Giselle's Choice

by Penny Jordan

  ‘We’ve got to get back to London asap. There’s been an accident. The full details aren’t known yet, but it seems that Aldo and Natasha and her father have been the victims of an assassination attempt by one of Natasha’s father’s business rivals. There was a bomb in the car in which they were all traveling. Aldo had told me that they were going to England to look at a property Natasha’s father wanted to buy there—a big country estate. Natasha and her father are dead, but Aldo is still alive. He’s in hospital in Bristol. Moira’s arranged for us to be picked up here by helicopter and taken to Barbados, where there’ll be a private jet waiting for us. The helicopter should be here within the hour.’

  Horrified, Giselle was already out of bed, going to Saul to hold him tightly as she told him, ‘I’m so sorry— I’ll get ready. It won’t take me long.’

  She knew how fond he was of his cousin, even though they lived such vastly different lives, and as she dressed and packed she prayed that Aldo would be all right. Poor Aldo. He was the most gentle and kind of men, and deserved a far more appreciative wife than Natasha. Giselle shivered, as she remembered what Saul had said. Aldo no longer had a wife. Natasha was dead.

  She and Saul had just finished packing their cases when they heard the sound of a helicopter arriving. One of the golf-type buggies the complex supplied for its visitors to get around on was already waiting outside their villa. The breakfast they had been served when Saul had rung Reception to tell them that they were leaving remained untouched apart from the cup of coffee Giselle had poured for Saul—black and strong, his weakness and only addiction apart from her, as he was fond of saying.

  During the flights from the complex to Barbados, and from there to Heathrow and then on again by helicopter to the hospital in Bristol—the nearest specialist hospital to the scene of the accident—Saul talked about his cousin and Giselle listened. She had met Aldo, of course. Giselle and Saul had first become lovers during a trip to Arezzio when she had accompanied Saul there as an architect seconded to his company by the practice he had been employing with regard to a new hotel complex.

  Aldo was nothing like Saul. Where Saul was ruthlessly masculine and charismatically sexy, Aldo was self-effacing, an aesthete and a dreamer. Natasha, Aldo’s Russian wife, had tried to convince Giselle that the reason Saul had sworn never to have children was because he resented the fact that his child could never inherit the role of Grand Duke of Arezzio. Saul, though, had made it plain that his reasons for wanting to remain childfree were based on his own childhood and the fact that his parents had been absent from it and from him, nothing else, and Giselle had seen that he was speaking the truth. Aldo loved the quiet backwater that was his small country, and had been grateful for the help that Saul had given him with its finances. A small price to pay, Saul had told Giselle, for the freedom he had to live his life the way he wished to live it because his father had been the younger and not the elder brother.

  Giselle might not have liked Natasha but she would never have wished her dead—and especially not in such a dreadful manner.

  The drips of information relayed to Saul whilst they travelled had told them only that because Aldo had been sitting in the front passenger seat of the chauffeur-driven car he had been spared the worst of the blast, but Natasha and her father had died at the scene of the accident.

  ‘Natasha’s father’s business methods were murky, to say the very least,’ Saul told Giselle. ‘It’s very clear that his deals have made him enemies, and many powerful people do not approve of what he’s done whilst accumulating his fortune. And it’s my fault that Aldo met Natasha.’

  ‘Aldo married Natasha of his own free will,’ said Giselle, trying to comfort him, reaching for his hand as their helicopter put down in a cleared area close to the hospital.

  ‘And now she’s dead. Aldo will be devastated. He adored her.’

  A senior policeman was waiting to escort them to the hospital, answering Saul’s anxious question about his cousin with a grim, ‘He’s alive, but badly injured. He’s been asking for you.’

  Saul nodded his head. ‘And the incident?’

  ‘We haven’t spoken to him about it as yet. The fact that the car was to some extent bullet-proof tells us something about Mr Petranovachov’s lifestyle and his feelings about his personal safety—bullet-proof but unfortunately not bomb-proof.’

  They had reached the hospital entrance now, and were quickly and discreetly whisked down corridors and eventually into an antiseptically clean and sparsely furnished waiting room adjacent to the private part of the hospital, where the Chief Inspector handed them over to a dark-suited consultant, accompanied by what Giselle guessed must be a senior-ranking nurse.

  ‘My cousin?’ Saul asked again.

  ‘Conscious and eager to see you. But I should warn you that his injuries are extremely severe.’

  Giselle looked anxiously at Saul, and said, ‘If you want me to come with you…’

  Saul shook his head. ‘No. You stay here.’

  ‘I’ll have a hot drink sent in for you,’ the consultant told Giselle, before turning to Saul. ‘Staff Nurse Peters here will show you to your cousin’s room. I’m afraid I can’t allow you to have more than a few minutes with him. We’ve patched him up temporarily, but we need to sedate and stabilise him before we can operate and tidy up the mess made by the bomb.’

  The mess made by the bomb. What exactly did that mean? Giselle worried once she was on her own. She hadn’t liked Natasha, but her violent death had reawakened her own memories of the violent deaths of her mother and her baby brother, whom she had witnessed being hit by a lorry. For years she had carried the guilt of being alive when they had died, after sharp words from her mother had resulted in her holding back when she had started to cross the road with the pram. That holding back had saved her life—and filled it with guilt. Only Saul’s love had enabled her to come to terms with the trauma of the accident.

  Poor Natasha. No matter how selfish and unpleasant she had been, she had not deserved such a cruel fate.

  In the hospital room Saul looked down at his cousin, wired up to machines that clicked and whirred, his head bandaged and his body still beneath the sheets.

  ‘He’s lost both legs,’ the nurse had told Saul before she opened the door to the room, ‘and there’s some damage to his internal organs.’

  ‘Is he…? Will he survive?’ Saul had asked her.

  ‘We shall do our best to ensure that he does,’ she had answered crisply, but Saul had seen the truth and its reality in her eyes.

  His vision blurred as he looked at Aldo. His cousin had always been so accommodating, so gentle and good.

  ‘You’re here. Knew you’d come. Been waiting.’

  The words, though perfectly audible, were dragged out and slow. Aldo lifted his hand, and Saul took it between his own as he sat down next to the bed. Aldo’s flesh felt cold and dry. The word lifeless sprang into Saul’s mind but he pushed it away.

  ‘Want you to promise me something.’

  Saul gritted his teeth. If Aldo was going to ask him to look after Natasha in the event of his death then he was going to nod his head and agree, and not tell him that she was dead. Aldo adored his wife, even though in Saul’s mind she was not worthy of that love.

  ‘Anything,’ he told Aldo, and meant it.

  ‘Want you to promise that you will look after our country and its people for me, Saul. Want you to take my place as its ruler. Want you to promise that you will secure its future with an heir. Can’t break the family chain. Duty must come first…’

  Saul closed his eyes. Ruling the country was the last thing he wanted, and he had always felt confident that he would never have to do so. Aldo was younger than him, after all, and married. He had assumed that Aldo and Natasha would produce children to succeed to the title.

  And as for Saul himself producing an heir… That was the last thing he wanted to do. He did not want children and neither did Giselle. For both of them what they had experienced during
their own childhoods had left them determined not to have children of their own. That shared decision had forged a very strong bond between them—a bond that was all the stronger because they knew that other people would find it hard to understand. Only with one another had they been able to talk about the pain of their childhoods and the vulnerabilities that pain still caused them.

  How could he discuss all of that now, though, when his cousin was dying and with his final breath asking him for his help—and his promise?

  What was he to do? Refuse Aldo’s dying plea?

  Aldo had touched a nerve with his use of the word duty. Their family had ruled Arezzio in an unbroken line that went back over countless generations, but more important than that he owed a duty of care to this man lying here—his cousin, his flesh, his blood, who but for him would never have met Natasha. It was his fault that Aldo was lying here, dying in front of his eyes—because that was what was happening.

  ‘Promise me. Promise me, Saul.’ Aldo’s voice strengthened, his hand tightening on Saul’s as he tried to raise himself up.

  ‘Waited for you to come. Can’t go until you give me your promise. Must do my duty. Even though…’ A grimace gripped his mouth. ‘Hurts like hell.’ Tears welled up in his eyes. ‘Promise me, Saul.’

  Saul hesitated. He could and would accept that it was his duty to provide their country with a strong leader, committed to doing his best for his people. He could give Aldo his promise that he would be that leader. When it came to the matter of providing an heir, though, Saul was a committed democrat who believed in elected rule. If he were to step into Aldo’s shoes that would be the direction in which he took the country—leading it by example away from the rule of protective paternalism provided by centuries of his ancestors into the maturity of democracy. And with that democracy there would be no need for him to provide an heir.

  Aldo knew his feelings on the subject of ancient privilege. But he was still asking him for a deathbed promise.

  Saul looked at his cousin. He loved him dearly. What mattered most here? Being true to his beliefs and stating them? Or easing the passing of his cousin in the knowledge that in reality, no matter what Aldo was asking now, he knew what Saul’s principles and beliefs were? Saul closed his eyes. He had never longed more to have Giselle at his side, with wise counsel and comfort to offer him. But she wasn’t here, and he must make his decision alone.

  ‘I promise,’ he told Aldo. ‘I promise that I will do my very best for our country and its people, Aldo.’

  ‘Knew I could rely on you.’ The grimace softened, to be replaced by something that was almost a smile.

  ‘Natasha?’ Aldo asked, speaking the word so slowly and painfully that it tore at Saul’s heart. ‘Already gone?’

  Saul bowed his head.

  ‘Thought so. Nothing to keep me here now.’ Aldo closed his eyes, his breathing so calm and steady that initially Saul thought with a surge of hope that he might survive. But then he drew in a ragged breath and opened his eyes, fixing his gaze on Saul as he exhaled and then said quite clearly, in a wondering voice of delight and welcome, ‘Natasha.’

  Saul didn’t need the flat line of the machine to tell him that Aldo had gone. He could feel it in the flaccid touch of his hand, feel it as clearly as though he had actually seen his spirit leave his body.

  In the waiting room Giselle stood up when the door opened and Saul came in, knowing instantly what had happened, and going to Saul to take him in her arms and hold him tightly.

  Neither of them spoke very much on the journey back to London City Airport and from there to their town-house in London’s luxurious and expensive Chelsea.

  Once they were inside their house, an eighteenth-century mansion, Saul dropped the guard he had been maintaining whilst they had been in public and paced the floor of their elegant drawing room, his eyes red-rimmed with grief and shock.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Giselle told him, going to him and placing her hand on his arm, bringing a halt to his pacing. ‘I know how much Aldo meant to you.’

  ‘He was younger than me—my younger cousin—but more like a brother than a cousin to me in many ways. Especially after our parents died and we were one another’s only blood relatives. I should have protected him better, Giselle.’

  ‘How could you have?’

  ‘I knew what Natasha’s father was. I should have—’

  ‘What? Forbidden Aldo from ever sharing a car with his father-in-law? You couldn’t know that Natasha’s father would be assassinated.’ Giselle’s voice softened. ‘I do understand how you feel, though.’ Of course she did. She had suffered dreadfully through the guilt and sense of responsibility she had felt after the deaths of her mother and baby brother. ‘But you are not to blame, Saul—just like I wasn’t to blame for what happened with my family.’

  Saul placed his hand over Giselle’s where it rested on his arm.

  No one would be able to understand how he felt better than Giselle. He knew that. But the situation with Aldo was very different from her situation. She had been a six-year-old child. He was a man, and he had always known how vulnerable his gentle cousin was—to Natasha and all the pain he would suffer through loving her. But not this—not his death as an accident, a nothing, the fallout from the actions of someone whose target was not Aldo himself.

  ‘This should never have happened. Aldo had so much to give—especially to his country and its people.’

  ‘He wanted greater democracy for them,’ Giselle reminded Saul gently, not wanting to say outright at such a sensitive time that Aldo’s death had opened the door to the country taking charge of its own future, electing a government rather than being ruled by a member of its royal family. Talking about the future of the country without Aldo was bound to be painful for Saul.

  ‘I’m going to have to go to Russia—and the sooner the better,’ Saul told her abruptly, and explained when she frowned, ‘Distasteful though it is to have to speak of such matters, the fact remains that Aldo survived both Natasha and her father. Since the rule of law when there is more than one death in a family at the same time is that the youngest member of that family is deemed to have survived the longest, it means that by that Natasha, as her father’s only child, will have inherited his assets at the moment of their deaths. And that in turn means that Aldo, as Natasha’s husband, will have inherited those assets from her by virtue of the fact that he survived her.’

  ‘Does that mean that as Aldo’s only living relative those assets will now pass to you?’ Giselle asked. ‘I don’t like the thought of that, Saul. Not just because of the circumstances of Aldo’s death, and the fact that he has died so young. It’s the nature of the assets, the way they were accumulated. I feel that they are…’

  ‘Tainted?’ Saul suggested, and Giselle nodded her head. ‘I share your feelings, and certainly the last thing I want or intend to allow to happen is for me to have any personal benefit from that money. However, I have a duty to Aldo and to the country—to do what is right for them. It was thanks to Ivan Petranovachov’s bad advice that Aldo invested so heavily and unwisely in ventures that led to him losing a great deal of money. I know that I helped him out by clearing his personal debts, but the country itself is still heavily burdened with loans that Aldo took out, intending to use the money for the benefit of his people. Unfortunately most of that money ended up in schemes that benefited those who proposed them—many of them business associates of Natasha’s father.’

  Giselle nodded. None of this was new to her. She was well aware of how angry Saul had been when Natasha had announced so smugly just after Christmas, when they had visited them, that she had insisted on Aldo ignoring Saul’s advice and turning to her own father instead. Aldo, sweet-natured though he had been, had not had a very good head for business.

  ‘What I plan to do first of all is speak to Natasha’s father’s Russian partners and business associates and find out exactly what the situation is. Then I’ll set about selling off the assets and using that money to cl
ear Arezzio’s outstanding debts brought about by Aldo’s ill-advised investment of the country’s money in Ivan Petranovachov’s business enterprises. Anything that is left I intend to give to charity. Not our own charity. I don’t want that tainted by money wrung out of businesses that rely on cheap enforced labour—which is what I suspect many of Ivan Petranovachov’s businesses do. I shall speak to someone in authority at the Russian Embassy and ask them to recommend suitable recipients for the money.’

  ‘I think that’s an excellent idea,’ Giselle approved. ‘When will we need to leave for Russia?’

  Saul shook his head. ‘I don’t want you to come with me, Giselle.’

  She tried to hide how much his statement upset her, but it was impossible for her to conceal her feelings. ‘We always try to travel together, and especially on an occasion like this, I want to be with you.’

  To give him her support. Saul knew that was what she meant.

  ‘I know,’ he agreed, ‘and believe me there is nothing I want more than to have you with me, supporting me.’ He gave her a tender smile. ‘We work so well together. It’s thanks to you that we founded our orphanage charity, and that, as you know, has done so much to help me lay the anger and negativity I felt towards my mother to rest. But I doubt I’ll be well received by some of Ivan Petranovachov’s business colleagues. I don’t want you being subjected to any unpleasantness—or danger.’

  Giselle’s heart thudded against her breastbone. ‘And I don’t want you to be in danger.’

  ‘I shall be very careful,’ he assured her. ‘But it will be easier for me to do what has to be done if I don’t have to worry about your safety. I won’t be gone long. Three or four days at the most.’

  Giselle exhaled unhappily. What Saul was saying made sense, but they’d only just spent some time apart. However, she didn’t want to add to the burdens that Saul was already carrying at such a tragic and unhappy time by making a fuss and having him worry about her, as well as dealing with the complications caused by Aldo’s death.