The Santina Crown Collection. Кейт Хьюит

Nasreen very much indeed to react to the mere mention of her as he had just done, Sophia decided.

      How she hungered to be loved like that, wholly and completely, as herself and not for her royal blood. One day, one day she would find that love, Sophia assured herself fiercely, just so long as she remained free to look for it, and wasn’t forced into a marriage she didn’t want. Her passionate nature, like molten lava compressed for too long beneath unforgiving stone, pushed against the unspoken rules of never betraying any real feelings in the Santina family. Before she could stop herself she had burst out, in self-betrayal, ‘My parents don’t believe that love matters. Duty to our family name is all that counts. Especially to my father.’

      The pain in her voice caught Ash’s attention. He knew her history so well that he could easily recognise the real reason for the way her voice had trembled over those telling words … my father.

      What was happening to him? He had a thousand more important things on which he ought to be focusing. The negotiations he had been involved in to turn the empty, decaying palaces which had once belonged to minor, now long-dead members of his extended family into elegant hotel and spa facilities were at a vitally important stage, as was the exhibition of royal artifacts being mounted by his charity to raise money to help educate the poor of India. These should be at the forefront of his mind, not this wayward passionate and far too desirable young woman standing in front of him.

      He needed to bring their conversation to an end.

      ‘I’m sure that your father only wants what’s best for you,’ he told her as he had done before. He knew that his words were bland and meaningless but why should he try to comfort and reassure her? Why should he care what happened to her? He didn’t, Ash assured himself.

      Best for her? Wasn’t that what he had said to her all those years ago before he had walked away from her? That refusing the plea she had made to him was ‘best for her’ when what he had meant was that it was best for him.

      ‘The best for me?’

      Ash could see the bitterness and the despair in her eyes as she shook her head in rejection of his words.

      ‘No!’ The second vigorous shake of her head that accompanied her denial had the dark cloud of her soft curls and waves sliding sensuously over her bare shoulders, reminding him … Reminding him of what? Of how much his body was still aching for her?

      ‘What my father wants is what he thinks is the best for him and for the Santina family. And as far as he’s concerned I’ve always been an unwanted and unexpected addition to the family.’ The softness of her mouth twisted painfully as she challenged him. ‘You know that’s true, Ash. You know the gossip about … about my birth as well as I do.’

      It was true. He had been a boy, invited back for the school holidays with Alex after Alex’s mother had realised that he was an orphan with no family with which to spend the long holidays from their British boarding school; Sophia herself had barely started school when he had first heard the rumours that the king might not be her father.

      ‘You have the Santina looks,’ was all he felt able to say to her now.

      ‘That is what my mother said when I asked her if it was true that the English architect everyone gossiped about might be my father, but doesn’t it tell you something that never once whilst I was growing up did anyone ever suggest I should have a DNA test?’

      ‘What it tells me is that both your parents were so sure that you are their child that a DNA test wasn’t necessary.’

      ‘That’s what Carlotta says,’ Sophia admitted, ‘but then with an illegitimate child of her own and her refusal to say who the father is, she would say that, wouldn’t she?’ Normally Sophia wouldn’t have been so outspoken about Carlotta’s situation. The birth of Carlotta’s son, Luca, had meant that she, too, was out of favour with the king. They both felt they were outsiders and this had bonded them together, despite the fact that Carlotta had a twin sister.

      ‘And Carlotta has always been very sensible.’

      Sophia gave him a wry look. ‘You call having a child out of wedlock by a man who she won’t name and, according to our father, bringing disgrace on the family sensible?’

      A child—a son—only he knew how atavistically he longed for fatherhood, Ash acknowledged as he felt the familiar strike of sharply savage pain burning into him.

      He had assumed when he and Nasreen had married that she would be as keen to start their family as he had been. Initially, when she had told him that she wanted to delay it because she wanted to have time alone with him he had been charmed and captivated. But then he had learned from Nasreen’s own lips the real reason why she did not want to have a child—ever—and that had led to the first of many rows between them.

      To outsiders, his desire for children would be seen as the natural desire of a man in his situation to have an heir to follow him. There was an element of that there, of course—he had a duty to his inheritance, after all—but his need went deeper and was far more intensely personal than that. The loneliness he had felt as a child had made him long for a family of his own in a way that had nothing to do with being royal, and it was a need he could not turn away from or deny. One day he would marry again—it would be a marriage of practicality and not emotion, but the children that came from that marriage he would love, because that love would come naturally and not have to be forced, or pretended. As he had done with Nasreen. The bitterness of his failure to love Nasreen still brought him guilt.

      ‘It isn’t what one would have expected of Carlotta,’ he acknowledged.

      ‘No, Carlotta was always the good one. Not like me. I suppose if anyone outside the family had to choose one of us to do something disgraceful to our father they would choose me.’ Sophia pulled a face. ‘Oh, don’t bother denying it. We both know that it’s true. If it had happened to me I’d do exactly what Carlotta has done and insist on keeping my baby. No matter who tried to take it away from me.’ Her face softened as she added, ‘Little Luca is so gorgeous that sometimes I almost wish he was mine.’ There was genuine warmth and tenderness in her voice. ‘Not that my father would ever tolerate such a lapse from what’s expected from me. It would be the last straw, I expect, and he’d probably completely disown me.’

      ‘I doubt that your father would be trying to arrange a suitable marriage for you if he himself wasn’t convinced that you are his child, especially not to a fellow royal.’

      His statement was intended to reassure her, as well as bring their conversation to a halt, but instead of doing that, it had Sophia firing up again and telling him fiercely, ‘If you think that then you don’t know my father at all. It isn’t for my benefit that he wants this marriage. It’s for his own. For the Santina name. That’s all that matters to him. Not us. Just the reputation of the Royal House of Santina. It’s always been the same, all the time we were growing up. All he ever said to us was that we must remember who and what we are. He rules us as he rules the kingdom, because he believes it is his right to do so. Our feelings, our needs, don’t matter. In fact, as far as he is concerned we ought not to have feelings at all, and that applies especially to me. He doesn’t understand me, he never has. You could help me, Ash. It wouldn’t take very much. As I’ve already told you my father would drop the Spanish prince like a hot potato if he thought he had any chance at all of marrying me off to you.’

      ‘I doubt very much that your father would switch his allegiance, son-in-law-wise, on the strength of seeing us together for a handful of hours at a party.’

      ‘Yes, he would,’ Sophia told him succinctly. ‘And I’ll prove it to you if you help me.’

      Sophia’s problems were nothing to him, Ash reminded himself. He was simply here as a friend of her eldest brother. The fact that he had felt a certain amount of protective compassion for Sophia as a young girl didn’t mean anything now. After all, then he had been an idealistic young man looking forward to a future filled with love and happiness, or so he’d thought. Now he was a realist—an embittered hard-hearted realist, some might say—who knew that such dreams were exactly