Stepping into the Prince's World

by Marion Lennox

  ‘You don’t know anything about my legal credentials.’

  ‘I do,’ he told her. ‘How can I doubt that they’re impeccable? Not only do I trust you, I can ensure the world will, too. Two minutes after we land in Hobart there’ll be a legal suppression order thumped on the appalling Felicity and her friends. If one whisper of improper conduct comes out, your ex-firm will be faced with a libel suit so massive it’ll make their eyes water. Claire, what I’m proposing is sensible, but it’s not sense I’m talking. It’s desire. This way you come back to my country. I won’t be able to spend much time with you between now and the ball, but you’ll see enough of me—and I’ll see enough of you—to decide if we have the courage to take this thing forward.’

  ‘Courage...’

  ‘It would take courage,’ he told her.

  His fingers were kneading hers gently, erotically, making her feel as if she wanted to stop talking this minute and head to the bedroom while there was still time. But of course she couldn’t. Raoul was talking sense and she had to listen.

  Sense? To fly to the other side of the world with a royal prince? Her? Claire Tremaine?

  Her head was spinning. The only thing grounding her seemed to be Raoul’s hold on her hand, and surely she shouldn’t trust that.

  ‘It would take courage,’ he said again, as if he’d realised her mind was having trouble hearing, much less taking anything in. ‘But what I’m suggesting takes the pressure off as far as I can figure how to do that. You’d stay in my country until the ball. You’d dance with me as my partner.’

  He gave another of his lopsided grins and she wished he hadn’t. It made her... Well, it made it a lot harder for her to take anything in.

  ‘It would be a favour to me,’ he told her. ‘It would take the pressure from me. It would make my grandparents happy...’

  ‘That you’re dancing with a nobody?’

  ‘They can hardly think you’re a nobody when you saved my life.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it.’

  ‘Claire, stop quibbling,’ he said, firmly now. ‘Because straight after the ball you’ll have a return ticket to Australia. Ostensibly to research a legal assistance system on our behalf. No—really to research a legal assistance system. That will give you time to come to terms with everything you’ve seen and with how you feel about me. It will give us both time. You can return to Australia with a job to do and we can both take stock of how we feel. No pressure. Your call.’

  No pressure.

  No pressure?

  Her head felt as if it was caving in.

  ‘You don’t know what you’re asking,’ she managed, and he took both her hands then, tugging her so she was looking straight at him. What had happened to their coffee? Obviously that was what happened when you used caterers’ blend, she thought tangentially. You got distracted by...a prince.

  ‘I do know what I’m asking,’ he told her. ‘And it’s a shock. To you, though—not to me. Claire, I knew the moment you pulled me from the water that your life had changed. You don’t save royal princes and then get marooned on deserted islands with them for days without media hype. You will get media hype, and I’m sorry. But there’s also this thing between us—this thing which I’m not prepared to let go. With my plan...I’m trying to rewrite the Cinderella story. I’m trying to figure how to get through this with your dignity as top priority. This way you’ll come to the palace, you’ll meet my grandparents, you’ll see things as they are. Then you’ll come to the ball as an honoured guest. And, yes, I’ll dance with you—a lot—but in real life the Prince has to dance with others, because feelings can’t be hurt. And you’ll dance with others, too, because men will be lining up. And at midnight...’

  ‘Where’s my glass slipper?’ she said shakily, and tried to smile.

  He smiled back. ‘That’s where the plot changes to what it should be. At the end of the ball I’ll put you back into your carriage, which won’t turn back into a pumpkin, your luggage will be waiting and you’ll take your return ticket back to Australia. I won’t come hunting for you. You’re your own person, Claire. If you take this job then you have months of secure employment, doing work my country needs. And then you can work out if you have the courage to return.’

  ‘Why...why would I return?’

  ‘Because, fast as this is, and even though I’ve known you such a short time, I suspect I’ll be waiting for you.’

  ‘But no promises?’ she said, fast and breathlessly, and he nodded.

  ‘No promises from either of us,’ he told her. ‘Both of us know that. But this is a chance...our only chance...to wait and see. If you have the courage, my Claire.’

  ‘I’m not your Claire.’

  ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘You’re your Claire and the decision is yours. Will you come home with me and give us a chance?’

  And what was a woman to say to that?

  How could she look into those eyes and say no?

  She might have courage, but her knees felt as if they’d sagged under her—and she wasn’t even standing.

  ‘Claire?’ he said softly, and put a finger under her chin and raised her face so her gaze met his. ‘Will you come with me?’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered, because there was no other response. ‘Yes, I will.’

  * * *

  And then the world broke in.

  At two that afternoon a small plane swooped low over the island.

  After four months of isolation the pilots of such planes, like the captains of the supply boats, seemed to have become Claire’s friends. They weren’t really. They were people doing their job. She couldn’t talk to them, and she didn’t even know their names, but she usually walked outside and waved. Sometimes they flew low enough so she could see people waving back.

  They’d just finished lunch, a mostly silent meal during which too much seemed to be happening in their heads for talk to be possible. Raoul had talked of practicalities and Claire had listened, but mostly her head was full of one huge question.

  What had she agreed to do?

  The sound of the plane was almost a relief. She glanced out of the window and hesitated. ‘If I go outside and wave they’ll think I’m okay,’ she told him. ‘They might not even see the SOS.’

  ‘No one can miss my SOS,’ Raoul told her. ‘And if you don’t go outside we’ll have people thinking you might be wounded. I didn’t have enough rocks to write a detailed explanation of the problem underneath. Claire, we need to be seen. Together. I assume they know you’re usually alone here? They’ll see us. The wreckage from Rosebud on the beach is self-explanatory. Let’s go.’

  So he led her outside, and they stood on Marigold’s Italian terrace, and Claire waved and Raoul stood silently by her side.

  He seemed grim.

  And as she waved for the first time it struck her. What he was asking of her was huge, but what he was facing himself was even bigger. He’d been in the army for fifteen years—a rugged life, dangerous, challenging, but obviously something he felt deeply about. He was back in his army uniform now, having decided he wouldn’t risk facing the world in Don’s gear. But it was more than that, she thought. In his army gear he knew who he was.

  She glanced at the set lines on his face and thought again of the reasons he’d walked down to his friend’s boat and set out to sea.

  This was an ending for him. And end of being who he wanted to be.

  The start of his royal life.

  ‘You’ll be brilliant,’ she said, and he looked down at her, startled.

  ‘What...?’

  ‘As a prince. You’ll be amazing. Look at you now—you’ve had three days lying around here and you could have...I don’t know...rested on your laurels, played the royal Prince, ordered me around like anything...’

  ‘As if I would.’

 
‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘Instead you taught me how to make tarte tatin, and if nothing else ever comes of this then I thank you. You’ve assessed this whole situation. You came over all bossy when you told me I need to leave. But more...you thought of the legal assistance thing—and, Raoul, I know that’s partly for us, but it’s also for your country. You’re thinking of what it needs. If you start that way you’ll be brilliant. I know you will.’

  ‘Not unless...’ And then he stopped. ‘No. I won’t blackmail you.’

  ‘Excellent,’ she said as the plane swooped low, did a one-eighty-degree turn and swooped again, right over the centre of the island where Raoul’s SOS stood out like a beacon. ‘Because we both have enough pressure on us already. All we can do is face forward and get on with it.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  THREE WEEKS LATER, in an apartment in Marétal’s secure legal precinct, she woke where she wanted to spend the rest of her life.

  She woke in Raoul’s arms.

  ‘Let me not move.’ She murmured the words to herself, not daring to whisper, hardly daring to breathe. ‘Let me hold this fantasy as truth.’

  For this was a fantasy. This was where Cinderella could have her fairytale, she thought. In the arms of her Prince.

  No. She wasn’t in the arms of her Prince. She was in the arms of the man she loved.

  And almost as she thought it Raoul woke, and the arms that had held her even in sleep tightened. Her body was spooned against his. Her skin was against his. The sensation was almost unbearably erotic. The sensation was pure...fantasy.

  ‘I can’t believe it’s only weeks since I first kissed you,’ he murmured into her hair. ‘It feels like months. Or years.’

  They’d been businesslike, as planned, even though it had almost killed them. But they’d had to be. They’d travelled back to Marétal together, but as soon as their plane had landed Raoul had been absorbed back into the royal family.

  Claire was being treated as an honoured guest. The story was that she’d rescued him and he’d been fortunate enough to persuade this skilled lawyer to take an outsider’s look at the country’s legal system.

  There’d been mutterings from the legal fraternity—‘Why do we need such an overview?’—but she was young and non-threatening and the royal sanction was enough to keep the peace.

  There’d been more than murmurs from the media—of course there had: Prince trapped on remote island with glamorous Australian lawyer. But Raoul had organised her clothes to be couriered from Sydney. She’d taken pains to appear in the prim clothes she customarily wore for work.

  There’d been a lavish dinner held by the royal family to thank her formally for her heroism, and Raoul had sat by her side, but she’d deliberately dressed plainly, with little make-up and her hair arranged in a severe knot. Raoul had been charmingly attentive, but he’d carefully been charmingly attentive to the woman on his other side too, and the rumours had faded.

  The media would have killed to listen in on the phone calls Raoul made to her every night, the calls she held out for, but the apartment he’d organised for her was in a secure part of the legal district where privacy was paramount.

  ‘If I so much as smile at you in the way I want to smile at you you’ll be overwhelmed,’ Raoul had told her, and she’d agreed.

  This was the plan. She was here to do a job—wasn’t she? Nothing more. And Raoul’s calls... They were those of a friend.

  Except she knew in her heart they were much more. She should stop them, she thought, but she couldn’t bear to.

  And the calls were a mere fraction of her day. For the rest of the time she could tell herself they weren’t important. She’d buried herself in the work she was here to do, and somewhat to her surprise had found it incredibly interesting. There was a need. She could do something useful. Paths had been opened to her through Raoul, and through the interest in her background. She’d learned a lot, fast.

  What she’d also learned was how constricted Raoul’s life was. He could go nowhere without the eyes of the world following.

  But finally, last night, Raoul’s promise to keep his distance had cracked. A plain black Jeep had driven up to her apartment and paused for maybe five seconds, no longer. A soldier had stepped out and he’d been inside her apartment before the Jeep had disappeared from sight.

  If anyone had been watching—which they probably hadn’t, because interest had died down—they’d simply have seen a shadow, and that shadow had disappeared so fast they could never have photographed it.

  The shadow had finally risked coming.

  And Claire should have greeted him formally, as a friend—no, as an employer—but it had been three long weeks, and the phone calls had become more and more the centre of her day.

  And, sensible or not, she’d walked straight into his arms and stayed.

  The shadow was now holding her. He was running his lovely hands over the smoothness of her belly. He was kissing the nape of her neck. He was sending the most erotic of messages to every nerve-ending in her body.

  Raoul. Her fantasy lover.

  Her Prince.

  ‘How long can you stay?’ she whispered to him now. She scarcely dared to breathe the question but it had to be asked. This night had been so unwise but it would have to stop. Was this all there was? One night of passion, maybe two, before she returned to Australia?

  It had to be—she knew that.

  Because she needed to return. She’d known that from day one, when she’d seen the sea of photographers pointing their cameras at her. Raoul was royalty and he lived in the media glare, and even if she was ever deemed suitable for him she had no wish to join him.

  Except for the way he held her.

  Except for the way she felt about him.

  Except for now.

  Last night... It had been as if two halves had found their whole. She’d walked into his arms and she’d felt complete in a way she’d never felt before.

  Raoul had warned her he was coming and she’d made dinner. Dinner had been forgotten.

  Dinner had turned into all night.

  Dinner had turned into perfect.

  ‘I’m taking all day,’ he murmured into her hair, holding her closer. ‘Imperatives be damned. You can’t believe how much I’ve missed you. Holding you feels like it’s making something in me complete. My Claire. My heart.’

  ‘I can’t be your Claire, Raoul. It’s taken you three weeks to find an opportunity to come.’

  She didn’t say it as a reproach. It was simply fact. She’d learned by now how much his country needed him. But he wanted to explain.

  He rolled over, propping himself above her so he could look down into her eyes. ‘Claire, you know why. You didn’t want to come to this country as my lover. Neither of us wanted that. We had to let the media interest die. But we can’t go on this way. Maybe it’s time to let the world know what’s between us.’

  He kissed her then, lightly on the lips. Or he meant to. His kiss deepened, and when it was done he pulled back and the smile was gone from his eyes.

  ‘I want you,’ he told her. ‘I’ve never wanted a woman as I’ve wanted you. I’ve never needed a woman. Claire, every time we talk I’m falling deeper and deeper in love with you. My days have been a nightmare, a jumble of pressing needs, but every night I’ve called you, and that’s what holds me together. Claire, I know it’s early. I know I said you’re free to go—and you are. But if you could bear to stay for longer... If you could bear to be seen by my side...’

  And the world stilled.

  She loved him. She knew she did. Their time on the island had been the embryo of their loving. The flight back to Marétal had made it grow. The long calls every night... The sight of him in the newspapers, discussing the needs of his country, shouldering a responsibility she knew was far too heavy for o
ne man...

  But to announce their love to the world? To let the media in?

  ‘You could face that?’ She said it as a breathless whisper and he smiled then—that smile that did her head in, the smile that wanted her to agree to anything he suggested.

  Anything? Such as walking out onto the balcony and shouting to the world that they were lovers?

  Staying with Raoul seemed right. But the rest... It did her head in.

  ‘Still too soon?’ he asked, sounding rueful. ‘Claire, I’ve known you for less than a month and yet I’m sure.’

  ‘But...’ she managed, and he sighed and closed his eyes, almost as if he was in pain.

  ‘But,’ he agreed. ‘I live in a goldfish bowl. It’s a privileged goldfish bowl, but that’s what it is.’

  ‘You’re doing your best to improve your bowl,’ she told him, striving for lightness.

  Striving to keep the underlying question at bay. Or the underlying answer. The answer she knew she’d have to give.

  ‘The news is full of reports of the discussions you’ve been having with your grandparents and parliament,’ she told him. ‘They say you’re dragging Marétal into the twenty-first century. You want parliament to have more power. You want the people to have more say. And yet the Queen is arguing.’

  ‘My grandparents have held the rule of this country for fifty years,’ he told her, following her lead, maybe realising how much she needed to play for time. ‘They’ve wanted me to share that rule. It’s come to the crunch now, though—they need me to share rather than want me to. I hadn’t realised quite how frail my grandfather is and how much my grandmother depends on him. So they need me. But I’ve told them that if I’m to inherit the throne I’ll do it on my terms. Or walk away.’

  ‘Could you walk away?’

  He’d hugged her around so they were face to face on the pillows—the most intimate of positions. His nose was four inches from her nose. His hands still held her waist. They were talking of something as mundane as...inheriting a throne.