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PENNY JORDAN

Phenomenally successful author of more than two hundred books with sales of over a hundred million copies!

Penny Jordan's novels are loved by millions of readers all around the word in many different languages. Mills & Boon are proud to have published one hundred and eighty-seven novels and novellas written by Penny Jordan, who was a reader favourite right from her very first novel through to her last.

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Penny Jordan is one of Mills & Boon's most popular authors. Sadly, Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixty-five. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over a hundred million books around the world. She wrote a total of one hundred and eighty-seven novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan's characters’ and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.

Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and continued to live there for the rest of her life. Following the death of her husband, she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her much-loved Crighton books.

Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be-published authors. Her significant contribution to women's fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

The Blackmail Marriage
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

PROLOGUE

‘SO, YOU realise now that I was telling the truth when I warned you that you could never be anything other than a momentary diversion to my godson?’ The Countess gave an elegant, contemptuous shrug. ‘How could it be otherwise? Luc is a prince, of noble blood and destiny. Of course he is also a man, and you are a very pretty girl, and…an available one!’ Another shrug, this time a disparaging one, accompanied her coldly dismissive words, whilst Carrie’s face burned with humiliation and anguish.

‘It was perhaps inevitable that he should pursue you. But he will never marry you! How could he? You are nothing. Nobody! The daughter of a mere employee, that is all! A foolish and immoral young woman the whole principality knows has thrown herself at him and inveigled her way into his bed! When Luc marries it has to be to someone of appropriate background and status. The most suitable candidate to become his wife is, of course, my own granddaughter. And it is to this end that she is presently being groomed and educated.’

Carrie stared at her tormentor in shocked disbelief. She had known, of course, about the Countess’s antagonism to the relationship developing between Luc and herself, but she had never dreamed that the older woman was calculatedly planning to have Luc marry her young granddaughter.

‘But Maria is only ten years old, and Luc is almost twenty-five!’

The Countess gave Carrie another cold look.

‘Age does not come into it, and besides, what is a mere fifteen years? My own late husband was over twenty years my senior! However, I digress. I have sent for you today, Catherine, in order that I may carry out Luc’s instructions. Luc wishes you to leave S’Antander immediately. Furthermore, he does not wish to have any future contact with you.’

‘No!’ Carrie protested. ‘No, I do not believe it.’

One thin arched eyebrow rose superciliously.

‘Why? Because Luc took you to his bed? You are not so naïve, Catherine. You know how the world works beyond our borders. After all, it is only your school holidays you have spent here in S’Antander with your father and your brother.’

‘But Luc—’ Abruptly Carrie stopped. Luc had not made any declarations of love to her, nor given her any promises, she knew that, but she had believed that he shared her feelings, and that it was only a matter of time before he told her that he loved her as much as she did him!

Last night when he’d informed her that he was going away on business she had never imagined that anything like this could happen! And when he had insisted that she was to return to her own bed instead of staying in his, as she had so longed to do, she had thought it was because he wanted to protect her reputation. But now her wonderful, precious romantic dreams had been brought crashing down by the cold reality of his godmother’s announcement.

How could Luc love her when he had instructed his godmother to treat her so ignominiously and to send her away?

Carrie admitted that up until this summer her feelings towards Luc had been slightly ambiguous. Seven years her senior, he was someone who had always taken his duties and his responsibilities seriously. He’d always held himself slightly aloof, which made her feel small and unimportant, even though she knew of the mutually high esteem that existed between Luc and her father, who had been commissioned by Luc’s late guardian to advise and educate Luc on the complexities of international economics and finance. She knew too that within a matter of months the present Regency of the principality’s elders, set in place to govern the country until Luc reached the age of twenty-five, would come to an end and Luc would become the principality’s ruler.

‘Luc what?’ the Countess challenged her icily. ‘It is obvious that he has now lost interest, having satisfied his sexual curiosity about you! My godson is a man of pride and principle who knows where his duty lies. All you were to him was a momentary diversion which he now wishes to forget. Surely you must realise that yourself, after hearing what he has instructed me to tell you?

‘Your father tells me that you have been offered a place in his own old university college. There must be a great many things you need to do in England in preparation for beginning your degree. A seat has been booked for you on tomorrow morning’s flight from Nice to Heathrow. My driver will take you to the airport. Oh, I almost forgot. Luc asked me to give you this,’ she added, handing Carrie a cheque. ‘He understands that university can be expensive, and he wished me to tell you that he didn’t want you to think he was unappreciative of your—’

Her face hot with chagrin and fury, Carrie broke in sharply.

‘You can tell Luc that he can keep his money and that I don’t want it—or him! Why should I? All he is—is a…a…an outdated character from a cheap operetta. A pantomime character who thinks he’s something special because he gets to dress up in a uniform and call himself Prince! The only reason he still has this stupid bit of land is because no one else wants it. He’s a joke! And you can tell him that I said so,’ Carrie finished recklessly.

‘How dare you speak so?’ The Countess had lost her haughty, cool detachment, and was now furiously angry. ‘My godson can trace his line right back over five hundred years, to the first Prince of S’Antander, who was granted this land as a gift from the Pope. His family have held it as a sacred trust against all adversity ever since. It was because Luc’s grandfather allowed the Allied Troops to land here on our beaches that he himself was shot and lost his life! S’Antander is no mere puppet kingdom, as its ruling family have proved over and over again, and with your own ignorant words you prove—if it needed to be proved—how unworthy you are of sharing Luc’s life.’

Much as she disliked the Countess, Carrie felt a tiny burn of shame. It was true that Luc’s family did have a history and a tradition of supporting those causes they considered to be just and of benefit to humankind, but she was in no mood to acknowledge any good in Luc right now. In fact at this moment in time she felt that she hated Luc even more than she did his manipulative godmother! Ignoring the cheque the Countess was still holding out to her, she spun round on her heel and headed for the door, before her emotions could totally get the better of her.

CHAPTER ONE

‘I WON’T say “be happy”, because I know that you will be. I am so pleased for you both!’

Carrie hugged her beaming newly married brother and his ecstatic bride.

‘Carrie, there is something Maria wants you to do for her,’ Harry begged her urgently.

Enquiringly Carrie looked at the pretty dark-haired girl wrapped in her brother’s arms.

‘Please, Carrie, will you go to S’Antander and tell them that Harry and I are man and wife?’

‘You want them to know?’ Carrie questioned a little warily.

She had been taken completely by surprise by her beloved younger brother’s announcement only a matter of days ago that he and Maria were to marry. After all, hadn’t it always been a given that Maria was going to marry Luc?

While no official announcement of an engagement or forthcoming wedding had actually been publicly made, Maria herself had admitted that everyone expected her and Luc to marry—including Luc himself! But when Carrie had reminded Maria of this, Maria’s response had been that her grandmother might have decided that she and Luc were going to marry, but Maria had absolutely no intention of being coerced into a cynical marriage of convenience—especially not now, when she and Harry had fallen so deeply in love!

‘Of course I want them to know. I have nothing to hide!’ Maria answered, tossing her head proudly. She looked up at Harry, her whole face alive with her love for him as she added sweetly, ‘Nothing and no one can part us or hurt us in any way now!’

Looking into their delighted faces, Carrie acknowledged that she envied them their confidence. And their shared love. It was plain that they were totally besotted with one another. Harry looked as proud as any ancient knight who’d rescued his lady from death by dragon. Though Harry was a man now, Carrie remembered, and not the boy she had cherished and protected as they grew up without a mother. The last thing she wanted to do was go to S’Antander, but Harry was looking at her pleadingly, and—as always—she couldn’t bear to let him down.

‘It’s all right!’ she heard Maria telling her confidently. ‘I know that you and Luc don’t get on, but you need not be afraid of seeing him. Luc…His Highness…will not be there! He’s away in Brussels on important business. When he gets back he will be expecting me to be there, and I feel I owe him.’

Infuriated by Maria’s assumption that she might feel fear at the thought of confronting Luc, Carrie told her fiercely, ‘Maria, you don’t owe that sexist brute of a puppet prince anything! Nothing at all! If he had had his way—’

Maria stopped her, her eyes filling with tears.

‘He must be informed, Carrie. I know you don’t like him, but Luc has never done me any harm. And…and it isn’t just that!’ Her chin tilting proudly, she went on, ‘I want everyone at home to know how much I love Harry and how proud I am to be his wife—especially my grandmother.’

As she looked across at Harry Carrie’s heart melted, and she was reminded again of the almost maternal sense of responsibility as well as the great deal of sisterly love she felt for her younger brother. She was inclined to be a little bit too indulgent towards him, or so her friends claimed, but Carrie could not help feeling very protective of him, and she was delighted to see him looking so happy. His love for Maria and their marriage had given him a maturity that he’d perhaps previously lacked.

It was true that she had had her concerns about him recently, specifically where his work was concerned, and indeed, if she was honest…But she was not going to dwell on past problems now, nor take him to task for not confiding in her about his relationship with Maria. She was far too happy for him to do that!

Happy for him, but Maria’s mentioning of her grandmother had awoken some far from happy memories for herself!

Oh, yes, Maria’s grandmother! Carrie’s eyes suddenly glinted with a certain steeliness.

‘Carrie, please,’ Maria pleaded, ‘There is no one else I can ask to do this for me. No one else I could trust…who understands just how things are at home in S’Antander…just how things are with Luc! If you would just go there for me and tell my grandmother. So that she can tell Luc.’

The very mention of Maria’s grandmother was enough to raise the most ignoble and tempting thoughts in Carrie’s mind!

She wasn’t a naïve eighteen-year-old any more, she reminded herself sternly. She was now a mature, confident and successful woman! A highly acclaimed economist, working freelance as a financial journalist.

Determinedly she tried to refuse, but Maria remained stubbornly insistent that Luc, His Serene Highness, ruler of the small but perfectly formed principality of S’Antander, had to be told that his prospective bride had instead chosen to marry the man who had been her childhood playmate—Carrie’s younger brother.

‘Please, Carrie,’ Harry begged her, and Carrie could feel her resistance weakening.

A little ruefully she admitted that there was a part of her that could not help feeling a certain degree of valedictory triumph in being the one to carry the news to the Countess that her granddaughter was not after all going to meekly accept her grandmother’s plans for her and fulfil her ambitions to make her Luc’s wife.

After the misery of a cold, wet British spring, the warmth that met Carrie as she stepped out of the airport at Nice and set off to collect her hire car was indeed a welcome relief.

Despite her fair English skin and straight silky shoulder-length naturally blonde hair, Carrie had never enjoyed the discomfort of her home country’s grey winter climate. Perhaps it was the fault of all those school holidays spent in S’Antander with her father—they had given her a taste for the warmth of its sunshine!

Her father was retired now, and lived in Australia with his second wife who, like him, had been widowed when they met.

Carrie liked her stepmother who, having no children of her own, had expressed herself delighted to be gaining two adult stepchildren. Carrie’s own mother had been killed in a car accident when Carrie had been seven and Harry only two. It had been one of the reasons why her father had accepted the post in S’Antander, which had included the benefit of proper domestic care for his young children—although that had not stopped Carrie from adopting her almost motherly attitude towards her younger brother.

Although Nice was its closest airport, S’Antander, which occupied a small strip of land between France and Italy, had been influenced by the Italian way of life as much as the French. Its people spoke Italian with a smattering of French names and vocabulary, and privately Carrie had always thought that there was a certain macho, Italian latinness about Luc himself.

The principality boasted a small seaport and harbour town, and its walled capital city was the site of an imposing castle which was both Luc’s principal home—he also had a hunting lodge high up in the Alps, which he used as a winter skiing retreat—and seat of the country’s government offices. It was set back from the coast, commanding a strategic position which overlooked both the main roads that gave access to the country.

Since the only way to get there was either to drive or to hire a private helicopter, Carrie had elected to drive. She might earn a very good living for herself, but it was not good enough to run to such extravagances as private helicopters! Unlike the new breed of entrepreneurs who were flocking to S’Antander to take advantage of its tax laws—just one of the innovative schemes and incentives that Luc was putting in place to attract income to the small principality!

‘You’re going where?’ her agent and close friend Fliss Barnes had demanded in excitement when Carrie had told her what she was doing. ‘You’ve got to do an article on the place whilst you’re there, Carrie,’ she had insisted. ‘I’ve heard that it’s awash with rich sports personalities and the like, and that you can’t so much as buy a one-bedroomed apartment there for under a million!’

The young Frenchman who had handed the hire car over to Carrie watched appreciatively as she walked over to it to check it over, admiring the length of her slender legs encased in a pair of low-slung jeans. A soft white tee shirt discreetly covered rather than hugged the rounded swell of her breasts, and the sunglasses she had put on to shade the cool jade-green of her eyes, whilst designer-logoed, were subtly discreet rather than flaunting their origins.

Quickly checking the time on the businesslike watch strapped to her narrow wrist, she unlocked the car. It was just ten a.m. That gave her time to drive to S’Antander and back again to the hotel she had booked herself in to for a brief self-indulgent stay before returning home.

Spring on the Côte d’Azur was a wonderful season, Carrie reflected, as she headed towards Menton, leaving the A8 behind to take the coast road.

After all, she was in no hurry to get to S’Antander—and revenge, so they said, was a dish best eaten cold!

She had never forgotten the cruelty of the way the Countess had spoken to her, and she had never forgiven the man who had given that woman authority to do so!

The naïve eighteen-year-old so desperately in love with Luc that he had filled her emotions and her thoughts to the exclusion of everything and everyone else had had to grow up very quickly since then.

A brief sadness darkened her eyes before she pushed her unwanted memories away as the once familiar countryside claimed her attention. Three years at university, followed by her father’s retirement and remarriage, had ensured that there had been no need for her to return to S’Antander since the Countess had delivered Luc’s dismissal to her.

A discreet signpost indicted the road to S’Antander’s border. Unlike Monaco, S’Antander had never touted itself as a tourist attraction. Olive groves flanked the road, and in the distance she spied the turquoise brilliance of the sea. Winding down her window as she approached the border post, Carrie breathed in the warm fragrant air of the South, with its intoxicating blend of perfume and sunshine.

A guard stepped forward as she stopped her car, dressed not in the pageantry of the country’s historic military uniform but instead in a much more serviceable police uniform. Handing him her passport, Carrie waited as he inspected it, and her, before handing it back to her.

It was only as she put the car in gear that she realised that she had been holding her breath.

Why? After all, Luc wasn’t even in the country—never mind likely to have placed her name on a ‘not to be admitted’ list! That was if he could even remember it!

As she drove further into the country Carrie was again entranced by its beautiful scenery. Centuries ago, before the country had been gifted to Luc’s forebears, it had been owned by a reclusive order of monks. The monastery high up in the Alps was now an exclusive skiing centre owned by Luc, but the monks’ careful husbandry of the land had been passed on to the people of the area, and as Carrie drove towards the capital she couldn’t help but admire the neat, orderly rows of vines and the small olive groves.

It had been her own father who had encouraged Luc to make his people as self-supporting as possible. Every acre of agricultural land was used as productively as it could be, and Carrie could see the sun glinting on the plastic coverings that housed the country’s much sought-after organic fruit and vegetable crops

The road had started to climb now. Below her was the sea and the small port, whilst up ahead of her…

Her heart did a slow somersault as she spied the rich terracotta walls of the city towering over the landscape. Built on a rocky outcrop and surrounded by a fertile plain, the castle commanded an excellent defensive position. Carrie remembered how shocked her twelve-year-old self had been when Luc had shown her the castle’s dungeons.

The steep incline of the road momentarily cut off the warmth of the sunlight, making her shiver in the coldness of the castle’s imposing shadow. Even if she had not known the history of this place it would still have been easy to imagine how daunting it would have appeared to any invading force.

Grimly Carrie drove under the narrow, tunnel-like entrance into the city, blinking as she emerged into the brilliant sunlight.

Maria had told her that her grandmother would be in residence at her grace and favour apartment in the castle, rather than staying in her country villa, and so Carrie parked her car in the small town square and got out, squaring her shoulders before making her way through the market stalls towards the castle.

High up above the city, in the eyrie he had made his private office, Luc D’Urbino, His Serene Highness, Prince of S’Antander, frowned. He had just returned from Brussels, where he had been involved in protracted and complex negotiations with regard to his country’s tax-free status, to discover that the political unrest which had been simmering between the traditionalist old guard of his grandfather’s generation and their younger, far more politically radical opponents had reached boiling point.

Still frowning, he listened as his elderly cousin and Prime Minister told him tersely, ‘The people want to see you married, Luc. The fact that you don’t as yet have a son, an heir, makes them feel insecure! And besides, your wedding would help to take people’s minds off all this fuss that’s going on with these foolish young hotheads who are claiming that we are guilty of allowing criminals and murderers to make use of our country to hide their blood money, as they insist on calling it.’

Luc suppressed a sigh as he listened. From a personal point of view he completely sympathised with the opinions expressed by the so-called ‘foolish young hotheads’, but his position meant that he could not publicly take sides—and besides, he naturally felt honour-bound to protect not just his late grandfather’s reputation but also the now sadly out of date and, because of that, vulnerable remaining members of the government who had been his grandfather’s peers.

‘I have already made it clear that as ruler of this state there is no way I intend to allow anyone guilty of profiting from the death of other human beings, or indeed any other illegal activities, to take advantage of our tax laws here,’ Luc began quietly, and then stopped as he looked down from his window into the market square below.

There was a woman standing there with her back to him, the sun shimmering on the tousled silky fall of her blonde hair. Lifting a hand, she raked her fingers through it, as though impatient with its waywardness. Immediately he stiffened, his stance unconsciously that of a hunter, silent but awesomely effective, as if he instinctively scented a prey. There was something about her bearing, about the fiercely eloquent independence of it, that he instantly recognised.

‘I am sorry, Giovanni, but I will have to discuss this with you later.’

Whilst his cousin watched in confusion, Luc thrust open the door and strode swiftly through it.

Carrie had no need to ask for directions to the Countess’s quarters. She knew exactly where the suite of rooms she occupied was, just as she knew how to evade having to go through the formality of entering the main doors to the castle and making herself known to the impressively uniformed major-domo stranding guard there, behind the equally impressive-looking pair of traditionally uniformed, helmeted and musket-carrying sentries.

They were there more for show than anything else, their muskets unloaded, but that did not mean that either the palace or its occupants were not very efficiently and discreetly protected by the ex-military un-uniformed men who formed the bulk of Luc’s security guards.

As she slipped through the small side door a hundred memories flooded back over her: the smell of the palace—a mixture of precious old furniture, works of art and ancient stone—and even more the smell of Luc, both before he had made love to her and after—a heady, dangerous mixture of male testosterone and those other indefinable scents that were his alone…

Or was she just allowing her imagination and her dangerous memories to play even more dangerous tricks on her?

Angrily Carrie closed her eyes, trying to blot out her unexpectedly sharply focused memories. Better that she remembered the icy hauteur of the Countess’s voice, the contempt and the cruelty with which she had been treated—at Luc’s behest after all—as well as the pain she herself had felt when…

‘So it is you! I thought so!’

‘Luc!’

Shocked, Carrie stepped back against the protection of the wall, her eyes widening betrayingly.

What was he doing here? Maria had insisted that he would be in Brussels.

And she had insisted that she was not afraid of seeing him, Carrie reminded herself! And she wasn’t! No way.

‘Well—an unexpected visitor indeed!’

Unlike her, Luc was dressed formally in a crisp white shirt and an expensive beige linen suit. His dark hair was immaculately groomed, his skin the same warm honey colour she had remembered during those long, aching nights when she had been so obsessed with the misery of losing him that all she had been able to remember was him.

His skin might look and feel warm, but his heart was icy cold—at least where she was concerned! Did the small whorls of body hair covering his chest still curl into small licks of curls, delicious to kiss in the damp heat of his bed? Did he still emerge from the shower looking like a Greek god, with the kind of physical proportions that…?

Aghast, and furious with herself, Carrie brought her thoughts to order. After all, she wasn’t some wide-eyed innocent teenager now, awash with excitable hormones!

Lifting her chin, she told him briskly, ‘Actually, I’ve come to see the Countess.’

Immediately Luc frowned.

‘My godmother? She isn’t here. She’s away visiting her niece in Florence. What did you want to see her about? As I recall there was little love lost between the two of you,’ Luc pointed out sardonically.

That he had known that and still allowed his godmother to humiliate her as she had done was all the reminder Carrie needed to make her bristle with antagonism and tell him challengingly, ‘I’ve got a message for her. From Maria!’

She was supposed to be savouring this, Carrie reminded herself, and her stomach suddenly dropped like a high-speed lift when she saw the way Luc was looking at her, his eyes narrowed intently, so dark that they looked almost black instead of the dark grey she knew them to be.

She could feel the silence stretching dangerously between them, taut with unspoken hostility and aggression.

‘What message? Give it to me!’

He was so arrogant! At eighteen she might have been so idiotically adoring that she had accepted it, but not now! She could feel the swift burn of her own immediate antagonism. Carrie took a deep breath, too infuriated to think of delaying the retribution she was about to deliver.

‘With the greatest of pleasure,’ she told him ‘She wanted you to know that she has married Harry, my brother.’ She smiled unkindly at him. ‘She loves him, and he loves her, and—’