Page 23 of His Royal Bride Replacement

* * *

The crush at the airport and the amount of security, including police, that shepherded them from their car indoors unnerved Rosy. Her spine was rigid while Alessio maintained a light hand at her back to keep her moving. Cameras flashed and the air was thick with shouted questions. She had never in her life felt quite so much on public show and ensuring that nothing other than a polite smile crossed her face was a distinct challenge. Boarding the opulent private jet was a relief and when it shot into the sky, the relief was even stronger.

‘Is it always like that?’ she asked, lying back in her reclining seat with a pile of new magazines beside her and a long, cold drink clasped in her weak hand.

‘Yes, that’s our norm,’ Alessio confirmed. ‘Eventually you just switch off and think nothing of it.’

Rosy was leafing through the magazines only to immediately pause when she saw Graziana’s beautiful face obscuring half the front page. Without hesitation, she went straight to that article, given, she noted, when Graziana was in New York. Reading it made her heart sink and her teeth grind. It was sugary sweet right down to the number of times the Princess of Eboltz had to pause to dry her tears and sip her water. Overwhelmed by the pressure of the royal wedding and insecure about the bridegroom’s commitment to her, Graziana explained, she had simply panicked and run away with a ‘good friend’ on her protection team, who had ‘insisted’ on marrying her before they took that ‘unwise’ step. She made herself sound like a little girl without agency of her own and only discreetly mentioned her hope of being granted an annulment of her marriage.

Drawing in a deep breath, Rosy tossed the magazine into Alessio’s lap. ‘I’ve already read it,’ he admitted, setting the magazine on the seat next him. ‘Our PR team is very efficient.’

‘She threw you under the bus!’ Rosy proclaimed. ‘She’s hinting that you and I had something going on before she ran off!’

Alessio shrugged a broad shoulder with a maddening air of nonchalance. ‘That was to be expected.’

‘Expected?’Rosy erupted angrily.

‘She’s only inferring what others have been too delicate to comment on,’ Alessio reasoned with outrageous cool. ‘The suggestion thatwewere carrying on some illicit affair during my engagement to her—’

Rosy was so vexed by that news that she jerked upright in her recliner and pressed it down, her blue eyes shaded violet with resentment. ‘Howdareshe?’ she seethed furiously. ‘How dare anyone think that about us?’

Alessio rested glittering green eyes on her, his surprise at her attitude unhidden. ‘But surely you realised that people would think that.’

‘No, I didn’t,’ Rosy admitted grittily.

‘It makes more sense that prior to the wedding you and I had, at the very least, an attraction to each other and at worst were involved in an affair.’

‘But it trashes my reputation!’ Rosy interrupted angrily. ‘I wouldn’t have got involved with a man on the brink of marrying another woman.’

‘What does it matter what other people think, Rosy?’ Alessio parried with rich cynicism. ‘The great majority were simply happy that when Graziana fled, you and I were able to step in and still deliver the wedding and that elusive promise of happy ever after.’

Rosy pursed her lips and said nothing because she was unwilling to say anything more. She had no control over Graziana, any more than he had, and no way of silencing gossiping tongues. So, her reputation had been destroyed, but what was a reputation as such in this day and age, she reasoned with herself, striving to cool down.

‘Let it go,’ Alessio urged with assurance. ‘Graziana will do and say whatever she feels she has to in an effort to redeem her public image and since, mercifully, I am not the guy who had to marry her, I intend to ignore her. Her father has cut her off from her trust fund and she is desperate to reclaim his approval by any means within her power. I would imagine that as soon as that annulment is granted, Graziana will marry some important power broker to please her father.’

Thinking about all that, Rosy relaxed back into her seat and set the magazines aside, lest they contain any further interviews with the Princess of Eboltz, guaranteed to boil her blood through her veins. It was past time she wised up, a little voice warned her at the back of her mind. Possibly, she was getting too big for her boots. She was the wife Alessio hadboughtwith cold, hard cash. What axe did she have to grind with such a background to their royal marriage? The fact that that money had gone to her family, rather than her personally, was not relevant. She needed to remember that she was a humble art restorer and not a genuine wife. She couldn’t do anything about the reality that some would believe that she had been sleeping with Alessio while he was engaged.

Life was tough that way, giving with one hand, taking with the other. Would she even want to turn the clock fully back? Return to her old life? Never ever have been a woman whom Alessio Maretti kissed? A little zing scorched through her pelvis as she looked at her husband, the Prince, rejoiced in that perfect profile of his, the fall of his tousled black hair as he worked at his laptop and chatted in Spanish on the phone. No, she fancied the socks off him, she admitted to herself. No, she didn’t wish to go back to her single past.

But was it only that sexual chemistry that drew her to Alessio? She didn’t want to fall in love with him. There was no love in a marriage of convenience. This was supposed to be a practical partnership in which both parties benefited from an exchange of mutual needs. Liking, respect and consideration were the foundation of that kind of bond and she believed that they had already achieved that happy balance, so she needed to be less temperamental and more accepting of their differences.

Certainly, she was seeing, if not quite accepting, their differences that afternoon when the SUV that had picked them up in Spain wafted them through a wonderful, tall black wrought-iron gateway and on to a thickly wooded estate. El Palacio, it was called, the former home of Alessio’s mother, and it had come to him by inheritance.

‘Once, I planned to sell it. My mother had no fondness for it and neglected it and by the time it came to me, it required extensive restoration. I only use it when I’m here on diplomatic visits or in need of a relaxing break, but, as I soon discovered, it has a remarkable charm all of its own,’ he advanced as the ancient rambling building came into view above them and the car continued up the steep lane. ‘It started out as a convent and changed into being a medieval home, but it was most altered in the eighteenth century when the daughter here married a very rich Portuguese duke. It’s a Spanish house but it carries an unmistakeable Portuguese flavour. It’s open to the public for most of the year.’

Rosy tried to relax her shoulders as the car came to a halt in a paved courtyard. ‘That’s good.’

In the fierce heat of the sun, she accompanied him up the steps under the shaded portico and on into a simply vast hall, with lines of marble columns marching ahead of them to frame a twin stone staircase at the rear. Before them stood a uniformed rank of household staff awaiting their arrival.

‘The duke was apparently inspired by a Roman villa that had recently been unearthed in the grounds,’ Alessio quipped as they moved forward into the blessed cool.

Introductions followed but Rosy missed most names after Jorge, the household steward, made himself known. ‘The number of staff tells me that we will be waited on hand and foot while we’re here,’ she murmured half under her breath as they mounted the stairs in Jorge’s stately wake. The inside walls of the staircase were lined with blue and white tiled medieval scenes.

‘This house runs like a top-flight hotel,’ Alessio agreed with amusement. ‘It’s the least you deserve after that experience at the cabin.’

‘No, that ended up being fun. I wouldn’t change that for the world.’

‘And you rescued Clover.’

---