Marion Lennox - Princess Of Convenience

‘A taxi? Here? And for non-housetrained alpacas?’

‘I’ll pay more for cleaning.’ She jutted her chin. ‘Raoul, I don’t want to hurt you.’

And there it was. A declaration, just like that. Raoul, I don’t want to hurt you.

What was she doing right now, by looking at him like this?

Get a grip.

‘Look, this is dumb,’ he told her. ‘Of course we can keep them. And you’re right. Edouard will love them.’

‘But if they remind you of Lisle…’

‘Maybe I need to be reminded of Lisle.’ He caught himself, tried to rethink-but he knew that he was right. ‘Maybe Lisle would tell me to get over it.’

She looked up at him, uncertain. ‘Lisle would want you to take these home?’

‘I guess she would.’ He managed a smile, albeit a lopsided one. ‘OK, I know she would. Even if I was driving the Lamborghini.’

That diverted her. ‘You drive a Lamborghini?’

‘Not when I’m transporting alpacas.’

She stared, seemingly dumbfounded. ‘My husband drives a Lamborghini,’ she said at last, and her look of sympathy was replaced by awe. And, amazingly, laughter. It was always there, Raoul thought, dazed. Ready to flash out at any opportunity. Life had kicked her round but still she laughed. ‘Ooh, I so want Cordelia to know this.’ She chuckled, including them all in her laughter. ‘Cordelia is my cousin,’ she told the farmer. ‘She thinks she’s the ant’s pants because her husband drives a Porsche.’

‘Ant’s pants?’ said the farmer. He sounded as dazed as Raoul was.

‘Jess,’ Raoul managed, trying desperately to get back on track. The world seemed to be spinning and he felt dangerously close to falling off. ‘Leave the explanations. Just get the babies into the van.’

‘She is your wife,’ the farmer said, abandoning distractions and getting back to basics as well. To what was important.

They should have swapped to speaking English, Raoul thought ruefully. But Jess was fluent; they’d been speaking to the farmer in his own language and it would have seemed rude to swap. But now…he’d heard every word. Including ant’s pants. And including the rest.

‘I remember the Princess Lisle,’ the farmer said, softly as if he was remembering something that gave him pleasure. ‘You know…’ he looked at Raoul, obviously trying to see in him the child that he’d once been ‘…you and your sister were born two days after my own daughter was born. My wife was so upset when they said the little girl-your sister-had problems. And then the old prince sent you away.’

‘We need to get on,’ Raoul said, more roughly than he intended, and the man beamed.

‘Of course you do. You’re taking the crias to the little prince?’

‘He needs them,’ Jess told the farmer and he nodded.

‘We were so afraid… We have all been so devastated that the Comte Marcel would get his hands on the little prince.’ He turned to Raoul, and his face revealed a mix of emotions that were clearly threatening to overwhelm him.

‘You married this woman so that Comte Marcel wouldn’t control the prince. So his grandmother could love him.’

There was only one answer to that. When the man looked at him like that…when he was feeling as he was feeling…

‘Yes,’ he said and the man blinked. He stood and stared at them for a long moment, and then he stared down at Jess.

Then he lifted the cheque and ripped it in two.

‘I’m not a wealthy man,’ he told them. ‘But you give me hope. How does that compare to the value of a cheque?’

‘Hey.’ Jess rose, still hugging her baby. ‘Monsieur, I wanted you to have that money,’ she told him. ‘Prince Raoul has enough. He even drives a Lamborghini.’

‘This money was yours.’

‘Now I feel like a rat,’ Raoul told them.

‘Good,’ Jess said. ‘Monsieur-’

‘I will not accept payment from you,’ the man said. ‘Not in a million years. Take these babies to the little prince, and God bless.’

‘Well, thank you,’ Jess said, clearly disconcerted. ‘You’re very good.’

‘It’s you who is good.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll take Angel home and maybe she will miss her babies and repent and maybe she won’t but even if she won’t I know they’ve gone to a noble cause.’

‘They’ll piddle on the van seats,’ Raoul said darkly but they were all smiling.

There was nothing left to do.

Jess loaded the second baby. She sat, overwhelmed by alpacas, smiling supremely, and once more Raoul steered the van toward the castle.

And on the road behind them the farmer smiled and smiled.

‘I have been very generous, no?’ he demanded of Angel, who was yet to notice that her babies had disappeared. ‘I have been wonderful. As this marriage is wonderful. But then, if this marriage is wonderful, why doesn’t the entire world know? And who is to tell them but me?’ He grinned. ‘I have been very wonderful but the fees for news stories are very, very excellent. I have, my Angel, what the world calls a scoop. Let’s see how fast we can walk to the nearest farmhouse. I need to make a very important phone call.’

IT TOOK twenty minutes to get from where they’d met the farmer to the palace gates.

In that twenty minutes the world had woken up.

One phone call from the farmer had produced immediate results. There had been huge media interest in the death of Lady Sarah. Everyone in the country knew the terms of the royal succession, and apart from Marcel and the politicians who would benefit, everyone had been devastated. There was general consensus that the little prince should stay with his grandmother and there had been hope that Raoul would prove a better ruler than his predecessors. Sarah’s death had dashed those hopes, but there was still avid interest in this Prince Raoul who the country knew so little of and who had lost so badly.

So there’d been media camped up at the palace gates, waiting to get interviews, photos, anything. That interest had died back over the past few days, so much so that they’d been able to get out this morning simply by driving the gardener’s van. No one had been stirring in the camp. No one had expected anything except maybe a statement of misery as the royals moved out.

But the farmer’s phone call had changed things.

As they approached the castle gates, the media seemed to burst from nowhere. Photographers and reporters and their associated equipment were spread over the road and their excitement was obvious from five hundred yards.

‘Uh-oh,’ Raoul muttered.

‘M. Luiten must have told them,’ Jess whispered, horrified.

‘Maybe it was your own declaration down the mountain,’ Raoul said drily. ‘You can hardly go round calling me your husband if you don’t want anyone to know.’

‘But the farmer didn’t have a phone.’

‘Maybe not but I’m guessing he and Angel found a phone faster than I can drive.’

‘So you’re saying this is my fault?’

‘Absolutely.’ He grinned.

‘Raoul…’

‘It’ll be fine,’ he told her. ‘Pretend you don’t speak our language.’

‘I can do that. And they can hardly photograph me,’ she said, cheering up as she hugged her babies. Raoul was smiling his reassurance. It couldn’t be all bad. ‘I’m covered in alpaca.’ She peered out at the pack ahead, blocking the road. ‘Can they stop us? Can’t we keep driving?’

‘Squashing the odd reporter?’

‘I think reporters are unsquashable,’ she said doubtfully. ‘It’s in their job description.’

‘A bulldozer probably wouldn’t squash this lot and we’re going to have to face this some time,’ he told her, drawing reluctantly to a halt. ‘We might as well face this now.’

‘Wrong.’

‘Wrong?’

‘You’re going to have to face this some time,’ she told him. ‘I’m going back to Australia.’

‘After the Press conference, my love,’ he told her. ‘Which is scheduled to start right now.’

My love…

Why had he called her that? Jess sat in the passenger seat and hugged Balthazar and Whatshername while Raoul got out of the van and started answering questions.

He’d called her my love. It had been a throw-away line, she thought. A dry reference to that fact that they were now married. It didn’t mean anything.

Heck, why was she thinking about two little words when she had so much more to think about? She shoved the two words away-not so far that she couldn’t haul them up at some later date and inspect them, but far enough away so she could think about what was happening.

The window on her side was closed but Raoul had left his side open and she could hear every word. There were microphones in his face and cameras flashing. Ugh. She slunk down and held her alpacas close; forming a barrier from the crowd trying to peer in.

The babies wriggled, not liking the flashes.

‘Shush,’ she told them. ‘We’re not on display here. Raoul is.’

Her husband?

He’d called her his love. Damn, the words wouldn’t stay where she’d put them. They were demanding immediate inspection.

‘I bet that’s what he called every one of his thousand previous women,’ she told the alpacas, and then she corrected herself. ‘I mean…they’re not previous to me. I do not make one thousand and one.’

She wasn’t making sense, even to herself.

She might as well listen to what was going on outside.

‘We’ve received reports that you’re married.’ That statement in many different forms was being thrown at him from all sides.

Did he mind? He seemed assured, Jess thought. A prince in charge of his world. Or maybe as a doctor working where he’d been, he’d had practice handling the Press. Whatever, Raoul had himself settled now. He was leaning back against his closed car door, protecting his bride as he faced the media.

‘That’s right,’ he told them. ‘I’m married. As of an hour ago.’

There was a moment’s shocked silence-a vast aura of stunned amazement from a contingent of the media who clearly were unused to being this shocked-and then a surge of questions.