Ordinary Girl in a Tiara

by Jessica Hart

  ‘I’d have to be besotted before I let you drive my car,’ he said, and opened the passenger door for her. ‘Most girls would be happy to be driven.’

  ‘I’m not most girls,’ said Caro, but she got in anyway and he closed the door after her with a satisfying clunk.

  ‘You can say that again,’ said Philippe, walking round to get in behind the wheel. Now she was stroking the seat and the wooden trim, leaning forward to gaze at the dashboard, wriggling back into her seat with a sigh of pleasure. It was practically pornographic! Not enough oxygen was getting to his brain and he had to take a breath, horrified to find that the hands he laid on the steering wheel weren’t entirely steady.

  The clear glass starter button glowed invitingly red, reminding him that he was in control. Philippe pressed it and the engine purred into life.

  ‘What about Yan and the luggage?’ Caro dragged her attention back from the car for a moment.

  ‘He’ll follow in the other car,’ said Philippe, nodding back to a black SUV with tinted windows.

  ‘Isn’t he supposed to be protecting you?’

  ‘He’ll be right behind.’ Philippe put the car into gear. ‘But for now it’s just you and me.’

  ‘Oh,’ was all Caro said, but a little thrill shivered through her all the same.

  Just you and me.

  It wouldn’t be just the two of them, of course. Lotty had told her about the palace servants, and there would always be Yan or a member of the public wanting their hand shaken. Just as well, Caro told herself firmly. It would be much easier to be friends when there were other people around.

  ‘Where did you learn about cars?’ Philippe asked as they turned onto the main road.

  ‘From my father.’ The road was clear ahead, and Philippe put his foot down. The car responded instantly, surging forward. Caro felt the pressure in the small of her back and settled into it with a shiver of pleasure. ‘He loved cars. He always had some banger up on the blocks and he’d spend hours tinkering with it. When I was little I’d squat beside him and be allowed to hand him a spanner or an oily rag. Even now the smell of oil makes me think of Dad.’

  Caro smiled unevenly, remembering. ‘Driving an Aston Martin was his dream. He’d be so thrilled if he could see me now!’ She stroked the leather on either side of her thighs. ‘And envious!’

  Distracted by the stroking, Philippe forced his attention back to the road. ‘It sounds like you had a good relationship with your father.’

  ‘I adored him.’ She touched the lapels of the jacket she wore. ‘This is Dad’s dinner jacket. He wore it for a school dance once, and no one recognised him. It was as if none of them had ever looked at him when he was wearing his handyman overalls, but put on a smart jacket and suddenly he was a real person, someone they could talk to because he was dressed like them.’

  Caro fingered the sleeve where she’d rolled it up to show the scarlet lining. ‘I remember Dad saying that some people are like this jacket, conventional on the outside, but with a bright, beautiful lining like this. He said we shouldn’t judge what’s on the outside, it’s what’s inside that really matters. I think of him every time I put this jacket on,’ she said.

  ‘My father thinks the exact opposite,’ said Philippe. ‘For him, it’s all about appearances. No wonder I’m such a disappointment to him.’ He was careful to keep his tone light, but Caro looked at him, a crease between her brows.

  ‘He can’t be that disappointed if he trusts you to stand in for him while he’s sick.’

  ‘Only because it wouldn’t look right if he didn’t make his only surviving son regent in his absence, would it? What would people think?’

  In spite of himself, Philippe could hear the bitterness threading his voice, and he summoned a smile instead. ‘Besides, it’s not a question of trust. It’s not as if they’re going to let me loose on government. My father thinks it’ll be good for me to experience meetings and red boxes and the whole dreary business of governing, but all that’s just for show too. There’s a council of ministers, but the Dowager Blanche will be keeping a firm hold of the reins. I’m trusted to shake hands and host a few banquets, but that’s about it.’

  ‘You could take more responsibility if you wanted, couldn’t you?’

  ‘They won’t let me.’ Caro could hear the frustration in his voice, and she felt for him. It couldn’t be easy knowing that any attempt to assert himself would be met by his father’s collapse. ‘And I daren’t risk insisting any more,’ Philippe said. ‘Not when he’s so sick, anyway. My father and I may not get on, but I don’t want him to die.’

  ‘Why doesn’t he trust you?’ Caro asked, swivelling in her seat so that she could look at him. ‘I know you were wild when you were younger, but that was years ago.’

  ‘It’s hard to change the way your family looks at you.’ Philippe glanced in the mirror and pulled out to overtake a lumbering truck in a flash. ‘Etienne was always the dutiful, responsible son, and I was difficult. That’s just the way it was.

  ‘Etienne was a golden boy—clever, hard-working, responsible, handsome, charming, kind. I could never live up to him, so I never tried. I was only ever “the spare” in my father’s eyes, anyway,’ he said. ‘I didn’t even have the good sense to look like him, the way Etienne did. Instead, I take after my mother. Every time my father looks at me, he’s reminded of the way she humiliated him. I sometimes wonder if he suspects I’m not even his son.’

  Philippe hoped that he sounded detached and ironic, but suspected it didn’t fool Caro, who was watching him with those warm blue eyes. He could feel her gaze on his profile as surely as if she had reached out to lay her palm against his cheek.

  ‘I never heard anything about your mother,’ she said. ‘What did she do?’

  ‘Oh, the usual. She was far too young and frivolous to have been married to my father. It’s a miracle their marriage lasted as long as it did. She ran away from him eventually and went to live with an Italian racing driver.’

  He thought he had the tone better there. Careless. Cynical. Just a touch of amusement.

  ‘Do you remember her?’

  ‘Not much,’ he said. ‘Her perfume when she came to kiss me goodnight. Her laughter. I was only four, and left with a nanny a lot of the time anyway, so I don’t suppose it made much difference to me really when she left. It was worse for Etienne. He was eleven, so he must have had more memories of her.’

  Philippe paused. ‘He would have been devastated, but he used to come and play with me for hours so that I wouldn’t miss her. That was the kind of boy he was.’

  ‘I didn’t realise you were so close to him.’

  Caro’s throat was aching for the little boy Philippe had been. Her father had been right. You could never tell what someone was like from the face they put on to the world. All she’d ever seen of Philippe had been the jacket of cool arrogance. It had never occurred to her to wonder whether he used it to deflect, to stop anyone realising that he had once been a small boy, abandoned by his mother and rejected by his father.

  ‘He was a great brother,’ said Philippe. ‘A great person. You can’t blame my father for being bitter that Etienne was the one who died, and that he was left with me. You can’t blame him for wishing that I’d been the one who died.’

  ‘That’s…that’s a terrible thing to say,’ said Caro, shocked.

  ‘It’s true.’ He glanced at her and then away. ‘It was my fault Etienne died.’

  ‘No.’ Caro put out an instinctive hand. ‘No, it was an accident. Lotty told me.’

  ‘Oh, yes, it was an accident, but if it hadn’t been for me, he’d never have been on the lake that day.’ The bleak set to Philippe’s mouth tore at her heart. ‘Lotty’s father was Crown Prince, and his brother still alive, with his two sons,’ he went on after a moment. ‘There was no reason to believe we’d ever inherit. My father had a vineyard, and Etienne was going up to look at the accounts or something equally tedious. He envied me, he said. To him it seemed that I w
as the one always having a good time. He said he wished he could do the same, but he was afraid that he didn’t have the courage.’

  He overtook a car, and then another and another, the sleek power of the Aston Martin controlled utterly in his strong hands.

  ‘“Come water skiing with me”, I said,’ he remembered bitterly. ‘“For once in your life, do what you want to do instead of what our father wants you to do.” So he did, and he died.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ said Caro.

  ‘My father thinks it was.’

  ‘It wasn’t.’ Without thinking, she put her hand on his shoulder. Through the yellow polo shirt, she could feel his muscles corded with tension. ‘It was Etienne’s choice to go. You didn’t make him fall, and you didn’t kill him. It was an accident.’

  ‘That was what Lotty said. She was the only one who stood by me then,’ said Philippe. ‘If it had been up to my father, I wouldn’t even have been allowed to go to the funeral. “If it wasn’t for you, Etienne would still be alive,” he said. The Dowager Blanche persuaded him to let me go in the end, for appearance’s sake.’ His voice was laced with pain.

  ‘As soon as it was over, I left for South America. I didn’t care where I went, as long as it was a long way from Montluce, and my father felt exactly the same. If it hadn’t been for inheriting the throne, he’d have been happy never to see me again, I think, but when he became Crown Prince, he didn’t have much choice but to be in touch. He’ll never be able to forgive me, though, for the fact that Etienne didn’t have time to get married and secure the succession.

  ‘There’s a certain irony in that,’ Philippe said with a side-long glance at Caro. ‘Etienne was gay. He was very, very discreet, and my father never found out.’

  ‘You didn’t tell him?’

  ‘How could I? It would have destroyed him all over again. All he’s got left is his image of Etienne as his perfect son. I’m not going to spoil that for him. It wouldn’t bring Etienne back and, anyway, he was perfect and, clearly, I’m not.’

  ‘But why don’t you tell him that you’ve changed?’

  ‘Who says that I have?’

  ‘The old Philippe wouldn’t have flown in emergency supplies,’ said Caro, and he lifted a shoulder.

  ‘It would take more than a few flights to change my father’s view of me,’ he said. ‘My father isn’t a bad man, and if it’s easier for him to keep thinking of me as difficult, why should I insist that he changes his mind? He’s had enough grief without me demanding his attention and approval. I’m not a child,’ said Philippe.

  ‘I think it’s unfair,’ said Caro stoutly. ‘I think if they’re going to make you regent, they should give you the responsibility to act too.’

  ‘Lots of people live with unfairness, Caro. I’ve seen people struggling to get by without food or shelter or a stable government. They haven’t got schools or hospitals. There’s no running water. That’s unfair,’ he said. ‘Compared to that, I think I can bear a few months of not being allowed to make decisions. I’ll use the time to familiarise myself with how the government works and then, when I’m in a position to make a difference, I will. Until then, I can live with a few pointless rituals.’

  Caro was still looking dubious. ‘It’s not going to be much fun for you, is it?’

  ‘No,’ said Philippe, ‘but we’re not there yet.’ Leaning across, he turned up the volume on the sound system and slanted a smile at her. ‘We’ve got about an hour until we hit the border. Let’s make the most of being able to behave badly while we can, shall we?’

  Caro never forgot that drive. The poplars on either side of the road barred the way with shadows, so that the sunlight flickered exhilaratingly as the car shot beneath them with a throaty roar, effortlessly gobbling up the miles and sliding around the bends as if it were part of the road.

  The sky was a hot, high blue. Cocooned in comfort, enveloped in the smell of new leather and luxury, she leant back in her seat and smiled. The windscreen protected her from the worst of the wind, but a heady breeze stirred her hair and she could feel the sun striping her face while the insistent beat of the music pounded through her and made her feel wild and excited and alive.

  She was preternaturally aware of Philippe driving, of the flex of his thigh when he pressed the clutch, the line of his jaw, the alertness of his eyes checking between the road and the mirror. He changed gear with an assurance that was almost erotic, and she had to force herself to look away.

  Caro could have driven on for ever that morning, her face flushed with wind and sun and Philippe beside her, with that long, lean, powerful body, his smile flashing, his hands rock-steady on the wheel, but all too soon he was slowing and reaching out to turn the music off.

  ‘Time to behave, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘This is it.’

  Tucked away in the mountains, Montluce was one of Europe’s forgotten back waters, cut off from the great traffic routes where borders flashed past in the blink of an eye. Not only was there a real border with a barrier across the road, but there were two guards in braided uniforms. Caro began to dig around in her bag for her passport as Philippe slowed down.

  ‘You won’t need that,’ said Philippe. ‘This is my border, remember?’

  The guards came sharply to attention when they recognised Philippe, who stopped long enough to exchange a few words in French with them. Caro watched the men relax. There was some laughter before they saluted smartly and, at a word from the officer, the junior guard leapt to open the barrier.

  Philippe acknowledged his salute as he drove through. ‘What?’ he said, feeling Caro staring at him.

  ‘That’s the first time I’ve realised that you’re royal,’ she said. ‘I mean, I knew you were, of course, but I hadn’t seen it. Those men were saluting you!’

  ‘You’d better get used to it,’ Philippe said. ‘Montluce is big on formality. A lot of bowing and curtseying and saluting goes on.’

  ‘But you knew what to do.’ Caro didn’t know how to explain what a revelation it had been to see the assurance with which Philippe had received the salutes, how clearly he had been able to put the guards at their ease without losing his authority. Even casually dressed, there was no mistaking the prince. That was when it had struck her.

  He was a prince.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  PHILIPPE might say Montluce didn’t mean much to him, but a subtle change came over him as they drove up into the hills. Caro puzzled over what it was, until she realised that he looked at home. Perhaps it had been hearing him speak French. His English was so flawless that it was easy to forget that he wasn’t British, but here he looked more Gallic than usual, his gestures more Continental.

  It was a beautiful country, with wooded hills soaring into mountains whose bare tops glared in the sun. The smell of pines filled the drowsy air as they drove through picturesque villages, past rushing rivers and up winding roads dappled with the light through the trees. Caro felt as if she were driving into a magical kingdom, and she was sure of it when they came over the range and saw the valley spread out below them. A large lake gleamed silver between the mountains and the city of Montvivennes on the other. Caro could see the palace, a fairy tale confection with turrets and terraces made of pale elegant stone, and she couldn’t prevent a gasp.

  From a distance, it could have been made of spun sugar, mirrored serenely in the lake. She wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see princesses leaning out of the towers, goblins guarding the gate and princes hacking their way through rose thickets. There would be wicked stepmothers and fairy godmothers, pumpkins that turned into coaches, wolves that climbed into bed and licked their lips when Little Red Riding Hood knocked at the door.

  ‘Please tell me there’s a tame dragon,’ she said.

  ‘Well, there’s my great-aunt,’ Philippe said, ‘but I wouldn’t call her tame.’

  Montvivennes was an attractive city with the same timeless air as the palace. It seemed almost drowsy in the sunshine, the only jarring note
being a group of protestors with placards clustered beside the main road that led up to the palace.

  Caro tried to read the placards as they passed. ‘What are they protesting about?’

  ‘There’s a proposal to put a gas line through Montluce,’ said Philippe. ‘They’re worried about the environmental impact.’

  A few moments later, they drove through the palace gates to more saluting and presenting of arms and came to a halt with a satisfying crunch of gravel in a huge courtyard.

  ‘Wow,’ said Caro.

  Close to, the palace was less whimsical but much more impressive. The imposing front opened onto a square with plane trees. Behind, long windows opened onto terraces and formal gardens leading down to the lake, beyond which the hills piled up in the distance to the mountains.

  Philippe switched off the engine and there was a moment of utter stillness. Caro saw two ornately dressed footmen standing rigidly at the top of the steps. It all felt unreal. Any minute now she was going to wake up. She wasn’t really here with a prince, about to walk into his palace.

  And then the footmen were coming down the steps, opening the car doors, and somehow Caro found herself standing on the gravel looking up at the elaborate doorway.

  ‘Ready?’ Philippe muttered out of the corner of his mouth as he came round to take her arm.

  ‘Oh, my God.’ Caro was frozen by a sudden surge of panic. ‘Do you think we can really do this?’

  Philippe put a smile on his face and urged her towards the steps. ‘We’re about to find out,’ he said.

  It wasn’t your usual homecoming, that was for sure. No family members hurried out to greet them with a hug. Instead, they passed through serried ranks of servants, all dressed in knee breeches and coats with vast quantities of gold braid. Caro was all for vintage clothes, but that was ridiculous.

  Philippe greeted all of them easily, not at all daunted by the formality. Caro’s French wasn’t up to much, but she caught her name and it was obvious that he was introducing her, so she smiled brightly and tried to look as if she might conceivably be the kind of girl Philippe would fall madly in love with.