PROLOGUE

August 1993

Looking at the clock on the bedside table, she saw that it was almost four o’clock. I must get up, she thought. He’ll be here soon.

But it was so difficult: she groaned as she managed to swing her aching legs off the bed, but the dizziness started almost as soon as she tried to stand. She took a deep breath and put her hand on the mattress to support herself, and slowly started to stand up. Her other hand automatically reached out towards the bedpost at the foot of the bed. Grasping it firmly, she found she was able to get onto her feet.

She rounded the bottom of the bed, stopping as a wave of nausea hit her, and leant against the column. I must get there, she scolded herself determinedly. I can’t let him down.

Fighting down the bile rising in her throat, she took a few more tentative steps and finally reached the window seat overlooking the front façade of the house and sat down, both relieved and proud that she’d managed the feat without throwing up.

She twisted herself awkwardly until she was able to look out of the window comfortably and leant against the inner shutter, resting her head against it until the dizziness finally passed. She opened her eyes again as she heard the distant chiming of the clock in the hallway. Four o’clock. She smiled in anticipation as she looked towards the other side of the street.

And there he was. The same familiar figure, his lightweight jacket flapping slightly. There must be a breeze today, she thought as she waved to him. She could almost make out his smile from here.

He’s lost weight this week, she decided. There is definitely something different about him. Or maybe his hair is starting to go thin. She squinted, leaning her forehead against the glass in an attempt to get a better view of him.

But instead of seeing the tall man with the black hair more clearly, she could just make out two other figures framing him with a soft, ethereal fog. Who are they? she wondered. He always comes alone. But her eyes wouldn’t focus well enough, even though she was rubbing them hard. All she could see were shadows: one was dark-haired, and the other – blond. There was something familiar about them and she found herself scrabbling about in her memory to try and place them. I know them, I know I do, she fumed. But I can’t see them!

At last, the vague figures started swimming into focus and her heart leapt into her mouth. No, it can’t be. It can’t be them! She felt the tears prickling in her eyes as she stared at them, forgetting to wave in her agitation.

The dark-haired figure started to beckon to her, his slender white hand out-stretched in supplication towards the house, signing to her to join him.

“I’m coming, my darlings,” she whispered. “I’m coming.” And she felt the strength filling her body and lifting her up from the window seat, driving her back into the bedroom…

CHAPTER ONE

February 1985

The foyer of the Royal Albert Hall was packed, the noise of hundreds of conversations going on at once adding to the electrical atmosphere as the Friday-night concert-goers started to flow towards the doors and staircases.

A slight, grey-haired figure in a long azure dress and white fur wrap, however, was standing motionlessly and staring at a young couple still seated at the bar. Moving purposefully, the elderly woman walked slowly against the stream of people until she was facing the buxom, dark-haired girl.

“Fancy seeing you here, Your Grace,” she said, more than a hint of smug satisfaction audible in her voice. “You don’t normally come to His Highness’s concerts, do you?”

The Duchess looked daggers at her for a second before baring her teeth in an apparent smile. “Well, Gräfin, I decided that this is a special occasion.”

The German Countess nodded at the young man stepping down from the bar stool next to the girl.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

Repressing the urge to sigh, the Duchess nodded. “Of course, Gräfin. This is the Earl St. Giles. He goes to Riccardo’s school. Eddie, meet the Landgräfin von Bitterswald.”

He nodded and shook the proffered hand cautiously. “A pleasure, I’m sure.”

“Well,” the Countess murmured, “it’s very nice to put a face to the name. I heard about you from my grandson. I just didn’t expect to see you with the Duchesse de la Roche sur Yon,” she added, the French title sounding odd when pronounced with a strong German accent. “Perhaps we could meet up for a drink at the interval?”

“I don’t expect so, Gräfin,” the Duchess said coolly. “It’ll be a madhouse here.”

The Countess narrowed her eyes. It was a deliberate slight. But she smiled again graciously as she turned to leave the bar. “Well, we’ll probably run into each other some other time.”

Earl St. Giles nodded, but was unable to hide his amusement when he heard the Duchess muttering “I’d better be driving a car then, you miserable old sorcière” behind him. He turned round, grinning.

“I get the impression you don’t like her much,” he remarked.

The Duchess held her hand out and he took it gently. Moving carefully, she put one elegantly shod foot down on the floor and stood up, rising to her full height until she was towering over the sandy-haired Earl. “Actually,” she announced, “I like her a lot. I only see her about once a year and it’s always fun to find new ways to be nasty to her. The old hag,” she added as she balefully eyed the now-distant Countess.

“You’re as bad as Riccardo,” he laughed. “It’s easy to see you’re cousins. He’s been making her grandson’s life hell at school. Mind you, the rotten little bastard deserves it,” he added thoughtfully.

“The whole family’s ghastly,” the Duchess said as she tucked her clutch purse under her arm. Taking the Earl’s hand, she leant down and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “Let’s go to our seats.”

He looked up at her admiringly. “You’re the most beautiful girl here, Henriette,” he said, squeezing her hand gently. “I’m the luckiest person I can think of.”

But the Duchess’s mind was elsewhere. “Actually, I’m surprised Riccardo doesn’t like Leopold,” she said. “They’ve got so much in common. They’re both orphans, after all.”

“Riccardo’s not an orphan,” the Earl began. “His mother’s still alive.” But he was interrupted.

“I’ve always said that you can tell if someone’s alive when there’s brain activity going on. Father said Maria-Elisabetta hasn’t shown signs of coherent thought in years.”

He laughed. “Yep, you’re definitely Riccardo’s flesh and blood. That sounds more like something he would say. How can you be so nasty about her? She’s your aunt or something, isn’t she?”

“She’s first cousin to both my parents,” the Duchess pulled a face. “We don’t talk about her. I’ll tell you the whole story one day when I haven’t got anything better to do.”

They finally made it to their seats and the Duchess sat down and immediately started looking around. “Good turn out,” she remarked. “Half of ‘Burke’s Peerage’ is here.” She opened the programme and started staring intently at the names of the works. “There’s not a single composer I can recognise except Johann Sebastian Bach,” she complained.

But the Earl was patting her on the arm. “Look, there’s Riccardo.”

She looked over at the stage, her wide smile threatening to make the top of her head fall off. “He’s so elegant, isn’t he? I’ve never seen him do a public concert before.”

The slender, formally-dressed boy climbing onto the podium immediately headed for the harpsichord in the middle and then turned to face the audience. He bowed slightly in acknowledgement of the applause, the light glinting on the star pinned to the pale blue sash running across his chest before he flipped his tails away and sat down on the stool. Nodding at the lead violinist, he raised his right hand and the orchestra started to play.

* * *

The Duchess stood up as the final notes died away, her hands clapping furiously. All around her, the audience was rising to show its appreciation. The clapping grew even louder as the boy stood up, his hand resting on the lid of the harpsichord for a second as he bowed – first to the orchestra, then to the Royal Box. But the Duchess was surprised to see that he wasn’t smiling. She peered closer, her smoky black eyes crinkling slightly as she tried to see him more clearly.

“Give me your opera glasses, darling,” she said to the Earl.

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled them out, unfolded them and then handed them to her with an inquiring look. But she merely took them from him and put them to her eyes, adjusting the focus carefully until the slim figure leaving the podium momentarily swam into focus before vanishing.

“He’s crying,” she whispered. “I can see the tears from here.” She turned to face the Earl again. “Wait for me in the foyer,” she commanded. “I’m going to his dressing room. Something’s not right.”

The Earl reached out a hand, but she brushed it away impatiently. “I won’t be long,” she said sharply. “There’s no reason for Riccardo to be crying.”

Grabbing her clutch purse, she forced her way along the remaining three seats until she reached the aisle and then rushed down the steps towards the exit. Catching sight of an usher, she strode over and immediately tapped him on the arm.

“Which way are the dressing rooms?” she asked imperiously. “I’m His Serene Highness’s cousin and I need to see him.”

The young man stared up at her. She was the tallest woman he’d ever seen, at least a foot taller than him. He mutely pointed in the direction of a half-concealed door marked ‘Private’.

She nodded and hurried over to the door and opened it, slipping into the corridor unnoticed. Pursing her lips, she walked slowly down the corridor until she heard a voice behind her.

“Can I help you, miss?”

The Duchess turned around. “I’m looking for Prince Riccardo’s dressing room,” she said. “I’m his cousin. He’s expecting me,” she lied.

“It’s just three doors down on the left,” the man said, pointing ahead of her. “You can’t miss it.”

“Thanks.” She quickly covered the remaining twenty feet and knocked on the door. When there was no reply, she turned the handle and opened the door slowly, poking her head into the space within. But the room was dark.

Where has he got to? I saw him leave the stage, I’m sure I did, she wondered.

Just then, she heard footsteps behind her and she turned round with a relieved smile.

“Riccardo, darling…,” she began. But the handsome, black-haired man in front of her merely took a step back in surprise, a faint pink tinge highlighting his swarthy skin.

“Isn’t he in there?” he asked incredulously. “I wanted to…,” his voice faded as he brought the bouquet of flowers from behind his back.

“No, he isn’t.”

They both turned round, though, when another voice echoed down the corridor.

“‘Is ‘Ighness ‘as already gone.” An older man holding a broom was looking at them curiously. “‘E come down, grabbed ‘is coat and left,” he added.

The Duchess heard the man with the bouquet swear under his breath, but decided not to say anything. Instead, she nodded politely at the cleaner. “Thank you. You’ve saved me a long wait.”

Frowning slightly, she turned to face the man with the bouquet. Gorgeous hunk, she thought appreciatively.

But there was also something hauntingly familiar about him. He shuffled his feet awkwardly under her penetrating gaze.

“Do I know you?” she asked. “I’ve just got the oddest feeling that we’ve met before, a long time ago.”

He shook his head, but there was a slight hint of panic in his dark eyes. “I don’t think so. I’m sure I would have remembered.”

The Duchess smiled at him ruefully. “Well, they say we all have a doppelganger somewhere. You look like one of my cousins from Italy.”

The man said nothing for a second or two as he twiddled with the bow on the bouquet.

“That’s what they say,” he said finally.

* * *

Coming out of the side door, the Duchess caught sight of the Earl and waved at him. He immediately picked the fur coat off the bench next to him and hurried over.

“I was a bit beastly to you,” she said apologetically as he craned to kiss her cheek. “I was just worried about Riccardo.”

The Earl helped her on with the coat before replying. “So where is he? Are we going to have supper together at the flat?”

She pursed her lips before shaking her head. “He’d already left. I don’t know where he’s gone, though.”

“Perhaps he’s gone to Ferdi’s flat in Knightsbridge,” the Earl suggested. He took her arm and they walked slowly through the rapidly thinning crowd.

“Ferdi’s still in Germany and I don’t think Riccardo’s got a key. I don’t know,” she looked around helplessly. “There was a man down there with a bouquet. I had the oddest feeling that I knew him from somewhere, but…,” she shrugged before frowning again. “Actually, I had a sort of feeling that he and Riccardo are, I don’t know, um…,” her voice trailed off as she tried to frame her thoughts, “friends.”

Or something more than friends, the unbidden thought flashed through her mind. But he’s never mentioned anything like that to me. She shook her head. She’d get the information out of him next time she saw him.

The Earl sighed. He’d been at school with Riccardo for a long time and they were good friends. But he also knew that there was a big secret surrounding the young Prince’s weekly visits to London: no-one knew where the fifteen-year old boy stayed while he was there. It had been the cause of a great deal of comment among the teachers as well as the other boys at the exclusive boarding school they both attended in Somerset. But that was the Prince’s way of life. Everything was a secret. And not even his closest friends had been able to penetrate the boy’s armour recently, despite the fact that there was something obviously wrong…

“Let’s get back to the flat, Henriette,” he said. “I’m not really in the mood to wonder about Riccardo. Once you get back to college, I’m not going to be seeing you for a while and I want to make the most of it,” he squeezed her hand gently as he looked up at her.

She grinned. “You’re a sex maniac, Eddie. And,” she lowered her voice and leaned down until her lips were level with his ear, “you’re bloody good at it. I’m going to be the happiest bride in England.”

He could feel her soft breath against his cheek before she pulled away again. The sensation was electrifying and he could feel the hardness growing in his dress trousers as she winked at him.

* * *

“Eddie,” the Duchess rolled onto her side to look at him, “has Riccardo ever said anything about having a lover in London?”

The Earl grimaced. Their lovemaking had continued from the moment they got back to his father’s flat until five minutes ago, and he wasn’t ready to spoil the mood by discussing her cousin’s sex life. “No,” he said shortly.

He pulled the rest of the duvet off his legs and swung them onto the floor, then padded over to the armchair and picked up a dark blue dressing gown. “I’m going to the kitchen,” he said. “Do you want anything?”

But his expression softened again when he saw the Duchess’ face. Her lips were trembling, and he instantly regretted his brusque reply. Throwing the dressing gown onto the bed, he walked over to her side and leant over, kissing her on the forehead.

“I’m sorry, darling,” he whispered. “But you know what Riccardo’s like. He never tells anyone anything about what’s going on with him. And it pisses me off sometimes,” he added bluntly.

The Duchess pulled herself up until she was leaning comfortably against the pillows and gave the Earl a hard look. “You mean you’ve never asked, or he’s never volunteered to tell you?”

“Have you ever asked him?” he countered evenly as he sat down on the edge of the big double bed. “I wouldn’t dare. He puts on that steel-plate look of his and stares right through you if you try and ask him personal questions. Augustin had the most awful time with him a couple of weeks ago. Ended up running out of his own room and taking refuge in mine, because Riccardo wasn’t in the mood to say what’s going on.”

Despite herself, the Duchess giggled. After all, Riccardo weighed almost nothing, while Augustin de Valençon was just as tall and wide as she was. The image that passed through her mind finally made her laugh out loud.

“Alright, you win,” she said at last. “I’ll call him at school tomorrow and try and get the gossip.”

“Good luck,” the Earl said dryly. “Now, do you want anything from the kitchen?”

* * *

“What the hell’s that noise?” the Duchess jerked awake. But the doorbell was still buzzing insistently. She looked at the clock: four-fifteen in the morning. “Eddie,” she hissed, shaking the sleeping boy’s shoulder hard. “Wake up.”

“Psftgl,” he muttered, before rolling over again.

Bugger. I swear he could sleep through the Second Coming, she thought irritably.

Throwing the covers back, she swung her feet onto the floor and rushed over to the armchair to grab a dressing gown.

And still the doorbell was buzzing.

Swearing under her breath, she walked out of the bedroom and down the hallway until she reached the telephone next to the front door.

“There’d better be a bloody good reason for waking me up like this!” she yelled into the receiver.

But instead of the doorman’s barely-concealed cockney accent, she heard a familiar voice speaking rapidly in French:

“Henriette, ma chère, c’est moi. Riccardo. Please let me in.”

Oh my God! What the hell is he doing here at this time of night?

She pressed the button to open the outer door and waited impatiently until she heard a soft knock at the door.

* * *

The Prince’s hands were trembling. She watched as he lit a cigarette, the flame from his gold lighter passing backwards and forwards in front of his pale face until it finally came into contact with the pale blue Sobranie cigarette in his holder.

She watched him curiously as he inhaled the aromatic smoke and started to relax. But he looked terrible: his hazel eyes were slightly red and the white tie of his formal evening dress was askew. She knew how vain he was and had never seen him less than impeccably dressed. But now he looked as if he’d been walking the streets. The pale blue sash and diamond-studded order that he’d been wearing at the concert were missing, but that was only to be expected. After all, London was not a safe place to wear fabulous jewellery in the small hours of the morning.

“Riccardo…,” she began gently. But the boy opposite her just shook his head.

“Please don’t ask me now, Henriette,” he said quietly, a pleading look appearing on his face for a few fleeting seconds before his expression settled back into its usual impassivity. “I just can’t cope with questions at the moment. Will you let me sleep here tonight? That’s all I want at the moment.” He stared at her, both beseeching and warning her.

“Of course you can sleep here, darling. Eddie won’t mind. But are you alright?”

The Prince closed his eyes for a few seconds before replying.

“I just need some time to think. Call me at school on Sunday and I’ll explain what’s happening. Is that okay?”

The Duchess’ heart sank. He was even closing himself off from her, his own cousin. They’d grown up together, their summers and winters spent together in France and Luxor at her grandmother’s various residences. They’d never had secrets from each other, ever. But she knew the look in his eyes. It was telling her to leave him alone.

“Let’s talk in the morning,” she suggested. “Everything looks better in the morning,” she added, cringing slightly at the triteness of the cliché, but at this early hour it was the best she could come up with.

He nodded slowly as he tapped his ash into the ashtray. “Perhaps it will.”

* * *

Riccardo was gone. The Duchess stood in the middle of the spare bedroom, staring at the neatly-made bed. It was as though he’d never been in the flat.

“Henriette! Where are you?”

She turned and saw Eddie standing in the doorway.

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere. What are you doing in here?”

She shook her head in puzzlement. “I have no idea. I’m beginning to wonder whether I dreamt it or not.”

“Dreamt what?”

“That Riccardo came over last night. Well, early this morning,” she corrected herself. “But he’s not here.”

“I never heard a thing,” the Earl said. “Perhaps you did dream it.”

Brushing past him, the Duchess walked back out into the hallway and strode quickly into the drawing room. The ashtray was gone. The glass of gin which she’d given Riccardo to drink just a few hours earlier was missing. She scratched her head in puzzlement before turning on her heel and stalking into the kitchen.

And then she saw the tumbler sitting on the draining board and she heaved a sigh of relief.

“No, I wasn’t dreaming it, Eddie,” she said to the perplexed Earl trailing behind her. “He was here.”

“Perhaps he’s gone back to school already,” he suggested.

She shrugged. “We arranged to talk on the telephone tomorrow.” She stared at the crystal tumbler for a moment. “I have a feeling he won’t be ready to talk until then.

* * *

But the Duchess never managed to make the phone call. Her drive down to the Ladies’ College in Wiltshire had been delayed by the Earl, who’d dragged her back to bed for another few hours and so, when she got back at nine on the Sunday evening, it was to find a message with the porter saying that the Duc de Valençon had been ringing every five minutes.

“I’ll telephone him from my room, Bates,” she said.

After hurrying across the quadrangle, she managed to get the key into the lock of her room just as the telephone inside starting to ring. Wrenching the door open, she threw her bag on the bed and reached over and grabbed the receiver.

“What!” she yelled in French, knowing who was calling. “Can’t a girl have any peace round here?”

“Henriette, ma chère, sit down, please,” the Duke’s voice sounded eerie, almost as though he was crying.

Ignoring the instruction, the Duchess merely leant her hip against the dressing table. “What’s up, Augustin? They told me you’ve been hunting high and low for me.”

“It’s Ferdi,” the Duke whispered, his voice cracking slightly. “He’s dead. You’ve got to come over. We can’t cope here. Riccardo’s…”

The telephone receiver fell from her hands as she felt the breath catch in her throat. Her hands groped across the surface of the table, knocking over her perfume and scattering the jewellery from the open box onto the floor.

“Ferdi,” she moaned. “Oh mon Dieu! Ce n’est pas possible…”

* * *

A few minutes later there was a knock at the door and an elderly woman put her head round the door.

“Your Grace,” she began hesitantly. “I’m so terribly sorry about His Excellency. I’ve arranged for our driver to take you to the Boys’ School. He’s waiting for you downstairs.”

The Duchess turned round on the stool in front of the dressing table and wiped her tears away with a lace handkerchief.

“Thank you, Miss Stanton. I simply have to go. Riccardo must be out of his mind.” She bit her lip as the tears started to flow again and the Headmistress walked quickly into the room and put her arm around the shaking girl’s shoulder.

“I quite understand, dear,” she murmured. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I do know what was going on over there and I know His Serene Highness needs you. He must be heartbroken,” she said, stroking the Duchess’ long black hair as the girl buried her face against her chest. “If your parents call, I’ll tell them you’re travelling down from London tomorrow,” she added soothingly. “That’ll give you some time to decide what you’re going to tell them.”

Miss Stanton had received a phone call from the Headmaster of the Boys’ School half an hour earlier and it had left her in a quandary. She knew that the Duchess’ parents had forbidden their daughter to have any contact with either Riccardo or Ferdinand, but she also knew how much the two princes relied on the older girl. In the end, she’d decided that the Duke and Duchess of Modena had no right to keep the two cousins separated simply because Riccardo was in love with the German boy. It was archaic. But she also knew that Henriette would want to attend the funeral, which would probably be held in Germany. And if she had to let the Duchess travel, then there would be fireworks if her parents found out.

After spending twenty minutes pacing up and down her office and arguing with herself, she’d finally decided to simply forget about it and let the girl decide for herself. After all, she was eighteen years old, independently wealthy and secretly engaged to be married to Earl St. Giles. It wasn’t the Headmistress’ place to make any more decisions on her behalf.

The Duchess, her usually flawless make-up streaked across her cheeks, looked up at the woman gratefully. “I’ll call you as soon as I can, Miss Stanton,” she promised.

* * *

The hour-long drive to the Boys’ School seemed to be taking forever. The Duchess, dressed in a long fur coat and a black dress, shivered in spite of the heat. Ferdinand von Sachsen-Göttlingen had been a part of her life now for nearly three years. Riccardo had taken one look at the boy when he started school in England and fallen for him completely. And so the blond boy had become a regular guest for the summer holidays at the villa in Menton and Christmases in Luxor. Her grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Florence, who had died the previous April, had adored him. She’d spent so much time honing her German and teaching him French, apart from showing him the sights in Egypt, that it seemed to the Duchess that her grandmother had taken on a new grandson – and was determined to give him everything that Riccardo and Henriette had received all their lives.

But Riccardo’s love for the younger boy had deepened from a schoolboy crush into a sensual love affair when he was fourteen: an affair that, nearly two years later, had left him in a hopeless position: disinherited and unheeded by the Duke of Modena, banned from seeing Henriette, and now more alone than anyone could imagine. Not even Eddie St. Giles or Augustin really knew the whole truth. Even the Duchess wasn’t entirely sure of the situation. But whatever the circumstances actually were, she only knew that Riccardo had been shedding weight at an alarming rate and withdrawing even further into his own shell, not even making his regular telephone calls to the Ladies’ College to share the latest gossip with her.

And now Ferdi was dead.

The Duc de Valençon had been patiently waiting on the line after she dropped the receiver and she finally heard the entire truth.

“He hanged himself yesterday, Henriette. But nobody knew he was here, because he hadn’t signed in. He just came back from Germany and killed himself and nobody knows why.”

And that’s when she’d finally broken down and started to weep, telling him that she’d see him at the School, that she couldn’t bear it anymore…

* * *

Finally the well-lit wrought-iron gates of the Boys’ School came into sight and the Duchess started to dry her tears. The Daimler slowly took the corner and gradually picked up speed again as it passed between the tall oak trees lining the gravel drive.

But a pair of headlights approaching from the opposite direction made the Duchess’s breath catch in her throat: they were far too large and close together for a modern car. Then the vague shape passed beneath one of the ornamental street lamps and she realized what she was looking at and gasped as she caught a glimpse of an elderly limousine that she had last seen up on blocks at the villa in Luxor. It was an enormous Rolls Royce, its coachwork finished in black over ivory, an intricate coat of arms visible on the driver’s door.

“Honk your horn!” she called to the chauffeur. “We’ve got to stop that car.”

Immediately she heard the horn and, a second or so later, an old-fashioned klaxon responded. After a few moments, the Rolls Royce drew alongside and she could make out Riccardo’s face. She rolled down the window:

“Where are you going? I need you!”

The young Prince was seated behind the steering of the car, casually resting his arm on the driver’s door, his face like pale marble and just as expressive. He quickly explained that he was driving to the hospital to see Ferdinand and told the Duchess to wait for him in his room.

But she wasn’t having it. Wrenching her door open, she half staggered, half fell out of the Daimler and immediately crossed over to the back of the Rolls and got into the luxurious interior. Leaning back on the rich leather seat, she picked up the gold and ivory telephone next her and pressed the little button.

“Can you hear me now? Drive on, Riccardo!” she said loudly. “We’re not leaving Ferdi alone at that hospital.”

* * *

Thank God for Marcus, she thought. The drive to the hospital in Yeovil had left her exhausted and light-headed at the same time, as she’d discovered a decanter full of old cognac in the small bar in the back of the Rolls Royce. But the head prefect had joined her, holding her for most of the forty-minute journey, before returning to the front seat to navigate for Riccardo.

Once she’d sobered up again in the hospital waiting room, she walked down to the morgue, following Marcus and praying that the boy was reading the incomprehensible signs correctly.

The prefect waved at her to stop and she immediately put her hand against the wall to steady herself. The floating sensation still hadn’t quite left her, and the tiled floor was slippery beneath her high heels. The young Indian doctor who had greeted them earlier and taken Riccardo downstairs was just ahead of them, and she could just make out the Prince kneeling next to a gurney draped in an olive-green sheet.

Marcus nodded to her and hurried over to the doctor, motioning to him not to approach the weeping boy. Then the Duchess finally entered the room, her stilettos sliding a little as she tried to keep her balance. The smell of chemicals and antiseptic stung her eyes, but she bit her lip savagely, determined not to faint at the sight of Ferdinand lying on the gurney, Riccardo holding him in his arms and babbling something she couldn’t understand in German.

Instead, she took a deep breath and walked over to the dead boy, her hand reached out and she stroked his blond hair away from his forehead and kissed him. Then she knelt down on the cold floor, her low voice joining with the Prince’s as they recited the Ave Maria together.

The festering body of the dog was still there, lying on the floor in front of the bed. Gagging, the Prince covered his mouth with his hand, although he couldn’t quite tear his gaze away from the sight. He took a step forward, but the sudden swarm of flies blocked his path and he gave up. There was nothing else to do except call in someone to fumigate the house. And get rid of the second corpse. Bloody police, he muttered to himself. They could at least have said they’d left the damned thing here…

It had been a difficult week. The phone-call at eight-thirty in the morning had not only woken him up, it had left him shaken and weeping. Although why he should have been crying was anyone’s guess. He certainly didn’t know. Relief, possibly. Or perhaps hysteria had made the tears rise up from somewhere deep inside him, almost choking him in their determination to finally be heard after so many years of suppression. But now he was here, there was no emotion left. Just the fly-ridden body of an elderly Alsatian in the room where a lonely, middle-aged woman had died.

Mother. Horrible word. It meant nothing to him, not any more. But that was the word the police officer had used that morning exactly six days ago.

The bitch. She’d ignored all his attempts at contact over the last eight years and had barely been communicative for three years before that. If one discounted the paranoid tirades of abuse, of course. But even they had stopped after his doomed last-ditch visit of reconciliation. And now he had to clear up the mess she’d left behind. In his own house, even.

God, I wish there was something to drink here, he sighed.

The house was filthy. A thick layer of dust covered all the furniture, rendering it impossible even to tell what colour some of the ornaments were. And as for the carpets… A ton of dog hair was lying over everything, changing the rich mauves and blues of the drawing room carpet into a dirty grayish-white mass of fur that stretched from the French windows in the dining room to the bedrooms themselves.

He contemplated sitting down at the dining-room table, but the chair was also covered in the same dust and dog hairs and he pulled away, unwilling to touch anything. But the shaking in his legs was growing stronger and he could almost feel his blood sugar levels falling. He staggered into the kitchen and carefully opened the cupboard under the sink, desperate not to have to touch any surface more than he had to. Thank you, God, he thought, as he saw the neat pile of towels, still in the same place they had always been. He pulled out a few and took them back into the dining room. Taking hold of the back of one of the chairs, he pulled it away from the table and covered the seat with a towel before sinking onto it in relief.

Now what the fuck do I do?

* * *

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Your Highness, but your mother has died in England. Her body was found a few days ago.”

His breath caught in his throat as he listened to the policeman’s voice droning on and on in Bulgarian. Interpol had been called by the coroner and it had taken them only four days to trace him to the tiny town on the Serbian border that had been his home now for thirteen years. And that despite it being a holiday weekend. But it was the news itself that was pulling him apart on the inside. The fact that she had died, alone except for her dog.

He switched off the mobile phone after politely thanking the officer for calling, his voice steady, the language flowing just as naturally as always. But the thoughts running through his head were in English, French, Italian… It was as though a thousand different voices were clamouring for attention.

The scribbled notes he’d made were almost unintelligible: certainly no-one else could have understood them. The name of the coroner was written half in Cyrillic, half in the Roman alphabet, while the number and the international dialing code seemed to take up half the page, the numerals slanting crazily, the occasional crossing out as he’d rectified the misheard numbers over the buzzing connection. He stared at the hieroglyphics as the tears stung his eyes and then painstakingly started to rewrite the information. A sound outside, though, made him rush to the door of the hotel room and yank it open.