Marion Lennox - Wanted: Royal Wife and Mother

He’d hardly seen the similarity between mother and son, but he saw it now. The way their brows creased together, puckering into a tiny line just above their noses. The way they focused absolutely. When they picked up the hacksaws and made their first tentative notch, then paused and held the plywood out to make sure they were doing the right thing, their actions were identical.

They looked…

Like mother and son.

More. They looked endearing. Enchanting. He was giving them both pleasure and the thought was enough to settle a deep, aching pain in his gut that had been there…maybe ever since his father had died.

A measure of the success of Robo-Craft was that it pulled people in regardless. If you could put a plain, unadorned plank on this tiny mechanism and watch it transform into something that suggested an old school bus or a spaceship-anything-and if you could see that very easily you could make such a thing and watch it work…

‘Yeah, it’s brilliant,’ Kelly said, smiling, and he grinned at her across the table.

‘Was it that obvious?’

‘That you love this stuff. Yes, it is. I can see why Anna’s cross at you being dragged back here.’

‘Uncle Rafael wants to be here,’ Matty said stoutly. He’d glued four pieces of wood together and was now chopping a nose cone out of Styrofoam with his hacksaw. His tongue was out a little, to the side; he was concentrating fiercely, but he was ready to join in this adult conversation. ‘You both want to be here, don’t you?’

‘Because you’re here,’ Kelly said warmly. ‘Yes, we do.’

Easy for you to say, Rafael thought, but out of deference to Matty he didn’t say it.

They returned to work. Rafael concentrated on trying not to watch the pair of them. He had his own work to do and he was free to do it.

He’d rather watch them.

‘Mama, Crater says you really can ride horses,’ Matty said into the silence and the atmosphere in the workshop changed.

‘I can’t,’ Kelly said shortly.

‘He said you rode with my papa.’

‘That was a long time ago. I’ve forgotten.’

‘I could help you to remember,’ Matty said, considering the shape of his cone and sandpapering a little off one side. ‘Crater said he saw you the first morning you met my papa. He said Papa rode Blaze and you rode a horse called Tamsin. Crater said he saw you gallop up the mountain and he said you looked just like a prince and a princess.’ He wrinkled his nose over his wobbly cone. ‘How can you forget how to ride?’

‘What happened to Tamsin?’ Kelly asked before she could help herself.

‘Papa sold her,’ Matty said, disapproving. ‘I asked once and he got angry and yelled at me. But there’s more horses in the stables you could ride. When Papa had other ladies here they rode with him. You could ride one of their horses.’

‘Matty, when I get on a horse,’ Kelly said, concentrating on her plywood school bus, ‘I forget to be sensible.’

‘Me, too,’ Matty said cheerfully. ‘Papa says when I’m on a horse I’m a true prince. He says I have royal hands.’ He looked down at his fingers, covered liberally with craft glue. ‘What do you think he means by that?’

‘You have blue blood,’ Rafael said, trying to deflect attention from Kelly. She’d forgotten she was enjoying herself. She looked as if she wanted to bolt again, back to her books and her attic.

‘I don’t have blue blood, silly,’ Matty reproved. He held up his forefinger for inspection-it had a sticking plaster over its tip. ‘Yesterday, I tried to carve a nose cone with Uncle Rafael’s big knife,’ he told Kelly. ‘There was a man in here talking to Uncle Rafael and I borrowed his knife without asking. My finger slipped and my blood was really, really red.’

‘You didn’t tell me,’ Kelly said, startled, and thought that a real mother would have noticed.

‘Uncle Rafael says it’s our own secret,’ he said with a guilty look at Rafael. Then, clearly anxious to change the subject, he turned to Rafael. ‘Why don’t you ride horses?’

‘I just don’t,’ Rafael said flatly.

‘Crater said you used to.’

‘Crater says too much for his own good,’ Rafael growled.

‘He said you rode with your papa. But then your papa was hurt really badly on a horse. Was that when you stopped riding?’

‘I stopped riding when I decided that riding royal horses was for royals,’ Rafael said.

‘You’re royal.’

‘Yes, but only a little bit royal. Not as royal as you, and I’d rather be a toy-maker.’

‘You’ll be a more important royal even than me until I’m twenty-five. I thought that and Crater said yes.’

‘You’re too clever for your own good.’

‘Yes,’ Matty said, satisfied with Rafael’s opinion. ‘So you’ll be a very important prince for years and years. You could ride lots and lots in that time. We could get Mama another horse called Tamsin…’

‘I don’t want a horse,’ Kelly managed.

‘Why not?’ Matty demanded, astonished. ‘Papa said it’s royal to ride horses. Good horses. He said it’s in our blood. Real royals learn to ride before they walk.’

‘But I’m not royal,’ Kelly said flatly and set her bus down so hard the unset craft glue gave up its tenuous hold and it disintegrated into four separate pieces. ‘I need to go back to work.’

‘You haven’t finished your bus,’ Rafael said gently.

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘And I’m not going to. I shouldn’t be here. Discussing royal blood. Discussing royal horses. For a moment there I almost forgot who I am. Thank you, Matty, for reminding me.’

She should destroy every gown in her old suite, she thought savagely as she made her way back to her rooms. They were too much of a temptation. She should never have put on that little black dress. But there were so many more gowns, hanging there…

Waiting.

AFTERWARDS-after a dinner where Kelly hadn’t appeared, pleading lack of appetite, when his mother had returned to the dower house, when Matty was well in bed, the servants had dispersed for the night and there seemed little risk of him being disturbed-Rafael wandered down to the stables. It was almost as if a magnet were pulling him. Matty’s conversation had stirred something within him that he’d thought he’d buried long since.

Riding was royal? He’d never thought of it as such. Riding was the thing he’d done with his father, an extension of his legs, a merging of himself and the wonderful animal beneath him.

Until that day…

He remembered it still in his dreams. Kass had been here with a group of his friends, and Rafael, at fifteen, had been home from boarding school. His parents had always been uneasy about him being here when Kass was home. As Rafael had been. He’d loathed his ego-driven cousin and he hadn’t needed his parents’ encouragement to steer clear of him.

On the last day of his holidays Rafael and his father had risen early, planning to ride up to the lower foothills where they could see the sun rise over the Alps. It was something they’d done every time Rafael left-a small personal ritual that both pretended meant little but in truth they’d both loved.

They’d set out in the pre-dawn dimness, walking their horses carefully through the woodland, speaking softly, half-awed by the early morning hush.

The shot had come from nowhere, zinging over the horses’ heads, terrifying in the stillness. Later, Rafael had found the track of the bullet in the hide of his father’s big gelding. The horse had been grazed across the neck. No wonder he’d reared, terrified, lunging backward, hurling his rider back with a savagery and ferocity no rider could cope with unprepared.

Rafael’s father had been thrown against the trunk of an oak, an unyielding, implacable barrier. A lower branch had ripped his face. The solid trunk had crushed his spine.

Rafael had him in his arms when Kass and his cronies had burst through the undergrowth. It seemed they’d been drinking all night and had decided bed was boring-they’d do a little pre-dawn hunting before sleeping off the drink. They had been mounted on the royal horses-horseflesh worth millions.

Each and every one of them had been carrying a loaded gun, but only Kass’s had been discharged. His friends had seemed appalled, but Kass had either been too drunk or too arrogant to care. He’d stared down at Rafael and his father and he’d sneered, ‘You ride in my woods, you expect what you get. Surely he should know how to hold his seat by now. That’s the commoner side of the family coming out.’

He’d turned his horse and cantered off, uncaring, leaving his companions, who had more conscience than he did, to cope with an almost fatally injured man and his distraught son.

It was the last time Rafael had been on a horse. The commoner side of him had decided right there that the non-royal part of him was the only side he cared about.

‘You hate them as much as I do,’ a soft voice said behind him and he whirled.

‘Kelly.’

‘Matty said he left his sweater here,’ she said. She hesitated and then walked forward to where a crimson sweater lay crumpled on the oat bin.

‘The servants would have fetched it.’

‘I don’t do servants.’ She lifted the sweater, holding it against her almost as a shield. She walked back towards the door, but then she turned.

‘Your mother told me you hate the horses,’ she murmured. She was standing in the doorway, a shadow against the moonlight outside. ‘She told me why.’

‘I don’t hate them. I just…don’t ride. And you?’

‘I don’t ride either.’

‘Crater said you do.’

‘Crater said I did. Past tense.’

‘You know why I don’t ride,’ he said, as a mare behind him nuzzled his hair, pressuring him to pay her attention. ‘That’s a bit lopsided.’

‘I used to love horses,’ she whispered. ‘That’s what got me into trouble.’