She opened her eyes, looking around her. The bedroom was large, and from what she could tell the house was some kind of small, Regency period country house. Presumably sufficiently remote for the press not to find Ben. How long would they need to stay here? she wondered anxiously. The sooner the story broke, the better—because then the fuss would die down and she and Ben could go home.
She frowned. Would Ben be upset that this mysteriously arrived uncle had simply disappeared again? She would far rather he had not known who he was. Her frown etched deeper. Why had he told Ben? It seemed a pointless thing to do. The news story would just be a nine-day wonder, and, although she could understand why the Ceraldi family would want to tuck Ben out of sight while it was going on, there was no need to have told Ben anything.
She’d have to tell Ben that even though Prince Enrico was his uncle, he lived abroad, and that was why he wouldn’t see him again.
Even so, it seemed cruel to have told him in the first place. Ben had asked about his father sometimes, and all Lizzy had been able to do was say that it had been someone who had loved the mummy in whose tummy he had grown, but that that mummy had been too ill to say who his daddy was.
For the hundredth time since the bombshell about Maria’s lover had fallen, Lizzy felt disbelief wash through her. And a terrible chill. With all the horror of having to rush out to France, to the hospital her mortally injured sister had been taken to, the news that the pile-up had claimed the life of the youngest prince of San Lucenzo had simply passed her by. She had made no connection—how could she have?
And yet he had been Ben’s father. Maria had had an affair with Prince Paolo of San Lucenzo. And nobody had known. No one at all.
It was extraordinary, unbelievable. But it was true.
I have to accept it. I have to come to terms with it.
She stared bleakly out over the room. Deliberately, she forced herself to think instead of feel.
It makes no difference. Once all the fuss in the news has died down, we can just go back home. Everything will be the same again. I just have to wait it out, that’s all.
Beneath her hand, she could feel Ben start to stir and wake. A rush of emotion went through her.
Nothing would hurt Ben. Nothing. She would keep him safe always. Nothing on this earth would ever come between her and the son she adored with all her heart. Ever.
CHAPTER THREE
‘GOOD morning.’
Rico walked into the drawing room. Ben was sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, occupied with a pile of brightly coloured building blocks. His aunt was beside him. He nodded brief acknowledgement of her, then turned his attention to Ben.
‘What are you making?’ he asked his nephew.
‘The tallest tower in the world.’ Ben announced. ‘Come and see.’
Rico did not need an invitation. As his eyes had lit on his nephew, his heart had squeezed. Memories flooded back in. He could remember Paolo being that age.
A shadow fleetingly crossed his eyes. Paolo had been different from Luca and himself. As his adult self, he knew why. Luca had been born the heir. The firstborn Prince, the Crown Prince, the heir apparent, destined to rule San Lucenzo just as their father, Prince Eduardo, had been destined to inherit the throne from his own father a generation earlier. For eight hundred years the Ceraldis had ruled the tiny principality, which had escaped conquest by any of the other Italian states, or even the invading foreign powers that had plagued the Italian peninsula throughout history. Generation after generation of reigning princes had kept San Lucenzo independent—even in this age of European union the principality was still a sovereign state. Some saw it as a time-warped historical anomaly, others merely as a tax haven and a luxury playground for the very rich. But to his father and his older brother it was their inheritance, their destiny.
And it was an inheritance that would always need protection. Not, these days, against foreign powers, or any territorial interests of the Italian state—relations with Italy were excellent. What made San Lucenzo safe was continuity. The continuity of its ruling family. In many ways the principality was the personal fiefdom of the Ceraldis, and yet it was because of that that it retained its independence. Rico accepted that. Without the Ceraldis it would surely have been merged into Italy, just as all the earlier duchies and city states and papal territories had been during the great Risorgimento of the nineteenth century, that had freed Italy from foreign oppression, and united it as a nation.
The Ceraldis were essential to San Lucenzo, and for that reason, it was essential that every reigning prince had an assured heir apparent.
And—Rico’s mouth tightened—that the heir apparent had a back up in case of emergency.
The traditional ‘heir and a spare’—with himself as the spare.
It was what he had been all his life, growing up knowing that he was simply there in case of disaster. To assure continuity of the Ceraldi line.
But Paolo—ah, Paolo had been different. He had been special to his parents because he’d been an unexpected addition, coming several years after their two older sons. Paolo had had no dynastic function, and so he had been allowed merely to be a boy. A son. A golden boy whose sunny temper had won round even his strait-laced father and his emotionally distant mother.
Which was why his premature death had been all the more tragic, all the more bitter.
Rico hunkered down beside his nephew, taking scant notice of the way his aunt immediately shrank away. Yes, Paolo’s son. No doubt about it. No DNA tests would be required; his paternity was undeniable, blazing from every feature. Perhaps there might be a little of his birth mother about him, but one look at him told the world that he was a Ceraldi.
Benedict. That was what he’d been called. And it was a true name for him.
Blessed.
His heart gave that familiar catch again. Yes, he was blessed, all right. He didn’t know it yet, but he would. And he was more than blessed—he was a blessing himself.
Because, beyond all the publicity and press coverage and gossip that was going to explode at any moment now, the boy was going to be seen as the blessing he was.
The final consolation to his parents for the son they had lost so tragically.
Lizzy moved backwards across the carpet and lifted herself into a nearby armchair. She had hoped, at the fact that she and Ben had had the breakfast room to themselves, that it meant Prince Enrico had gone.
She wished he had.
She felt excruciatingly awkward with him there. She tried not to look at him, but it was hard not to feel intensely aware of his presence in the room. Even without a drop of royal blood in him he would have been impossible to ignore.
By day he seemed even taller, outlined against the light from the window behind him, and his startling good looks automatically drew her eyes. He was wearing designer jeans, immaculately cut, and an open-necked shirt, clearly handmade. Immediately she felt the full force of just how shabbily she was dressed in comparison. Her cheap chainstore skirt and top had probably cost less than his monogrammed handkerchief.
At least, apart from that brief initial nod in her direction, he wasn’t paying any attention to her. It was all on Ben, or helping him build his tower.
Resentment and embarrassment warred within her.
Ben was chattering away confidently, without a trace of shyness, his smiles sunny. He was like Maria in that, Lizzy knew. Hindsight over the years since her terrible death had made things clearer to her. It had been a miracle that Maria’s sunny-tempered nature had not been warped by her upbringing. Despite the way her parents had doted on her, obsessed over her, she really had seemed to escape being spoilt. And yet, for all her sunny nature, she had known what she wanted, and what