Playing the Royal Game

She showed the wilting bunch, but the king just huffed. ‘Weeds...’

She told them that she had walked into shops, and that she had made their day, and she looked to the queen. ‘I am a poor substitute for you, but they were thrilled. I shopped, and if people approached, it was just to say hello.’

The king, unbidden, reached for her bags. ‘Tomorrow the papers will be full of the gifts, of the royals’ greed....’

‘Leave her things,’ Alex snapped, but the king ignored his son’s orders and opened the bags. ‘Have someone go now and pay—’

‘I paid,’ Allegra said. ‘Of course I paid.’ And maybe the king was expecting pearls and jewels to spill from the bags that he shook out on the desk, but it was a few postcards and a couple of souvenirs from Santina and a little snow globe with a tiny castle inside.

That they would do that, take her things and just riffle through them, was too much for Allegra. She would say something rude—but she must not. If she opened her mouth now she would be disrespectful to the king. Whatever they thought of her father, he had taught her better than they knew, so instead just a sob of frustration came from her lips as she fled the room.

‘Go after her,’ the queen said to her son, and then turned to her husband. ‘Eduardo, you should not have touched her things.’

But he did not go after; he faced his father.

‘You say the people love her, and yet you try to change her!’

‘I rule Santina.’ The king picked up the book he had been reading, the book that had caused Allegra’s family so much shame. ‘You lose your head to her and you will make poor decisions—you will turn this family into a circus. Do you want this for your people? She will act accordingly.’

‘She just went for a walk, for God’s sake!’ The queen’s voice was rising. ‘She just went for a walk...’

‘That’s how it starts.’ The king turned to his wife, to the woman he had once trusted. ‘And then she makes friends, and then she makes closer friends and before you know it...’ He looked to his wife. ‘The rules are in place for a reason. We are not changing our ways to accommodate your fiancée, Alessandro. It is she who must change hers. When I am dead and gone, you can do what you see fit, but while I rule...’ He looked to his son, to his eldest, to the strongest and wisest of his children, and he would not allow him to give in as he once had, would not allow him to open up to the hurt he would feel. As his son strode out of the study, the king hurled the truth to his back and watched it stiffen. ‘I am still your king.’

It was a cauldron, an impossible one, and soon enough it had to explode.

CHAPTER TEN

‘ALLEGRA.’ It was the next morning when he crawled into bed, ten minutes before the maids appeared. It was all he could take—twenty minutes simply killed him and last night he had chosen the sofa. Her eyes were still swollen from crying, for despite his words in the woods, last night he had made it clear—there could be no major changes, just the occasional compromise.

‘What?’ It was a surly response.

‘Stop sulking.’

‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘I’m thinking.’

‘About...’

‘How impossible this is. How I want to go home.’ She turned to him. ‘You’re going to London soon...can’t I at least join you?’

She couldn’t—yes, he had work to do in London, but he also had plans and certainly he did not want her around to spoil them.

‘To see my family...’ There was so much going on, and all she got were glimpses. It was as if she were being cut off even from them. ‘I hardly hear from them. I want to see them, talk to them....’

Which was the last thing he could risk. She trusted them implicitly, she defended them at every turn, yet more and more they were becoming entwined with his—her sister Izzy and his brother, Matteo, were holed up somewhere together, and his cousin Rafe McFarland had married her stepsister.

He could not risk her confiding in them, and must, as his father had pointed out, keep her removed from their scandal.