Playing the Royal Game. Carol Marinelli

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СКАЧАТЬ know,’ Allegra said, and she spoke some more, except he was only half listening, his mind elsewhere. He looked to the table where he had sat just last week, with a man on the edge of his dreams who now lay cold in the ground, and he looked to the window and he saw the rain. He did not want to be lying there, cold with the rain and a life half lived, dreams undone. He wanted more for his business, wanted a couple more years before he returned to the fold—but how?

      ‘Can’t your brother do it?’ She pulled him from his introspection and she saw him frown. ‘If you don’t want to be king…’

      ‘I never said I did not want to be king,’ Alex corrected. ‘Just that I would like more time.’ He frowned at her. ‘Matteo and I have had different upbringings. Of course, were anything to happen to me, he would step in, but…’ He tried to explain it, for though he never expected her to understand, today he wanted her to. ‘You said earlier, that is how people feel at funerals… that people get upset…’

      ‘Of course,’ Allegra said. ‘Everyone does.’

      ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘When I was seven my grandmother died. The funeral was massive. At the cemetery…’ He did not really know why he was telling her this; he had not thought of this for years, but somehow he had to make her understand. ‘Matteo was upset, my mother hushed him, then my father picked him up—I remember because it was one of the pictures in the newspaper. I started to cry,’ Alex said. ‘Not a lot, but a little. The coffin was going down and I could hear my brother, and… I started to cry and my father gripped my hand and then he gripped it tighter.’ He took a breath. ‘He was not holding my hand in comfort.’

      ‘I’m not with you?’

      ‘When we got back to the palace, before the guests arrived, my father took me to the study and removed his belt.’ Alex wasn’t saying it for sympathy; it wasn’t a sob story she was being told. It was facts being delivered. ‘He said he would not stop till I stopped crying.’

      ‘You were a seven-year-old boy!’ She was the one who was appalled—not Alex.

      ‘I was a seven-year-old prince who would one day be king,’ Alex explained. ‘He had to teach me difficult lessons. A king does not cry, a king does not show emotion….’

      ‘You were a child.’

      ‘Who would one day be king,’ Alessandro said again. ‘And around and around the argument goes. You can despise him for it, but it was a lesson my father had to teach—which he did. He taught his firstborn son—perhaps he knew it was a tough lesson, for he gave my brother more rein at least till he was older. I have what it takes—I have been raised for this purpose.’

      ‘I’m not surprised you want more time.’ Allegra blew up her fringe. ‘Before you have to go back to—’

      ‘I could always fall in love.’ His voice halted her midsentence. ‘Our people know it is not a love match—Anna knows that too. Surely if I met someone and fell in love… there would be scandal, but it would blow over.’

      Allegra looked to him. ‘Maybe you should try talking to Anna.’ She gestured to the table behind them, to the ladies that had been vying for time with him. ‘Maybe she’s the one…?’

      That made him laugh.

      ‘I will not fall in love.’ He said it so assuredly. ‘I have no time for such things. But if I said that I had…’

      There was a flag rising, an alarm bell ringing, but they were slow and in the distance because by the time she registered them, she had already spoken on.

      ‘Said that you had what?’

      ‘Fallen madly in love. That love had swept me off my feet, that I had become engaged.’ He indulged in a smile at the ridiculousness of the very thought. ‘Of course, in a few short weeks I would come to my senses and realise I had made a mistake, that my new fiancée and I are not suited after all, or more likely the people would strongly object. But by then it would be over between Anna and me, and my family would want me here, in London, at least for a year or two, till things had settled down.’

      ‘Well…’ Suddenly her throat was dry. ‘Good luck looking.’ She watched as he went to top up her glass, except the bottle was empty and he summoned the waitress but Allegra shook her head. ‘Not for me.’ She needed space, because her mind was bordering on the ridiculous. For a moment there she’d thought he was talking about her, that they were plotting together, that this might be real.

      She excused herself and fled to the safety of the ladies’, told herself to calm down—except when she looked in the mirror her cheeks were flushed and her green eyes glittered in a way they never had before. Her fringe was stuck to her forehead from the rain and she blasted it under the hand dryer, then dabbed on some powder in an attempt to calm her complexion down.

      Had he been suggesting that she…? Allegra halted herself there, because it was ridiculous to even entertain such a thought—yet… Who’d have thought when she stepped inside the bar, or when she had walked out of her job, that just a few hours later she’d be sharing a bottle of champagne with the Crown Prince of Santina.

      She would have hid in the ladies’ for a little while longer, would have straightened out her thoughts before heading back out there, but a couple of the women Alex had been avoiding came in then and didn’t shoot her the most friendly of looks.

      ‘I said that I didn’t want any more champagne.’ The waitress was about to open another bottle when she returned.

      ‘Just leave it there unopened,’ Alessandro said to the waitress as Allegra sat down. ‘We might have something to celebrate later.’

      ‘Not with me you won’t,’ Allegra said.

      ‘We could just take it back to my—’

      ‘I think you’ve very much got the wrong impression of me,’ Allegra said primly, so primly she hoped he could not hazard a guess as to her suddenly wild thoughts, because she would love him to pick up that bottle, would love to dive into a taxi and be kissed all the way back to his place, to sit and drink champagne on a sheet rumpled by their lovemaking. God, but she’d had too much to drink and, mixed with this man, she was having trouble attempting rational thought. ‘Half a bottle of champagne and I’m well over my limit—and I don’t leave bars with men I’ve barely met.’

      ‘I was joking,’ Alex lied, for he had been hoping. ‘What about my other suggestion? Do you want to be my fiancée?’

      ‘Alex…’ Allegra said. ‘Why, when I didn’t even want to have a drink with you, do you think I’d even entertain—’

      ‘A million pounds.’

      She laughed, because these things didn’t happen, and he had to be joking. When he pulled out a chequebook, she laughed even more, because it was crazy. Except when he handed it to her, his hand was completely steady and he wasn’t laughing.

      ‘You might not have to do anything. I will fly to Santina tomorrow and tell my family and Anna. The people will be outraged. Soon enough I’ll be told to reverse my foolish decision, to come back to London till the scandal dies down.’

      ‘So what are you paying me for?’

      ‘I can’t just invent someone—you СКАЧАТЬ