Читать книгу The Royal House of Niroli Collection - Кейт Хьюит, Пенни Джордан - Страница 35

THE cottage was in total darkness when Alex drove up the pot-holed driveway. He glanced at the little figure sitting so silently beside him, wondering if she was going to baulk at going out with him again. He had enjoyed the evening much more than he’d expected to. He knew he had limited time on the island, but it didn’t mean he couldn’t have a little dalliance without strings. Certainly Amelia Vialli was nothing like any other woman he had ever dated, and after his most recent break-up that was exactly what he needed right now. It had nothing to do with Amelia’s lack of experience of the world, although he would be lying to himself if he didn’t admit to how quaint and refreshing he found it. So many women he knew were way too polished and worldly, and Sarah, his ex-girlfriend, had been no exception. It was such a change to be in the company of a young woman who didn’t hide behind layers of make-up and cloying perfume and flirtatious, manipulative wiles. Amelia had a feisty spirit underneath that quiet humility and he loved that she showed it without reserve. And she was passionate, much more so than he could ever have imagined. One kiss had shown him what was simmering under the surface, no doubt hidden for all this time for fear of being hurt again.

‘Would you like me to wait with you until your father and brothers return?’ he offered as he brought the car to a standstill.

‘No, I’ll be fine. They could be ages and you have to operate tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Thank you for a lovely evening. The meal was wonderful.’

He came around to help her out of the car, the moonlight highlighting the perfect oval of her small pixie face. ‘But we didn’t even have dessert.’ He gave her a twinkling look. ‘That’s my favourite part of the meal.’

He heard the soft intake of her breath. ‘Maybe some other time.’

He smiled as he pressed a soft kiss to the corner of her mouth. ‘I’ll hold you to that.’

He walked her to the door, waiting for her to light a candle before he left. The soft, flickering light gave her an almost ethereal look as she turned to face him.

‘I suppose you’re wondering why we don’t have electricity connected,’ she said, a tiny glimmer of pride showing in her hazel eyes.

‘I hadn’t noticed,’ he lied.

He felt his stomach tighten with anger at how she and her family had been treated. ‘It’s not right you have to live like this, Amelia. There must be something that can be done. I could speak to someone about it for you.’

She lifted her chin as she held the door open for him. ‘We come from completely different worlds, Alex. Don’t go looking for a bridge between them. There isn’t one.’

‘That’s crazy and you know it. We are just two ordinary people who are interested in each other. Why not explore that interest and see where it takes us?’

‘It will take you back to Australia and leave me here.’

He frowned at her. ‘You don’t know that.’

‘It won’t work, Alex. I know it won’t.’

‘So you’re suddenly an expert on intimate relationships after one bad experience in eleven years?’ He hadn’t meant to sound so angry, but the determination in her manner and tone had got under his normally unflappable skin. ‘Come on, Amelia. Give this a chance. We struck sparks off each other from the word go. I haven’t felt like that before. I know this could work for now.’

‘Do they have a playboy manual that all you men consult to give you the best pick-up lines to use?’ she asked with a little curl of her lip. ‘So far this evening on at least two occasions you’ve used the very same lines my ex-lover used to get me to sleep with him.’

Now he was really angry. ‘Amelia, don’t cast me in the same mould as that idiot. I don’t see why we can’t just see what happens.’

‘You want a relationship with an outcast peasant?’ she asked with an arch of one brow.

‘You are not a peasant. I don’t see you as anything other than a beautiful young woman who is throwing her life away.’

‘So you fancy yourself as Prince Charming intent on rescuing Cinderella from her life of drudgery, do you?’ she asked with biting sarcasm.

‘I’m no prince,’ he said tightly. ‘I’m just a regular guy who is very attracted to a woman for the first time in I don’t know how long.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘That is such a line.’

He clenched his fists, trying to get control. ‘Look, I can’t help it if some things I say have been said before in another context. That’s not my problem—that’s yours. All I know is I have a short time here and I don’t want to waste any of it on arguing when we could be developing a connection instead.’

She gave him a smile touched with sadness. ‘You’re wasting your time with me, Alex. Go and find yourself someone who is able to move with grace and ease in your world. I would only embarrass you. After all, isn’t that really why you bought me this dress? So you could take me out in public without cringing?’

He raked a hand through his hair in frustration. ‘I give up. All right, you win. I’ll leave you alone. I get the message loud and clear. Sorry it’s taken me so long. I must have dating dyslexia or something. You can live your little nun’s life hidden up here in the woods—see if I care. I have better things to do with my time than try and get you to change your mind.’ He moved through the open door to the moonlight outside. ‘I guess I’ll see you some time on the ward.’

She didn’t answer.

But in a way that was in itself an answer, Alex thought as he drove back down the road, bumping over the pot-holes without a thought to his hire car’s suspension.

Amelia Vialli had given him the brush-off and he’d damn well better get over it.

When she came out into the kitchen the next morning Amelia found her father sitting at the table, his pain-glazed eyes briefly meeting hers.

‘I do not want anything to eat,’ he said as she reached for the utensils to prepare his breakfast.

‘But, Papà, you have to have something,’ she insisted.

He sent her an embittered glance. ‘What need does a dying man have for food?’

‘Papà—’ she began.

‘Do not patronise me, Amelia.’ He gave a hacking cough and continued, ‘I know I am dying. As far as I am concerned the sooner it happens, the better.’

‘You can’t mean that!’

‘I do,’ he said with a grim look. ‘Especially now.’

She frowned at his tone. ‘Why…especially now?’

He shifted his eyes from hers and she saw his throat tighten, along with his hands, which were in white-knuckled knots on the table in front of him.

‘Papà?’

He raised his head to look at her. ‘A long time ago…before you and Rico and Silvio were born I did a very bad thing.’

Amelia felt something thick and immovable settle in the middle of her chest, robbing her of the air she needed to breathe. ‘W-what sort of bad thing?’ she asked, her voice coming out as a cracked whisper.

His eyes were filled with shame as they held hers. ‘I was responsible for the kidnap of Prince Alessandro Fierezza.’

She stared at him, her insides shuddering, her heart racing and her palms damp with the dew of dread.

‘I am sorry, Amelia,’ he went on brokenly. ‘I know it is a terrible shock but I was young and got caught up in the rebellion.’

‘But you said you were never part of it! You’ve always told us you were not involved in any way!’

He coughed so hard and for so long, she became seriously frightened. ‘Papà?’ She stepped towards him. ‘Are you all right?’

He waved his hand as he used the other to bring an old rag to his mouth to spit out the bloody mucus. His gaze returned to hers. ‘I started out on the fringe and was never too heavily involved—always kept in the dark. But gradually, over time, I was given more and more responsibility, especially as the movement to kidnap the prince gathered momentum.’

‘Y-you…you mean you…killed him?’

He shook his head and sighed. ‘No, I did not kill him. Do you really believe me capable of such a thing, your own father?’

Amelia swallowed and reached for his age-ridden hand. ‘No, Papà, but, w-what did you do with him?’

His eyes glistened with moisture, something she had never seen in them before, not even after her mother had died.

‘I organised for him to be shipped away,’ he said. ‘I had some connections, a couple who were prepared to take the child.’

‘Take him where?’

‘To somewhere he could not be easily traced.’

‘But what about the other child?’ she asked after a throbbing silence that seemed to be keeping erratic time with her heart. ‘The child who is now buried at the palace?’

‘King Giorgio had activated an undercover operation to get his grandson back but it backfired. The parents of the child were part of the resistance group and when the explosions happened during the rescue operation they were all killed. Because they had no other relatives it was easy for me to pass the boy off as the prince. No one questioned it. I saw the chance to get out of the contract that had been handed to me.’

‘The contract?’

‘To kill the prince if the ransom bid failed.’

Amelia stiffened at her father’s harsh words. ‘But you couldn’t go through with it?’

‘No.’ He gave a ragged sigh. ‘He was a little boy of two, barely speaking, crying for his mamma and brother all the time. It nearly broke my heart. I just couldn’t do it.’

Tears burned at the back of Amelia’s eyes. ‘Oh, Papà.’

‘I had to rely on the silence of other people to ship the boy out of danger. It cost me everything. That is why we have lived in poverty ever since. But it was the only thing I could do, Amelia. I suddenly found myself in over my head with the rebellion. Your mother had just found out she was pregnant. I could not extricate myself without losing my life or hers if it became known I had not carried out the plan to kill the prince.’

‘Have you heard anything of what happened to him?’ she asked.

‘There are rumours…’ he paused, his throat moving up and down again ‘…rumours that he is alive and currently on the island.’

Amelia stared at him in growing alarm.

‘Of course, no one has verified it but it should not be hard to do so,’ he said. ‘One look will be enough for me to know if he is the prince.’

‘One look?’ She frowned at him in bafflement. ‘But, Papà, a tiny child of two will be hard to recognise thirty-four years later, surely?’

His pain-filled eyes came back to hers. ‘Prince Alessandro has a birthmark, a strawberry one. I saw it when I was looking after him. It is very distinctive. It is shaped like the island of Niroli.’

‘A birthmark…’ she breathed. ‘Where?’

‘It is on his right forearm, on the underside near the elbow. You would not see it unless he turned his arm right over.’

Amelia let out her breath in a jagged stream, her thoughts clanging together in her head like discordant cathedral bells. She mentally backtracked, going over each time she had been with Alex Hunter, trying to recall whether he had been wearing shirt sleeves or whether they had been rolled up….

‘The new doctor,’ her father said into the heavy silence. ‘I want to see him. But it must be in private. Up here. Can you arrange it?’

‘Why him, Papà?’

‘I want to make sure.’

She swallowed again. ‘Y-you think Dr Hunter is the prince?’

‘I do not know but I must make certain before I die.’

The stark reality of the situation was fast dawning on Amelia and it terrified her. If news got out of her father’s role in the kidnap of the prince he would be hauled before the courts and charged. His last few weeks of life would be spent in prison, not with his family. Their name would again be vilified in every way imaginable; her brothers would never find work again on the island and her life would be even more difficult than it currently was.

And if it was true that Alex Hunter was indeed Prince Alessandro, what would that information do to him? How would he cope with the news that he was not a simple commoner but a member of the richest royal family in Europe? And not only a member, with his twin brother’s recent decision—now the rightful heir to the throne.

Her father jolted her out of her tortured reverie. ‘I want you to know that I am prepared to be punished for what I did, Amelia. I have always been prepared, but I did not come forward at the time for your mother’s sake. I kept everything from her. I had to. She was expecting a child, your brother Rico. I did not want her to see me as a man capable of such a crime. It was even worse after your brothers and you were born. Having my own children made me realise the enormity of what I had done. I could tell no one and the fight to keep those who knew silent became all the more desperate. It has cost me dearly.’

‘It has cost the prince his birthright!’ she said, unable to contain her despair and shame at what he had done. ‘No matter if the Australian doctor is the prince or not, whoever the prince is now has been robbed of everything that is rightly his. He has never known his real parents, never lived on the island, and never spoken the language and a thousand other things that can never be replaced or put right by a last-minute deathbed confession!’

‘I know, but I must put right what I can,’ he said. ‘I must see this man who has the whole island talking of his likeness to Antonio Fierezza.’

‘And Prince Marco,’ she put in heavily.

‘Is that true?’ he asked, his throat moving up and down again. ‘You have seen Prince Marco up at the palace, have you not? Does he look anything like the doctor?’

She frowned as she thought about it. There was a similarity; they were both dark of hair and eyes, although she seemed to recall Marco’s were not as coal-black as Alex’s, and he seemed a bit taller, not much, maybe only an inch if that.

‘I don’t know…maybe a little bit,’ she said.

‘So you will do this for me? Bring the doctor to me as soon as you can arrange it?’

‘He was here last night,’ she informed him.

He coughed out the word. ‘Here?’

She nodded. ‘He came across me on the road. and gave me a lift and somehow talked me into having dinner with him. I decided to go because you and Silvio were out. Where is Silvio, by the way?’

‘He has been working on a boat that goes between here and Sicily. He heard the rumours and took me down to the port to talk to some people who had seen the doctor and become suspicious.’

‘Papà…you do realise if Alex Hunter is the child you spirited away that there will be consequences, not just for you, but for Rico and Silvio and me?’

‘Yes…’ His thin chest deflated on a ragged breath. ‘I have thought long and hard about it. For some years now, in spite of my efforts to distance myself from the organisation, my name has been brought up whenever the Vialli bandits are mentioned. Every finger is now pointing to me. I cannot allow you or your brothers to live any longer under the shame of a murder that never took place.’

‘The kidnap of a small child is almost as bad.’

‘I did the best I could do under the circumstances,’ he said. ‘I did not kill him. I had every chance but I did not do it. I would like to tell that to him…to ask for forgiveness. Then I can die in peace.’

She let out another sigh. ‘There can be no peace, Papà, can’t you see that? Not now, not if what you’ve said is true.’

‘What would you have me do?’ he asked. ‘If he is the prince, he has the right to know.’

‘But what if he’s not?’

Her father looked at her, the sadness of his life shining in his eyes. ‘Just bring him to me, Amelia. Bring the Australian doctor to me so I can find out once and for all.’