‘No one’s making you.’
‘Yes, but the main reason I can come here is that I have an imperative,’ she said. ‘I have an imperative here, but I also have an imperative back in Yorkshire. I haven’t told you what that imperative is, but believe me facing a firing squad at dawn looks pretty good in comparison. No. We get proactive. Did you have to wear a suit?’
‘Did you have to wear a duffel coat?’
‘A duffel coat’s more appropriate than what you’re wearing,’ she retorted. ‘Lose the tie. Do you have a jacket in your baggage?’
‘I’m not sure where our baggage is.’
‘It’s being brought separately,’ the driver said, bemused, watching them through the rear-view mirror.
‘If we wanted to go to your picnic…’ Rose said slowly, looking ahead and behind at their convoy. There were twelve uniformed army-officers in front of them on motor bikes. There were twelve behind. ‘Do you suppose they’d arrest us if we stopped down at the river?’
‘Madame, we can’t stop.’
‘Yes, we can,’ she said.
‘My orders are to take you straight to the palace.’
‘And whose orders are those?’ she asked, and all of a sudden she was haughty. The driver stared at her in astonishment-and so did Nick. Then the eyes of the two men met. A small moment of male empathy. Two male shrugs, and the driver gave a small smile.
‘You want to go to our picnic?’
‘We need to meet the people,’ she said. ‘This is the fastest way to do that, right?’
‘I guess.’
‘Then our escort can come too. But we don’t have food for a picnic. I won’t be a freeloader.’
‘The people will share.’
‘I’m not going to my first picnic in Alp de Montez as a freeloader,’ Rose said. ‘My fiancé agrees with me.’
‘Do I?’ said Nick.
‘Of course you do-darling,’ she said. ‘Now, what can we do?’
‘If I might make a suggestion…’ The limousine driver was looking at her as if she had two heads. So was Nick.
‘Suggest away,’ she said.
‘If you were to produce, say, a keg or two of beer…Beer’s expensive and rationed.’
‘Beer’s rationed?’ she said incredulously.
‘Do you have maybe a Diner’s Card?’
‘I bet my fiancé does.’
‘Do you, sir?’
‘Eh?’ Nick said, getting more startled by the minute. This was a seriously startling woman.
She grinned. ‘My fiancé will pay you,’ she said. ‘Erhard told me you’re seriously rich. I’m not, but I’m working on it. Soon I’ll be a princess, but I’m waiting on my first wages. I need a loan of a keg until pay-day.’
It was too much. They were sitting in the back of a royal limousine, escorted by armed troops, heading to a palace with who knew what reception, and she was calmly negotiating a loan of a keg or two of beer.
He chuckled. The driver chuckled. Nick delved obediently into his wallet and produced his Diner’s Card.
‘So how will this help?’ Rose asked the driver.
‘The husband of my wife’s cousin works as a delivery driver to one of the army hotels,’ the driver said, moving into the spirit of the thing with enthusiasm. ‘If I radio your card details he can organise a keg to be here within the hour.’
‘Two kegs,’ Nick said, deciding he could be expansive too. ‘And lemonade for the kids.’
‘A keg of lemonade?’
‘I don’t have a clue how it comes,’ Nick admitted. ‘We’ll leave that to your wife’s cousin’s husband. Tell him to bring what he thinks a gathering will need. I guess you know the numbers. Though how we know we can trust you…’
‘There are very few people in the higher echelons you can trust,’ the driver said flatly. Then he smiled again. ‘But we’re not accustomed to seeing our royalty in overcoats that smell a little like the farmyard. And while you were inspecting the troops Griswold told me we might hope. Things are desperate here. We’re willing to take a chance on you.’
‘You won’t get sacked if you deviate?’ Rose asked.
‘By the time our escort has time to respond, we’ll be there. I’ll be following your direct orders. Maybe you organised this with Erhard long since, no? Not with me.’
‘Not with you,’ Rose said firmly.
The driver looked at her again for a long minute in the rear-view mirror and then he gave a decisive nod. He picked up his radio and spoke fast, quoting Nick’s Diner’s Club card number, ordering his supplies. Then he handed back Nick’s card.
‘Thank you both.’ He smiled at Nick via the rear-view mirror. ‘There’s a jacket under the front seat you can borrow,’ he told him. ‘It’s not as disreputable as your fiancée’s, but it will have to do. Hold on please.’
With a squeal of brakes the car turned at ninety degrees and proceeded calmly down to the river bank, with Nick wondering what he’d got himself into. And it wasn’t just the situation that was startling him. It was this woman beside him. And how he was starting to react to her.
Rose. Potential princess. Potential wife.
Up until now he’d hardly thought about the wife bit. It hadn’t seemed relevant.
Now, though, when he should be thinking a thousand other things, that was the word that was drifting around his head, like a chink of light through clouds, a tiny glimmer of possibility.
Wife.
CHAPTER SIX
T HERE had to be argument from their minders. Of course there did. There was a moment’s peace, before their escort of motor bikes reassembled, veered off the highway and roared after them. Then the head of the squad-Jean Dupeaux-came alongside their limousine and gestured angrily for the driver to pull over. Nick’s errant thoughts were dragged back to the here and now with a vicious jolt as the bike nosed sharply in front of the car, causing their driver to brake and veer onto the verge.
But not stop. The driver was starting to look as determined as, well, as determined as Rose.
The bike jerked back so it was driving alongside. Rose let down her window, put out her head and yelled, ‘Our driver’s following our instructions, Monsieur Dupeaux. We just want to see the river.’
‘You must pull over,’ Dupeaux shouted, and Rose smiled happily, waved and closed the window.
What was the Chief of Staff doing, riding motor bikes? Nick thought. And then, more nervously, what is going on here?
Dupeaux veered in front of the car again. The driver skilfully pulled out and overtook him.
What the outcome would have been if they’d had to go further Nick couldn’t tell, but they were already turning to where the cliffs along the river-bank formed what seemed almost a natural amphitheatre. Willows hung over the slow moving river. There were ruins of some ancient castle high on the cliffs. A few cars were parked under the trees, but mostly there were horses and carts. And people.
There was real poverty in this country, Nick thought. Horses and carts might look picturesque, but these weren’t men and women using their horses and carts for pleasure. These horses were workhorses, and every single man and woman-and even the adolescents-looked as if they’d spent a long, hard day in the fields. No luxury of going home to a long, hot bath and a change of clothes, but still they’d assembled to enjoy the evening.
The people turned as one at the arrival of the limousine, with its trailing queue of motor bikes. Their jaws dropped in astonishment.
And then displeasure. Nick saw the moment their surprise turned to resentment as they recognised the coat of arms on the limousine, as they realised what the outriders represented.
They shouldn’t be here, he thought, his astute mind working things through fast. If there was antagonism to royalty, how would they react to the surprise visit of two rank outsiders?
But, before he could stop her, Rose was out of the car. He climbed out afterwards, but was called back. ‘Sir!’ The driver sounded insistent. He was handing him a shabby lea
ther-jacket.
‘I’ll get it back from you some time,’ he said diffidently. ‘Just don’t lose it.’ And then he smiled. ‘By the way, the lady said lose the tie.’
Lose the tie. Right. He hauled his tie off, undid a couple of buttons, shrugged on the jacket and rounded the car to join Rose.
‘Hi,’ she was saying as the people stared at her.
The uniformed motor-bike riders were coming in now, gathering in a cluster around the car. But they didn’t kill their engines. The noise was overpowering. And there were horses…
Nick saw the danger. ‘Kill the engines. Now!’ he ordered, but the damage had been done.
One of the horses-the one nearest the bikes-was shifting sideways in its traces, clearly panicked. It reared once and then grounded, backing. Its eyes were rolling, nostrils flaring.
There was a child in the cart behind it. No!
But Rose had seen. Closer than Nick, she could get there faster. She dumped Hoppy unceremoniously on the ground and strode swiftly forward to grab the horses bridle. She steadied it, then tugged it sideways, hauling its head around so it was forced to yield the force in its hindquarters.
Even Nick, who scarcely knew one end of a horse from another, could see this was an expert. In one swift movement she’d defused a potentially deadly situation.
‘Hush,’ she told the horse into the sudden stillness, speaking in the local dialect. ‘Quiet, now. Hush.’ Then, as the horse settled, she spoke to the people around them. ‘I’m sorry. I should have known there’d be horses here. I forgot the bikes would follow.’
As the child’s mother darted forward to retrieve her daughter from the cart, Rose took her time, soothing the big horse, scratching behind his ears, whispering reassurance, waiting until the flare of panic faded from his eyes. Nick could only watch, entranced. Every moment he spent with this woman meant he saw another facet of her. She was amazing. She took all the time she needed to settle the big animal, then handed the bridle over to his owner.
Hoppy pawed at her leg in some indignation. She picked him up and stroked him behind his ears as well.
She had the absolute attention of every person there.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she told the people around them. ‘Nick and I have just come from the airport. I’m not sure if you know, but I’m Rose-Anitra. I left here when I was fifteen, but I was never able to leave the palace grounds very much before then, so I don’t know you. This is my fiancé, Nikolai de Montez. Son of the old Prince’s daughter, Zia. We’ve been told that we stand to inherit the throne. We’re here to talk it through, and we want to meet some of the locals. Don’t we, Nick?’ She turned and smiled at him, and he walked forward until he was by her side. It was what she seemed to want.
Which suited him. This was a woman to be proud of.
A wife to be proud of?
Equal partners? The thought was suddenly seductive for all sorts of reasons.
‘I’m a veterinary surgeon,’ she told the assemblage, tucking her hand confidingly in Nick’s-a gesture of intimacy which jolted him still further. ‘So we should know better than to scare your animals. This was just a whim, to stop here.’
‘You have no business being here,’ Dupeaux shouted. ‘These people don’t want you.’
That might have been a foolish thing to say, Nick decided, watching the faces of the crowd around them. Rose looked a chit of a thing in her too-big jacket and holding her lame dog. She’d just quieted a massive horse. She had the advantage of looking a bit of a stray herself.
Dupeaux was big and uniformed and brusque. Authority personified. ‘Get back in the car, woman,’ he snapped, and there was a visible ripple of dissent. ‘Leave these people be. They don’t want you here.’
With one harsh order, this man had made Rose an underdog, and from all he’d seen so far Rose wasn’t anyone’s underdog.
‘Erhard Fritz told us that we were wanted here,’ Rose said gently but firmly, stating something that was out of her control. ‘Erhard said this country needed us.’
‘We don’t need royalty,’ someone shouted from the back of the crowd, and Rose faltered.
Time to lend a hand, Nick thought. He couldn’t stay being a complete wimp.
‘Rose and I never thought there was any need for us to be in this country,’ Nick said, loudly, urgently, speaking as Rose had spoken in the native tongue. ‘You know, we never thought we’d inherit the throne. We don’t understand what your problems are. But Erhard came to find us. He’s shown us what’s being done in your neighbouring countries-Alp d’Azur and Alp d’Estella. He says a sympathetic royalty could make that happen here. We could organise things so the country could self-rule as a democracy. Erhard’s convinced us to try. Of course, if we’re wrong, if we’re truly not wanted, then we’ll go.’
Silence. Not a man, woman or child moved.
Behind them, the troops shifted uneasily. These riders were the same men who’d greeted them at the airport. Rose had charmed them.
Here she’d done it again. Maybe.
Rose’s grip on his fingers tightened. It felt good, he thought. It felt…right.
‘What’s your dog’s name?’ a little boy called out from the front of the crowd, and Rose smiled.
‘He’s Hoppy. Because of his leg. He can hop better than any dog I know.’
‘He doesn’t look like a royal dog.’
‘I tried to get him to wear a tiara,’ Rose said, and grinned. ‘But Hoppy thought he looked like a sissy.’
Amazingly there was a ripple of laughter.
‘Can he play with my dog?’ the little boy asked. He motioned to a half-grown collie, thin and straggly but wagging its disreputable tail with the air of a dog expecting a good time.
‘Of course,’ Rose said, and put Hoppy down.
The two dogs eyed each other warily, and then proceeded to sniff the most important part of their anatomy.
The shock and sullen resentment of the crowd was turning to smiles.
‘Are you really a prince and princess?’ someone called.
‘We’re the son and daughter of the old Prince’s children,’ Nick replied. ‘We haven’t been in direct line to the throne, so until we come into succession we’ve no title. Rose-Anitra is first in line to the throne before her sister, Julianna, and I come after her. If our claim to the throne succeeds, then Rose would be Crown Princess and I’d be…’He hesitated. ‘You know, I’m not sure what I’d be.’
‘Mr Crown Prince?’ someone called, and there was more laughter.
‘Crown Consort,’ someone else called. ‘You’d be Crown Consort, and Earl de Montez as well. I think you already are. There’s no one else to inherit the title.’
‘What about Julianna’s husband?’ someone else called.
‘He’s not royal,’ someone else snapped. ‘No matter what airs he might give himself.’
‘Will you get back in the car?’ Dupeaux snapped, and he sounded furious. He took a step towards Rose which might or might not have been menacing, but suddenly Nick was standing in front of Rose. He wasn’t alone with his protective instincts. In a flash there were half a dozen burly men between Nick and the officer.
‘It’s you and your bullies who aren’t wanted here, Dupeaux,’ someone called to the officer in charge, and the man’s face darkened in fury.
‘Look, this is a private party,’ Nick said, speaking quickly, knowing he had to deflect confrontation. ‘Rose and I don’t have a right to be here unasked. We’ve ordered a couple of kegs of beer and a few other things, to make the evening a bit more fun for you. They’ll be here any minute, whether or not we stay. No matter. We just wanted to say hello. Now maybe we should leave.’
‘But we’d like you to stay. And you can share our picnic,’ someone called.
‘And ours.’
‘And mine.’
‘These men are our escort,’ Rose said, taking courage again, holding Nick’s hand tighter and smiling towards the men on bikes. ‘Can they stay too?’
&n
bsp; ‘No,’ Dupeaux snapped. ‘They’re on duty.’
‘Then isn’t it lucky we’re not?’ Rose said, and tugged Nick forward to where an elderly lady had unpacked her basket on a rug on the grass. ‘Are they chocolate éclairs? My favourite.’ She turned back to the officer and smiled her sweetest smile. ‘If you leave us the limousine, we’ll make our own way home. Thank you for escorting us so far.’
Dupeaux had no choice. There were a couple of hundred people gathered here, and more arriving every minute. To use force would escalate the situation in a way he might not be able to control. So he and his men disappeared in a roar of diesel engine that had the horses rearing again. Almost as soon as they’d gone, a battered truck turned into the clearing.
‘Two kegs of beer, crates of lemonade, and wine for the ladies,’ the man driving the truck said. ‘Pierre said you were ordering for a party so I took the liberty…’
‘Brilliant,’ Rose said, beaming. Only the way she was still holding tight to Nick’s hand let Nick know that underneath this outward show of bravado she was more nervous than he was. But she wasn’t letting on. ‘We have a party.’
And a party they had.
It would have been a good party anyway, Nick thought as the evening wore on. Anyone who could play any sort of instrument had been dragged into the toe-tappingly good band. The food seemed generous and plentiful-great home-cooking. The beer and lemonade and wine flowed plentifully. And Rose worked the crowd.
Actually, they both did. Nick had been in enough international situations to know how to make small-talk, to ask the right questions, to keep things flowing smoothly without treading on sensitivities. He’d been trained to do it. Rose did it naturally.
It almost felt as if he was back at work, Nick thought as he moved among the crowd, but there was a huge difference here. For whoever he spoke to in this gathering was trying desperately to find out about him, to gauge his interest as being genuine or not, and to discover whether Rose felt the same. He and Rose had spent so little time together that he could only hope they were now presenting a united front. They were forced apart-there were too many people wanting to talk to them to allow them to stay as a couple-but he was aware that people were talking easily to her, laughing with her, enjoying her presence.
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