Royally Romanced Read Free

Portuguese countryside, it had taken several minutes to explain the situation.
    “Yes, she’s engaged.” It was getting somewhat easier to say the words aloud. Giorgio’s grandmother had been ecstatic at the prospect of a royal wedding in Vinciguerra, especially since his own parents’ wedding had been the last one celebrated, and that had been over thirty years ago. They had been returning from an anniversary trip when they died tragically in a car accident. Giorgio hoped his sister’s nuptials would distract his grandmother from asking him when he would make some lucky woman his principessa.
    “And to some guy we’ve never met.” Frank sounded nearly as disgruntled as Giorgio had been.
    “I’m leaving in a few minutes for New York, so I’ll meet him tomorrow.”
    “Does Jack know?” Jacques de Brissard was the third member of their trio.
    The three men had met their freshman year at the university in Manhattan. Although Giorgio technically out-ranked Frank, a duke with a large estate in Portugal, as well as Jack, a count who owned a lavender farm in Provence, they had much in common. Their bachelor apartment had turned into a home when Stefania had come to live with them—home, something Giorgio thought he’d lost when his parents died.
    “No, I left a message for him, but he’s traveling to Southeast Asia to do medical relief for that cyclone that hit the coast.”
    Frank made a sound of dismay. “He just got back from the earthquake in Turkey and sounded exhausted. I told him he needed to take some time off to recuperate. What is he thinking?”
    “He’s a doctor, and his patients come first.” Giorgio didn’t like it any better than Frank, but Jacques had always been single-minded about his medical career.
    “He’s going to wear himself out,” Frank predicted gloomily, breaking off to shout instructions in Portuguese. Giorgio must have caught him as he was supervising the farmhands. Frank was always experimenting with new crops in addition to the olives and grapes his family’s land produced. “But what are we to do with Stefania? She’s not old enough to marry.”
    Giorgio shook his head to decline a second glass of wine from the lounge attendant, a pretty redhead. “I don’t like it, either, Frank, but she’s twenty-four. At least she’s finishing up her graduate degree first. Besides, if you think she was stubborn when she was eleven…”
    Frank snorted. “Remember when she refused to go to that fancy prep school you had all picked out for her and insisted on going to the academy of the arts? You even threatened her as her principality’s sovereign ruler and what did she do?”
    “Called the State Department and requested legal asylum on grounds of persecution.” Giorgio sighed. He had tried to forget that little incident. His grandmother had not been amused to receive indignant phone calls from various human rights and refugee organizations. “ Amigo meu, maybe it is time to turn our girl over to this German fellow. After all, they are the orderly sort.” He laughed, and Giorgio had to join in at the idea of anyone keeping Stefania in order. “And when is the blessed event? If she wants to come to my island out in the Azores she and the German can have a private honeymoon—consider it my gift.”
    Giorgio smiled. “They haven’t set a date, but I’ll be sure to tell Stefania when I see her Wednesday.”
    “Give her my love, and make sure this fiancé of hers is a decent guy. If he isn’t, then you and Jack and I will talk some sense into her.”
    “Or I’ll just drag her back to Vinciguerra and put her in the dungeon.” They had three actually, one cleaned up for the tourists and two that hadn’t been used since the Napoleonic Wars.
    “Human rights organizations be damned.” Frank sounded more cheerful. “We’re just living up to the time-honored European tradition of locking stubborn princesses in towers and such.”
    “Do the time-honored traditions mention