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CAROLE MORTIMER is one of Mills & Boons’s® most popular and prolific authors. Since her first novel, published in 1979, this British writer has shown no signs of slowing her pace. In fact, she has published more than 170 novels!
Her strong, traditional romances, with their distinct style, brilliantly developed characters and romantic plot twists, have earned her an enthusiastic audience worldwide.
Carole was born in a village in England that she claims was so small that “if you blinked as you drove through it you could miss seeing it completely!” She adds that her parents still live in the house where she first came into the world, and her two brothers live very close by.
Carole’s early ambition to become a nurse came to an abrupt end after only one year of training due to a weakness in her back, suffered in the aftermath of a fall. Instead, she went on to work in the computer department of a well-known stationery company.
During her time there, Carole made her first attempt at writing a novel for Mills & Boon®. “The manuscript was far too short and the plotline not up to standard, so I naturally received a rejection slip,” she says. “Not taking rejection well, I went off in a sulk for two years before deciding to ‘have another go.’” Her second manuscript was accepted, beginning a long and fruitful career. She says she has “enjoyed every moment of it!”
Carole lives “in a most beautiful part of Britain” with her husband and children.
A Night in the Palace
Carole Mortimer
MILLS & BOON
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Contents
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘THIS is an urgent announcement for Ms Giselle Barton, travelling on the thirteen-thirty flight to Rome. Please come immediately to desk number six in the departure terminal. Ms Giselle Barton—go immediately to desk number six.’
Lily Barton—no one but her dearly missed mother had ever called her Giselle!—had struggled all the way through the airport terminal, dragging her wayward case behind her to desk number fifty-two to join the long queue of people waiting to book in for the flight to Rome. She now gave a disbelieving groan at the realisation that desk number six had to be all the way back where she had originally started from.
So far on this cold December morning, only two days before Christmas, Lily’s taxi had been late picking her up from her apartment, and the freezing temperatures and the snow that had been falling for most of the night had made the journey to the airport both slow and treacherous—ensuring that Lily was likely to be the very last passenger to join the queue checking in for Rome. As a consequence she would probably be allocated a lousy seat on the plane. No doubt squashed between two overweight businessmen who would spend the whole flight trying to look down the scooped neckline of her blue sweater once she had removed the heavy jacket she had worn against the freezing English weather outside!
To add to her misery, one of the wheels had decided to drop off her suitcase—an old and battered one of her mother’s—as the taxi driver pulled it out of the boot of the car outside the airport. It had then refused to be fixed back into place, meaning that Lily now carried a superfluous wheel in her over-large shoulder bag—which had already weighed a ton even before the addition of the metal wheel—and the suitcase now had a tendency to veer off to the left as she attempted to drag it along behind her.
If, for some reason, she was now going to be bumped off the flight to Rome—which was highly likely considering how late she had booked her ticket and the fact that most flights tended to be overbooked at this time of year—she was just going to sit down and howl! It really would be the last straw in an already disastrous day.
‘Ms Giselle Barton—please come immediately to desk number six in the departure terminal.’
‘All right, all right, all right!’ Lily muttered as the announcement was repeated, grabbing the handle of her suitcase to walk back to where she had started. The announcement had sounded more imperious this time, she noted, which probably meant she was definitely going to get bumped off the flight. No doubt with an offer to rebook her onto one leaving after Christmas.
Damn, damn, damn.
It had been a last-minute decision to spend Christmas in Rome with her brother—Felix had moved over there to work as PA to Count Dmitri Scarletti three months ago—when Lily’s original plans for the holidays had fallen through. She should have known better than to think that Danny, the man she had been dating for the past couple of months, would abandon his divorced mother—with whom he still lived—in order to spend Christmas with her after Miriam had made it clear she had no intention of inviting Lily to join them. The perfect time, Lily had decided ruefully, to end that particular going-nowhere relationship.
Thank goodness her emotions hadn’t been seriously involved; Danny, a fellow teacher at the secondary school where they both worked, had been fun to go out to the cinema or dinner with, but his domineering and demanding mother was a definite turn off!
Once her decision to go to Rome for Christmas had been made, Lily had felt her excitement start to grow. She had never been to Rome—or anywhere out of England, as it happened—and it would be lovely to see her brother again after all these months apart. Their parents had both died eight years ago,