Stepping into the Prince's World

by Marion Lennox

  She liked that smile, she decided. She liked it a lot.

  ‘I’ve been in the army for fifteen years and never had to put a single sticking plaster on a bullet hole. But broken legs and dislocated shoulders, cuts and bruises, stubbed toes and hangovers...as first-aid officer for my unit I’ve coped with them all. Actually, make that especially hangovers.’

  ‘Why did you join the army?’ She was propped up now. She’d taken her pills. Maybe she should settle down and sleep again until the pills worked, but Raoul was here, and she hadn’t seen anyone for four months—surely that was a good enough reason for wanting him to stay? It surely wasn’t anything to do with how good he looked in his uniform. And how that smile twisted something she hadn’t known could be twisted.

  ‘Lots of reasons,’ he told her. ‘The army’s been good for me.’

  ‘Good to you or good for you?’

  ‘Both. Has this island been good for you?’

  ‘I guess.’ She thought about it for a moment and then shook her head. ‘Maybe not. Six months is a long time. You just heard me talking to myself. I do that a lot. I guess I’m starting to go stir-crazy.’

  ‘The least your employers could do is give you a decent bedroom,’ he told her, looking round at her bare little room in disgust. ‘You have bedrooms here that are so opulent they could house a family of six and not be squashed, and you’re in something out of Jane Eyre.’

  ‘Hey, I have my own bathroom. I bet Jane never had that.’ She smiled, the pain in her arm receding with every second—and it had nothing to do with the drugs, she thought. It had everything to do with the way this man was smiling at her. ‘But every now and then I do sneak into one of the guest bedrooms,’ she conceded. ‘They all have fantastic views. Rocky and I read romance novels and pretend we’re who we’re not all over again. But I’m here to get my life back to normal, not indulge in fantasy.’

  ‘You can’t stay here,’ he told her.

  She took a couple of sips of juice and thought about it. ‘I have a contract.’

  ‘The contract doesn’t hold water. It’s unsafe to leave you here alone for six months and now the radio’s smashed.’

  ‘I can get a new one.’

  ‘Which could get smashed, too. When we figure out a way to evacuate me, you need to come, too.’

  ‘I can’t just walk out.’

  ‘I assume you can contact Don and Marigold?’

  ‘I...yes. When I get satellite connection again.’

  ‘Or when you get to the mainland and email or phone them. You’ve been injured. You have no reliable means of communication. Any lawyer in the land will tell you you’re within your rights to terminate your contract. And,’ he said, and grinned, ‘I happen to know a lawyer right here, right now. Don’t be a doormat, Claire Tremaine.’

  ‘I’m not a doormat.’

  ‘I know that,’ he told her.

  And here came that smile again. Oh, that smile...

  ‘I had proof of that yesterday,’ he continued. ‘But for today you’re allowed to be as doormat-like as you want. And speaking of wants...would you like breakfast in bed?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Just asking,’ he said, and grinned and put up his hands as in self-defence. ‘Don’t throw the porridge at me.’

  ‘Porridge?’

  ‘I found oats,’ he told her. ‘And maple syrup. It’s a marriage made in heaven. It’s on the stove now.’

  ‘I thought you said you weren’t going to forage without my permission.’

  ‘I didn’t need to forage for these guys. Like the eggs last night, they jumped right out at me. Want to share?’

  ‘I...’ She stared at that smile, at those crinkly eyes, at that magnetic twinkle, and there was only one answer. ‘Yes, please,’ she told him. And then she added: ‘But not in bed.’

  Because breakfast in bed with this guy around... Some things seemed too dangerous to be considered.

  * * *

  The transmitter was indeed useless.

  They stood in the ruins of the radio shack and stared at the shambles and Raoul said, ‘What on earth was he thinking? He could have had half of this set up in the safety of the house.’

  ‘But it would have been only half of this set-up.’

  Claire was dressed and breakfasted. The painkillers were working; indeed they might not be needed as much as she’d feared, for with her arm held safe in the sling the throbbing had eased to almost nothing. She’d walked outside with him to see the damage. The wind had ceased. The shack holding the radio transmitter was a splintered mess, debris covered the terracing, but the storm was over.

  ‘He wanted to take over one of the rooms in the house,’ she told Raoul. ‘But Marigold wouldn’t have it—a nasty, messy radio transmitter in her beautiful house. So he planned to build proper housing, but of course he wanted it straight away, so he was forced to use this.’ She looked ruefully at the mess. ‘This was an old whaler’s cottage, but it’s been a long time since any whaler came near the place.’

  ‘Or anyone else?’

  ‘The supply boat comes once a week. They didn’t come this Monday because of the storm. I expect they’ll come next week, unless the weather’s bad. That’s why we have decent supplies.’

  ‘Fishing boats?’ he said, without much hope, and she shook her head.

  ‘I’ve never seen any. I see an occasional small plane, out sightseeing.’ She hesitated. ‘You’re thinking of rescue. Are you sure your friends won’t realise you were on a boat and be searching?’

  ‘I’m sure,’ he said grimly. ‘There were reasons I wanted to be alone. I seem to have succeeded better than I imagined.’

  ‘Hey,’ she said, and she touched his shoulder lightly, a feather touch. ‘Not completely,’ she said. ‘You’re stuck with Rocky and me. Want to come to the beach?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To see if anything’s been washed in from your boat.’

  ‘You need to rest.’

  ‘I’ve had four months of resting,’ she retorted. ‘Come on, soldier—or can’t those bootees make it?’

  He was wearing Don’s sheepskin bootees. He stared down at his feet and then stared at Claire.

  She smiled her most encouraging smile and turned towards the cliff path. Maybe she should be resting, she thought, but there was a reason she was pushing him to come with her.

  While Raoul had been in charge—while there’d been things to do—Raoul’s smile had been constant. He’d buoyed her mood. He’d given her courage. But now, standing in the ruins of the only way to get messages to and from the island, his smile had disappeared. She’d heard bleakness and self-blame in his voice.

  He’d helped her, so the least she could do was help him back. Maybe she should dislocate the other shoulder. She grinned, and he caught up with her and glanced across and saw the grin.

  ‘What? What do you have to laugh about?’

  ‘You,’ she said. ‘I might need to put a training regime in place if you’re not to get miserable. You’re stuck here for at least five days...’

  ‘I can’t stay for five days.’

  ‘Five days until the supply boat’s due,’ she said inexorably. ‘But Marigold has a whole library of romance novels, and Don has fishing magazines, so cheer up. Meanwhile, let’s go see if anything’s left of your boat.’

  * * *

  Rosebud was an ex-boat.

  The last time he’d seen Tom’s boat she’d been upturned in the surf. Now she was nothing more than a pile of splintered debris on the storm-washed beach.

  The radio shack and Rosebud had held his only links to the mainland and both were smashed. He looked out at the still churning sea and knew he had a lot to be thankful for—but at what cost?

  ‘Will your friend be very upset?’ Claire
asked in a small voice.

  He thought of Tom, and thought of the new boat he could buy him, and he thought Tom would give him heaps of flak and enjoy buying a new boat very much.

  ‘I guess,’ he said.

  ‘Is it insured?’

  He hadn’t even thought of insurance. ‘Probably. I don’t know.’

  ‘Will you have to cover the cost? Oh, Raoul...’

  And she slipped her hand into his with such easy sympathy that it was impossible for him to say, No, it’s okay, the cost of this yacht is hardly a drop in the ocean of my fortune.

  Why would he say that when she was holding his hand and looking up at him with concern?

  Um...because otherwise it was dishonest?

  Maybe it was, he thought, but she held his hand and he liked it, and he thought if he was to be stuck here for days then he wouldn’t mind being treated as an equal.

  Time enough to be treated as a royal when he got home.

  And the thought struck again. His grandparents... They’d have heard by now. They’d be grief-stricken, appalled and terrified.

  Something must have shown on his face, because the hold on his hand tightened.

  ‘It’s okay, Raoul,’ she said softly. ‘You can’t help any of this.’

  ‘I could have.’

  ‘Yeah, but that’s in the past. You can’t do a thing about that now. Focus on the future.’

  ‘Like you have? Should I go find me a rock to sit on for six months?’

  ‘You can have this one if you like,’ she told him. ‘I’m over it. Hey, is that a boot?’

  It was. Rocky had found it. He was standing over it, wagging every bit of him in excitement. Raoul let go Claire’s hand—reluctantly—and went to see.’

  One boot. It was half hidden under a clump of seaweed.

  ‘Let’s see if we can find more,’ Claire told him, and they hunted at the high tide mark and found the other, washed in after he’d kicked it off in the water. It was dumb, but their find made him feel a whole lot better.

  Could a guy with boots walk home? Maybe not, but when they were cleaned and dried he wouldn’t be dependent on Don’s slippers. And when he was finally taken off this rock...

  ‘You’ll look very nice for the journalists,’ Claire told him, and he looked at her sharply.

  ‘Journalists?’

  ‘You think if someone finds you that you’ll slip back into Hobart unnoticed? Storm...wrecked yacht...marooned in the middle of Bass Strait...’ She brightened. ‘Hey, maybe you could sell it to the tabloids. All it needs is a sex angle and you could maybe make enough to pay for your friend’s yacht.’

  A sex angle...

  The comment had been flippant. Off the cuff. It had been all about tabloid newspapers and what sold. It wasn’t anything to do with what was happening to them.

  So why did it seem to stand out? Why did the words seem to echo?’

  What was it about this woman that was making his senses tune in to nuances that shouldn’t be there? She was injured, vulnerable, alone. He had no business thinking of her in any way other than as someone who’d saved his life and was stuck on this barren, rocky outcrop with him until help arrived.

  Think of something else—fast.

  He bent and picked up a battered piece of timber, the painted registration number of Rosebud, and tried to think of a way he could get a message to the mainland. A way he could get a message to his grandparents.

  He tried not to think of the woman beside him, of how she made him feel.

  ‘Chuck a message in a bottle?’ she asked.

  He looked sharply up at her. She’d better not be able to read his mind, he thought. His thoughts were too tangled, and somewhere in there was the vision of Claire as he’d first seen her, struggling in the water towards him, holding him, her lovely chestnut curls tangled wetly around her face.

  Claire...

  Yeah, empty the mind fast, he told himself. What had she said? A message in a bottle?

  ‘I suspect your supply boat might be faster,’ he said, and she grimaced.

  ‘You’re right. Your grandparents will be very frightened?’

  ‘They’ll know I won’t have gone AWOL.’ As will half the world. He thought of the rumours that would be circulating. His country had had recent threats centred on the throne. The current thinking was that they had come from a crazy fringe organisation with no resources. Marétal was a small player on the world stage, but his disappearance followed by silence would have the media in a frenzy. His grandparents would be beside themselves.

  No boat for almost a week...

  ‘If we had the internet we could try and make a crystal radio set,’ Claire said thoughtfully. ‘I had a friend who made one once.’

  ‘Good idea,’ he told her. ‘Except we don’t have the internet and crystal sets receive but don’t send. But if we had the internet we could email.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘But good thinking.’

  ‘Don’t patronise me,’ she muttered.

  He grinned. She really was extraordinary. ‘I guess we could always burn the place down,’ he said, deciding to join her in the planning department. ‘If the fire was big enough and we did it during the day the smoke would be seen for miles.’

  ‘Yeah, and if it wasn’t noticed...?’

  ‘Is there a cave in any of these cliffs?’

  ‘I don’t know about you, soldier,’ she told him. ‘But Rocky and I don’t take kindly to caves. We like our comfy beds. And how would I explain a fire to Marigold? I’m caretaker for this place. Burning it down doesn’t exactly come into my job description.’

  ‘It was just a suggestion,’ he said hastily.

  ‘A bad one.’

  ‘Okay, a bad one.’

  ‘Hmmph.’

  They stared at the sea some more. She was so close, Raoul thought. She was obviously thinking.

  He should be doing some thinking. He was thinking. It was just that the woman beside him was taking up a whole lot of his thinking room.

  ‘What about an SOS in the middle of the island?’ she said, and he hauled his thoughts back to sense when his thoughts really didn’t want to go.

  ‘SOS...?’

  ‘We could do it in rocks,’ she said. ‘There’s a flat plateau behind the house. It’s strewn with small rocks. We could organise them into an SOS. I’m thinking by tomorrow sightseeing flights might start again from Hobart. A plane might fly across.’

  ‘Do they always fly across?’

  ‘There aren’t many,’ she told him. ‘It’s winter. Tourists who pay money for flights will be thin on the ground and we don’t have a weather forecast so it might be a lot of effort for nothing.’

  He thought about it. SOS. The universal cry for help. Was it justified?

  They were both well. They had enough supplies to keep them fed for as long as they were stranded and the house was more than comfortable.

  ‘It’d be for your grandparents’ sake,’ Claire said, watching him. ‘And you might get charged for the cost of the rescue.’

  He might.

  The cost would be negligible compared to the costs his country would be facing trying to locate the heir to the throne.

  Claire was watching him thoughtfully. ‘Is it just for your grandparents?’ she asked, and he thought about telling her.

  I’m royal and there’ll be a worldwide search...

  Not yet. For some unknown reason a voice in the back of his head was pleading, Not yet. She thought he was an equal. A soldier, nothing more.

  She’d been battered by people who’d treated her as trash. She was feisty and brave but she’d retreated to this island, hurt.

  He didn’t want her retreating from him. He knew he’d have to tell her, but now the vo
ice was almost yelling.

  Not yet. Not yet.

  ‘There’ll be a fuss and a half when I get off this island,’ he told her. ‘Part of me thinks I should just stay. But the fuss has to be faced some time, and my grandparents...they’ll be pushing for a search, no matter what the cost.’

  And that was the truth, he thought. When he thought of the resources they’d be throwing at it... At him... And his two bodyguards... They’d be being vilified and it wasn’t their fault. Short of burning down the house, he had to try everything.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ he said shortly, without answering her question, and she looked at him curiously.

  ‘There’s stuff you’re not telling me.’

  ‘I’m ashamed of myself.’

  ‘Would the army rescue you?’

  ‘Yes.’ That would be the best outcome, he thought. If the army could slip in and take him off the island...

  ‘An SOS seen by sightseers is going to hit the media,’ she told him. ‘Are you prepared to have your picture taken?’

  ‘I guess it’ll be both of us.’

  ‘Not me,’ she told him. ‘Not in a million years. I’m hiding, remember? If you get taken off by a crew of SAS forces abseiling down with parachutes and stun guns I’ll be hiding in Don’s basement. Tell them you were taken in by a hermit with a beard down to his ankles who fires at the sight of a camera. Better still...’ She hesitated. ‘Better still, just wait for the supply boat.’

  ‘I don’t think I can.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  She looked at him long and hard. Then she sighed and picked up his waterlogged boots.

  ‘Okay, then,’ she told him. ‘Let’s go dry some boots and organise some rocks.’

  * * *

  He organised rocks. Claire sat on a rocky ledge at the edge of the plateau and watched.

  It was kind of peaceful. The wind had died completely. The weak winter sun was warm on her face. Today was one of the few days she’d had here when the weather made her think this was a wonderful place to stay.

  Or maybe it was the company. Maybe it was because the ache in her arm was fading. Maybe it was because she and Rocky were safe and yesterday had made her realise how wonderful ‘safe’ was.