The Royal Heir - The Valtoria Diaries 2

Pretty poisons

Rick laughed when he saw the headline on the newspaper that Madeleine handed to him as he sat at his breakfast table in the royal dining room. "Well, they're not wrong."

"It seems that the media have got wind of their excursion, no thanks to Duke Maxwell's social media accounts," Madeleine tutted. "I did tell them that it was foolish to assume they would escape the attention by leaving the country."

The large caption on the front page of the Daily Apple screamed out about JEN AND MAXWELL'S BABY MAKING ROAD TRIP. There was a large photograph of the two of them kissing; the caption explained they were in Washington DC. There were also images of them at Niagara Falls – Rick had already seen these, of course, courtesy of his friend's Pictagram feed.

"The press have correctly come to the assumption that they're travelling west," sighed Madeleine. "Fortunately, the matter of Duke Bertrand's wedding hasn't been speculated on yet. Do you know where they are currently?"

"No," Rick admitted. "I was going to call Drake for an update at some point. With the time difference, you'll appreciate now is probably not the best time." It wasn't the best time for Madeleine to update him either, he would have much preferred to be able to take breakfast without interruption.

"Well I called Duchess Jen just now. She didn't answer, so I left a message. Warned her of the developments and told her to make sure Maxwell stops his idiotic updates immediately. He'll be the first to complain if the press don't leave them alone, yet he's the one leaving the trail."

"Thank you, Countess Madeleine," Rick said. "Can I leave it with you to issue a brief statement that the Duke and Duchess are enjoying a well-deserved vacation? Hopefully that will placate the media."

"Of course," Madeleine said, and left him to continue his breakfast.

He looked out of the window. It was a calm spring morning. Today was hopefully the day that he would finally achieve an important objective; he and Olivia were meeting with Cordonia's top marriage lawyer to set her annulment in motion. He'd regretfully not been able to help her himself, due to another ridiculous old Cordonian bylaw (and he really needed to have his legal team go through those bylaws to make sure there were no other threats to his crown hanging over him that might jump out of the shadows when he least expected it), but he'd engaged private sector assistance at an extortionate price, although a price worth paying twice over to free Olivia from the ridiculous betrothal that should never have been legal in the first place.

He heard the tapping of heels across the room, and looked up again, expecting to see Madeleine returning, but it was Regina.

He smiled warmly at her. "Good morning Regina."

She nodded at him. "Good morning Rick. May I?"

"By all means."

She sat down next to him and glanced through the paper. "Oh dear. That poor, poor couple. You really have thrown them in at the deep end, you know." Regina wasn't an advocate of the arrangement he and House Beaumont-Jones had come to.

"They can handle it," he said to her. "I wouldn't have asked them if I didn't think they could."

"A good job," she sighed. "Your father had all of this pressure, you know, when he married Elizabeth. Even when Leo was small, the press wanted to know everything about him, every little development. They never left her alone. I honestly think that's part of the reason why she left."

"I never appreciated that," Rick admitted.

"Of course, that's not something you'll have to go through. It will lighten your load as monarch considerably. I just hope you manage to retain your friendship with Duchess Jen and Duke Maxwell, and I hope their marriage holds up too, otherwise matters will become more complicated all round."