Gaelen Foley Read online

  CONTENTS

  COVER PAGE

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  EPIGRAPH

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  EPILOGUE

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  OTHER BOOKS BY GAELEN FOLEY

  EXCERPTS BY GAELEN FOLEY

  PREVIEW FOR THE PIRATE PRINCE

  COPYRIGHT

  For Eero—

  With a huge hug across the miles.

  My crown is in my heart, not on my head.

  —SHAKESPEARE

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  Ascencion, 1816

  The greatest lover of all time was at it again, smoothly seducing the artless country girl Zerlina, as Mozart’s famed duet “La ci darem la mano” filled the sumptuous theater with a graceful spire of twining voices, tenor and soprano making love to each other in exquisite song.

  No one was paying attention. The wink of opera glasses and the rustling whispers betrayed that the glittering audience’s fascination was fixed, not on the stage, but on the first and finest theater box on the mezzanine, stage right, perched over the orchestra. Cloyingly sculpted with cupids and urns and draped plasterwork ribbons, the box was permanently reserved for royalty.

  He sat at the carved marble rail, half in shadow, unmoving, his suntanned face expressionless. Light from the stage gleamed on the signet ring on his finger, played over the patrician angles of his face, and gilded his long dark-gold hair, which was swept back in a queue.

  The audience watched with bated breath as he moved for the first time since the performance had begun. Slowly he reached into the pocket of his extravagant waistcoat, took a peppermint from a flat metal tin, and placed it in his mouth.

  Ladies watched him suck the candy and blushed, fluttering their fans.

  I am so bored, he thought, his eyes glazing over. So, so very bored.

  The favored members of his entourage sat around him in the theater box, sullen, gilded young lords, gorgeously dressed. Behind their air of studied idleness, they had hard, hooded eyes, weapons concealed beneath their coats. With a few, the scent of opium smoke clung to their rich clothes. Some in his little flock went further than others, but everything was allowed.

  “Your Highness?” came a whisper from his right.

  Never taking his dull, heavy gaze off his beautiful mistress on the stage, Crown Prince Raffaele Giancarlo Ettore di Fiore flicked one jeweled hand, brushing off the proffered flask. He was in no humor for liquor, brooding in a cynical mood that Dante had had it all wrong.

  The Inferno, with all its fire and brimstone, could not be worse than this echoless realm of Limbo where he was suspended in eternal waiting.

  Being born the son of a great man was a hard thing; yet somehow Rafe had managed to get himself sired by one who was not only great but also evidently immortal. He did not by any means wish his father’s demise, but in light of the fact that he would turn thirty tomorrow, he was besieged by a general sense of doom.

  Time was flying past and he was getting nowhere. Had any aspect of his life changed significantly since he was, oh, eighteen? he wondered as the robust song from Don Giovanni faded into the background of his awareness. He still had the same friends, played the same games, still languished in pointless luxury, a prisoner of his rank.

  Unable to make a move in control of his own destiny, he was merely his father’s puppet, nothing more. Every matter of consequence concerning his existence must first be debated over, voted on, and approved by the court, the newspapers, and the whole damned senate, and Lord, he was tired of it. He felt more like a prisoner than a prince, not a man but an overgrown adolescent.

  He had given up arguing with Father to assign him some meaningful task worthy of his ability and education. It was futile. The old tyrant refused to part with an ounce of his power.

  Ah, what was the point of caring? He fancied he might as well sleep the years away in a glass coffin behind some enchanted wall of thorns. They could wake him when it was time for his life to begin.

  After an eternity or so, Don Giovanni was dragged off to Hell and the opera was finally done. He and his followers left the theater box while the audience was still applauding.

  He stared straight ahead as they strode in a pack down the marbled hall, pretending that he did not see the people lined up, beaming eager smiles at him, all the nice people who wanted a bite of him, like the stout, vaguely familiar matron who attempted to stop him presently.

  “Your Highness,” she gushed, curtsying with her nose almost to the floor, “how marvelous to see you this evening! My dear husband and myself and our three lovely girls would be so honored if you would come to our soiree—”

  “My regrets, madam, thank you and goodnight,” he muttered harshly as he kept walking. God, save me from hopeful mothers-in-law.

  One of the dread journalists pushed his way to the fore. “Your Highness, did you really win fifty thousand lire in a wager last week and did your phaeton really break an axle in the race?”

  “Get him out of here,” he muttered to his boyhood friend Adriano di Tadzio.

  Then Lord Someone-or-other stepped partly into his path with a dignified bow. “Your Highness, what a smashing performance by Miss Sinclair! Beg pardon, I have some people here who would love to meet you—”

  He growled and moved past the bald man, then he and his entourage did not stop until they reached the backstage regions of the large, elegant theater.

  With a slow swagger, chin high, Rafe stepped inside the actresses’ dressing room and instantly began to feel better, the tension easing marginally from him. There were scantily clad women everywhere and that was a sight to lift any man’s spirits, however jaded. Women. The warm, sweet smell of their flesh made him breathe easier. With a rather cool half-smile he glanced around slowly, surveying the selection.

  “Look! He’s here!”

  A shrill chorus of feminine screams of delight filled the drafty, candlelit dressing room. They raced at him from every quarter.

  “Raaaaafe!”

  A pack of screaming, squealing girls swamped him. All talking at once, they pulled him down into a chair, three of the actresses sitting on his lap, giggling and stroking his chest, and two draped around his neck, covering his face in kisses.

  “Ah,” he sighed, smiling slightly for the first time that night as he leaned back lazily in the chair, closing his eyes and drowning pleasantly under the soft, scented, writhing mass of lovely limbs and unbound breasts and lace flounces and careful curls. “I love the theater.”

  He heard them giggling, felt them rummaging in his coat and waistcoat like pickpocket children searching for treats. Ah, well. He supposed he had spoiled them, rolling them a handful of jewels last time he’d been here, foxed as Pharaoh.

  Soft lips alighted on his mouth, caressing lightly. After a judicious moment, he began kissing back, willing ennui away. Touching wherever he pleased, he sampled their kisses one by one, but the fun ended when Chloe arrived.

  Rafe watched the English diva strutting toward him in her clinging silvery gown.

  She had a perfect body and a gleaming smile, his latest toy. They had been lovers for four months now, a record for Rafe. He
did not quite know how to tell her that he had begun losing interest. He was rather hoping she would figure it out for herself.

  Chloe huffed to see her sister thespians all over her royal protector. She slid her feather boa off her creamy shoulders and pushed her way into their midst, catching Rafe around the neck with it. He glanced up with an unrepentant half-smile. Chloe gave him a disapproving look, but didn’t dare reproach him.

  Instead, she fluffed the feather boa on him. “Darling, how avant-garde.”

  “Ooo, it looks so pretty on him!” one of the girls exclaimed, fixing the pink feather boa over his shoulder like a scarf.

  “Everything does,” another sighed.

  He stared dully at the chit, wondering if he had ever been that young and easily impressed.

  “Look at this, Prince Rafie!” a buxom brunette said eagerly, climbing off his lap. Daringly, she lifted the hem of her chemise and bared the left cheek of her pretty, rounded bottom for him.

  He lifted his eyebrows, admiring the R tattooed there. He traced the monogrammed letter with his fingertip lightly over the curve of tender flesh. “How sweet of you, my pet. What was your name again?”

  “Begone, you little tramps, or I’ll speak to the house manager and you’ll all be out of a job!” Chloe snapped, shooing them off.

  Rafe chuckled at his mistress’s pique, saying nothing as the girls sadly drifted away, curls drooping. He smiled to himself, watching his friends intercept them, flirting, billfolds at the ready.

  “Lovely, lovely little tarts.” He glanced up at the haughty blond with a wicked gleam in his eyes. “And then there’s you, madam witch.”

  She leaned over him, grasped both ends of the feather boa, and tugged. “That’s right,” she whispered, holding him in a sultry stare, “and you, my devil, are coming with me. I must punish you for sleeping through my aria. Don’t think I didn’t see you.”

  “I was awake…but you can punish me as you see fit,” he murmured softly as he stood, towering over her. As she laughed and led him by the gaudy feather boa, Chloe’s hungry gaze teased him with pleasures yet to come. He pretended not to notice the sheer worship in her eyes, looking away to nod at his companions. “See you around two at the club,” he said, holding the door for Chloe, who slid the feather boa off his shoulders.

  “Ciao,” said Adriano with a toss of his black forelock.

  “Enjoy,” Niccolo drawled with a smirk.

  Just then, Rafe heard someone calling him.

  “Your Highness! Your Highness! Sir!”

  Halfway out the door, he turned around and saw a courier in royal livery bustling through the dressing room. Instantly every muscle in his body tensed with checked hostility.

  A message from the king.

  As the courier hurried toward him, Rafe drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, for he was not a man who lost his temper. His father was the blustery hothead in the family; he prided himself on remaining coolly graceful at all times. He lifted both brows expectantly as the courier bowed.

  “How does my good father this night?” he asked, his tone soft but edged with the barest hint of irony.

  The courier bowed apologetically. “His Majesty summons you, Your Highness.”

  Rafe stared at him for a long moment, his slight, urbane smile pasted in place, his marble-green eyes snapping with anger. “Tell him I will call on him tomorrow around noon. After I have had my breakfast.”

  “Pardon, Your Highness,” the man said with a gulp, bowing again, “the king insists you come anon.”

  “Is it an emergency?”

  “I know not, sir,” the man stammered. “His Majesty sent the carriage—”

  “I have my own carriage,” Rafe said pleasantly through gritted teeth, realizing that Father must have sent the gaudy state coach because, hang it all, he had probably heard about his drunken race, roaring across the countryside in the dead of night last Wednesday.

  No doubt the reason for the summons was that his father wished to scald his ears again as usual with another recounting of his many failings as a future king, how the responsibility was going to crush him because he was just a dreamer, and how the courtiers were going to eat him alive, et cetera, et cetera.

  He was really in no mood to hear it.

  Meanwhile, his friends, his mistress, and his charming young devotees were all watching the exchange with worried looks, as though they expected him to explode any day now, any moment.

  He saw he had a choice—the same choice as always. Either he could make a scene like a churl and stand on his pride, or, as usual, swallow the humiliation of having to jump whenever his father snapped his fingers and exit like the prince he was down to his fingertips.

  His voice was velvet, his slight, cold smile angelic. “I will be pleased to attend His Majesty at once, but rest assured, I will take my own carriage.”

  The courier bobbed as though he might collapse with relief. “As Your Highness wishes.” He backed away from Rafe, still bowing.

  Rafe turned to his mistress, lifted her hand and kissed it in taut gallantry, his angry thoughts a million miles away. “Apologies, my sugar-sweet.”

  “It’s all right, darling,” she soothed, caressing his arm, then looked meaningfully into his eyes. “As long as I can still give you your birthday present tomorrow.”

  “I cannot wait to see what it is,” he murmured with a knowing half-smile.

  Then he walked out alone, still shaking his head to himself at the thought of his father’s high handedness, though the same routine ought to come as no surprise by now.

  Outside, the ornate gilded state coach which the king had insultingly sent to collect him was just pulling away. Waiting for him in front of the theater crouched the smart, new, exceedingly expensive landau with mahogany panels and elliptical springs that had been lent to him, gratis, by the city’s finest carriage-maker, who was fixing his phaeton’s broken axle.

  The generous gesture had been a prudent move on the wheelwright’s part, Rafe thought cynically, for now that model of equipage was selling like mad. Strange how the world at large disparaged him for his wild ways, yet their slavish mimicry of his every passing whim had made him the kingdom’s arbiter of fashion. He could not boast of a stainless conscience, but at least he had excellent taste.

  The street was crowded in front of the lavish theater, people still thronging the area since the opera had just let out. Vendors were selling them flavored ices. Since the grand opera hall in Belfort was being renovated, the ton had flocked to this smaller theater in the quaint coastal town a few miles down the hill. The cafés along the beach had become all the rage.

  Walking out to his waiting coach, Rafe breathed the flowery, salt-laden air of his homeland and paused to stare up the hill at the great crooked bulk of the Italian island where his family had ruled for seven hundred years.

  Under the moon, the port town before him was narrow and long, hugging the steep terraced hillside. The lampposts, frugally spaced along the quay to his right, cast a dim glow upon stout palm trees blowing in the night wind. He turned, the breeze caressing his clean-shaved cheeks as he stared at the lush purple mounds of oleander waving amid the dark boulders that abutted the beach.

  He looked at the row of narrow shops with painted hanging signs. On the upper stories, small wrought-iron balconies overlooked the harbor and the rocky strand. Every doorway slumbered under thick cascades of white jasmine, whose sweet perfume softened the stink from the fish markets farther down the docks.

  Ascencion, he whispered in his mind, as if savoring a lover’s name. Fairer even than the isle of Capri, she was his sacred heritage. For Ascencion, he would endure his cage and take whatever humiliations his father dealt him. Somehow, he would hold on, though he knew he was dying on the vine. The one thing that kept despair at bay was the promise that one day he would truly rule this peerless gem of the Mediterranean. The one desire he had not yet fulfilled was his longing to be a good king.

  Everyone thought he would b
e a disaster, he knew. He would show them. One day.

  Sighing, he stepped up into the coach. A groom briskly shut the door. He rapped boredly on the inside and his unmarked vehicle slid into motion, passing quickly through the little port town to turn onto the King’s Road, which wound up the hillside to the great capital, Belfort.

  He suddenly remembered he’d forgotten to let the royal bodyguards know he was leaving. Ah well, they’ll figure it out and catch up soon enough. He didn’t need them anyway. Being trailed constantly by six hulking thugs in uniform was just one more reminder that until he came to power, he was naught but a coddled, glorified prisoner.

  In the dark cab of the coach, he rested his elbow on the edge of the window and leaned his cheek on his hand. He stared out pensively at the landscape. Silver and indigo in the moonlight, his kingdom rolled out along the road, like his life passing him by.

  Devil take birthdays, he thought. When he was king, he would outlaw them.

  The King’s Road was a blue ribbon in the moonlight. They watched in tense silence from the woods, wondering if their night’s vigil was done. A short while ago, they had watched the gilded royal state coach pass. Now a sleek vehicle of gleaming black and mahogany was barreling up the road, pulled by a team of four galloping matched bays.

  “Looks promising,” Mateo whispered, even as his youngest brother signaled the owl’s hoot from the distance, calling them to alert.

  The Masked Rider nodded and gestured the others into position.

  Stealthily, they maneuvered their horses among the trees, assuming their posts on the high embankments over the road. They waited….

  The coach hit a rut in the road and bounced violently on its newfangled springs. Rafe winced in annoyance and drew breath to shout an imperious rebuke at the driver to have a care—he didn’t want to have to buy the damned thing—when suddenly he heard shouts outside.

  A horse whinnied frantically and the coach began to slow. A gunshot ripped through the night.