Prince Charming (23 page)

There was something deeper in it.

Daniela and Rafe conferred together quietly after the old men had left the room. Furtively, Orlando watched them. He saw her steal the traces of checked anger from Rafe’s face with a touch on his cheek and a gentle kiss.

Perhaps he was the only one who really saw and felt how changed Rafe was under the new influence of Lady Daniela, Orlando thought. One thing was certain: He didn’t like what he saw. It was bad enough that the tide of public opinion had already begun to turn in Rafe’s favor with his sparing the valiant Masked Rider. Now the girl looked prepared to pick up a sword to defend her golden savior, while his shrewd, marble-green eyes seemed to look out upon the world with a new, mysterious, and disconcerting focus.

The prince’s yawning ennui was gone. His air of careless bonhomie had vanished. With none of his usual idle banter, Rafe had said few words, but those he had spoken were quiet, full of discipline, impact, drive.

Disgusted by the couple so urgently in love, Orlando turned away and joined the others in the hall, wondering what the hell would become of his plans if Rafe lived to get his soon-to-be wife pregnant.

By the look of them, that wouldn’t take long, and he didn’t know if he could arrange the prince’s demise that quickly. Thus far, the oblivious Rafe had passed through his lethal traps miraculously unscathed. If he sired a son on Daniela, the throne would fall to their child, not to Rafe’s younger brother, Prince Leo. Orlando could not allow that to happen.

He glanced over his shoulder at them in the other room, then narrowed his eyes as they kissed, thinking themselves unobserved. Orlando turned away with a heart full of envy and hate. With his dark good looks, his wealth and title, and his connection to the royal house, he’d had many beautiful women, but no one had ever kissed
him
that way.

Not that he had much use for gentleness with a woman. His loving usually left welts on soft skin; he reveled in secrets and perversity. His women were carefully selected and to these he bestowed rewards of shuddering shame in exchange for the cries of pain that were his delight.

Still, he did not understand the arcane bond between the prince and his newest plaything. The strange power of it frightened him. Perhaps it was time to turn Rafe’s fair little ally against him, he mused. The beauty of it was, he wouldn’t even have to lie.

The cabinet reconvened after the break, but the afternoon session was cut short when Lady Daniela suddenly had her fill of Don Arturo’s condescending manner toward Rafe. She interrupted the prime minister in the middle of his snide explanation.

“That will do, sir!” she uttered, rising from Rafe’s lap to stand, leaning toward the man in blazing fury, her hands planted on the table.

Don Arturo gaped at her, but when Rafe stifled a laugh, hiding his mouth behind his fist, the prime minister’s temper snapped.

“You shouldn’t even be in here, little miss! Who do you think you are?”

“A patriot and your future queen, sir, that’s who,” she belted right back at him.

Rafe laughed in delight, but the ministers gasped.

Daniela Chiaramonte wasn’t done. “You’re the one who shouldn’t be here if this is how you speak to your country’s sovereign lord. I never saw such insolence in my life! You’re supposed to be serving Ascencion, not sewing discord. Why are you deliberately undermining His Highness?”

The peaceable minister of agriculture attempted to intervene. “Don Arturo is not undermining His Highness, your ladyship—”

“The devil he’s not,” she spat, her eyes blazing aquamarine

“Daniela,” Rafe purred from behind her.

“Yes, my lord?” she replied, still fixing Don Arturo in her kittenish glare.

“Would you excuse us for a moment?”

“As you wish, my lord,” she said stiffly, but she turned to him before she exited and asked him privately in a tone of agitation, “Your father wouldn’t take this from them. Why should you?”

“Go, my sweet,” he murmured gently, kissing her hand.

Orlando’s gaze swept the council chamber as he felt the tension climbing with every second. He had a feeling that the moment the lady left the room, all hell was going to break loose.

Daniela nodded stiffly to him, then walked out, shoulders thrown back, her chin high. Rafe watched her until the door had closed. Then he turned back to them with fire and brimstone in his eyes.

“Don Arturo,” he said calmly. “Gentlemen of the cabinet. You are
fired
!” he roared, slamming his fist on the table before him.

Listening outside the door, Dani’s eyes flew open wide at Rafael’s furious bellow. When the prime minister challenged him, he went on the rampage, by the sound of it. Everyone in the other room was shouting, but Rafael’s deep, commanding voice thundered over theirs.

Oh, Lord, what have I started?
she thought, paling.

Just then, the frightfully dignified palace steward came marching down the hall and saw her eavesdropping. His wrinkled face drew into a lordly frown.

Chagrined, Dani withdrew from the door. She supposed any moment now the dismissed cabinet members would come gusting out of the council chamber in anger and she certainly did not want to get caught in their exodus. She could scarcely believe she had lost her temper so completely as to have yelled like a quarrelsome fishwife at Don Arturo di Sansevero, the king’s most venerated official, for heaven’s sake. Yet she was delighted that Rafael finally refused to tolerate the man’s insolence any longer.

With mixed feelings at the knowledge that she would probably be cast somehow as the villainess in all this when the king and queen came back, she hurried off toward her apartment in the hopes that there, at least, she might manage to stay out of trouble.

Sweeping down the hall past one of the main salons, Dani heard trilling laughter from an artfully cultured soprano voice. Halted by curiosity, she peered through the wide-open doorway into the salon and saw Chloe Sinclair elaborately arranged on a striped cream-and-gold couch with her pink silk scarf draped over its scrolled arm and her dainty feet tucked under her. The woman was radiant with laughter, dimples winking, the afternoon sun gilding her champagne-blond hair.

At her feet and seated on ottomans around her sat an ardent group of worshipers, dashing blades who hung on her every word and offered lavish compliments. Young ladies sat demurely by, gazing wistfully at her as though they only wished they could be a fraction as dazzling as she.

Dani’s heart fell. If ever there had been a feminine equivalent for the prince’s celestial beauty, it was surely this bright, sugar-spun fairy queen.

What is she doing here? She must have come to see Rafael, but…

Dani didn’t know how to complete the thought without growing furious at the implications. After all, she was marrying Rafael tomorrow.

In the brief second that she stood there, the English diva’s sky-blue eyes flicked to her. Recognition caught in her eyes and turned at once to hostility. Chloe’s laughter died down, but she looked right through Dani and turned away again, redirecting her diamond smile to one of the young bucks at her knee—cutting Dani as thoroughly as though she had slammed the door in her face.

Clenching her jaw, Dani turned from the salon door and forced herself to keep walking until she was in her rooms. Angrily, she paced back and forth in her apartment, arms folded over her chest, waiting for Rafael to come to her. Obviously he had called an end to the meeting downstairs, so when the fighting was over she expected he would come and see her.

Unless he allowed himself to be distracted by that arrogant theater woman!
she thought. There was no use denying it. She was outlandishly jealous and petrified of the famous diva’s hold on Rafael. Chloe Sinclair had the beauty and sophistication worthy of a royal prince and, seeing her, Dani felt all the more like a tomboy-oddball misfit.

Some of the flowers in the sitting room were already wilting. She reached to snatch a dying rose impatiently from one of the bouquets and yelped with pain as she pricked her finger on a thorn. She abandoned the sitting room and paced back into the bedchamber, sucking her pierced finger until it stopped hurting. Restlessly, she went out onto the balcony, squinted against the high sun, and counted the dragging minutes.

He must come, she thought. He had promised her that later today he would take her personally to the docks to say goodbye to the Gabbiano brothers, who were being deported to Naples that afternoon.

A few minutes later, one of her maids came to the edge of the balcony and said she had a caller. Dani all but ran into the other room, but in the doorway she drew up sharply in surprise.

Dressed all in black, Orlando stood admiring her flowers.

The Duke Orlando di Cambio had the Fiori family resemblance. Raven-haired, darker complected, and somewhat older than Rafael, aside from his coloring, he looked astonishingly like the prince. He was carrying a small leatherbound document box. As she stepped into the room, he turned to her and offered her a smile that did not quite reach his cryptic, ice-green eyes.

“Lady Daniela.” His voice was deep and quiet. He bowed to her. “His Highness is preoccupied at the moment and asked me to check on you.”

“Is he?” She felt the blood draining from her face.

Preoccupied, was he? Anger flooded her, out of all proportion. She did her best to hide her reaction from his kinsman, not wishing to make a fool of herself in her jealousy.

Orlando cast a quick glance toward the heavyset maid standing at attention in the doorway, then looked at Dani again. “Shall we take a turn down the hall and talk a bit?”

“As you wish.”

Orlando gestured toward the door. “After you, my lady.”

She was almost too angry to notice where they were going. All she could see in her mind’s eye was Rafael and his silvery English beauty.
Name your heart’s desire, Daniela. Anything you want,
she thought angrily, remembering his attentions last night. How did he propose to fix her roof if he was busy fawning on that theater woman?

Simmering, she kept in step with Orlando’s long strides as they walked down the empty marble corridor. At the far end of the hallway, a small potted lemon tree basked on a sunny balcony whose French doors had been left open to admit the breeze. The wispy curtains billowed gracefully. They headed for it.

Orlando was silent, his head high. He had a wider brow and a slightly hooked, aquiline nose, but he even carried himself rather like Rafael, she thought. Before he detected her anger and she humiliated herself with revealing the cause, she strove to be civil and make conversation.

“I was not aware that His Highness had any cousins,” she remarked coolly. “I thought all of the Fiori except Rafael’s father were slain in that unspeakable butchery of King Alphonse and Queen Eugenia.”

“Rafe and I are distant cousins,” he replied. “The di Cambio line left Ascencion a hundred years ago and resettled in Tuscany after some absurd family argument.”

She was curious about the history of the renowned family she was about to join, but he seemed disinclined to speak more about it or himself, and she was in no mood to press him. They arrived at the balcony and he swept his hand before her, inviting her to step outside. Cautiously, she moved past him.

The lemony scent from the little potted tree filled the sun-warmed air. The balcony overlooked the broad graveled drive that led from the huge black gates of the palace grounds up to the grand front entrance. She could see soldiers posted here and there below, carriages coming and going on the kingdom’s business.

Orlando balanced the document box on the railing and stared at her. “Lady Daniela, the truth is I have come to speak to you about your impending marriage. You said back there in the council chamber that you are a patriot, and I do believe that’s true. I believe you want what’s best for Ascencion and for Rafael.”

“Of course I do.”

He hesitated and looked off toward the horizon, frowning. “I fear my cousin is on a reckless course. Please understand that my first loyalty must be to Ascencion and King Lazar. What I have to tell you, I’m afraid, won’t be easy to hear.”

It couldn’t be harder, as the moments dragged, than knowing her fiancé was even now dallying with his beautiful mistress. She thrust the thought angrily aside and folded her arms over her chest. “What is it?”

Orlando looked at her again, his expression grave. “I fear that by marrying you, Rafe is jeopardizing his future and may well cause another rift in the royal family like the one that drove my ancestors away from Ascencion a century ago.”

Taken aback, she stared up at him.

“I am fond of Rafe, you understand, but everyone knows he misbehaves. He’s good-natured and doesn’t always take matters as seriously as he should. I’m not sure he realizes the consequences he may have to pay if he marries you. I’ve tried to make him understand, but he won’t listen, so in the prince’s best interest, I had to come to you.”

She felt her blood running cold. “What consequences?”

“Well, to put it plainly: The likelihood is that King Lazar will disinherit him and name Prince Leo his successor to the throne.”

“What?”
she cried. Immediately she thought of Rafael’s words last night on the boat when he had talked about his strained relationship with his father.

“Just before the royal family sailed for Spain, the king threatened Rafe in front of the whole cabinet with the loss of the crown, in favor of Prince Leo.”

“I can’t believe His Majesty would really carry out such a threat,” she said in horror. “Do you? Rafael would be crushed.”

“Well, he has caused his family a great deal of embarrassment.”

She winced. “I still don’t believe King Lazar would disinherit him because of me. I may be poor, but I’m from a good family—”

“You were arrested for highway robbery, my lady. That point rather thrusts your pedigree into the background. Do you really think Their Majesties will accept a known criminal as the mother of future Fiori kings? They will see you as a taint in the royal bloodlines, no better than if you were Chloe Sinclair.”