Royal Baby, Forbidden Marriage by Kate Hewitt

Author:Kate Hewitt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2009-12-14T05:00:00+00:00

‘The king is expecting me,’ Leo coolly informed the aide standing guard outside Nicholas’s bedchamber. The aide moved aside and Leo let himself into the darkened room.

King Nicholas sat up in bed, an ornately carved four-poster, several pillows piled behind him and the coverlet folded over his knees.

‘Well?’ he demanded in a rasp. ‘Did it work?’

‘Did what work?’ Leo asked laconically, and Nicholas gave a growl of impatience.

‘Whatever this plan of yours is, to get the girl out of the way.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Leo replied. He propped one shoulder against one of the bedposts as he surveyed Nicholas’s frail form. ‘It’s working.’

‘I don’t see why we couldn’t just buy her off,’ Nicholas grumbled. ‘Or run a smear campaign—’

‘Trashing her in the tabloids would hardly benefit your heir,’ Leo pointed out sardonically, ‘and I told you, she can’t be bought.’

‘And as I told you, everyone can be bought, Leo,’ the old man said. He paused, his eyes glinting with malice. ‘Your own mother’s price was fifty thousand.’ He paused, clearly savouring Leo’s surprise. ‘American.’

Leo froze, his gaze sweeping over his uncle in icy assessment. He didn’t want to believe what he’d just heard; he wanted to call the king a liar. Desperately. Surely his mother wouldn’t have accepted money in the place of her son. Yet, looking at Nicholas’s sleek smile of satisfaction, he knew he wasn’t lying. His mother had accepted cash to abandon her child to the royal family and their machinations, and clearly Nicholas had been waiting for such a moment as this to tell him so.

He felt a wave of icy shock at the realisation, and underneath a deeper hurt he couldn’t bear to probe. He snapped his unfocused gaze back to his uncle and smiled lazily.

‘At least she got something out of it, then,’ he said in a drawl, and Nicholas let out a raspy laugh.

‘So what is your plan with this American?’

Leo smiled coldly. It was a sign of the old man’s unbelievable arrogance that he trusted Leo to carry out his bidding even now, when he’d told him he would no longer be his heir. He’d cut him out of the succession as ruthlessly as if he’d wielded scissors, yet Nicholas didn’t doubt or question Leo for a moment. He simply wasn’t accustomed to disobedience. The only one who’d dared to go against him in a moment of childish folly had been Anders, and look where it had got him…abdicated, exiled, dead. A waste of a life. Leo swallowed back the rush of guilt such thoughts always caused him and turned to address his uncle.

‘There’s no need for you to know the details,’ he said coolly. ‘I’m carrying it out and it will deal with…the inconvenience…in due course.’

‘Inconvenience.’ Nicholas snickered. ‘Yes, she is that.’ He shifted in his bed, adjusting the pile of pillows behind him. ‘Well, as long as you take care of it, and soon.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Leo assured him, his voice terribly bland. ‘I’ll have it dealt with by tomorrow night.’

‘Good.’ Nicholas pulled the coverlet up over his chest, a cough rattling in his bony chest.

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