A Royal Wedding. Trish Morey

      Look for The Heir from Nowhere, Trish Morey’s most recent novel from Mills & Boon® Modern™.

      Dear Reader,

      There’s something about a craggy Mediterranean island topped with a looming castle that really appeals to me as a setting. The combination of remote with imposing might well be a mirror to the hero, who is as unapproachable and intimidating as the island setting itself.

      Count Alessandro Volta is as unapproachable and intimidating as they come. Scarred both physically and mentally from a tragedy that left him the only survivor, Alessandro shuns society and the media and takes to self-imposed exile on his storm-ridden island home. Until a discovery is made in the secret tunnels beneath his castle, the lost pages from an ancient book of healing.

      The woman who comes to evaluate the find is not the crusty academic he was expecting and suddenly Alessandro finds his escape from the world challenged by Dr Grace Hunter, a passionate scientist whose unwelcome presence threatens to break down the dark shields around him and thrust him once again into the light.

      But can the fabled book of healing live up to its reputation and heal a heart so savagely broken? And will this unlikely couple ever earn their summer royal wedding?

      I hope you enjoy finding out.

      With very best wishes,

       Trish x

      With grateful thanks to the real Archival Survival team, Angela Henrickson and Geoff McIntyre, and especially to Annie for all her help with a project that was so totally left field.

      I’m not sure if this is what you envisioned Annie, when I first put the premise of this story to you, but thank you so much for your advice and assistance and for your sheer enthusiasm! Any mistakes or omissions are purely author error.

      Thank you Annie!

      CHAPTER ONE

      SHE was coming. From his office overlooking the sea, Count Alessandro Alonso Leopold Volta watched the launch approach the island that was home to Castello di Volta and the seat of the Volta family for more than five hundred years.

      The boat hadn’t even docked and already the bitter taste of bile hovered menacingly at the back of his throat.

      He growled. He hated visitors, hated the way they brought the smell of the outside world with them, as if clinging to their very clothes. He hated their wide-eyed stares and their looks of horror when they first saw his scars, horror that bleached their faces white and sent their eyes skidding away to the floor or to the nearest work of art. Anywhere, it seemed, that wasn’t his face.

      But most of all he hated their pity, for the horror always gave way to pity.

       He preferred the horror.

      His hands curled into fists at his side. He didn’t want anyone’s pity.

      He didn’t want anyone. Period.

      The launch slowed, rocking sideways on the bumpy water as it neared the dock and its wash caught up with it. He ground his teeth together and turned away, knowing that this time he had no choice. The package found tucked away in the caves deep beneath the castle had seen to that.

      Why here? he asked himself again. Why, of all the places in the world, of all the places that would welcome the attention such a discovery would bring, why had what could be the lost pages from the fabled Salus Totus, the legendary Book of Wholeness, had to turn up here? When had fate taken to wearing a clown’s mask?

      He grunted his displeasure and dropped into the chair behind his desk. One week Professor Rousseau had promised him the job would take. No longer than one week to examine and document the pages, to determine whether they were genuine, and if so to stabilise their condition until they could be taken away and prepared for display. One short yet no doubt interminable week, with a stranger clattering around the castle, asking questions and expecting answers, and probably expecting him to be civil in the process.

      He looked down at the file he’d been reviewing before the onshore wind had carried with it the thumping beat of an approaching