Playing the Royal Game

Look at me, I’m not who you see...

Deep inside there’s someone else, longing to break free...

She just had, Allegra realised. Izzy had broken free, and though the words seemed aimed at Allegra’s heart, from Izzy’s shy glances to the side of the stage, from the love that blazed in her eyes, she knew that the words were intended for another.

Alex could feel Allegra beside him as he watched the woman they had all scorned prove so many people wrong.

He wanted to take Allegra’s hand, wanted to relax and absorb the moment, but he was sitting next to a woman who loathed the palace, who did not want to be queen, who wanted this duty over.

He looked over to her glassy eyes, heard a tiny sniff. How he wanted to comfort her, to be proud with her, but he couldn’t give up his right to the throne. He couldn’t.

If he walked away it fell to Matteo.

Matteo was tough, completely capable, but... Alex looked to Izzy, heard the pure talent, a talent that would be silenced. Did Allegra not see what might happen here?

‘She was amazing!’ Allegra turned to him, but his face was rigid. She did not get this man. Did nothing move him? Was he so embalmed in royal blood that a glorious voice in such a magnificent place could leave him still as cold as the marble statues back at the palace?

‘I’d like to see Izzy...’ Allegra said. ‘Can we go backstage?’

‘I rather think your sister is busy,’ Alex said. ‘Perhaps we should leave them to it.’

She’d had so much pinned on tonight, had ridiculously got her hopes up, but she couldn’t keep up appearances any longer. The flash of the cameras flooded the blacked-out car as they drove back to the palace and she felt Alex’s eyes on her.

‘Can the tears wait till we get back to the palace at least?’

‘Oh, let them see them, maybe they’ll report that cracks are starting to appear,’ Allegra said. ‘Anyway, the press can concentrate on Izzy and Matteo now.’ She was appalled that she could be jealous of her own sister—not for the attention, nor for her talent, but because it had been so clear she was singing to someone, that love was in her eyes and voice. That’s what burnt. Oh, of course she wanted her sister happy. By the morning she would be okay, but right now, she could not feel lonelier, could not believe the situation she had found herself in, would never have agreed to this if she had known what Alex would be like.

‘What happened to you?’ She did not care if the driver might be listening, just simply did not care about appearances any more. ‘What happened to the man I met in London? The man who came over and spoke to me?’

He could see the palace looming in the night sky and it looked like prison. He could hear her thick voice and knew that tears were falling. He had done this to her—he had trapped her as much as he was trapped himself.

‘You’ve changed.’ She hurled the accusation again and he turned his head to face her.

‘No.’

‘You have!’

‘No,’ he said it again. ‘I have returned to who I am.’

She would never understand him.

‘Here I am, Crown Prince Alessandro, here I am on duty at all times. Here there is no time for self, for—’

‘Because you make it so,’ she insisted. ‘Because you and your family lock yourself away in the palace or behind dark glass windows. You’re so bloody used to acting the part you’ve forgotten that you’re people too. And your people know it,’ she added nastily because, hell, she felt nasty. ‘The reason they like me is because I’m real, because I’m ordinary.’ She hurled the word back at him. ‘Because I don’t pretend to be perfect, because I don’t act as if I’m better than them. No wonder your fans—’

‘Fans?’ He snorted. ‘They are our people, not our fans.’

As they arrived at the palace, before the car had even fully stopped, she jumped out, flew up the steps and into the hall but he was just a step behind her. ‘I said the wrong word,’ Allegra retorted, ‘one wrong word and you jump down my throat, belittle me....’ And she did not need to explain herself, did not need a moment more of this.