Chapter Eight
‘OK?’ Orazio checked in an undertone, quietly guiding Zia out onto the former palace balcony where her father, the hated dictator, had once made his grandiose public appearances.
Yet again, the politicians had picked the cleverest spot from which to make their chosen message through the appearance of the Mandovian ‘royals’. She and Orazio were now linked together like salt and pepper and she marvelled that he didn’t resent her for it.
‘Of course,’ Zia fibbed because, no, she wasn’t really OK at all with the thousands of people heaving in the city square below them, cheering and waving up at them with what struck her as almost hysterical enthusiasm.
Orazio had assured her that the seemingly exciting news of their relationship would die down within a week but his forecast had been wrong.
My word, she thought weakly as she kept her forced smile in place and stood, a small, straight figure within the shelter of the relaxed masculine arm enclosing her.
My word, had Orazio got it wrong! The two of them being together as a couple was clearly the very biggest thrill either Upper or Lower Mandovia had seen since the revolution that had toppled her late father from power.
For the past month, she and Orazio had had to hurtle between both countries completing engagements.
And now that they were genuinely together with the reunification on the horizon, they were both in constant demand as a pair, a seemingly indivisible couple.
The newspapers had got really silly with their articles, suggesting suitable wedding dates, the best designers for ‘the dress’, right down to rather offensively implying that Orazio must be none too keen on making a lasting commitment to her if he had not yet popped the question.
It was all so unfair to him, she thought guiltily.
He had so obviously not foreseen the complicated, deeply personal expectations that would explode in the public arena if they came out and were honest about their relationship.
They were ushered out of the palace that was now a hotel by a rear entrance where only the paparazzi knew to await their exit.
A posse of security guards ringed them to hold back the crush of cameras and keep the shouted questions at a distance.
Zia almost winced as she heard someone demand to know when they were getting married and it was far from the first time that that question had been asked.
It still rather surprised her that Orazio hadn’t just dumped her to protect himself from such aggressive demands.
Nobody, it seemed, could simply let them be together without expecting their togetherness to be made swiftly official and to see her crowned as his Queen.
In opposition to Zia’s anxious reflections, Orazio was thinking that everything that day, and for many days previous to it, had gone superlatively well.
His Princess was gradually adapting to intense public exposure and surely more than ready for him to propose a permanent union.
According to his reckoning, he had gone very slowly indeed and he had kept everything low-key and calm, which was the most comfortable pace for him.
To his relief, his own more intense emotions had cooled down now that they were together and everybody knew it.
There was no reason now for him to feel that seething jealousy or possessiveness.
From the moment he had ended up in bed with Zia he had known she would become his wife.
Surely, she was now expecting a proposal?
Working up to the moment as though they were some normal romantic couple would be unnecessary, he decided, everything reserved in his nature shying away from the threat of having to get emotional with anyone… even his intended bride.
At the airport in Upper Mandovia, they clambered into a helicopter and conversation was impossible for the duration of the flight.
Fiero was in the limo that ferried them back to the castle where Zia now lived in the Queen’s Tower on a more permanent basis.
And only now was Zia questioning all of those facts, she realised in dismay.
Poor Raz had sleepwalked into the marriage trap with her!
He had got everything wrong while striving to show due consideration and respect to all involved parties, she reasoned in consternation.
‘Zia and I want to talk,’ Raz announced, reaching for her hand in such a natural move that she was completely silenced just as Harvey, his head of household, approached him for a discreet word.
Orazio’s lean bronze chiselled features froze for a fraction of a second and then he turned to look at her with a smile and murmured, ‘My grandfather and my mother have arrived for an impromptu visit. I’m afraid we’ll have to take a rain check on—’
Even as he spoke, a volcanic flood of Spanish erupted nearby.
Zia spun round to find that a tall, impossibly elegant lady with silver hair and a fantastic number of diamonds on her person was bearing down on her with an aggressive stare.
Orazio stepped between the two women and urged Zia towards the stairs. ‘I’ll see you shortly,’ he swore.
Before Zia could start up the stone steps, a tall, lean, older man with white hair stepped into her path. ‘I am Xavier Zalas, Orazio’s grandfather. Please excuse his mother’s outburst. Occasionally she forgets her manners. I shall look forward to getting to know you.’
It was a timely intervention and she grasped the old man’s extended hand politely, flashing her signature warm smile.
Even so, her ears were still ringing from hearing Orazio be verbally attacked for dating that ‘loathsome man’s daughter’!
Even though the former Queen and Orazio’s mother, Luisa Arcangeli, had lowered her voice, her shrill syllables had been unmistakeable in tone.
She seemed to believe that her son was on the brink of marrying Zia and had been so horrified by that suspicion that she had flown all the way from Venezuela to make her opposition known.
‘That would be lovely,’ she answered his grandfather graciously before, with one flash of his expressive green eyes, Orazio sent an unmistakeable warning to her to disappear and leave him alone to deal with his difficult parent.
With a sigh, already well attuned to that silent prompt of caution, Zia turned again and climbed the stairs to her room.
Those tabloid rumours were causing all sorts of misunderstandings, she conceded with a heavy heart.
Of course, Orazio was not thinking of marrying her and would doubtless soon soothe his mother’s worries.
But, just as naturally, Zia was made miserable by that overheard snatch of dialogue.
His mother’s hostility only reminded her that she absolutely loved Orazio from the bottom of his heels to the crown of his actual head and that there was no future in it.
How could she possibly feel any other way about him when they had spent the last month as lovers and he had supported her in every way there was?
In short, even Zia knew that she adored him.
Orazio had become everything to her. How could he be anything else?
This was the guy who enfolded her in a lovers’ embrace every night that he was with her.
Since they had come out as a couple, nobody expected them to be apart at night, aside from the ultra conservatives, who took issue with them openly living together before marriage.
Yet that had not been what they had been thinking when they had done that, she acknowledged guiltily, worried that Orazio had not foreseen the likely result of the unhidden intimacy they shared…
such as his family turning up to express their objections to such a connection with the dictator’s daughter!
She stripped in her fancy built-in dressing room and pulled on a robe to go for a shower, a well-worn routine in the evening.
She would relax in a bath first and eventually rejoin Raz for dinner, just the two of them.
And, naturally, reports of such constant togetherness had escaped when they had been so open about stuff, she reflected painfully.
Doubtless that was why his relations had arrived without warning, so, there would be no such togetherness this evening.
She lay back in her bath and drifted off into thoughts about Raz.
He made her happier than she had ever been in her life because, for the first time ever, she wasn’t alone and she had someone she could truly depend on.
Only their relationship wasn’t going to last for ever, she reminded herself.
Since the start she had decided that living strictly in the moment made the most sense.
She would enjoy what they had while it lasted rather than depress herself with images of the hurt and rejection that she would experience when they broke up.
She was such a dreadful pessimist. Raz tended to complain about that downbeat outlook of hers but then he had lived a very different life from her, a much safer, more secure life where literally everything he had ever wanted magically came to him.
A quick shower later, with her hair casually dried to tumble round her shoulders, her maid arrived to inform her that Orazio was waiting for her.
With his family? She tried not to wince at the prospect of dining with his hostile mother and dug out a fancy dress to put on, because she had begun to enjoy the little feminine things she had never had time or reason to consider before.
And Raz was very responsive to the right dress, she reflected with a wicked little grin as she outlined her lips with a foxy red shade and decided that the former Queen of Mandovia was not going to make her hang her head as though she had done something to be ashamed of.