Marion Lennox - His Miracle Bride

‘It’s not the same,’ Wendy muttered.

‘No, but I was your temporary housekeeper,’ she said softly. ‘My job here is done.’

The journey back to the castle was made in silence. Shanni stared straight ahead. She’d insisted Wendy sit up front with Pierce. She felt small and insignificant in the back seat-and mean.

She’d hurt Wendy. The thought tore her in two. But she looked at the rigid set of Pierce’s shoulders and thought, what else was she to do? She had to walk away-if not run.

They pulled into the castle forecourt and sat for a moment, as if each was reluctant to get out.

‘They’ll be waiting for you on the beach,’ Shanni said gently to Wendy. ‘Won’t they, Pierce?’

‘They were planning lunch on the beach when I left,’ Pierce said. ‘They’ve set up a cabana for shade, and they looked set there for the next month.’

‘Then you need to get your swimmers on and join them.’

‘I want you to come,’ Wendy whispered.

‘I can’t.’

‘You mean you won’t,’ Pierce said.

‘That’s right,’ she whispered. ‘I’m mean, selfish…’

‘I didn’t mean-’

‘You know very well why I’m doing this,’ she snapped. ‘Don’t make it any harder.’

He didn’t reply. Shanni saw his hands clench on the steering wheel, so hard his knuckles turned white.

‘Fine,’ he said at last. ‘Wendy, let’s get our swimmers.’

‘But…’

‘We have to learn to stick together,’ Pierce said harshly. ‘Shanni’s not part of our family.’

Ouch. But it was true.

‘Wendy, I love you lots,’ she said. ‘I’ll come down to the beach and say goodbye.’

She climbed out of the car and fled into the castle before they could say another thing.

In the movies packing was done fast. She’d seen it. The cuckolded husband storming in, seizing his suitcase, throwing in a handful of shirts, slamming the lid and saying, ‘I’ll be back for the final stuff later.’

Shanni, however, was not a storming kind of person. She was actually a really messy person. She opened her suitcase and stared at the room and tried to figure out where to start.

She’d only been here twenty-four hours. Hardly time to make herself at home.

Damn, she was crying. She never cried. Never, ever.

She sobbed.

Finally she hauled herself together-a little-and marched down to the bathroom to find tissues.

Queen Victoria looked astonished. And even more disapproving.

‘Yeah, I’m breaking my heart over five kids and a guy I’ve known less than a week. Dumb, dumb, dumb.’

No answer. Well, what did she expect? ‘You were protected from this sort of thing,’ she told the queen. ‘Married young, one baby after another…

‘You still broke your heart, though,’ she whispered, thinking back to history at school, to the stories of the abyss of misery Victoria had fallen into after the death of Albert.

‘Yeah, well, you should have found a career you could throw yourself into. Like I have.’

Didn’t Queen of England count as a career? And Shanni didn’t have a career. Thanks to Mike she had nothing, and now thanks to Pierce she had less than nothing-but a cracked heart…

‘I thought you couldn’t possibly fall in love this fast,’ she told Victoria, sniffing hard. ‘I was wrong.’

‘Shanni?’

She stilled. It was Pierce, calling from below stairs. ‘Where are you?’ he yelled.

‘Talking to Vicky.’

There was a moment’s silence, and then the sound of the stairs being taken two or three treads at a time.

The bathroom door was locked. She and QueenVic were safe.

‘Come out,’ he called.

‘Why aren’t you at the beach?’

‘I took Wendy down and came back.’

‘Did they like her hairdo?’

‘They loved it. They’re currently making a sandcastle, modelling it on Kirsty. Seeing Kirsty’s nine months pregnant it’s some sandcastle. Shanni, come out.’

‘I’m busy.’

‘Talking to Victoria?’

‘You think I’m crazy?’

‘Hell, no,’ he told her. ‘Everyone in this damned castle finds a confidante somewhere. Susie told me she’s sure Ernst and Eric were marriage counsellors in a former life.’

‘Ernst and Eric?’

‘The suits of armour at the foot of the stairs.’

She’d forgotten. ‘Right.’

‘Come out?’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘You sound younger than Abby.’

‘Well, then. I’m younger than Abby and a damned nuisance.’

‘Shanni, I’m so sorry you heard that conversation last night.’

‘So am I,’ she snapped, and hauled open the door. Which was a mistake. She’d thought her anger could protect her, at least giving her room to get from the bathroom to the privacy of her bedroom. But as soon as she saw him…

‘You’ve been crying,’ he said, and he put his hands on her shoulders.

‘I have hayfever,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster. ‘I’m allergic to aspidistra. Tell Queen V it’s her fault.’

‘I don’t want you to go.’

‘I have to.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’m falling in love with…the kids.’

He hesitated. Then, ‘Wendy’s breaking her heart.’

‘I’ve been with her less than a week. I’m a friend. I’ll get over it.’ She paused. ‘I mean, she’ll get over it,’ she amended.

‘So you feel the same?’

‘About the kids, maybe, yes,’ she snapped. ‘They’re fantastic. ‘You’re really lucky.’

‘Lucky…’

‘Only you don’t see that. You’re too busy trying to be self-contained.’

‘I only know that the kids think you’re wonderful.’

‘So you want me to stay so you can take even more of a back seat. I don’t think so.’

‘It’s not just the kids.’

She held her breath.

‘Look, Shanni, I…’

‘Yes?’

‘I don’t know.’ He dug his hands deep in his pockets and swore. ‘You cook a mean chocolate cookie.’

‘I do, don’t I?’ She paused, and then softened. Anger was getting her nowhere. He couldn’t see what was in front of his eyes-that she was falling hopelessly in love with him, and every minute spent with him was making her more miserable. For he didn’t have a clue how to reciprocate such love.

‘Pierce, I’m an art curator,’ she said gently. ‘I’m not a housekeeper. I used you as an emergency stop-gap, and now the emergency is over.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yes, for I’ve pulled myself together.’ She gave another sniff as if to prove it. ‘So I’m off back to my world, leaving you to get on with yours.’

‘I still don’t want you to tell Ruby.’

Great. Back onto neutral ground. Well, it was okay with her-if that was all there was.

‘You can’t stop me,’ she said flatly. ‘I won’t be a party to hurting my Aunty Ruby. You’ve hurt her by not telling her about the kids. She knows I’ve been with you, and I’ll be grilled. I won’t lie.’

‘Just don’t go near her.’

‘My lovely Aunty Ruby? Avoid her? Like you have for the last year? I love my Aunt Ruby, and you have rocks in your head for suggesting such a thing.’

‘She’ll give me a really hard time.’ He looked so hangdog that suddenly, despite her heartbreak, she chuckled.

‘She will, too,’ she said. ‘I remember when I was twelve I stayed with her. She was having a time out from fostering-there’d been a couple of heartbreaks and she needed time. So my family sent me to keep her company. You remember that white poodle she had?’

‘Miffanwy.’

‘That’s the one. It spent its days preening itself in front of the front-room mirror.’

‘So…’

‘So I wanted to have a go at dying my hair, but I wasn’t game. So I tried it out first on Miffanwy.’

‘Oh, God.’

‘Flaming scarlet, the packet said, though fire-engine red might be a better description. Anyway Miffanwy darn near had kittens and hid under the bed for days. And I laughed, and Ruby took a mop to me.’

‘A mop?’

‘She was mopping the kitchen floor when Miffanwy came flying out of the bathroom-bright red-and hid behind her legs. I was giggling and she raised her mop. Well, I went flying out of the house and she chased me and chased me. She was a little tub on legs, without a snowball’s chance in a bushfire of catching me. Finally I legged it up a huge eucalyptus in the back yard. Then I was dumb enough to jeer, “You can’t catch me.”

‘And so…?’ he said, and he was smiling. She loved his smile, she thought. She just loved it.

‘And so she simply smiled, put her mop back over her shoulder and marched away. “You’ll be home for dinner,” she said as she left, and I still remember the sinking feeling I had in my stomach as she walked inside.’

‘But she wouldn’t have hit you.’

‘No. Oh, I might have got a faceful of soggy mop and that’d be it. Instead of which, I had to spend three hours every morning for the rest of my holidays scrubbing out kennels at the local dog shelter.’

He grinned. ‘Good old Ruby.’

‘The punishment fits the crime.’

‘It always did.’

‘Shanni, stay.’

It slammed back at her. He was still smiling, that wobbly, endearing smile that had her heart turning somersaults. But she wasn’t going to be drawn in. She wasn’t.

She forced herself to deliberately look behind her. Queen Victoria in widow’s weeds looked sternly down upon them. Victoria, who’d fallen so deeply in love that she’d spent almost half of her life in mourning.

And here was Pierce. A man she could fall for, just like that.

A man she had fallen for.

‘No,’ she said.

‘Because?’

‘Because you don’t understand.’

‘Because of the kiss?’ he demanded.

‘Kisses. If you like.’

He stared at her, baffled. ‘Hell, Shanni, no I don’t understand.’

‘Neither do I,’ she said sadly. ‘I only know I don’t have a choice. I’ll go down to the beach and say goodbye, and then I’m leaving. Please, Pierce, don’t stop me. I just have to…go.’

JULES’S floor was really hard. They padded it with cushions, even going out to the shop to buy more, but as a luxury hotel it lacked a certain something.