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She kept his royal heir a secret...
Now he’ll make her his reluctant queen!
Prince Casimir of Byzenmaach can’t shake the memory of Anastasia Douglas. With her, he forgot his royal duties for a moment of wild abandon. Seven years later, he must wed—but seeking out the unforgettable Anastasia, he discovers a secret: she gave birth to his daughter! And he’ll stop at nothing to claim them both...
KELLY HUNTER has always had a weakness for fairy tales, fantasy worlds and losing herself in a good book. She has two children, avoids cooking and cleaning and, despite the best efforts of her family, is no sports fan. Kelly is, however, a keen gardener, and has a fondness for roses. Kelly was born in Australia and has travelled extensively. Although she enjoys living and working in different parts of the world, she still calls Australia home.
Also by Kelly Hunter
Claimed by a King miniseries
Shock Heir for the Crown Prince
And look out for the next book
Convenient Bride for the King Available March 2018
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk
Shock Heir for the Crown Prince
Kelly Hunter
www.millsandboon.co.uk
ISBN: 978-1-474-07176-5
SHOCK HEIR FOR THE CROWN PRINCE
© 2018 Kelly Hunter
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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Version: 2020-03-02
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Contents
Cover
Back Cover Text
About the Author
Booklist
Title Page
Copyright
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EPILOGUE
Extract
PROLOGUE
CASIMIR, CROWN PRINCE OF BYZENMAACH, woke with a woman on his mind and an ache in his loins. He rolled onto his back, and let out a groan when the heavy cotton sheet rubbed against him in just the right way to make his hips move again, and then again. Not this again. Not her again—it was the third time this week.
He wasn’t impressed.
It took longer than usual to shove those wayward memories of lovemaking aside and roll out of bed. Naked, he padded across age-old silk carpets towards the door that led to the parapet that led to the bathhouse—a domed white marble indulgence that would have found favour with the gladiators of Rome.
Cool air hit his skin the minute he opened the huge double doors, and if he hadn’t been fully awake before, he was now. Summer was in full swing in Byzenmaach but here in the snow-capped northern mountains the mornings still held the edge of winter on them and always would. He suffered it because he liked the cool lick of ice on his skin and because it made that moment when he entered the hot pool that much sweeter.
Nothing could ease the tension in his body and clear his mind faster than spending five minutes beneath the pounding man-made waterfall at the far edge of the hot pool and then another five immersed in the still and silent water at the other end of it. Access to the bathhouse was one of the main reasons he’d made Byzenmaach’s remote winter fortress his permanent home.
Hedonist. He’d never deny the label. Pleasure-seeking was an integral part of his nature.
It wasn’t all he was.
The woman on his mind—Ana—had been a mistake, a youthful indiscretion, a hedonistic folly, and every so often she haunted him. She’d been a student of languages, living in Geneva. He’d been on his way home from delegate talks and bored. The bar where they’d first met had been called the Barrel and Fawn.
Who remembered details like that seven years after the encounter?
The walkway to the bathhouse was open to the air on one side, courtesy of a waist-high stone wall and colonnade arches. The view that greeted him stretched out over the valley below and still managed to impress, no matter how many times he saw it. Once winter hit he’d take the long way round through the palace, but until then he’d enjoy the caress of cool mountain air on his skin. Perhaps it would cool his morning ardour.
It didn’t.
Why was it that seven years after the affair, Anastasia Douglas was still his go-to memory when his body sought release?
Why did he remember the way she took her morning coffee when he had hundreds, if not thousands, of more important memories to recall?
Double shot, black, with one sugar, and hot enough to burn.
Her hair, a tousled black cloud that framed exquisite bone structure as she purred her contentment and blew on the steaming black liquid to cool it before setting it to her lips.
He hadn’t been the only hedonist in their short-lived relationship. The things she could do with her mouth...
He shivered and it wasn’t just because of the cool dawn air.
There’d been something in the air, in the water, on the night he’d met her. Something that had him acting with greater than usual abandon. He’d made the first move, used every bit of charm in his arsenal, and before the night was through they’d ended up naked in her tiny student apartment on the outskirts of the city. He’d stayed the night and instead of leaving the next morning he’d stayed four more nights, turning his back on everything but her. Learning her. Loving her. Ramming into her life and meeting no resistance.
He’d monopolised her nights and infiltrated her days.
They’d lain on the grass in a tiny gated park with his face to the sun and Ana’s head on his hip as she read Russian poetry to him in flawless Russian and then again in English. She’d been equally fluent in both languages, or so she’d said—courtesy of her Russian mother and English father—but the results of her translations had been confusing.
Russian poetry was never meant to be read in English, she’d said, which had begged the question as to why she was attempting the impossible in the first place.
She wanted to be an interpreter, she’d said. Maybe for the European Parliament, maybe for the United Nations Secretariat, and to do that she had to be the best of the best. She was practising.
She’d shared her goals and ambitions, her body and her home.
He’d shared next to nothing.
She hadn’t known she was talking to the Crown Prince of Byzenmaach, with his impeccable lineage, private planes and castles carved into the side of mountains.
He hadn’t told her he was Casimir, dutiful son and heir to the throne, student of politics since he was old enough to stand at his father’s knee and listen.
For four days and five nights he hadn’t been Casimir, with his dead mother and sister, an ailing father and responsibilities he hadn’t been ready for. She’d called him Cas, just Cas, and the freedom to be Just Cas had been liberating.
Maybe that was why he kept remembering Anastasia Douglas every so often. Her breathy cries and the softness of her skin, the way she’d wrapped around him...maybe he equated her with freedom, or the illusion of freedom. Maybe his longing to choose his own path sat in his subconscious like a burr, never mind that he’d come to terms with his royal responsibilities long ago.
The waters of the bath glinted deep blue and silver in the weak light of morning. Steam spiralled towards the high domed ceiling, and the caress of water on his feet as he took that first step down into the pool made him groan his pleasure.
He liked that the water temperature was almost too hot to bear.
Same way Ana had liked her coffee.
He took another step into the pool and then another, the water now lapping at his thighs, his erection in no way deflated by the sensory experience of cold air followed by the lick of hot water.
Soon he would propose to Princess Moriana from the neighbouring monarchy of Arun. Moriana was smart, educated, well versed in affairs of state and extremely well connected. It wasn’t a love match but he wouldn’t regret the union. Moriana would be good for him and for Byzenmaach. He knew this.
Moriana, not Anastasia.
He tried to turn his thoughts towards his intended, but it was no use. Ana won.
Ana always won.
Turning on his heel, he stepped back out of the pool and headed for the shower, half hidden in the marble recesses beside the far door. He turned the taps, adjusted the heat and let fat water droplets fall to the floor before stepping beneath them. He reached for the body oil rather than the soap and took himself in hand.
Maybe he should find out what Anastasia Douglas was doing these days as a way of getting her out of his head. Maybe she’d be married now and wildly content with her husband and two point three children. Unavailable, unobtainable. No longer the woman who’d loved Cas, just Cas, and wished him happiness.
New memories, lesser ones, to replace the memories that haunted him still. Ana, sated and smiling, all long limbs, alabaster skin and silky black hair that a man could lose his fist in. Ana on her knees for him while he muttered words like please and more on more than one occasion. Ana, with her open sensuality that had ignited his.
No pressure, no reputation to uphold, no expectations and no demands. Pleasure for pleasure’s sake. Quick, clever hands and lips that dragged in all the right places. Tumbling words of fire and passion that his soul understood, even if the actual words had been a mystery to him.
Surely, in his mind, if nowhere else, he could have this.
Closing his eyes and turning his face upwards into the water, he let the memories come.
CHAPTER ONE
‘YOUR HIGHNESS, A moment of your time.’
Casimir looked up from the papers on his desk and nodded for Rudolpho to enter. The king’s chief advisor looked more careworn than usual but that was only to be expected given that his king, Casimir’s father, was dying. Loyal to a fault, Rudolpho had found the transfer of power from Leonidas to Casimir an unpalatable process. Crown Prince or not, Rudolpho was first and foremost the king’s man.
And he didn’t always like the changes Casimir was insisting on.
Soon Casimir would have to leave his winter fortress and take up permanent residence in the palace in the capital. Soon he would no longer have to bear witness to his father’s relentless march towards death. He and his father weren’t close. A big part of him loathed the man, and always would. Another part pitied him. And then there was a tiny sliver of Casimir’s soul that craved the man’s approval.
It wasn’t like Rudolpho to hang back in doorways, but the older man still hadn’t entered the room and his stance was stiffer than usual. Something was amiss. ‘What news of my father?’ he asked.
‘Your father had a comfortable evening. Morphine helps. He’s sleeping now.’ Rudolpho approached the desk, his gaze roving over the neat stacks of paperwork to either side of Casimir’s laptop. ‘You need to delegate some of this workload.’
‘I intend to. Just as soon as I understand exactly what it is I’m delegating.’ Some of these duties were new to him. Not many, but some, and Casimir was nothing if not thorough. ‘I thought you left the palace hours ago.’ Casimir let his raised eyebrow ask the obvious question.
If the king was resting comfortably and Rudolpho had a rare evening off, what was he doing here?
Rudolpho set a yellow courier’s envelope on the desk as if he couldn’t wait for it to leave his hand. ‘The report you ordered on Anastasia Douglas came in. I took the liberty of opening it.’
‘You open everything.’ Nothing unusual about that.
‘Not every report I glance through threatens my ability to breathe. Did you know?’
The older man’s voice had taken on a hard, precise edge, with an undertone of something Casimir couldn’t quite place. Fear? Despair? Maybe it was disappointment. ‘Know what?’
‘I’ll be in my office,’ Rudolpho said, and stalked away, his spine one ramrod line of displeasure.
Disappointment it was. Casimir eyed the offending envelope with deep suspicion before reaching for it.
New memories to replace the old, he reminded himself grimly. Closure, rather than curiosity. Nothing to worry about. He’d asked for this.
So why did his hand tremble ever so slightly as he reached in and withdrew the contents of the envelope?
There were photos, lots of photos, and the topmost image was a close-up of Ana’s face. A heart-shaped face, wide of brow and pointy of chin, with eyes to drown in and lips that promised heaven. Strong, shapely eyebrows and lashes, thick and black, made the cerulean blue of her eyes all the more arresting. In this picture her hair had been scraped back into a careless ponytail. In the next photo it framed her face in sultry waves that curled around her neck and shoulders. It was a face to stop a man’s breath. Casimir put a hand to his face and rubbed hard before turning to the next photograph.
So she’d grown into her beauty. No surprises there.
The next shot was a full-body take of Ana walking up a set of wide outdoor steps—rushing up them most likely, because her body was a study in motion. Slender legs and rounded curves and, again, that loose mane of ebony hair. She wore a dark grey corporate skirt and jacket and had a black satchel slung over her left shoulder. Two more photos showed similar variations on a corporate theme.
The next photo showed her in jeans and a pink short-sleeved T-shirt, standing outside school gates with a young schoolgirl by her side. The photographer had caught them from the rear, as Ana adjusted the shoulder strap of the girl’s backpack. So she was a mother now—good for her. Hopefully she had a husband to love and a solid family life. Casimir looked to her hand to see if she wore a wedding ring but the photo didn’t allow for that level of detail.
The next shot was a formal school photo of the child.
At which point the world as Casimir knew it simply stopped.
There was no sound. No air.
Grey threatened the edges of his sight.
No.
Yes.
Casimir had had a sister once. For seven years he’d had a sister three years younger than he was. And then the rebels to the north had taken her and when his father hadn’t agreed to their demands they’d killed her and sent back pieces to prove it.
His mother had never recovered. She’d taken her own life a year later to the day, leaving her husband and her son to carry on alone.
They didn’t talk about it, Cas and his father. They never had and probably never would. Therapists had been out of the question—too much potential for exploitation to ever let someone inside the young Prince of Byzenmaach’s head, so Cas had survived as best he could.
The pictures of his mother and sister remained prominent in the palace—a permanent reminder of failure, loss and grief. One of the first things he’d do as king would be to remove them to a rarely used dining room and shut the door on them.
Such a small and petty command for a new monarch to give.
He couldn’t look away from the picture of the girl. The cloud of unruly black hair, the cowlick at the child’s temple, the aristocratic blade of her nose.
Those eyes.
He put his hands to his own eyes and rubbed, but the picture was still there.
There would be no getting rid of this.
More pictures followed and each one brought with it a barrage of conflicting emotions because from a distance the kid could be any young girl, but up close...up close, and especially around the eyes—the hawkish, tawny-gold colour of her eyes...
The photo of her twirling in the garden, arms outstretched as if to catch the dust motes in the air...
Heaven help him, he was ten years old again, only this time he hadn’t left his sister alone in the garden to go and get a jar to catch the praying mantis in, and when he came back she hadn’t been gone.
Taken.
Kidnapped.
And never coming back.
Weakness didn’t sit well on him but he’d rather cut his own eyes out than look at another photo of Anastasia Douglas’s daughter. Cas closed his eyes and concentrated on the formerly simple act of breathing.
The clink of glasses and a bottle thudding down on the table prevented him from doing either. Rudolpho was back, and with him a glass and a bottle of Royal Vault brandy. Age spots and veins stood out on the older man’s hands as he poured generously and pushed the glass into Casimir’s hand.
‘I don’t know the royal protocol for this,’ Rudolpho said gruffly. ‘But drink. You’re white.’
‘She’s... It’s...’ Cas took a steadying breath. ‘It’s not her.’
‘No. It’s not her,’ Rudolpho said evenly. ‘But the likeness is uncanny. How far did you get?’
Wordlessly, Casimir picked up the photo of the child in the garden. Rudolpho winced.
‘Summarise,’ Casimir said.
Rudolpho sighed and stared momentarily at the brandy. Casimir gestured for him to have one and succeeded only in offending the man. Rudolpho was a product of an earlier era and would no more sit and drink with Casimir, Crown Prince, than fly. It wasn’t done. It breached a thousand protocols. ‘The child is six years old and has a British birth certificate, courtesy of her being born at the Portland Hospital in London and her mother’s chosen nationality.’
Now it was Casimir’s turn to wince at the thought of a child of Byzenmaach claiming a foreign nationality.
‘The mother is Anastasia Victoria Douglas,’ Rudolpho continued. ‘Twenty-six years of age. Marital status: single. Occupation: interpreter for the European Parliament and the United Nations Secretariat. Currently residing in Geneva, where most of her work is.’
‘And the father?’ He had to ask. He already knew.
‘Father unknown.’
So.
Casimir, future king of Byzenmaach, had an illegitimate six-year-old daughter. A daughter who was the spitting image of his long-dead sister.
‘Your name isn’t on the birth certificate,’ Rudolpho pointed out quietly. ‘Maybe the child’s not yours. Maybe Anastasia Douglas doesn’t know who the father is.’
Cas silently rifled through the photos for the headshot of the girl in school uniform and held it up.
Rudolpho could barely bring himself to glance at it. ‘Maybe the mother has a weakness for amber-eyed men. My point being that the girl’s mother hasn’t contacted you in seven years. She hasn’t asked you for anything, least of all acknowledgement. She provides amply for the child. The girl has a roof over her head, good schooling, loving grandparents. The child is intelligent. She won’t lack for life choices.’
‘Are you suggesting I don’t acknowledge her?’
Rudolpho stayed silent.
‘That’s your counsel?’
‘Or you could bring her here,’ Rudolpho said finally. ‘And do your best to protect her.’
Temper soared. ‘You think I can’t?’ Never mind that Casimir had been the one to leave his sister unprotected in the first place. ‘You think I’m like him?’
‘I think...’ Rudolpho paused, as if choosing his words carefully. ‘I think this innocent bastard child looks like your sister reincarnated. She’d be a target for your enemies from the outset. Front page fodder for the press.’
Silence fell again, the deeply unsettling kind.
‘This stays between us for now,’ Casimir said finally.
Rudolpho met his gaze. ‘It can stay between us for ever, if that is your wish.’
Could he do it? Casimir glanced at the pictures strewn across his desk. Could he really shut her out the way he’d shut out all memory of his seven-year-old sister and too-weak-for-this-world mother? Pack all the pictures away and never look back?
Could he really continue on as if the girl simply didn’t exist?
The child was his blood. His responsibility. His to protect. ‘What’s her name?’ he asked gruffly.
‘Your Highness, the less you know the easier it’ll be to—
‘What’s her name?’
‘Sophia.’ Rudolpho sounded defeated. ‘Sophia Alexandra Douglas.’
A fitting name for the daughter of a king.
Had she known? Had Anastasia Douglas known who she was getting in bed with?
‘Your Highness—’
‘Enough!’ Whatever it was, he didn’t want to hear it.
‘Your Highness, please. Sleep on this. Think carefully before you expose the child to Byzenmaach, because there’s no coming back from that. They’ll take her and shape her into whatever they most desire, and you’ll have to protect her from that too.’
‘The way my father never did for me?’ Casimir asked, silky-soft and deadly.
Rudolpho remained silent. Never would he speak ill of the king he’d served for over forty years.
‘Are you asking if I can accept this child as a person in her own right—with strengths and flaws of her own making? Can I protect her from the expectations of others? Do I know how to be a father to a child who carries the expectations of a nation on her shoulders? Is that your concern?’