He began striding towards the private side entrance of the cathedral, the one shielded from the press and the crowds lining almost every other inch of the capital, calling for a car—a fast one—and issuing a rash of orders as he went. For his security chief. And for Seb, his best man, who, with the abrupt cessation of his other duties, was now in charge of damage limitation.
‘The official line will be that she’s taken ill,’ Leo said as he strode ‘The wedding is postponed. No bride wants her special day spoiled by a bout of the runs.’
Seb winced. ‘You want everyone to think your absent bride is stuck in her bathroom? The press will have a field day.’
‘Not my problem. That’s hers. She ran away. My protection is no longer a given,’ Leo said, arriving at the doorway as a red Ferrari pulled up.
Seb’s beloved car. Leo had indulged his cousin, who’d insisted he should surrender his bachelorhood in true playboy style, and allowed him to drive them both to the cathedral in it. The crowds had lapped it up. Cheering like maniacs as the groom and his best man climbed out.
Something more anonymous would have been his preference now, but at least the thing would eat up the miles between him and his missing bride. She’d had maybe a twenty-minute head start and if she was heading where he believed this would get him there before anyone else.
He climbed in.
‘What do you want me to do with that lot back there?’ Seb waved a hand in the direction of the cathedral behind them.
‘You’re supposed to be the charming one. I’m sure you’ll work something out. And tell the staff in the castle they get a bonus for their silence. Any who do decide to talk to the press will not only lose their job, but get themselves and their family kicked out of the principality. Permanently.’
Seb looked shocked. ‘Can we even do that?’
‘We can now. Blame the woman. The shame all goes one way, remember.’
‘So where precisely are you going?’ Seb asked, leaning on the open door.
‘Grandmother’s chateau. Violetta went there every summer. Right up to Grand-Mère’s death four years ago.’
‘But you had it closed up.’
‘Which makes it even more perfect as a bolt-hole, don’t you think?’
Seb’s brow knotted. ‘Wait, isn’t that where—’
‘Yes.’ Leo cut him off. ‘And I won’t let that happen again.’
Leo lowered the car window to give some last-minute instructions. ‘Give the archbishop the blue suite at the castle. He’s fond of the bed in those rooms. I’ll have the girl back here before midnight and he can marry us in the chapel. You can be a witness. No need for anything grander. Get a press release ready so we can announce the marriage in the morning.’
‘You’re that confident about persuading her to come back?’
‘She’s not her sister. It’s probably just nerves. There are numerous benefits to being married to me. She just needs to see the sense of it.’
‘Oh, I’d definitely open with that. She’ll be putty in your hands.’
‘Seb, we’re so close to getting the grand duchy back I can almost taste it. I won’t be denied that by some unreliable girl who can’t see what’s good for her.’
None of his ancestors had ever come this close to regaining the duchy. Not even his father. Leo would wed the Devil’s mistress to prove to that cold-hearted bastard he was better than him and all their mutual ancestors put together.
He gunned the engine and sped out of the cathedral close, into the streets that had been closed for the duration of the wedding celebrations and kept clear for service vehicles. Heading north, out of the capital. Twenty miles to the very edge of his realm. Where Grimentz finally succumbed to the mountains and its neighbours beyond.
As he drove Lake Sérénité glittered below him. How ironic. A lake called serenity dividing two ruling families who’d battled each other to a stand then maintained a belligerent silence of deep mistrust for four centuries. This wedding was supposed to have put an end to all that.
Beyond Sérénité’s calm waters sat the grand duchy of San Nicolo, lush and green with its superb vineyards and rolling pastures. It wasn’t rich like Grimentz. It hadn’t embraced the financial services that had given his principality unimaginable wealth and global influence. But it was soft and welcoming in a way that Grimentz, with its dour medieval castle and looming mountains, could never be.
His ancestors had struggled over their peaks finding a rocky outcrop on the western edge of the lake, where they’d built their castle. As forbidding and unforgiving as the mountains that soared behind, it rose from the shoreline to dominate everything for miles around. Previous princes had tried to pretty it up with fairy-tale turrets and terraced pleasure gardens, but at its heart it remained what it was: a fortress.
But there was no castle hewn from cold rock for the Della Torres. They lived in Palladian elegance. Princess Violetta’s forebears had fallen in love with the Renaissance and remade San Nicolo in its image, gracious and refined. Tourists flocked to its chocolate-box capital and pretty villages to quaff the wine and gorge themselves on the cheese and pastries it was famed for. Its subjects were comfortable, though perhaps not content. Since the death of Violetta’s parents in a plane crash three years ago, just months after the elopement of her elder sister, there had been rumblings that the Della Torre family were no longer fit to rule. Her uncle, the regent while Violetta was not yet of age, was unpopular and fuelling the dissent with his rigid and old-fashioned governance. The sooner Leo could step in and take power—in the name of his wife, of course—the better.
He only had approximately thirteen hours to do that. After that, things became more complicated.
On the stroke of midnight, in the reverse of a Cinderella tale, his flighty bride turned twenty-one and would no longer be just Princess Violetta of San Nicolo, subject to her uncle’s rule, but would be transformed into Her Serene Highness the Grand Duchess Violetta Della Torre, absolute monarch.