Page 28 of Crowned For The King's Secret

He ran his hands through his hair. ‘She’s the one we missed. But I have a core of people who kept me safe when I was in exile, others who worked to return me to the throne. They kept me alive.’

‘How did you get away? How did you escape?’

These memories were ones he never wanted to revisit. One of the most painful nights of his life. However, if he was truthful about their getting to know each other better for the sake of their child, it was a story he’d tell her.

‘My parents sent me away with my godparents and most trusted courtiers. I was spirited across the border and then to the UK, which offered me safety. They were betrayed.’

‘Sandro, I’m so sorry.’ She reached out as if to touch his hand, pulled back. ‘I can’t imagine.’

He shrugged because he’d long had to accept what had happened to him, his family. It was a dreadful, bloody part of the tapestry of his life.

‘I was saved, and it was always my job to return to the country as King.’

‘If you were so well protected, how did you end up at a private club with me? I could have been anyone.’

He smiled. That was one memory he could take pleasure in.

‘It was two days before I was to leave for Santa Fiorina. I wanted one night to myself.’ To take a chance, because his whole life he’d taken none. ‘The Asteria Club is renowned for its safety and security. I was offered membership the moment I turned eighteen with the promise that it would be a safe haven if I needed it. It’s one of the places my security and I trusted the most. You were my one moment, when I was allowed to be selfish and simply want.’

She stared at him, her eyes brimming with sympathy. So beautiful in the low light, wearing the colours of the ocean, her hair falling around her shoulders like cornsilk. Victoria shook her head.

‘How did you survive it? You were only...what? Around nine?’

Sandro took another draught of wine. ‘Because I had no choice. Because I had a purpose.’

‘But you’ve spent more time in England than you have in the country of your birth.’

To his shame, in his teens he’d wondered where his home truly was. Santa Fiorina seemed so distant. Like a dream. ‘I was reminded of my past constantly, of where my future lay.’

She frowned. ‘I can’t imagine that, not for a child. You would have been grieving.’

He rubbed at a tightness in his chest. All those years in a foreign land, wondering if he had a true place in the world.

‘I had my godparents. My parents’ most trusted friends and courtiers to look after me. I wanted for nothing.’

‘Apart from your mother and your father.’

He’d been told he had to be strong, because that was what they would have wanted.

‘Of course. They were...’ His voice caught in his throat. Fleeting memories of happiness clutched at his consciousness, but they were so distant, remote, it was hard to hold on to them. Then she reached out and finally placed her hand over his. Something about it was solid, grounding, when all he had of his past seemed so ephemeral.

‘They would have been irreplaceable.’

‘I had so little to remember them by.’ That had been the cruellest thing for a child, how the memories faded till he was unsure whether they were real or simply dreams. ‘We left without any pictures of them. Their royal portraits were destroyed. Their memory seems distant now, like a faded photograph. I’ve moved on. My responsibilities are greater than a single man’s grief. I have to wear my country’s as well.’

Victoria’s eyes still gleamed, overbright with unshed tears. He didn’t need her sympathy. He drew his hand from underneath hers. He’d learned long ago that his strength was all he had.

‘You have one picture of them. Why is that?’

It was as if he’d been plunged into a winter sea. He could hardly breathe. All he could recall was a dark day in his early teens, when he’d told those protecting him that he didn’t want this any more. There was no hope. No point pretending he would one day be King in the memory of people long dead.

Then he was brutally reminded why it was necessary.

‘It’s irrelevant.’

He didn’t know why the words were so hard to get out. Why this felt like an evisceration.

‘Did anyone really love the grieving little boy you once were?’

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