The Italian's Unexpected Heir

“Not fear, Your Highness,” he said, firmly, and then after just a moment’s hesitation, “but certainly apprehension.”

“All right,” the prince conceded, “apprehension. It reminds me of that time in Mountain Bend when I was recognized at the Ritz concert. Something battle-ready about you. What’s going on?” He gestured at the chair in front of his desk, and Lancaster took it.

“I had a call from Interpol this morning,” Lancaster said, without preamble. “A very concerning call. A shadowy group has appeared on their radar. They’ve intercepted threads of some disturbing internet chatter. It involves Havenhurst.”

“A threat to Havenhurst?” Prince Edward asked, and a ripple of shock crossed his face. Havenhurst was little more than a speck in the North Atlantic, two hundred kilometers from the North Channel. Except for ancient scuffles with nearby islands, there had never been a risk to the kingdom. “A danger worthy of a warning from an international police organization?”

The prince’s marriage to Madeline Nelson, an ordinary American woman, had brought an abundance of publicity to the Havenhurst, relatively unknown to the world before that. The birth of their son, Prince Ryan Lancaster—named, to Lancaster’s great pride, after both Maddie’s father and himself—had cemented the royal couple’s celebrity status.

Now, with Maddie pregnant with the second royal baby, Lancaster was uncomfortably aware of the whole world watching them endlessly and obsessively. That obsession made his job more difficult, though he certainly recognized the celebrity was both a gift and an annoyance. The gift was that it had benefited the economies in both Maddie’s home town of Mountain Bend, Oregon, and this small island nation. The newfound fame meant both places could barely keep up with the demand for their exports, and that tourism had exploded.

The annoyance was the cameras, the media attention, the stories and articles—sometimes true, sometimes false—were constant intrusions on the family’s privacy. For Lancaster, it had created a need to come up with increasingly complex ways of shielding the royal family from a celebrity-besotted world.

For the most part Lancaster, unflappable, took the new complexity of his duty to protect Edward and his family in stride.

Until now.

After Edward’s mention of the word fear, he had stripped his features of emotion. He was pretty sure he looked, as always, as if his expression had been cast in stone, and gave away nothing. And yet he had to admit, despite his denial, there was some uncomfortable truth to the prince’s observation.

But then Edward had known Lancaster since they both were children. He would read what others would not: the brows lowered, the downturn of the mouth, the hand resting a little too close to the hilt on his belt. All spoke an unusual tension—apprehension—in a man who took extraordinary pride in his ability to remain calm.

Lancaster took pride, too, in the fact that Edward and his family felt so safe precisely because Lancaster never did. No matter how peaceful the island might seem, he never let down his guard, never stopped training, never stopped watching, never relaxed his attitude toward his responsibilities to the royal family.

“It’s not precisely a threat to Havenhurst,” Lancaster said, his tone deliberately measured. “What’s come to the attention of Interpol is what appears to be a series of kidnapping plots.”

“Kidnapping? Ryan?” Edward asked, his tone strangled, his understanding of the apprehension he had seen in Lancaster’s face suddenly solidified.

Lancaster gave him a dark look that assured him of the safety of his family. He would lay down his life to protect them, and an enemy would never meet a more formidable opponent.

“There is no direct threat to any member of your family, Your Highness,” Lancaster said. “That is the diabolic brilliance of these plots that are unfolding. Whoever is perpetrating them knows they can’t go after an actual member of a royal family, a high-profile politician, a famous musician or movie star. These people are too well protected.

“What came to Interpol’s attention were fragments of a list. It had a dozen names on it of very prominent people, in a code, which they broke. At first they could make no sense of it. Because it would have a target’s name in code—for example, Henry Hampton—” he named a famous concert pianist who had been recently knighted by the British queen “—and then a name appearing beside that name, not in code, that no one had ever heard of.

“But good police work unveiled this—those unheard of people have strong ties to the rich and famous. They are childhood friends, or a favorite aunt or uncle, trusted confidants, sometimes secret lovers, people who are close but well outside the circle of protection.”

“Who?” Edward asked.

“It was Princess Madeline’s name that was decoded.”

Edward blanched. “Who have they targeted in her circle?”

Frowning, Lancaster handed him a folded piece of paper.

Edward unfolded it, and saw it had written on it a single name.

Sophie Kettle

“Sophie,” Edward said, softly. “Maddie’s best friend. Godmother to Ryan.” His eyes went to Lancaster and the rest of what Sophie was in their shared history remained unspoken between the two men.

Lancaster cleared his throat. “She’s very much on the loose around the world since she does PR for that rock band, the Ritz. Sophie Kettle would make an unfortunately easy target.”

“She was fired last week.”

Something flickered in Lancaster, uncomfortable and alien. That very thing he claimed never to feel? Fear? “Which probably makes her an even easier target.”

“I can’t tell Maddie this. She’s just been so unwell. I can’t add an additional stress right now.”

The prince’s great love for his wife—and how appalled he was at the idea of keeping a secret from her—was evident in his face. Lancaster quickly quelled the sharp awareness of his own solitary existence that the prince’s devotion to Maddie created in him.