‘It was. They both tried hard to be good parents to us but there were a few years when they were too wrapped up in their mutual loathing to notice the damage they were doing.’
‘What made them see sense?’
‘Me.’
‘You?’
He inclined his head. ‘I’d listened to so many of their screaming matches that I knew exactly what their issues with each other were and what they both wanted, so I sat them down individually and brokered peace negotiations.’
‘You did? When you weretwelve?’ At twelve, the only brokering Alessia had done was when trying, unsuccessfully, to negotiate the right to read books with rather more salacious material than her Enid Blyton’s.
‘I was fourteen at this point. It took a couple of weeks of negotiating between them but eventually they agreed to sell the house and split the profits.’ He flashed a quick grin. ‘That way, neither of them “won.” I also got them to agree to buy a new home each within a mile of mine and Mariella’s school, and drew up a custody plan that gave them equal access to us.’
‘How did that work?’
‘There’s fifty-two weeks in a year. We spent twenty-six with each parent, with each year carefully planned to cater for their individual work schedules. We alternated Christmases and birthdays.’
‘A fair compromise to them both,’ she mused dubiously.
‘Exactly. Neither won. Neither lost.’
‘What about you and your sister, though? Wasn’t it hard carving up your time between them and never being settled in one home?’
‘That brought its own challenges but it was easier than living in a war zone. I also had it written into the contracts that they were forbidden from bad-mouthing each other to us.’
She rubbed the back of her head. ‘You were one mature teenager.’
‘My mother used to say I was born serious.’
Her eyes were searching. ‘Do you agree with her? Or was it circumstances that made you that way?’
He considered this. ‘A combination of both, perhaps. The circumstances certainly made me the man I am today. Pursuing a career in diplomacy felt natural after negotiating their divorce and custody arrangements.’
‘And the circumstances gave you a pathological loathing of the press?’ And, Alessia suspected, a loathing for conflict and a need to always be firmly in control of himself and his surroundings.
He nodded. ‘I changed my surname legally when I turned eighteen—my father’s name isn’t as well-known as my mother’s but their marriage made him a celebrity in his own right. I value my privacy because I never had it when I was a child.’
‘And now you’ve married a princess,’ she said quietly, now understanding why he was so adamant in his refusal to be a ‘proper’ royal. ‘A life you never wanted.’
He shifted forwards in his seat and stared deep into her eyes. ‘I marriedyou, Alessia, and I need you to understand that though I don’t want the princess, I do want the woman. I wantyou.’
So many emotions filled her at the sincerely delivered words that she couldn’t even begin to dissect them. It frightened her how desperately she longed to believe him, believe that he did want her, but even that longing was fraught because she didn’t know if he meant he wanted her, body, heart and soul, or just the first part, and she couldn’t bring herself to ask because she didn’t know if she’d be able to take the answer.
She was saved from her tortured thoughts by the ringing of the bell and the simultaneous trilling of both their phones, but there was no relief in the interruption, only a plunge in her heart as she immediately understood what it meant. It meant the media circus Gabriel so despised and had spent his adult life avoiding had come for him.
She closed her eyes briefly and sighed. ‘I think the announcement of our marriage has just gone out.’
It took three days before Gabriel and Alessia were able to inspect the place that was going to be their marital home. Gabriel had expected news of their marriage to cause a sensation but, when it broke, sensation was an understatement. The east side of the castle, the half open to tourists, was so besieged by press that it had to close to visitors. The rotors of helicopters ignoring the no-fly zone above the castle was a constant noise for hours until the Ceres military put a stop to their illegality. Gabriel’s phones, business and personal, didn’t stop ringing. It seemed that everyone he’d ever been acquainted with felt the need to call and congratulate him. Once the press obtained his number, he’d had enough and turned it off, but not before his mother, furious not to have been invited to the wedding, cried and wailed down the phone like the good actress she was for an hour before ringing off so she could call his sister, who’d stayed for the wedding night in the castle’s guest quarters, and sob theatrically down the phone to her. Alessia’s phone rang non-stop too, her private secretary and other clerical staff rushing in and out of their quarters with updates and messages, the usual buzz of activity within the castle walls having turned into a loud hum.
He’d not needed to step foot out of the castle grounds to feel the impact of the circus.
Gabriel knew the stables, which had once housed hundreds of horses, had initially been converted for the reigning queen’s mother to live in, but it was still much,muchbigger than he’d expected. U-shaped with a bell tower in its centre, it was built with the same sand-coloured stone as the rest of the castle, its roof the same terracotta hue that topped the castle’s turrets, and was situated close to the side of the castle where the Berruti family lived and worked but far enough from it to feel entirely separate. Even before Alessia unlocked the grand front door, he knew this would make the perfect home for them.
And then he stepped inside and knew it would only make the perfect home if the entire thing was stripped to bare walls and started again. The high-ceilinged reception room they’d stepped into glowered—there was no other word for it—with faded glamour. It was a glamour that would have held no appeal even if it wasn’t faded. Nothing had been done to mitigate the lack of natural light coming in from the small windows. If anything, the décor had been chosen to enhance the shadows. Even the exquisite paintings that lined the reception walls seemed to have been selected for the menace they exuded, and he recognised a variation of Judith with the severed head of Holofernes.
Not wanting to insult Alessia, he kept his initial impression to himself and indicated the tall archway in front of them. ‘Do you want to lead the way?’
Having been staring wordlessly at a painting of the medusa turning naked men into stone, Alessia faced him, her brow creased in confusion.