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

by Sharon Kendrick

‘Sit,’ he commanded.

  As she sat, he leaned forward. An ever-present nurse sprang to attention but he waved her away.

  ‘Leave us,’ he commanded.

  ‘But your Royal Highness—’

  ‘Leave!’

  The nurse left and the King examined Nicole’s face carefully, then lifted his head and gave Lucy a tired smile.

  ‘She is very beautiful,’ he observed.

  Lucy was trying to remember all the etiquette of not speaking until she was spoken to, but in the circumstances it was difficult—and when it all boiled down to it wasn’t she just like any proud mother showing off her baby to his grandpop?

  ‘Yes, she is, isn’t she?’ She beamed. ‘She’s got Guido’s eyes, of course, and his colouring—’

  ‘But your nose, I think,’ he said unexpectedly.

  ‘Well, yes,’ answered Lucy, pleased. ‘I think so.’

  ‘And my late wife’s name. Nicole.’

  ‘Yes. Guido wanted it.’

  ‘A medieval French name,’ he observed rather dreamily. ‘Although I believe it is popular again now.’

  They sat for a few moments in companionable silence, watching and listening while Nicole nestled in Lucy’s arms and made little sucking noises.

  ‘Would you like to hold her?’ she asked tentatively, but the King shook his head.

  ‘My arms are too weak to cope with such vigorous life,’ he said sadly, but then his faded eyes twinkled at her. ‘And, if the truth were known, the Princes of Mardivino were not raised to deal with infants! Nico has broken the mould of that, of course,’ he observed thoughtfully.

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked at her properly then, and she could see the quiet gleam of perception in his dark eyes. ‘And Guido? He is…what is that term they use for fathers nowadays?’

  ‘Hands-on?’

  He smiled. ‘Yes. Is Guido…hands-on?’

  Lucy chose her words carefully. ‘Not really. He loves her, of course—but he’s one of those men who’s almost a bit too frightened to pick her up, in case he drops her.’

  The King appeared to digest this. ‘I should never have sent him to America,’ he said suddenly.

  It was such an astonishing thing for him to say that Lucy just stared at him. In the long silence which followed, the King seemed to be deciding whether or not to speak.

  ‘When his mother died I think I went a little bit mad,’ he admitted eventually, and then he gave a ragged little sigh. ‘It was such a shock, you see.’

  Lucy said nothing, for there was nothing in the etiquette books to prepare you for a disclosure like this one.

  ‘Nico was just a baby, of course—and oblivious to what was going on.’

  ‘But he would have missed his mother,’ Lucy pointed out.

  He nodded. ‘Of course he did. And for a while he was a lost little baby. But his physical needs were such that his nurse was able to fulfil them. Gianferro was different—he was almost eight, and my heir, and as such he had always been treated in isolation from the other two. His whole life has been a role of preparation,’ he said. ‘He has always been taught to adapt to the changes that time brings.’

  Lucy thought that little had changed—that Gianferro still lived his life in isolation. She held the baby closer and carried on looking at the King. Some instinct told her that he was leading up to something, but she didn’t know what it was.

  ‘But Guido was shattered,’ he said quietly. ‘He was especially close to his mother. For a while it seemed that the Palace was in uproar. Indeed, the whole island was—my people grieved for her so—and when my wife’s sister offered to take him for the summer in Connecticut—I…well, I seized the opportunity.’

  ‘You did what you thought was best,’ said Lucy staunchly. But people’s thinking was often muddled when they were grieving. And no one could predict the effect that their actions would have on the future.

  ‘How do you think he felt?’ asked the King.

  She didn’t question him on why he had asked her, or begin to wonder whether he had heard rumours that she and Guido were not happy. The important thing was that he had asked, and she must answer. Truthfully.

  ‘He must have felt very…alone,’ she said slowly, and a wave of guilt rocked her. How blinkered she had been. She had been so busy thinking about what she wanted—about what was best for her—that she had never stopped to think about why Guido was the way he was, why he acted the way he did.

  She tried to imagine his confusion and his anger and his hurt at the time. Close to the mother who had been so cruelly taken from him, and then sent away from the only home he knew. He must have felt as if he wasn’t wanted. No wonder he found it difficult to adapt to life on Mardivino. And she had selfishly refused to understand why.

  But he never talked about it—he never talked about anything close to him.

  And can you really blame him?

  He had been too young to articulate his feelings at the time—he must have just blocked them out to make them bearable. And perhaps the habit had become one which had followed him into adulthood, impossible to break.

  The King was looking at her, but he made no comment on the way she had bitten her lip in sorrow and self-recrimination.

  ‘He never cried, you know,’ he said suddenly. ‘Not once.’

  Feeling that if she heard any more then her heart would break, Lucy stared down at Nicole. A fierce need to make things right filled her with a new kind of determination. She didn’t need the fairytale love-story—for how many people ever got that?—but if she could make her daughter happy, then surely she could make Guido happy, too. But how? Well, she could start by agreeing to move to New York! That was no hardship, really, was it?

  She stared at the King, seeing him begin to wilt a little, and as if summoned by an invisible command the nurse reappeared. Lucy got to her feet. ‘Thank you for seeing me today, your Serene Highness,’ she said quietly.

  ‘It has been my pleasure.’ He pointed to his forehead, and, immensely moved, she bent to kiss it, then held the baby forward for him to do the same to her.

  She was about to move away when his next words halted her.

  ‘Do you ever sing to her?’ he asked.

  Lucy blinked. ‘Occasionally. Why?’

  ‘There is a lullaby, a French lullaby—“Bonne Nuit Cher Enfant”—do you know it?’

  Lucy shook her head.

  ‘Then learn it, and sing it to her some time.’ He smiled conspiratorially. ‘Our little secret.’

  Their eyes met and Lucy realised that he did not have long to live. For why else would have said such an extraordinary thing? Abandoning Court formality to suggest she learnt a lullaby!

  But she had learned so much else during her unconventional conversation with the King, and she was lost in thought as she made her way back from his apartments.

  When she arrived in her own suite of rooms it was to find a message from Guido, telling her that he had unexpectedly had to go to the other side of the island, and he would be back the following day.

  Her heart sank. She had been bursting to tell him her news, and now he wasn’t around to hear it! And it wasn’t the kind of thing that she wanted to tell him over the phone…she wanted to see his face.

  Well, she had waited this long to come to her senses. A little longer wouldn’t hurt her.

  After lunch, she took Nicole for a walk, and happened to see Nico in the Palace gardens. He was wearing shorts and a singlet and was dripping with sweat. He had obviously been out running. Lucy smiled. It was times like this that really emphasised the fact that this was a family home as well as a Palace.

  Well, maybe not for her. Not any more.

  Yet, strangely enough, the idea now gave her no disquiet. She could live here for as long as she wanted to—but what was the point if Guido was unhappy? Inevitably, he would do what he had done once before—start taking more and more frequent trips to New York. Only with a baby she would not find it so easy to follow him…


  ‘Hello, Nico,’ she said.

  ‘Hi!’ he panted, and stopped to peer into the pram. ‘How is she?’

  ‘Gorgeous.’ She looked at him. ‘Nico?’

  ‘Mmm?’ His dark eyes crinkled at the corners.

  ‘Do you know a lullaby called “Bonne Nuit…” something?’

  “‘Bonne Nuit Cher Enfant”?’

  ‘That’s the one!’

  ‘Yeah, I know it.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, I wondered if you…’ This was very important—she didn’t know how, or why—she just knew that it was. ‘Nico, will you teach it to me?’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  DUSK was falling on the Palace by the time Guido returned, and he stretched and yawned as he walked along the long marble corridor leading to their apartments.

  It had been years since he had visited the western side of the island, and he had been impressed to see the result of his brother’s hard work. Nico was slowly helping to build up the infrastructure on Mardivino—to improve the roads and access to more remote parts of the island—but without destroying any of the natural and stunningly beautiful habitat. Indeed, the small fishing village of Lejana was as picturesque as any place he had visited. But maybe he had been viewing it with new eyes…

  For Guido had found himself appreciating the landscape in a way that he had always seemed too busy to do before. That thing about making the most of the little things—taking time to stand and stare. Maybe having Nicole had changed him more than he’d realised. His heart gave a little leap at the thought that he would soon see her again. He glanced at his watch. If Lucy hadn’t already put her to bed.

  Briefly, his eyes closed as he thought of Lucy, and the longing and frustration gnawed away at him. Sometimes discoveries took an awful long time to make, and he knew now that he had not been fair to her—in so many ways.

  Quietly, he opened the door to their suite, and then a sound stopped him in his tracks. He froze as he heard a voice singing a tune so familiar that it twisted his heart around.

  Lucy’s voice.

  The words wafted through the still, early-evening air.

  ‘Bonne nuit cher enfant…’

  Guido closed his eyes.

  ‘Quand tu dors dans mes bras…’

  He stood motionless as a statue until the final lilting strains.

  ‘Comme un ange dans mes bras.’

  He did not feel the tears which lay damp on his face. He moved like a man in a dream—maybe he was—until he opened the door to the nursery and saw them. Mother with child. Rocking gently in the big old chair which had seen generations of Royal babies nursed.

  And there it was—his past, his present and his future, all merged into the tableau silhouetted by the window.

  Lucy looked up and her lips parted in disbelief. ‘Guido?’ she whispered, as if she had seen a ghost—and maybe she had—for this was her husband as she had never seen him before.

  ‘I didn’t know you knew that song,’ he said unsteadily.

  ‘Do you?’ It was one of those unnecessary questions, but it needed to be asked. It was a floodgate question.

  He nodded. ‘Of course I do. My mother used to sing it.’

  So! With swift care she deposited Nicole in her crib and went to him, brushing away his tears with gentle fingertips. Then she wrapped her arms tightly around him with not a thought other than to comfort him, not caring if he wanted this from her or not—because right then he needed it. They sometimes said that it took a weak man to cry, but Lucy knew that was wrong.

  For strong men could cry, too.

  ‘Oh, my darling,’ she said softly. ‘My darling, darling Guido—what is wrong? Tell me.’

  But a lifetime of not talking about things didn’t just vanish in an instant, and Lucy knew that she had to help him—show him the way forward—let him know that a life lived to the full in all the ways that mattered was a better life for them all.

  She drew a deep breath for courage, praying that in his pain he wouldn’t push her away. ‘You never grieved for your mother,’ she said slowly, and saw him flinch. ‘You never even cried. Your father sent you away and you felt you weren’t wanted any more. You were a lost soul in America, and when you came back it didn’t feel like home. Nowhere did, nor ever has.’

  ‘Who told you this?’

  ‘Your father gave me the bare outline—the rest of it I filled in myself. Some of it I had already guessed. That’s why he told me to learn the lullaby and sing it to Nicole—’

  ‘My father told you to do that?’ he demanded incredulously.

  Lucy nodded. ‘He must have known that sooner or later you would hear me singing it.’

  He was dazed, like a man who had been knocked out and was slowly coming round again. ‘That is a remarkably perceptive thing for him to have done,’ he said, still on a disbelieving note.

  ‘I think he is a perceptive man,’ she said. ‘But as King he rarely shows it quite so openly. Or maybe his position doesn’t allow him to.’ And then she realised that perhaps there were other reasons why the King had enlightened her. That she had her own part to play in the healing process.

  ‘Don’t be hard on him for what happened, Guido,’ she said softly. ‘He acted with the best possible motives. He was missing your mother and having to help the people of Mardivino to adjust. Maybe he knew that there was no time to give to a five-year-old boy who was grieving. But he loves you,’ she finished. ‘He loves you very much.’

  She prayed again, for the courage and the strength to say what she knew she had to without prejudice. Not because she wanted anything back from him—well, she did—but because Guido needed to hear this.

  ‘As I do,’ she said softly, and she looked up at him, her voice and her eyes very clear and very steady. ‘As I do.’

  Guido heard the deep love in her voice, unvarnished by any kind of vanity, and he gave a small cry, as if he had been wounded. A sweet, answering emotion began to lick warmth into his cold heart. He tightened his arms to enfold her closer and thought what a fool he had been. He buried his face in the sweet nectar of her hair, and for the first time in his life allowed his feelings to wash over him.

  They bathed him with a bitter pain and regret until he thought he could bear it no longer, and then, inexorably, the tide turned and they gave way to a blessed kind of peace and hope. He raised his head and looked down at her.

  ‘Will you forgive me, cara?’ he said shakily.

  ‘Why?’ Her eyes widened. ‘What have you done?’

  Now he could read her own fears. Dio, but he had never stopped to think about how she might really be feeling herself, deep down. Was that because he had not cared? Or had not dared?

  He touched her lips with his own. ‘Not enough,’ he said gently. ‘Not nearly enough.’

  ‘Guido, you’re talking in riddles.’

  ‘Then that does not bode well for the future, cara mia,’ he responded. ‘Since I have just come to my senses!’

  ‘Guido! Please! What is it?’

  ‘I want you to listen to me now, and hear me out. Do you think you can do that?’

  She closed her eyes, praying that he hadn’t decided he couldn’t go on…not before she had had a chance to tell him that she was prepared to change. If he didn’t want love then she would deal with it—because she wanted to work at her marriage. To do anything in her power to make it better. Weren’t some Royal marriages based on that kind of understanding anyway? All she knew was that she didn’t want to lose him.

  ‘I have been a selfish, stupid fool, Lucy,’ he said bitterly. ‘I have just taken and taken—without even considering what it is that you might want. Without bothering to give anything back.’

  ‘Guido, I—’

  ‘Weren’t you going to hear me out?’ he queried gravely.

  She nodded, because now she doubted whether any words would come, for her throat was knotted by the terror which was beating hotly through her veins.

  ‘It was insensitive a
nd thoughtless of me to expect you to live in New York.’

  She wanted to say But… Except that she had promised to listen…

  ‘Yesterday I went to visit Lejana—do you know where it is?’

  ‘Isn’t it on the coast by the Western Isles?’

  A smile of satisfaction curved his lips. ‘You know your Mardivinian geography,’ he approved.

  ‘Well, our daughter will need to—it’s her heritage!’ she retorted, and his smile grew wider. ‘What about it?’

  ‘There is a big plot there that we could build a house on.’ He saw her frown. ‘But if you want to stay in Solajoya, then you can—any damned part you choose!’ He then made what was, for him, the ultimate sacrifice. ‘We can even carry on living at the Palace if that’s what you want.’

  ‘But I don’t!’

  He narrowed his eyes. ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘I don’t want to live on Mardivino—I want to live in New York!’

  Now he was confused. ‘You do?’

  ‘Yes!’

  He frowned. ‘So what’s changed your mind?’

  ‘I want to make our marriage work, Guido. You won’t be happy living here, and if you’re not happy then I won’t be either—and everyone knows that women are much better at adapting than men.’ She drew a badly needed breath. ‘So I will.’

  He began to laugh, and once he had started he couldn’t stop—but then he had never laughed with quite such uninhibited joy before. It was like balm to his soul, music to an ear starved of sound.

  Lucy stared at him as if he had taken leave of his senses. ‘Shh! You’ll wake Nicci!’

  He pressed his lips together like a schoolboy trying not to giggle in church. ‘Let’s get this straight, Lucy. You want to live in New York because I do—and I want to live on Mardivino because you do?’

  ‘Um…well, yes, I suppose so. Oh, Guido—this is terrible—it’s like Catch 22! What are we going to do?’

  ‘I don’t think we need to decide right this minute, do you? I think that there are rather more important things to do.’ Like finding the right words to convince her that he didn’t care where the hell he was, just as long as she would be by his side. He felt like a blind man who had just stumbled into the light. And that, he knew, was the restorative power of love.