Кейт Хьюит – Royal Christmas: Royal Love-Child, Forbidden Marriage (страница 13)
‘The palace is only a few minutes away,’ Leo said as the limousine pulled away from the airstrip, heading down a narrow road that snaked along the valley floor. Phoebe glanced at Christian; he was taking in everything with wide, amazed eyes. He must, Phoebe thought, feel as if he’d stepped into a TV show, or a fairy tale.
Within minutes the limousine emerged from the closed valley to the outskirts of Njardvik, the boulevard into the city lined with pastel-coloured townhouses, a leftover relic of the island’s Dutch possession four hundred years earlier. Unwillingly Phoebe gazed around at the quaint plazas with their flowerpots and pavement cafés, now shuttered for the oncoming winter. There could be no denying that Njardvik was an unspoiled jewel of a city, and just the sight of its pretty streets and elegant homes made her remember the optimism and excitement that had buoyed her along this very route with Anders.
Was her hope that this would end after two weeks just as misplaced?
‘Wow,’ Christian breathed, and Phoebe turned to see the limousine enter the eagle-crested gates of the palace courtyard. The palace itself was several hundred years old, a rambling and impressive edifice of mellow gold stone. A rather grim-faced official in royal livery waited by the main entrance, guarded by two soldiers resplendent in their royal blue uniforms and polished helmets.
‘Here we are,’ Leo said lightly, and opened the door.
Numbly Phoebe followed him, Christian clutched in her arms. She heard Leo speak a few words of Danish to the official, who opened the doors to the palace and, with a sweep of his arm, bade them enter.
She’d only been to the palace once before, hustled like some criminal by royal agents, afraid, alone, to be confronted by Leo. It almost made Phoebe feel dizzy and sick to be back here. Once again she was afraid, alone, and she had no idea what was going to happen.
She pushed the feelings away, tried to summon back her courage. Her confidence. She was changed, no matter if Leo was or wasn’t. She was stronger now, and she had to remind herself of that strength as she stood in the palace’s huge foyer, feeling tiny and insignificant on about an acre of black and white checked marble.
‘The king would like to see you,’ Leo said. ‘But first you will want to rest, freshen up. Johann will lead you to your rooms.’ Another servant, also in royal livery, seemed to appear almost magically, and wordlessly Phoebe followed him from the cool marble foyer up the ornate curving staircase, Christian at her side.
Johann led them to a suite of rooms in the back of the palace. Phoebe took in the two king-sized bedrooms, joined by an elegant little parlour, and the wide terrace overlooking the palace gardens, now rimed in frost.
She dropped her handbag next to her suitcase on the floor, the carpet thick and sumptuous, and took a deep, steadying breath. Christian was already investigating the huge walk-in wardrobes, the big-screen plasma TV hidden behind mahogany doors, the king-sized bed with its fluffy feather mattress.
‘This place is so cool,’ he said, reaching for the TV’s remote control and stabbing curiously at the buttons. ‘How long are we staying?’
‘Two weeks,’ Phoebe replied tightly. She felt wound up, ready to snap, and they hadn’t even seen the king yet. They hadn’t seen anything, done anything, and already the tension was biting at her, fraying her calm, her strength. She went to the bathroom to splash water on her face, and grimaced at her pale, strained reflection.
Christian wandered in, the remote control still clutched in one hand. ‘If the prince is my cousin, what should I call him?’ he asked, wrinkling his nose. ‘And if he is a prince, does that make me one too?’
A light knock on the door kept Phoebe from answering those alarming questions. She opened the door to another blank-faced servant, who informed her in flawless English that King Nicholas awaited in the throne room.
‘Already?’ Phoebe asked, to which the servant simply gave a helpless little shrug. She hadn’t changed or even brushed her hair, but if the king was going to be so rude as to demand her attendance before she’d even caught her breath, he could take her as she was.
She gestured to Christian and, ever ready for an adventure, he quickly trotted to her side. They followed the servant through a maze of corridors and down another, more private staircase until finally they were standing in front of a pair of ornate doors decorated in gold leaf.
Phoebe swallowed. This part of the palace she’d never seen.
‘His Majesty, King Nicholas the First of Amarnes,’ a servant intoned, and the doors were thrown open. Phoebe started forward, Christian at her side, only to have a burly, solemn-faced servant step straight in front of her, so she smacked into his chest.
‘What—?’ she cried in dazed confusion. A hand came down hard on her shoulder.
‘Only the boy,’ a voice, low and final, spoke in clipped English, and before Phoebe could frame a protest she was hustled away as Christian disappeared behind the heavy, ornate doors.
CHAPTER SIX
‘I thought you’d like to know. The king summoned the boy ten minutes ago.’
‘But they’ve just arrived,’ Leo said, his voice no more than a growl. Had the king no tact, no sensibility? Running roughshod over Phoebe was not the way to gain her trust.
‘Just the boy,’ Piers clarified. ‘Not …’ he paused delicately ‘ … the mother.’
Leo dropped the letter he’d been holding and glared at his aide. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked, his voice menacingly soft.
Piers shrugged in apology. ‘The king has no wish to see her, apparently. He refused her entrance into the throne room.’
‘She would have resisted—’
Piers coughed. ‘I believe Lars escorted her to the blue salon.’
‘Lars!’ Leo repeated in disgust. Lars was little more than a thug, paid to do Nicholas’s dirty work. And when Piers said
Rage, white-hot and electric, coursed through Leo. For a moment a memory of his own mother’s treatment blazed through him. Just like Phoebe, she’d been shunted from the palace and her son’s life because she’d been surplus to requirements. He felt sick at what Phoebe had to endure. What he had allowed her to endure.
‘I will speak to the king,’ he said shortly and, tossing the rest of his mail aside, he strode from the room. Rage fuelled him as he navigated the palace’s many corridors before arriving at the throne room. He paused at the doors, for if Christian was still with the king he had no desire to frighten the boy. All was silent from within. Leo threw open the doors and strode in.
Nicholas sat on the throne, a small, grey-haired man, diminished by age, wearing his usual three-piece suit, his thin, liver-spotted hands folded over his middle.
Leo didn’t bother with the preliminaries; he was too angry. ‘What were you thinking,’ he demanded tersely, ‘to separate Phoebe from her child practically the moment they arrived?’
Nicholas regarded his nephew shrewdly. ‘Phoebe, is it? I told you not to bring her.’
‘I had no choice,’ Leo replied, his voice curt despite the anger that still coursed through him. He curled his hand into a fist at his side, resisting the urge to plough it straight into the king’s sagging belly. ‘She wouldn’t be bought.’
‘Everyone can be bought.’
Leo pressed his lips together. ‘Phoebe is utterly dedicated to her son. I’ve seen it myself.’ He paused. ‘Before I went to New York, I didn’t realise quite how much.’ He’d gone to New York anticipating a flighty, careless woman … the kind of woman who had married a man she’d known for little more than a week, and separated from a month later. Yet Phoebe hadn’t been that woman. She’d changed, he realised, changed and grown, and he felt a surprising flash of both pride and admiration at the thought.
Nicholas shrugged. ‘No matter. I’m sure we can find a way to dispose of her.’
Dispose of her. Like rubbish, Leo thought, just as Phoebe had feared. Twenty-four hours ago such a statement would have caused barely a ripple of unease; Phoebe had just been an inconvenience to deal with. Yet now his uncle’s callousness infuriated him. Enraged him, touching and hurting him in a deep place inside he couldn’t bear to think about. ‘Your sensitivity astonishes me,’ he said in a clipped voice that belied the emotion coursing through him in an unrelenting river, ‘but she has a legal right to her son—’
‘As did your mother,’ Nicholas replied with a glimmer of a smile. ‘Yet she saw fit to step aside.’
Leo struggled to speak calmly; the mention of his mother caused that river of emotion flowing through him to become a torrent, an unstoppable tide. For a moment he was that boy again, standing at the window, struggling not to cry, yet wanting desperately to shout out, to beg her to come back or at least turn around. She never had.