Page 103

Which was pretty much the polar opposite of boring.

And the very last thing she needed.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE ROYAL CATHEDRAL was packed. There were crowds lining the streets and there had been since before the sun peeked over the highest mountains to the east.

Snow still fell, though it had shifted to a light dusting in the hours since dawn, and added to the fairy-tale Christmas experience that this wedding was meant to provide to the kingdom. Had always been meant to provide, even when the bride and groom had been different people entirely.

Saviero could not have asked for better cooperation from the natural elements.

He knew that the Cathedral would have been crowded either way. And that the residents of the kingdom would have taken to the streets and cheered no matter who was getting married today—because everyone loved a Royal Wedding.

But as he sat in the stately, classic car that had been selected to drive the new Prince—so styled by the Queen herself less than an hour before Saviero had left the palace—to the Cathedral, he couldn’t help thinking that the crowds were doubled in size. No doubt because the spectacle of the planned Royal Wedding that everyone had expected today was now a significantly larger piece of history. Vesuvius’s abdication had been the top news story around the world.

If Saviero wasn’t mistaken, half of Europe had managed to get here overnight to witness this occasion.

That might have intimidated another man, but it only made him more resolved to pull things off perfectly. Nothing else was acceptable when the stakes were this high.

Both he and Cesca had spoken to Vesuvius, who had looked entirely too good for a recently dead man on the video call. Saviero had been pleased to find that when he’d made his way back into Cesca’s rooms from his official office in a different part of the palace, he had found her in her dressing rooms, halfway through the application of her makeup. He’d waved her aides away and handed her his mobile, but left her there to speak to her brother on her own.

No more unnecessary embracing—no matter how emotional the moment. No more conversations he should not have allowed to happen. No more words coming out of his mouth that would have been far better left unsaid, at least until they made it through this extraordinary day.

She had seemed resolved herself when she’d finished her call with Vesuvius. Saviero had to think that boded well.

Once at the Cathedral, Saviero exited his vehicle at the base of the grand stairs. When he heard the cheers, he found himself looking around for Cesca even though he knew she shouldn’t have arrived yet.

It took him a long moment to realize that he was the one being cheered.

Clearly, the people approved of this wedding. That pleased him, because he did, too. He had to think that it was good for the kingdom—and certainly better than the miserable marriage that would have resulted had Vesuvius been here today.

That was the only thing that he allowed himself to think, then. Because it was the only thing that mattered, he thought, as he waved, then started for the ornate doors at the top of the stairs.

Yet he was brought up short once again, internally anyway, when all of the staff who led him inside bowed deeply and called him Your Royal Highness.

Saviero found himself wishing that the grandfather who had raised him was still alive to see this. Otto Cimarosa had died only a few years ago after what he had always insisted had been a long and marvelous life. He had been the one to instill a sense of duty and honor in his grandson, as well as a deep commitment to the kingdom that he’d insisted was their family’s birthright.

He would have loved this.

Otto had confessed, after Saviero had taken his position as Vesuvius’s High Minister, that he’d always fancied a royal connection in the modern era to match the Cimarosa family’s services to the crown in ages past. He’d thought it would come through Saviero’s parents, and very well might have if they hadn’t died so tragically in that car accident when Saviero was young.

Hearing his grandson addressed as Your Royal Highness while walking into the Royal Cathedral as a Prince of Liandero to marry the new Queen of his beloved kingdom would have made his grandfather absolutely beside himself with delight. Imagining Otto’s reaction had Saviero smiling himself as he made his way into the vestibule at the side of the altar, and waited.

Though behind his smile, he felt that familiar ache.

Losing his parents had been a catastrophe that nothing had ever softened, though Saviero had always counted himself lucky to have had his grandfather. But loving Otto had always been tempered with the knowledge that he would lose him, too, and sooner than he’d like.

It was an all an ache, these close relationships. It was all the same loss—now or later.

He would never have married had his kingdom not needed him to do this today. He had never intended to add more loss to the scale, more devastation to survive.

Saviero assured himself he would weather the marriage by managing it the way he did his own staff and the palace. And managing his wife, Her Majesty, as well.

Though he didn’t quite like how that notion landed in him.

He ignored it, because he knew that he was right. What mattered was the crown. Only and ever the crown, and his marriage was simply in service to that. Nothing more.

The crowd in the Cathedral was excited. And noisy with it. They were not sitting quietly, and even if they were whispering, there were too many of them for it to remain hushed. Saviero found himself deeply relieved that he did not have to announce Vesuvius’s death. That he did not have to turn this moment into a pageant of communal grieving as he’d been preparing himself to do.