The Prince She Had to Marry (17 page)

Chapter Fourteen

T
he days went by.

And then the weeks.

Lili kept busy with her correspondence and the occasional speaking engagement. With her work for a number of important charities. In her free time, she read some really good romances. And she painted. Scenes of light and hope and happiness.

But she was not exactly feeling the hope. Or the light or the happiness. July somehow became August. Alex didn’t call. He didn’t email. And he did not return.

On a Wednesday morning exactly five weeks to the day since her husband had left her, Lili stood sideways before the tall mirror in the bathroom wearing only her panties and bra. Gently, she rubbed her round belly. She was definitely showing now. Even fully dressed, one could see a definite bump.

Alex should be here to see this, see our baby growing,
she thought.
Where
are
you, Alex?

And then she caught herself. There was no sense in wishing for him, no sense in wondering where he might be now. He wasn’t here. She was on her own.

Well, not completely on her own. There were people who loved her. Lots of them.

And there was her baby.

“I love you,” she whispered to the tiny being within. “I love you and I will always take care of you....”

In the other room, on the bedside table, her cell phone began playing “Dancing Queen.”

Alex!

Well, it could be. It
might
be....

She whirled and raced to the bedside, where she scooped up the phone and answered breathlessly, “Yes? This is Lili.”

“Have lunch with me.” It was Arabella. Alex’s sisters were constantly at her side, keeping her company, keeping her mind off the husband she had neither seen nor heard from in a month now. She tried not to feel disappointed. Belle went on, her voice a little too bright, “We’ll go down to the Triangle d’Or.” The Golden Triangle was the area of exclusive shops around the world-famous Montedoran Casino d’Ambre. “We’ll buy something beautiful that costs way too much. And then a slow, leisurely meal beneath a wide umbrella on a sunny patio, overlooking the sea....”

Lili couldn’t help chuckling. “Listen to you, Belle. Anyone might think you were some empty-headed, self-indulgent royal instead of a hardworking professional nurse and champion of anyone in need.”

“You make me sound noble indeed.”

“You
are
noble.”

“Lunch?”

There would be bodyguards. And they would probably be spotted by some wild-eyed paparazzo who would get right up in their faces with his cameras and demand to know where Lili was keeping the elusive Prince Alexander. “Why don’t you come to me? Rufus will fix us something nice.”

“You certain you wouldn’t like to splurge on Dior and Versace—and then eat out?”

“I’m sure. One o’clock?”

“I’ll be there.”

* * *

They sat on the shaded terrace outside the sitting room, where they could smell the sea air and feel lazy in the August heat. Belle looked wonderful, Lili thought, her thick brown hair swept up in a twist and her bronze silk blouse almost the exact color of her golden-brown eyes.

The meal was delicious as always.

Belle asked about the baby. Lili patted her stomach and said she was doing fine. Belle spoke of her brilliant American friend, Anne Benton. Anne was a single mom with a fourteen-month-old son. Belle had yet to meet the boy.

“The time just flies by.” Belle shook her head. “Anne is busy with her little one, and getting her doctorate. And I’m always on my way to give a speech or off visiting a field hospital somewhere at the far end of the earth. Charlotte and I need to catch a flight to the States.” Lady Charlotte Mornay was in her late forties, from an impoverished branch of the Calabretti family. She was also Belle’s very capable companion and general aide-de-camp. Belle added, “I need to see my friend and meet that little boy....”

“Do it,” Lili urged.

Belle nodded. “I will. Soon. I will....”

Rufus came out. He whisked away their empty plates and served them each a simple, beautiful dessert of mixed berries with mascarpone. Lili thanked him. He nodded and left them.

“Rufus takes such good care of me,” Lili said.

Belle reached across the little stone table and put her hand on Lili’s arm. “He’s an ass. I’m going to kill him when he gets back.”

Lili smiled. “Rufus?”

Belle laughed. “No, not Rufus. You
know
who I mean.... Have you called him?”

“No.” Oh, she had wanted to. She had picked up the phone to do it too many times to count. But somehow, she always managed to stop herself before she finished dialing. “He has the number here. And my cell number. He knows how to reach me if he wants to talk to me—and until he
does
want to talk to me, well, what is there to say?” Lili dipped her spoon in the crystal dessert cup—and then realized she didn’t feel like eating anything right at that moment. She pushed the cup away. “It really is something he
had
to do.”

Belle scowled. “Don’t make excuses for him.”

“I’m not, believe me. I’m furious at him. All I want is for him to call—so I can hang up on him.”

“He does love you. He’s always loved you. We all knew it—well, my sisters and I, anyway. Because we’re women and women know these things. And Damien knew, I think. And my mother and father, of course.” Belle grew thoughtful. “How strange it is, really. Everyone knew but Rule. He was too busy thinking he ought to marry you himself.”

“Oh, don’t remind me.”

“And Max was oblivious.”

“Dear Max,” Lili said fondly of Belle’s oldest brother. “And well, I still don’t see how you all could have known.
I
didn’t know. And
he
certainly didn’t.”

Belle nodded. “Yes, let’s not ever say his name again, shall we?”

“Agreed. The name leaves a bitter taste in my mouth anyway—and if you knew, well, why didn’t you tell me?”

“Would you have believed me?” Belle asked.

Lili scoffed. “I would have laughed you out of the room.”

Belle sipped her glass of iced mineral water. “We all knew that, too.”

Lili pulled her dessert back in front of her. It was simply too beautiful to ignore. “Remember I told you about Jack Spanner, the fisherman who owned the house on the island where we were shipwrecked, the one who collected the reward for rescuing us?”

“I do remember, yes.”

“Jack’s wife, Marina, had left him. Before we said goodbye to Jack, I made him promise to go after her, to make it up with her.”

“Did he?”

Lili beamed. “I received a lovely letter from Marina yesterday. She thanked me. She wrote that what I had said to Jack, about going after her, about staying home more, was exactly what she was trying to make him see. They’re back together. Jack has promised to spend more time at home. So far, he’s keeping his word.”

Belle sighed. “I love it when a man finally sees the light.”

“Marina said she finally realized that the only way to get her husband back was to leave him. And mean it. She had to stop telling him how unhappy she was and
show
him how it was going to be if he refused to meet her halfway.”

Belle savored a bite of berries and cream. “So, when will you be leaving us?”

“I’ll thank your mother today for everything. I do have the best mother-in-law on earth.”

“Yes, she really is something special,” Belle agreed.

“And then tomorrow I’m going home.”

* * *

“Are you sure?” Adrienne asked softly. They were alone in the sitting room of her private apartment.

“No, but I’m going anyway.”

“We will miss you.”

“And I will miss you. I always do. When my husband returns—
if
he returns—you can tell him that I’ve had enough. I’m through. Finished. I’ve...surrendered the field.”

“Lili, darling, you don’t mean that.”

“I’m sorry. I’m afraid I do.”

“It’s something you really ought to tell him yourself, don’t you think?”

“I do, yes. But I haven’t seen him in over a month—or heard his voice, or received one single line of correspondence—also, I have no idea where in the world he might be so that I
can
tell him myself.”

“Perhaps a phone call?”

“He’s the one who should call.”

Adrienne suggested gently, “A letter, then?” And Lili thought of Marina’s letter, left on the rough table in the little stone house. “Of course. I will leave him a letter. He might even come back and read it someday.”

“He loves you. You know that?”

Lili tried a smile but failed to produce one. “He’s never said so.”

“He hasn’t had an easy time of it.”

“I know. I understand. I sincerely do. But there comes a point when a woman has to draw the line and stick by it.”

“Yes. You’ve been a saint, darling Lili. You truly have.” Her Sovereign Highness held out her arms for a goodbye hug.

* * *

Lili called her father. When she told him her husband had disappeared and she was ready to come home, she expected blustering, and at least a few vividly brutal threats against Alex’s life and manly parts.

But her dear papa only said, “I will be so pleased to have you here.”

He sent a jet to collect her.

She arrived at San Ferdinand Airport not far from her country’s capital city of Salvia in the late afternoon. A car, with escort, was waiting to whisk her off to D’Alagon. By some miracle of good fortune, the press had not been alerted that she was returning to Alagonia. She got off the jet and into the car without anyone firing questions at her or sticking a camera in her face.

They set out. D’Alagon was considered the royal palace of Alagonia and it was by far the largest of her father’s residences. It was very old, the Gothic core of it having been built in the twelfth century, when the Castilians came to power in Alagonia. Over the endless ensuing generations, D’Alagon had been updated, enlarged and improved. It stood above the city, proud, massive, rambling, golden. D’Alagon was a fantasy blending of Gothic towers and flying buttresses, of Renaissance domes and semicircular arches, of stern, stately Baroque colonnades and the fanciful asymmetric curves and flourishes of the later Rococo style.

Lili loved D’Alagon and had always considered it her home. The first sight of it, appearing miraculously above her as the car wound its way upward, tugged at her heartstrings. It was good to be home.

If only Alex...

Lili shut her eyes.
I will not think of him
.

When she looked again, they were approaching the wide circular drive and the enormous fountain at the main entrance.

Inside, the staff was lined up and waiting. She greeted them all and then went up the right side of the wide, curving double staircase to her father’s private rooms.

He was waiting in his sitting room, which was elegant and ornate, the walls covered in rich tapestries and paintings of gamboling nymphs and eighteenth-century courtiers, heavily decorated with plasterwork molded to resemble thick, twining foliage and mythical beasts. At the sight of her, he rose from a gilt-accented red velvet chair.

“My little love...”

She ran to him. “Papa!”

He wrapped his arms around her and held her close and she felt safe and cherished and surrounded by pure love. Then, of course, he
had
to mutter, “I will have his head on a pike....”

And she pulled away and told him gently, “Oh, stop it, Papa. You will do no such thing and we both know that you won’t.”

“A pity.” He gazed down at her adoringly. “You look a bit sad, but healthy at least. And my grandson?”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “Your granddaughter is very well, thank you.”

“Wonderful. And when is that wandering husband of yours coming home to you?”

“I don’t know. But if he ever does, I
won’t
be waiting.”

“Delightful. I shall have him barred from D’Alagon.”

She smiled sweetly up at him. “Yes, Papa. Please do.”

* * *

Lili’s cell phone rang at a little after ten that night as she was sitting in bed in her own bedroom at D’Alagon, reading an historical romance in which the heroine was a French spy and the hero an English-born pirate. It was a great book, exciting, with lots of clever dialogue and derring-do. She was totally absorbed in it.

Still, she jumped and dropped her e-reader to the coverlet when “Dancing Queen” had her cell jittering in a circle on the bedside table. She even cried out absurdly “Alex!” at the sound.

Of course, she knew it couldn’t actually be Alex. It never had been before. Still, when she grabbed up the phone, she did take a moment to check the display before she answered.

She gasped and dropped the phone as if it burned her.

It was him!

Impossible. But it was. It was really, really him. Alex.

Calling her. At long last...

With a cry, she grabbed up the phone again and started to answer—and stopped herself just in time.

No, she would
not
answer. She had left him. She was no longer sitting there, twiddling her thumbs at the Prince’s Palace, waiting for him to return. There was nothing to talk about.

Or if there was, he would have to do a lot more than finally pick up the phone to make it happen.

She dropped the phone again and put her hands over her ears and waited for “Dancing Queen” to stop. When it did, she carefully set the phone back on the nightstand and picked up her book again.

A few seconds later, her voice mail chimed.

She tried, oh, she really did, to ignore it. To simply continue reading her very excellent romance and forget all about whatever message he might have condescended to leave her.

But it was impossible. In the end, she tossed the e-reader down and grabbed the phone again.

The phone shook in her hands as she dialed voice mail. And then, there it was.

His voice in her ear after all these endless, awful weeks....

“Lili, it’s done.” He sounded tired, but somehow good. Somehow...satisfied. “I’ll be home to you tomorrow. I’ve missed you.” Her throat clutched. He seemed to mean it. He truly did. “I’ve missed you so much. I didn’t call. I know it. I
should
have called. Should have written. Should have...
something
. But I couldn’t. I...” The word trailed off. She held her breath. A tear dribbled down her cheek. She swiped it away. But then he only said, “Tomorrow. I’ll be with you.
Really
with you. Tomorrow...”