The Prince's Love-Child (The Royal House 0f Cacciatore Book 2)

by Sharon Kendrick

  ‘Hello, Lucy.’

  Just the sight of him made her heart turn over, as she had suspected it would anyway. But her feelings for Guido were deeper and more complex now—for this was the man who had sired the child which grew inside her. A strong and powerful man. How she yearned to just let him take over and protect her—an instinct which perhaps went hand-in-hand with pregnancy itself. But he was offering to do neither, and she did not have the right to ask—she had relinquished all such rights the day she had walked out on him…

  Her heart was racing—could that be good for the baby?—and she nodded in acknowledgement. ‘You’d better come in.’

  It was a bit like stepping into a larger version of a dolls’ house he had once seen as a child in a museum, when he had been staying with his aunt. He’d had no idea that proportions could be so scaled-down—that rooms could be so small!

  She led the way into a yellow and white sitting room, and he was surprised by the sudden understanding of a word which was not usually in his vocabulary. Cosy.

  ‘Would you like some coffee?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, I do not want coffee.’ And then, because they both seemed in danger of ignoring something in the hope that it might just go away, he said, ‘How many weeks?’

  ‘I’m not sure—’

  ‘How can you not be sure?’ he demanded.

  ‘We can work it out,’ she said desperately.

  ‘You haven’t been to see the doctor?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  She saw the anger and the disbelief which sparked flames in the coal-dark eyes, and yet with a blinding blow of surprise she realised that not once had he interrogated her about who the father was. Which meant he believed her. A relief she hadn’t been anticipating washed over her and she felt compelled to offer some kind of explanation. ‘I was…in denial, I guess.’

  ‘You did not plan it?’ he questioned coldly.

  A wave of dizziness swept over her. ‘Plan it? You think I planned it? What? To try to trap you or something? Well, think again, Guido, that isn’t my style—and even if it were there were two of us. It isn’t just the woman who is responsible for contraception—it’s the man’s responsibility, too!’

  Something unfamiliar stole over him. A sense that here was something which he couldn’t just have someone solve for him by snapping his fingers.

  ‘Sit down,’ he ordered quietly.

  Maybe if she hadn’t been feeling so woozy and so perilously close to tears she might have told him that she didn’t need permission to sit down in her own home. As it was, she collapsed in one of the armchairs as if her knees had been turned into gelatine.

  His eyes narrowed as he did a swift mental calculation. ‘I remember when it was,’ he said slowly.

  He had been showing her round the Palace and she had made him laugh, made him feel…normal in those formal surroundings, and something primitive had ripped through him. Something so primitive that he had neglected to protect himself and her—and when before in his life had that happened?

  There had been an overwhelming need to take her swiftly and without ceremony—a truly novel experience for a man whose upbringing had been swamped with ceremony. No, she was right. It had been his responsibility, too—and passion had made it fly straight out of his head. Damn the witch! He had recognised that for him she spelt danger, and it seemed that he had been right.

  His eyes sparked with black fire, but what good would anger do him now? He needed his wits about him to achieve what he needed to achieve.

  ‘Nearly three months, I make it,’ he said.

  Some of her strength began to return as she heard the clipped note in his voice, and her eyes flashed defiance at him. ‘I’m having the baby!’ she declared. ‘No matter what you say!’

  He registered this, his mind sifting through all the possibilities. He was left with the same and only one which had occupied his mind all during the flight. The question was how he should go about achieving it—for he knew that beneath today’s rather shaky Lucy lay a woman with steely resolve. Who could walk out of his door without turning back.

  ‘I agree,’ he murmured.

  She was in such turmoil that it didn’t even occur to her to tell him that she didn’t actually need his consent. Instead, she looked at him with suspicion. ‘You want me to keep the baby?’

  He flinched as if she had struck him. ‘Did you imagine that I would contemplate any alternative?’ he questioned, in a low, shocked voice.

  For a moment she felt like a drowning woman who had been offered not just a lifeline but a warm change of clothes at the end of it. And then he snatched them all away with his next words.

  ‘Have you not considered that you carry within you a child of noble blood?’

  ‘Every baby—any baby—is noble in my view!’ she declared.

  A faint smile curved the cruel lips. ‘I commend you for your passion, Lucy,’ he said softly. ‘But I am looking at this from a purely practical point of view.’ The black eyes bored into her, as coolly analytical as a lawyer’s eyes might have been. ‘You are carrying my child—a child in whose veins beats the Royal blood of Mardivino.’

  Now who was being passionate? she thought tiredly.

  ‘By birth, that child will have certain rights and privileges. He or she could one day become King or Queen if Gianferro does not produce an heir—which looks increasingly likely.’

  No, Lucy had been wrong. It had not been passion she had heard in his voice—it had been practicality. Now he was discussing their child’s position in Mardivinian society as a conquering army might discuss dividing up the spoils of a country.

  She rubbed her fingers over her forehead. ‘I don’t know what you think we can do about it. If anything. We aren’t a couple any more.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘If indeed we ever were.’

  He stared at her. Was she mad? Did she think he was just going to accept her momentous piece of news and walk away from her? Allow her to bring up his child—a Mardivinian Prince or Princess—in this little house in the middle of suburban England?

  Like a chess master edging towards a win, he considered his next move with care. The burning question was whether the baby was indeed his. He looked down into her pale and beautiful face. The faint tremble of her bare lips unexpectedly stabbed at his conscience and as he gazed into the honey-coloured eyes the burning pride and dignity he read there left him in no doubt. And doubt, he recognised with an overwhelming certainty, would be the one thing guaranteed to thwart his wishes. Her baby was his.

  He felt the rapid acceleration of his heart, accompanied by an almost dizzy feeling and a strange, blunted pain where his heart should be—if every woman he’d ever known hadn’t accused him of not having one. He shook his head, shaken by the unfamiliar physical sensations and the random process of his thoughts.

  He was in shock!

  But now was not the time to examine his reaction to impending fatherhood—there were matters far more urgent and pressing.

  ‘The child must be born on Mardivino,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Must?’ She stared at him.

  ‘Do not fight me on this, Lucy,’ he warned.

  ‘But you don’t live there!’ she protested. ‘You left your Royal life behind a long time ago—remember? You told me!’

  ‘So I did.’ His mouth hardened. ‘But things are different now.’

  How was it that he had slipped so quickly back into a traditional outlook? As if all those years of freedom had not happened. For a moment he felt dazed by the realisation of how indelibly his birthright had stamped its mark on him.

  She tried one last attempt, knowing that she was fighting against something, but not quite sure what it was. ‘It doesn’t have to be difficult, Guido. Lots of women manage on their own—we can work something out.’

  But he cut across her opposition as if it was of no consequence. ‘Not only must the birth take place within the Principality,’ he continued, ‘it must also be legitimised.’

 
Her head was spinning now. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Your Prince has come, cara,’ he drawled sardonically. ‘And he intends to marry you.’

  Marry her? With a shotgun held to his back? ‘No!’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, and even though it was silky soft, there was no mistaking the undercurrent of steely purpose. ‘You may wish to play the courageous single mother, but the reality will be an entirely different matter. It isn’t going to happen. My baby will not be born illegitimately—he or she will inherit all that is their due, but that can only be achieved within wedlock.’

  She stared at him, frozen into immobility by the iron edge of his words and the realisation that she had never seen Guido like this before. So cold and so powerful, and so…determined.

  ‘Guido—’

  ‘Don’t even think of fighting me on this one, Lucy,’ he said harshly. ‘The odds are stacked highly enough in my favour to make it a laughably one-sided battle.’ There was a pause to drive home his words, as if one was needed. ‘Which I would win.’

  She looked into his eyes and knew that he meant it. Which meant that Lucy Maguire was going to marry a Prince.

  It should have been a dream come true—but the reality was something different. It meant being shackled to a sexy but cold-blooded aristocrat. A man who didn’t love her.

  No, it was not a dream.

  It was a living nightmare.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THEY were to be married quietly on Mardivino, on this blustery autumn day, with only their immediate families in attendance—including Lucy’s rather bewildered parents, who kept looking around them as if expecting to wake up at any second. You and me both, she thought, rather grimly.

  Her brother was a different matter, taking the whole bizarre situation in his stride and joking to her that she’d done ‘better than I could ever have imagined, sis!’ As if she’d won the Lottery!

  But she knew that Benedict meant what he said. And that he actually liked Guido and thought he was a good man.

  Well, of course he did! Hadn’t Guido gone out of his way to win him round? Taking him sailing around the island and introducing him to glamorous women, and laying on bucketfuls of charm—which would have had even the most hardened cynic eating out of his hand?

  Come to think of it he had been equally persuasive in winning Lucy over, getting her to agree to marry him—but in her case he had certainly not used charm. She wondered that he had not even bothered to try.

  Perhaps he’d had no stomach for it, or perhaps he had instinctively realised that she would shrink away from it. For charm was nothing but a superficial and shallow veneer which people used as a front to hide their true feelings.

  Instead, he had argued with cold and remorseless logic, citing historic precedent, making her dizzy with facts about the Mardivinian royal family and its progeny.

  She supposed that if anything could be said in his favour it was that he hadn’t bothered to dress up their proposed marriage to be something it wasn’t.

  And in the end she had been too tired to fight him, recognising that the full weight of a powerful regime would swing behind him if she dared to oppose his wishes. But perhaps pregnancy made you more vulnerable and susceptible—for she had found herself unable to let her own self-interest deny her baby its rights. What woman in her right mind would?

  It would, he told her, be first and foremost a legal contract between them—and anything which went beyond that would have to be negotiated between them.

  Their lawyers had thrashed out a long-prenuptial agreement. Lucy had engaged the best lawyer she could afford and she had taken his advice—though she had argued in vain about the clause which stated that should they divorce then the Cacciatore family would get custody of her child.

  ‘Can they do that?’ she had asked heatedly.

  The lawyer had given a rather thin smile. ‘Oh, yes. No contest—though you could try. Though can you see the courts letting you put a royal child with minders—while you carry on flying? These people will get whatever it is they want, make no mistake.’

  So that was the deal. If she wanted to keep her child then she must stay married to its father.

  And now here she was, on her way to the ceremony in all her bridal finery, with her stomach tied up in knots and feeling none of the joyful expectation of the normal bride.

  ‘Good heavens,’ breathed her father faintly as their horsedrawn carriage came to a halt in front of the cathedral steps. ‘Just look at all those people!’

  There were hordes of them—all waving flags and clutching flowers and cheering—their faces alight with what looked like genuine joy at their first glimpse of the bride.

  ‘It’ll be okay, Dad,’ Lucy whispered, and squeezed his arm. ‘Just pretend it’s the village church.’

  ‘I don’t think my imagination is quite that good,’ remarked her father wryly.

  Lucy was wearing ivory—which flattered her Titian hair far more than pure white would have done. Anyway, she would have felt a hypocrite wearing white when both families knew she was pregnant—and soon the rest of the world would, too. There would be smug smiles all round, of that she was certain. Hadn’t she scoured newspaper columns herself and done sums on her fingers to work out if a child had been conceived before or after marriage?

  Her wedding gown was cut with flattering simplicity—a floor-length dress, its starkness relieved by a mere sprinkling of freshwater pearls sewn into the fabric. Over the top she wore a silk-chiffon overcoat which floated like a cloud in the breeze. Fragrant flowers were woven into her hair, and on her feet were a pair of exquisite high-heeled shoes which brought her almost up to Guido’s nose.

  The aisle seemed as long as a runway, yet all she could see were the groom’s dark flashing eyes—a half-smile of what looked like encouragement as she made her way towards him.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he questioned softly as she joined him at the altar.

  His heart was pounding. There had been a part of him which had wondered whether she would actually go through with it. Or just flounce off the island—since no one could have physically stopped her—and try to fight him through the courts for custody of the child. Had she been sensible enough to heed his words and realise that such a battle would have been lost before it had begun? Would that explain her fixed and determined smile? And was she also sensible enough to see that it was possible to make this work?

  ‘I’m fine, thank you,’ Lucy answered politely, discovering that it was easy to squash the haunting demons of bitter regret—if you practised long and hard enough.

  She had decided that she was going to behave exactly as a bride should behave, and not let her parents—or herself—down. She was pregnant with Guido’s child, and there were far-reaching repercussions which she had been forced to accept. She was certainly not going to start coming over like a petulant adolescent, sulking because her marriage was not the one she had sometimes dreamed of.

  Oh, on the outside it was all those things—and more. Her friends had been in turn envious and disbelieving. For how many women with Lucy’s background ended up marrying a devastatingly handsome prince from a picturesque Mediterranean island? How many would be made a princess the moment the ring was slid onto her finger?

  Her schoolfriend, Davina, had voiced what most of the others were feeling. ‘Huh—at least you aren’t going to have to save up for ever for your reception—or your honeymoon!’

  Lucy had allowed them all their envy—for pride had let her confide in no one that it was simply a marriage of coincidence. But it had been Lucy who had felt envious. Davina might have a few years of scrimping and saving ahead of her—of making do and pass-me-down baby equipment—but she had a fiancé who adored her, who would do anything in the world if it made her happy.

  And that was the difference.

  Lucy had Guido—royal and rich and powerful.

  And utterly remote.

  She stared into his black eyes and saw nothing there other than a
look of quiet triumph and determination.

  The ceremony was conducted in French as well as English—in order to satisfy Mardivinian law. And as Guido slipped the slim platinum band on her trembling finger Lucy was aware that her life was never going to be the same again. She had left Lucy Maguire behind at the altar and had become Princess Lucy Jennifer Cacciatore instead.

  They emerged from the cathedral to a storm of swirling rose petals and the blinding light of flash-bulbs, which set out in stark relief the banked flowers lining the steps leading down to the waiting carriage.

  Once the door had slammed shut on them Guido turned to her. ‘Have I told you how beautiful you look?’ he murmured.

  She was feeling like a drooping flower, and not in the least bit beautiful. ‘We’re alone now, Guido,’ she said tetchily. ‘So you can drop the pretence.’

  A pulse hammered at his temple. ‘How you test me, Lucy,’ he observed steadily.

  She smiled down at a small girl who had hurled a rather battered home-grown posy into the carriage. ‘I don’t see why. You’ve got what you wanted, haven’t you? Legally I’m your bride, but in reality I’m your prisoner!’

  ‘Don’t be so melodramatic!’ he said angrily. ‘You are free to move at liberty!’

  ‘Oh, really? So if I took a flight back to England tomorrow, then you’d be perfectly agreeable?’

  ‘In theory, there would be no objection.’

  ‘In theory?’ She opened her eyes very wide, aware that she was being prickly—but wasn’t that a kind of defence mechanism? She was trying to accept the situation for what it was, and not what she would like it to be.

  And she was trying to stop herself from loving a man who had used her right from the very start.

  He gave a hard smile. ‘But the doctor has advised you not to travel,’ he said smoothly.

  ‘Very conveniently for you!’ she retorted. ‘And I suppose that if the doctor had told me that I had to run round and round the Palace gardens every morning, no doubt you’d be behind it!’