Born Royal. ALEXANDRA SELLERS

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      “All right.”

      “I’ve got to get her alone. I think she’d see sense if she didn’t have that coterie of Kamal-haters around her.”

      Nadia’s eyebrows went up. “And?”

      Rashid rubbed his chin and stared out into the darkness. For a moment they listened to the sound of the waterfall.

      “I’m going to have to kidnap her.”

      It was when Lucas’s plane went missing, oddly, that Julia woke up at last. Perhaps because she suddenly saw how precious life was. And she had given away a whole year of hers.

      No one knew whether Lucas would be found alive or dead. All they had was hope. Julia had returned to the family emotionally to share that hope with her sisters and her parents, and keep it alive.

      She had learned a lot during her year of self-exile. She felt she had come a long, long distance from the repressed, self-doubting perfectionist she had become in order to cope with Luigi’s rejection.

      Mariel de Vouvray had been her friend since the two girls had attended private school in Switzerland together. When Mariel’s wedding invitation had arrived, she had turned it down, like every other invitation she received during that year of darkness.

      But as the day grew closer, Julia began to change her mind. She and Mariel had been very close for a while, and it was only physical distance that had changed that. She wanted to see Mariel married to her prince. Haroun al Jawadi was a man Julia didn’t know, brother of the new Sultan of Bagestan.

      Mariel had said on her invitation that the wedding was going to be “as private and personal as we can make it. We emphatically are not selling the story to Hello! magazine. So you won’t be on show—we hope!—if you come.”

      She knew that a last-minute acceptance would cause logistical problems. The high-profile wedding guests were staying overnight in the château where the wedding was being held, as Julia had been invited to do. She didn’t want to put Mariel to the trouble of a reshuffle. She also knew that if word got out that Princess Julia was making her first public appearance at the wedding after a year’s exile it would boot up the media interest in the wedding.

      She decided to go incognito. She travelled on her private passport and put up in a tiny family hotel where, if she was recognized, at least no one made a fuss.

      The ceremony itself would take place in the beautiful old chapel attached to the château. Julia slipped into the church with a group of non-celebrity arrivals. No photographer recognized her in the ankle-length dark blue coat and low-brimmed hat. For good measure she had pulled her white silk scarf up over her chin.

      Inside, she sat on the bride’s side of the church, tucking herself beside a pillar where she couldn’t be seen from most of the church. She couldn’t see, either, and she didn’t look around for people she knew.

      So she didn’t realize until the ceremony was almost over that one of the guests was Rashid Kamal.

      “We need to talk,” Rashid’s voice said firmly in her ear. Julia twitched nervously, feeling hunted. She shifted the receiver to her other hand.

      “Do we? Why?” She had had a mostly sleepless night last night, and she wasn’t ready for this.

      She could almost hear him gritting his teeth. “Because you are pregnant with my child and I want to marry you. And we need a reasoned discussion of the choices before you go public with a denial of our engagement.”

      Julia was silent.

      “You haven’t already done it, have you?”

      “No.” Coward that she was. She should have picked up the phone when the mood was on her and called the newspaper reporter most loyal to her. She had told herself that she needed breathing space before stirring up yet another round of speculation. “Not yet.”

      “No, of course not,” he reminded himself. “Someone would have called me for a comment immediately if you had.”

      “And what would you have said?” She did not want a war with Rashid to be fought in the media. But she did not forget that he was the one who had put her in this position.

      “What could I say? That I regretted your decision. And I do, Julia. But I don’t believe that decision is final, or should be.”

      “It is!” she cried, almost panicking. “Totally final! I’m going to do it today!”

      Damn it, did he always have to handle her wrong?

      “Look,” he said, as calmly as he could. “I’d like us to talk. Before you do that.”

      She sighed uneasily, not sure why she didn’t feel safe talking to him. He had such charisma. Suppose he convinced her to marry him against her better judgement? Once was enough.

      “All right, go ahead,” she said, suddenly wishing she had Christina here to support her through this.

      She heard him expel an exasperated breath. “Not over the phone, damn it, Julia! I need to see you face-to-face. And away from the palace somewhere.”

      Panic threatened in her stomach. The baby did a somersault. “Where? We’ll be chased wherever we go.”

      He said dryly, “I think I can promise to get us to a venue where there will be no journalists.”

      “I don’t see what there is to talk about.”

      “How about the fact that at the moment a Sebastiani child is the only direct descendant of the Kamal ruling house in the next generation and my father’s people will want to know whether he’s to be in line for the throne?” Rashid said impatiently. “Do you feel that question could be important enough to discuss?”

      The panic rushed up to grip her throat. Might the old man name her son a prince of Tamir? She supposed he had the right to confer the status of prince on his illegitimate grandson, if he wished. She was pretty sure that in the dim and distant past of Tamir, Rashid himself had a bloodline that dated back to a favourite concubine.

      What kind of chaos would it cause in her life, to be raising the child destined, however briefly, for the throne of another nation? An enemy nation. And what suffering was in store when Rashid married and had a legitimate son, as he surely would, and her son was displaced as heir?

      “He can’t do that!” she cried. Rashid was right. They had to talk. “All right, what do you want me to do?”

      “I want you to agree not to issue any statement until we’ve talked.”

      Her nerves tightened. “Twenty-four hours,” she said.

      She heard him breathe. “That’s not much time.”

      “Twenty-four hours,” she repeated.

      “Twenty-four hours it is. If you can convince your father not to have my helicopter shot down on arrival,” Rashid said with mordant humour, “I’ll pick you up in an hour. Pack a swimsuit.”

      It was a beautiful ceremony. Mariel was stunning, with an СКАЧАТЬ