The Torn Prince Read online

  Then he moved to the other side of the table to place a similar kiss on the smooth, cinnamon-rich cheek of the king’s second wife. “Mama Sapphire.”

  “Sit down, dear boy,” Queen Sapphire bade. “Will you have some scones? There’s the Devon clotted cream you love so much. Freshly arrived just this morning.”

  They knew his weakness, and it was pointless fighting any of these women. And when they were both in the same room? Absolutely futile to protest. So, he sat down and reached for a scone, slicing it, and loading it with thick clotted cream and the gooey strawberry preserve made by the palace chef.

  He had just taken a bite and was savouring the treat when the first salvo landed.

  “So, what has Bilkiss said?” his mother asked.

  The piece of scone in his mouth turned to dust. Well, not really, but all the delightful tastes just evaporated to be replaced by this sickening and unpalatable dryness of plaster. He knew what that tasted like courtesy of Zareb punching him right through a plaster-lined wall being renovated in the east wing when they’d been teens. Zediah had made his twin eat dirt in retaliation.

  But back to the here and now.

  Zediah forcefully chewed and tried to swallow, taking a big gulp of hot tea, and hoping it would wash away the sludge on his taste buds. The liquid burned the roof of his mouth, but it didn’t matter.

  “What do you mean?” he managed to throw out.

  Queen Zulekha waved a delicate hand in the air. “You were just on the phone with her.”

  And she knew this how? He shook his head. Didn’t matter; she knew, aka the end of it.

  “Is she ready to talk to the wedding planner? We were thinking a February wedding, what with Valentine’s Day and all,” his mother continued.

  “We could even schedule it for February fourteen,” Queen Sapphire quipped.

  This was going too far, way too fast. Again, the later that train decided to leave the station, the better. For him, and for Bilkiss, it seemed.

  “So, what does she think?”

  He focused on his mother and made sure to hide his wince. “She was thinking more along the lines of August.”

  Both queens blinked.

  “She wants a wedding in the next dry season?” Queen Zulekha asked.

  “But it’s ages away,” the other woman supplied.

  He just shrugged. “Well, it is her wedding.”

  “And yours,” his parent pointed out.

  He gulped. He really did not want to think of it. Maybe they could come to a compromise, he and Bilkiss. A marriage of convenience, in name only. He wouldn’t have any issue living like a monk. He had for the past eighteen months. After her—

  He stopped himself right there. He would not think of her. Not here. Not now. Not in this scenario.

  Because if he did, he would remember how she was the only woman who could make his blood boil, shake his lust from the dormant state. In his late teens, he’d worried, wondered why he just didn’t seem to be drawn to any woman. He’d even questioned if he could be attracted to other genders. But it had been the same kind of cold spell there, too.

  Until he’d seen her for the first time.

  “Zediah, I imagined you would be taking this more seriously,” his mother said. “What would your father …”

  The cunning queen left the words unsaid, something which stung him even more than if she’d actually said them. Oh, she knew how to play the guilt card. In fact, his whole family knew how to pull that one on him after what he’d done following his return from London.

  And speaking of London …

  “Mum, I need to be away for a few days.”

  Queen Zulekha frowned. “Whatever for? Did your brothers ask this of you? I didn’t know we needed to send an envoy to visit an ally.”

  And again, what she didn’t say was what smarted the most. Ally. They usually sent someone like him—inexperienced in politics and military strategy, and with ‘useless’ knowledge about music and its world—like a clown to a nation where he wouldn’t rock the boat in any way.

  To any place not an ally, he just wouldn’t cut it, would probably put his foot in his mouth. Embarrass them at best and jeopardise world peace at worst.

  They just didn’t ‘get’ him, did they? Frustration roared inside him, firing up his blood. They’d taken his music from him, chosen a wife for him—did they also need his dignity?

  “I need to head back to London,” he stated calmly.

  This calm control was one of his fortes—not that they’d know—how he could appear unfazed and unruffled outside while a storm, often a shitstorm, raged in him.

  “Whatever for?” his mother bit out with a disapproving frown. “I thought you’d put all this nonsense behind you, Zediah.” She shook her head. “We really shouldn’t have been so lenient with you. I see it now.”

  His eyes narrowed as he stared at her. But a soft nudge from a shoe against his foot under the table bade him to calm down. Of course, Mama Sapphire was there to smooth ruffled feathers. She’d always come through for him—he shouldn’t forget it. And Isha, his half-sister.

  “How long?” Queen Sapphire asked.

  “A few days,” he replied. “A week, at most.”

  His mother sighed. “If it’s to put your past to rest …”

  “It is,” he confirmed.

  She sighed. “Fine. Do let Zawadi know first, will you?”

  And just like that, his temper boiled over. He didn’t need a keeper, and he certainly did not need to have all his movements recorded by the Crown Prince and the stickler-for-rules known as Zareb.

  “Mum, just once …” He bit his tongue on the rest. First, one did not speak like so to their parent. Second, especially not to a queen.

  The teacup clattered so hard in its saucer, he feared the fragile china wouldn’t make it in one piece.

  “Music, Zediah? Is music so important to you? You’ve had your fun. Don’t forget you’re betrothed now!”

  And on and on it would go in a similar vein—he’d heard the same chorus before, carried loudly by his mother, his father, and his brothers.

  “I have a child!” he burst out.

  A stunned silence descended on the Winter Garden. Both women were staring at him with wide eyes and open mouths.

  Queen Sapphire blinked first. “Who …?”

  Damn it, he’d let the cat out of the bag now. No way could he retract. Yet, it was true he was going to London to retrieve his baby. Why did he have to hide this from his family? They would be this kid’s family, too.

  He gulped back and shrugged. “A woman I got involved with briefly before I left England.”

  No one important … Though who was he kidding but himself with the thought?

  “She has a child?” Mama Sapphire continued. “And it’s yours?”

  He shrugged again. “I believe so, yes. Though I’m not sure yet.”

  Officially, that is. His everything already knew.

  “My first grandchild,” his mother whispered so softly, he thought he’d imagined it.

  “Indeed,” Queen Sapphire concurred.

  But more than the words, it was the awe in them that gripped his heart in a vise and refused to let go. His two mums would love this child to bits. His sisters would spoil the kid rotten. And the king … His father might finally be proud of him, even though he’d not gone about the proper way to bring a baby into their world.

  “Is it a boy or a girl?” his mother asked softly again. Gone was the bristly political strategist, replaced by a doting grandmother in the blink of an eye.

  “I don’t know yet,” he admitted.

  She nodded. “You’ll bring him or her home?”

  His turn to nod. “Yes, Mum.”

  Because this was where his child belonged, with its family. Not to tout his own horn, but he was a royal prince, which did have its perks sometimes. His child would grow in a palace, with the best upbringing money could afford, a chance to see the world, to be someone.

&nb
sp; Rio … For the first time in seventeen months, three weeks, four days, and give-or-take nine hours, he allowed himself to recall her name. Riona. His Rio.

  She would want the best for her child, wouldn’t she?

  Now to make her see he was the best thing for their baby, for all the opportunities he could grant the kid, which she probably couldn’t. He would never fail to acknowledge she had a mother’s love for their son or daughter. Surely, she, too, would come to see Zediah could give their baby the finest future one could afford in today’s world.

  Chapter Two

  Riona ‘Rio’ Mittal sighed as the phone rang yet again that Sunday. Her mother, of course.

  Maybe she could ignore it for just this afternoon. With a tug, she pulled the front door of her Clabon Mews freehold house in Knightsbridge so it would close with a soft thump. Next, she slammed her other foot on the brake of the pram and stopped it in the entryway.

  Coat off and scarf unwound, she then divested her son of the many extra layers on him before picking the baby up and placing him on her hip.

  Why did it seem to be getting much colder so soon this year? She’d never had to be in many clothes in November. But things just seemed to come in way faster nowadays.

  Case in point, all the Christmas decorations that had already made their shiny and blinking appearance. All they needed was Mariah Carey to start blaring from the speakers inside the department stores. Come the actual Christmas, everyone would be sick and tired of the music and screaming in their heads to have it turned off.

  In her arms, the baby gurgled, then burped, the accompanying spit-up drooling all over her shoulder. A groan escaped her. Thank goodness she’d already removed her cashmere coat. The thermal top could go in the laundry, like the entire collection that made it through the delicate cycle every three days, it seemed.

  “Nour, baby,” she cooed to her son. “Can we please stop with the spit-ups? Pretty please, sweetheart?”

  Nour just watched her with his big doe eyes, then threw his head back and laughed.

  Okay, so he would not cooperate. What had she expected? He was a mini-bloke already. She sighed. But she loved him to bits, though, and he had her heart—she would thus probably forgive him just about anything.

  Yet, by the same criterion, someone else had owned her heart once—no, twice—yet she hadn’t forgiven them, had she?

  Shaking her head, she forced herself to leave those dodgy thoughts behind and focus on her main reason for living now, aka her son.

  Rio shuffled farther into the house, her socked feet sliding on the wood floors in the main reception space making up the best part of the open-plan ground floor, on her way to the stairs at the far end. She paused near the kitchen island as a blond head emerged from the staircase leading to the lower ground level and basement.

  “You’re still here?” she asked Oksana, her live-in nanny. “I thought you had a date today.”

  The pretty Russian girl smiled and shrugged. “Not for another hour. I just need to hop on the Piccadilly line, and I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  Rio nodded. “And who is it this time? The environmental protection start-up bloke, right?”

  Oksana shook her head and laughed softly. “You keep better track of my dates than I do!”

  “Living vicariously through you, love. So, I got it right?”

  “Yep.”

  She frowned at the young woman. “You don’t sound too convinced.”

  Oksana shrugged again. “I don’t know. I just keep going to dates that are absolute busts every time.”

  Nour started fidgeting in her arms, and she switched him to the other hip, where he promptly ducked his head into her neck and started gnawing on her hair. Oksana quickly reached over and pulled Rio’s long locks to her other shoulder where the baby wouldn’t be able to get them.

  Rio started bouncing the child to stave off a teary episode. Nour did not like having his toy of the moment taken from him.

  “It’s only your … eighth date, innit?” she asked.

  “Feels more like eight-hundredth,” the blonde replied with a sigh.

  Rio chuckled. “Come on. He could be ‘the one’ this time.”

  Her phone rang again, the Bollywood ringtone assigned to her mother.

  Oksana frowned. “It’s your mum.”

  “I know.” She huffed.

  “If you need to go see her, I can take care of Nour here.”

  Rio narrowed her eyes at her. “No, you don’t. Sunday is your one day off, and you have a date. Plus, you’re …”

  She was going to say, ‘you’re all decked out,’ but it was apparent Oksana hadn’t tried. Though she didn’t need to, to be honest. Who needed to make an effort when they were twenty-three, and the world was at their feet? Though less than a decade older, Rio had long lost those rose-coloured glasses. And she needed to make an effort daily.

  Not really rejoicing. Her spirits sank. The ringtone cut, only to pick up four seconds later as the song started back again. Great. She would have to answer this and then pander to whatever puerile request her mother would be sure to voice out from the western end of London in Southall.

  Oksana was already reaching for Nour, but Rio swerved in the opposite direction. She would not take the chance of the nanny getting vomit on her pretty Topshop dress and then bail out of her electronically arranged date.

  “Off you go,” she intoned.

  Oksana groaned but gave her a smile and dropped a kiss on Nour’s cheek. The baby took the opportunity to lunge forward, his mouth coming into close contact with his mother’s hair that he promptly started to chew on again.

  Rio winced at the pain when chubby fists wrapped into the locks to tug hard. Still grimacing, she followed Oksana to the entrance hallway, making sure the girl put on her coat and scarf.

  “Don’t forget gloves.”

  Oksana rolled her eyes. “I’m from Russia, Rio. This is almost spring weather for us.”

  Did this mean, given how both her parents were originally from hotter lands—her father from India, her mother from Mauritius—she had become averse to the slightest hint of cold?

  “Still,” she muttered. “And be nice! Give him a chance this time. He could be—”

  “The one. I know.” This earned her an eye roll.

  “Okay, shoo.”

  She smiled as the younger woman left the house and started in the direction of the Knightsbridge underground station. Closing the door, she hopped back inside, just as her phone started ringing again.

  “Yes, Ma,” she answered.

  “Ene bonzour nanié pa gagné ar toi aster!”

  “Good morning, Ma.”

  She sighed. She should’ve seen the reprimand coming—her mother was a stickler for propriety, which implied a suitable greeting every time. Another sigh tried to escape. Her mother had used Creole, and that bade nothing good. There went her quiet afternoon putting Nour down for a nap and then catching up with whatever Villanelle was up to in the latest season of Killing Eve.

  Thankfully, her mother switched to her heavily-accented English, which sounded like a French person trying to pass for British, but failing miserably yet having no clue.

  “There’s a problem with the seating plan.”

  Rio groaned softly inside. Of course, there would be.

  She was essentially a millionaire now, thanks to the divorce. So, whatever it was, they would need her to swoop in with her chequebook and smooth it all out with a few hundred—or thousand—pounds.

  “What happened?” she asked, taking the stairs up to the first floor where the nursery was located. Baby balanced on her left hip and phone cradled to her right ear with her shoulder, she’d pay for the contortion later.

  Her feet left the Turkish runner on the staircase to plunge into the soft carpet on the first-floor landing. She reached the playmat in the corner of the largest bedroom, lowered the baby, and retrieved the phone in her grip. Yep, her neck was killing her already.

  “You h
ave to come, Rio beti.”

  Okay, so not only did her mother sound hysterical, but she’d also buttered her up with this little endearment that meant ‘darling daughter’ in Hindi.

  There would be no way out. Not with her mother. Never with her. Best she buckled up and met it all head-on like she always did.

  “Give me one hour.”

  Sighing, she cut the call, relieved and slightly worried her mother had not protested at all and urged her to get there quicker. Whatever brewed must be significant.

  Sixty minutes would give her just enough time to take a shower, change, and feed Nour a snack as it would take a little more than half an hour to get from Knightsbridge to Southall by car.

  Indeed, an hour later, she parked her Range Rover Evoque in front of her family’s restaurant in Southall.

  Her grandfather, who’d arrived here in the early 1950s, had nabbed a property right on The Broadway, which had ended up becoming the main thoroughfare and foodie street of the area.

  Exiting the vehicle, she averted her gaze, avoiding the blinding glare of sunlight on the chunky gold necklaces displayed in the window of the Indian jewellery store next door. Walking to the other side, she grabbed Nour from his car seat.

  No point bothering with a stroller here as there would be half a dozen pair of arms, at least, to take the baby from her the minute she stepped foot inside.

  With a few long strides to cross the pavement, which always struck her as extra-wide, she strolled into the dimly lit interior of The Jolly Maharajah. ‘The Jolly Rajah’ had already been taken by another family who’d opened their eatery a few streets down. Yet, her family had considered it their good fortune that the other place had gone bust a couple of years later.

  “Sat Sri Akal,” she greeted as she passed through towards the back and met the mostly Sikh workforce of the restaurant. A few ‘Namaste’ made their way in, as well as a single “Assalam Aleikum” to the lone Muslim employee—a Pakistani chef—in the kitchen. They opened for dinner on Sundays, only from five o’clock onwards, hence the deserted front eatery at this time of the afternoon.

  Holding the baby tight, she started up the steep staircase leading to the family home in the two storeys above the ground floor.