Castiglione's Pregnant Princess. Lynne Graham

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      Charles studied his son’s lean, forbidding face in frustration, hating the fact that he recognised shades of his ex-wife’s icy reserve and heartless detachment in Vitale. If there was one person Charles could be said to hate it would have to be the Queen of Lerovia, Sofia Castiglione. Yet he had loved her once, loved her to the edge of madness until he’d discovered that he was merely her dupe, her sperm donor for the heir she had needed for the Lerovian throne. Sofia’s true love had been another woman, her closest friend, Cinzia, and from the moment Sofia had successfully conceived, Charles and their marriage as such had been very much surplus to requirements. But that was a secret the older man had promised to take to the grave with him. In the divorce settlement he had agreed to keep quiet in return for liberal access arrangements to his son and he had only ever regretted that silence afterwards when he had been forced to watch his ex-wife trying to suck the life out of Vitale with her constant carping and interference.

      ‘Yes...the favour,’ Charles recalled, forced back into the present. ‘I’ve received a letter from Peggy’s daughter, Jazmine, asking for my help. I want you to assess the situation and deal with it. I would do it myself but I’m going to be working abroad for the next few months and I don’t have the time. I also thought you would handle it better because you knew each other well as children.’

      Vitale’s lean, strong, darkly good-looking face had tensed. In truth he had frozen where he stood at the threat of being forced to meet Jazz again. ‘The situation?’ he queried, playing for time.

      The older man lifted a letter off the desk and passed it to him. ‘The toy boy ripped Peggy off, forged her name on a stack of loans, plunged them into debt and ruined their financial standing!’ he emphasised in ringing disgust. ‘Now they’re poor and struggling to survive. They’ve tried legal channels and got nowhere. Peggy’s ill now and no longer able to work.’

      Vitale’s brow furrowed and he raised a silencing hand. ‘But how is this trail of misfortune your business?’ he asked without hesitation.

      ‘Peggy Dickens has been on my conscience for years,’ Charles confided grudgingly. ‘I could have done something to help but I was too wary of causing offence so... I did nothing. All of this mess is on me and I don’t want that poor woman suffering any more because I failed to act.’

      ‘So, send her a cheque,’ Vitale suggested, reeling from the display of guilt his father was revealing while he himself was struggling to see any connection or indeed any debt owed.

      ‘Read the letter,’ his father advised. ‘Jazmine is asking for a job, somewhere to live and a loan, not a cheque. She’s proud. She’s not asking for a free handout but she’s willing to do anything she can to help her mother.’

      Vitale studied the envelope of what was obviously a begging letter with unconcealed distaste. More than ever he wanted to argue with his father’s attitude. In Vitale’s opinion, Charles owed his former employee and her daughter absolutely nothing. By the sound of it, Peggy Dickens had screwed up her life; however that was scarcely his father’s fault.

      ‘What do you want me to do?’ Vitale asked finally, recognising that how he felt about the situation meant nothing in the face of his father’s feelings.

      Yet it amazed Vitale that his father could still be so incredibly emotional and sentimental and he often marvelled that two people as ridiculously dissimilar in character as his parents could ever have married.

      ‘I want you to be compassionate and kind, not judgemental, not cynical, not cold,’ Charles framed with anxious warning emphasis. ‘And I know that will be a huge challenge for you but I also know that acknowledging that side of your nature will make you a better and stronger man in the process. Don’t let your mother remake you in her image—never forget that you are my son too.’

      Vitale almost flinched from the idea of being compassionate and kind. He didn’t do stuff like that. He supported leading charities and always contributed to good causes but he had never done anything hands-on in that area, nor had he ever felt the need to do so. He was what he was: a bred-in-the-bone royal, cocooned from the real world by incredible privilege, an exclusive education and great wealth.

      ‘I don’t care what it costs to buy Peggy and her daughter out of trouble either,’ his father added expansively. ‘With you in charge of my investments, I can well afford the gesture. You don’t need to save me money.’

      ‘I’m a banker. Saving money and making a profit comes naturally,’ Vitale said drily. ‘And by the way, my mother is not remaking me in her image.’

      Charles vented a roughened laugh. ‘It may be graveyard humour but I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if you find yourself engaged by the end of that ball next month! Sofia is a hell of a wheeler dealer. You should’ve refused to attend.’

      ‘I may still do that. I’m no pushover,’ his son stated coldly. ‘So you want me to stage a rescue mission in your name?’

      ‘With tact and generosity,’ the older man added.

      Exasperation leapt through Vitale, who used tact every day of his life because he could never be less than courteous in the face of the royal demands made of him. But no matter how onerous the demand Charles had made struck him, there was, nevertheless, a certain pride and satisfaction to the awareness that his father was trusting him to deal with a sensitive situation. He realised that he was also surprisingly eager to read Jazz’s letter.

      Jazz, a skinny-as-a-rail redhead, who had developed a massive crush on him when she was fourteen and he was eighteen. He had been wildly disconcerted that he rather than the friendlier, flirtier Angel had become the object of her admiration and he had screwed up badly, he acknowledged reluctantly, cracking a wounding joke about her that she had sadly overheard. But then Vitale had never been the sensitive sort and back then he had also essentially known very little about women because he had stayed a virgin for many years longer than Angel. But, not surprisingly, Jazz had hated him after that episode and in many ways it had been a relief to no longer be the centre of her attention and the awful tongue-tied silences that had afflicted her in his presence. In the space of one awkward summer, the three of them had travelled from casual pseudo friendship to stroppy, strained discomfiture and then she and her mother had mercifully disappeared out of their lives.

      Compassionate... Kind, Vitale reminded himself as he stood outside his father’s office reading Jazz’s letter, automatically rating it for use of English, spelling and conciseness. Of course it had been written on the computer because Jazz was severely dyslexic. Dyslexic and clumsy, he recalled helplessly, always tripping and bumping into things. The letter told a tale of woe that could have featured as a Greek tragedy and his sculpted mouth tightened, his momentary amusement dying away. She wanted help for her mother but only on her own terms. She wanted a job but only had experience of working as a checkout operator and a cleaner.

      Per carita...for pity’s sake, what did she think his father was going to find for her to do on the back of such slender talents? Even so, the letter was pure Jazz, feisty and gauche and crackling with brick-wall obstinacy. An ordinary woman, he thought abstractedly, an ordinary woman with extraordinarily beautiful green eyes. Her eyes wouldn’t have changed, he reasoned. And you couldn’t get more ordinary than Jazz, who thought a soup spoon or a fish fork or a napkin was pure unnecessary aristocratic affectation. And she was, evidently, badly in need of money...

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