His Two Royal Secrets. Caitlin Crews

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СКАЧАТЬ what I said, Matteo,” she forced herself to say, in a very calm, composed, matter-of-fact sort of way.

      She’d practiced that, too.

      “You cannot be serious,” her brother blustered, a look of sheer horror on his face.

      But Pia was standing before the wide desk in the library of the ancient manor house that had been in her father’s side of the family since that early, hardy Combe ancestor had clawed his way out of the textile mills and built it. Or she thought that was how the story went, having always preferred to tune out most of the lectures about the grand history of both sides of her family. Because her parents had so dearly loved to lecture at each other, as if their histories were engaged in a twisted battle for supremacy.

      And because she was standing there before her brother, wearing a dress that fit her more tightly than she might have liked—in all that unrelenting funereal black that Pia had been draped in for the past six weeks since their mother had died—she could feel it when Matteo’s disbelieving stare landed on her belly.

      Her belly, which, despite Pia’s best attempt to pretend none of this was happening, was protruding. Sticking right out, whether she liked it or not.

      There was no way around it.

      Her mother, of course, had noticed that Pia was getting “chunky” in the week or so before she’d died. And Pia had learned a long, long time ago exactly what weight she needed to maintain to avoid the acid side of her mother’s tongue. Her mother had seen the instant Pia had exceeded that weight, the way she had when Pia had been a rather moonfaced and shy young girl. To the ounce.

      Puppy fat is for poor girls with no prospects, the legendary Alexandrina San Giacomo had said to her woebegone twelve-year-old daughter, her magnificent face calm—which made it worse. You are a San Giacomo. San Giacomos do not have chipmunk cheeks. I suggest you step away from the sweets.

      After that Pia had been so determined to, if not live up to her mother’s impossible standard of effortless grace and beauty, at least escape her scathing put-downs. She’d dieted religiously throughout her teens, yet her cheeks had steadfastly refused to slim down, until one morning she’d woken up, aged twenty-two, and they’d gone.

      Sadly, she’d taken her fateful trip to New York City shortly thereafter.

      And Pia couldn’t say why her mother had done what she had done. She couldn’t definitively state that it was because she’d discovered her unmarried daughter was pregnant, and on the verge of causing the kind of scandal that was usually her mother’s province. Hadn’t Alexandrina spent the bulk of Pia’s childhood beating it into her—not literally, thankfully, though Alexandrina’s tongue was its own mallet—that Pia was to walk the straight and narrow? That Pia was to make certain she remained peerless and without blemish? That Pia needed to be, above all things, Snow White—pure as the driven snow or Alexandrina would know the reason why.

      The truth was, Alexandrina hadn’t much liked the reason why.

      Pia couldn’t say that the news that she was not only not at all innocent any longer, but pregnant by a stranger whose name she didn’t know, had made her mother decide to overindulge more than usual, as she had. And with such tragic results.

      But she couldn’t say that wasn’t the reason, either.

      And now it was six weeks later. Alexandrina had died and left their little family—and her planetful of admirers—in a state of despair. And then her father—brash and larger-than-life Eddie Combe, who Pia had thought was surely immortal—had collapsed with a heart attack three days ago and died that same night. And Pia was certain, now.

      This was all her fault.

      “You are serious,” Matteo said, darkly.

      She tried to keep her face calm and expressionless, as her mother always had, particularly when she was at her most awful. “I’m afraid so.”

      Matteo looked as if he had glass in his mouth. “You are aware, I feel certain, that we are moments away from our father’s funeral?”

      Pia decided that wasn’t a real question. She waited instead of answering it, her hands folded in front of her as if she could stand there all day. She gazed past her brother and out at the Yorkshire countryside arrayed outside the windows, green hills beneath the gunmetal sky. Matteo, his gray eyes more dark and brooding than the stormy sky behind him, glared at her.

      But when he spoke again, she had the impression he was trying his best to be kind.

      “You look pregnant, Pia.”

      As if she might have missed that. “I do.”

      “There will be press at this funeral service. Paparazzi everywhere we turn. There was no avoiding them six weeks ago and it will be even more intense today. You must know what kind of commotion a visible pregnancy will cause.”

      To his credit, he sounded as if he was trying to talk without clenching his jaw like that.

      “What do you suggest I do?” Pia asked the question quietly, as if it hadn’t kept her up since the night her father had died. If she didn’t attend the funeral, would that be worse than if she did?

      “How the hell did this happen?” Matteo growled.

      Pia had always considered herself close to her brother. It was only the two of them, after all, caught up some ten years apart in the middle of their parents’ famously tempestuous, always dramatic love story. Eddie Combe had been known as much for his tendency to take a swing at his business competitors as for his business itself, Combe Industries, that was the direct result of those tough Combes who’d climbed out of the mills.

      Meanwhile, Alexandrina San Giacomo had been the most beautiful woman in the world. That was what they’d called her since she’d been all of eighteen. At her funeral, pop stars had sung elegies, the world had watched the televised version to weep along and post pictures of their black armbands, and rarely a day had passed since without Pia encountering some or other remembrance of Alexandrina that called her La Bellissima, the angel of our time.

      And that was the more restrained lot.

      Their parents’ love story had transfixed a generation. Pia had always been transported by it herself, especially as her experience of their love came with the shouting matches, the broken crockery followed by Those Noises behind locked doors, and their utter and complete fixation on each other at all times. No matter who else was in the room.

      Matteo, darkly handsome, broodingly intense, and excruciatingly dedicated to his role as the last San Giacomo heir as well as his father’s successor in the family business, was precisely the sort of child one might expect to come from such a union.

      Pia, by contrast, had been hidden away for most of her life, which she had always assumed was a direct consequence of her chipmunk cheeks. She’d been packed off to a convent, then a finishing school, while everyone in the family had gone to extreme and excessive links to keep her out of the public eye.

      They all claimed it was to protect her, but she knew better. She was too awkward. Too chunky. The most beautiful woman in the world could not have an embarrassing, tragic daughter, could she? Alexandrina had been a swan by any measure. Pia was, sadly, still very much the ugly duckling in comparison, and she’d resigned herself to that.

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