from its setting and fixing it at the nape of her neck. She put a hand to the precious piece, the jewels feeling heavy and cool against her skin, whereas the brush of his fingers felt warm, but all too light and all too brief.

He sat down again, the fire in the gems reflected in the flames in his eyes. ‘They suit you.’ And then, ‘they make that gown look even more magnificent.’

She dropped her eyes. ‘Carmelina chose it.’

‘But it’s not just the dress,’ he said. ‘It’s you. You look radiant’ He lifted his glass to her. ‘Here’s to you, my future bride, the mother of Montvelatte’s future.’

She trembled, the responsibility of the title he’d just bestowed upon her feeling like a leaded weight. ‘Look, Rafe, I haven’t actually agreed to marry you yet’

He frowned, her words clearly taking him off guard, before reaching over the table to take her hand. ‘What choice do we have? Soon you will start to show. Do you want this marriage to look like some shotgun wedding?’

Like her parents’ perchance?His words cut through the goodwill they’d built tonight like a scythe, sharp and deep, reopening old wounds and laying them bare. ‘If I did agree to marry you, why shouldn’t it look that way, when that’s exactly what it is?’

‘I prefer to call it a marriage of convenience, for both of us.’ ‘And I call it like I see it. You may not be holding a shotgun to my head, but you might as well be. What choice have you given me?’

Candlelight flickered in his dark eyes. ‘I’m sorry. Maybe coming out tonight was premature and you are not yet ready to see sense.’

‘As you are not yet ready to see my point of view!’

He sighed and leant back in his chair, throwing his napkin down onto the table. ‘And what is your point of view? That you can go on your merry way carrying two royal babies and somehow continue your life as a helicopter pilot as if nothing had happened?’ He cursed under his breath and stood, signalling to the waiter for the car to be brought around.

She remained exactly where she was and jagged her chin up higher. ‘I don’t know any more. Two babies—I just don’t know. But I do know that whatever you call it, a marriage between us will have no chance of success while we remain virtual strangers. Look at our conversation tonight, we don’t know the first thing about each other.’

For a moment his jaw looked so set she thought he might just turn and leave without her, and then he breathed out on a sigh and folded himself into his chair again, nodding. ‘Si. You are right. I am rushing you. Would a month be long enough, do you think?’

He was giving her a month to decide? She rolled the proposal around in her head, looking for the catch but happy to take any concession going given the way she’d been railroaded up until now. ‘That would certainly help.’

It did help.Rafe had Sebastiano rearrange his diary to free up his evenings over the course of the next week, taking her to the opera, to the opening of a play and countless magnificent dinners overlooking the lights of the city or the harbour or sometimes even both. They were photographed wherever they went, a buzz around them whenever they were spotted, and while Sienna knew there would be pictures in magazines and articles written about them, she wasn’t uncomfortable with the attention. She’d made no commitment to him. She had her month and she had the time to get to know Rafe better.

At every event, Sienna was reminded of what it was that had put her under Rafe’s spell from the very beginning. He could be so utterly charming, his attention focused one hundred per cent on her and her alone, to the exclusion of everything and everyone else. She’d missed that attention, especially lately. Missed the feeling that she was special for herself. And all the while he’d been the perfect gentleman, never pushing her for so much as a kiss, even though there were times she saw his need in a glance or in the tightness of his movements, like he was trying to keep it in check. She appreciated it. They’d known each other’s bodies before they’d known the first thing about each other. Now they could redress the balance.

And at every outing she saw the people’s reaction when they met their Prince. There was respect there, to be sure, but there was joy too as he mixed with his people, and a kind of elation lifted the crowd.

And she decided he was a good prince for Montvelatte.

They were just leaving an exhibition at an art gallery one day when it happened. A small crowd had assembled outside, cheering behind a cordon of palace guards as they made their exit. A small girl squirmed out from between a guard’s legs and ran towards them carrying a hand-picked posy of flowers that she held up for Sienna to take, her dark eyes wide as if begging her to accept her gift. Sienna smiled and reached down. ‘Grazie,’ she said, and the little girl beamed before throwing herself at Rafe’s legs and wrapping her arms around them in a bear hug. A guard came closer, but Rafe shooed him away, instead picking up the small girl and hoisting her into his arms as he made his way to the crowd and her parents. ‘Grazie, bella ragazza,’ and the child’s smile widened before she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the cheek.

Sienna’s grip had tightened around the posy, just as a band had twisted around her heart. He wasn’t just a good prince. He would make a damn fine father as well.

Rafe was nothing like her own father. Though it wasn’t as if he’d wanted children so much as heirs, at least he would never tell these babies that they’d ruined his life.

Was that enough to marry the man?

Could she risk it?

She was almost tempted.