Grotesque. The word tolled through him again.
Shaming him.
Shaming him with its pitiless honesty.
Well, now it didn’t matter. Didn’t matter what either of them thought about such a marriage. Because neither of them was important now—only Ben.
And this was the only way to keep him safe.
Savage humour filled him. So Luca had set him up like a patsy, had he? Despatching him to mount a charm offensive on Ben’s aunt that would steal her child from her, duping him into offering to marry her simply to lull her into a false sense of security. His mouth tightened.
Thanks for the idea, Luca—it’s a really good one.
And it would beat his family on all points.
And keep Ben safe with his mother.
His eyes went to the boy. He was still asleep, lolling against his mother.
He met her eyes. They were huge, strained.
‘Thank you,’ she said, her voice low and tight.
She felt as if she was falling. Falling very far, into a deep, bottomless pit. All she had to cling to was Ben. And it was imperative she did. Imperative she keep hold of him, never, ever to loosen her hold on him—because otherwise he would fall away from her and be lost for ever.
Fear shot through her like a grid of hot wires in her veins. Over and over again the horror of what had happened in the palace, when she had realised she had been locked in that room, when she had realised that it could mean only one thing, still drenched through her.
Her eyes went to the man standing beside her in the chill, stone-built church, his expression drawn and shuttered.
Trust me, he had said.
I give you my word, he had said.
Could she trust him? Was he really rescuing her? Or simply tricking her again?
But how could he be tricking her? He was prepared to do something that would change his life for ever. Something so drastic that it made her feel faint with the enormity of it. He had disobeyed his father, knocked his own brother out cold so he could rescue her, so he could get Ben and her away to freedom…safety.
Safety with him.
He’s doing it for Ben. Because he knows it would be unspeakably cruel for him to lose me. And that was why she’d do it too. For Ben.
Nothing else mattered.
The priest was starting to speak. The dimly lit, tiny whitewashed church, scarcely more than a chapel, was in a small village somewhere in the hills. She had no idea where. There had been a low-voiced, urgent conversation in the car between the Prince and his bodyguard, who was, so it seemed, not merely loyal enough to his employer to have stood by him, but also possessed of a great-uncle who was a priest.
A frail, elderly man, he stood before them now, clasping their hands together with his and intoning words she did not understand, but which, she knew, were binding her in holy matrimony
to the man at her side.
She went on falling.
It was done. Ben and his mother were safe. Relief sluiced through Rico. As he thanked the priest, mentally vowing that he would take every measure to avoid the man getting into the slightest trouble over what he had done, and thanked the housekeeper who had been the witness to the ceremony along with Gianni, Rico knew that there was one more thing to be done.
He ushered Ben and his mother back into the car. Gianni slid into the driver’s seat. He knew where to go, what to do.
‘I’m hungry,’ announced Ben. He had woken up, stood beside Gianni during the brief, hurried ceremony, passively accepting, as children did, without comprehension, what was happening to the grown-ups around him.
‘We’ll have some food soon—very soon, I promise,’ Rico said, ruffling his hair. It was still not quite dark, but they had a way to drive. He would have preferred to fly, but that was out. There was no way he could take a helicopter up without air traffic control knowing about it. But they would head cross country, by obscure routes if they could.