Stella’s blood iced.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
STELLA SAID NOTHING Eduardo grabbed the iPad and stared at the screen. He swiped it a few times, scrolling down. Then he looked at her. Without saying anything he tilted the tablet so she could see what he’d been reading.
Eduardo’s Secret Soldier Bride!
The headline was emblazoned across the top and there was a picture beneath... Shock rolled through Stella.
‘How did they get that photo?’ All the amusement of the past few hours disappeared. ‘Someone leaked it?’
Eduardo was like granite. Expressionless. Unmoved.
‘Not Giulia?’
‘No.’ Eduardo shook his head. ‘She has been in service with my family for decades.’
‘All her life?’
‘All mine,’ he replied shortly. ‘She was my nanny.’
‘Really?’ She was momentarily diverted, touched that he’d wanted his old carer present at his marriage. And now she understood why Giulia had worked so quietly and endlessly to help her get ready. The woman had a soft spot for the spoilt second son. ‘Then who?’
He frowned and turned away. ‘I will find out. But it does not matter—it was going to become public anyway.’
Stella looked at the photograph, scarcely recognising herself. She was standing just outside the chapel, at the moment when Giulia had gone to check all was ready. They must have Photoshopped it because she looked soft and pretty, and so happy, holding that bouquet of roses up with a small smile curving her lips.
She scrolled down and read the text. Her name. Her history. Her entire service record, there for everyone to read. Horrified, she scanned the words.
‘How did they find all this out?’ she asked. ‘How did this happen?’ She squinted at the screen. ‘Do they know about—?’
‘It is not mentioned.’ Eduardo guessed her concern and answered, flicking a glance at Matteo, who was busy scrolling through another iPad. ‘I’ve checked the other papers—they’ve picked up on the story but there is nothing.’
It was all suddenly very real. And yet it wasn’t real.
‘It says we’ve been in love for ages.’ She could hardly speak for the shock. ‘That we fell in love in the palace. That you met me there because of my father...’ The Prince and the General’s daughter. Star-crossed lovers whose relationship was forbidden by the Crown Prince...
‘You might want to hit Refresh,’ Matteo said apologetically.
Stella stared as new pictures were loaded onto the screen. There were the ones from the café. And then pictures of them walking across the tarmac from the ‘baby jet’. Pictures taken only five minutes ago. They looked dishevelled, in their water-stained shorts and tee shirts, her hair in a loose, wild ponytail.
The headline made a meal of them having spent an hour on the tarmac before disembarking. They’d speculated that it had been so that the new Princess could make herself pretty before being snapped by the paparazzi... But then she and Eduardo had stepped out and she’d looked like that. Apparently it was ‘obvious’ that they’d spent the time engaged in ‘other pursuits’. But she knew the flush she’d worn wasn’t from orgasmic pleasure but board-game victory.
Before her eyes crude joke after crude joke filled the ‘comments’ section.
‘I must see Antonio,’ Eduardo said grimly. ‘Release the wedding pictures,’ he said to Matteo. ‘They will counteract these.’
‘Wedding pictures?’ Stella asked faintly.
‘Matteo took some inside the chapel,’ he answered distractedly, scrolling through the images again.
He had? She’d not been aware of anything but Eduardo in that moment.
And now Eduardo was busily tapping out emails. Wham-bam—back to business. She had to remember that this marriage was little more than another of his business deals. They’d signed the paperwork and everything.
This was not a fairy tale. This was not for ever. Their fantasy escape was over.
CHAPTER TWELVE
STELLA STRODE QUICKLY, trying to match Eduardo’s pace through the vast gilded corridors to his private rooms. Even though she’d spent chunks of her childhood in the immense palace, she now found it forbidding, and she’d certainly never been into the Princes’ wing before. Now she’d learnt that Antonio had one floor, Eduardo another, and there were formal reception rooms on the floor between the two, where they’d meet.