‘And he’d probably haul me back in chains,’ she whispered. ‘I’m a captive wife, Deefer. I’ll end up like Tia. Obedient and fearful after years of marriage.’

Another lick.

Unbidden her eyes filled. Dammit, she would not cry. She carried the little dog over to vast French windows opening to a balcony overlooking acres of manicured gardens.

A vision sprang to mind-dusty paddocks, gum trees, and a small white grave.

‘You’ll like it at Munwannay,’ she told Deefer. ‘And at least I’ll have you with me this time.

‘But I want it all,’ she whispered to herself. ‘I want you and Andreas and Munwannay. I want to be a family.’

‘You’re flying out at dawn. I have a list of contacts over there for you to work your way through.’

Andreas stared at his brother, his dark eyes clouded. ‘I can’t leave Holly here.’

‘You can’t take her with you. You need to move fast and move alone. You’ve trained in security-you’re the only one with the skills and inside knowledge and discretion to do this. And you know what happens if the stone isn’t found.’

‘I don’t give a damn about the stone.’

‘Do you think I do?’ Sebastian asked incredulously. ‘But like me, you care about our country. You care about our people.’

‘Zakari would make a decent ruler.’

‘We don’t know that,’ Sebastian said ruthlessly. ‘And there’s too much at stake to take a chance. You don’t have a choice.’

‘I’ve never had a choice,’ Andreas said grimly.

‘Not when the livelihood of our people’s at stake. No.’

‘And when the stone’s found?’

‘Then you might find you like being a prince again,’ Sebastian said, and allowed himself a glimmer of a smile. ‘As I might relish the chance to be king. But meanwhile we do what we have to do, and we do it now. The security chief is here to brief you. Let’s go.’

Two a.m. He opened the door with stealth as if he was wary she might be sleeping. Yeah, she might be sleeping if she wasn’t so on edge every nerve ending felt frayed and exposed and standing on end.

He’d also forgotten one pup. Deefer was out of bed the minute the door opened, bounding across the bedroom, yelping in delight at seeing his long-lost friend.

Holly followed the examples of her nerves and sat bolt upright. ‘It’s a bit early in our marriage to come creeping in after midnight,’ she said scathingly. ‘Wouldn’t you say?’

‘I had to-’

‘Go to Greece. Your mother told me.’

‘I’m not going until tomorrow.’

‘Oh, goody.’ She glanced at the clock on the gilt bedside table. ‘But it is tomorrow. Do we have one day left before you go.’

‘Holly, I’m sorry, but…Yes, it’s today. I need to go early this morning.’

‘You have to save the world. Your mother told me.’

‘What else did she tell you?’ he said, sounding apprehensive.

‘That Deefer has to sleep in the stables.’

‘I can see you took that one on board.’ The pup was wriggling ecstatically round his legs, practically turning inside out. He hadn’t had his beach run today. He was one bored dog. Andreas scooped him up, turned him over and started scratching his tummy.

‘Don’t start making up to my dog,’ Holly snapped and Andreas smiled, walked across and sat on the bed. It was a very big bed. Huge. There was no reason Holly’s heart should lurch just because Andreas had sat down.

Maintain the rage, she told herself breathlessly. It was the only defence she had in this situation and she surely needed a defence.

‘Your mother says I need to have deportment lessons.’

‘It’d be excellent if you would,’ he said.

‘Why would it be excellent?’

He put Deefer down onto the carpet, wriggled the fringe of the ancient Persian rug until Deefer was distracted and then left him to it. This conversation, it seemed, was more important than a mere priceless heirloom.

‘Holly, maybe we could have a real marriage,’ he said cautiously.

‘A real marriage.’ She repeated the words dumbly, trying to figure why she felt as if all her breath had been sucked out of her. Three little words. A real marriage.

‘Our plan of a royal marriage has worked far better than we dared hope. The people are seeing you as my Cinderella bride. You have enormous public sympathy. Sebastian thinks it could work.’

Sebastian. ‘Does he just?’ she retorted, fighting for equilibrium. ‘I’ll have you know-’

‘And I want you.’

There it was again. Whoosh. The same gut feeling she’d felt at seventeen, the moment her father had introduced her. Multiplied by about a million.

‘If you want me,’ she said softly, almost to herself, ‘then it’s not about Sebastian. It’s not about this country. It’s about us.’

‘That’s right,’ he said, and tugged the covers aside, pulled her up so she was hugged against him and softly kissed her. ‘It’s all about us.’

‘But tomorrow…’

‘I am a prince,’ he said, almost sadly. ‘I need to do what I need to do. I won’t let this country be ruined. But for now…For now, my heart, there’s only you.’

Until dawn, she thought, but it could only be a fleeting thought for Andreas was holding her, possessing her, demanding she respond and how could she help but respond?

He was right. There was only them.

Until dawn.

She woke and he was gone. She stirred in the too big bed, drowsy and sated with the after effects of loving. She turned sleepily to his side of the bed and it was empty.

Even Deefer wasn’t with her. She looked over to the door and he was there, his little black nose pressed against the vast oak panelling. Andreas was gone, and Deefer had the air of a pup who’d be faithful for years.

‘Come back to bed, Deef,’ she whispered, but the pup just whined and put his nose hard against the crack at the base of the door. She flung back the covers and padded across to him, picked him up and carried him back. She slid back down under the covers and held him close.

A real marriage. Huh!

‘You’ll like Australia,’ she whispered. ‘You can be a real dog on the farm. And me…I can go back to being the real me.’

The lonely me. The me who mourns a dead baby and a lost love.

‘Yeah, the Miss Haversham me,’ she said, blinking and sitting bolt upright as she heard the echoes of what she’d just thought. ‘Sitting alone for years in cobwebs and crumbling wedding cake.’

There was a knock on the door. A maid put her nose around, looking apologetic.

‘If you please, ma’am,’ she said. ‘Her Majesty, Queen Tia, has scheduled your deportment lesson at ten. She says breakfast will be served for you in the grand dining room at eight, and an etiquette master will be on hand to show you through the protocols.’

She closed the door.

‘Wow,’ Holly whispered. ‘Protocols, eh? We’re having protocols instead of eggs and bacon?’ She shivered. ‘You know, Deef, I want to go home.’

But…

‘I said I’d make a go of this marriage,’ she said, addressing a spine that was starting to sag. ‘Andreas says we need to be married and I believe him.’

But…

‘But nothing,’ she told herself. ‘Don’t even think about being homesick. Go bury yourself in…protocols.’

He was gone for eleven interminable days. Days when she wasn’t permitted out of the castle gates.

‘Everyone thinks you’re still on honeymoon,’ she was told by the bureaucrat who headed the public relations department for the royals. ‘The public doesn’t know Andreas has gone to Greece. Your honeymoon is a perfect front.’

A perfect front for a marriage. Sure. They were supposed to be on honeymoon, ensconced in their sumptuous apartments, gloriously in love. Andreas was in Greece. She was in…protocol hell?

‘You will walk three steps behind your husband at all times. Watch his feet-the moment he pauses, you pause. If he turns back, if he attempts to speak to you, come up to within a step of him, listen, smile, make your response brief, never look as if you’re disagreeing and then step back. Your husband is royal and you’re not. He takes precedence in everything.’

‘Yeah, but he’s not here to take precedence,’ she told Deefer on day eleven. She’d taken the little dog for a walk in the palace grounds-to the south because cameras could penetrate to the north and it was imperative she wasn’t seen walking disconsolately alone. Even here she didn’t feel at ease. There was music playing from the palace balconies. The princesses, she thought, wincing. She’d hardly seen them. They’d been too caught up with their own personal concerns to spend much time with her. And she didn’t like their choice of music.

She didn’t like this place.

‘It’ll be better when I get home,’ Andreas had assured her in the brief phone calls he made. He’d sounded stressed and tired, which was the only reason she couldn’t yell at him. Though eventually she’d yell. Quietly of course. In a very deferential manner. If he ever returned.

She’d been thinking for too long. She’d taken her eyes off her pup. She hauled herself to attention but it was too late. Deefer had headed off at a run towards the palace’s ornamental lake.

Uh oh. Deefer had found the lake a week ago and there’d very nearly been trouble. Swans…

‘Get back here,’ she yelled in her best authoritative voice. But whether he heard her over the music or not, Deefer wasn’t paying attention. He was bored. Holly had spent the morning in interminable lessons. The servants didn’t like him wandering. They seemed to have almost a phobia about pets, instilled by the old king. He wasn’t permitted anywhere Holly wasn’t, so he’d been locked in her apartment.

Border collies were bred to work. It was in him, an innate instinct to get out in the fields and round things up. And the only things here to round up were the palace swans, scattered on the far side of the ornamental lake, spread randomly over the grass as they searched for snails.