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It was crazy. She didn’t need protection.
She couldn’t stay.
Where could she go?
Home?
Home was where the heart was.
She had no home.
‘Stay for a few more days.’ It was Louise, gently adding her urging to her son’s. ‘We feel so responsible. You have no idea what the Press will be like. You seem exhausted. Let us give you just a little time out.’
Time out.
It was an idea that was almost incredibly appealing. And it was the only thing she could think of to do. What else? Pick up the threads?
What threads?
She was bone-weary and she was faced with a choice. These pillows and the protection of castle walls for a few more days—or the scrutiny of the world’s Press. There was suddenly no choice. Especially as Raoul was smiling down at her like…like…
She didn’t know. All she knew was that his smile warmed parts of her that desperately needed to be warmed. Stay? Of course she’d stay.
She must.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered, and she was rewarded by a widening of that killer smile.
‘Good.’ Raoul’s voice was strong again, commanding and sure. His eyes met hers, filled with warmth and pleasure that she’d decided to be sensible. ‘Join the world slowly again, no? Start with dinner tonight. With us.’
‘I…’
‘It’s very informal,’ Louise told her, guessing immediately the confusion such an invitation would cause. ‘Just my son and myself.’ She smiled, and her smile was ineffably sad. ‘And the odd servant or six.’
‘Have just Henri serve us tonight, Mama,’ Raoul told her. ‘Give the other servants the night off.’
She nodded. ‘That would be lovely. If you don’t think it’s cowardly.’
‘Maybe we need to be cowardly,’ he told her. ‘Maybe we all do. For a while.’
CHAPTER TWO
JESS wallowed—that had to be the word for what one did in such a sumptuous bathtub—and thought about what she was about to experience.
Dinner with the Prince Regent of Alp’Azuri…
As a little girl she’d read the tale of Cinderella—of course she had—and she’d dreamed of princes. But now…
Reality was very different, she thought. Real princes weren’t riding white chargers ready to whisk a woman away from the troubles of the world. Real princes came with tragedies of their own.
It made the whole situation seem surreal, so much so that as she dried and dressed, slowly, in deference to her aching muscles and myriad scratches, she didn’t cringe that she had no fabulous evening gown to wear, or a fairy godmother on hand to transform her.
She should wear severe black, she thought, but she shoved that thought aside as well. Black? When had she ever?
At least she had her stock-in-trade—the reason she was in this country. Her wardrobe had been brought more to show suppliers what she wanted than to wear herself. Tonight she chose a simple skirt, cut on the bias so it swirled softly to her knees. The skirt combined three tones of aquamarine, blended in soft waves. The colours were almost identical but not quite, and when spun together they were somehow magical. She teamed the skirt with an embroidered, white-on-white blouse with a mandarin collar and tiny sleeves. It hid her bruises perfectly.
That was that. No make-up. Like black, make-up was also something she didn’t do. Not since long before Dominic.
She brushed her close-cropped chestnut curls until they shone, then gazed at her reflection in the mirror.
These were great clothes, she conceded, but it was a pity about the model. This model had far too many freckles. This model had eyes that were too big and permanently shadowed with grief.
The model needed a good…life?
‘You’ve had your life,’ she told her reflection. ‘Move on. They’re waiting for you to go to dinner.’
But still she gazed in the mirror, and something akin to panic was threatening to overwhelm her.
This was a suite of rooms. ‘It’s one of several guest suites we have, dear,’ Louise had told her. It consisted of a vast bedroom, a fantastic bathroom and a furnished sitting room where the fire had crackled in the hearth the whole time she’d been here, its heat augmenting the spring sunshine that glimmered through the south-facing windows. The windows looked down over lawns that stretched away to parks and woodland beyond.
The whole place was breathtakingly beautiful, yet until now Jess had simply accepted it as it was. It was as if her mind had shut down. For the last few days she’d simply submitted to these people’s care.
Now she had to move. She’d said she’d go to dinner. She was dressed and ready. But outside was a castle. A castle!
How had Cinderella coped with collywobbles?
But then there was a knock on the door and Henri was there. The elderly butler was someone she was starting to recognise, and his smiling presence was steadying and welcome.
Her own private fairy godfather?
‘I thought I’d accompany you down, miss,’ he told her, his twinkling eyes letting her know that he recognised her butterflies and that was exactly why he was here. ‘It’s easy to get lost in these corridors.’ He surveyed her clothes with approval. ‘And if I may say so, miss, you look too lovely to lose.’
Jess smiled back, knowing if she was inappropriately dressed he would have warned her, but his smile said she was fine. He held out his arm and she hesitated a little and then stepped forward to take it. Yep, he was definitely a fairy godfather and she wasn’t letting go of his arm for anything.
‘You know, they’re just people,’ he told her as they started the long trek toward the distant royal dining room. ‘They’re people in trouble. Just like you.’
That initial time Jess had seen Raoul—the one time he’d entered her bedroom—she’d thought he was stunningly good-looking. Now, as Henri opened the dining-room door, she saw he was dressed for the evening, and good-looking didn’t come close.
The cut of his jet-black suit and his blue-black silk tie clearly delineated his clothes as Italian-designed and expensive. The crisp white linen of his shirt set off his deeply tanned skin to perfection. And his smile…
Good-looking? No. He was just plain drop-dead gorgeous, she decided. Toe-curlingly gorgeous.
Henri paused at the dining-room door, smiling, waiting for Raoul to react. And he did. He rose swiftly, crossed to take her arm from Henri’s, led her to her seat and handed her into it with care.
It’s just like I’m a princess, Jess thought, and she even managed to get a bit breathless. OK, she’d been shocked into a stupor where she’d hardly noticed her surroundings these last few weeks, but there were certain things that could pierce the thickest stupor.
Raoul Louis d’Apergenet was certainly one of them.
Her outfit was too simple for this setting, she thought fleetingly, with a tiny niggle of dismay, but Raoul was smiling at her as if she was indeed a princess and Louise was gazing at her skirt with admiration and saying,
‘Snap.’
‘Snap?’ Jess sat down—absurdly aware of Raoul’s hands adjusting her chair—and gazed at the array of silver and crystal before her. Snap? Card games was the last thing she was thinking about.
The table must be one of the palace’s smallest. It was only meant for eight or ten—but it was magnificent. The array of crystal and silverware made her blink in astonishment.
‘I think the word is wow,’ she said softly. ‘Snap has nothing to do with it.’
‘I meant your skirt.’ Louise was still smiling. ‘If I’m not mistaken that’s a Waves original. The same as mine.’
Jess focused—which was really hard when there was so much to take in. And when Raoul was smiling with that gentle, half-sad smile, the smile that said he knew…
She was being ridiculous.
Louise’s skirt. Concentrate.
Her hostess was indeed wearing a Waves skirt. It was one of Jess’s early designs, much more flamboyant than the one she was wearing, a calf-length circle of soft spun silk, aqua and white, the colours mingling in the shimmering waves that were Jess’s trademark—the colours of the sea.
‘I love the Waves work,’ Louise was saying. ‘And you must, too. But then you’re Australian. Waves is by an Australian designer, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Jess said and then because she couldn’t think of anything else to say she added, ‘Um, she’s me. Waves, that is. It’s what I do.’
‘You work for Waves?’
‘I am Waves,’ she said a trifle self-consciously. Actually, until a year ago she wouldn’t have said that. She would have said she was half of Waves. But then, that had never been true. She’d supported Warren, and when she’d needed him…
No. She closed her eyes and when she opened them Henri was setting a plate before her.
‘Lobster broth, miss,’ he said and it gave her a chance to catch her breath, to look gratefully up at him, to smile and to recover.
‘I own Waves,’ she told them, conscious of Louise’s eyes worrying about her and Raoul’s eyes…doing what? He seemed distant, assessing, but then maybe he had room for caution. ‘I started designing at school and it’s grown.’
‘You’re not serious? You own Waves?’ Louise’s expression was one of pure admiration. ‘Raoul, do you hear that? Waves is known throughout the world. We have a famous person in our midst.’
‘I’m hardly famous,’ she managed. She tried the broth. ‘This is lovely,’ she told Henri, though in truth she tasted nothing.
‘Are you here on a holiday?’ Raoul was gently probing, his eyes resting on her face. He seemed to be appraising, she thought, as if maybe he suspected his mother needed protecting from impostors and she might just be one.
She was being fanciful.
‘I… No. I’m here on a fabric-buying mission.’
‘There was no fabric in your car,’ Raoul said.
Once again, that impression of distrust.
‘Maybe because my plane landed the morning of the crash,’ she told him and there was an edge to her voice that she hadn’t intended. She tried to soften it. ‘I’m here to buy but I’ve hardly started. I’d heard that the Alp’Azuri weavers are wonderful and the yarns here are fabulous.’ She hesitated but couldn’t help herself. ‘I have already been to one supplier. If you’ve searched my luggage you’ll have found yarns.’
‘I didn’t search your luggage,’ Raoul said, swiftly, and Jess raised her brows and managed a slight, disbelieving smile. Good. It was good to have him defensive.
Why? She didn’t know. And maybe she was being dumb. To get a European prince of the blood offside…
Whoa, Jess. Back off.
‘My son didn’t mean to be offensive,’ Louise was saying and to Jess’s delight Raoul was getting a look of reproof from his mother. Hey, she’d won this round. ‘And the Alp’Azuri spinners certainly are amazing.’ Louise was animated now as if here at last was a safe subject, a subject they could indulge in where everything wasn’t raw. ‘I could take you out and introduce—’
‘No, Mama,’ Raoul told her. ‘You can’t go out. Not while there’s this drama. You forget.’
His mother flushed and bit her lip. ‘No. I’m sorry.’
‘Are the Press hounding you?’ Jess looked from one to the other, her spurt of childish satisfaction fading. Their faces were tight with strain. She’d been so caught up in her own misery that she’d hardly noticed, but she was noticing now. There was more behind these expressions than their recent tragedy, awful as that was.
‘The Press are certainly hounding us,’ Raoul said heavily. ‘They’re waiting for us to leave.’
‘We need to leave the castle eventually,’ Louise whispered. ‘We can’t stay here indefinitely.’
‘Why would you want to leave?’ Jess said, astonished.
‘We’re a bit under siege,’ Louise said and then bit her lip and looked ruefully at her son. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘I didn’t… Jess, you’re not interested in our troubles.’
‘Too many troubles,’ Raoul muttered. ‘None of our making. Drink your soup, Jess. Forget it.’
But it seemed that trouble couldn’t be forgotten. Henri reentered the room almost as he said the words, and he wasn’t bearing food. He looked distressed.
Definitely trouble.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he told Raoul, ‘but your cousin, the Comte Marcel, is here. He’s been here three times today already and this time he refuses to leave.’
‘Of course I refuse to leave.’
The voice was a ponderous, pompous baritone, and before Henri had time to withdraw, the dining-room door was shoved wide. Henri was shoved roughly aside. ‘This is my home from now on, man,’ the newcomer said. ‘You and my so dear relatives will just have to grow accustomed to it. Now.’
Was it possible to take a dislike to someone on sight? Whether it was the imperiousness of his tone, the audacity of his statement or the way he’d shoved Henri, Jess’s first reaction was revulsion. She wasn’t alone in her reaction. Raoul was rising to his feet and his face was dark with anger.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, shoving your way into my mother’s dining room?’ he snapped and the man’s eyes rose in supercilious reproof.
‘Surely you mean my dining room.’
He was in his late fifties, short and balding, with what was left of his hair oiled flatly down over a shiny scalp. He was dressed in expensive evening wear but his clothes weren’t flattering. His stomach protruded over his sash, and nothing could disguise the flab beneath the suit.
‘This is my husband’s nephew, the Comte Marcel d’Apergenet,’ Louise murmured to Jess, and there was real distress in her tone now as she attempted introductions. ‘Raoul, please sit down. Jess, this is the…the new regent as of next week. Marcel, this is Jessica Devlin.’
The man’s eyes were already sweeping the room. They flickered over Raoul with dislike, they moved past Louise with disdain and now they rested on Jess with something akin to approval.
‘Ha. The girl who killed Lady Sarah.’
‘She did not kill—’ Louise started hotly, but the man held up his hands as if to ward off attack. He even smiled.
‘Now, even if she did, who am I to criticise? Sarah might have been a distant relative but she wasn’t close. Are any of our family close? No. And her death destroyed your plans very neatly. But that means we need to move on. I’ve been trying for days to see the pair of you, but your damned butler refuses me admission. It’s time to face the future.’
