by Wendy Holden
He leapt forward and grabbed the newspaper with shaking hands. The photograph really was of him with the madwoman who had assaulted him on the yacht.
He stared, transfixed, at the headline. Our Future Queen? demanded The Sedonan. Hot and cold waves of horror coursed through his body. He remembered, as he’d writhed to get free of her grasp, the flashing and whirring of a camera, but had not connected the two events.
That kiss! He looked as if he were devouring the woman. But it had been the other way round; she had hurled herself at him, wrapping every limb about his body, wrenching his head down so his lips met hers.
Max fought the overwhelming urge to run screaming from the room. ‘It’s not how it looks,’ he gasped. ‘She was a mad person.’
‘Mad person? That’s not very chivalrous,’ the King remarked placidly.
His father actually looked pleased, Max noticed. But how could he be?
‘You don’t understand.’ Max stared desperately at his parents. ‘I don’t know who took that picture. Or why. I don’t know who that woman is either. She just appeared when I was getting off Bigski’s boat. Sort of launched herself at me.’
His father was still smiling, however. ‘You hadn’t drunk too much?’ he suggested skittishly.
‘Of course not,’ Max snapped. ‘That’s Giacomo’s territory.’
Astrid did not defend her second son. Instead she said, ‘This girl in the pictures. She’s apparently very respectable.’
‘She wasn’t acting very respectably,’ Max growled.
‘She’s Lady Alexa MacDonald. Of that Ilk,’ the Queen added.
‘Hippolyte knows all about her,’ the King chimed in blithely. ‘According to him, the phones have been ringing off the hook in the press office. It’s a news sensation, exactly the sort of thing Sedona needs. Everybody wants to know about you and her.’
‘There’s nothing to know!’ Max cried. Beano, at his feet, gave a warning growl.
The breakfast room door now opened and Giacomo wandered in, his handsome, sleepy face showing all the signs of an exceedingly late night. His expression altered abruptly when he spotted the newspapers. ‘Hey, bro,’ he exclaimed, snatching up one and scanning the front cover. ‘Good going.’
‘It wasn’t how it looks,’ Max shouted.
‘They all say that,’ Giacomo drawled, flipping back a shining blond lock of hair. ‘I’m always saying it myself.’ He read the report out loud. ‘After an assignation on a luxury yacht, the besotted Prince sealed his love with a passionate kiss . . .’
‘But I wasn’t! I didn’t!’ Max yelled.
Beano started to bark.
‘Shut up!’ snapped Engelbert.
Beano looked up at his master with an indignant expression. But Max, usually lightning-quick to defend his pet, was too preoccupied to notice.
‘Hey, what’s the problem?’ Giacomo grinned. ‘She looks hot. Well,’ he allowed, ‘not bad, anyway.’
‘A charming girl.’ The King sniffed, twitching his moustache from side to side. ‘Hippolyte says she is very well connected at the English court. An aristocrat, no less,’ he added, his voice lingering over the magic word.
Unseen, the Queen made a slight moue at this. Privately she wondered if well-brought-up girls got themselves photographed kissing passionately on the front pages of newspapers. But perhaps she was being old-fashioned. Engelbert had been delighted that a pretty and, apparently, well-connected girl, to whom Max was clearly attracted, had appeared on the scene.
And yet Max’s reaction seemed one of genuine horror. That he would deny all knowledge of it, she had been warned to expect. Yet there was defensive and defensive, Astrid thought, and Max’s reaction was beyond anything she had anticipated.
Engelbert had sidled up to his son. ‘Nothing to be ashamed of,’ he said with a smirk, elbowing Max in the side in jocular fashion. ‘We all have to sow our wild oats.’
Pretending she had not heard, Astrid fiddled with her linen napkin.
Max rounded on his father, eyes sparking with anger and frustration. ‘Wild oats have nothing to do with it,’ he cried.
There was a knock; Monsieur Hippolyte entered. His hair was carefully arranged in its usual determinedly black bouffant and his brown face – curiously smooth for his age – was wreathed in smiles. ‘Very positive press coverage, Your Royal Highness,’ he remarked, bowing in Maxim’s direction. ‘May I offer my congratulations.’
‘There’s nothing to congratulate me about,’ the Crown Prince snapped.
Monsieur Hippolyte’s round eyes met the King’s and they exchanged an understanding smile. ‘Of course. It’s early days,’ the private secretary said. ‘There are, to put it mildly, quite a number of newspapers interested in this story, but I’ll tell them all no comment, shall I?’
As Hippolyte bowed and withdrew, Maxim turned in despair to his mother. ‘It’s not early days, Mum. It’s not “no comment”. It’s not anything.’
Astrid looked back at him helplessly, wondering what to think. Suddenly it did not seem at all clear.
Chapter 56
It was more than clear to the King, however.
‘Be sensible,’ he urged his son. His voice was reasonable and friendly. ‘She looks like good breeding stock, this girl.’
To Max it seemed as if everything stood absolutely still. He felt suddenly very cold, despite the summer morning. ‘You’re not . . .’ His teeth were chattering in his skull. ‘You’re not suggesting . . . I should marry this woman?’
‘Why not?’ The King threw open his arms expansively. ‘You obviously like her.’
‘As I’ve already said, I’ve never met her before,’ Max growled beneath knitted brows. ‘I don’t know her.’
‘Oh well, if you say so,’ the King said disbelievingly. ‘But, look, why don’t you marry her? You have to marry someone, it’s your duty, and this woman will do as well as anyone. Bird in the hand, and quite a bird too, eh?’ He chuckled at his son, and nudged him. ‘Eh?’
Astrid, who had been listening with growing concern, now interrupted. ‘But my dear. Surely it’s rather early to be talking in terms of marriage? We really don’t know a great deal about her.’
‘Of course we do!’ Engelbert riposted. ‘We’ve seen that website, haven’t we? The family home is a wonderful chateau in Scotland, and there are photographs of her with practically every crowned head in Europe.’
Max said nothing. A feeling of unreality was stealing over him. He had not imagined that his situation could get worse or more complicated, but it seemed he had imagined wrong.
‘You don’t have to love or even like her,’ Engelbert was continuing blithely. ‘A royal marriage, it’s just an accommodation. A piece of business, essentially,’ he went on happily, oblivious to the steam emerging from the Queen’s ears. Then, responding to the urgent face-pulling of his younger son, he seemed suddenly to remember himself. ‘Except in our case, of course, my dear,’ he added hurriedly, reaching for his wife’s hand.
The Queen snatched her fingers away and stood up. ‘Excuse me,’ she said in strangled tones, flinging her napkin on the table.
Max met his father’s gaze steadfastly. ‘Even if I did agree with you, which I don’t, it’s not a piece of business I can do. When I marry, I marry for love.’
His saw his mother, heading for the door, pause at his words. Then she turned, her eyes for the first time fixed on his, full of an expression he could not read.
The King, meanwhile, was bristling with outrage. ‘Lady Alexa MacDonald of that llk is a suitable person for you to marry,’ he rapped out suddenly.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Max said quietly.
‘She is very presentable and very well connected.’
‘She’s also insane,’ Max retaliated.
‘De Sedonas have married plenty of mad people in the past,’ the King pointed out. ‘There’s rather a history of it, in fact.’
‘I won’t marry her.’ Maxim raised his eyes to his father’s. Again he h
ad the sensation of the world holding its breath. There was a loud thudding noise, which he realised was his heart.
A heavy silence followed, which was interrupted by Giacomo.
‘Will I have to wear a top hat at this wedding?’ he asked suspiciously as the dread possibility occurred to him.
‘At the very least,’ said the King drily.
‘What’s the date?’ Giacomo demanded. Ages off, hopefully. Time enough for him to be somewhere else altogether when Maxim went up the aisle. Just not another branch of the bloody military, though. Was space an option? The first royal in space – now that would be cool.
Chapter 57
Max ran down the passageway from the breakfast room as if wild beasts were pursuing him. Which in a sense they were; snarling heraldic creatures leapt on flags and devices the full length of the corridor. The only actual creature on his trail, however, was a Beano ripped untimely from some bacon Giacomo had slipped him and limping determinedly to keep up.
Max was clutching his head with one hand; in the other he grasped the fateful newspaper. Playing and replaying in his mind was the very end to the morning’s scene. ‘What if there’s someone else?’ he had demanded of his father out of desperation.
‘Who else?’ his mother had asked sharply from where she stood by the door.
‘No one in particular,’ he had muttered, depressingly aware that it was all too true. Polly would have given up on him ages ago.
‘Someone else? Not a problem,’ the King had responded cheerfully.
‘Not a problem?’ For a moment Max’s heart had lifted. Birds sang, sweet melodies swirled in the scented air. He felt unsteady with relief.
‘Not at all,’ boomed the King delightedly. ‘Once you’ve married this Alexa woman, any other totty can be your mistress.’
Max had snatched up the nearest newspaper and slammed out of the room. He would go back to his rooms and hide under his duvet, in a darkness as black as his future.
Polly, meanwhile, was finding her way round the chateau corridors. From the stone-flagged lower passages she had proceeded upwards, and was now negotiating long, creaking corridors. They smelt of polish and were lined with red carpet; with vaulted ceilings. The walls were covered with white panelling, interspersed with wide white doors with golden handles. Was one of them Max’s?
At first she had tensed in fear whenever she passed another person, but she had gradually learnt to relax. With the pile of linen in her arms, no one stopped her; no one asked her anything. Should she, Polly wondered, push her luck and ask for directions to Prince Maxim’s room? But places like this were full of protocol; something about the manner in which she asked it, or that she asked it at all, might betray her.
Growing within was the depressing realisation that she could wander around here for ever. Having got to Sedona despite the hijacking, having gained the castle despite the guards, was she now to fail because of interior geography?
A large staircase loomed at the end of the passage. Polly paused when she reached it. Up or down? Her whole future could depend on it.
Max had almost reached his room now. He felt twisted with anger, and, now, guilt. Poor Beano, he realised, had had a devil of a time keeping up. As he approached the double doors of his suite, he stooped and picked up his pet. ‘Nearly there now, boy.’
Polly, coming up the stairs, heard his voice. She scrambled to the top and dashed round the bend, only to tangle her foot in a ruched piece of carpet and come crashing down at his feet.
Max, his dog in his arms, turned at the commotion. Some poor laundrymaid had fallen over with the sheets. He shoved the newspaper under his arm, put Beano down and sprang towards her. ‘Here, let me help you up.’
She rolled over, turned her face upwards – and burst out laughing. ‘Surprise!’
‘Polly?’
He really had gone mad, Max thought. Lost it completely now. Against the red carpet she appeared as a vision. He had forgotten how beautiful she was. How adorable her freckles were, and the tilt of her nose, how full and pink her lips, how thick the fringes of her eyelashes. Only her hair was exactly as he recalled it, the soft brown of bracken on an English moorland, or of autumn fields after ploughing.
She scrambled to her knees and was looking in delight at his dog. ‘This must be Beano! He’s adorable!’
The spaniel ambled over slowly and started to lick her hand. ‘He likes me!’
‘That makes two of us,’ Max said shakily, pulling her up to standing, still not entirely certain that it wasn’t all a dream.
Her eyes searched his. ‘Are you all right? I’ve been so worried about you.’
He hung his head. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘So you should be,’ Polly said sternly. ‘It was awful, you running away like that. I was worried that something really terrible had happened. But then I found out.’ She stopped; he was pulling her into his arms and kissing her.
‘We’ll talk about all that later,’ he muttered, holding her to him with one hand, opening his room door behind him with the other.
The ceiling above Polly was a whirl of gold and white. He was carrying her across the room. The ceiling became the pleated canopy of a four-poster bed. Gently he laid her among its unmade and rumpled sheets.
‘Oh Polly.’ He clung to her as if she were a rock in a rushing river and he were a drowning man. ‘I’ve missed you so much.’ He kissed her eyes, mouth and neck. There was, for the moment at least, nothing more to say.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked, afterwards. ‘Your Royal Highness,’ she added, snorting.
‘I just wanted you to think I was normal.’
‘Normal!’ Polly smiled. ‘Most people want to be extraordinary. Rich, famous, whatever.’
‘Not me.’ Max shook his head slowly. ‘Normal’s great. Normal will do.’
His brain was churning, making plans. She was here, she still loved him; he must act. He had now both the reason and the courage to defy his parents. He rose on his elbows, resolved. There was no better time than now. They might still be in the breakfast room . . .
Polly stretched luxuriously and turned on her side. Lying on the carpet beside the bed was a crumpled newspaper. Her gaze glided idly over it, taking nothing in, but then something yanked her attention back. A pair of eyes in a photograph. A pair of eyes she knew.
It was in her hands in a second. She gazed, frozen.
Our Future Queen? screamed the headline. Crown Prince Maxim de Sedona passionately embraces his mystery love.
A woman who, in the cruellest, most appalling and unlikely twist of fate, looked exactly, horribly, absolutely like . . . Allison Donald.
All the delight within her curdled to acid. Max. With an Allison Donald-alike. It couldn’t be possible.
‘Polly?’ Max had heard her gasp. ‘Polly? What is it?’
There was a thick silence around her ears through which only the doomy thudding of her heart penetrated. She had come all this way. Left her job. Oh God, how stupid. How utterly gullible and stupid.
‘Polly! What’s wrong?’ She had leapt up from the bed and was running across the room.
A puzzled Beano had started to bark. What had made the friendly lady so cross?
Max had seen the paper now. He leapt after her. ‘Please,’ he howled. ‘Come back. It’s not what it seems.’
How many more times would he say that this morning?
Polly, now at the door, turned. ‘Makes two of you, then,’ she wrenched out bitterly.
As she blundered, stunned and tearful, along the corridors, Polly walked directly into someone.
‘Hey, gorgeous,’ the someone said in a tone of ardent appreciation. ‘What’s upset a beautiful girl like you? Why don’t you stop and tell your Uncle Jack all about it?’
She found herself staring into the amused face of Prince Giacomo. She recognised him immediately from the postcard, but more than that – there was no doubt about it now – from the hijack too. In the flesh it was more obvious; his good l
ooks, yes, but beyond that, the ineffable self-satisfaction she remembered, the obvious belief that the whole world admired and adored him.
Prince Giacomo clearly felt he could treat people however he liked and get away with it.
It was a trait he shared with his brother.
‘I’m sure I could think of something to make you feel better,’ he added suggestively.
Polly had not imagined she could feel any angrier, but a further surge of fury now swamped her. She raised her hand and slapped the startled Prince hard across the cheek. ‘That’s for the bus passengers,’ she snapped, before stalking off down the corridor.
Chapter 58
‘Trap sprung. Congratulations to us,’ Barney had said that morning on the balcony of the Monaco flat. He had said more, but a helicopter taking off immediately behind had drowned out his words. Even that, though, could not drown the words printed on the front pages of the newspapers all around their feet.
‘. . . now we can move from this bloody place,’ Barney had added, as the noise died down.
And so, that afternoon, ensconced in the best available suite at the Hotel des Bains, Alexa sipped a glass of chilled champagne and soaked in a vast scented bath. Afterwards she climbed into the high, soft white bed, sipped yet more champagne and inhaled the delicious scent of the many perfumed candles scattered about. She glanced constantly at the newspaper pictures, spread on the bed’s snowy surface, of herself apparently being kissed passionately by a prince, and tried to feel as exultant as she knew she ought.
After all the effort and excitement, she was exhausted. But it was more than that. She was also worried. Unlike the bumptious Barney, she felt far from certain about what happened next. She was on the front pages, but what now?
Her suite door opened and Barney appeared, wrapped in a dazzling white bathrobe. He looked, Alexa thought, like a little pink pig, slightly sweaty and steaming. Welded to his hand was his own glass of champagne; like her, he had been drinking it non-stop since the newspapers had come out.