The Royal House of Niroli Collection. Кейт Хьюит

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СКАЧАТЬ had given him the brush-off and he’d damn well better get over it.

      When she came out into the kitchen the next morning Amelia found her father sitting at the table, his pain-glazed eyes briefly meeting hers.

      ‘I do not want anything to eat,’ he said as she reached for the utensils to prepare his breakfast.

      ‘But, Papà, you have to have something,’ she insisted.

      He sent her an embittered glance. ‘What need does a dying man have for food?’

      ‘Papà—’ she began.

      ‘Do not patronise me, Amelia.’ He gave a hacking cough and continued, ‘I know I am dying. As far as I am concerned the sooner it happens, the better.’

      ‘You can’t mean that!’

      ‘I do,’ he said with a grim look. ‘Especially now.’

      She frowned at his tone. ‘Why…especially now?’

      He shifted his eyes from hers and she saw his throat tighten, along with his hands, which were in white-knuckled knots on the table in front of him.

       ‘Papà?’

      He raised his head to look at her. ‘A long time ago…before you and Rico and Silvio were born I did a very bad thing.’

      Amelia felt something thick and immovable settle in the middle of her chest, robbing her of the air she needed to breathe. ‘W-what sort of bad thing?’ she asked, her voice coming out as a cracked whisper.

      His eyes were filled with shame as they held hers. ‘I was responsible for the kidnap of Prince Alessandro Fierezza.’

      She stared at him, her insides shuddering, her heart racing and her palms damp with the dew of dread.

      ‘I am sorry, Amelia,’ he went on brokenly. ‘I know it is a terrible shock but I was young and got caught up in the rebellion.’

      ‘But you said you were never part of it! You’ve always told us you were not involved in any way!’

      He coughed so hard and for so long, she became seriously frightened. ‘Papà?’ She stepped towards him. ‘Are you all right?’

      He waved his hand as he used the other to bring an old rag to his mouth to spit out the bloody mucus. His gaze returned to hers. ‘I started out on the fringe and was never too heavily involved—always kept in the dark. But gradually, over time, I was given more and more responsibility, especially as the movement to kidnap the prince gathered momentum.’

      ‘Y-you…you mean you…killed him?’

      He shook his head and sighed. ‘No, I did not kill him. Do you really believe me capable of such a thing, your own father?’

      Amelia swallowed and reached for his age-ridden hand. ‘No, Papà, but, w-what did you do with him?’

      His eyes glistened with moisture, something she had never seen in them before, not even after her mother had died.

      ‘I organised for him to be shipped away,’ he said. ‘I had some connections, a couple who were prepared to take the child.’

      ‘Take him where?’

      ‘To somewhere he could not be easily traced.’

      ‘But what about the other child?’ she asked after a throbbing silence that seemed to be keeping erratic time with her heart. ‘The child who is now buried at the palace?’

      ‘King Giorgio had activated an undercover operation to get his grandson back but it backfired. The parents of the child were part of the resistance group and when the explosions happened during the rescue operation they were all killed. Because they had no other relatives it was easy for me to pass the boy off as the prince. No one questioned it. I saw the chance to get out of the contract that had been handed to me.’

      ‘The contract?’

      ‘To kill the prince if the ransom bid failed.’

      Amelia stiffened at her father’s harsh words. ‘But you couldn’t go through with it?’

      ‘No.’ He gave a ragged sigh. ‘He was a little boy of two, barely speaking, crying for his mamma and brother all the time. It nearly broke my heart. I just couldn’t do it.’

      Tears burned at the back of Amelia’s eyes. ‘Oh, Papà.’

      ‘I had to rely on the silence of other people to ship the boy out of danger. It cost me everything. That is why we have lived in poverty ever since. But it was the only thing I could do, Amelia. I suddenly found myself in over my head with the rebellion. Your mother had just found out she was pregnant. I could not extricate myself without losing my life or hers if it became known I had not carried out the plan to kill the prince.’

      ‘Have you heard anything of what happened to him?’ she asked.

      ‘There are rumours…’ he paused, his throat moving up and down again ‘…rumours that he is alive and currently on the island.’

      Amelia stared at him in growing alarm.

      ‘Of course, no one has verified it but it should not be hard to do so,’ he said. ‘One look will be enough for me to know if he is the prince.’

      ‘One look?’ She frowned at him in bafflement. ‘But, Papà, a tiny child of two will be hard to recognise thirty-four years later, surely?’

      His pain-filled eyes came back to hers. ‘Prince Alessandro has a birthmark, a strawberry one. I saw it when I was looking after him. It is very distinctive. It is shaped like the island of Niroli.’

      ‘A birthmark…’ she breathed. ‘Where?’

      ‘It is on his right forearm, on the underside near the elbow. You would not see it unless he turned his arm right over.’

      Amelia let out her breath in a jagged stream, her thoughts clanging together in her head like discordant cathedral bells. She mentally backtracked, going over each time she had been with Alex Hunter, trying to recall whether he had been wearing shirt sleeves or whether they had been rolled up….

      ‘The new doctor,’ her father said into the heavy silence. ‘I want to see him. But it must be in private. Up here. Can you arrange it?’

      ‘Why him, Papà?’

      ‘I want to make sure.’

      She swallowed again. ‘Y-you think Dr Hunter is the prince?’

      ‘I do not know but I must make certain before I die.’

      The stark reality of the situation was fast dawning on Amelia and it terrified her. If news got out of her father’s role in the kidnap of the prince he would be hauled before the courts and charged. His last few weeks of life would be spent in prison, not with his family. Their name would again be vilified in every way imaginable; her brothers would never find work again СКАЧАТЬ