She’d had the flu. She wasn’t over it yet. Maybe that was why she was shivering.
‘I should have phoned,’ he said ruefully. ‘This has been too much of a shock. But I was sure you’d have heard, and I didn’t understand why you didn’t contact us.’
‘It’s me who doesn’t understand,’ she whispered.
‘You don’t read the newspapers?’
‘I…not lately. I’ve been unwell. This place has been hopelessly understaffed. What have I missed?’
‘Alp de Ciel is only a small country but the death of its sovereign made worldwide news. Even right down here in Australia.’
‘When?’ What had happened to her voice? It was coming out as a squeak. She tried to pull her hands away but failed. She couldn’t stop this stupid shivering.
He was still holding her. Maybe he thought she needed this contact. But he was a de Boutaine. Part of her life that had been blocked out for ever.
Matty was a de Boutaine. Matty was in her kitchen cutting cake.
‘I’ve had flu,’ she whispered, trying to make sense of it. ‘Real flu, where you don’t come out from under your pillow for weeks. The whole park staff’s been decimated. For the last couple of months, if we haven’t been sick we’ve been run off our feet covering for those who are.’
‘Which is why you’re trudging round in the mud,’ he said softly. ‘My informants say you’re a research historian here.’
His informants. That sounded like Kass. ‘What I do is none of your business,’ she snapped.
‘The woman who is responsible for Mathieu is very much my business.’
She stared at him. Staring seemed all she was capable of. There was nothing else to do that she could think of.
‘Who…who are you?’ she whispered.
‘Kass was my cousin.’
She moistened her lips. ‘I don’t think…I never met…’
‘Kass and I didn’t get on,’ he said, with a sideways warning glance at Matty. There were things that obviously couldn’t be said in Matty’s presence. But Matty was doing his measuring and cutting with the focus of a neurosurgeon. These cake slices would be exactly equal if it took him half an hour to get it right.
‘My father was the old prince’s younger brother,’ Rafael said. ‘Papa married an American girl-my mother, Laura-and we lived in the dower house at the castle. My father died when I was a teenager, but my mother still lives at the castle. She and my father were very happy and she never wants to leave, but I left when I was nineteen. For the last fifteen years I’ve spent my life in New York. Until Kass died. Then I was called on. To my horror, I’ve discovered I’m Prince Regent.’
‘Prince Regent.’
‘It seems I’m the ruling Prince Regent of Alp de Ciel until Matty reaches twenty-five,’ he said ruefully. ‘Unless I knock it back. Which I don’t intend to.’
So the Prince Regent of Alp de Ciel was sitting at her kitchen table. Unbelievable. She didn’t believe it. She was fighting a mad desire to laugh.
How close to hysterics was she?
‘So you’re Prince Regent of Ciel.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’ve come to Australia…why?’
‘Because Matty needs his mother.’
That was enough to take her breath away all over again.
‘Kass decreed he didn’t need his mother five years ago,’ she whispered. She shot Matty a quick glance to make sure he wasn’t a figment of imagination. She’d been delirious for twenty-four hours with influenza. She was still as weak as a kitten. This was surely an extension of her illness.
But no. Matty was here. He was evening up his slices, taking a surreptitious nibble of an equalizing sliver.
‘My cousin,’ Rafael was saying, softly so the words were for her alone, ‘had the morals of a sewer rat. I heard what he did to you. You were a kid; he married you and then you were in no man’s land. Mother of a future Crown Prince. Only of course you’d signed your rights away. As a commoner marrying into royalty, you had to sign an agreement saying if the marriage ever broke down full custody of any children would stay with the Crown. So when you had an affair…’
‘I had no affair,’ she said, dragging desperately on to truth as a lifeline.
‘It seems now that you didn’t,’ Rafael said grimly. ‘It was the only thing that made it palatable to the world. That there were men who claimed to be your lovers. That you were proven to be immoral. Everyone knew Kass never had any intention of being faithful to a wife-he only married you to make his father furious. But…’
‘I don’t want to talk about this.’
‘No, but you must.’ His hands were still holding hers. She stared down at the link. It seemed wrong but it was such an effort to pull away. Did she have the strength?
Yes. This man was a de Boutaine. She had no choice. She tugged and he released her.
‘The story as I knew it,’ he said softly, ‘is that Kass married a commoner who was little better than he was. Together you had a child, but the only time you came to the castle was in the last stages of your pregnancy. By the time you had the child, the word was out. Your behaviour was said to be such that the marriage could never work. Kass’s public portrayal of your character was so appalling he even insisted on DNA testing to prove Mathieu was his son. Then, once Mathieu was proven to be his, he sent you out of the country. He cancelled your visa and he didn’t allow you back. The terms of the marriage contract left you no room to fight, though the people of Alp de Ciel always assumed you were well looked after in a monetary sense. You disappeared into obscurity-not even the women’s magazines managed to trace you. You weren’t a renowned beauty looking for publicity. You weren’t flying to your lawyers to demand more money. You simply disappeared.’
‘And Matty?’ she whispered. For five years…every minute of every day he’d stayed in her heart. What had been happening to him?
But Rafael was smiling. Matty had the three slices even now, but there’d been a few crumbs scattered in the process. He was carefully collecting them, neatening the plates before he presented his offering to the adults.
‘Matty’s been luckier than he might have been,’ Rafael told her. ‘Kass couldn’t be bothered with him and abandoned him to the nursery. My mother had been in the US with me for the few weeks while you were at the castle-she knew nothing about you, and as far as she was concerned the reports about you were true-but when she returned there was a new baby. He had no mother and a father who didn’t care. My mother loves him to bits. Every summer when Kass closed the palace and disappeared to the gambling dens in Monaco or the South of France, she brought him to New York to stay with me. Kass didn’t care.’ He smiled. ‘My mother cares, though. Which is where I come into the picture.’
There were too many people. There was too much information. ‘My head hurts,’ she managed.
‘I imagine it must,’ he said and smiled again, a gentle smile of sympathy that, had she not been too winded to think past Matty, might have given her pause. It was some smile.
‘My mother took Kass’s word for what sort of woman you were,’ he said. ‘We knew Kass had married to disoblige his father and that he’d married a…well, that he’d married someone really unsuitable seemed entirely probable. When Kass told the world how appalling you were he was believed-simply because to marry someone appalling was what he’d declared he’d do. You disappeared. The lie remained. Then, when Kass died, his secretary finally told me what really happened.
‘Crater…’
‘You remember Crater?’
‘Yes.’ All too well. An elderly palace official-the Secretary of State-with an armful of official documents, clearly spelling out her future. He’d sounded sympathetic but implacable. Telling her she had no rights to her son. Showing her the wording of the documents she’d signed in a romantic haze, never believing there could be any cause to act on. Telling her she had no recourse but to leave.
‘He’s felt appalling for five years,’ Rafael told her. �
�He said that six years ago Kass left the castle, furious with his father, and met you working on site on an archaeological dig. He said you were pretty and shy and Kass almost literally swept you off your feet. He could be the most charming man alive, my cousin Kass. Anyway, as far as Kass was concerned you fitted the bill. You were a nobody. You had no family. He married you out of hand, settled you in France and made you pregnant. Only then, of course, his father died. Kass was stuck with a wife he didn’t need or want. So he simply paid his henchmen to dig up dirt on you-make it up, it now seems. Crater had doubts-he was the only one who’d met you before you were married when Kass had called on him to draw up the marriage documents-but there was little he could do. The prenuptial contracts were watertight and you were gone before he could investigate further.’
‘Yes…’ She remembered it every minute of her life. A paid nanny holding the baby-her baby. Matty had been four weeks old. Kass, implacable, scornful, moving on.
‘I’m cancelling your visa this minute, you stupid cow. You won’t be permitted to stay. Stop snivelling. You’ll get an allowance. You’re set up for life, so move on.’
She’d been so alone. There had been a castle full of paid servants but there had been no one to help her. She remembered Crater-a silver-haired, elderly man who’d been gentle enough with her-but he hadn’t helped her, and no one else had as much as smiled at her.
She had to go, so leave she had. And that had been that. She’d gone back to France for a while, hoping against hope there’d be a loophole that would allow her access to her little son. She’d talked to lawyers. She’d pleaded with lawyers, so many lawyers her head spun, but opinion had all been with Kass. She could never return to Alp de Ciel. She had no rights at all.
She’d lost her son.
Finally, when the fuss had died-when the press had stopped looking for her-she’d returned to Australia. She’d applied for the job here under her mother’s maiden name.
She’d never touched a cent of royal money. She’d rather have died.
And now here he was. Her son. Five years old and she knew nothing of him.
And Matty? What had he been told of his mother?
‘What do you know about me?’ she asked the little boy, while the big man with the gentle eyes looked at her with sympathy.
‘My father said you were a whore,’ Matty said matter-of-factly as he carried over the plates, obviously not knowing what the word meant. ‘But Aunt Laura and Uncle Rafael have now told me that you’re a nice lady who digs old things out of the ground and finds out about the people who owned them. Aunt Laura says that you’re an arch…an archaeologist.’
‘I am,’ she said softly, wonderingly.
‘My mother and I have told Matty as much of the truth as we know,’ Rafael told her. The cake plates were in front of them now, and they were seated round the table almost like a family. The fire crackled in the old wood-stove. The rain pattered on the roof outside and the whole scene was so domestic it made Kelly feel she’d been picked up and transported to another world.
‘Kellyn, my mother and I would like you to return,’ Rafael said, so gently that she blinked. Her weird little bubble burst and she couldn’t catch hold of the fragments.
‘Return?’
‘To Alp de Ciel.’
‘You have to be kidding.’ But she couldn’t take her eyes from Matty.
‘Mathieu is Crown Prince of Alp de Ciel.’
She couldn’t take this in. ‘I…I guess.’
‘I’m Prince Regent until he comes of age.’
‘Congratulations.’ It sounded absurd. Nothing in life had prepared her for this. Matty was calmly sitting across the table eating chocolate cake, watching her closely with wide brown eyes that were…hers, she thought, suddenly fighting an almost irresistible urge to laugh. Hysteria was very, very close.
Matty was watching her as she was watching him. Maybe…maybe he even wanted a mother. He wanted her?
This was her baby. She longed with every fibre of her being to take him in her arms and hug him as she’d dreamed of holding him for these last five years. But this was a self-contained little person who’d been brought up in circumstances of which she knew nothing. To have an unknown woman-even if it had been explained who she was-hugging and sobbing, she knew instinctively it would drive him away.
‘I’ll never go back to Alp de Ciel,’ she whispered but she knew it was a lie the moment she said it. She’d left the little principality shattered. To go back…To go back to her son…Her little son who was looking at her with equal amounts of hope and fear?
‘It would be very different now,’ Rafael said. ‘You’d be returning as the mother of the Crown Prince. You’d be accepted in all honour.’
‘You know what was said of me?’
‘Kass said it over and over, of all his women,’ Rafael said. ‘The people stopped believing Kass a long time ago.’
‘Kass was Matty’s father,’ she said with an urgent glance at Matty, but Rafael shook his head.
‘Matty hardly knew his father. Matty, can you remember the last time you saw Prince Kass?’
‘At Christmas?’ Matty said, sounding doubtful. ‘With the lady in the really pointy shoes. I saw his picture in the paper when he was dead. Aunt Laura said we should feel sad so I did. May I have some more chocolate cake, please? It’s very good.’
‘Certainly you can,’ Kelly whispered. ‘But Kass…Kass said he intended to raise him himself.’
‘Kass intended nothing but his own pleasure,’ Rafael said roughly. ‘The people knew that. There’s little regret at the accident that killed him.’
‘Oh, Matty,’ Kelly whispered, and the little boy looked up at her and calmly met her gaze.
‘Ellen and Marguerite say I should still be sad because my papa is dead,’ he said. ‘But it’s very hard to stay sad. My tortoise, Hermione, died at Christmas. I was very sad when Hermione died so when I think of Papa I try and think of Hermione.’
‘Who are Ellen and Marguerite?’
‘They’re my friends. Ellen makes my bed and cleans my room. Marguerite takes me for walks. Marguerite is married to Tony who works in the garden. Tony gives me rides in his wheelbarrow. He helped me to bury Hermione and we planted a rhod…a rhododendron on top of her.’
He went back to cutting cake. Rafael watched her for a while as she watched her son.
‘So you’re in charge?’ she managed at last.
‘Unfortunately, yes.’
‘Unfortunately?’
She gazed across the table at his hands. They were big and strong and work-stained. Vaguely she remembered Kass’s hands. A prince’s hands. Long and lean and smooth as silk.
Rafael’s thumb was missing half a nail and was carrying the remains of an angry, green-purple bruise.
‘What do you do for a living?’ she asked. ‘When…when you’re not a Prince Regent.’
‘I invent toys. And make ’em.’
It was so out of left field that she blinked.
‘Toys?’
‘I design them from the ground up,’ he said, sounding cheerful for a moment. ‘My company distributes worldwide.’
‘Uncle Rafael makes Robo-Craft,’ Matty volunteered with such pride in his voice that Kelly knew this was a very important part of her small son’s world.
‘Robo-Craft,’ she repeated, and even Kelly, cloistered away in her historical world, was impressed. She knew it.
Robo-Craft was a construction kit, where each part except the motor was crafted individually in wood. One could give a set of ten pieces to a four-year-old, plus the tiny mechanism that went with it, and watch the child achieve a construction that worked. It could be a tiny carousel if the blocks were placed above the mechanism, or a weird creature that moved in crazy ways if the mechanism was in contact with the floor. The motor was absurdly strong, so inventions could be as big as desired. As kids grew older they could expand their sets to make wonderful inventions of their own, fashioning their own pieces to fit. Robo-C
raft had been written up as a return to the tool-shed, encouraging boys and girls alike to attack plywood with handsaws and paint.
‘They say it encourages kids to be kids again,’ Kelly whispered, awed. ‘Like building cubby houses.’
‘Uncle Rafael helped me build a cubby house in the palace garden,’ Matty volunteered. ‘We did it just before we left.’
‘So you do spend time in the castle?’ she asked him. She was finding it so hard to look at anything that wasn’t Matty, yet Rafael’s presence was somehow…intriguing? Unable to be ignored.
‘I’ve been there since Kass died.’
‘But not before.’
‘My mother still lives in the dower house. I didn’t see eye to eye with Kass or his father and left the country as soon as I was able, but my mother…well, the memories of her life there with my father are a pretty strong hold. And then there’s Matty. She loves him.’
So it seemed that at least her little son had been loved. Her nightmares of the last five years had been impersonal nannies, paid carers, no love at all. But thanks to this man’s mother…And now thanks to this man…
‘What do I do now?’ Kelly whispered, and Rafael looked at her with sympathy.
‘Get to know your son.’
‘But…why?’
‘Kelly, my mother and I have talked this through. Yes, Matty’s the Crown Prince of Alp de Ciel, but you’re his mother. What happens now is up to you. Even if you insist he stay here until he’s of an age to make up his mind…no matter what the lawyers say, we’ve decided it’s your right to make that decision. You’re his mother again, Kellyn. Starting now.’
CHAPTER TWO
T O SAY Kelly was stunned would be an understatement. She was blown away. For five years she had dreamed of this moment-of this time when she’d be with her son again. But she’d never imagined it could be like this.
It was ordinary. Domestic. World-shattering.
‘Why don’t you take a bath and get some dry clothes on?’ Rafael suggested, and the move between world-shattering and ordinary seemed almost shocking.
Wanted: Royal Wife and Mother Page 2
