Page 6 of Off-Limits To The Crown Prince

‘There is no princess yet.’

‘Shame. I thought she might be able to give me some tips. Juicy gossip even.’

The perfect Prince’s eyes narrowed. His lips tightened.

‘There is nojuicy gossip. My life is my country. My country is my life. That is all you need to know.’ His voice was ice. The cold blast of a winter gale. A tremor shuddered through her at the chill of his tone. She almost believed there was nothing more to him than this and didn’t know why that thought left an ache deep inside, because it struck her as sad.

‘Duly noted,’ she said. Her answer seemed to mollify him. He gave a curt nod in reply.

‘When we are in public you will refer to me as Your Highness or Sir.’

‘I’ve read the rulebook, though there was one thing it didn’t address.’ She leaned back into the soft upholstery of the armchair and tried to relax, though nothing about the man sitting opposite encouraged her to do so. ‘What about when we’re in private?’

‘There will be no“in private”.’

Hannah looked about the vast room, through the windows that gave a view of rolling hills and olive groves beyond. Pencil pines spearing upwards from a garden like dark green sentinels. ‘We’re alone now.’

‘Stefano.’

‘Sì?’

Hannah whipped round. Stefano stood just inside the closed doors of the room. He gave her a wry smile. She turned back to Alessio. Crossed her legs. Clasped her hands over her knee. He followed her every move, almost as if he were cataloguing her.

‘Where were you hiding the poor man—in a cupboard?’

‘There is a chair, in an alcove, inside the door. However, where Stefano sits is immaterial. What is material is that we will not be alone.’

‘Then how am I meant to begin the process of painting your portrait?’

‘I would have thought it quite easy. Brush, canvas.’

She shook her head. ‘I can’t work with strangers...loitering about. Portrait painting is a contract between two people. The artist and the subject. Of its nature it’s...intimate. I—’

‘So you have said before. You don’t get to dictate terms, Signorina Barrington.’

No. There was a way she worked and, although she tried to be a little flexible, the way he spoke to her rankled. She clenched her hands a bit harder round her knees.

‘It’s a wonder you don’t pick up a brush and paint yourself...Your Highness.’

Everything about him seemed impassive, inscrutable. Having barely any expression, his face was marked only by a cool, regal kind of presence. She could get the measure of most people, but never the measure of him. Even as a far younger man, there’d been nothing on his face to tell what he might be thinking. Like a blank canvas waiting for the first, defining brushstroke.

‘If I could, I would.’ Alessio sat back in his leather chair, which creaked as his weight shifted. Steepled his fingers. ‘However, there’s a reason I engaged you and that’s because you’re reputedly the best. I will havenothingbut the best.’

A vice of tightness crushed her chest. Right now, she wasn’t at her best. What her uncle had done had floored her. She had thought she could at least trust her family. Now she was being forced to take this commission due to circumstance, which was not the way she’d ever worked. What would her parents have thought of all this? They believed they’d ensured the security and comfort of their only daughter and she’d let it slip away by being too absorbed in her art and not keeping a close enough eye on things, till it was too late and the money gone. The threat of tears burned the back of her nose. Even after nine years the grief still hovered close. All these things had weighed on her and right now her thoughts were not about colour and light, or the gentle tilt of someone’s almost smile, but on survival again.

Though that might suit a painting of this man. The expressionless quality. She could try losing herself in that, a simplicity which meant she didn’t need to fight the canvas to find the heart of him. Because there was nothing in his face she could grasp, apart from the impact of his sheer masculine beauty. Like the statue of David. Exquisite, perfect, coldly etched. She doubted he had a warm, beating heart. But in the end to do her best, to paint what critics said she was renowned for, she neededsomethingcurious for her brushstroke to shape. Some expression to show the person before her was man, not marble. Because sadly she was a portrait artist, not a sculptor.

She stood and walked towards a wall on which one portrait hung, of a man sitting on a golden chair. Old. Imposing.

‘I didn’t invite you to leave your seat.’ Alessio’s voice was cool as the blast of air-conditioning on a hot summer’s day. She wheeled round. He was still seated himself. Was there something in that dossier she’d been given to read about this? She couldn’t remember, though the man probably wasn’t used to having anyone turn their back on him. Still, whilst he was a prince, she was a grown woman. She’d accord him the respect required because of the quirk of his birth, but asking for permission to stand?

Ridiculous.

‘That’s going to make things difficult if I need to ask you for permission whenever I have to do something. Your Highness, may I drink my glass of water? Your Highness, may I use the bathroom? Your Highness, may I apply this charcoal to paper?’

He swivelled his chair to face her, gazing at her with an intriguing intensity, as if she were an olive he was about to skewer in the tines of a martini fork.

‘There are rules by which the palace and my country is run. Those rules keep chaos away from the door. In this place, you follow mine.’

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