Princess Of Convenience

by Marion Lennox

  ‘Trousers? From a sheet? Would you wear trousers made from a sheet?’

  ‘Maybe not,’ he said faintly and she grinned.

  ‘There you go, then. Sebastian deserves splendid trousers and that’s what we’ll make him. All hands on deck.’

  ‘I don’t understand all hands on deck,’ Edouard complained and she grinned still more.

  ‘It means I’m the captain and I’m saying we have work to do. I’ve never had two princes to boss around before but I’m bossing now. Work. Now.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Raoul told her and she smiled up at him.

  Damn, there was that gut-twisting sensation that was threatening to spiral out of control.

  She had work to do.

  She couldn’t keep smiling at Raoul forever.

  No matter how much she wanted to.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  WHAT followed was a truly excellent hour.

  Jess’s fingers were true weaver’s fingers. Edouard chose his yarns: red, gold, a deep blue and a soft lemon that made her smile. She attached the threads, she considered for a little, and then she set to work. The shuttles flew in her hands, back, forth, pressing each thread into place in her chosen pattern while the boys looked on in wonder.

  Edouard watched for a few minutes and after a bit she asked him if he’d like to place the shuttles for her. To her surprise his fingers were nimble and sure, and he seemed to sense the pattern she was working without being told. She’d want a thread and his fingers were already reaching for the right shuttle.

  This little boy was intelligent and he was fascinated. As was Raoul. She had his undivided attention. It made her feel strange, but the shimmer of joy was still with her. The grey that had been with her since Dom’s death was held at bay by their absorption.

  She worked fast, and in half an hour there was a good half a yard of cloth; enough for any bear’s trousers.

  ‘Now what?’ Raoul said faintly as she drew the cloth from her frame and gazed at it, considering. ‘It’s beautiful. We should frame it.’

  ‘Frame it? When it can be useful?’ That was what she’d been doing with Sebastian himself, she thought, her joy fading a little. She’d been shoving the little bear down the bottom of her suitcase. Unable to cope with holding him, unable to look at him but also unable to let go. Holding him in store for when he could be useful.

  Like now.

  ‘What is it, Jess?’ Raoul asked, and she hauled herself out of her introspection and made herself focus.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said abruptly, reaching for scissors. ‘There’ll be no more framing. This might be a pretty piece of cloth but Sebastian needs trousers.’

  It was a very rough pair of trousers. She had no sewing machine and Edouard was starting to droop, but she badly wanted the trousers to be finished tonight. So she cut a front and a back and sewed them together swiftly with a neat, fast backstitch, using a rough blanket stitch to stop fraying. She turned the band at the waist, plaited the remainder of the skeins and threaded the resulting cord through the band. She deliberately released threads at the hems to give the trousers a Robinson Crusoe look, and Sebastian’s trousers were complete.

  ‘There.’ She held them up for inspection. ‘What do you think?’

  They were all still sitting on the floor. Edouard was back on Raoul’s lap-whoops-knee. He was fighting weariness but there was no way he’d sleep while his Sebastian was being clothed.

  Jess held out the trousers and he accepted them as a man might accept a piece of priceless artwork. He looked doubtfully up at Raoul. Raoul smiled. He took a deep breath, and then he started pulling the trousers onto his bear.

  Two heads, one dark, one fair, bent over the teddy while Jess looked on and fought back another stupid urge to cry.

  ‘They fit,’ Edouard said in a voice of wonder and Raoul smiled down at the teddy and touched Sebastian’s nose as Edouard himself had done.

  ‘How could you doubt they would fit?’ he demanded of his nephew. ‘We have a master weaver and seamstress in our midst. A wonder weaver. Our Jess.’

  Our Jess. Damn, there were the tears again.

  She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t.

  ‘Can I take him to bed?’ Edouard asked, and there was a sudden quaver in his voice. Bed. He’d had time out, his voice said. Now he had to face his too-big bed again-and his jungle.

  And it was out before she could help herself. ‘Would you like to sleep here?’

  What was she doing? How could she have asked it? She felt the colour drain from her face as she said the words, and Raoul’s eyes snapped down in confusion.

  ‘In your bed?’ Edouard whispered, and it was too late to back out.

  ‘Yes.’ She swallowed. ‘Just for tonight.’

  Edouard looked through to Jess’s big bedroom. The light was off but there a fire was lit in there as well, making the room look incredibly appealing. It seemed a million miles from his horrible nursery.

  ‘Yes, please,’ Edouard whispered-and then there was nothing to do but to watch as Raoul prepared his little nephew for bed.

  She stared into the flames while he carried him through to the bathroom. She stared at some more flames while he settled him into Jess’s bed. He tucked Edouard between the sheets-and tucked Sebastian-Bear between the sheets as well.

  The flames were riveting. She wouldn’t watch-she couldn’t-as Raoul kissed his nephew goodnight and then stroked his fair curls until the wide eyes drooped and he drifted into sleep.

  When Raoul finally turned away, Jess was still crouched on the floor, surrounded by the remains of her weaving and her trouser-making. She was staring at her flames as if she was trying to remember every flicker.

  She didn’t say a word. She couldn’t.

  Finally Raoul sank into the floor beside her, as if he’d come to some major decision.

  ‘I think it’s time you told me, Jess,’ he said softly.

  ‘Told me?’

  ‘Start with Sebastian-Bear,’ he said gently, and he lifted her hand. ‘Sebastian belonged to you. Now he belongs to Edouard. But there was someone in the middle. Your child? Tell me who, Jess.’

  ‘Dominic.’

  How could it hurt to say the word? she thought. It was a magical little name. She’d always loved it. She loved it still.

  ‘Dominic was your son?’ he asked, still in the soft, half-whisper that the firelight seemed to encourage. He’d flicked down the power of the overhead light as he’d returned to her, so the light was kind; a soft dusk of flickering firelight that hid the distress on her face. Or she hoped it hid the distress. He was acute, this man. He saw…

  ‘Dominic was my son,’ she whispered. ‘He died three months ago.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘He was four.’ Four years, two days. He’d celebrated his fourth birthday.

  Just.

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘Leukaemia,’ Jess told him, her voice growing mechanical now. Dull. ‘He was ill for almost two years. I fought so hard, and so did he. He had every treatment possible. I tried everything.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Tragedies happen,’ she said wearily. ‘You move on.’

  ‘Do you?’

  Silence. The fire crackled and hissed, absorbing pain.

  ‘You tried so hard,’ Raoul said at last, speaking slowly, as if absorbing every thought. ‘And Dominic fought. You don’t mention Dominic’s father.’

  ‘Warren didn’t like illness.’ This was easier, she thought thankfully. Talking about Warren was like talking about…nothing. ‘He left us a month after Dominic was diagnosed. By the time Dominic died, Warren had a new wife and a baby daughter. He didn’t even come to the funeral.’

  Raoul’s face stilled, appalled. ‘Tough,’ he whispered and she shook her head.

  ‘Warren wasn’t tough,’ she told him. ‘He was weak. Not like his son. Dominic was just the bravest…’

  She stopped. There was a long pause, broken only by the sound of the fir
e.

  ‘So you’ve come here to try and recuperate,’ he said at last, and she flinched.

  ‘You don’t recuperate from a child’s death,’ she whispered, and she couldn’t stop the sudden flash of anger. ‘But that’s what they all said. You go overseas and forget, they told me. Start again. How can I start again? Why would I want to?’

  ‘Like me,’ he said softly and her eyes flew to his. ‘Only harder.’

  ‘What…what do you mean?’

  ‘I believed them,’ he told her, his voice gentling. ‘Or maybe, like you, they just wore me down by repeating their mantra and I hoped like hell they were right.’

  She paused. The fire died down a little. It was crazily intimate; crazily close. It was as if the world had stopped, paused, giving them a tiny cocoon of unreality. Space in the face of shared tragedy.

  ‘You’ve lost someone, too?’ she whispered, though she already knew the answer.

  ‘My twin. My sister. Lisle.’

  His twin sister. She stared at his face and she saw the bleakness of loss.

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘Three years.’ He shrugged. ‘I know. I should be over it.’

  ‘Of course you shouldn’t be over it,’ she snapped. She stared some more into his strained face. ‘I guessed it,’ she said, savagely, angry at herself for not letting the thought surface before. ‘I knew.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘It’s a look,’ she told him. ‘I saw it in the hospital. I saw it in the faces of those who knew there was no longer hope. It’s an emptiness, a hole. You and your mother… Jean-Paul’s death has hurt, but it’s also brought back Lisle’s death.’

  ‘I don’t have an emptiness,’ he said but she shook her head.

  ‘No? Then why Médecins Sans Frontières?’

  ‘I just… It seemed the right thing to do, to be a doctor.’ He hesitated but the firelight was enough to encourage him to go on. It was like the confessional, Jess thought. This night there were no secrets. ‘Lisle was deprived of oxygen during birth,’ he told her. ‘She had cerebral palsy. She was so bright, so damned intelligent, and her body was a prison.’

  He paused for a moment and she thought he’d stop. But she didn’t speak. She simply waited.

  ‘That’s why my mother left my father,’ he told her. ‘As soon as my father realised Lisle would be disabled, he demanded she be placed in an institution. Of course, my mother refused. We had servants here to help with Lisle’s physical needs, and Lisle was as intelligent as any of us. She loved us. To do anything but keep her as an integral part of our family seemed unthinkable. But physical disability horrified my father and he insisted. Mama fought him-she held out for six long years. But then it was time for schooling, and there were to be no tutors here. My father refused to have them. And he started being cruel to Lisle. So Mama had a choice and it was a hellish one. Place Lisle into an institution, or walk away from the palace. There was no way my father would release his grip on his heir so that also meant walking away from my brother.’

  ‘Oh, no. Oh, Raoul.’

  ‘It broke her heart,’ Raoul said bitterly. ‘Jean-Paul was twelve. She’d hoped she could maintain access-she’d hoped that Jean-Paul himself could understand her decision, but of course he couldn’t. He hated her for leaving. And my father… I think my father just dismissed her. She was forgotten the moment she walked out of the palace and she was never permitted back.’

  To make a choice between her children… Jess’s heart recoiled in horror. ‘I can’t imagine how she can have managed.’

  ‘Oh, she managed,’ Raoul said and a hint of a remembering smile played across his lips as he left the tragedy of his childhood and moved on. ‘She took Lisle and me to Paris. She raised us with love, and she tried not to let the tragedy of leaving her eldest child spoil our childhood. No one answered our phone calls to the palace but we wrote to Jean-Paul every week. Every one of us did. But he never answered. Mama thought for a long while that my father was keeping the letters from him, but no. The servants confirmed for us…Jean-Paul, like my father, had simply moved on.’

  ‘And Lisle?’ Jess asked, and his face softened. Pleasure returning.

  ‘Lisle ended up with a first-class university degree,’ he told her. ‘She loved life. She had friends, she had the best sense of humour… We were so proud of her. She was a truly wonderful person.’

  ‘But she died.’

  The smile faded. ‘In the end her body defeated her,’ he said softly. ‘She suffered infection after infection and finally we couldn’t save her.’

  He fell silent, and she saw the pain etched across his face. There was a part of her-a really big part of her-that wanted to reach out and touch him. No. But it took an almost superhuman effort to keep her hands to herself.

  ‘As I said, that was three years ago,’ he continued and maybe he didn’t sense what she was thinking. He was staring into the firelight-not at her. ‘I was already a practising doctor and I thought, after watching the courage with which Lisle faced life, that the least I could do was try to help others. And, of course, everyone said I should get away and forget.’

  ‘Hence Médecins Sans Frontières?’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Hence the scar?’ she asked, wanting suddenly to reach out-to trace its course. She did no such thing.

  ‘Tribesmen involved in a who-gets-the-doctor-first dispute,’ he said, smiling faintly. ‘I tried to referee and then there were three of us needing attention.’

  She couldn’t touch it. She musn’t.

  ‘And now you’re back here,’ she said softly, gripping her hands firmly into place; staring at the firelight and not looking at him. ‘You’re trying to save your country. And your mother is facing losing again. Losing her grandson. Walking away.’

  ‘It’s damnable,’ he told her. He glanced through the door to the bed, where Edouard lay clutching his Sebastian in sleep. ‘He’s so…desperate. You know, in the weeks we’ve been here my mother has given him toys but he’s not looked at anything. Tonight has been magic.’ He hesitated, and she saw him form the question she knew had to come. ‘Sebastian is Dominic’s teddy?’

  ‘He’s Edouard’s teddy,’ she told him, her voice firming.

  ‘But…’

  ‘Edouard needs him now.’ She was speaking more firmly than she felt, but she knew this was right. ‘We move on, Raoul. We both need to move on. We need to remember Lisle and Dominic-but we also need to get on with our lives.’

  ‘Easier to say than do.’

  ‘It’s not so hard. You just have to be definite. You just have to remember toast and marmalade makes you feel good.’

  ‘And firelight,’ he told her. ‘And making trousers for teddies.’

  ‘That too,’ she told him. She stared at him then, straight at him. There was such trouble in his face, she thought. She was coping with the loss of her child, but she wasn’t alone in her grief. This man was not only coping with the death of his twin and the more recent death of his brother, but he was also facing his mother’s sorrow. And in the next room, in her bed, was a little boy who would be raised alone because this man had fought and lost.

  ‘Why did you never marry?’ she asked for the second time, gently into the night. ‘Until now?’

  It was a presumptuous question but it seemed tonight that nothing was presumptuous. For this night, for this time, there were no barriers.

  ‘I hardly thought of it,’ he told her. ‘I guess…Lisle’s health was so precarious and she needed so much help that there never seemed time to get heavily involved outside our family circle.’

  He smiled then. It was a mere echo of the smile she loved so much but it was a smile for all that. ‘But I haven’t exactly been puritanical,’ he told her. ‘If you think I’ve led a life of pure hard work and no fun…’

  ‘Women, eh?’ she said, following the lead he was giving with his smile, and magically, wonderfully, he grinned. ‘Lots of women?’

  ‘A thousand at least,’ he told
her, and she smiled straight back at him.

  ‘Excellent.’ She hesitated. ‘So…you’ve had a thousand-odd women but when you needed to marry there was only Sarah to choose? A relative who-from my point of view anyway-maybe didn’t seem the wisest choice.’

  ‘She seemed a good choice,’ he told her, and his voice was suddenly stiff again. Defensive. ‘I didn’t want to be held down.’

  ‘Right,’ she said drily. ‘Well, she’s surely not holding you down. And now what? If Sarah was a business proposition, can you not make another? Can’t you find another good choice by Monday? Another bride who’ll not keep you from your thousand other women?’

  ‘I was joking.’

  ‘I know you were joking,’ she told him. ‘But there must be someone. Maybe you could advertise.’

  ‘Oh, sure,’ he said, self-mockingly. ‘I should just put a notice up on the main palace gate. Wanted, one princess.’

  ‘Why not? You’d be swamped.’

  ‘By women who’d expect something. By a woman I didn’t know, who could lead to all sorts of complications. It’s impossible. The woman I want would have to marry and then step away. Sarah was doing it for money and prestige, but she knew enough of the rules of the monarchy to toe the line. Or I thought she did. And she didn’t mind the goldfish bowl she was stepping into. She’d have enjoyed the attention of the Press. Anyone else it’d swamp.’

  Silence. More silence.

  The fire crackled and Jess suddenly felt dizzy. She put a hand down onto the thick Persian rug she was kneeling on-as if she needed to steady herself.

  She did need to steady herself.

  Something was forming in the back of her mind. Something so preposterous it was taking her breath away.

  Could she?

  How could she not?

  ‘Unless…unless your bride didn’t live here,’ she said, softly, sounding the idea out in her head as the idea formed. ‘Unless she lived somewhere like…Australia? There’d be no media if your bride packed and left for Australia the moment the ceremony was ended.’

  There was a moment’s stunned silence. Raoul’s face stilled.