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That was easy. ‘Jessica Devlin.’
Where was she from? Her passport said Australia. Was that right?
‘Yes. I’m Australian.’
Who did she want them to contact?
‘No one. Unless I’m dead, in which case my cousin, Cordelia, but don’t you dare let her know where I am if there’s the slightest chance that I might live. Please.’
After that they backed off a bit—these gentle people who nursed her. Who were they? She didn’t ask.
There was a woman with elegant clothes and silver hair and a worried look that seemed to be more worried every time she saw her. There was a silver-haired old gentleman who deferred to the lady. He called her ma’am and carried in trays and he also looked worried.
Who else? Two nurses—one at night, one during the day, and a doctor who patted her hand and said, ‘You’ll be fine, my dear. You’re young and you’re strong.’
Of course. She was young and strong.
The doctor asked the hardest question and that was the only one that she had real trouble making herself answer. When the nurses and the others were gone the doctor touched her gently on the hand and asked, ‘Girl, your child. Your family. I have to know. There was no sign of anyone else in the car. There’s no wedding ring on your finger, but there are signs on your body that tell me you’ve had a child. There wasn’t a little one in the car, was there?’ His face stilled as he prepared for the worst. ‘No one else went over the cliff?’
She fought to answer that. Fought to say the words. But they had to be said to stop this kindly old doctor panicking more. He had no need to fear the worst. The worst had already happened.
‘I only have… I’ve only had the one child and he’s dead. Back in Australia. Before I came here.’
There was a pause. Then, ‘Maybe you’re not so young after all,’ he murmured. ‘My dear.’
But her eyes had closed and he let her be. He didn’t intrude. None of them did. They let her lie in this luxurious bed draped in crimson velvet and gold tassels, sinking into a mattress that felt like clouds, and they let her sleep.
She’d hardly slept since Dom died, she thought drearily in one of her tiny lucid moments. It was as if her body was now screaming at her that it had to catch up.
She slept and slept and slept.
On day six—or was it day seven?—she opened her eyes and for the first time she really looked around her. Until now she’d simply accepted this bed, this room, the astounding view through her casement windows as the next in a series of events fate was throwing at her. She’d been out of control for so long that she’d ceased asking questions.
Now, though, sunlight was streaming in over sumptuous furnishings and she gave herself up to astonishment. This was no hospital.
The nurses were no longer here. Now there was only this fairy-tale bedroom and an elderly lady, sitting by the window gazing out at the morning.
Was she crying?
‘What’s wrong?’ Jess asked and the lady turned, sadness replaced by concern in an instant.
‘Oh, my dear. It’s not you who should be asking that.’
Jess gazed cautiously around her. She’d been awake but not awake. In some dream world. Taking the time out she so desperately needed. ‘I guess I should have been asking questions before now,’ she tried. ‘Like…where am I?’
‘This is the royal palace of Alp’Azuri.’
‘Right.’ Jess let that sink in for a while. Alp’Azuri. She knew she was in Alp’Azuri. This tiny country was famous all over the world for its fabulous weavers and she’d come here because…
Because of fabric and yarns. She thought about it, remembering a long-ago conversation with her cousin, Cordelia. ‘You take the trip, dear. Research your suppliers on the ground. It’ll take your mind off things best forgotten.’
Things best forgotten. Dominic?
This wasn’t the time to be thinking of Dom.
‘Um…why am I in the royal palace instead of a hospital?’ she asked, and grief washed back over the older woman’s face.
‘Do you remember the accident?’
‘I…’ Jess swallowed. She did remember. The sports car coming fast. Unbelievably fast. It was right in front of her and all she could do was put up her hand and say…
‘No.’
Then as the lady winced, thinking she’d have to start at the beginning, she corrected herself. ‘I do remember a little. I remember a blue sports car on the wrong side of the road. At least I think it was on the wrong side.’
‘That was Sarah’s car,’ the lady said. ‘Lady Sarah Veerharch was my son’s fiancée.’
Jess swallowed. There was something about the lady’s face that made her not want to go on, but she had to. Even though she already knew the answer. Was. The woman had said was. ‘I… Sarah was…killed?’ How had she made herself say it? And to her horror the woman was nodding.
‘She was killed instantly. Her car glanced off yours—the fact that you were able to stop before the cars hit apparently saved your life—but Sarah slewed off the cliff and into the sea.’
‘No.’
‘I’m sorry, my dear, but yes.’
Jess’s eyes closed in anguish. So much death. It followed her everywhere. Dominic, and now this…
Concentrate on practicalities, she told herself fiercely. If you think about death you’ll go quietly crazy.
‘So why am I in a royal palace?’ she asked and the lady’s face grew grave.
‘This is my home. Mine, my son’s and my grandson’s. For…for now. There’s such media coverage—such interest. Dr Briet thought that, seeing your injuries were relatively minor, you’d be better off here where we could protect you from the worst of it.’
‘Such media coverage.’ Jess’s face had lost whatever colour it had. ‘Lady Sarah… Your future daughter-in-law. Your son’s the…’
‘Raoul is the Prince Regent of Alp’Azuri,’ his mother told her. ‘At least… Well, for now he is. I’m Louise d’Apergenet. My son is Raoul Louis d’Apergenet, second in line to the crown. He is… He was to succeed to his position as regent on the occasion of his marriage. Which was to have been yesterday.’
‘And I’ve killed his bride.’ Jess’s voice subsided to an appalled whisper.
‘Sarah killed herself. You had nothing to do with it.’
The strong male voice startled them both. Jess’s gaze flew to the open door.
She hadn’t seen this man before. Nurses, doctor, servants…this man fitted none of these categories.
He was…royal?
Royalty was her first impression and maybe it wouldn’t have been her first impression if she wasn’t sitting under a velvet draped canopy in a fairy-tale castle. He was wearing light chinos, a dark polo shirt and faded loafers. These were casual clothes, but there was nothing casual about this man.
Tall, dark, superbly muscled, the man’s strongly-boned face was lean, appearing almost sculpted. His eyes were hawk-like and shadowed, revealing nothing. But indefinable or not, the aura of power he exuded was unmistakable.
Was he really a prince? His skin was weathered to a deep bronze, his eyes were creased as if accustomed to a too-harsh sun and there was a long, hairline scar running the length of his jaw. And his hands… These were no prince’s hands. They’d worked hard.
There was no trace of easy living on this man’s frame. Jess stared up at him, stunned. Even a little afraid?
But then he smiled—and the fear evaporated, just like that.
You couldn’t fear a man with a smile like this.
‘Good morning,’ he said softly. ‘You must be Jessica. How are you feeling?’
‘I… Yes. I’m Jessica and I’m fine.’ Unconsciously her hands tugged her bedcovers to her chin, in a naïve gesture of defence. Why? He didn’t make her feel afraid, she thought. He just made her feel—small? Young? In her flimsy cotton nightgown, with her short crop of chestnut curls tousled from sleep and her freckled face devoid of make-up, she felt about twelve.
‘I’m Raoul,’ he told her.
She’d guessed. ‘Y…Your Highness.’
‘Raoul.’ His voice firmed, and there was even a tinge of anger, as if he was repudiating something he found offensive.
‘Jessica’s been fretting about Sarah’s death,’ his mother told him. ‘I’ve told her she’s not to blame herself.’
‘How can you blame yourself?’ Raoul was speaking in English. His voice was strong and deep, and only faintly tinged with the accent of his native country.
Where did he fit in? How did this family fit into the government of this place? Jess thought, trying desperately to remember what she’d learned of this country before she came here. Not much. Her trip this time been more an excuse to get away than to learn about another culture, and her only other visit here had been fleeting and had ended in disaster.
But she knew a little. Alp’Azuri was a principality, a tiny country edged by the sea. There’d been some recent tragedy, she thought, remembering flashes of international news in the past few weeks. A dissolute prince and his princess found dead. A tiny crown prince, orphaned.
Where did that leave Raoul?
‘I’ll not have you blaming yourself for Sarah’s death,’ Raoul was saying, and she blinked, trying to haul herself back to reality. To now.
‘Um…’
‘Sarah killed herself.’ Raoul’s voice was stern, sure of what had to be said. ‘Oh, not intentionally. We’re sure of that. But she’d been drinking. She was driving too fast on the wrong side of the road and the police say the only reason you weren’t killed also was because you were being incredibly cautious. Somehow, miraculously, you managed to avoid a double tragedy.’
‘But if I hadn’t been there…’
‘Then she might have hit someone else further down. Maybe with even worse consequences.’ He shook his head. ‘If it had been a family…’ He closed his eyes, as if to shut out a tragedy that could have been. ‘We’re all grateful that you were there, Jessica, and that you somehow prevented what could have been a lot, lot worse.’
‘But your fiancée…’
‘Yes.’ His eyes were open again now, and behind their cool, appraising look she could see pain. And something else. Despair? Defeat? ‘But we move on.’
‘Edouard will stay with me,’ his mother said softly and Jess frowned at this strange twist in the conversation. ‘We will fight for him. We must.’
Jess was lost. Edouard? Fighting?
Was this yet another tragedy? She pulled her covers even higher, in a gesture of protection that was as crazy as it was unhelpful.
‘I’ve been lying here for too long,’ she managed and Louise smiled.
‘My dear, it’s been six days. You were concussed and you dislocated your shoulder. But Dr Briet says—and Raoul concurs—that you seem to have been suffering more than that. He says you seem exhausted. You were taken initially to the Vesey hospital but when it was clear that all you needed to do was to sleep, it seemed best to bring you here.’ She hesitated. ‘It’s not possible to keep the Press away anywhere else, and Raoul has been on hand if needed.’
This was making less and less sense. ‘You’ve been very good,’ Jess managed, ‘in the face of your own tragedy.’ She hesitated, but there was more to be said. Edouard. The name had brought back a memory now, remembrance of news reports she’d read surely less than a month ago. ‘And it’s not just Sarah, is it?’
‘You can’t know…’ Louise started but Jess was too distressed to stop.
‘I’m remembering the deaths of the crown prince and his princess,’ Jess said. ‘And your grandson being orphaned. I heard of it back in Australia. I’d just…forgotten.’
Of course. When her own world had collapsed, so had her ability to take in tragedies of those about her. But the deaths had been front-page news at home at a time when her world had been blank and meaningless, and it had been dreadful enough to haul her out of her pool of misery, into someone else’s.
She remembered cringing inside. The prince and his princess, in a chalet high in the mountains. An avalanche? A storm? She couldn’t remember. But she remembered that the child was alive, unharmed, but with his parents both dead.
The world had been captivated.
Deep in her own personal tragedy, Jess had hardly taken it in. But now… She forced herself to think back to those half-remembered newspaper headlines. Rumours that it hadn’t been a storm that had killed them. That the storm had cut off access to the cabin and meant that normal checks couldn’t be made. The royal couple had escaped their minders and there’d been drugs.
This was not her scene, she told herself fiercely. It was not her business.
She looked up at Raoul and there was that look on his face that precluded questions—and how to ask a question like the ones that were forming in the back of her mind? She couldn’t. She didn’t need to. Thankfully.
She was so tired.
She lay back on her pillows and closed her eyes, allowing the exhaustion and distress to wash through.
Unexpectedly Raoul stepped forward and lifted her hand. The gesture was a measure of comfort that was surprisingly successful. It was strong and reassuring and compelling. ‘Don’t distress yourself,’ he told her. ‘You mustn’t.’
His touch warmed her more than she’d thought such a gesture could. It was unexpected, a gesture that he didn’t need to make. Maybe in the same circumstances she’d find it impossible to make this gesture herself, she thought. To touch the cause of more sadness…
‘Jess, you’re not to focus on this,’ he told her, his voice, like his touch, strong and warm and sure. ‘You’re here as our guest for as long as you need before you feel strong enough to face the world.’
‘I’m well now.’ She opened her eyes and he was close, she thought, dazed. Too close.
‘You’ve had a hell of a time,’ he told her. ‘And maybe not just this week?’
It was a question. She swallowed. This man was wounded too, she thought.
‘We’re a pair,’ she whispered and there was a stillness.
‘I…’
‘I’ll leave you as soon as I can pack,’ she said wearily. ‘I’m fine. It was very good of you to let me stay this long.’
‘Jess, as soon as you leave this place you’ll be inundated,’ he said warningly. ‘The world’s Press want interviews. This tragedy has caught the attention of the international media and you won’t be left alone. Plus after six days in bed you’ll be as weak as a kitten. Stay here. Within the walls of this castle I can protect you. At least for the next few days. Outside…I’m afraid you’re alone.’
Silence.
Within the walls of this castle he’d protect her?
