“Good.” The king nodded.
“Attacking a member of the royal family,” Orlando said, sitting back in his chair with a look of disgust. “I’ll be glad to see them hanged.”
“They didn’t know whom they were attacking, I fancy. I was in a borrowed carriage—uh, never mind,” Rafe muttered, avoiding his father’s knowing smirk about the carriage race and the broken axle.
Orlando shook his head regretfully along with the others.
The king cleared his throat. “Well, Rafael, the reason we called you here is because I have decided to take a holiday. I leave tomorrow.”
Rafe’s eyes widened, his arm falling off the back of the chair.
The man had not taken a break in thirty years of rule.
“Now that that unspeakable Corsican has been penned up again—let us hope for good this time—I have decided to take your mother to Spain for a couple of months to see our grandchildren. I am making you prince regent in my absence, Rafe. What do you say to that?”
Rafe sat there in absolute shock.
He stared at his father and his father stared at him, a mysterious look of challenge in his piercing gaze, perhaps even a trace of wily amusement in the depths of his wise, dark eyes. “Are you ready?”
“Yes, sir!” he said at once, fervently. His heart gave a violent kick, then raced.
His father held up one hand, halting his euphoria. “But I have one condition.”
Rafe wet his lips. “Anything.”
King Lazar gestured to Orlando. His cousin rose from his chair, went to the huge carved sideboard by the wall, and returned to Rafe carrying a large wooden tray. A roguish smile flicked over the king’s hard mouth as Rafe looked down at the tray.
On it were arrayed five small portraits of women and a small stack of legal papers. Furrowing his brow, he looked questioningly from the portraits to his father.
“It’s time you chose a wife, Rafe.”
He looked up in horror.
“Go on, pick one,” the king said, nodding toward the tray.
“Right now?” he exclaimed, aghast.
“Why not? How much longer do you intend to put it off? We have been waiting for you to make up your mind for three years. It is your duty to produce heirs, is it not?”
“Yes, but—”
“If you want a taste of rule, Your Highness, you must choose one of these young ladies for a wife and sign the proxy wedding papers there.”
“Proxy wedding!” he cried, yanking his hand away from the page. “You mean if I sign this, I’m married?”
“Precisely. You see? We couldn’t make it much more painless for you than that.”
Rafe stared at the paper as though it were a severed hand lying there on the tray.
The king steepled his fingers, giving him a stern look. “Rafael, your willingness to assume the responsibility of marriage is the only way I can rest assured that I can entrust you with Ascencion when I’m gone.”
He sat back in his chair and stared at his father. “You must be joking.”
Lazar merely waited.
Rafe shot a trapped, simmering glance at the old men, who regarded him in varying degrees of spite and disdain. No help was forthcoming from their quarter, he saw. He glanced at Orlando, but his cousin was studying the women’s portraits.
Rafe couldn’t bring himself to look at them. “Father, be reasonable. I cannot just randomly pick someone I’m going to have to look at every day for the rest of my life. I don’t even know who these women are!”
“You’re thirty years old, Rafe. You’ve had your time to court suitable women, but you chose to spend that time chasing actresses instead, so we have narrowed the field for you.” The king clasped his hands, resting his elbows on the table. “Choose. Then sign. Otherwise, I will leave Don Arturo in command, and you may continue to play. But,” he added in a hard tone, “should you make that choice, I will be forced to seriously reconsider your succession to the throne. Leo is still young enough, after all, to be molded for the crown.”
Rafe stared at him in disbelief, a knot of dread at the terrible threat forming in his stomach while fury gathered in his veins.
What could he do? He had to submit…as always.
Lowering his head, he stared down at the portraits, slowly growing too blind with rage to see the smiling, insipid faces of the approved, voted-upon, politically prudent, royal broodmares.
Puppet.
Prisoner.
He remembered Daniela Chiaramonte, a woman, barely more than a child, standing there on her front stoop as proud as you please, mistress of her own destiny—and he was humiliated.
No,
he thought, his heart pounding. For years he had endured his father’s domineering. The criticisms and impossible standards. The bullying on one hand and overprotectiveness on the other had all but wrecked his already shaken self-confidence. But this was beyond the pale.
“This,” he said in a very calm tone, “is intolerable.”
“Pardon?” the king asked ominously, lifting both eyebrows.
Rafe looked up slowly from the portraits with burning fury in his eyes. Suddenly he stood, throwing back his chair.
The ministers gasped. Orlando arched one brow. The bishop narrowed his eyes. Without another word, Rafe pivoted and stalked toward the door.
“Rafe! What the hell are you doing?”
“Freeing myself from
you
, sir!” he shouted, turning. “I am done with you controlling my life! Give the crown to Leo. I don’t want it if the price is my soul.”
With that, he walked out, trembling with anger. Walking numbly down the hall, peeling his gloves off with shaking hands, he stared straight ahead, his mind a wall of rage. He couldn’t believe he had just done it. But bloody hell, they had trained him from infancy to be a king and then expected him to take orders like a lackey! He was done with it.
Let the king disown him if he liked. It scarcely mattered. He had given his best and it had never been enough for the man, but Father had just pushed him too far.
“Rafael!” He heard his father’s voice calling angrily from down the hall behind him.
He tensed, stopping at once in spite of himself out of mere habit, like a well-trained hunting dog, an idiot-loyal spaniel. He despaired of himself, knowing that if he didn’t keep walking now, he would never be free.
Yet all he could feel was his love for Ascencion keeping him rooted, chained where he stood, cruel mistress, forcing him to humble himself for her, as ever. Still, it was as unprecedented for Father to come after him as it had been for him to defy the king so blatantly in front of the cabinet. In his pride, he could not bring himself to turn around, but he waited where he was, his hands stiff at his sides, his gloves clenched in one fist.
“Rafe, damn you,” the king muttered in annoyance, walking to him.
Rafe turned with a bitter expression and met his father, eye to eye.
Lazar pulled off his spectacles and stared forcefully at him. “You choose a poor time to make your stand, boy.”
“I am not,” he replied in searing quiet, “a boy.”
“Do you think I don’t know why this is difficult for you?”
“Because this time you are forcing the most important decision of my life down my throat? Because you think me too great an idiot even to choose a decent wife for myself?”
The king was shaking his head impatiently. “No, no. You and I both know full well that the reason you refuse to be snared is because you’re still scarred by what that woman did to you when you were nineteen. What was her name? Julia?”
Rafe froze, glancing uneasily at him. His father’s gaze was piercing, shrewd.
“It’s time to get past it, Rafe. It’s been ten years.”
He looked away.
The Debacle.
Some people had to learn things the hard way. He, young royal fool, had been one of them, trying to save his damsel in distress. Such an easy target, with his deep pockets and his tender heart.
Those days were gone.
“You should have let us prosecute her, Rafe. By law, she should have hanged. You should have let me take care of it for you.”
“I don’t need you to fight my battles for me, Father,” he said tersely, sickened by the memory of himself at nineteen.
Such a noble young chevalier, so utterly sure of himself, unwilling to flinch before the rumors that his beautiful older woman, his temptress, his prize, had lain with every man in the kingdom and was merely using him. He hadn’t cared. He had been sure that if he gave her everything, in time he could make her love him for himself, not for his rank or his wealth or his looks. He had nursed Lady Julia back to health when he’d found her brutalized by some lover. He had satisfied her debts and healed her crushed pride, and for all his tender pains, what was her thanks?
She seduced him, took his virginity, then robbed him while he slept. She had searched his desk, stealing secret government maps which he had been making for his father—maps she then sold to the French, who promptly used them to invade Ascencion.
The House of the Fiori had nearly lost Ascencion to Napoleon, all because the heir apparent had failed to control his adolescent lust for an inappropriate woman.
Not a man in government had taken him seriously since, not his father, not the people, and especially not the cabinet.
“That whore merely beguiled you, took advantage of your youth—”
“I don’t wish to discuss it, Father,” he said curtly, looking away. “It was my own fault. I trusted the wrong woman.”
“And now you’ll trust none of them. Rafe, Rafe.” Lazar sighed. “You need an heir, Rafe.”
“Why?” he demanded. “What’s the sudden rush?”
“I’m ill,” his father said.
“What?”
he breathed, turning to him.
Lazar stared at him, then slowly lowered his gaze. “That is why I am going to Spain to see Darius and Serafina and the children. I don’t know how much longer I will be strong enough to make the trip.”
“What are you talking about?” he exclaimed. “You don’t look sick!”
“Keep your voice down,” the king said, glancing down the hall. “No one knows about this except the head physician, Don Arturo, and now you. I want to keep it quiet for as long as I can.”
Rafe gaped at him for a moment, incredulous. He struggled to find his voice. “Does Mother know?”
“No. God, no,” he whispered, then visibly steeled himself. “I don’t want her to worry a moment longer than necessary.”
“What’s the problem? Does the doctor know what it is?”
He shrugged. “Some sort of stomach ailment. Possibly a cancer.”
“Oh, my God,” said Rafe, stunned. Then anger filled him. “How can this be? You’ve never been sick a day in your life! Are they sure that’s what it is?”
“Fairly sure. Rafe, what matters is putting our house in order. This is no time for you to walk out on me.”
Rafe stared at him, his emotions in chaos. Now that he knew to look for them, he could see the signs of strain in his father’s face. Lazar’s weathered skin stretched tautly over his cheekbones and there were shadows under his eyes, as though he had been spending sleepless nights.
He could not believe it. His father had always seemed to him as invulnerable and immortal as a god. “Are you in pain?”
Lazar gave a rueful shrug. “I’m fine if I don’t eat.”
He shook his head. “Father. Why the hell didn’t you just tell me this in the first place instead of backing me into a corner like that? I’m damned sorry I lost my temper—”
“I didn’t want you to know. You’re going to have plenty else on your mind when you’re the one with the fate of half a million people on your shoulders.” He laid a firm hand on Rafe’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Perhaps my methods tonight were a little high-handed, Rafe, but I do want you to wed. Not merely for the sake of the kingdom and the family, but for your own well-being. I sowed some wild oats in my day, God knows, but I don’t like what I see happening to you.”
Rafe said nothing.
“You’re going to want someone who truly cares for you by your side when trouble comes—and it will. I’ll tell you honestly, I never could have lasted this long if it weren’t for your mother.”
Rafe dropped his gaze from Lazar’s intense stare and looked blindly at the floor, swallowing hard against the sudden lump in his throat. He feared he might weep like a child on the spot. Some king he would make.
“Yes, sir,” he mumbled. Now that he understood the situation, he could not possibly refuse his father’s wish. He didn’t have the heart. Marry he would, and so be it, though it was akin to a death sentence. “I will do as you ask. But I fear there are no more like her, sir.”
His father suddenly grinned. Full of courage even in the face of death, Rafe thought in awe. The king slapped him heartily on the back. “You’re right about that. Come on, then. We’ve got to go over a few administrative details.”
Lazar threw his arm around Rafe’s shoulders, pulling him back toward the council chamber, though Rafe’s mind was still reeling. “You’re going to do fine, son. Now, I’ve arranged for Don Arturo to work closely with you….”
If one day he could be half the man his father was, he would consider his life a success, he thought, still shaken by the news. Yet somehow his mind refused to accept the idea that his father was dying.
Perhaps that was why his thoughts flew to other possible explanations—including sinister ones. Surely the doctors had checked for poison.
If they had found it present, Father would not have accepted the diagnosis of stomach cancer. Besides, who would want to poison the great, the renowned King Lazar di Fiore, the so-called Rock of Ascencion? His Majesty was loved and revered by all.
One thing was certain—Rafe was going to pay a visit to the royal physician and grill him for information. Also, he decided to send his own chef on the ship with his family, for he knew the man could be trusted. He would replace the ship’s provisions before they sailed, too.
Fortunately, he knew that if his father really were in danger from some outside source, there could be no safer place for him than under Darius’s roof in Spain. His sister’s fierce, deadly husband had always been the watchdog of the royal family, the very man who had found the means to turn the French invaders away from Ascencion’s shores on that fateful day ten years ago.