Princes of Castaldini

Such beauty. The only kind that had completely commanded his appreciation, ruled his libido, wreaked havoc with his restraint.

Prince Overwhelming, indeed. Says Mind-Blowing Beauty.

He’d forgotten his plan to make her pursue him inside an hour. An hour? A minute. Within that time frame, he had barely stopped himself from dragging her down on that dance floor and taking her then and there. He’d not only succumbed to her “negotiations,” he’d practically blackmailed her into letting him do so.

And he hadn’t stopped there. Instead of ending that blistering night by taking her back to his bed after she’d admitted her desire, he’d sat there and promised he wouldn’t.

And here they were, with the sizzling rules of their new liaison laid down, finally in Castaldini.

All through the trip onboard his private jet, she’d tried to keep their interaction flowing, to inject it with lightness and teasing, and he’d struggled to match her attitude.

But it had been no use.

There was too much tension and pent-up passion between them, too much anticipation, too much…everything.

And that hadn’t been all. Something else had been happening. Something he’d been totally unprepared for.

The closer they’d gotten to Castaldini, and as the reality of his return there crystallized, the more his ability to keep up the pretense had faded. He’d looked down at the island as the jet had started to descend and had felt a pressure building inside his chest, around his throat, behind his eyes. It had escalated with every meter’s descent. And it had had nothing to do with the pressure change inside the cabin.

By the time they’d landed and disembarked to the limo he’d had waiting, the imaginary pins holding up his smile had seemed to pierce his flesh. He’d had to relinquish the expression, as well as any attempt at communication.

He’d been relieved when she’d withdrawn into herself, too. For about fifteen minutes. Then restlessness had started to claw its way to the surface. How was it possible to miss her when she was within arm’s reach?

He wasn’t about to reinitiate dialogue. He couldn’t. He had nothing to say—nothing he could put into words. But he needed to reconnect with her. Just…feel her. He reached for her hand.

She surrendered it to him with a squeeze that transmitted directly to his heart, and a smile that lodged there, too, before she resumed watching the scenery rushing by her window.

He dragged his eyes away from her, forced himself to look through his own window. He cursed himself for the reluctance, the trepidation that gripped his guts. It was just an island, just another beautiful country with magnificent nature and blessed weather. Looking at the scenery wouldn’t hurt him.

But it did. He felt things splintering inside him. The once-severed and reattached tethers of his heart snapped under the strain, one after the other with each mile deeper onto Castaldinian soil. For eight years, he’d lived with the certainty—the hopelessness—that he’d never see this land again.

He hadn’t imagined he could feel this way. He’d thought he’d long ago moved beyond such frailties as homesickness and nostalgia, that this land and all it represented had no more hold on him.

He might not have known, but Phoebe clearly had. She knew. Everything that was roiling inside him. He now understood what she was doing. She was trying to turn off her aura, her presence. She was trying to give him privacy. To sort through the chaos that returning to his homeland had kicked up inside him.

He felt something too warm for comfort swell inside his rib cage. Something achingly sweet. Gratitude. That she understood, gauged his needs and gave him the spiritual space and silent empathy that would soothe him, ameliorate his turmoil. And he just knew she’d also sense when he’d dealt with the first shockwave of response, would come back to him then.

He shook his head in self-deprecation as he succumbed, let storm through him the emotions he’d believed he’d never feel again—for the land that had exiled him, and the woman who’d deserted him.

Yes. A fool. In so many incurable ways.

Phoebe kept her eyes on the rushing by Jawara.

As capitals went, it was probably the only one in the twenty-first century that didn’t have one building built later than the eighteenth. Its mixture of Gothic, Moorish and baroque architecture was considered the best-preserved in the world. Or it used to be. There’d been cuts in the restoration programs over the last twenty years, channeling of funds into venues of a more pressing nature. To her—someone who hadn’t seen Castaldini before those times—the kingdom looked magnificent anyway, even with the disrepair. But Castaldinians said the decline had been noticeable. And though she hadn’t been at her most observant of the outside world these past years, she’d noticed the deterioration deepening.

Jawara did still feel like a jewel, as its Moorish name proclaimed it to be, sparkling under perpetual sunlight, nestling between the banks of the Boriana River and the Montalbo mountains before giving way to rolling plains to the north and south. But it did look like a cracked jewel the closer you looked. Now it needed the help of its closest peak, the 2,010-meter Odesilia only a few kilometers from the city center, to augment the majestic feel that it was losing. And as they entered the oldest part of the city, which was dominated by the massive royal palace overlooking it on a hill between two smaller mountains, she drew the parallel for the first time.

The whole place was getting old and tired. Like its ruler.

That was why it was imperative for a new king to take over.

A powerhouse like Leandro could be Castaldini’s salvation in so many ways. If he could see that Castaldini needed only revitalization, not reinvention.

For though he thought the country stuck in time, she saw it as a refuge from the invasion of modernity. Let the rest of the world join that parade. Castaldini felt like the last stronghold of times gone by. And no, she wasn’t romanticizing those times by calling them the good old days. The “old days” had had their share of the bad. And the extremely bad. But though Castaldini wasn’t perfect and was showing its age, she believed it had the potential to become the best possible combination of old and new, under the leadership of the monarch Leandro could be.

She looked at him now. She couldn’t get enough of looking at him. Never would. But right now, worry was a fist tightening over her heart. How did he see this place? Did it have the same magic and potential in his eyes? Or did he see it through the cast of bitterness and the critical eye of the developer? How did he feel as they approached the royal palace, the place she’d come to call home in the past ten years? The place he’d thought he would call home once, only to have his plans so viciously torn apart?

She hung on every nuance as his eyes, now as verdant as Castaldini’s meadows, as clear and jewel-like as its shores, roamed the enormous complex of buildings comprising the palace.

They passed by the National Library, the Royal Museum, the ceremonial halls and government offices on their way to the royal apartments and the king’s state rooms. It took a while to get there, as the palace grounds had a depth of ten miles and the palace itself lay over four hundred thousand square feet.

She hadn’t been inside even one-quarter of its more than one thousand rooms during her stay. She’d only once visited the rooms most famous for their design and decoration, the king’s and queen’s apartments. It had been a chance visit with Julia about three years ago. Those rooms had indeed been something to see, even if the deceased queen’s apartments had the stale feel of a shrine, and the king’s had shown the most neglect she’d seen anywhere in Castaldini. She’d then thought the visit worth it just for the mural-framed study window from which the king waved to subjects and visitors in the Solarella Square on Fridays and Sundays, and the ceiling frescoes painted by masters who’d inspired Michelangelo and Raphael.

She regretted ever seeing the apartments. She now had an indelible image of the quarters that would one day be Leandro’s if he accepted the succession—and those that would house the woman Leandro would marry.

She no longer had the least delusion she’d be that woman. She wondered how she’d harbored it once. She was certainly not queen material. But then, she hadn’t thought of it that way in the past. She’d wanted only to be Leandro’s. She’d never thought about what being his when he became crown prince, then king, would entail.

She could imagine both apartments revamped for the new, in-their-prime king and queen, saw the connecting room between them, with a king-size bed placed below the magnificent central dome, where Leandro and his…his…

She tore her eyes away from his face, her thoughts away from the images. But it was no use. She could still see him, caught in the throes of passion as he’d been with her years ago. But this time he was with a faceless woman. Leandro. Growling in pleasure, driven to ferocity by that woman’s touch, that woman’s body and hunger, his magnificent body spread over her, undulating in a fever of arousal, driving between the splay of her greed, roaring in completion, spilling…

She bit down to stop a surge of tremors. How stupid was it to feel this way, when she’d made a pact with him about the nature of their liaison this time? The kind designed to burn someone out of one’s system? What she did believe she needed?

The limo glided to a smooth stop at the gates leading to the king’s quarters. She was thankful for the bustle of activity as Leandro descended from the limo and came around to hand her down, as they were met by dozens of people pouring out welcomes and opening doors all the way into the king’s inner sanctum.

Once they were alone, Leandro exclaimed, “Per Dio, this place is falling apart.”

Phoebe frowned. The place was in bad shape. King Benedetto hadn’t had any renovations—nor any repairs—done since long before she’d been here. Oh, the work needed to preserve the palace as a national monument had been done, but she now wondered if his total lack of interest in preserving his own living quarters was his way of mourning his wife’s death and his eldest son’s estrangement. And his decision to exile Leandro?

The king’s secretary interrupted her musings. The king was waiting for Prince Leandro in the Throne Room.

As the man turned to usher him there, Leandro gestured for him to wait outside, gave the place another sweeping glance, his eyes heavy. “It seems dilapidation is now considered heritage to be preserved in Castaldini. You’re going to have a tough time getting me to change my conviction that Castaldini is stuck in time. It might even change to going back in time.”

She grasped his forearm, anxious to ameliorate his disappointment. “I do believe the condition of these rooms is a reflection of King Benedetto’s state of mind. Not that that’s good news.”

“It wouldn’t be as bad if Jawara wasn’t suffering the same signs of neglect.”

She could protest that. “Jawara is nowhere near this bad.”

“I hope not, as this is…Dio, this is unacceptable.” She found nothing to say to that. It was. “I hope you’re right about this being exceptionally bad, that on closer inspection Jawara won’t reveal the same level of deterioration, since you’ve been right about many things. Being Castaldinian whether I like it or not, for one. It hurt, physically, just flying into the airspace. Setting foot here again felt like stepping back into the worst days of my life—and that was nothing compared to driving through the streets, feeling the majesty of the place dimmed and seeing my worst projections coming true.”

She had so much to say. That it wasn’t that bad. That he could make it so much better. But she had no words. All she could think was that she couldn’t bear to see him…subdued like this, almost dejected. Not her imperturbable, indomitable Leandro.

And she did something she hadn’t thought she ever would. She threw her arms around him and hugged him. Just hugged him. A with-all-her-strength squeeze of empathy and compassion.

She was about to step back when he caught her back in a compulsive crush. When he let her breathe again, she blinked back her agitation as he touched his forehead to hers, like a lion butting his awesome head against his mate in affection.

Then his whisper seared her, with its softness, its sensuality. Its sincerity. “Grazie, tesoro mabuba, I needed that.”

He left her struggling with a widespread nervous dysfunction at his endearment—beloved treasure—and with a shuddering inhalation, stepped away. Then he crooked his arm. She blinked.

He quirked one eyebrow at her. “You got them the prize they wanted—worthless as it is.” Before she could protest, retract that piece of petty vindictiveness, she realized he was teasing. “Don’t tell me you’re letting it walk into their greedy hands unescorted?”

Seven

“Leandro, il mio figlio, sede benvenuta.”

Welcome home, my son.

Phoebe winced as King Benedetto’s words seemed to ripple in ever-expanding waves in the Throne Room.

He was underlining the significance and official nature of the meeting, his respect and appreciation of Leandro’s presence and position by receiving him there. Big mistake.

She wished he’d met Leandro in his private rooms. And she wished he’d made it a closed meeting. With her new insight into Leandro’s character and preferences—which was in absolute contrast to the opinion she’d previously held of both—King Benedetto would have put his best foot forward by approaching Leandro on a personal level. This man really didn’t know what he meant to Leandro, even after all the enmity and estrangement.

And then he had to complicate matters further. Welcome home my son was probably the worst thing he could have said in the presence of the Council, who didn’t have any measure of Leandro’s affection and respect, whose injury was untempered by entrenched hero worship and memories of much better times.

She found herself holding her breath, dreading Leandro’s response. What was he thinking? Feeling? She remembered his state eight years ago, the soul-permeating anguish at the amputation of his goals and identity. Would reinstatement, would welcome to what King Benedetto claimed to be Leandro’s home, the palace, the whole kingdom, be enough? Could anything be?

Leandro crossed hands over heart in that gesture that was quintessentially Castaldinian. “Grazie molto…” he wiggled his eyebrows, once “…King B.”

Gasps swept through the expansive hall, like a gale blowing through a forest of dying leaves. They couldn’t have been more shocked if Leandro had made an indecent gesture. Everyone except the king himself. It was difficult to read his skewed face from this distance, but she felt his reaction. Relief. He must have been prepared for far worse than Leandro’s irreverence.

Leandro gave her a sideways glance. Her throat closed. His eyes were eloquent, but she understood none of the things they were telling her. Were his wounds opening, his bitterness pouring out, overwhelming his restraint and his intentions to give the people who’d stripped him of too much a fair chance, the opportunity to atone? Was he deciding he’d made a mistake coming here…?

She gasped. He’d winked at her, slammed her with conspiring mischief and harsh-edged satisfaction—and the message that his desire was mounting, that nothing could take his mind away from it. Then he turned to King Benedetto.

“This place is stuffy. How about we reduce…” his gaze panned over the Council members “…carbon dioxide production?” More gasps ensued. He shook his head. “You’d better do something fast. Oxygen levels are plummeting with those spikes in consumption.”

This time Phoebe’s heart twittered with excitement. Enjoyment. All these years she’d loved and lusted after Leandro and she’d never suspected how deviously, deliciously witty he was.

She had eyes only for him as he stood in the middle of the massive space and extreme opulence, overshadowing it all, giving no outward reaction to the Council members’ displeasure as they obeyed their king’s silent gesture for them to leave.

When the doors closed behind the last grumbling member, he took her hand, walked them to the bottom of the crimson carpet-covered steps leading to the gilded, carved-wood throne and the man doing his best not to slump in it.

“You’re looking good,” Leandro murmured.

One of the king’s eyes closed. She knew both would have if the other had obeyed his emotions. When both were open, they were brighter than before. His voice reflected his agitation, too. “I don’t expect courtesy from you, Leandro. Certainly not kindness.”

“I’ve been called many things.” Leandro gave her a teasing look before looking back at the king. “Kind was never one of them. I expected you to be in bad shape, what with all the desperate cries for me to come back. Now I’m almost wondering why you brought me here. You look—hell, you feel vital enough to me. So what’s your game?”

“I may be guilty of many things, irreconcilable things where you’re concerned, Leandro, but if there’s one thing I never committed with you, it’s lying. I’m not well. You are here because I need you. Because Castaldini needs you.”

Leandro shrugged, dismissing that. “Castaldini can as easily need Durante. Or Ferruccio. I’m not your only choice.”

“You are our best one.”

Leandro raised a hand in a “don’t” gesture. “I have no ego to appeal to here anymore. I no longer subscribe to the letter of the ancient criteria. And it’s about time you sift through them and keep only what works. You’re just too afraid to propose them to the people, and the Council are a bunch of stuck-up snobs who can’t force themselves to look beyond the birth requirement and lineage crap.”

The king seemed to have trouble finding words. Then he rasped, “I have loved you since you were born, Leandro. Osvaldo would have been the proudest father had he lived to see you become who you are. But if I were unencumbered by the laws, by people’s expectations, don’t you think I would have wanted my own son to succeed me?”

“Sure. If you dared approach him. Which you don’t.”

“You judge our choice harshly. Won’t you even consider another point of view of why we made it?”

“You mean there are reasons, apart from Durante’s hatred, and considering me the lesser evil, even when I was once considered public enemy number one? And you haven’t even mentioned Ferruccio. His stigma is the worst in your eyes, eh?”

“There are factors that make you, if not the best, then the most logical choice. You’re the one who once believed it his destiny to be king, the one who worked not just to succeed but to succeed me. You were also a diplomat.”

“Again…total crap. It’s just easier to reinstate an errant prince who has all criteria ticked off, rather than to recruit a prodigal prince, or—God forbid—an illegitimate one.”

Silence fell. Phoebe could almost hear incredulity whistling long and loud in her head. And puzzle pieces clinking into place.

She’d been scratching her head, thinking of a Ferruccio who fit the incredibly demanding bill of succession criteria. There wasn’t one. Not a D’Agostino. The only man she’d seen on Castaldini who was on par with Leandro’s demigodliness and who happened to be named Ferruccio was a Selvaggio. And now she knew he was a D’Agostino as well.

“No convenient rationalizations?” Leandro asked. “But let’s say I give you the benefit of the doubt, that you do believe I’m the best man for the right reasons—”

The king interrupted, his voice the very sound of desolation. “Durante didn’t even call when I had my stroke. He didn’t care if I lived or died. He would never agree to be my crown prince.” He brought himself under control with obvious difficulty. “And yes, Ferruccio’s parentage makes him very…problematic. I don’t know how you come to know about him being a d’Agostino—”

“Ferruccio sought me out and told me in confidence. He didn’t say exactly who his parents are. I’ve been wondering if you would have the guts to send the laws to hell and ask him or Durante to be your crown prince. But you’re taking the easy way out.”

“It’s not that at all, Leandro. It’s one thing for it to be whispered that Ferruccio is a D’Agostino, another to validate it so that he can take the crown. It might be imperative to divulge his parentage for people to accept him. But exhuming buried secrets would have untold repercussions on the house he belongs to. The Council were reasonable to consider him our last possible choice, for the sake of those whose lives would be turned upside down if the truth came to light.”

“I see.” It seemed Leandro was seeing this in a different light for the first time. He still didn’t like it. “So you don’t think much of depriving him of what he deserves—the recognition of his family, and the crown—based on nothing but fear of disrupting the self-righteousness of some over-privileged D’Agostinos and the sensibilities of the holier-than-thou masses?”

The king seemed at a loss. He exhaled. “Compromises are never totally fair or acceptable. But the fact remains—neither Durante nor Ferruccio ever wanted to be king of Castaldini. By choosing you, I won’t be depriving them of something they never wanted in the first place.”

Leandro shook his head, wry, resigned. “You know, we can go around in circles forever. So let’s narrow down the threads of discussion. What makes me salvation material all of a sudden?”

“You were always that, Leandro. But you know exactly why I was forced to implement the measures I did in the past.”

“I do know exactly why. I pushed you against a wall.”

“You amassed power too fast, Leandro, juggled overwhelming agendas and goals. You pushed yourself beyond your limits.”

“Oh, so now you’re maintaining that I was having some sort of breakdown at the time? But I was too powerful to risk letting me run around unchecked, so you performed damage control?”

The king gave a grave nod. “That is basically the truth. Though you had worthwhile concepts, you wouldn’t take into consideration the hindrances of reality versus theory, or the suitability of planting what you were proposing in our sociopolitical soil. You wanted your way and you wanted it immediately, and you started acting with a volatility that shocked me for being so out of character. I dreaded your influence on the international community. You had its ears and hearts, and they started pushing for your policies to be installed, at once, for you to take over the crown. I never expected you to turn on me to get it.”

Leandro’s volley was ready, lethal. “And I never expected you to commit an injustice to hang on to it.”

The king didn’t contest the accusation. “It was one of the most difficult choices I’ve ever had to make. With your passion and power, what you were proposing was not so much a succession as a coup. You might think you would have been in control, but Castaldini’s enemies would have capitalized on your revolutionary policies, would have entrenched themselves into the kingdom by invoking the pretexts of globalism. I feared that once you made me step aside, your reign would be the beginning of the end—and that once it ended one way or the other, Castaldini itself would be no more.”

An outcome she’d told him he was capable of causing. And coming from his king, it silenced Leandro.

At last he drawled, “You really believed that? You really feared I’d be the end of the monarchy?”

The king’s gaze was steady. Sad. “Si.”

Leandro inhaled, shook his head. “What’s different now? I’m still the same man.”

“But you’re not the same. Time has tempered you and the brutal prices and constant compromises of keeping your place at the top have taught you the multiplicity of points of view and the paramount importance of implementing what works, not what you personally think is right. I’m sure that now, even though your views remain unchanged, knowing the dangers, you will find a way to make your vision come true while keeping Castaldini sovereign. And intact.”