City of Swords Read Online Free

of the family will be here soon for father’s funeral. But just now we have no male relative to help us. Your support would be most welcome.’
    ‘There is so much to organise,’ said Lucia. ‘And Mamma is too distraught to be burdened with it.’
    It was true that the Princess of Fortezza had aged overnight. Now that her husband was dead, it was as if she had lost all anchorage in the world and felt in danger of spending the rest of her life adrift.
    ‘I will do whatever you ask,’ said Guido, thrilled to be regarded as a substitute for a relative. ‘Please use me – I should like to be of help.’
    ‘Mamma, may I talk to Guido about the succession announcement?’ said Lucia. ‘It is one thing we can spare you.’
    ‘Very well,’ said the Dowager Princess. ‘Please do. And, Bianca, could you help me to my room? I don’t think I can entertain any more visitors today. Not that you are not welcome, Signor,’ she added, remembering the demands of courtesy. ‘It is a pleasure in our grief to renew your acquaintance.’
    Princess Caroline and her younger daughter left Lucia and Guido alone together in the salone .
    ‘Is there a problem with the announcement?’ asked Guido. ‘I don’t know how these things are done in Fortezza. You remember that I come from Bellezza, where Duchesse are elected.’
    ‘Even though your present Duchessa inherited the title when her mother died?’
    ‘Not inherited, was elected,’ Guido corrected her. He did not put Lucia right about the old Duchessa’s being dead; not many people knew that Silvia was still alive and living in Bellezza.
    ‘Well, it’s a formality, but as soon as my father has been buried, a herald comes to the balcony of the castle and must read out a decree about the succession,’ she said.
    ‘There will be no argument, surely?’ said Guido. ‘As you are your father’s older daughter? You are his indisputable heir under the law.’
    ‘There are some in Fortezza who believe that a woman should not inherit. But as long as there is no rival claimant, then yes, I will become Fortezza’s ruling Princess.’
    She looked sadly at Guido and he wondered if she was just grieving for her father or for something else.

    Laura was not used to having so much attention focused on her. She pulled nervously at her sleeves and answered as briefly as possible, but that didn’t matter to Nick, who pounced on her main news and told the others what he thought.
    ‘So it’s Fortezza,’ he said. ‘And poor old Uncle Jacopo. I mean he was a sort of cousin really but we all called him “uncle”. He was a good sort.’
    ‘And he is the father of the woman whose husband was killed at their wedding?’ asked Ayesha, who had joined them.
    ‘Yes,’ said Nick. ‘That was my brother, Carlo. They had just got married.’
    ‘Sorry, Nick,’ said Ayesha. ‘I keep forgetting you are related to all these people.’
    ‘He used to be,’ said Georgia firmly. ‘He doesn’t have any brothers in this world. Or dead uncles.’ She put her arm round him protectively.
    ‘Jacopo had two daughters though?’ said Isabel, trying to change the way the conversation was going. She knew that Nick was terribly conflicted still about which world he lived in.
    ‘Yes,’ he said calmly. ‘Lucia was married to my brother – briefly – and the younger one, Bianca, is married to my cousin, Alfonso, Duke of Volana. He’s OK.’
    ‘You mean all these Fortezzan di Chimici are “good” ones?’ asked Matt.
    Isabel was quiet, thinking back to a few weeks ago when the Barnsbury Stravaganti had got together and compared notes on their Talian experiences. For Laura all this talk was just a blur of names. She had met only Fabio on her stravagation with the paperknife – her ‘talisman’, as her friends had called it – and he wasn’t a royal prince.
    ‘So are you going back tonight?’ Sky asked her.
    Laura jumped. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I mean, why was I taken there? Why do you