Bound by the Prince's Baby
Автор
Jessica Gilmore
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PROLOGUE
THE CAR PURRED to a stop and the driver got out, walking as stiffly as if he were on parade to the rear passenger side and opening the door. Amber Kireyev pulled her hated kilt down to her knees before she grabbed her rucksack and shimmied out of the car under his always watchful gaze.
‘Thank you, Boris,’ she said with a smile, but as usual there was no glimmer of a return smile, just a curt nod.
‘Princess Vasilisa.’
‘Amber,’ she said, as she always did. ‘Call me Amber.’
But Boris didn’t acknowledge her words as he stood tall and imposing, waiting for her to walk through the entranceway; he wouldn’t move until he had seen her go into the building and the doors close behind her.
Amber suppressed a sigh. She knew that most people would consider selling their soul to occupy an apartment in this grand Art Deco building overlooking Central Park, especially a penthouse in one of the two iconic towers, but to her the apartment was more prison than home. Hefting her backpack onto her shoulder, she walked, chin held high, up to the doors and pressed the button for admittance. The doors swung silently and ominously open and, without a backward glance at the sun-filled afternoon, she walked inside.
The opulent high-ceilinged marble and tile foyer was so familiar to her she barely noticed its glossy splendour, but she did notice the smiling man behind the concierge desk, dapper in his gilt and navy uniform.
‘Miss Amber, Happy Birthday to you.’
‘Thank you, Hector.’
‘Do you have something nice planned to celebrate?’
Amber tried not to pull a frustrated face. Her fellow pupils at the exclusive girls’ school she attended had all thrown extravagant parties for their eighteenth birthdays, renting out hotel ballrooms or heading off to their Hampton Beach homes for the weekend. Even if they had invited her Amber wouldn’t have been allowed to attend, but they’d stopped asking her years ago. ‘Grandmama said that we might go out for dinner, after my lessons, of course.’ Not even on her eighteenth birthday could Amber skip her dancing or deportment or etiquette lessons.
‘I have something for you,’ Hector whispered conspiratorially and, after looking around, he pulled out a large brown envelope from under his desk and held it out to her.
Amber’s heart began to beat faster as she took in the familiar postmark. ‘Thank you for letting me have it sent to your house.’ Her future lay in that envelope. A future far away from here, far away from her grandmother.
‘London?’ Hector asked and she nodded.
‘The university prospectus. London is where my parents met and worked, although we lived just outside, in a little village. I always promised myself I would go back as soon as I was old enough. Applying to university is just the first step.’ She slipped the envelope into her backpack. ‘Thank you again.’
‘I also have this for you.’ With a flourish he produced a large cupcake, extravagantly iced in silver and white. ‘There’s no candle. The fire alarms, you know. But Maya told me to tell you to make a wish anyway.’
‘Oh, Hector.’ Amber hated crying but she could feel hot, heavy tears gathering in her eyes. ‘This is so kind of you and Maya. Give her my love.’
‘Come see us again soon; she has a new recipe she wants to teach you.’ Hector cast an anxious look up at the huge clock which dominated the vestibule. ‘Your grandmother will be calling down soon; you’d better go. And Amber? Happy Birthday.’
The lift—Amber refused to say elevator, clinging onto her English accent and vocabulary as stubbornly as she could—was waiting and she tapped in the code which would take her up to the penthouse, nibbling her cake as the doors slid shut and the lift started its journey.
The doors opened straight into the penthouse hallway. Usually Amber could barely put a toe onto the parquet floor before her grandmother querulously summoned her to quiz her about her day and criticise her appearance, her posture, her attitude, her ingratitude. Amber steeled herself, ready for the interrogation, the brown envelope, safely stored in her bag, a shield against every poisonous word. But today there was no summons and Amber, half a cake still clutched in her hand, managed to make it to her bedroom undisturbed, slipping her backpack onto the floor, taking out the envelope and concealing it, still unopened, at the back of her wardrobe. She’d look at it later tonight, when her grandmother was asleep.
Sitting back on her heels, Amber checked to make sure there was no hint of the envelope visible through her clothes and then clambered up, her feet sinking into the deep pile pink carpet. Her whole room was sumptuously decorated in bright pinks and cream which clashed horribly with her auburn hair and made her pale skin look even paler. But she had as little choice in the decor as she did about her schooling, wardrobe and pastimes.
Wriggling out of the hated blazer and kilt, she slipped on a simple blue dress, brushing out her plaits and tucking her mass of hair into a loose bundle before heading out to find her grandmother. The silence was so unusual that she couldn’t help feeling a little apprehensive. For one moment she wondered if her grandmother had planned a birthday surprise, before pushing the ludicrous idea away. Her grandmother didn’t do either birthdays or surprises.
Padding along the hallway, she peeped into the small sitting room her grandmother preferred, her curiosity piqued as she heard the low rumble of voices coming from the larger, formal sitting room her grandmother only used for entertaining. The room was light thanks to floor-to-ceiling windows with stunning views over Central Park but stuffed so full of the furniture that had been saved from Belravia during the revolution that it was impossible to find a spot not cluttered with ornate chairs or spindly tables, the walls filled with heavy portraits of scowling ancestors.
Amber hovered, torn. She hadn’t been officially summoned, but surely her grandmother would expect her to come and greet whichever guest she was entertaining.
Just a few more months, she told herself. She’d graduate in a couple of months, and by the autumn she’d be in London. She just needed to apply to university and figure out how to pay for it first. She’d saved a couple of thousand dollars from her allowance but that wasn’t going to cover much more than the plane ticket.
Okay. She would worry about all that later. Time to go in, say hello and act the Princess for as long as she needed to. It was so much easier with escape within smelling distance. And of course, now she was an actual adult, her grandmother’s control over her had come to an end. At last.
Inhaling, Amber took another step forward, only to halt as her gaze fell on a masculine profile through the part-opened door. A profile she knew all too well: dark hair brushed smoothly back from a high forehead, a distinctly Roman nose flanked by sharp cheekbones hollowing into a firm chin, mouth unsmiling. Amber swallowed. She had spent too many nights dreaming of that mouth. Her heart thumped painfully, her hands damp with remembered embarrassment. What was Tristano Ragrazzi doing here, on her birthday of all days?
Tristano—or, as he was more commonly known, His Most Excellent Royal Highness Crown Prince Tristano of Elsornia—was Amber’s first crush. Or, if she was being strictly honest, only crush, despite the four-year age gap and the not insignificant fact that on the few occasions they’d met he’d barely deigned to notice that she was alive. This small detail hadn’t stopped a younger Amber weaving an elaborate tale around how he would one day fall in love with her and rescue her from the tower: a tale she had stopped weaving the day she had tripped over one of her grandmother’s many embroidered footstools and spilt a tray of drinks and olives over him—perfect hair, exquisite suit, handsome face and all. Hard as she tried, she had never forgotten his incredulous look of horror, the scathing, contemptuous glance he’d shot her way. She hadn’t seen him since—and that was more than fine with her.
Amber started to tiptoe backwards—far better to face her grandmother’s wrath than His Highness—when Tristano spoke and, at the sound of her name, she froze again.
‘Princess Vasilisa is still very young.’
‘Yes,’ her grandmother agreed in her usual icy, cut-glass tones. ‘Which is in your favour. I’ve ensured she’s been kept close; she can be moulded. And of course she has had no opportunity to meet any males. A virgin princess with no scandal attached to her name, excellent academic qualifications, educated in statesmanship and diplomacy is a rare prize and that’s before we consider her dowry. She’s unique and you know it, Tristano. So let’s not play games.’
It was all Amber could do not to gasp. For her grandmother to be discussing her virginity with anyone was mortifying enough but with his Royal Hotness? Her cheeks felt as if they might burst into flame any moment, and not just with embarrassment, with indignation. She was not some prize sow to be discussed in terms of breeding! She was surprised her grandmother hadn’t mentioned her excellent teeth—unless her dental records had already been discussed!
‘Of course, the Belravian fortune,’ a male voice she didn’t recognise cut in. He had a similar accent to Tristano, only far more noticeable: a little Italian, a little Germanic. ‘Is it really worth as much as it was when the country fell?’
‘More, thanks to some wise investments as we waited for a Kireyev to sit on the throne once more. But empires have risen and fallen and it’s clear that our country is no more, and with it our throne. So we look to another throne, another country in which to invest our money and our blood. Your throne, your country, Tristano.’
Silence fell. Was Tristano tempted, disgusted—or indignant that she was being bartered as if she were part of the fortune, not a living, breathing human? Hope for the latter filled her, only to be dashed when he finally spoke.
‘But the fact remains, the Princess is still very young.’
‘Let’s not be hasty,’ the unknown man said. ‘The Princess may be too young to marry, but there’s no reason not to enter into a formal betrothal. And that’s what we are here to discuss. The papers are right here.’
The what? She had to be dreaming, surely. Amber barely breathed as she listened.
‘I’m her legal guardian,’ her grandmother said. ‘I can sign right here, with the Duke as my witness. All you need to do is sign as well, Tristano, and then I suggest you take Vasilisa back to Elsornia with you. She can spend the next three years finishing her education to your liking and then, when she comes of Belravian age at twenty-one, she will make you a perfect bride. The perfect Queen.’
A perfect bride indeed! If Amber hadn’t been so horrified she would have laughed out loud. She hadn’t even been kissed yet; there was no way she was marrying a prince until she had tried a lot of frogs. Besides, she had her own plans for the next three years and they didn’t include being finished off in a castle in the middle of Europe. No, she was going to live like a normal girl. She was going to laugh and learn and flirt and find those frogs and enjoy every moment.
Amber’s first instinct was to burst in and tell them all in no uncertain terms that the only person who could sign that agreement was her and she did not consent. To remind them that now she was eighteen her grandmother was no longer her guardian—and that even if she was she had no right under US or UK law to marry her granddaughter off, that any betrothal they plotted wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. But caution quickly replaced the anger. She had no doubt that her grandmother was capable of taking her forcibly to Elsornia if she chose to. No, better to be careful.
Amber backed away as silently as she could, resolution filling her. She was more than the heir to a long gone throne; she was also English on her mother’s side, and it was long past time that she went home. The last sound she heard was a pen scratching over thick paper as she inched back towards her bedroom. Passport, money and she would be gone. And she wouldn’t be looking back.
