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Cordina’s Crown Jewel

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Cordina's Crown Jewel
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Publication
Author Nora Roberts
Pseudonym
Publisher Silhouette Books
Publication date February 2002
Format/Imprint code MM
ISBN10 0373244487
ISBN13 9780373244485
Series
Series Cordina's Royal Family
Book number 4
Preceded by The Playboy Prince
Followed by
Locations

Cordina’s Crown Jewel is a novel by Nora Roberts first published by Silhouette Books in 2002 as Silhouette Special Edition #1448. It is the fourth and final book in the Cordina's Royal Family quartet.

Overview

Overwhelmed by the demands of royal life and a relentless press, Princess Camilla de Cordina impulsively cuts her hair, adopts the name Camilla MacGee, and slips away from her family for a few weeks of anonymity in America. A car accident during a Vermont thunderstorm strands her on the doorstep of reclusive archaeologist Delaney Caine, setting off a romance neither of them expects — and a reckoning, once her true identity comes to light, over trust, title, and what each is willing to give up for the other.

Plot summary

After a grueling charity gala in Washington, D.C., Camilla de Cordina — eldest of the new generation of Cordinian princesses and the most publicly recognizable, owing to her American father and time spent in the States — decides she can no longer bear being defined by the press and her royal duties. With help from her best friend and personal assistant, Marian Breen, she cuts off her long hair, takes Marian's rental car, and drives off under the name Camilla MacGee, telling the press only that she is on holiday in Europe.

Traveling alone through the mid-Atlantic and New England states, Camilla revels in ordinary life — diners, cheap motels, anonymity — while confiding her observations to a journal. Cutting through Vermont during a violent summer storm, she swerves to avoid a deer and drives her car into a ditch. She is rescued by Delaney "Del" Caine, a gruff, injured archaeologist recovering at his family's rundown cabin after a Jeep accident on a Florida dig left him with a dislocated shoulder, broken clavicle, and bruised ribs. Unable to reach a tow truck in the storm, Camilla stays the night, and — introducing herself only as "Camilla Breen" — ends up staying on as Del's assistant, tidying his cabin, cataloging his notes, and nursing his injuries while he finishes his fieldwork reports.

Despite Del's prickly, solitary temperament and Camilla's initial exasperation with him, the two grow close over weeks of shared work and proximity, eventually becoming lovers. Camilla, aware she is falling in love, keeps putting off telling Del the truth about her identity. The secret comes out when Del overhears her speaking to Marian by phone and pieces together who she really is. Feeling deceived, he lashes out, accusing her of slumming with "the locals," and Camilla — wounded and ashamed — flees back to Cordina without leaving a word.

Del's parents, Niles and Alice Caine — the Earl and Countess of Brigston, making Del himself Lord Delaney, Viscount Brigston, a fact he had never bothered to mention — arrive at the cabin and learn what happened. Alice, having separately received a gracious note from Gabriella thanking Del for his hospitality to her daughter, quietly arranges for the family to be invited to Cordina's Autumn Ball, both to secure new funding for Del's Bardville dig (funding Camilla has arranged) and to push the two reunited.

Reunited at the palace as the Earl and Countess's son, "Lord Delaney," Del and Camilla circle each other with wounded pride through days of royal functions, each too stubborn to make the first move. During the Autumn Ball, tempers flare again in the garden, with Camilla accusing Del of cowardice and Del accusing her of running from every difficulty in her life, including him. That night, in a driving rainstorm, Del rappels down the palace wall to Camilla's terrace, and the two finally admit how much they've hurt each other and how much they love one another. Del proposes; Camilla accepts, planning to divide her time between her royal duties, Del's excavation, and a Paleolithic project of her own with Dr. Lesuer in France, having found in archaeology the personal passion she'd been searching for all along.

Major characters

Locations

Families

Timeline

Cordina's Crown Jewel closes out the Cordina's Royal Family quartet, following the marriages chronicled in Affaire Royale (Gabriella and Reeve), Command Performance (Alexander and Eve), and The Playboy Prince (Bennett and Hannah). It is set roughly four years after the death of Camilla's grandfather, the previous ruler of Cordina, and takes place primarily over one summer and into the following autumn's Cordina Autumn Ball.

Connections

Themes

  • Identity beyond public role or title
  • The tension between duty and personal passion
  • Trust and honesty in relationships
  • Class and rank as obstacles to intimacy

Publication history

  • Original publication: Silhouette Special Edition #1448, February 2002
  • Hardcover: Thorndike Press (large print), 2002
  • Paperback: Silhouette Books, 2002; Harlequin/Silhouette reissue
  • Audio:
  • Ebook: St. Martin's Publishing Group, June 2, 2020

Trivia

  • Concludes the four-book "Cordina's Royal Family" series that began with Affaire Royale.
  • The book's title plays on the press nickname given to Camilla, "Cordina's crown jewel."

See also

References

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