Chapter Three
CHAPTER THREE
‘Sit down,’ Vittoria urged the bride, because Rosy was white as milk and visibly trembling and, in the background, they could both hear the festive roars of the crowds in the streets below, already gathering for the wedding day celebrations.
The older woman leant down to whisper in her sister’s ear, from which a priceless pearl and diamond drop earring was suspended. ‘You don’t have to do this. I may think Prince Alessio’s the most fanciable thing since Patrick first made sour dough but if the prospect of Alessio is truly what is making you look sick, you can still walk away.’
‘What, and get murdered by the mobs out there?’ Rosy whispered shakily but a loving smile softened her lips at her sister’s generosity.
‘I’m not saying that escape would be easy but it’s possible right up until you say “I do” at the altar,’ Vittoria insisted briskly. ‘Alessio’s not been doing what he should’ve been doing this past week.’
‘He’s been working, selling the story, if you want to call it that. He’s got the media skills… I haven’t. No, it’s just the crowds and the excitement getting to me. It freaks me out a bit.’
‘He should’ve been spending more time with you, helping you shape up, getting to know you,’ Vittoria spelt out in a punitive hiss. ‘And so I told him at that stupid dinner.’
Rosy nodded, trying not to imagine how Alessio would have responded to such blunt interference, and a flush of mortified colour finally warmed her pallor. The ‘stupid’ dinner, which they had both attended at the palace a couple of nights earlier, had been a mere photo opportunity to capture the Sedovian prince meeting his lady love’s family. Vittoria and Patrick had weathered it well. Patrick had predictably hived off to meet the palace head chef and discuss some new kind of ravioli that had appeared on the dinner menu. Her nephews had disappeared into a games room that was stacked with options to entertain teenagers.
And Vittoria had basked in Alessio’s attention, trying to sum him up and get a good read on him because that was what Rosy’s sister did with anyone getting close to her family. Only possibly Vittoria was working out what Rosy had already learned about Alessio—he didn’t let people in. He was always courteous, charming and a hell of a polished communicator, but he didn’t allow people to get close.
Rosy had had a rare glimpse of the real Alessio the day he’d proposed to her when he had told her stuff, more personal stuff because she’d already known about Graziana, and he had seen no need to prevaricate on that topic. She had been shaken when he had said very, very convincingly, ‘I was not fortunate enough to meet a woman I could love,’ and a little piece of her soft heart had broken off and gone in his direction because he had been sincere. She had truly believed that had he met a woman he loved there would never have been a marriage of convenience with Graziana arranged in the first place.
But Rosy had not seen a glimpse of the real Alessio since then, in spirit or in the flesh. Once Prince Alessio had made his shocking announcement about the change of brides and Graziana’s elopement, the Cathedral View Hotel had been mobbed by the media and Rosy had had to move into a guest room at the palace to give her family the peace to continue running their hotel. She had been handed over bag and baggage to the household staff to be packaged as the bride and that had proved to be serious business.
Little capsule etiquette lessons on how to address the other royals and VIPs attending the wedding. They had discovered that she didn’t need coaching on the cutlery or art or in various other fields because she had been educated well and sensibly brought up. Good manners, patience and tolerance were innate in her but Alessio’s vanishing act—to work or otherwise—had left her feeling abandoned by the guy who had promised to help her adapt while he still remained, by his own choice, a virtual stranger.
And she now assumed that that was how he expected their supposed marriage to work: as a romantic pretence in public and nothing whatsoever in private. Certainly, the palace had to realise that they were fake because Alessio had kept his distance. And he had not given Rosy any material with which to fashion romantic fibs for her own family’s benefit. She had had to tell Vittoria the truth. She was the replacement bride and Alessio would very generously reward them all by taking care of that bank loan and any outstanding debts. What she had not foreseen, however, was that her connection to the hotel would cause business to boom there, with the restaurant packed every night, or that would-be guests for rooms that were already fully booked were still phoning and arriving at all hours pleading for a space.
‘Are you sure that you want to do this?’ her sister had asked her doubtfully. ‘Are you attracted to him? Is that why?’
‘Yes, I do find him attractive,’ Rosy had admitted ruefully. ‘But I’m not going to be doing anything about it. This is a business arrangement and it’ll stay that way until we part. I’m convinced that he’s only willing to marry me because he thinks the Sedovian economy will suffer without this wedding. So, think of me like a wedding doll, not a future wife. I’m a symbol, nothing more.’
Vittoria departed to collect her sons downstairs and head to the cathedral while Patrick remained in the palace to escort Rosy on the strictly timed schedule. Only her wedding gown was Rosy’s own personal choice. Her magnificent pearl and diamond tiara, earrings and necklace were Maretti heirlooms. Her bouquet had been chosen by the staff. But the dress? That was very much Rosy’s dream. She had been shocked by the number of top designers who’d stepped forward when it had become known that a royal wedding gown was required within the space of a week.
It was classic with a slender silhouette, long tight lace sleeves and a sweetheart neckline. The silk bodice was adorned with crystals that glittered and the skirt and the train were exquisitely white, embroidered with Sedovian wildflowers. In her opinion, she looked exactly like a fairy princess from a cartoon, particularly with her mad mop of curls left long and loose…hugely persuaded by the stylist, who had told her that Alessio had verbally admired Rosy’s amazing curls. She wrinkled her nose, wondering why he had even noticed her curls.
She wasn’t wearing anything borrowed or blue. She might be stepping into Graziana’s shoes and have inherited most of her bridesmaids—the Sedovian ones at least—but at no stage had Rosy ever viewed herself as a genuine bride. She was too practical to see herself as anything other than Cinderella, but the Prince wasn’t hers and there was no fairy godmother hovering in the wings to make her secret fantasies come true.
Did she have secret fantasies? Yes, of course she did, and Alessio could have played a starring role in them had he not been quite so careful to ensure that she didn’t get any ideas above her station or any notion that he had any kind of a personal stake in marrying her. She was the convenient stand-in bride, nothing more important, and she was way too sensible to base any dreams on Alessio Maretti. He was as gorgeous as a sunset but as unobtainable as the moon. No, Rosy wanted a normal, hard-working guy, who thought she was as special as the stars in the sky.
Abstractedly, she wondered where he was taking her on their two-week honeymoon. He had been planning to take Graziana to Barbados, but a staff member had remarked that it would be bad taste to take Rosy to the same place, so where was she getting to go? Her eyes sparkled with anticipation.
Patrick, closely shaven and unusually immaculate in his fancy wedding apparel, was even more nervous than Rosy was when they climbed into the waiting beribboned limousine.
‘I’ll be glad to get out of this monkey suit,’ he lamented, running an uneasy finger round his silk cravat.
‘I’ll just be grateful when the cathedral and all the fuss is over,’ Rosy confided anxiously.
The car moved at a stately pace through the flag-waving, cheering crowds to the cathedral where a line of attendants and security men awaited the bride’s arrival. Breathing in deep, her train caught up immediately by an attendant to aid her exit, Rosy emerged to a burst of cameras, mercifully kept back by the protective barriers. She kept her back straight and her head high and forced a smile. Bride, wedding day, look happy. It was a pretty simple role, she told herself as she was escorted into the church and the splendid music started up, along with the soaring voices of the choir. There had been no time for a rehearsal but the aisle was a straight passage, if a very long one, and she walked down it, her hand braced on Patrick’s arm, the bridesmaids flocking in behind her.
* * *
Alessio watched his bride and he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
‘ Madonna mia , she’s tiny!’ his best friend and legal counsel, Eduardo Conti, hissed. ‘And beautiful. You’re doing better than you deserve with this one.’
Rosy was doing so well, Alessio decided. He knew she was extremely nervous because he could see the tension etched into the delicate lines of her face, but she wasn’t showing it otherwise, walking erect and dignified with her head high, the tiara lodged in her magnificent fiery fall of hair. She had worn it down for him . Although he had not asked specifically, only hinting to the stylist, he was pleased.
She looked absolutely spectacular, and the thought shook him because Alessio had never thought of a woman in such exaggerated terms before. He drew in a slow, ragged breath and realised that, while he had dreaded marrying Graziana, there wasn’t any dread in him now, only a sort of hopeful expectancy that they would work as a couple. It didn’t hurt that she turned him on hard and fast, even with a cardinal standing over him in all his church regalia, and for Alessio, who prided himself on his self-discipline, that was a revelation. Something about Rosy Castelli fired him up like dynamite.
‘You look incredible,’ he murmured when she finally looked at him, something she had appeared determined not to do on her passage down that long aisle in the full glare of the television cameras.
Her polite smile barely moved. The cardinal began to speak. Alessio’s mind wandered but Rosy listened. She was more serious in the religious stakes than he was, he decided.
* * *
Holy cow, he was so breathtakingly beautiful, Rosy could barely believe that Alessio was real flesh and blood. The lean angles and hollows of his perfect face, the high cheekbones, the proud jut of his nose, the moulded sensuality of his full mouth but, above all, it was always his eyes that she carefully avoided, lest in some mysterious way he guessed that she found him impossibly attractive. That lustrous vibrant green surrounded by a layer of thick inky lashes? Her heart stuttered to a stop before ramping up in pace. Her muscles all tightened in defence, that ache stirring low in her pelvis again, her breasts swelling and tightening inside her dress; all the embarrassing hallmarks of what was wrong with her, she reflected in pained discomfiture.
Rosy had never been so drawn to anyone in her whole life and when it was Alessio, it embarrassed her to death at the same time as it terrified her because that magnetism of his made her feel out of her depth and out of control. She refused to be silly about him, however, totally refused to be that stupid. She was an adult and she knew they had no relationship and that they were enacting a deception on the real world. She had been in the same room when his PR team had discussed how popular a choice she would be in comparison to someone like Graziana, who had apparently insulted the entire country of Sedovia by letting Alessio down. Rosy might have her role in the Cinderella story but she wasn’t in line for Cinderella’s happy ending.
Alessio slid the wedding ring onto her finger and she surfaced again to the ceremony, colour burning her cheeks as she realised how she had mentally drifted away. A ring was passed to her and she tried to slot it onto Alessio’s finger but by that stage her hand was shaking and he had to take care of it. It was done, it was done, she thought in relief, the main event accomplished and complete: they were married.
‘You were very brave,’ Alessio murmured soothingly as they signed the register. ‘For someone unaccustomed to crowds, you’re managing very well.’
‘Thank you,’ she said stiffly and braced herself to walk back down the aisle.
Alessio banded an arm round her as they reached the cathedral’s main entrance. ‘One kiss for the cameras?’ he whispered.
‘Of course,’ she agreed because it was part and parcel of the whole performance of a couple supposedly in love, she thought ruefully.
His hand eased down her spine to catch her to him, while his other hand tipped up her chin. ‘You’re a very long way down,’ he complained teasingly as he bent his dark, arrogant head.
Rosie braced as though she were in a queue for the guillotine. And then his sensual mouth engulfed hers and not in the fleeting salute she had innocently prepared for. The tip of his tongue parted her lips and he nibbled the lower one as though they had all the time in the world and no audience, and only then did he kiss her. The whole world fell away from her. Her head spun at the intoxicating taste of him and a flush of raw heat flamed through her every nerve ending as he welded her against him with big hands. She felt the unyielding hardness of his broad chest, the solid strength of him, and she was dizzy with the multitude of sensations striking all at once.
The best man gave Alessio a covert nudge. ‘You’re shocking the press…’
Alessio started to free his bride, discovering only then that he had lifted her right off her feet and she had dropped her bouquet. He stooped to retrieve it and returned it to her. ‘I forgot where we were,’ he said apologetically.
On the drive back to the palace, Alessio talked smoothly about some of their most important guests, educating her for the reception party, Rosy gathered. It was as if the kiss hadn’t happened. Although she felt relieved, in the sense that she felt she had responded with too much enthusiasm, she was also tempted to ask him what he thought he had been playing at with such a kiss in a non-existent relationship. It wasn’t as if they had even dated. In any case, nobody had ever kissed her so intimately before and she didn’t really want to openly complain about that because the fact that she had never had a lover was her business and not his. But he was a guy, an international playboy, and maybe he thought nothing of such a kiss. If she complained, she would come across as ridiculously strait-laced and outdated in her ideas.
Once they arrived at the palace, the regimented reception schedule kicked off. There were greetings and drinks with arriving guests, followed by entertainment by Sedovia’s most famous artistes. Rosy spent a little time with her former work colleagues and realised only then that she was out of a job she had loved for good at the palace. Nobody was likely to put Alessio’s ex-wife back on the staff. Of course, she would have the divorce settlement mentioned in one of the many documents she had had to sign prior to their wedding, and she wouldn’t be poor, so possibly she would look for a conservation job elsewhere in Sedovia.
The reception drifted on, seemingly endless with the speeches, the polite socialising with strangers, the cutting of the cake, even the tossing of the bouquet because it was a very traditional wedding. By the time she had to move out onto the dance floor to do that first couple’s dance thing, Rosy had had more than enough of the pomp and ceremony and, even worse, the having to dance in front of the guests when she couldn’t dance. Predictably Alessio compensated for that lack by letting her simply shuffle in time with him.
‘We can leave now,’ he murmured into her hair. ‘You’ve had enough.’
‘Thank goodness,’ she muttered, letting him tug her through the crush and urge her across the giant foyer towards the lift in the corner. ‘Where are we going?’
‘It’s a surprise. I think you’ll like it. It’s private and not too intimidating.’
On the floor above, he ushered her into a bedroom and paused in the doorway of a connecting room. ‘This is your room. I’m next door. Your maid will help you change.’
And then he was gone, the stranger she had married. A young woman arrived, dressed in the household uniform, and told Rosy that her name was Maria. Rosy could never have got out of her gown without help and she was relieved to have someone untangle the laces and unhook the hooks and undo the buttons.
‘Will I leave you to get dressed? Or should I stay?’ Maria asked her uncertainly. ‘I’m very good with hair. Your luggage is already packed and ready for your departure.’
‘You can leave. Thanks for your help,’ Rosy said warmly. ‘I’m not going to need anything more done to my hair today.’
An array of unfamiliar clothes was laid across the bed. The new wardrobe that Alessio had briefly mentioned during one of his fleeting phone calls? She had been kitted out like a new army recruit, she thought with amusement, selecting black linen trousers and a shimmering but light silky top for the journey, deeming comfort most important while travelling. She removed the jewellery, glad to see the back of the heavy necklace and tiara, rubbing her sore neck as she removed the earrings. She didn’t think she had ever been so tired in her entire life.
As she was emerging from the bedroom, one of the household stewards was hovering. ‘The Prince is waiting downstairs, Your Highness.’
It was the first time she had actually registered being addressed as a princess and she reddened and nodded, too weary to point out that it wouldn’t do any harm for Alessio to wait on his bride for a few minutes. Unfortunately, the entire household revolved around him, but the needs of others had to be considered as well, she reasoned ruefully, determined not to become one of the ‘adulation of Alessio’ clique. He was human and flawed like everybody else, hence that utterly inappropriate kiss at the cathedral. She had let him get away with that but he wasn’t getting off with much more around her.
Alessio was already at the wheel of a large SUV. Rosy climbed into the vehicle with difficulty because it was so tall, and she slumped in the front passenger seat while smothering a polite yawn. It wasn’t too far to the airport, she reflected sleepily, struggling to stay awake.
A hand shook her shoulder and she moaned and sighed. ‘Don’t make me get up…’
‘I have to. We’ve arrived,’ Alessio informed her gently, all too aware that he had not appreciated how exhausted she was until she fell into a solid five-hour nap beside him. And she’d looked so cute asleep, all ruffled foxy curls and that delicate little upturned nose with its handful of freckles above that pink luscious mouth.
Rosy shook herself like a dog coming out of water and sat up, eyes squinting into the darkness lit only by the glaring headlights. She couldn’t see anything but big dark trees and driving rain thumping down on the bonnet. ‘Weather’s not the best,’ she mumbled helplessly. ‘I don’t even remember getting on a plane…how is that possible?’
‘We drove here. We didn’t fly, although if we ever return, we will fly. The time it would take to get here was seriously underestimated and the mountain roads are bad.’
Mountain roads? They had driven here? It didn’t sound like any honeymoon Rosy wanted to be on. Alessio virtually bullied her out of the car and, by virtue of a torch, she saw their luggage already stacked on the front porch of a…giant mountain cabin surrounded by overhanging trees. Graziana had been deemed worthy of Barbados and Rosy got…? A mountain cabin. With resolve she lifted her chin, not wanting to be difficult. Maybe Alessio fished or climbed or hiked or some such thing and this was his dream destination. Yes, that made sense.
Although Rosy was determined not to make endless excuses for his omissions, she knew that she had to make allowances for his background, which she had heard all about just working within the palace. Alessio had always been alone, no siblings, not even cousins, and with detached and indifferent parents. He had existed in a cocoon of one from birth. Clearly it didn’t come naturally to him to consult others about their preferences, needs or wishes. Nor did it help that he was surrounded by fiercely loyal and sycophantic staff, who believed that he could do no wrong.
The front door was unlocked and they stepped into gloom until she found a light switch that illuminated the huge and very ugly antler chandelier above them.
‘I don’t understand,’ Alessio breathed. ‘Where are the staff?’
‘How many of them are there?’
‘I haven’t a clue. This was my grandparents’ holiday home and I haven’t been here in over twenty years,’ Alessio startled her by admitting. ‘But the same family have been paid to maintain and look after the place for generations.’
‘It looks like they dropped the maintenance, certainly the cleaning,’ Rosy remarked, noting the layer of dust on everything and already moving further to explore, walking through a door to the rear of the hall to find herself in a country-style kitchen that had much more appeal than the dusty hall with its old-fashioned furniture. She investigated the fridge and found it packed with food.
‘Somebody tried to prepare for us coming.’ She pointed out all the food to Alessio.
‘This place is a dump. We can’t possibly stay here.’
‘It’s too late at night to move anywhere else,’ Rosy said with common sense. ‘The roads are bad, it’s dark and it’s pouring with rain. I’ll check out the rest of this place.’
She went across the hall, illuminated a giant reception room ornamented with horrid hunting trophies and an array of sofas. There was a small library, a formal dining room, a games room and a study with an ancient desk. She padded upstairs and heard a sound that she had unhappily become familiar with during her first months with her family at the hotel: the sound of water dripping in more than one place. She began opening doors, switching on every light she came across and discovered bedrooms too damp to occupy until she reached the double doors at the end of the landing and walked into a large room that was obviously a later addition to the cabin because even the furniture was more modern.
And someone had prepared the final room. The faded rugs and the floor were spotlessly clean and the giant four-poster bed was freshly made up in clean linen. There was even a bunch of wildflowers on a table by the window and she smiled. Someone had done their best with a giant neglected house left to go to rack and ruin and she appreciated it. A relatively modern bathroom with working plumbing also lay through a door, which took care of her last concern.
Alessio was still pacing along the cavernous porch and totally unable to get reception on his phone, rage and frustration emanating from him in perceptible waves.
‘Forget it. We’ve got food and accommodation. We’ll manage. I’m going to make some food. I don’t know if you’re hungry but I’m starving,’ she told him and simply left him to pace.
‘This is not accommodation,’ Alessio objected from the kitchen doorway as she slammed through drawers and cupboards to find pans.
‘It may not be what you’re used to, but it will do.’
‘Not for our wedding night.’
‘Yes, but it’s not a real wedding night. We’re a fake couple, remember?’
Silence fell for a beat and then another. She tensed and turned to look at him. He was frowning at her, perfect ebony brows drawing together in apparent surprise. Vibrant green eyes suddenly struck hers like lasers. ‘Is that your way of saying that you’re not sharing a bed with me?’