He could not imagine that he had ever found another woman beautiful. She was everything to him. With every moment that she lay still and silent in that bed, he felt more hollow and lost. Everyone knew he was suffering, but he was doing his best to mask his raw emotions. His adorable little nieces and nephews cheered him somewhat, even as they broke his heart for fear over the welfare of his own child.
“Son,” his father murmured, looking over at him as they sat on a bench under a tree.
Rafe glanced questioningly at him, his throat dry, his eyes red and raw.
“I have something to say to you.”
“Yes, sir?”
“I’ve been doing some thinking. With all of the spite and hatred from Orlando, I think it’s important that I tell you so you know…” His voice trailed off. A troubled frown lined his weathered brow as the king stared forward, then tentatively began, “I want to say that maybe I was too hard on you all these years. You were a good lad and you’re a good man. I want to tell you I’m…proud of you. I…really do…love you, son. That’s all,” he mumbled.
Rafe stared at the ground with stinging eyes.
His father laid a firm hand on his shoulder.
He swallowed hard and furrowed his brow. “Thank you, sir.”
When the king furrowed his brow and lowered his head in a pose just like Rafe’s, he was struck by how much alike they truly were.
“She’s going to be all right, Rafe.”
For a moment, he thought he was going to completely fall apart. “Yes, sir.” He lifted his chin, his mouth pursed.
Just then, his sister came out onto the veranda and waved hurriedly at them from across the grass. “Rafe! You’d better come quick!”
He leaped to his feet and started forward in pure dread, his heart instantly racing. “What’s wrong?”
Serafina beamed a radiant smile at him. “She’s awake!”
His eyes widened.
His fatigue falling away like a cloak from his shoulders, he ran toward the house. He raced inside and bounded up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
Dani was sitting up in bed when the door burst open and Rafael stood framed in the doorway, his face flushed, his golden hair tousled. He stared at her for a heartbeat.
Love filled her gaze at the sight of him.
Suddenly in motion, he strode across the bedroom to her and for a moment just stood beside her bed, gazing at her with welling green-gold eyes. He reached down and took her hand in his.
Slowly, he sank to his knees beside her bed, holding her hand fervently to his lips. His long-lashed eyes closed.
“Rafael,” she whispered.
He pressed her palm to his cheek and lifted his gold-tipped lashes, tears on the ends of them. “God, I missed you,” he said in a shaky voice.
She held out her arms to him. He embraced her carefully around her waist, laying his golden head on her chest. She hugged him around his neck and rested her cheek atop his hair. They held each other in trembling silence, flooded with gratitude and pain and joy at their reunion.
“I thought I’d lost you, Dani,” he choked out abruptly.
“You didn’t,” she whispered, pouring her love out on him in every caress. “You didn’t lose either of us.”
His big, hard body shaking, he bent his head and kissed her belly through the white muslin of her night rail. Then he closed his eyes and laid his head on her lap.
She petted his hair back from his feverish skin, loving every line of his tanned, angular face. After a few moments, he lifted his head and stared at her, his soul bared in his eyes.
For a silver-tongued charmer, he was mute with emotion, but his tempestuous eyes said it all.
“I know, sweet. I love you, too,” she whispered.
He closed his eyes with a look of pain and lowered his chin, moving his head against her caress. “You must never, ever leave me, Daniela,” he said in a taut, constricted voice. “I can’t live without you. You are my heart.”
“I never will. Come to me, beloved,” she murmured, drawing him to her.
He climbed up off his knees and lay down on the bed beside her, gathering her protectively in his arms.
They lay there, staring at each other and caressing. He kissed her occasionally on her forehead, her eyelids, her hair.
She nestled down against his chest with a sigh, feeling wonderfully safe and cherished, knowing at last she was exactly where she belonged. He sought her hand and linked his fingers through hers, and as she listened to the slow, powerful song of his heart, like the sea’s rhythmic tide laving Ascencion’s shores, the vibrant afternoon light caught the golden glory of his royal signet ring and made it shine like the blaze of a thousand suns.
EPILOGUE
April 1815
Church bells clanged and bonged and pealed wildly throughout Ascencion on the day the newborn prince was christened. In the city and the newly planted fields and all across the land, no work was to be done, for King Lazar had declared it a day for feasting and song.
The Gabbiano brothers stood together in the cheering mob, staring up in still rather amazed silence at the ornate balcony off the palace where the entire royal clan was positioned behind Dani and Prince Rafael. The proud new parents stood together with beaming smiles, letting the world have a look at the tiny future king.
His Royal Highness, Prince Amador di Fiore, was a little over two weeks old. It was impossible to make out his tiny face from such a distance, but Alvi had read to them earlier from the gazettes that the babe had his mother’s aqua eyes and a little downy tuft of his father’s golden hair.
The former gang of gallant highwaymen stood around with a collective sigh. They had been pardoned by the queen and welcomed back to the land of their birth.
Brava, bella, Mateo thought, gazing at his childhood friend with a slight smile on his tanned face. Dani looked poised, regal, and beautiful holding her son, and it was obvious that the big, elegant man by her side adored her.
“Look, there’s Gianni!” Rocco said suddenly, pointing toward the balcony where their youngest, freckled brother could be seen with Prince Leo, both boys grinning, their arms slung waggishly around each other’s shoulders.
Dani had arranged for the roguish little peasant boy to be educated with Prince Leo and had him moved into the palace as Leo’s companion. Prince and pauper had become instantly inseparable.
Mateo laughed at his brother’s antics, then felt a soft hip bump his own. He glanced down at his new bride and his heart clenched, as usual, to see her shy smile and the slowly growing trust behind her wary dark eyes.
“Do you think they’re really as happy as they look?” Carmen asked skeptically, folding her arms over her chest.
Mateo slipped his arm around her shoulders in habitual protectiveness and pulled her close gently, gently. She was so tough and yet so fragile, so young for the harsh life she had known. Fate had put him in her path so he could rescue her, he knew. He had always wanted to be someone’s knight in shining armor.
“Yes, my love,” he murmured as she began blushing at his slight doting smile, “but not half so happy as we.”
She scoffed, but joy sparkled in her dark eyes. She took his hand and began tugging him toward the square, where countless food stalls filled the springtime air with the cooking aromas of good things to eat. “Come on, I’m hungry.”
“Me, too,” said his large brother, Rocco.
Mateo stole a final glance over his shoulder toward the balcony at the three generations of kings—the Rock of Ascencion, the newborn child, and the crown prince in the prime of his manhood. Rafael looked proud enough to burst. Dani glanced up at him with a calm, settled smile of quiet love, her babe resting snugly in her arms, then she turned and the royals began to go back inside their palace.
He supposed it took a hellion to tame a rake—and a rake to charm a hellion.
Goodbye, Dan, he thought, his eyes misting briefly with pride in the redheaded tomboy he had once known.
&n
bsp; Then Carmen tugged him impatiently toward the square and he turned away, leaving them with a private smile to their happiness.
HISTORICAL NOTE
As a longtime fan of historical romances set in Regency England, the inspiration for this story came from my interest in the wild, pleasure-hunting life of “Prinny,” England’s George IV.
I have often wondered how differently history might have turned out if the Prince Regent had managed to find a wife who was able to bring out his potential, in place of what fate handed him—a dismal, scandal-ridden, forced marriage to the equally unfortunate Princess Caroline of Brunswick. The couple despised each other.
If you are interested in learning more about “the first gentleman of Europe,” I would highly recommend The Prince of Pleasure and His Regency, 1811–1820 by J. B. Priestly (Heinemann, 1969).
Dani’s role in the story came from a quite different source. Would you believe that history truly tells the tale of a female stagecoach robber?
For this facet of my story I must credit and recommend the excellent Wild Women by Autumn Stephens (Conari Press, 1992).
In this outrageous, wallop-packing little volume, subtitled “Crusaders, Curmudgeons, and Completely Corsetless Ladies in the Otherwise Virtuous Victorian Era,” Stephens tells the true story of Pearl Hart, born 1871, who donned trousers, picked up a rifle, and held up stagecoaches to pay for the medical care of her ailing mother. When the “famous lady highwayman” was caught, however, she was sentenced to five years in an all-male prison, where, according to Stephens, the warden’s wife was afraid Pearl would corrupt the morals of the other prisoners!
So, now our tale has come to a close. Thanks for reading, and I hope you have enjoyed Rafe’s story and the Ascencion Trilogy as much as I have loved writing it.
Best wishes,
Gaelen
By Gaelen Foley
Published by The Random House Publishing Group:
THE PIRATE PRINCE
PRINCESS
PRINCE CHARMING
THE DUKE
LORD OF FIRE
LORD OF ICE
LADY OF DESIRE
DEVIL TAKES A BRIDE
ONE NIGHT OF SIN
“You’re a tough one, Daniela Chiaramonte. God knows you’ll make one hell of a queen.”
“What are you talking about?” she rasped, her face searing red.
“Did I forget to mention? You are going to marry me. That is your sentence….”
“Are you out of your mind?” she nearly shouted.
He smiled—charmingly.
“I will not marry you! No! No!” she said again.
“Of course you will, my dear. Come, Daniela—here I am, down on bended knee for you. I lay my kingdom at your feet.” His tone was jaunty, his eyes twinkling.
“Don’t you dare try to charm me, Rafael di Fiore!” Wretched with nausea and fury and disbelief, she glared at him, her hair hanging lankly in her face. She could not believe a woman could look such a wreck and receive a marriage proposal from the catch of the century. “First you shoot me! Then you have me dragged to you so you can seduce me! What kind of perverse game are you playing with me now?”
If you enjoyed PRINCE CHARMING,
don’t miss the first two books in Gaelen Foley’s Ascension trilogy:
THE PIRATE PRINCE
and
PRINCESS!
THE PIRATE PRINCE
by Gaelen Foley
Taken captive by a fearsome and infuriating pirate captain come to plunder her island home of Ascension, the beautiful Allegra Monteverdi struggles to deny her growing passion for her intriguing captor. Lazar di Fiore is a rogue with no honor and has nothing in common with the man of her dreams—the honorable and courageous crown prince of Ascension, who is presumed murdered with the rest of the royal family by treacherous enemies of the throne.
But Allegra has badly misjudged Lazar, a man with a tragic past and demons that give him no peace. He harbors a secret that could win him Allegra’s love and restore freedom and prosperity to Ascension, if his sworn enemies do not destroy him first. And the greatest battle of all must be fought within Lazar’s own heart as Allegra tries to prove that, prince or pirate, he is truly the man that she has always dreamed of.
Published by The Random House Publishing Group.
Available wherever books are sold.
PRINCESS
by Gaelen Foley
Darius Santiago is the king’s most trusted man, a master spy and assassin. He is handsome, charming, and ruthless, and he has one weakness—the stunning Princess Serafina. Serafina has worshiped Darius from afar her whole life, knowing that deep in the reaches of her soul, she belongs to him. Unable to suppress their desire any longer, they are swept into a daring dance of passion until a deadly enemy threatens to destroy their love.
Published by The Random House Publishing Group.
Available at bookstores everywhere.
Lance St. Leger is defying his destiny. The eldest son and heir to Castle Leger, he has returned from the army determined to continue his role as rakehell and black sheep. He is plagued by an infernal restlessness that cannot be appeased, perhaps because the St. Leger legacy of strange powers is most pronounced in Lance’s own dubious gift. He calls it night drifting—his ability to separate his body from his soul, to spirit into the night while flesh and bone remain behind. And it is on one wild night’s mad search for a magnificent stolen sword—the icon of the St. Leger power—that he finds her….
THE NIGHT DRIFTER
Rosalind, a young, sheltered widow with a passion for the Arthurian legend, mistakes Lance’s “drifting” soul for the ghost of Sir Lancelot. Seeing that she is in need of a champion, the St. Leger rogue assumes the role of the tragic knight, not knowing that this woman is his destiny, his perfect mate.
by Susan Carroll
But deep down in her heart, Rosalind is all too aware she is a mortal woman with very real desires that only a man of flesh and blood can fulfill—a man like Lance St. Leger. As a murderous enemy challenges the St. Leger power, Rosalind must tempt magic herself to save her beloved from the cold depths of eternal damnation.
Published by The Random House Publishing Group.
Available in bookstores everywhere.
An Ivy Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 2000 by Gaelen Foley
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ivy Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Ivy Books and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.ballantinebooks.com
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-91741
eISBN-13: 978-0-345-49412-2
eISBN-10: 0-345-49412-1
v1.0
Gaelen Foley Page 37
