Stranded with His Runaway Bride
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Julieanne Howells
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HarlequinCHAPTER ONE
THE CATHEDRAL OF St Peter’s was looking its baroque best. Decked out in floral displays so spectacular they were upstaged only by the guests in all their wedding finery. Half the crowned heads of Europe were sitting in the congregation. Joined by presidents, prime ministers and, of course, all the senior officials of the principality of Grimentz. There to see its ruler wed.
So for His Serene Highness Prince Leopold Friedrich von Frohburg, waiting in the sacristy for proceedings to begin, his cousin’s whispered message was not what he wanted to hear.
‘It appears your blushing bride has fled.’
Leo swirled from the mirror where he’d been submitting to the last adjustments of his perfectionist valet.
‘Although—’ Seb added casually, and entirely at odds with the gravity of the situation ‘—it would be more accurate to say disappeared. Because one minute Princess Violetta was in her room at the castle and then, poof...’ He snapped his fingers in the air for effect. ‘Gone.’
Leo glared at his cousin. Prince Sebastien von Frohburg was the only person on the planet he truly trusted, which meant he allowed him informalities he’d tolerate from no one else. But this was definitely not the time for any of them.
‘A young woman in her wedding dress, and wearing our priceless Elisabetha tiara, I might add, has simply vanished?’
Seb shrugged. ‘That about sums it up, yes.’
‘Who the hell allowed that to happen?’
His cousin slanted him a look. ‘Er...well, that would be you, Leo, wouldn’t it?’
Leo ignored the implication.
Get to know this one, Seb had begged him. Woo her...don’t take the chance.
But he’d been reassured that this Della Torre sister was different. Biddable. Willing. Decorous. And certainly, at the few joint functions they’d attended, her hand had been cool and steady in his while she’d played the part of consort-to-be flawlessly.
Better than the last. The elder sister who’d run off with her bodyguard—a bodyguard!—a month before she was due to fulfil her decade-long engagement to marry him, a prince, and monarch of the oldest and richest principality in Europe. Where was the comparison?
The shame, of course, had all been attached to her family. He and his father had made sure of it. No woman could be allowed to sully the great name of von Frohburg. Especially not a Della Torre one. They’d been a thorn in the side of the von Frohburgs for four hundred years.
Their grand duchy sat opposite Grimentz, separated by only a thin stretch of water. With no males to inherit, once Leo wed the female about to become the next grand duchess, her little state would rejoin his.
A bloodless reunification after centuries of bitter waiting.
For that prize Leo was ambitious enough to risk another go at marrying into the family. Despite the elder sister’s rebellious streak.
Violetta, the younger daughter, her uncle and regent, had assured him, had been carefully raised and would never do such a thing.
No female had ever been allowed to rule the duchy in her own right, and none of the officials were keen to try that now. The Della Torres had approached his father fifteen years ago. Once it became clear the grand duke and his wife would have no male heir.
Leo hadn’t seen the need to get to know the second daughter any better, other than at the handful of official functions they’d attended together as a betrothed couple. He’d gone through all the relevant groundwork when he’d been engaged to her sister. He knew the key players, the role she had in her duchy. Her uncle had been involved in the first negotiations anyway and he was still in place. It was essentially just a matter of replacing one sister with the other in the existing arrangements. All the requisite background checks revealed a female who’d led a quiet and blameless life.
Leo liked the fact she’d appeared bland and undemanding at their few meetings. It boded well for a businesslike union with no complications: like romantic expectations on the girl’s part. Or, heaven help him, emotions. Life had long since taught him to be done with all that. While she wasn’t a beauty like her sister, he was confident he’d be able to do his duty in bed and get the son and heir he needed. The future of his country and his people depended on him.
But could it be happening again? Was this girl eloping too? Anger and humiliation sliced through his gut.
‘Was she alone?’ Leo growled.
‘As far as we know. It seems to be a spur-of-the-moment thing. There were less than ten minutes between her maids leaving and her uncle showing up to escort her here—’ Seb paused to fish his phone from a pocket. ‘Interesting. One of the businesses supplying flowers for the reception has reported a van stolen from the castle courtyard.’
‘So now she has transport?’
‘Looks that way. But where could she go? She’s hardly been here. How well could she know Grimentz?’
Barely at all. Historically, the two families had kept their distance since the treacherous Della Torres, then a vassal family, had stolen the grand duchy for themselves from his ancestors four centuries ago.
Unless she’d bribed a Grimentzian boatman to take her back across the water, there was only really one place she could go. The one place Leo knew for certain the girl had visited in Grimentz. Unfortunately, this was the last place he’d ever wanted to set eyes on again.
He began striding towards the private side entrance of the cathedral, the one shielded from the press and the crowds lining almost every other inch of the capital, calling for a car—a fast one—and issuing a rash of orders as he went. For his security chief. And for Seb, his best man, who, with the abrupt cessation of his other duties, was now in charge of damage limitation.
‘The official line will be that she’s taken ill,’ Leo said as he strode ‘The wedding is postponed. No bride wants her special day spoiled by a bout of the runs.’
Seb winced. ‘You want everyone to think your absent bride is stuck in her bathroom? The press will have a field day.’
‘Not my problem. That’s hers. She ran away. My protection is no longer a given,’ Leo said, arriving at the doorway as a red Ferrari pulled up.
Seb’s beloved car. Leo had indulged his cousin, who’d insisted he should surrender his bachelorhood in true playboy style, and allowed him to drive them both to the cathedral in it. The crowds had lapped it up. Cheering like maniacs as the groom and his best man climbed out.
Something more anonymous would have been his preference now, but at least the thing would eat up the miles between him and his missing bride. She’d had maybe a twenty-minute head start and if she was heading where he believed this would get him there before anyone else.
He climbed in.
‘What do you want me to do with that lot back there?’ Seb waved a hand in the direction of the cathedral behind them.
‘You’re supposed to be the charming one. I’m sure you’ll work something out. And tell the staff in the castle they get a bonus for their silence. Any who do decide to talk to the press will not only lose their job, but get themselves and their family kicked out of the principality. Permanently.’
Seb looked shocked. ‘Can we even do that?’
‘We can now. Blame the woman. The shame all goes one way, remember.’
‘So where precisely are you going?’ Seb asked, leaning on the open door.
‘Grandmother’s chateau. Violetta went there every summer. Right up to Grand-Mère’s death four years ago.’
‘But you had it closed up.’
‘Which makes it even more perfect as a bolt-hole, don’t you think?’
Seb’s brow knotted. ‘Wait, isn’t that where—’
‘Yes.’ Leo cut him off. ‘And I won’t let that happen again.’
Leo lowered the car window to give some last-minute instructions. ‘Give the archbishop the blue suite at the castle. He’s fond of the bed in those rooms. I’ll have the girl back here before midnight and he can marry us in the chapel. You can be a witness. No need for anything grander. Get a press release ready so we can announce the marriage in the morning.’
‘You’re that confident about persuading her to come back?’
‘She’s not her sister. It’s probably just nerves. There are numerous benefits to being married to me. She just needs to see the sense of it.’
‘Oh, I’d definitely open with that. She’ll be putty in your hands.’
‘Seb, we’re so close to getting the grand duchy back I can almost taste it. I won’t be denied that by some unreliable girl who can’t see what’s good for her.’
None of his ancestors had ever come this close to regaining the duchy. Not even his father. Leo would wed the Devil’s mistress to prove to that cold-hearted bastard he was better than him and all their mutual ancestors put together.
He gunned the engine and sped out of the cathedral close, into the streets that had been closed for the duration of the wedding celebrations and kept clear for service vehicles. Heading north, out of the capital. Twenty miles to the very edge of his realm. Where Grimentz finally succumbed to the mountains and its neighbours beyond.
As he drove Lake Sérénité glittered below him. How ironic. A lake called serenity dividing two ruling families who’d battled each other to a stand then maintained a belligerent silence of deep mistrust for four centuries. This wedding was supposed to have put an end to all that.
Beyond Sérénité’s calm waters sat the grand duchy of San Nicolo, lush and green with its superb vineyards and rolling pastures. It wasn’t rich like Grimentz. It hadn’t embraced the financial services that had given his principality unimaginable wealth and global influence. But it was soft and welcoming in a way that Grimentz, with its dour medieval castle and looming mountains, could never be.
His ancestors had struggled over their peaks finding a rocky outcrop on the western edge of the lake, where they’d built their castle. As forbidding and unforgiving as the mountains that soared behind, it rose from the shoreline to dominate everything for miles around. Previous princes had tried to pretty it up with fairy-tale turrets and terraced pleasure gardens, but at its heart it remained what it was: a fortress.
But there was no castle hewn from cold rock for the Della Torres. They lived in Palladian elegance. Princess Violetta’s forebears had fallen in love with the Renaissance and remade San Nicolo in its image, gracious and refined. Tourists flocked to its chocolate-box capital and pretty villages to quaff the wine and gorge themselves on the cheese and pastries it was famed for. Its subjects were comfortable, though perhaps not content. Since the death of Violetta’s parents in a plane crash three years ago, just months after the elopement of her elder sister, there had been rumblings that the Della Torre family were no longer fit to rule. Her uncle, the regent while Violetta was not yet of age, was unpopular and fuelling the dissent with his rigid and old-fashioned governance. The sooner Leo could step in and take power—in the name of his wife, of course—the better.
He only had approximately thirteen hours to do that. After that, things became more complicated.
On the stroke of midnight, in the reverse of a Cinderella tale, his flighty bride turned twenty-one and would no longer be just Princess Violetta of San Nicolo, subject to her uncle’s rule, but would be transformed into Her Serene Highness the Grand Duchess Violetta Della Torre, absolute monarch.
Some weird twist in the San Nicolo succession meant her husband couldn’t take power until she was twenty-one. But take power he would. San Nicolo was old-fashioned that way. Never before allowing a woman to rule in her own right, and her uncle was determined that wouldn’t happen now. Though if they’d married before now Leo would have had months of deferring to him. Obliged to be involved in the country’s affairs but with no actual power.
Leo had solved the problem by arranging the marriage for the eve of the princess’s birthday. No frustrating wait, forced to watch as her uncle wielded power—badly, he might add—and no legal complications. Because if they weren’t married by the time the girl reached her majority there’d be a tortuous legal process to have him recognised as Head of State in place of his wife.
He gritted his teeth as he drove. All that stood between him and achieving his lifelong goal was an unsteady girl. What was she running away from? A life of privilege, and of ease. He’d shoulder all the responsibilities of monarch. She’d never have to raise a finger. Never have to make difficult choices.
‘The girl has no aptitude for the work,’ her uncle had told him. ‘Better to have you at the helm.’
Leo was fine with that. Glad to have no interference from the Della Torres. What had they achieved with their picture-postcard duchy? Cheese, wine and tourism. That was the extent of their ambition. Leaving the people trapped in an agrarian living museum. He’d be bringing them up to date.
Once he’d made Violetta his wife.
Briefly he pitied the girl. Her father was happy to give away the first daughter to an enemy. The uncle even happier to hand over the second. No chance for her to be Grand Duchess in her own right. Her father and uncle preferring to relinquish the duchy’s sovereignty rather than have a female at the helm. What a family to have!
Then he recalled the packed cathedral, the spoiled banquet, the bunting, drooping in the July heat, and his sympathy deserted him.
He slammed the car into a higher gear and screamed down the road.
He hoped he’d guessed her destination correctly. This was his way. React swiftly. It had been drummed into him since birth.
‘Never dither. Better to act, and act decisively. Indecision is for commoners, boy.’ His father’s mantra. He’d learned it well. Along with several others.
‘Kindness is a weakness you cannot afford.’
‘Compassion is for fools.’
‘Love is a lie.’
‘Women are for bed sport and offspring and otherwise not to be trusted.’
Pity his father hadn’t had one for dealing with being jilted, twice. By the same damn family. But Leo knew what he would have said.
Marry her, get a son by her and we finally have the duchy back.
Oh, I intend to, Papa.
In his life he’d never wanted anything more than to be the von Frohburg to finally regain the grand duchy. To prove to his father, even though he was long gone, that he deserved to be the prince he’d been born to be.
Once he had secured her, he’d paint it as wedding jitters, all eased and soothed by her handsome groom. He’d have photos released. Preferably of her gazing up at him, doe-eyed and adoring. The least she could do under the circumstances.
If he failed, not only would he lose the chance of regaining the duchy but, should he die without siring a son, Grimentz would suffer the rule of Max, Seb’s older half-brother.
It was hard to imagine a man less suited to the task.
Devoid of his sibling’s intelligence and loyalty, Max cared for only two things: himself and his pleasures. That was it. He was dedicated to a life of indolence and excess. The principality had not risen to the heights it had under the guidance of such men.
Leo wouldn’t let that happen. He was thirty years old. The time had definitely come for him to wed.
And reclaim San Nicolo at last.
He met no one on the road. The entire population would be watching the wedding. Either at home or in the streets of the capital. In just twenty minutes he passed the gatehouse and entered the grounds of the estate of his grandmother’s chateau. The very last place he’d thought to visit again. After she’d left it to him in her will, he’d ordered it be practically closed up. Except for authorising a monthly visit by a housekeeper, maid and groundsman to see to any repairs and keep the place watertight, he’d wanted nothing more to do with it.
Damn and blast the girl. Why did she have to go there of all places? With all of its bitter memories and mountains of regret. A place he’d vowed to never set foot in again.
Where he’d taken the elder Della Torre girl, his first fiancée.
Francesca was the beauty of the family. She’d inherited her mother’s blue eyes and golden hair. Her mother’s height and lithesome figure too. She’d charmed and flattered him and given no inkling she’d been using him to plot her escape.
‘Let’s go to your grandmother’s chateau,’ she’d said. ‘The two of us, for a night away from everyone and their prying eyes.’ He’d believed her. When she’d asked if they could wait so she’d come to him a virgin on their wedding night, he’d agreed and they’d gone to their separate beds.
Only for him to discover the next morning that she’d run off. A month later she was married to her ex-bodyguard. Going to the chateau with him had simply been a way for her to escape the watchful eyes of her father and the San Nicolo security team.
Leo’s humiliation had been complete, and his father’s rage and censure had been blistering. But he’d learned his lesson well. He’d never trust a woman again.
The last section of road climbed upwards to the chateau itself. The road had become rutted, the winters having taken their toll. So intent was he on his destination he missed the deep pothole. Sadly, the car did not. On a shudder and with a sickening grinding noise he came to an abrupt halt.
Leo flung the door wide and climbed out into the July heat. He’d be completing his journey on foot. With a curse he set off, sweating already in his wedding regalia.
The woman had better be at the end of this track.
Then the chateau appeared from behind the trees. Somewhere Grand-Mère had laughingly called the summer house but Chateau Elisabetha had three floors, nine guest bedrooms and a ballroom lined with mirrors and finely painted figures of dancing couples. An elegant white limestone chateau, nestled in its own valley with lush green foothills behind, extensive gardens on all sides and its own boathouse and jetty on the lake. His grandmother’s summer residence. She and her husband had originally bought the place when their daughter had married the ruling prince and when she was widowed, his grandmother had spent every summer there to be close to her.
Leo hadn’t expected the rush of memories as he approached. That it would look pretty much just as he’d remembered. Before he’d turned fourteen, and fate had taken a different turn and holidays with his grandmother had instantly ceased.
The gardens were a little more overgrown than Grand-Mère used to keep them, but even there she was a lover of nature, letting every kind of lost, loveless creature find a home—including him once—so she might have approved of the meadow of wildflowers that had taken over the lawns.
He could see her now. On that terrace, overlooking the lake. Drinking schnapps by candlelight and listening to Buena Vista Social Club. With her beloved rescue dogs by her side. Various mutts missing a leg or an ear, or with a broken doggy heart that she somehow fixed. All once unloved creatures, given the best of homes in this chateau.
Sometimes other guests had joined them. Like that last summer he’d spent there, when the grandchildren of her best friend had been invited to the house for two weeks.
Girls. One so young and tiny he and Seb had dubbed her la fée, the fairy. He remembered she’d followed him around like a puppy. To a thirteen-year-old boy a small girl had been beneath his dignity, and he’d found a way to chase her off.
Then came that last visit, three years ago. When the chateau was his. Left to him in his grandmother’s will.
The night he’d spent here with Francesca, the elder of those two girls.
What a debacle that had turned out to be.
But despite all that, it was still a house that held a touch of magic. It wound its way around him now.
He fought it off. Now was not the time for pointless sentiment. It had never served him well in the past and he didn’t need it for what he was about to do.
The florist’s van sat abandoned at the side of the building. A large sunhat, gauzy scarf and sunglasses stuffed on the dash. Probably also stolen from the florist. That would explain how his bride had driven from the castle unchallenged. She’d disguised herself.
Leo strode on. His determination building with each step. He’d caught up with her. Now to put a stop to this nonsense and persuade her to return with him.
