Vitale studied her with brutally male appreciation and a heat she was instantly aware of, his dark eyes scorching hot with the thought of possibilities, and something clenched low in her body, the stirring primal impulses of the same hunger.
‘I’ll leave you in peace,’ he began.
‘No,’ Jazz countered, reaching out her hand to close into his sleeve. ‘I’m not that tired.’
Vitale dealt her a sizzling smile that sent butterflies tumbling in her tummy and bent his head to kiss her, both his hands sinking into the torrent of her hair. Excitement leapt into her slender body like a lightning bolt and then just as suddenly the bedroom door burst noisily open. Vitale released her instantaneously and Jazz thrust herself up on her hands, her face flushed with annoyance and embarrassment as she focused on the woman who had stalked into their bedroom without so much as a warning knock. Even worse, a gaggle of goggle-eyed people were peering in from the corridor outside.
‘Close the door, Vitale,’ Jazz murmured flatly, staring at the enraged blonde, garbed in a stylish blue suit and pearls, standing mere feet away. ‘We don’t need an audience for this—’
‘Oh, I think we do, leave the door wide, Vitale,’ Queen Sofia cut in imperiously. ‘I’d like an audience to see your red-headed whore being thrown out of the palace.’
Vitale closed the door and swung round. ‘I will not tolerate so rude an intrusion, nor will I tolerate such abuse.’
‘You will tolerate whatever I ask you to tolerate because I am your Queen!’ the blonde proclaimed with freezing emphasis. ‘I want this creature gone. I don’t care how you do it but it must be done before the ball this evening.’
‘If my fiancée leaves, I will accompany her,’ Vitale parried.
‘You wouldn’t dare!’ his mother screeched at him, transforming from ice to instant fiery fury.
A woman with no volume control, Jazz registered, only just resisting the urge to physically cover her ears. The Queen shot something at Vitale in outraged Italian and the battle commenced, only, frustratingly, Jazz had no idea what was being said. Vitale’s mother seemed to be concentrating on trying to shout him down while Vitale himself spoke in a cool, clipped voice Jazz had never heard him employ before, his control absolute.
‘Jazz will be my partner at the ball this evening,’ Vitale declared in clarifying English. ‘Nothing you can say or do will change that.’
‘She’s a servant’s daughter... Oh, yes, I’ve found out all about you!’ Queen Sofia shot triumphantly at Jazz, her piercing pale blue eyes venomous.
Jazz slid off the bed and stood up, instantly feeling stronger.
‘You’re a nothing, a nobody, and I don’t know what my son’s doing with you because he should know his duty better than anyone.’
‘As you have often reminded me, my duty is to marry and produce a child,’ Vitale interposed curtly. ‘Jazz is the woman I have chosen.’
‘I will not accept her and therefore she has to go!’ The older woman cast the file she had tightly gripped in one hand down on the bed beside Jazz. ‘Have a look at the candidates I selected. You couldn’t compete with a single one of those women! You have no breeding and no education, none of the very special qualities required to match my son’s status.’
‘Get out,’ Vitale breathed with chilling bite, closing a firm hand to the older woman’s arm to lead her back to the door. ‘You have said what you came to say and I will not allow you to abuse Jazz.’
‘If you bring her to the ball, I will not acknowledge her!’ Queen Sofia threatened. ‘And I will make your lives hell!’
‘I imagine Vitale is quite used to you making his life hell,’ Jazz opined dulcetly, her head held high as the older woman stared at her in disbelief, much as though a piece of furniture had moved forward and dared to address her. ‘And as long as I have Vitale by my side, you will not intimidate me with your threats either.’
‘Are you going to let this interloper speak to your Queen like that?’ his mother raged.
In answer, Vitale strode forward and addressed his mother in an angry flood of English, a dark line of colour edging his hard cheekbones. The older woman tried to shout him down but Vitale slashed an authoritative silencing hand through the air and continued in the same splintering tone, ‘You will not call my fiancée vile names ever again. You will not force your way into my private quarters again either. I am an adult, not a child you can bully and disrespect. Other people may tolerate such behaviour from you but I no longer will. Be careful, Mother, very careful because your future plans could easily fall apart. Your insolence is intolerable and if it continues I will leave the palace and I will leave Lerovia,’ he completed harshly. ‘I will not live anywhere where my fiancée is viciously abused.’
The Queen was pale and seemed to have shrunk in size. She opened her mouth but then just as suddenly closed it again, visibly shattered by his threat to leave the country. As she left, Vitale shut the door firmly again.
For an instant there was complete silence. Jazz was shaken by his vigorous defence but still unconvinced by his decision not to tell the whole truth immediately.
‘You should have told your mother that the deed was already done and that you are married,’ Jazz told him unhappily. ‘Why wait to break that final bit of news when she’s already in such a snit?’
‘I have my own ways of dealing with my mother,’ Vitale countered curtly. ‘Don’t interfere and give her another excuse to attack you.’
‘There’s more than one way of skinning a rabbit!’ Jazz tossed back at him, determined to fight her corner as best she could. ‘Could you have my cases brought back in?’
Vitale froze, a winged ebony brow lifting. ‘Why would you want your cases?’
‘Because if your mother is free to walk into our bedroom any time she likes, I’m not staying,’ Jazz told him bluntly.
‘Dannazione...’ Vitale swore with clenched fists of frustration. ‘You heard what I told her.’
‘I just witnessed a grown woman throwing a tantrum and hurling outrageous insults with apparent impunity. Being royal, being a queen, does not excuse that kind of behaviour.’
Vitale ground his teeth together and raked long brown fingers through his cropped blue-black hair. ‘I agree,’ he conceded. ‘But I threatened to leave this country if she interferes again and that shocked her.’
‘Ask for my cases, Vitale,’ Jazz urged, refusing to listen. ‘We could have been in bed when your mother walked in and she wouldn’t have cared.’
In a provocative move, Vitale settled his broad shoulders back against the door and braced his long powerful legs. ‘You can’t leave. I won’t let you,’ he told her lethally.
‘If you can’t protect me in your own home, I’m leaving.’
‘Over my dead body,’ Vitale murmured, dark eyes glittering with challenge even as he stood his ground. ‘You will be protected. I will accept nothing less.’
In reality Jazz was more incensed by his stubborn refusal to take her advice. ‘I still think you need to tell the Queen now that we are married, I’m pregnant and that the marriage is only a temporary measure,’ she countered between stiff lips.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about!’ Vitale could feel his temper suddenly taking a dangerous and inexplicable leap forward again.
Jazz angled her head back, aware of the flare of angry gold brightening his forceful gaze but quite unafraid of it. ‘Well, of course I don’t... You don’t tell me anything. It’s all too personal and private for you to share, so you hoard all your secrets up like a miser with treasure!’ she condemned resentfully.
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Vitale shot back at her quellingly.
But Jazz was in no mood to be quelled. ‘You had no problems telling me that I would only be your wife until the twins are born, so I can’t understand why you would be so obstinate about sharing that same information with your mother! After all, she’ll undoubtedly be delighted to hear that I’m not here to stay.’
At
that unsought reminder of the terms he himself had laid down, Vitale’s lean, strong features set like a granite rock and the rage he was struggling to control surged even higher. ‘Now you are making a most inappropriate joke of our situation, which I intensely dislike.’
Jazz’s green eyes took on an emerald glow of rage at that icily angry assurance because if there was one thing that drove her mad, it was Vitale aiming that icy chill at her. She had been proud of him when he’d targeted his mother with that chill though. ‘Oh, do you indeed? I intensely dislike a stranger blundering into what is supposed to be the marital bedroom when we’re on the bed! She’s the kind of royal who gives me Republican sympathies! I will never ever forget that woman calling me a whore and I won’t forgive her for it either, no, not even if she apologises for it.’
‘The Queen does not do apologies. You are safe from that possibility,’ Vitale derided. ‘Now, you will calm down and have lunch, which is being prepared.’
‘You will not tell me to calm down!’ Jazz raged back at him. ‘I will shout if I feel like it.’
‘You’re pregnant. You need to keep calm,’ Vitale proclaimed.
‘That is not an excuse to shut me up!’ Jazz hissed back at him.
Vitale startled her by striding forward without warning and lifting her off her feet to settle her down squarely on the bed she had only recently vacated. ‘It is the only excuse I need. Lunch will wait until you have rested.’
‘Do I look like I’m in the mood to rest?’ Jazz argued fierily.
‘No, but you know it’s the sensible option and you have to think about them.’ Vitale unsettled her even more by resting his hand with splayed fingers across her stomach. ‘Neither of us want you to run the risk of a miscarriage by getting overexcited and pushing yourself too hard when you’re already exhausted and stressed. The ball tonight will tire you even more,’ he reminded her grimly.
Jazz had paled and she closed her eyes, striving for self-control, but she was still so mad at him and frustrated that it was an appalling struggle to hold back the vindictive words bubbling on her tongue. And then her green eyes flew wide again, crackling with angry defiance. ‘Surely a miscarriage would suit—’
Vitale froze, wide sensual mouth setting hard, dark golden eyes flashing censorious reproach. ‘Don’t you dare say that to me!’ he breathed in a raw undertone. ‘They are my children too and I want them, no matter how inconvenient their timing may be! No matter how much trouble their conception may have caused us!’
Jazz had stilled, her anger snuffed out at source by the wrathful sincerity she saw in his gaze and heard in his voice. ‘I thought you didn’t want children,’ she reminded him.
‘I thought so too but for some reason I’m getting excited by the idea of them now,’ Vitale admitted reluctantly.
Surprisingly, a kind of peace filtered in to drain away her anger. She was ashamed of what anger had provoked her into saying to him but soothed too by her first real proof that Vitale truly did want their unborn children, regardless of their situation. Given sufficient time, he too had adjusted his attitude and his outlook had softened, readying him for change. She closed her eyes again, drained by the early morning start to the day, the travel and all that had followed their arrival at the palace. Fit and healthy though she was, the exhaustion of early pregnancy was pushing her to her limits and the imminent prospect of the ball simply made her suppress a groan.
Vitale glowered down at her prone figure. She had lost her temper, lost control, he reasoned grimly, had barely known what she was saying. Wasn’t that why he guarded his own temper? But during that scene with his mother one unmistakable reality had powered Vitale. His wife and his children had to come first because they depended on him. His mother, in comparison, was surrounded by supporters comprised of flattering subordinates and socially ambitious hangers-on, not to mention her chief lady-in-waiting, the Contessa Cinzia, who had never been known to contradict her royal mistress.
Jazz only stirred when a maid entered the room bringing a tray and she sat up with a start, blinking rapidly while wondering what was crackling beneath her hips. Her seeking hand drew out a file and a dim memory of the Queen tossing it there surfaced.
‘Thank you,’ she told the maid. ‘I’ll eat at the table.’
She settled the file down on the table by the window. Carmela informed her that her hair and make-up stylist would be arriving in half an hour and, killing the urge to roll her eyes at that information, Jazz lifted her knife and fork and then paused to open the file...
CHAPTER NINE
‘BUT IF THIS belonged to your grandmother that means it’s royal, so how can I wear it?’ Jazz protested as she held the delicate diamond tiara that shone like a circlet of stars between her reverent fingers.
‘You’re my wife and my grandmother bestowed her jewellery on me in her will for my wife’s use,’ Vitale explained. ‘And if that is still not sufficient reason for you, think of how it will enrage my mother to see you draped in her mother’s fabulous diamond suite.’
Her green eyes glinted with amused appreciation of that sally and she sat down by the dressing table to allow Vitale to anchor the tiara in her thick hair. With careful hands, she donned the earrings and the necklace from the same box and forced a smile, refusing, absolutely refusing to think about what she had read in that ghastly file that very afternoon. She needed to be confident for the ball, was determined to look as though she belonged at such a glittering event purely for Vitale’s sake. The prospect of doing anything socially wrong in his mother’s radius literally made her stomach clench with sick horror.
‘You look wonderful,’ Vitale husked as she rose again, a slim silhouette sheathed in a green gown that glistened with thousands of beads. Cut high at the front, it bared her slender back, skimming down over her narrow hips to froth out in sparkling volume round her stiletto-clad feet.
‘Wonderful enough to win your bet?’
Vitale, designer chic in a beautifully tailored evening jacket and narrow black trousers, groaned out loud. ‘I couldn’t care less about that bet now and you know it. Accepting that bet was a foolish impulse I now regret.’
Jazz smiled, the generous curve of her lush mouth enhanced by soft pink, and Vitale shifted forward, dark golden eyes flaring. ‘No,’ she said succinctly. ‘If you knew how long it took the stylist to do my make-up, you wouldn’t dare even think of kissing me.’
Vitale laughed, startling himself, it seemed, almost as much as he startled her, amusement lightening the forbidding tension that had still tautened his strong features. ‘You’re good for me,’ he quipped.
But nowhere near as good in the royal wife stakes as Carlotta, Elena or Luciana or their equivalents would have been, a rebellious little voice remarked somewhere down deep inside her where the file had done the most damage by lowering her self-esteem and making her feel almost ashamed of her humble background. Shutting off that humiliating inner voice, Jazz drank in a deep steadying breath and informed him that she was ready to leave.
The female staff had assembled to see her ball gown and Jazz smiled, pleased by their approbation, secure in her belief that she had chosen well when she’d decided not to pick the plain and boring black dress that Vitale would have selected. With diamonds sparkling at her every step, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in a tall hall mirror and barely recognised that glitzy figure.
Vitale’s arm at her back, they entered a vast reception room on the ground floor where pre-dinner drinks were being served. Glorious landscape paintings of Lerovia lined the walls. Waiters in white jackets served drinks below the diamond-bright light of the gleaming crystal chandeliers twinkling above them. Angel and Merry headed straight for them and relief washed through Jazz the minute she saw their familiar faces.
‘Super, super dress,’ Merry whispered warmly.
‘And yours,’ Jazz responded, admiring the elaborate embroidery that covered her sister-in-law’s pale gown. ‘Vitale didn’t tell me you’d both be here.’
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‘Vitale’s on another planet when the Queen Bee is around,’ Angel remarked very drily. ‘One thing you will learn about Charles’s sons, Jazz. He didn’t pick our mothers very well.’
‘But Charles is so lovely that he makes up for that,’ Merry chipped in soothingly into the rather awkward silence that had fallen, because Jazz would not risk uttering a single critical word about the Queen, lest she be overheard and embarrass Vitale.
‘Yes,’ Jazz agreed as Angel roamed off to speak to his brother.
Place cards were carelessly swapped at the dining table to ensure that they sat with Angel and Merry and Jazz tucked into the first course with appetite, striving not to look in the direction of the Queen at the top of the exceedingly long table.
‘Why’s Zac not here?’ Jazz asked curiously. ‘I was hoping to meet him.’
‘He’ll be at the ball. He’s not a fan of formal dinners,’ Angel explained. ‘He hates restrictions of any kind.’
‘Very different from Vitale then... Interesting,’ Jazz mused, incredibly curious about the third brother and already conscious that although Vitale hadn’t actually admitted it, he didn’t seem to like his Brazilian sibling much.
An hour later, Jazz was busily identifying the women in the ball room from their photographs in Queen Sofia’s file, the ‘suitable wives’ file as she thought of it. And not a plain face or a redhead amongst the six candidates, all of them terrifyingly well-born, several titled, all possessed of the ability to speak more than one language, a high-flying education and a solid background of charitable good works. None of them would have required lessons on how to use cutlery or how to address an ambassador or curtsy to a reigning monarch. By the time she had finished perusing that damning file Jazz had felt horrendously inadequate. She had also felt ashamed that she had instinctively resented Vitale’s certainty that theirs could only be a temporary marriage.