Once again a wedding ring slid onto her finger and once again there was no kissing of the bride, Vitale being no fan of public demonstrations of affection. They left the cathedral to a barrage of whirring, clicking cameras and the roar of the irritatingly happy crowds assembled behind the crash barriers in the square beyond. It was lovely that people were happy for them, Jazz reflected, trying to find something positive in the event, but sad that those same people would be disappointed when their marriage ended again.
She would not miss being royal, she told herself as they stepped into the waiting horse-drawn carriage and Vitale complained bitterly about how rocky and uncomfortable it was to travel in such a way. Then without any warning whatsoever he gripped her hand, almost crushing her poor fingers, and shot something at her in driven Italian. ‘Cosa c’e di sbagliato? What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing’s wrong!’ she snapped, trailing her hand back in a trice.
‘That is so patently a lie that my teeth are gritting,’ Vitale told her roundly.
Well, that was tough but he would just have to live with it. She had been forced into a second very public wedding with the future replacement-wife candidates trailing her down the aisle as bridesmaids. Hadn’t he even recognised them? Of course, he would have looked at the ladies in that file at some stage because his mother was too pushy to have let him sidestep it. Jazz felt very married and very cross with her two wedding rings and her husband who didn’t love her. Not that that meant that he kept his hands off her though, she reflected hotly. Of course, she was in a bad mood. Yes, she was doing this for her children, but deciding to do it had been considerably easier than actually living the experience.
Vitale flipped mentally through every possible sin or omission he could have committed and acknowledged that he had made more mistakes than he could count. It made him uncomfortable when Jazz went quiet because she was never naturally quiet. ‘Did the doctor say something that worried you?’ he asked.
‘Will you stop reminding me that I’m pregnant?’ Jazz launched at him. ‘Can’t I just forget about being an incubator in a wedding gown for five minutes?’
Vitale clamped his mouth firmly shut because even he could take a hint that landed with the crushing weight of a boot. Maybe it was hormones, something like that, he reasoned uneasily. Or maybe she was feeling sick again. He parted his lips to enquire and then breathed in deep to restrain the urge, relieved that the palace was already in view. An incubator in a wedding gown? Where had that bizarre image come from? He would have a word with his father at the reception. Charles Russell had impregnated three women. He had to know something about pregnancy. Jazz sounded really upset and she didn’t get upset, at least not in his experience. He stole a covert glance at her rigid profile and watched in absolute horror as a tear slid down her cheek.
‘Jazz...?’ Vitale stroked a soothing forefinger down over her tightly clenched hands. ‘What can I do?’
‘I just wish...’ she began in a wobbly voice, ‘that we were already divorced. Then it would all be done and dusted and in the past and I could get my life back.’
Vitale froze, his shrewd banker’s mind going utterly blank at that aspiration. ‘I don’t want to discuss that,’ he finally replied flatly. ‘I don’t want to discuss that at all.’
‘Tough,’ Jazz pronounced grittily.
Vitale decided at that point that talking was sometimes a vastly overrated pursuit, particularly when it was heading towards what promised to be a multiple-car crash of a conclusion. It was definitely the wrong moment. In a few minutes, they would be the centre of attention again at a reception attended by the crowned heads of Europe. What he said to Jazz needed to be said in private. It would have to be measured, calm and sincere even though it wouldn’t be what she wanted to hear, even though he would be breaking his word. That acknowledgement silenced Vitale because he was appalled at that truth.
The reception was endless. Jazz shook hands and smiled and posed for photos, feeling like a professional greeter at a very upmarket restaurant. Charles Russell warmed her by giving her a hug and saying, ‘Well, when I sent Vitale in your direction I wasn’t expecting a wedding but I’m delighted for you both, Jazz.’
The older man greeted her mother with equal friendliness while Vitale bored the hind legs off her aunt by telling her all about Lerovia. At least he was trying, she conceded, striving to be more generous in her outlook. But that she was in a bad mood was really all his fault. They had supposedly only married to give the twins legitimacy, so why was he still sharing a bed with her? Why was he draping her in his grandmother’s fabulous jewellery? She had more diamonds than she knew what to do with and he kept on buying gifts for her as well.
She thought about the tiger pendant with the emerald eyes that she cherished. She thought about the ever-expanding snow globe collection she now possessed. Vitale had given her the wrong signals from the outset and it was hardly surprising that she had fallen for him hard or that she had foolishly continued having sex with him, hoping to ignite emotions that he wasn’t capable of feeling. He had as much emotion as a granite pillar! Didn’t she have any pride or sense of self-preservation? Lashing herself with such thoughts, Jazz held her head high and continued to smile while deciding that things were about to change...
CHAPTER TEN
‘THE STORY’S ALL over the internet...’ a vaguely familiar voice was saying urgently. ‘And apparently the Herald is publishing the article tomorrow, complete with revealing photos. Your mother’s request that they pull the article was refused. The whole household is in uproar and Sofia’s planning to flee to her Alpine chalet. Nobody knows how to handle this.’
‘Yet you knew and you didn’t warn me,’ Vitale framed with raw-edged bitterness as Jazz peered drowsily at the clock by the bed and noted that it was three in the morning.
‘It wasn’t any of my business. She threw me out of the palace the day before her coronation. Saw her kid brother as competition, you see, refused to accept me as family.’
‘Sì, Eduardo,’ Vitale agreed flatly. ‘I’ll get dressed and see what I can do.’
‘There’s nothing anyone can do!’ Vitale’s uncle proclaimed on a telling note of barely concealed satisfaction. ‘Too late for any emergency cover-ups now!’
As the bedroom door closed Jazz sat up and stared in the dim light of the lamp by the door at Vitale, naked but for a pair of black boxers. He looked shattered. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked straight away.
‘Apparently my mother’s been involved in an affair with her best friend, Countess Cinzia, for over thirty years and it’s about to be exposed in the press. The scandal’s already online,’ he revealed with harsh clarity.
‘A gay affair?’ Jazz questioned in astonishment.
‘How did I not know?’ Vitale groaned. ‘That’s why my parents divorced. Apparently, my father once found my mother and Cinzia together. After I was wakened and told, I phoned Papa at his hotel because, at first... I couldn’t believe it. But he confirmed that it was the truth. Yet I still can’t believe it,’ he admitted with growing anger. ‘I’ve lost good friends, friends who left this country because of the restrictive laws that the Queen actively promoted. How could my mother oppose gay liberation when she’s gay herself? What kind of hypocrite behaves like that?’
‘I don’t know...’ It was completely inadequate but Jazz could think of nothing to say because she was equally stunned by what he was telling her.
‘I’ll deal with it as best I can,’ Vitale said angrily. ‘But we won’t be helped by the number of enemies the Queen’s made of influential people.’
‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ Jazz enquired weakly.
‘Go back to sleep,’ Vitale advised succinctly. ‘My mother will step down from the throne. She’s too proud to face this out.’
‘But that means...’ Jazz gasped and then dismay sentenced her to a silent stare of consternation at the lean, powerful male poised at the foot of the bed.
‘Sì. Let?
?s hope you take to being a queen better than you took to being a bride a second time,’ Vitale pronounced with lashings of sarcasm while secretly wondering how he would take to the transformation of his own life. He could barely imagine a future empty of his mother’s constant demands and complaints, but the prospect loomed ahead of him with a sudden brightness that disconcerted him, like the light at the end of a dark tunnel.
Jazz hunched back under the covers, too exhausted to snark back at him. She had collapsed into bed late the previous evening so exhausted that she had had all the animation of a corpse and had immediately fallen asleep. Certainly, it could not have been the second wedding night of any bridegroom’s dreams. She had, however, been looking forward to escaping the palace in the morning and relaxing on the yacht Angel was loaning them for a Mediterranean cruise. Now she reckoned that any chance of a honeymoon was gone because, whatever Sofia Castiglione chose to do next, Vitale would be heavily involved in the clean-up operation and far too busy to leave the palace.
Vitale reappeared while she was having breakfast out on the terrace that overlooked the gardens. He told her that people were marching with placards outside the palace and that she was fortunate to be at the back of the building.
‘How’s your mother?’ she asked awkwardly.
‘She’s already gone,’ he breathed almost dazedly, as if he could not quite accept that astonishing reality. ‘Cinzia and her together. She wasn’t willing to talk to me and she released a statement declaring that her private life was exactly that, so no apologies either for a lifelong deception.’
‘Did you really expect any?’ She studied him worriedly, recognising the lines of strain and fatigue etched in his lean, strong face, and he shook his head in grim acknowledgement of that point.
The silence stretched while a member of staff brought fresh coffee to the table. Even the staff were creeping about very quietly as though there had been a bereavement rather than a massive scandal that had blown the Lerovian royal family wide open to the kind of international speculation it had never had to endure before. Jazz poured coffee for Vitale and urged him to eat. After his mother’s hasty departure, he was heading straight into a meeting with government representatives.
‘The Prime Minister persuaded her to abdicate,’ Vitale groaned. ‘Nothing to do with her being gay. Ironically, she could have come out of the closet years ago had she been willing, but she wasn’t. It was her hypocrisy in opposing equality laws that are normal in the rest of Europe that brought her down. Her behaviour was indefensible.’
‘Just move on from it,’ Jazz muttered, feeling useless and helpless when she wanted to be the exact opposite for his sake.
‘We all will,’ Vitale declared more smoothly. ‘But, more importantly, I’ve made arrangements for you, your mother and aunt to fly out to Angel’s yacht this morning.’
‘I can’t leave you here alone!’ Jazz exclaimed.
‘There’s nothing you can do here,’ Vitale pointed out with inescapable practicality. ‘We have protestors outside the palace and in the city. Lerovia is in uproar. I cannot leave right now but you and your family can.’
‘But—’
‘It would be a comfort to me to know that you are safe on Angel’s yacht and protected from anything that could distress you,’ Vitale incised in his chilly take-no-prisoners command voice that always made her tummy sink like a stone.
Jazz’s protests died there. He didn’t want her to stay. He was sending her away. It was clear that her presence was neither a consolation, nor a necessity. It was a lesson, she conceded painfully, a rather hard lesson and overdue. Vitale didn’t need her. She might feel a need for him pretty much round the clock but that bond did not stretch both ways. She sucked in a steadying breath and contrived a smile when she felt more like crying, a reaction he certainly did not deserve. ‘OK. What time do I leave?’ she asked quietly without a flicker of reaction.
Relief at her assent showed openly in Vitale’s stunning dark golden eyes and her heart clenched that her leaving could so obviously be a source of respite for him. Of course, he wasn’t in love with her and he didn’t depend on her, so she was, very probably, just one more person in his already very crowded life to worry about.
It was way past time she began accepting the limits of their relationship, she reflected unhappily, because here she was even now, always looking for more from Vitale, asking for more, hoping for more. And those fond wishes were unlikely to be granted. Nor, to be fair to him, had he ever suggested that there would be more between them than he had originally offered.
Carmela had already packed for the proposed cruise round the Mediterranean and Jazz chatted on the phone to her mother and her aunt, who were all agog and fascinated by the newspaper revelations but wildly overexcited at the prospect of staying on a billionaire’s yacht for at least a week.
Back to basics, Jazz told herself firmly as she climbed into the helicopter that had landed in the castle grounds with her mother and her aunt already on board. And the basic bottom line on her marriage with Vitale was that they had married solely to legitimise their unborn children. It shocked Jazz to force herself to remember that modest truth. When had she begun moving so dangerously far from that original agreement? Hadn’t she known in her heart even at the beginning that she felt far more for Vitale than she should? In other words, she was suffering from a self-inflicted injury. He had not asked her to love him, had never sought that deeper bond or hinted at more lasting ties. In fact, Vitale had married her while openly talking about divorcing her, so she couldn’t blame him for misleading her or lying in any way. No, she could only blame herself for not keeping better control of her emotions.
Angel’s yacht, Siren, rejoiced in such size and splendour that Jazz’s mother and aunt were completely overpowered by the luxury and quite failed to notice Jazz’s unusual quietness. Separated from Vitale, she felt horribly alone and empty.
Over the next few days while the trio of women sunbathed, swam and shopped in the island towns the yacht visited, Jazz continued to avidly read online reports of the latest developments in Lerovia. Vitale had been declared King and the popular unrest had subsided almost immediately because he was expected to be a modern rather than traditional monarch as his mother had been described. He phoned Jazz every evening, polite strained calls that did nothing to raise her spirits. The coronation had been scheduled for the following month.
Vitale was free now, Jazz thought unhappily, free for the first time in his life from his mother’s demands and interference. But he wasn’t free in his marriage, Jazz acknowledged wretchedly, feeling like the final obstacle in his path to full liberation. After all, if she hadn’t fallen pregnant he wouldn’t have been married to a woman unqualified to become his Queen. But what could he possibly do about it now? He could hardly divorce her while she was still pregnant, so he was stuck with making the best of things until he was free to make a better choice.
Thinking such downbeat thoughts, Jazz studied her changing body shape in the bedroom mirror. Her stomach was developing a rounded curve while her waist was losing definition and her breasts were now overflowing her new bras. Shopping for maternity clothing could not be put off much longer but the very idea of such a trip made her feel unattractive.
‘I’ve decided to go home to London with Mum and Clodagh tomorrow,’ Jazz informed Vitale when he phoned that evening. ‘It would get me out of your hair.’
An abrupt little silence fell on the line.
‘What if I don’t want you out of my hair?’ Vitale demanded with sudden harshness.
‘Well, you did say that you were comforted by the idea of me being away from you on this yacht, so I thought that possibly me being in London would have the same effect.’
‘It wouldn’t.’ Vitale’s voice was cold and clipped and very emphatic in tone.
‘Oh... I expect I’m needed for things at the palace,’ she muttered ruefully.
‘You are,’ Vitale confirmed without skipping a beat, wonder
ing what on earth had got into her, and from where she had picked up such strange ideas.
Only slowly and with effort did he register that avoiding talking about the kind of stuff he had always avoided talking about could be the single biggest mistake he had ever made. Silence didn’t work on Jazz as it had on his mother. Jazz wasn’t content to fill the silence with the sound of her own voice. She would be too busy judging everything he said and did as though it were a crime scene and reaching her own dangerous conclusions.
Vitale got off the phone very quickly after that exchange and it unnerved Jazz, who had assumed that he would encourage her to go to London. She wondered if she would ever understand the conflicting signals he gave her. First, he wanted her, next he didn’t want her, then he wanted her again. She supposed the crisis was over now and possibly that was the cause of his change of attitude. Weary of speculating about a man who had always confounded her expectations but whom she would have walked over fire to protect, Jazz dined with her family and then went for a shower.
When the helicopter came in to land, she was wrapped in a towel and seated out on the private terrace off the master suite watching the sun go down in flaming splendour. Having assumed that the craft was merely delivering supplies, she sped indoors again to escape the noise and was completely taken aback when Vitale strode in only minutes later.
‘What are you doing here?’ Jazz gasped in disconcertion while her eyes travelled with guilt-ridden enthusiasm over his lean, powerful figure, admiring the fit of his jeans over his long, hard thighs and the breadth of his chest below his black shirt. He returned her scrutiny, attention lodging on the edge of the towel biting into the exuberant fullness of her breasts, and she reddened, horribly self-conscious at being caught undressed and without a lick of make-up on.