‘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 townhouse 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 fall-out 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