Читать книгу The Prince She Never Knew - Кейт Хьюит - Страница 9

TODAY WAS HER wedding day. Alyse Barras gazed at her pale, pinched face in the mirror and decided that not all brides were radiant. As it happened, she looked as if she were on the way to the gallows.

No, she amended, not the gallows; a quick and brutal end was not to be hers, but rather a long, drawn-out life sentence: a loveless marriage to a man whom she barely knew, despite their six-year engagement. Yet even so a small kernel of hope was determined to take root in her heart, to unfurl and grow in the shallowest and poorest of soils.

Maybe he’ll learn to love me…

Prince Leo Diomedi of Maldinia seemed unlikely to learn anything of the sort, yet still she hoped. She had to.

‘Miss Barras? Are you ready?’

Alyse turned from her reflection to face one of the wedding coordinator’s assistants who stood in the doorway of the room she’d been given in the vast royal palace in Averne, Maldinia’s capital city, nestled in the foothills of the Alps.

‘As ready as I’ll ever be,’ she replied, trying to smile, but everything in her felt fragile, breakable, and the curve of her lips seemed as if it could crack her face. Split her apart.

The assistant Marina came forward, looking her over in the assessing and proprietary way Alyse had got used to in the three days since she’d arrived in Maldinia—or, really, the six years since she’d agreed to this engagement. She was a commodity to be bought, shaped, presented. An object of great value, to be sure, but still an object.

She’d learned to live with it, although on today of all days—her wedding day, the day most little girls dreamed about—she felt the falseness of her own role more, the sense that her life was simply something to be staged.

Marina twitched Alyse’s veil this way and that, until she gave a nod of satisfaction. It billowed gauzily over her shoulders, a gossamer web edged with three-hundred-year-old lace.

‘And now the dress,’ Marina said, and flicked her fingers to indicate that Alyse should turn around.

Alyse moved slowly in a circle as Marina examined the yards of white satin that billowed out behind her, the lace bodice that hugged her breasts and hips and had taken eight top-secret fittings over the last six months. The dress had been the source of intense media speculation, the subject of hundreds of articles in tabloids, gossip magazines, even respected newspapers, television and radio interviews, celebrity and gossip blogs and websites.

What kind of dress would the world’s real-life Cinderella—not a very creative way of typecasting her, but it had stuck—wear to marry her very own prince, her one true love?

Well, this. And Alyse had had no say in it at all. It was a beautiful dress, she allowed as she caught a glance of the billowing white satin in the full-length mirror. She could hardly complain. She might have chosen something just like it—if she’d been given a choice.

Marina’s walkie-talkie crackled and she spoke into it in rapid Italian, too fast for Alyse to understand, even though she’d been learning Italian ever since she’d become engaged to Leo. It was the native language of his country, and Maldinia’s queen-in-waiting should be able to speak it. Unfortunately no one spoke slowly enough for her to be able to understand.

‘They’re ready.’ Marina twitched the dress just as she had the veil and then rummaged on the vanity table for some blusher. ‘You look a bit pale,’ she explained, and brushed Alyse’s cheeks with blusher even though the make-up artist had already spent an hour on her face.

‘Thank you,’ Alyse murmured. She wished her mother were here, but the royal protocol was—and always had been, according to Queen Sophia—that the bride prepare by herself. Alyse wondered whether that was true. Queen Sophia tended to insist on doing things the way they’d ‘always been done’ when really it was simply the way she wanted them done. And even though Alyse’s mother, Natalie, was Queen Sophia’s best friend from their days together at a Swiss boarding school, she clearly didn’t want Natalie getting in the way on this most important and august of occasions.

Or so Alyse assumed. She was the bride, and she felt as if she were in the way.

She wondered if she would feel so as a wife.

No. She closed her eyes as Marina next dusted her face with loose powder. She couldn’t think like that, couldn’t give in to the despair, not on today of all days. She had once before, and it had led only to heartache and regret. Today she wanted to hope, to believe, or at least to try to. Today was meant to be a beginning, not an end.

But if Leo hasn’t learned to love me in the last six years, why should he now?

Two months ago, with media interest at a frenzied height, her mother had taken her on a weekend to Monaco. They’d sat in deck chairs and sipped frothy drinks and Alyse had felt herself just begin to relax when Natalie had said, ‘You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.’

She’d tensed all over again, her drink halfway to her lips. ‘Do what?’

‘Marry him, Alyse. I know it’s all got completely out of hand with the media, and also with the Diomedis, to be frank. But you are still your own woman and I want to make sure you’re sure…’ Her mother had trailed off, her eyes clouded with anxiety, and Alyse had wondered what she’d guessed.

Did she have even an inkling of how little there was between her and Leo? Few people knew; the world believed they were madly in love, and had done ever since Leo had first kissed her cheek six years ago and the resulting photograph had captured the public’s imagination.

Leo’s mother Sophia knew, of course, as the pretense of their grand romance had been her idea, Alyse suspected, and of course Leo’s father, Alessandro, who had first broached the whole idea to her when she’d been just eighteen years old and starry-eyed over Leo. Perhaps Alexa—Leo’s sister, her fiery nature so different from his own sense of cool containment—had guessed.

And, naturally, Leo knew. Leo knew he didn’t love her. He just didn’t know that for six years she’d been secretly, desperately, loving him.

‘I’m happy, Maman,’ Alyse had said quietly, and had reached over to squeeze her mother’s hand. ‘I admit, the media circus isn’t my favourite part, but…I love Leo.’ She had stumbled only slightly over this unfortunate truth.

‘I want for you what your father and I have had,’ Natalie had said, and Alyse had smiled wanly. Her parents’ romance was something out of a fairy tale: the American heiress who had captured the heart of a wealthy French financier. Alyse had heard the story many times, how her father had seen her mother across a crowded room—they’d both been attending some important dinner—and he had made his way over to her and said, ‘What are you doing with the rest of your life?’

She’d simply smiled and answered, ‘Spending it with you.’

Love at first sight. And not just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill love, but of the over-the-top, utterly consuming variety.

Of course her mother wanted that for her. And Alyse would never admit to her how little she actually had, even as she still clung stubbornly to the hope that one day it might become more.

‘I’m happy,’ she’d repeated, and her mother had looked relieved if not entirely convinced.

Marina’s walkie-talkie crackled again, and once again Alyse let the rapid-fire Italian assault her with incomprehension.

‘They’re waiting,’ Marina announced briskly, and Alyse wondered if she imagined that slightly accusing tone. She’d felt it since she’d arrived in Maldinia, mostly from Queen Sophia: you’re not precisely what we’d have chosen for our son and heir, but you’ll have to do. We have no choice, after all.

The media—the whole world—had made sure of that. There had been no going back from that moment captured by a photographer six years ago when Leo had come to her eighteenth birthday party and brushed his lips against her cheek in a congratulatory kiss. Alyse, instinctively and helplessly, had stood on her tiptoes and clasped her hand to his face.

If she could go back in time, would she change that moment? Would she have turned her face away and stopped all the speculation, the frenzy?

No, she wouldn’t have, and the knowledge was galling. At first it had been her love for Leo that had made her agree to their faked fairy tale, but as the years had passed and Leo had shown no interest in loving her—or love at all—she’d considered whether to cut her losses and break off the engagement.

She never had; she’d possessed neither the courage nor conviction to do something that would quite literally have rocked the world. And of course she’d clung to a hope that seemed naïve at best, more likely desperate: that he would learn to love her.

And yet…we get along. We’re friends, of a sort. Surely that’s a good foundation for marriage?

Always the hope.

‘This way, Miss Barras,’ Marina said, and ushered her out of the room she’d been getting dressed in and down a long, ornate corridor with marble walls and chandeliers glittering overhead every few feet.

The stiff satin folds of Alyse’s dress rustled against the parquet as she followed Marina down the hallway and towards the main entrance of the palace where a dozen liveried footmen stood to attention. She would make the walk to the cathedral across the street and then the far more important walk down the aisle by herself, another Maldinian tradition.

‘Wait.’ Marina held up a hand and Alyse paused in front of the gilt-panelled doors that led to the front courtyard of the palace where at least a hundred reporters and photographers, probably more, waited to capture this iconic moment. Alyse had had so many iconic moments in the last six years she felt as if her entire adult life had been catalogued in the glossy pages of gossip magazines.

Marina circled her the way Alyse imagined a lion or tiger circled its prey. She was being fanciful, she knew, but her nerves were stretched to breaking point. She’d been in Maldinia for three days and she hadn’t seen Leo outside of state functions once. Hadn’t spoken to him alone in over a year.

And she was marrying him in approximately three minutes.

Paula, the royal family’s press secretary, approached with a brisk click of heels. ‘Alyse? You’re ready?’ she asked in accented English.

She nodded back, not trusting herself to speak.

‘Excellent. Now, all you need to remember is to smile. You’re Cinderella and this is your glass slipper moment, yes?’ She twitched Alyse’s veil just as Sophia had done, and Alyse wondered how much more pointless primping she would have to endure. As soon as she stepped outside the veil would probably blow across her face anyway. At least she had enough hair spray in her hair to prevent a single strand from so much as stirring. She felt positively shellacked.

‘Cinderella,’ she repeated. ‘Right.’ She’d been acting like Cinderella for six years. She didn’t really need the reminder.

‘Everyone wants to be you,’ Paula continued. ‘Every girl, every woman, is dreaming of walking in your shoes right now. And every man wants to be the prince. Don’t forget to wave—this is about them as much as you. Include everyone in the fantasy, yes?’

‘Right. Yes.’ She knew that, had learned it over the years of public attention. And, truthfully, she didn’t mind the attention of the crowds, of people who rather incredibly took encouragement and hope from her and her alleged fairy tale of a life. All they wanted from her was friendliness, a smile, a word. All she needed to be was herself.

It was the paparazzi she had trouble with, the constant scrutiny and sense of invasion as rabid journalists and photographers looked for cracks in the fairy-tale image, ways to shatter it completely.

‘I’d better get out there before the clock strikes twelve,’ she joked, trying to smile, but her mouth was so dry her lips stuck to her teeth. Paula frowned, whipping a tissue from her pocket to blot Alyse’s lipstick.

‘We’re at thirty seconds,’ Marina intoned, and Paula positioned Alyse in front of the doors. ‘Twenty…’

Alyse knew she was supposed to emerge when the huge, ornate clock on one of the palace’s towers chimed the first of its eleven sonorous notes. She would walk sedately, head held high, towards the cathedral as the clock continued chiming and arrive at its doors when the last chime fell into silence.

It had all been choreographed and rehearsed several times, down to the last second. Everything arranged, orchestrated, managed.

‘Ten…’

Alyse took a deep breath, or as deep a breath as the tightly fitted bodice of her dress would allow. She felt dizzy, spots dancing before her eyes, although whether from lack of air or sheer nerves she didn’t know.

‘Five…’

Two footmen opened the doors to the courtyard with a flourish, and Alyse blinked in the sudden brilliance of the sun. The open doorway framed a dazzling blue sky, the two Gothic towers of the cathedral opposite and a huge throng of people.

‘Go,’ Paula whispered, and gave her a firm nudge in the small of her back.

Pushed by Paula, she moved forward, her dress snagging on her heel so she stumbled ever so slightly. Still it was enough for the paparazzi to notice, and dozens of cameras snapped frantically to capture the moment. Another iconic moment; Alyse could already picture the headlines: First Stumble on The Road to Happiness?

She steadied herself, lifted her head and gave the entire viewing world a brilliant smile. The answering cheer roared through the courtyard. Alyse could feel the sound reverberate through her chest, felt her spirits lift at their obvious excitement and approbation.

This was why she was marrying Leo, why the royal family of Maldinia had agreed to his engagement to a mere commoner: because everyone loved her.

Everyone but Leo.

Still smiling, raising one hand in a not-so-regal wave, Alyse started walking towards the cathedral. She heard a few snatched voices amidst the crowd, shouting her name, asking her to turn for a photo. She smiled, leaving the white carpet that had been laid from the palace to the cathedral to shake people’s hands, accept posies of flowers.

She was deviating from the remote, regal script she’d been given, but then she always did. She couldn’t help but respond to people’s warmth and friendliness; all too often it was what strengthened her to maintain this charade that wasn’t a charade at all—for her. For Leo, of course, it was.

But maybe, please God, it won’t always be…

‘Good luck, Alyse,’ one starry-eyed teen gushed, clasping her hands tightly. ‘You look so beautiful—you really are a princess!’

Alyse squeezed the girl’s hands. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured. ‘You look beautiful too, you know. You’re glowing more than I am!’

She realised the clock had stopped chiming; she was late. Queen Sophia would be furious, yet it was because of moments like these she was here at all. She didn’t stick to the royal family’s formalised script; she wrote her own lines without even meaning to and the public loved them.

Except she didn’t know what her lines would be once she was married. She had no idea what she would say to Leo when she finally faced him as his wife.

I love you.

Those were words she was afraid he’d never want to hear.

The cathedral doors loomed in front of her, the interior of the building dim and hushed. Alyse turned one last time towards the crowd and another roar went up, echoing through the ancient streets of Averne. She waved and blew them a kiss, and she heard another cheer. Perhaps the kiss was a bit over the top, but she felt in that moment strangely reckless, almost defiant. There was no going back now.

And then she turned back to the cathedral and her waiting groom.

Leo stood with his back to the doors of the cathedral, but he knew the moment when Alyse had entered. He heard the murmurs fall to an expectant hush, and the roar of approbation that she generated wherever she went had fallen to silence outside. He flexed his shoulders once and remained with his back to the door—and his bride. Maldinian princes did not turn around until the bride had reached the altar and Leo deviated from neither tradition nor duty.

The organ had started playing with sonorous grandeur, some kind of baroque march, and he knew Alyse was walking towards him. He felt a flicker of curiosity; he hadn’t seen her dress, had no idea what she looked like in it. Polished, poised and as perfect as usual, he presumed. The perfect bride. The perfect love story. And of course, the perfect marriage. All of it the perfect pretense.

Nothing more.

Finally he felt the folds of her dress whisper against his legs and he turned to face her. He barely noticed the dress. Her face was pale except for two spots of blusher high on her cheekbones. She looked surprisingly nervous, he thought. For the past six years she’d been handling the intense media scrutiny of their engagement with apparent effortless ease, and her attack of nerves now surprised him. Alarmed him a bit too.

She’d agreed to all of this. It was a little late for cold feet.

Conscious of the stares of the congregation—as well as the cameras televising the ceremony live to millions of people—he smiled and took her hand, which was icy and small in his. He squeezed her fingers, an encouragement if anyone saw, but also a warning. Neither of them could make a mistake now. Too much rode on this marriage, this masquerade. She knew that; so did he. They’d both sold their souls, and willingly.

Now he watched as Alyse lifted her chin, her wide grey eyes flashing with both comprehension and spirit. Her lips curved in a tiny smile and she squeezed his hand back. He felt a flicker of admiration for her courage and poise—as well as one of relief. Crisis averted.

She turned towards the archbishop who was performing the ceremony and he saw the gleam of chestnut hair beneath the lace of her veil, the soft glimmer of a pearl in the shell-like curve of her ear. He turned to face the man as well.

Fifteen minutes later it was done. They’d said their vows and Leo had brushed his lips against Alyse’s. He’d kissed her dozens, perhaps hundreds, of times during their engagement, always in front of a crowd. A camera.

He kissed her now as he always had, a firm press of lips that conveyed enthusiasm and even desire without actually feeling either. He didn’t want to feel either; he wasn’t about to complicate what had been a business arrangement by stirring up a hornet’s nest of emotions—either in her or himself.

Although now that they were married, now that they would actually consummate this marriage, he would certainly allow himself to feel attraction at least, a natural desire. All his life he’d controlled such contrary emotions, refused to let them dictate his behaviour as they had his parents’. Refused to let them ruin his life and wreck the monarchy, as they had with his parents.

No, he had more dignity, more self-control, than that. But he certainly intended to take full advantage of his marriage vows—and his marriage bed. It didn’t mean his emotions would actually be engaged.

Just his libido.

Leo lifted his head and gazed down at her, smiling slightly for the sake of their audience, and saw that Alyse was gazing at him with panic in her eyes. Her nerves clearly had not abated.

Suppressing his own annoyance, he gently wrapped his hands around hers—they were still icy—and pried them from his shoulders. ‘All right?’ he murmured.

She nodded, managed a rather sickly smile and turned towards the congregation for their recession down the aisle.

And now it begins, Leo thought. The rest of his life enacting this endless charade, started by a single moment six years ago.

Who could ever have known how a paparazzi photographer would catch that kiss? And not just his lips on her cheek but her hand clasped against his cheek, her face uplifted, eyes shining like silver stars.

That photo had been on the cover of every major publication in the western world. It had been named the third most influential photograph of the century, a fact which made Leo want to bark in cynical laughter. A single, stupid kiss influential? Important?

But it had become important, because the sight of the happiness shining from Alyse’s eyes had ignited a generation, fired their hearts with faith in love and hope for the future. Some economists credited the photograph with helping to kick-start Europe’s economy, a fact Leo thought entirely absurd.

Yet when the monarchy’s public relations department had realised the power of that photograph, they had harnessed it for themselves. For him, his father King Alessandro and all the future Diomedis that would reign over Maldinia.

Which had led, inevitably, to this engagement and now marriage, he all the while pretending to live up to what that photograph had promised—because for the public to realise it was nothing more than a fake would be a disaster.

Hand in hand with his bride, he walked down the aisle and into a lifetime of pretending.

She was breaking up, splitting apart, all the fragile, barely held parts of her shattering into pieces. She’d held herself together for so long and now…?

She wasn’t sure she could do it any more. And it was too late not to.

Somehow Alyse made it down the aisle, although everything around her—the people, the colours, the noise and light—was a blur. Everything but the look that had flashed in Leo’s eyes after he’d kissed her, something bordering on impatient annoyance at her obvious unease. Her panic.

She felt Leo’s arm like a band of iron beneath her hand. ‘Smile as we come out of the cathedral,’ he murmured, and then the crowds were upon them, their roar loud in their ears and, still feeling sick inside, she smiled for all she was worth.

The wordless roar turned into a rhythmic chant: bacialo! Bacialo!

The crowd wanted them to kiss. Wordlessly, Alyse turned to Leo, tilted her head up at him as he gazed down at her and stroked her cheek with a single fingertip and then, once again, brushed his lips against her in another emotionless kiss.

Even so that cool kiss touched Alyse’s soul, whispered its impossible hopes into her heart. She kept her lips mostly slack beneath his, knowing after six years of such kisses he didn’t want her to respond, never had. No hot, open-mouthed kisses of passion for them. Just these chaste displays of their mutual love and devotion.

He lifted his head and she smiled and waved to the crowd. It was done.

Still smiling, Leo led her to the waiting carriage, all gilt and scrollwork, like something out of a fairy tale. A Cinderella carriage for a Cinderella bride.

He helped her in and then sat next to her on the narrow leather seat, his thigh pressing against her hip, her dress billowing over his lap. The liveried coachman closed the door and they were off for a celebratory ride through the city, then back to the palace for the reception.

As soon as the door had closed, Leo’s smile, his mask, dropped. There was no need for it now; no one was watching. He turned to her, a frown appearing between his brows.

‘You’re too pale.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I’m tired.’

Leo’s frown deepened, and then it ironed out and he sighed and raked his hands through his hair. ‘It’s no wonder. The last few days have been exhausting. I expect it will be good to get away.’

They were leaving tomorrow for a ten-day honeymoon: first a week on a private Caribbean island and then a whistle-stop tour through London, Paris and Rome.

Alyse’s insides quaked as she thought of that first week. An entire week alone, without cameras or crowds, no one to perform for, no audience to entertain. A week completely by themselves.

She lived in both hope and fear of that week.

‘Yes,’ she said now, and thankfully her voice remained steady, strong. ‘I expect it will.’

Leo turned to the window and waved at the crowds lining the ancient cobbled streets of Averne, and Alyse turned to her own window and waved as well. Each flutter of her fingers drained her, as if she were lifting a huge weight. Her engagement ring, an enormous emerald surrounded by pearls and diamonds, sparkled in the sun.

She didn’t know why everything felt so much harder now. She’d been living this life for six years, after all. She’d come to enjoy her interactions with the public and had learned to live with the media’s attention.

Yet today, on her wedding day, with nearly the last words she’d spoken having been vows before the world, before God…

She felt the falseness of their masquerade more than ever. They’d only been married a few minutes and already she felt how difficult, how draining, this life of play-acting was going to be. She’d been moving towards that realisation for months as the weight had dropped off and her stomach had churned with nerves, as everything had steamrolled ahead with such frightening implacability that she had known she couldn’t call a halt to the proceedings even if she’d wanted to. The pretending.

And the terrible truth was, she still didn’t want to. She’d still rather hope.

‘Alyse?’

She turned from the window where she’d been blindly staring at the crowds, her hand rising and falling in a fluttering wave without even realising she was doing so. ‘Yes?’

‘You don’t look well,’ Leo said and he sounded concerned. ‘Do you need a few moments to rest before we go into the reception?’

Alyse knew what the reception would entail: hours of chatting, laughing and pretending to be in love. Of kissing Leo, squeezing his hand and laying her head on his shoulder. She’d done it all before, of course, but now it hurt more. It felt, absurdly perhaps, more fake.

‘I’m fine.’ She smiled and turned back to the window so he wouldn’t see how her smile trembled and almost slid right off her face. ‘I’m fine,’ she said again, this time for herself, because she needed to believe it. She was stronger than this. She had to be stronger, because she’d chosen this life, knowing how hard it would be.

At times it might have felt as if she had no choice, with the pressure of both the media and the monarchy urging her to agree, but if she’d really wanted to break off the engagement she surely could have. She would have found the strength to.

No, she’d chosen this life, and chosen Leo; she’d believed in the duty she was performing and she’d held out for love.

She still did. Today was a beginning, she reminded herself. Today was the start of her and Leo’s life together, days and nights spent with each other in a way neither of them had ever experienced before. Maybe, finally, Leo would fall in love with her.

Leo just wanted this day to be over. Although of course with its end would come a whole new, and rather interesting, complication: the night. Their wedding night.

He glanced again at Alyse; her face was turned away from him but he could still see how pale and wan she looked. And thin. The dress clung to her figure, which had already been slender but now looked rather waif-like. Clearly the strain of the heightened media attention had got to her over these last few months.

Just as it had got to him. He’d lived his life in the spotlight and he certainly should be used to it now. As a child, the play-acting for the media had confused him, but as he’d grown older he’d accepted it as the price he had to pay for the sake of his duty to the crown. At least this time, with Alyse, he’d chosen it. He’d entered this loveless marriage willingly, even happily.

Because wasn’t it better to know love was a sham from the beginning, than to live in desperate yearning for it—just as he had done for the whole of his confused and unhappy childhood?

At least he and Alyse agreed on that. She’d always known he didn’t love her, and he knew she didn’t love him. Really, it was the perfect foundation for a marriage: agreed and emotionless expectations.

Yet he’d found the last few months of intense media speculation and interest wearying. The charade of acting as if they were in love had started to wear thin. And he’d wondered, not for the first time, just why Alyse had agreed to this marriage.

He’d never asked her, had never wanted to know. It was enough that she’d agreed, and she’d gone along with it ever since. Just as he had.

Only, unlike him, she had no incentive to please the press, no duty to repair a badly damaged monarchy and increase the tourist revenue for a small and struggling country. No need to pretend to be wildly in love. So why had she agreed all those years ago? Why had she continued to agree?

He had to assume it was because, like him, she wanted this kind of marriage. Or maybe she just wanted this kind of life—the life of a princess and one day a queen. He didn’t fault her for it. She wouldn’t be the first person to have her head turned by wealth and fame. In any case, she’d approached their union with a practical acceptance he admired, and she’d embraced the public as much as they’d embraced her.

Really, she was perfect. So why did he wonder? Why did he now feel a new, creeping uncertainty? The questions—and the lack of answers—annoyed him. He liked certainty and precision; he prided himself on both.

He didn’t want to wonder about his bride on his wedding day. Didn’t want to worry about why she looked so pale and shaky, or why her smile seemed less assured. He wanted things to be simple, straightforward, as they had been for the last six years.

There was no reason for marriage to complicate matters, he told himself.

The carriage came to a stop in front of the palace and he turned to her with a faint smile, determined to banish his brooding thoughts and keep their relationship on the courteous yet impersonal footing they’d maintained for their entire engagement.

‘Shall we?’ he said, one eyebrow lifted, and Alyse managed just as faint a smile back as she took his hand and allowed him to help her out of the carriage.