PROLOGUE
THE dark-haired figure seated at the antique desk and illuminated by an ornate, gold trimmed lamp slapped shut the leather folder, placed it on the growing pile to his right, and reached for yet another folder, opening it with an impatient flick. Dio, was there no end to these damned documents? How could so small a place as San Lucenzo generate so many of the things? Everything from officers’ commissions to resolutions of the Great Council, all needing to be signed and sealed—by him.
Prince Rico gave a caustic twist of his well-shaped mouth. Perhaps he should be grateful the task seldom came his way. But with his older brother, the Crown Prince, in Scandinavia, representing the House of Ceraldi at a royal wedding, the temporarily indisposed Prince Regnant—their father—had for once been obliged to turn to his younger son to carry out those deputised duties he was generally excluded from.
Rico’s eyes darkened for a moment with an old bitterness. Excluded from any involvement in the running of the principality—however tedious or trivial—yet his father still condemned him for the life he perforce led. The twist in his mouth deepened in cynicism. His father might deplore his younger son’s well-earned reputation as the Playboy Prince, yet his exploits both in the world of expensive sports like powerboat racing, and on the glittering international social circuit—including the bedrooms of its most beautiful women—generated invaluable publicity for San Lucenzo. And, considering just how much of the principality’s revenues derived from it being one of the world’s most glamorous locales, his part in contributing to that glamour was not small. Not that either his father or older brother saw it that way. To them, his exploits brought the attention of the paparazzi and the constant risk of scandal—both of which were anathema to the strait-laced Ruling Prince of San Lucenzo and his upright heir.
Not, Rico grudgingly allowed, as he scanned through the document in his hand, that they were not sometimes justified in their concerns. Carina Collingham was an unfortunate instance in that respect—though how he could have been expected to know she was lying when she told him her divorce was through was beyond him.
Despite his instantly having dissociated himself from her the moment he’d discovered the unpalatable truth about the marital status of the film actress, the damage had been done, and now his father had yet another complaint to lay at his younger son’s door.
His older brother, Luca, had taken him to task as well, berating him for not having had Carina security-checked adequately before bedding her. Better to exercise some self-restraint when it came to picking women out of the box like so much candy.
‘There’s safety in numbers,’ Rico had replied acerbically. ‘While I play the field, no woman thinks she has the ticket on me. Unlike you.’ He’d cast a mordant look at his brother, along whose high Ceraldi cheekbones a line had been etched. ‘You watch yourself, Luca,’ he’d told him. ‘Christabel Pasoni has plans for you.’
‘Christa’s perfectly content with the way things are,’ Luca had responded repressively. ‘And she does not cause a scandal in the press.’
‘That’s because her fond papa owns so much of it! Dio, Luca, can’t you damn well ask her to tell Papa to instruct his editors to lay off me?’
But Luca had been unsympathetic.
‘They wouldn’t write about you if they had nothing to write. Don’t you think it’s time to grow up, Rico, and face your responsibilities?’
Rico’s expression had hardened.
‘If I had any, I might just do that,’ he’d shot back, and walked away.
Well, he’d wanted responsibilities and now he’d got some—signing documents because there was no one else available to do so, and atoning for having had a misplaced affair with a stilltechnically-married woman.
Maybe if I sign every damn document in my best handwriting before Luca gets back I’ll have earned a royal pardon…
But his caustic musing was without humour, and impatiently he scanned the document now in front of him. Something to do with a petition from a convent to be rescinded of the obligation to pay property tax on land on which a hospital had been built in the seventeenth century—a petition which, so the helpful handwritten note appended by his father’s equerry reminded him, was nothing more than a pro forma request, made annually and granted annually since 1647, requiring nothing more than the customary royal assent. Dutifully, Rico scrawled the royal signature, put down the quill, and reached for the sealing wax, melting the required dark scarlet blob below his name, and then waiting a few moments for it to cool before impressing on it the royal seal. He was just replacing the seal when his phone went.
Not the phone on the desk, but his own mobile—to which very, very few people had the number. Frowning slightly, he slid a long fingered hand inside his jacket pocket and flicked open the handset.
‘Rico?’
He recognised the voice at once, and his frown deepened. Whenever Jean-Paul phoned it was seldom good news—certainly not at this late hour of the night. The hour when, Rico knew from experience, the press went to bed. And what a certain section of the press across Europe all too often went to bed with was a story of just who he had gone to bed with.
Damn—had the vultures stirred yet more trouble for him over Carina Collingham? Had she been milking the situation for yet more publicity for her career?
‘OK, Jean-Paul, tell me the worst,’ he said, when foreboding.
The gossip-columnist, who was also the impoverished grandson of a French count, as well as a rare genuine friend in the press, started to speak. But the story that he’d heard was about to break had nothing to do with Carina Collingham. Nothing to do with any of Rico’s affaires.
‘Rico,’ said Jean-Paul, and his voice was unusually grave, ‘it’s about Paolo.’
Rico stilled. Slowly he released his hand from the back of his neck and slipped it down on to the leather surface of the desk. It tensed, unconsciously, into a fist.
‘If anyone—’ his voice was a soft, deadly snarl ‘—thinks they are going to dig any dirt on him, they are—’
He could hear the wariness in the other man’s voice as he interrupted.
‘I wouldn’t call it dirt, Rico. But I would…’ he paused minutely ‘…call it trouble. Seriously big trouble.’
Emotion splintered through Rico.
‘Dio, Paolo is dead. His broken body got pulled from the wreckage of a car over four years ago.’
Pain stabbed him. Even now he could not bear to think about, to remember, how Paolo—the golden prince, the only one of his father’s three sons who had ever won his parents’ indulgence—had been snuffed out before he was even twentytwo. Like a bright flame extinguished by the dark.
The news had devastated the family. Even Luca had wept openly at the funeral, where the two of them had been the chief pallbearers who had carried their young brother’s blackswathed coffin into the cathedral on that unbearable day.
And now, years later, some slimeball hack dared to write some ki
nd of sleaze about Paolo.
‘What kind of trouble?’ he demanded icily. On the desk, his hand fisted more tightly.
There was a distinct pause, as if Jean-Paul were mentally gathering courage. Then he spoke.
‘It’s about the girl who was in the car crash with him…’
Rico froze.