A Secret Heir to Secure His Throne, page 1
That impossible prettiness of Madelyn’s seemed to infuse everything, even the dusk settling around her shoulders like a shawl.
That deep gold thread inside him pulled tight.
That longing in him was something more like a roar.
“Listen to me,” she bit out, and whatever he might have been about to do disappeared, lost somewhere in the way she held her hands on her hips, her censorious gray eyes fixed on him. “This will not happen. Troy is not a toy for you to play with. And I am not going to marry you. You might not remember what happened between us, but I do. Just as I remember exactly what was required to survive it. While caring for the child you didn’t know existed until yesterday.”
He didn’t think she should remind him of that part. It wasn’t wise. There was still that boiling well of fury inside him, and he didn’t see it dissipating any time soon.
But this was not the time for fury. Not directed at his future queen, at any rate.
“You will marry me,” he corrected her, without any heat.
USA TODAY bestselling, RITA®-nominated and critically-acclaimed author Caitlin Crews has written more than a hundred and thirty books and counting. She has a master’s and PhD in English literature, thinks everyone should read more category romance and is always available to discuss her beloved alpha heroes. Just ask. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her comic book–artist husband, is always planning her next trip and will never, ever, read all the books in her to-be-read pile. Thank goodness.
Books by Caitlin Crews
Harlequin Presents
The Bride He Stole for Christmas
Willed to Wed Him
The Outrageous Accardi Brothers
The Christmas He Claimed the Secretary
The Accidental Accardi Heir
Pregnant Princesses
The Scandal That Made Her His Queen
The Lost Princess Scandal
Crowning His Lost Princess
Reclaiming His Ruined Princess
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
Caitlin Crews
A Secret Heir to Secure His Throne
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
EXCERPT FROM BOUND BY THE ITALIAN’S “I DO” BY MICHELLE SMART
CHAPTER ONE
AS WALKS OF shame went, this one bordered on epic.
And better yet, gave Madelyn Jones a lot of time to think about the consequences of her foolish actions during her semester abroad back in college. As if she hadn’t already spent the past six years doing exactly that.
At some points, hourly.
Though she had thought about it less and less as the years went by. That was what reality did—it chipped away at all the flights of fancy and what ifs, not to mention all the pointless angst that went along with it, and what was left was life itself. No more and no less.
Madelyn liked her life these days. She’d worked hard to assemble it.
Now it was as if she might as well not have bothered.
She laughed a little at that, though not because it was funny. She was sitting in the back of an armored SUV, halfway up the side of a mountain in the remotest region of the island kingdom of Ilonia, known for winning wars against the Visigoths in antiquity and for otherwise being a largely isolated wet and gray archipelago located off the coast of the Iberian Peninsula, north and east of the Azores.
When a person thought about island kingdoms, they thought of sparkling blue waters the temperature of a cozy hug. Or Madelyn did. White-sand beaches beneath graceful palm trees, cocktails festooned with ripe and exotic fruits, and lovely, temperate winters bursting with tropical flowers in a riot of bright colors.
It was just Madelyn’s luck that even that was denied her. The capital of Ilonia was on a different island than this one, with an old harbor, colorful buildings arranged prettily enough, and the Royal Ilonian Palace set on the highest hill. That was where they’d landed, and while it was hardly the Caribbean she’d never set foot in but had dreamed about through many a snowy winter, she’d thought it was nice enough. But this island—accessible only by one designated and highly regulated ferry or the monarch’s personal air transport—was considered the royal refuge in these green and cloudy mountains sticking up out of the Atlantic, covered in deep jungles, volcanic craters, and an improbable number of blue hydrangeas.
Here stood the tallest mountain in Ilonia, Madelyn had been told. With more pride than someone who lived in the American West and knew from tall mountains found reasonable. What that meant in practical terms was that they were high up and it was cold. It was still temperate enough compared to Madelyn’s home back in a little village near Lake Tahoe—a vast and mostly unspoiled lake nestled between California and Nevada and currently blanketed by the latest snowstorm, the way it would likely continue to be until June—but still. The slap of the cold as they’d climbed up the winding mountain road—the center vehicle in a convoy, flanked by the Royal Guard—was unexpected.
Like all the rest of what was happening to her.
“You have been cleared to approach the Hermitage, Miss Jones,” the forbiddingly sleek older woman beside her said in her smoothly accented English.
For the second time, since Madelyn had yet to make a move.
Madelyn had already gotten all the arguments out of her system. Or, more accurately, she’d grudgingly accepted their futility.
“Lucky me,” she murmured, sarcastically, because maybe she was still more in the grudging part of her acceptance of this shocking turn her life had taken.
The woman beside her—the terrifying Angelique Silvestri, whose silver hair seemed to gleam with malice—only smiled.
It was the same smile she’d aimed at Madelyn when she presented herself at the front door of the house Madelyn shared with her aunt Corrine, a black-clad entourage splayed out behind her. The same smile that stayed in place throughout each and every interaction that had led them here, across the world and up the side of a mountain in the rain and sleet.
“You agreed to this course of action,” the older woman reminded her calmly.
Always so very calmly, as if that made it better.
“It was less an agreement and more blackmail,” Madelyn reminded her. She had fought too hard the past six years to take anything lying down. But then she sighed because she also wasn’t quite so foolish these days. She didn’t take pointless stands that might negatively impact her survival. That wasn’t an option available to her. Again, that was reality. That was life. And usually, she thought that was a good thing. “But I’m here. How many people would you estimate have died by slipping off that tiny path and falling to their deaths far below?”
Angelique Silvestri was an Ilonian minister. Madelyn didn’t know or care of what.
But she was very good at infusing her every utterance with the weight of her mysterious office when she spoke. “Very few commoners are permitted to set foot on this island, Miss Jones. Those who do are sufficiently aware of the privilege and do not tend to waste the opportunity on histrionics. All you need to do is walk up the path and enter the Hermitage. I hope that’s not too much to ask of a girl with your apparent resourcefulness.”
Madelyn did not dignify that comment with a response. One of Angelique Silvestri’s talents was making it clear that she was delivering a stinging set down, but opaquely enough to leave it open to interpretation. Was she referring to Madelyn’s job as a waitress in one of Tahoe’s fancier resorts? Or did she mean the fact that Madelyn had never asked for help—or anything else? All that was clear was that resourcefulness was not being mentioned as a positive. Not along with the reminder that Madelyn was a commoner.
But she bit her tongue because there was nothing to gain by getting into this again. She’d flown all the way here. She’d agreed to this back in Tahoe. There was no point in backing out now just because it was all a little bit more frightening than advertised.
That could be the title of her autobiography, really.
Spurred on by that notion, she pushed open the heavy SUV door—made heavier by the gusting wind and the sleet turned to hail that pelted her. She climbed out, taking a moment to pull the hood of her jacket over her head. It wasn’t much help, but she told herself it was better than nothing.
“Sometimes that’s all you get,” she reminded herself beneath her breath.
Life was nothing if not an opportunity to gather up the lemons and make lemonade.
She didn’t look back at the SUV and Angelique, swallowed up behind the tinted windows. Madelyn headed instead for the path up the mountain, which was little more than a narrow hiking trail carved into the forbidding rock. The trail wound away from the small, flat area where the convoy was parked, hugging the steep mountainside as it curved around and headed up.
And up. And up.
Madelyn knew where she was going. She’d dutifully looked at the images while flying over the Atlantic. The Hermitage had been built centu
Or like the ego of the man she knew waited within.
But there was no point in worrying about him just yet, Madelyn told herself. First, there was living through this hike.
The wind picked up as she trudged up the path, doing her best to huddle against the side of the mountain without seeming to do exactly that. She did still have her pride, after all. Pride that was hard-won and well deserved—and she was keenly aware that every step she took drew her closer and closer to one of the major reasons she’d had to fight so hard in the first place.
She didn’t like to think about those last few weeks of her study-abroad adventure at Cambridge. Those clear, sunny days that everyone in England had told her were unusual, especially as it wasn’t beastly hot, either. The days had been so long. The evenings had stretched on into forever.
And the sweet, warm nights had changed her whole life.
She could still hear his laughter, like it might dance on the wind in this lonely place the way it had seemed to all along the River Cam. She could see all that light and magic sparking in his unusual green eyes, nearly as turquoise as the sea she’d imagined would surround the fanciful island kingdom she’d known—vaguely—he came from.
Just as she could remember how it had ended. Her flight back home had been canceled at the last minute, leaving her with an extra night in England. Instead of staying down in London, she’d taken the train back up to Cambridge. She’d been so thrilled that she would get to surprise him. She’d been so sure he would welcome that surprise. She hadn’t stopped to think twice. She hadn’t stopped or thought at all.
It was cringeworthy, looking back. Madelyn had to take care she didn’t cringe herself right off the side of the slick, cold mountain.
Madelyn had hurried into the endless party that was forever going on in the private house where he lived. It sometimes appeared to be a communal-living situation with his friends and sometimes seemed to be only his—he had waved a hand and changed the subject whenever it was raised—but in either case, she had pushed her way through the usual throngs of people and darted up the stairs, bursting with excitement.
But those guards of his that she’d come to consider friends barred her way.
Worse, they’d looked at her with pity. And hadn’t let her into his rooms.
And she’d known full well, by then, that there was only ever one reason they kept the Prince from his adoring friends and fans. It was still embarrassing, even now as she tracked up the side of this endless mountain, to remember how long it had taken for the penny to drop. How humiliatingly long she’d stood there, staring up at his guards in disbelief because they had always been so friendly to her before and what could possibly have changed...?
“Idiot,” she muttered to herself now, picking up her pace on the narrow path. “Complete and utter fool.”
She told herself the good thing about remembering all the actual details she usually preferred to gloss over these days was that she wasn’t tempted to look off the side of the path or imagine, in dizzying detail, exactly what would happen to her if she slipped...
Better to think of that first, perhaps more painful fall, back in Cambridge.
In the present, Madelyn blew out a breath. Back then, she’d turned away from those great doors and his pitying guards. Eventually. But that hadn’t been an improvement, because one of his slinky friends waited there, at the top of the stairs. Very much as if she’d gone out of her way to follow Madelyn up from the crowded lounge.
In the aftermath, Madelyn had returned to that moment again and again, and she could only conclude that Annabel—who was Lady Something-or-other-unutterably-posh, yet spent the bulk of her time partying with her family’s money—had almost certainly seen Madelyn enter the house. And had followed her up the stairs to take pleasure in what she would find here.
But that night, Annabel had pretended to be sympathetic.
With the same insincerity she’d used while pretending to be friendly over those last few weeks.
Darling, Annabel had purred. You look positively crestfallen. I did warn him that you couldn’t possibly know how these games are played. But he’s careless, you see. He always has been. No one ever dared tell him not to break his toys.
What was funny, Madelyn thought as she kept marching resolutely uphill, was that for some time after she’d slunk back to spend a terrible night on a shiny terminal floor in Heathrow, she’d imagined that moment between her and the smirking, completely phony Annabel was the worst of it.
When it had only been the beginning.
It was that last thought that calmed her, though she sped up even more. She wanted out of the cold. Out of the pelting hail. She wanted to do what she’d agreed to do, then march herself right back down to the brittle Angelique, express her sympathies that she’d been unsuccessful because she was sure she would be, and head right back to her life.
Like everything else in life, the only way out was through.
The Madelyn who had staggered out of that house in Cambridge, heartsick and bewildered, had been weak. Foolish and silly, just as Annabel had always intimated, and the fact she had to admit that to herself stung. It had been a bitter pill then and it never got any less bitter.
It was just that Madelyn had grown stronger.
She’d had no choice. She’d lost everything she’d thought mattered to her, as surely as if she’d set her life on fire. But it turned out she was a phoenix, because she’d learned how to rise up anyway. These days, she thought of the fire as the thing that had made her, not destroyed her.
And all this was, she thought as she wound around the side of the mountain again and saw that stone-cut building before her in the gloom, was a little bit of leftover ash. Easily enough given over to the wind, then hopefully forgotten.
Madelyn studied the Hermitage as she climbed the last little way. It was even more impressive up close, where she could see that the ancient artisans really had etched the building from the mountain itself. From a distance, it looked as if it floated here, somehow holding the peak up above it while perched so prettily on the bulk of the mountain below. Up close, it was less pretty and more...a kind of shrine to a certain ruthlessness, really.
Because who climbed this far up the side of an inhospitable mountain and thought, Why, yes. I will fashion myself a dwelling place here and make myself a part of the mountain itself.
But even as she thought that, something in her knew the answer.
The Hermitage rose several stories above the path, on the other side of a stone arch and an ancient gate that could have guarded the entrance to any medieval keep. As she approached, she looked around, not for a doorbell or anything so modern, but for some kind of ancient device—a bellpull or the like—that might allow her to signal whoever lurked within that she was here.
A part of her hoped there was nothing. Or even if there was, that it would fail to raise the Hermitage’s lone inhabitant. She was already plotting out how she would sorrowfully explain to Angelique that there was nothing to be done. That she couldn’t even gain entrance, and so it was best all round if she simply took herself back home and let the Kingdom of Ilonia sort itself out without her.
Madelyn felt the most cheerful she’d been in days as the path opened up a bit wider here at the top, to fit in all that stone and drama.
But her hopes were crushed when she got closer and realized that there was a little door in the great gate, and it already stood open.
Muttering under her breath, Madelyn forced herself to step right on through instead of standing there, thinking better of it.
Inside, she blinked as she looked around, because she was still outside, if beneath the outcropping above. She’d walked into what looked like some kind of castle keep and realized that what she’d taken for an ornate window between one floor and the next was actually a perfect place to pace around, staring down at the world far below. On clear days, Angelique Silvestri’s assistant had informed her on the plane, it was possible to see the entire sweep of Ilonia from the hallowed heights of the Hermitage. Madelyn hadn’t cared much about that while flying. But now that she was up here, she found herself almost wishing that it was clear today. Because she imagined the view must be spectacular enough to almost make even her forced march worth it.
