‘Smile,’ he told Pippa.

‘Why?’ She was astounded.

‘We’re the closest thing this country has to a royal family. Tanbarook is going to see you. Smile.’

She managed a weakish sort of smile but she was so confused her head was threatening to spin off. ‘I’m not family,’ she muttered, staring down at Dolores, who was licking Max’s boots. ‘Isn’t Dolores supposed to go into quarantine until she’s vet-checked?’

‘We had a vet check her before she left. She’s a royal dog now. And you’re as royal as I am. We’re royal by association. The royal family.’

He was smiling at her as photographers snapped around her and she felt her color rising by the minute. ‘I should be like the governess, standing ten steps back.’

‘Same with me. But you won’t let me leave, and if you leave the kids and Dolores will howl.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ Marc said, affronted. ‘But Dolores might,’ he conceded.

‘There you go. Smile,’ he ordered again. ‘Pippa, there’s only one thing worse than publicity, and that’s publicity when you’re glowering. It makes you look like you’re constipated.’

She choked. ‘Gee, thanks.’

‘I just thought I’d mention it. So smile.’

‘I’m smiling,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘And neither the kids or Dolores are scared of you. They think you’re the next best thing to Father Christmas.’

‘Little they know.’

‘There’s the ogre side of you as well?’

‘I’m not exactly a family man.’

‘Why not?’ It was out before she thought about it-a direct response to something she needed to know. To something that had to be sorted before she took one step further.

And Max’s smile faded.

Why not? he wondered, as the cameras clicked around them and he tried to resurrect his smile. Why had he never taken that last step? From lover to husband…

Marriages were fraught. His mother’s marriage had led to irretrievable disaster. ‘Don’t ever marry,’ she’d said to him over and over. ‘You can’t ever know how someone will turn out. Oh, Max, take lovers, do what you need to be happy, but be so careful…’

He’d hardly decided not to marry because of his mother’s experiences, but then, it had made him so careful that such a decision had almost been made for him.

‘You’re not gay, are you?’ Pippa asked thoughtfully and his thoughts hit a brick wall. He turned and stared at her. Stunned.

‘What did you say?’

‘Smile,’ she reminded him. The photographers were clicking from every angle. ‘I was asking whether you’re gay.’

‘Didn’t I just kiss you?’

‘That’s proof you’re not gay?’

‘Yes,’ he said, revolted. ‘It wasn’t a platonic kiss.’

‘No,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘but then I didn’t really inspect it for platonic. Maybe I wouldn’t recognise it if I saw it. I lead a very sheltered life.’

She was teasing him, he thought. She was trying to get him to react, here and now, in front of the country’s press.

‘Shut up,’ he said, carefully pasting on his smile and carefully no longer looking at her. ‘One more word, Phillippa Donohue, and I’ll set the twins down and teach you what a platonic kiss isn’t.’

‘In front of everyone? You wouldn’t dare.’

‘No,’ he said, sounding regretful. ‘You’re right. I wouldn’t. But only because it’d make our lives even more complicated than they already are. Which is very complicated indeed.’

Okay, so that little interlude made her flustered. The stilted welcome speech made by an official made her more flustered still. And the ride from airport to castle, in the back of the limousine with Max in the seat opposite, the children snoozing beside them and Dolores draped over their feet, made her even more flustered.

‘That was a dumb thing to do,’ she managed about ten minutes after they’d left the airport, which was the time it had taken to figure anything at all to say.

‘What was?’

‘You kissing me.’

‘I didn’t kiss you in front of the photographers,’ he said virtuously. ‘I wanted to but I had my arms full of twins.’

‘You kissed me on the plane.’

‘That was necessary. Because I suspected that you suspected I was gay. And I was right. Not that my kiss seemed to reassure you.’

‘It reassured me,’ she said hastily and went back to staring out the car window.

The scenery was amazing.

She’d read about these four tiny countries. There’d been a fuss in the Australian press when Pippa’s countrywoman had married the Crown Prince of Alp d’ Azuri. There’d also been a write-up and potted history of how these countries had come to be, and she’d found time to reread it on the internet before she’d come.

A king in a large neighbouring country, way back in the sixteenth century, had had five sons. The boys had grown up warring and the old king had foreseen ruin as the sons had vied for the Crown.

So he’d pre-empted trouble. He’d carved four separate countries from his southern border, and told his younger sons that the cost of their own principality was lifelong allegiance to their oldest brother.

His plan hadn’t worked, the article had told her. Granting whole counties to men with a lust for war was hardly a guarantee of wise rule. The four princes and their descendants had brought four wonderful countries to the brink of ruin.

Ruin? Pippa stared out of the car window and saw lush river valleys, towering mountains, quaint cottages, herds of cream and white cows, the odd goat, tiny settlements that might almost have come from a photograph from a hundred years before. It didn’t look…ruined.

‘It’s beautiful,’ she breathed.

‘If you like postcards,’ Max said shortly. ‘But the reality’s less than beautiful. You were cold and hungry this winter. These people are cold and hungry every winter.’

She glowered again, suspecting pressure. ‘Don’t you dare show me starving peasants. I won’t be responsible.’

‘I couldn’t anyway,’ he conceded. ‘It’s summer and the harvest this year will be a good one. Things are okay at the moment.’

‘But not for long?’

‘Yes, for long. If we can pull this off.’ He looked down at the sleeping Marc and his mouth quirked.

‘I won’t-’

‘No. You agree to nothing. Let’s just see how it goes. Meanwhile if you look to your right you’ll see the castle…now.’

‘Oh.’

As an exclamation it was totally inadequate, but it was all she could think of. Built into the side of one of the towering alps, the castle was a mass of gleaming white stone, set against the purple of the mountains behind. She stared out, stunned, as the castle grew larger against its magnificent backdrop. It was all turrets, battlements and towers, like something straight out of a fairy story.

She nudged Marc, but he’d settled back into sleep. They were now in the middle of the children’s night and the future Crown Prince of Alp d’Estella had drifted back where he belonged.

Frustrated, she bent over to wake the twins, but Max caught her hand.

‘Leave them. They’ll see enough of it in the future.’

There was something in his voice that caught her. She stared across at him, and then turned and looked again at the castle. The battlements seemed to be looming above them, towering over the tiny town nestled underneath.

‘You don’t like it,’ she said.

‘I don’t like what it represents.’

‘What does it represent?’

‘Too much power. Too much money by too few people.’

‘You’re rich yourself.’

‘I earned my money through hard work,’ he said shortly. ‘The princes in this place got their money by taxing their people until they bled. You’d think I’d have anything to do with that?’

She thought about it, wondering. Thinking back to the family tree.

‘Your grandfather left the palace and went to France?’

‘Yes. But he’s not really my grandfather.’

‘So you’ve had no contact with the palace?’

‘I…no.’

‘Does that mean maybe?’

‘My…my father did,’ Max said shortly. ‘More fool him.’

‘You blame the palace for what happened to your father? And to Thiérry?’

‘My mother does and she should know.’

‘Right,’ Pippa said and cast an uneasy glance down at Marc. This was getting tricky. ‘So if Marc takes on the Crown you’ll hold Thiérry’s death against him?’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘As ridiculous as staring out at that great hunk of stone and saying that’s what killed your brother?’

‘I didn’t say-’

‘No, but you meant,’ she said. ‘I look at that castle and think fairy tale. But you look and see a dead brother. A psychologist could have a field-day with that.’

‘A field-day!’

‘Yes, you know-a day when everything’s on show. Like your emotions now.’

‘They’re not on show.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

She grinned. She had the great Maxsim de Gautier flummoxed. Excellent.

‘This is serious,’ he told her.

‘Nonsense,’ she said soundly, beginning to relax. ‘This is fun.’

It might have fun potential but it was so grand it took her breath away.

The limousine swept inside the castle grounds and pulled to a halt in a vast forecourt ringed by fountains. The chauffeur moved swiftly, opening the door for them, even saluting.

Ignoring Max’s protest-her back really was better-she gathered the nearest twin-Claire-into her arms and climbed out. At the sight of what lay ahead she gasped. She stared around her for a couple of awed moments while her stomach sank at the enormity of where she’d found herself.

There were thirty or more servants forming a guard of honour to the grand front entrance-vast marble steps set between marble columns flanking doors wide enough to accommodate a Sherman tank. The servants were dressed as the type of domestic servants Pippa had seen on television. The women were in severe black with frilled white aprons and white caps. The men were in total black, or, even more amazingly, red and black livery.