New Year Wedding For The Crown Prince

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She paused, then, apparently needing to be honest, she added, ‘Not that Jo was all that keen on him. Not keen on marriage at all. I think her home life as a child put her off.’

The slight tightness in his chest as he heard Dottie’s words Charles put down to tiredness. It had been a long night and he hadn’t finished his grilled cheese on toast before he’d been drawn into the drama of the birth.

Down in the antiquated laundry, Dottie was running cold water into a deep stone tub.

‘We’ll soak all this for now,’ Dottie told him, although she was doing all the work. ‘Then get Jo off to her own bed for the night, not that she’ll get much sleep if the baby wakes through the night, which, of course, it will. That Chris and Alice are in for some fun!’

She pushed the towels and sheet into the cold water, pressing them down so they were all covered, then headed for a door he hadn’t noticed before. The place was like a rabbit warren.

‘Box room,’ she said, throwing open the door. ‘See if you can find a decent, dry box we can pack with sheets for the baby. Having got this far, it would kill Jo if she rolled on the little fellow in the night and smothered him.’

Charles had to smile as he peered into the unlit room. It was obvious cardboard boxes had been going there to die for years, possibly decades. Which made the ones at the top of the pile the newest and most likely to be sanitary.

Pleased to have been co-opted by Dottie to help—surely it would thaw her attitude towards him, if only a smidgen—he examined the boxes with care, finally producing a clean-looking one with KURL printed in blue along the top.

He had no idea what KURL might be—tinned food, paper, linen?—but he pulled it out and held it for Dottie to inspect.

‘You’ll have to cut down the sides,’ Dottie told him, after a nod he took for approval. ‘It wouldn’t do for him to suffocate at this stage.’

She turned and led him from the room, through the kitchen where he looked a little longingly at the debris of his supper.

‘The scissors are in still in my bedroom, so we’ll take it up there.’

And if he manoeuvred himself into a good position he might be able to see the photos on the chest of drawers.

Clutching his box like a prize, he waited until Dottie had ascended in her lift, then followed her up to find Jo awake, sitting on the little chaise, holding the baby in her arms and looking slightly bemused.

She smiled as he and Dottie came into the room.

‘I obviously didn’t dream it because there’s this baby here to prove it, but I can hardly believe it all happened.’

‘You’ll believe it soon enough when he wakes you every couple of hours during the night,’ Dottie told her, going forward to lift the infant from Jo’s arms. ‘Now, you go to bed and try to get some sleep. We’ll fix a bed for him and put him by you.’

But Charles and his box had stopped in the doorway, transfixed by the sight of this woman, her red-gold hair wild and dishevelled around her pale face, the baby resting in her arms. It was a scene worthy of the great Pre-Raphaelite paintings, and he could only stare.

She’s not keen on marriage.

‘Well, are you going to cut the box?’

He hoped he hadn’t been standing there more than a few seconds, for all it had seemed like a lifetime. He strode forward, smiling at Jo as he passed, taking the scissors from Dottie and hacking away at the sides of the makeshift crib.

‘You do that and sort through the linen for padding. You need to keep it firm. I’ll take Jo to her room,’ Dottie ordered, still holding the baby and occasionally smiling down at him when she thought no one was watching.

Not as tough as she made out, this grandmother of his, Charles thought, but still a very redoubtable lady.

He’d kind of accidentally moved to the far side of the bed so as he cut the cardboard he could also take in the photos.

But although he’d hoped to see at least one of a young woman, or even a girl, who might be his mother, he was disappointed. There was Dottie as a young woman, in her nurse’s white uniform, clutching a rolled certificate, and a handsome young man in army uniform he assumed would be his grandfather. Unfortunately, the wide-brimmed, slouch hat of the Australian Army shadowed the man’s face and before he could do more than glance at the rest he heard Dottie returning.

Hastily dropping the cut pieces on the floor, he put the scissors on the bedside table, grabbed a sheet and wadded it into the bottom of the box, then put a cut sheet, wide enough to swaddle the baby, over it.

‘That should do,’ Dottie told him, although she seemed reluctant to relinquish the baby into his new bed.

‘You’d better get some sleep yourself,’ she said instead, as Charles picked up the debris from the floor and stood there wondering what on earth to do next. ‘If you turn left at the top of the stairs you’ll come to the front room, though why it’s always called that I don’t know. But it has a view if ever it stops raining—looks south and west towards Anooka.’

He had to say something, Charles knew, but what?

He went with courtesy.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘It’s very good of you to take me in. I hadn’t realised just how isolated this place would be. I had arranged accommodation—well, the hospital at Anooka had arranged it—but having come all this way I wanted—’

‘Why should the hospital have arranged accommodation for you?’ Dottie demanded, definitely frosty now.

Charles shrugged. It seemed silly now, given Dottie’s reaction to his arrival, but the old cliché about a person might as well being hung for a sheep as a lamb seemed appropriate here so he told her.

‘I thought, when I decided to come to see you, that it wouldn’t be fair to either of us if I just came for a few days. I wanted to learn something of what my mother’s life would have been like growing up here, so I came in on a six-week working visa, sponsored by the Anooka and District Hospital Board. Apparently, they are only too happy to have British-trained doctors to fill in as locums, especially over Christmas.’