AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“That’s right. So you see, the law has its uses.”
She frowned, considering. “There must be any number of ways around it. You could marry someone in time to keep your inheritance, and then divorce her as soon as your thirty-third birthday has passed.”
He nuzzled her neck. “Already planning how you’ll get rid of me, eh?”
She laughed, and caught his face and kissed him, hard, on the mouth. “Never. But you know what I’m saying, right?”
“We are Catholic. The heir to the throne always marries in the church. Divorce is not an option in the church. There is annulment, but there are specific grounds for that, none of them pretty. And you have to understand. In my family, we are raised to respect the Prince’s Marriage Law. We believe it is a good law, good for Montedoro—especially after we saw what happened when my great-great-grandfather abolished it. And we grow up committed to the spirit of that law, to finding a proper marriage partner by the required date. My parents were good parents, parents who spent time with their children, what you would call in America ‘hands-on’ parents. My mother considers each of her nine children to be every bit as important as her throne.”
“Well, all right,” she said. “I guess I can’t argue with success. But I do have a couple more questions.”
“Ask.”
“Do we have to marry in the church in order for you to keep your inheritance?”
“No. The heir must marry in the church. The rest of us are only required to be legally wed before the age of thirty-three. But, should I become the heir—which is most unlikely at this point—you and I would have to take steps for a church-sanctioned marriage. That would not be complicated, as neither of us has been married before.”
“Do you want us to be married in the church?”
He kissed the tip of her nose. “I do, yes.”
“Good answer.” She slid her hands up his chest and wrapped them around his neck. “I want that, too.”
“Then we shall take the necessary steps to make it happen as soon as we’re settled in Montedoro.”
“Agreed. I think we should seal it with a kiss.”
“Beyond a doubt, we should.”
So they kissed. A long, slow one. The kiss led to more kisses and then to the usual stimulating conclusion.
Rule told her again to go sleep.
She said, “Soon.”
And then they talked for another hour about everything from the success of his plan to sell Montedoran oranges to a number of exclusive outlets in the U.S., to why his brother Alex and Princess Lili had never gotten along. Alex, Rule said, had always thought Lili was silly and shallow; Lili considered Alex to be overly brooding and grim, with a definite tendency toward overbearing self-importance.
Sydney learned that his brother Max’s son was named Nicholas and Max’s little girl was Constance. And Rule told her that in his great-grandfather’s day, the economy of Montedoro was almost solely dependent on gambling revenues. His grandfather and his mother had made a point to expand the principality’s economic interests beyond its traditional gambling base.
“Now,” he said, “gambling accounts for only four percent of our nation’s annual revenues.”
She reminded him that he knew all about Ryan and Peter. But other than Liliana, she knew nothing of the women who had mattered in his life.
“You already know that I admire my mother,” he said with a gleam in his eye.
“Your mother and your sisters don’t count. I’m talking love affairs, Rule. You know that I am.”
So he told her about the Greek heiress he’d loved when he was fourteen. “She had an absolutely adorable space between her two front teeth and she spoke with a slight lisp and she intended to run away to America and become a musical theater star.”
“Did she?”
“Unfortunately, she was tone deaf. I heard her sing once. Once was enough.”
“Destroyed your undying love for her, did it?”
“I was young and easily distracted. Especially when it came to love.” He spoke of the girl he’d met in a Paris café when he was eighteen. And of an Irish girl he’d met in London. “Black hair, blue eyes. And a temper. A hot one. At first, I found her temper exciting. But in time it grew tiresome.”
“Luckily there were any number of actresses and models just waiting for their chance with you.”
