The Prince's Love-Child (The Royal House of Cacciatore 2)

‘Well, yes,’ answered Lucy, pleased. ‘I think so.’

‘And my late wife’s name. Nicole.’

‘Yes. Guido wanted it.’

‘A medieval French name,’ he observed rather dreamily. ‘Although I believe it is popular again now.’

They sat for a few moments in companionable silence, watching and listening while Nicole nestled in Lucy’s arms and made little sucking noises.

‘Would you like to hold her?’ she asked tentatively, but the King shook his head.

‘My arms are too weak to cope with such vigorous life,’ he said sadly, but then his faded eyes twinkled at her. ‘And, if the truth were known, the Princes of Mardivino were not raised to deal with infants! Nico has broken the mould of that, of course,’ he observed thoughtfully.

‘Yes.’

He looked at her properly then, and she could see the quiet gleam of perception in his dark eyes. ‘And Guido? He is…what is that term they use for fathers nowadays?’

‘Hands-on?’

He smiled. ‘Yes. Is Guido…hands-on?’

Lucy chose her words carefully. ‘Not really. He loves her, of course—but he’s one of those men who’s almost a bit too frightened to pick her up, in case he drops her.’

The King appeared to digest this. ‘I should never have sent him to America,’ he said suddenly.

It was such an astonishing thing for him to say that Lucy just stared at him. In the long silence which followed, the King seemed to be deciding whether or not to speak.

‘When his mother died I think I went a little bit mad,’ he admitted eventually, and then he gave a ragged little sigh. ‘It was such a shock, you see.’

Lucy said nothing, for there was nothing in the etiquette books to prepare you for a disclosure like this one.

‘Nico was just a baby, of course—and oblivious to what was going on.’

‘But he would have missed his mother,’ Lucy pointed out.

He nodded. ‘Of course he did. And for a while he was a lost little baby. But his physical needs were such that his nurse was able to fulfil them. Gianferro was different—he was almost eight, and my heir, and as such he had always been treated in isolation from the other two. His whole life has been a role of preparation,’ he said. ‘He has always been taught to adapt to the changes that time brings.’

Lucy thought that little had changed—that Gianferro still lived his life in isolation. She held the baby closer and carried on looking at the King. Some instinct told her that he was leading up to something, but she didn’t know what it was.

‘But Guido was shattered,’ he said quietly. ‘He was especially close to his mother. For a while it seemed that the Palace was in uproar. Indeed, the whole island was—my people grieved for her so—and when my wife’s sister offered to take him for the summer in Connecticut—I…well, I seized the opportunity.’

‘You did what you thought was best,’ said Lucy staunchly. But people’s thinking was often muddled when they were grieving. And no one could predict the effect that their actions would have on the future.

‘How do you think he felt?’ asked the King.

She didn’t question him on why he had asked her, or begin to wonder whether he had heard rumours that she and Guido were not happy. The important thing was that he had asked, and she must answer. Truthfully.

‘He must have felt very…alone,’ she said slowly, and a wave of guilt rocked her. How blinkered she had been. She had been so busy thinking about what she wanted—about what was best for her—that she had never stopped to think about why Guido was the way he was, why he acted the way he did.

She tried to imagine his confusion and his anger and his hurt at the time. Close to the mother who had been so cruelly taken from him, and then sent away from the only home he knew. He must have felt as if he wasn’t wanted. No wonder he found it difficult to adapt to life on Mardivino. And she had selfishly refused to understand why.

But he never talked about it—he never talked about anything close to him.

And can you really blame him?

He had been too young to articulate his feelings at the time—he must have just blocked them out to make them bearable. And perhaps the habit had become one which had followed him into adulthood, impossible to break.

The King was looking at her, but he made no comment on the way she had bitten her lip in sorrow and self-recrimination.