The Prince's Scandalous Wedding Vow by Jane Porter

Author:Jane Porter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2018-11-01T17:35:06+00:00

* * *

Alexander descended the tower staircase to his office on the second floor, aware that Josephine wasn’t wrong. He was different here. He had to be different here. On Khronos he’d been just a man. In Aargau he was the future king. He’d rather enjoyed being just a man. There had been freedom, and an ease he didn’t know in his world here.

Aimee, his secretary, was at her desk when he entered the room and she glanced up at him, a troubled crease between her brows. “Her Highness has requested you join her in her rooms immediately.” Aimee glanced at her watch. “That was nearly an hour ago. Her staff has followed up with me twice since, worried I haven’t passed on the message.”

“You knew where I was.”

She gave a faint smile. “Yes, but you said not to bother you, and so I didn’t.”

Alexander crossed the Alberici castle grounds, heading for the pale yellow eighteenth-century palace that travel guidebooks always falsely claimed had been inspired by the architecture of Versailles but in reality drew its inspiration from the Royal Palace at Caserta, which was just fifty years older and much closer geographically.

Alexander climbed the grand pink and yellow marble staircase to the second floor and headed back down the long corridor to the set of rooms that were his mother’s. There was no need for him to knock as her butler opened the door, announcing him.

Queen Serena waved him to a chair near hers. “You kept me waiting long enough,” she said as he sat down and stretched out his legs.

“I came to you the moment I was free.”

“I’m hearing things, worrying things.” She gave him a long look. “Do you have any news for me? News that would ease some of my anxiety, because your father grows weaker. He slept most of today. We’re running short on time, particularly if you hope to have him present at your wedding. Or perhaps you intend to marry after he’s gone?” His mother’s tone was cool and distant. But then, it was the tone he knew best. She was beautiful and regal, elegant and refined, always cognizant of her power and responsibility as the queen of Aargau.

“Of course I want him there.”

“Then the wedding needs to be sooner, not later.”

“I understand.”

“Then what is the problem, Alexander?”

“Josephine isn’t...ready...to marry.”

“Excuse me? She’s carrying your child, the heir to the kingdom.”

“I understand.”

“The longer you wait, the more difficult it becomes from a PR standpoint. You understand that, don’t you? We’re trying to do damage control, Alexander, and all we need is a small, private service in the palace chapel—”

“Unless she wants the formal service in the cathedral.”

“We don’t have time to plan a formal wedding, and she doesn’t need a big, formal wedding. Your father is very unhappy that she’s trapped you.”

“I trapped her, not the other way around.”

“You’re a prince. She is no one.”

He knew his mother well enough to know that she wasn’t trying to be cruel or rude, just honest. “She didn’t care that I was a prince, and she is most definitely someone.

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