The Prince's Love-Child (The Royal House of Cacciatore 2)

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.’