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Without taking his eyes off her Akil pulled out his phone and dictated a quick message.
Arrosa, I’m at your house with Clem, let me know everything’s all right.
He put his phone down. ‘Okay, that’s why you’re here. But I still don’t know who you are, or that I can trust you.’
‘Arrosa trusts me, shouldn’t that be enough?’
‘It would be if you didn’t know more about my personal business than I’m comfortable with.’ He sat back and folded his arms. ‘I’ll tell you what I do know. Number one, you resemble Arrosa so closely you have to be a near relative, number two, she’s never mentioned you but you clearly know a lot about her life, number three, you’re not Asturian, you speak the language well but there’s a hint of an accent. Not French, not Spanish. If I had to bet I’d say English. So why is an English girl in Asturia pretending to be the Crown Princess?’
‘I’m an actress.’
‘So this is a job? All above board? Signed off by the King?’
‘It’s more of a private arrangement.’
‘Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t alert the guards to your presence here.’ He didn’t take his eyes off her and she knew he wasn’t bluffing.
‘Because I’m her half-sister,’ she said. ‘The family secret. And no one in Asturia is supposed to know I exist. Happy now?’
Whathad she just said? It took more than a few seconds for Akil’s brain to process the words he’d just heard.
‘You’re Arrosa’s half-sister?’ He knew that the King and Queen lived largely separate lives, but he’d never heard rumours of any affairs—and certainly none of any other children. But Clem’s resemblance to Arrosa was startling, sisters made perfect sense. How had this scandal been hushed up for so long in this small country? Who else knew?
Clem nodded. ‘I’m six months older than Rosy. Look, my existence is only known to a very, very few people.’ She looked across at him pleadingly. ‘Please don’t tell anyone. If the truth got out it would hurt Rosy more than me. Any family scandal might rebound on her even though she’s obviously not responsible for anything apart from treating me as much like a sister as possible. The next few months are key, you know that. Maybe I shouldn’t have come to Asturia, maybe it was too risky, but Rosy lives such a quiet life outside her duties I didn’t think anyone would find out if I stuck to her villa and slipped out to explore incognito. Shows how much I know. I managed less than twenty-four hours here before you found me.’
Akil sat back and sipped his coffee, his mind racing. Clem had a point—more than one. If news of her very existence got out then the ensuing scandal would overshadow the new hereditary law, and possibly disrupt the ratification. Change came slowly to Asturia and a consensus was still very much in the balance, as was public opinion, especially amongst the older generations. But Clem was also right about Arrosa’s need for time away. She’d looked increasingly pale and thin over the last few months and Akil knew her offer to him came from a need for companionship and help, not from any deeper feelings. Some time away was exactly what she needed—and if he hadn’t turned up unexpectedly then who was to say that the ruse wouldn’t have worked the way the sisters had planned it?
‘I won’t say a word,’ he promised. ‘But how is this even possible? You’re six months older than Arrosa, you say, which must mean Zorien is your father? Who’s your mother?’ It was unlike Akil to be so overtly curious but he was intrigued beyond politeness by this secret at the very heart of the court.
Clem flushed, her eyes fixed on her cup. ‘One thing you need to know is that this isn’t easy for me. I have never told anyone who I am, not even my old boyfriends, or my best friend. Anyone from home who has met Rosy thinks she’s my cousin. Just saying the truth aloud feels like I’ve broken some law.’
‘You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,’ Akil assured her and her answering smile was grateful.
‘I know. But in a strange way, I do want to tell you. It’s probably better that you know the whole truth rather than leaving you with just bits of it. I would hate for you to think badly of my mother, or even my father. He’s not exactly been there for me, but I do understand how difficult things were for him and he has ensured that Rosy and I know each other. I will always be grateful to him for that.’
Akil did some rapid mental calculations. ‘Arrosa was born a year after Zorien and Iara married—so you would have been conceived three months before?’
Clem nodded. ‘What you have to remember is that Zorien’s marriage was brought forward after his father’s illness meant he decided to abdicate in favour of his son. There had been an informal agreement between the families that Zorien and Iara would marry but they weren’t technically engaged when Zorien dated my mother. It’s a bit of a technicality because the marriage was very much in the pipeline, but my father wasn’t a total cad. A bit of one but not atotalcad.’ Her voice rang with sincerity. It was obviously important to her that Akil believed this—that she believed it.
Akil had never really thought about the King’s marriage before, or how it had come to be. But this was Asturian politics, nothing happened without planning for the long game, his own parents’ disastrous marriage aside. ‘Queen Iara comes from an old and wealthy aristocratic family with links to European royalty on both sides. I believe it was a popular marriage among the people and politically sound,’ he remembered. ‘And for the most part it seems to have worked well; apart from her propensity to take long retreats abroad, she’s a good queen. Not loved, exactly, but respected.’
‘From what I’ve gleaned they live mostly separate lives but put on a united front. Neither had any romantic fantasies about the marriage. Iara’s family wanted her to be Queen and she liked the idea. Zorien knew his position as a young king would be stabilised by a good marriage. After the plans were agreed, but before they got engaged, Zorien was allowed to go to the Sorbonne for a year’s MBA as reward. He enrolled anonymously and that’s where he met my mother. They fell in love. At least, my mother told me it was love.’ Her voice softened, became wistful. ‘He told her the truth when his father’s declining health meant the court decided to bring the engagement forward, followed by a wedding just six weeks later. What neither of them knew when they parted was that she was pregnant with me. By the time she found out the wedding was less than a month away and the abdication planned. A different man might have broken off the engagement and married my mother despite the court’s objections and weathered the scandal, or even walked away from the throne altogether, but Zorien decided to put Asturia first, go ahead with the wedding and make sure no one knew about my mother or about me.’
‘That must have been difficult for your mother.’ And for the daughter, which made her presence here today rather remarkable. Madeherrather remarkable. Strong, forgiving, compassionate.
Beautiful.
Desirable.
The realisation made him catch his breath. Yes, she resembled her sister, but she was very much her own person; there was a piquancy to her features that differentiated her, made her unique. Made her desirable in a way Arrosa wasn’t. Not that Akil had any right to dwell on either her beauty or her desirability.
Clem’s mouth twisted into a wry smile. ‘My mother was a doer not a dweller.’ Akil noted thewasand the way she blinked sudden tears away at the word. ‘She moved to England where I was born, fell in love with Cornwall and retrained as a teacher, although Zorien was very generous, money-wise at least. She never married, never really dated seriously as far as I know although she had plenty of suitors. Instead she threw herself into campaigns and causes, never happier than when she was directing the village play or organising a march or painting a placard. To be honest I’m not sure being a queen would have agreed with her. She liked to say exactly what was on her mind, to take action. Diplomacy wasn’t really her thing.’
‘How did you and Arrosa get to know each other?’
‘Apparently Zorien told Iara about my mother and the pregnancy before they married. When it started to seem likely that Arrosa was going to be their only child she agreed that we should be allowed to meet. In the end Rosy used to come to us, incognito of course, for most holidays and nearly all of the summer. She loved the chance to do normal things. To go surfing or bowling, to eat chips on the beach. To get dirty and have tangled hair and old clothes. We had amazing summers. We don’t get to spend time together now but we speak weekly. She’s my sister, my closest friend. I love her and her happiness matters.’ Her gaze was direct. ‘So I am glad you and I got the chance to meet. To talk.’
Her meaning was clear. ‘She told you about her proposition?’
