Modern Romance July 2026 Books #1-4

Chapter One

‘What do you think would tempt the Princess into returning here, Your Majesty?’ the government special advisor, Massimo Caccia, pressed in frustration.

‘We’re not having any luck with her. The people want her back here because of her saintly mother and her reputation…

as if she’d be some sort of good-luck symbol.

Mandovia really needs her to be part of this deal. ’

‘I don’t know her,’ Orazio, generally known as Raz to his friends, countered levelly, unable to avoid the reality that he thoroughly disliked the older man for his specious manners. Usually, he was very much the smoothie politician but the aggressive soldier he had been showed through too often.

‘You’re the only one of this generation who has even met her, Your Majesty,’ Massimo pointed out.

‘I was ten years old and she was a toddler of three,’ Orazio reminded him. ‘I can only tell you that she was a little girl who liked to climb trees—’

‘But your father and hers arranged a betrothal between you.’

Raz breathed in so deep and long to suppress his exasperation that his executive assistant, Fiero, planted a deft hand on his arm as though to restrain his sovereign.

‘Agreed, but I doubt that even back then either my father or the dictator ever thought their little gentlemen’s agreement would become anything more than an expression of goodwill between neighbouring countries. ’

‘I disagree,’ Massimo argued vehemently. ‘The dictator knew his days were numbered and he had no son. He hoped that announcing that betrothal would satisfy the revolutionaries that change was truly on the horizon.’

‘You could be right,’ Fiero slotted in lightly.

‘I’m rarely wrong.’ Massimo smirked and it took years of court training for Raz to resist the urge to roll his eyes. ‘And resurrecting that betrothal now would delight many people.’

It would not delight Orazio but he did not waste his time saying so.

‘You’re chasing a fairy tale, Massimo. You already know everything there is to know about Princess Annunziata.

She’s in London and apparently content to work there as a chambermaid.

The government offered her an all-expenses-paid trip to Mandovia and she ignored the invitation.

When they tried to visit her home, the door was slammed in their faces.

Upper Mandovians killed her father and Lower Mandovians killed her mother.

Maybe she simply wants to forget her heritage—’

‘Her mother’s death was a horrible accident at the border and everyone accepts that!

’ Massimo protested in an angry, defensive tone that reminded everybody present that he had been a military commander during that troubled period.

‘It offends Upper Mandovians that their Princess should be living in such reduced circumstances and the Princess owes a duty of responsibility towards her people at a time when they need that reassurance.’

Orazio released his breath in a slow, measured hiss. ‘Annunziata left this country at the age of three. She wasn’t raised with such concepts. Who knows what horrors she saw in the street-fighting the night that her mother’s companion fled with her?’

Massimo, a thickset rather portly male, rose to his feet heavily. ‘If she were here and willing, would you marry her, Your Majesty?’ he demanded with startling abruptness.

The prime minister, a small, slight, older male very much less vigorous in personality than his advisor, also stood up and cleared his throat in the smouldering silence. ‘I don’t think it’s fair to ask our King to answer such a question about a woman he’s never met.’

‘If both she and my people wanted it, I would do it,’ Orazio ground out with the chilling hauteur of extreme reluctance. ‘But, short of a miracle, I don’t believe that situation will ever arise.’

‘I apologise,’ the prime minister murmured uncomfortably as his advisor stomped out of the room, ignoring all court protocol.

‘Massimo gets on his favourite hobby horse and forgets who you are. He’s obsessed with getting the Princess back on her home soil and that betrothal nonsense.

But he does mean well. He’s devoted to our country and he’s desperate for the reunification to continue smoothly. ’

‘As are we all,’ Orazio conceded easily, thinking that it had still taken almost twenty years for the rudimentary, inexperienced revolutionary government in Upper Mandovia to agree to the reintegration of the two parts of Mandovia that should never have been separated in the first place.

The upper part was landlocked, staunchly traditional and very poor, the lower rich and prosperous.

The dictator, Annunziata’s late and unlamented father, Octavio Giordano, had denied his people the education, medical care and opportunities freely available in the kingdom next door.

Eventually the people themselves had risen up to overthrow Octavio and reclaim democracy.

‘I don’t like Massimo,’ Raz breathed as he and Fiero trudged back across the castle to the monarch’s private accommodation. ‘He’s sly and scheming.’

‘Nobody likes him,’ Fiero chuckled. ‘He can be very rude. I don’t know how you kept your temper, Raz.’

‘The prime minister was as red in the face as a tomato,’ Raz sighed. ‘I felt sorry for him. He has to cope with Massimo every day. I see him only once a month or so. I’m fortunate.’

‘Sometimes, I don’t know why you took on this gig,’ his childhood friend and executive assistant admitted.

‘Or why you accompanied me and left the business world behind where you were flourishing? For the same reasons as my own,’ Raz replied with confidence. ‘First and foremost, this is our country and we want to do the best we can for it and steer it in the right direction.’

‘But you never wanted to be King—’

‘I didn’t expect to have people begging me to come back and step into my father’s shoes.

Not only did I think the monarchy would eventually be abolished, but I also didn’t expect my father to die in his fifties,’ Orazio acknowledged, a bleak look in the emerald-green eyes, so bright against his bronzed skin and the caramel-blond contrast of his hair.

‘I was content in my life but here I’m not just making money, I can really make a difference and push reforms through by engaging the right people in the process. ’

‘Your mother’s still in shock that you accepted the throne.’

‘She has her take on Mandovia and I have mine.’ His mother, Luisa, had separated from his father years before their split became public.

She had refused to live with a cheating husband and, once the word was out, she had returned to her native Venezuela and the family diamond mines, happily rediscovering the wealthy socialite lifestyle she had lost when she’d married.

Bitter years spent in an unhappy marriage had left her with a strong aversion to anything related to Mandovia.

Orazio, conversely, had been forced to live between two worlds and several countries from the day of his parents’ official separation.

He had been schooled in business by his billionaire grandfather for one half of the year and schooled in the monarchy for the other half.

If anything, his father’s corruption had given Raz a distaste for hereditary rulership.

The former King Luciano had been much more interested in feathering his own nest than in instigating a benevolent reign aimed at stabilising Mandovia under one unifying figurehead.

Even so, his parents’ talent for schmoozing the rich into investing in Lower Mandovia had been unparalleled.

As a result Lower Mandovia was as rich as Upper Mandovia was poor and those glaring inequalities were unacceptable in the twenty-first century.

That challenge was precisely why Orazio had finally agreed to accept the throne, although it had not occurred to him then that one day a government official would dare to demand that he marry a total stranger.

‘What do you remember about Annunziata?’ Fiero asked him curiously.

‘She was a very cute toddler when she wasn’t kicking or scratching me,’ Orazio recalled with a sudden laugh.

‘She was in a tree and her nursemaid couldn’t get her down.

At the maid’s request, I lifted her down and, even though she was really tiny, she fought me like a tigress, ripping her fancy dress and shouting at the top of her voice.

She reminded me more of a wild animal than a princess… ’

‘Suffice it to say that she could never be your dream match,’ Fiero quipped. ‘You like sophisticated, tranquil women. In any case, she works as a chambermaid. She couldn’t cut it here in this world and you’ve never lived anything other than a very privileged life. You’d be oil and water.’

‘Don’t be weird,’ Orazio urged, disliking the tone of the conversation as he poured both of them a drink.

He wondered if Fiero knew just how snobbish he sounded.

Harvey, his father’s much-prized English butler and the major domo of the current King’s household, frowned at them both from the doorway.

‘Go away,’ Orazio told the older man quietly.

‘You’re still supposed to be on medical leave after your surgery.

You shouldn’t be coming downstairs to serve us drinks. ’

‘You are royal, Your Majesty,’ Harvey reminded him stubbornly. ‘You do not need to serve your own drinks.’

‘Unlike my father, I’m a modern monarch. I don’t expect to be waited on hand and foot like some feudal king.’

‘Nonetheless and with respect,’ Harvey responded heavily, ‘you are the King and it is your place to be served by staff and my place and my honour to wait on you, Your Majesty.’

‘And that’s us told,’ Orazio quipped as the door closed on Harvey’s censorious exit. ‘Poor Harvey, sentenced to wait on a king who still doesn’t know his place.’