He stared blankly into the face of the woman sitting opposite him. A woman who was a complete stranger. But to whom he had to say the following words.
‘We get married,’ said Rico.
She didn’t move. That was the most unnerving thing of all. She just went on sitting there, hands clenched in her lap, face white. Rico felt his guts tighten. Had he really just said what he had? Had he been that insane?
And yet he knew it was not insanity that had made him say the words, but something much worse.
Necessity. Because, loathe Luca as he might for what he had suggested, Rico could see the unavoidable sense of it. The impasse they were in was immovable. Ben and his adoptive mother came as a package—that was all there was to it. A package that had to be incorporated somehow—by whatever means, however drastic—into the fabric of the San Lucenzo royal family. Ben alone would have been no problem—but Ben with the woman who had raised him, whom he thought of as his mother and who was in the eyes of the law indeed that person, that was a whole lot more impossible to swallow.
And yet she had to be swallowed. No alternative. No choice.
And he was the one who was going to have to do it. Luca had been right, and Rico hated him for it. But it didn’t stop him being right. It would solve everything.
A marriage of convenience—for everyone except himself!
He felt his jaw set even tighter, and unconsciously his hands pressed against the rounded brandy glass. He wanted to take another mouthful, but knew he should not. He’d already drunk wine with dinner, to fortify himself, and although he wanted to drink himself into oblivion he knew it was impossible.
Why wasn’t she responding? She hadn’t moved—not a muscle. A spurt of anger went through him. Did she imagine this was easy for him? Abruptly he found himself raising the brandy glass anyway, and taking a large mouthful.
Something moved in her eyes minutely.
Then, as if a lever had suddenly been pulled, she jerked to her feet.
‘You are,’ she said, and there was something wrong with her voice, ‘completely mad.’
Rico’s eyes darkened. He might have expected this.
‘Not mad,’ he said repressively, ‘just facing facts. Sit down again, if you please.’
She sat. Rico got the feeling it was not to obey him, but because her legs wouldn’t hold her upright. The bones of her face were standing out, and the blood had drained from her skin, which now looked like whey.
‘If you marry me,’ he began, ‘a great many problems simply disappear. We have already established that your old life has gone—there can be no doubt about that. Ben is a royal prince of the House of Ceraldi, and he must be raised as such, in the land of his patrimony. He cannot be raised in this country, and he cannot be raised by you alone. But…’He took an inhalation of breath. ‘Were you to marry me, this problem would immediately disappear. You and Ben would be absorbed into the royal family as a unit, and Ben would make the easiest transition possible to his new life. You must see that.’
Her mouth opened, then closed, then opened again.
‘No, I don’t.’
Rico’s mouth pressed tightly.
‘I appreciate,’ he began, in that same deliberate fashion, ‘that you may find this hard to comprehend, let alone accept, but—’
‘It’s the most insane, tasteless thing I’ve ever heard.’ The words burst from her. ‘How can you say it? How can you even say it? You can’t sit there and say something like that—you can’t.’
Agitation shook her visibly.
Abruptly he held up a hand.
‘It is a matter of expediency, that is all.’
She was staring at him as if he were speaking Chinese. He ploughed on.
‘The marriage would take place for no other purpose than to regularise my nephew’s existence. As my wife you will become a Ceraldi, with a due place in the royal family, a rank appropriate to the adoptive mother of the Reigning Prince’s grandson. You will have a suitable place in all the events of his life. The marriage itself will be a formality, nothing more. Be assured of that.’
There was an edge in his voice, and he continued before she could interrupt him again.
‘You may also be assured that the marriage will only be temporary. Once Ben is settled into his new life, and once you are settled into yours, and can move within it in an appropriate manner, then the marriage will be annulled. We will need to observe the proprieties, but my father has agreed that he will sanction a short duration—little more than a year—after which the marriage will have served its purpose and can be dissolved.’
She was still sitting there, looking as if he’d just hit her over the head with a sledgehammer. Well, that was what he had done, of course. He, at least, had the last forty-eight hours to accustom himself to what had been proposed as the way through the impasse.