Marion Lennox - Princess Of Convenience

‘My lap?’ Raoul said, sounding French, and Jess grinned.

‘Your knee. I guess princes of the blood don’t have laps. Edouard, would you like some lemonade?’

Edouard looked astounded.

‘We’ll all have lemonade,’ she decreed. There was a small refrigerator in her sitting room. She went out and poured three glasses of lemonade and returned to find Edouard sitting on Raoul’s…knee.

They both looked so apprehensive that she giggled.

‘Hey, I don’t bite,’ she said and handed over the glasses.

Edouard stared into his glass in absolute suspicion.

‘There are bubbles?’ he whispered and there was another shock. A royal prince reaching three years old without meeting lemonade?

‘Sure there are bubbles,’ she said, trying not to get choked up. ‘They tickle your nose. Try it.’

Edouard glanced at his uncle. Raoul smiled and drank some of his.

Edouard stared at Jess, who drank some of hers.

He hesitated-and then he took a sip.

His eyes widened. He took another sip. And another.

It had been a test, Jess thought, letting breath out that she didn’t know she’d been holding. And they’d just passed.

‘I like it,’ he said, on a long note of discovery, and Jess grinned.

‘Me, too. What about you, Uncle Raoul?’

‘Me, too,’ he said definitely and he smiled-and suddenly they were grinning at each other like fools again, and that crazy twist inside her that she’d been trying to put aside all evening slammed back so hard that her breathing got tricky.

She wasn’t sure how to manage this breathing business. What was going on?

‘Um…teddy,’ she managed, but Raoul was still smiling at her and it took all the strength she possessed to break contact.

‘Teddy?’ he said, softly, almost wonderingly, and she knew that whatever was twisting her insides was having a similar effect on him.

She ignored it. Or she tried to ignore it. She walked over to the wardrobe where her suitcase lay stored in its cavernous depths. She knew exactly where Teddy was. In a moment she had him out, and was walking back to the bed.

Dammit, she wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t.

She reached the bed, and she held out one small bear.

‘Edouard, this is Sebastian,’ she told him. She crouched down so her eyes were on a level with Edouard’s. Raoul had him on his knee so she was almost touching his legs. It was a crazily intimate setting. But then, it was a crazily intimate gesture.

It might not work. It might be stupid. What made her think so strongly that it was the right thing to do? That Dom would have wanted this…?

‘Edouard, Sebastian is a very old bear,’ she told him. ‘He was my bear when I was a little girl, and then he belonged to a little boy called Dominic. Dominic can’t look after him any more, and for the past few weeks he’s been sitting in the bottom of my suitcase. But that’s a very sad place for a special bear to be. He’s been lonely and he badly wants a friend. Would you like Sebastian, Edouard?’

Edouard considered. His small face was intent, as if knowing instinctively that this was a very serious charge.

Sebastian lay in Jess’s hands. He’d been patched and re-patched. His eyes didn’t quite match. His nose was fraying, and one leg was very much shorter than the other. He gazed out at the world with world-weary, crooked eyes and a crooked little smile that had been stitched and re-stitched but had never stopped smiling in all the years of his life.

He was one special bear.

Jess held him out, and she felt her gut wrench as she did so. But it felt right. It felt…fine.

She looked up into Edouard’s face and she saw the intent look he was giving Sebastian and she thought, yep, here was his home.

‘He looks sad,’ Edouard said even though the little bear was smiling.

‘He’s been in the bottom of a suitcase in my cupboard,’ Jess told him. ‘He’s been very lonely. He needs a friend.’

‘Sebastian needs me?’ His voice was too old for his years, Jess thought, and more and more she knew this was the right thing to do.

‘I guess he does,’ she told him and waited while Edouard considered some more. Finally, he reached out a finger and touched the ragged nose.

Then very carefully, as if Sebastian might break at any minute, he accepted him into his hold. He held him at arm’s length for a long minute-and then hauled him in closer. Protectively.

‘He doesn’t have any clothes,’ he whispered. ‘He’s sad because he doesn’t have anything to wear.’

‘Do you think so?’ Raoul was smiling. She noticed his smile, and even more she thought, this felt good. Very good. And not just for Edouard. The wash of grey fog she’d been living in for the last few months had lifted. Just a bit. Just a fraction, like the sun glimmering out from the clouds, but the sun was on her face and she felt, for this magic moment, a shard of glorious freedom. And she intended to pursue it for all it was worth.

‘We could make him some trousers,’ she said, and her two princes looked puzzled.

‘Now?’ Edouard whispered and she nodded.

‘Now.’

‘How?’ Raoul demanded, surprised out of his sideline role.

She smiled. ‘Magic. Watch.’ She disappeared back to her wardrobe, to her suitcase, then returned carrying a frame-a tiny loom already threaded with black warp thread. She also carried a handful of brightly coloured balls.

‘We’ll start from the ground up,’ she told the boys. ‘I have this set up so I can try out various yarns for effect. Raoul, set Edouard down. There’s work to be done.’

She dropped her balls at her feet and skeins of brightly coloured yarn rolled over the imperial carpet. These were amazing skeins, carefully collected from one producer, each one sourced and labelled. At this one place Jess had visited before her accident she’d known she’d been right to come. Alp’Azuri was a weaver’s paradise.

The balls were unique, vibrant colours and amazing textures. Magic. She’d produced only the coarser of her selection-there was no time for fine weaving now-but the coarser ones were magic enough.

She knelt on the carpet, setting her frame on the floor.

‘I need you to choose four skeins for the cross thread-the weft,’ she told the boys. ‘If we’re to do trousers tonight we can’t work with any more. Edouard, can you count to four?’

Edouard was clutching Sebastian tightly. He climbed down from Raoul’s lap and he held up four fingers.

‘Un, deux, trois, quatre.’

Jess beamed. This tiny man-child was turning more and more into a child as she watched. ‘I usually say one, two, three, four because I’m Australian,’ she told him. ‘Sebastian is Australian, too. But he’s a fast learner. I bet you he understands you right now. OK, choose…what do you say? Un, deux, trois, quatre balls so we can make cloth for Sebastian’s trousers.’

‘Wouldn’t it be easier if we cut up a sheet or something?’ Raoul ventured and he was given a pitying look for his pains.

‘Trousers? From a sheet? Would you wear trousers made from a sheet?’

‘Maybe not,’ he said faintly and she grinned.

‘There you go, then. Sebastian deserves splendid trousers and that’s what we’ll make him. All hands on deck.’

‘I don’t understand all hands on deck,’ Edouard complained and she grinned still more.

‘It means I’m the captain and I’m saying we have work to do. I’ve never had two princes to boss around before but I’m bossing now. Work. Now.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Raoul told her and she smiled up at him.

Damn, there was that gut-twisting sensation that was threatening to spiral out of control.

She had work to do.

She couldn’t keep smiling at Raoul forever.

No matter how much she wanted to.

WHAT followed was a truly excellent hour.

Jess’s fingers were true weaver’s fingers. Edouard chose his yarns: red, gold, a deep blue and a soft lemon that made her smile. She attached the threads, she considered for a little, and then she set to work. The shuttles flew in her hands, back, forth, pressing each thread into place in her chosen pattern while the boys looked on in wonder.

Edouard watched for a few minutes and after a bit she asked him if he’d like to place the shuttles for her. To her surprise his fingers were nimble and sure, and he seemed to sense the pattern she was working without being told. She’d want a thread and his fingers were already reaching for the right shuttle.

This little boy was intelligent and he was fascinated. As was Raoul. She had his undivided attention. It made her feel strange, but the shimmer of joy was still with her. The grey that had been with her since Dom’s death was held at bay by their absorption.

She worked fast, and in half an hour there was a good half a yard of cloth; enough for any bear’s trousers.

‘Now what?’ Raoul said faintly as she drew the cloth from her frame and gazed at it, considering. ‘It’s beautiful. We should frame it.’

‘Frame it? When it can be useful?’ That was what she’d been doing with Sebastian himself, she thought, her joy fading a little. She’d been shoving the little bear down the bottom of her suitcase. Unable to cope with holding him, unable to look at him but also unable to let go. Holding him in store for when he could be useful.

Like now.

‘What is it, Jess?’ Raoul asked, and she hauled herself out of her introspection and made herself focus.

‘Nothing,’ she said abruptly, reaching for scissors. ‘There’ll be no more framing. This might be a pretty piece of cloth but Sebastian needs trousers.’

It was a very rough pair of trousers. She had no sewing machine and Edouard was starting to droop, but she badly wanted the trousers to be finished tonight. So she cut a front and a back and sewed them together swiftly with a neat, fast backstitch, using a rough blanket stitch to stop fraying. She turned the band at the waist, plaited the remainder of the skeins and threaded the resulting cord through the band. She deliberately released threads at the hems to give the trousers a Robinson Crusoe look, and Sebastian’s trousers were complete.