Playing the Royal Game

‘No,’ Allegra said. ‘I want my father to be the first... Actually...’ She stopped herself. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Does it matter or not?’ He was always so straight to the point.

‘It matters.’

‘Well then?’

‘I didn’t expect to finish so soon, but now that I have I was hoping to give it to Dad at the wedding, to have the book bound—except Santina is not exactly inundated with office shops.’

‘You should get it properly bound.’

‘It’s only a first draft—it isn’t even finished.’ She couldn’t work out the end, didn’t want it to be about her wedding, except so much had happened, there were so many changes in her family.

‘Email it to me and I will have it bound.’

‘You won’t read it?’

‘Allegra.’ He gave a wry laugh. ‘I haven’t got time to sleep, let alone read.’ When Allegra said nothing he concluded the conversation. ‘Send it now and I will get Belinda straight on to it. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Sure.’ She hung up the phone, wondered how she could be marrying a man in two days and having such a stilted conversation with him. Maybe he felt the same because almost the moment she hung up, the phone rang again.’

‘Alex...?’

‘Sorry, only me...’ came the lovely sound of Angel. ‘We want Allegra!’ She heard the cheers in the background. Heard Leo and Ben, Ella and Izzy, all chanting her name. ‘Surely you can escape for an extra night.’

‘I’ve got my hair to sort—’

‘Allegra...’ Izzy came on the phone. She knew better than the rest just how difficult the palace could be at times. ‘Just wait there, I’m going to have Matteo send me a car and we’re all coming to the palace to get you!’

She fired Alex an email, considered telling him, but chose not to—he would attempt to dissuade her after all. She loved that her siblings had come to rescue her, loved the evening she spent with them, hearing them laugh, catching up on all the news.

Strange that she missed Alex with all this going on.

So much so that the next day, as soon as she awoke, it was Alex she called, even though she knew he would be on his plane.

‘He’s busy.’ It irritated her that Belinda answered Alex’s private number.

‘Can I speak to him please?’

‘He’s specifically asked not to be disturbed,’ came the snooty response. ‘He’s having a lie-down.’

And she tried not to think of the bedroom on the private jet that had brought her to here. Tried not to think of Alex and Belinda confined.

It was too hard to.

Especially when tomorrow she would be marrying him.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

‘WHERE is everyone?’ Belinda dropped him off and headed straight to the office as Alex walked into a very empty palace on the eve of his wedding.

He’d expected a hive of activity, for Allegra at least to pretend to be pleased to see him, but the welcoming committee consisted of his father at his irritable worst.

‘As if anyone would tell me! Your fiancée left yesterday for the hotel to be with her family.’

‘I spoke to her yesterday,’ Alex said. ‘She said she was joining them after the rehearsal.’

‘Well, those sisters of hers turned up unannounced, and that ghastly market woman.’

‘Chantelle?’

‘I really don’t need to know her name. Anyway, they’ve taken her with them.’ His son’s frown annoyed him. ‘You’ll see her at the rehearsal.’

Alex knew he’d been cutting it fine, but he’d banked on seeing her, for an hour or two, to check how she was doing. It never entered his head that the cut-off, out-of-control feeling he was experiencing was one he’d subjected his fiancée to these past weeks while in London.

‘How is she?’

The king shrugged. ‘Permanently premenstrual, I think. She burst into tears the other night because her father can’t get here till late this afternoon.’ The king let out a smug laugh. ‘He’s taking part in some celebrity quiz show, in front of a live audience. I think we were supposed to be impressed! Oh—’ the king hadn’t finished airing his frustrations ‘—your ex-fiancée is pregnant—baby due in a few months. You certainly backed the wrong horse. We could have had an heir on the way instead of the traveling gypsies descending on Santina.’