Princess Of Convenience

by Marion Lennox

  ‘For a while,’ he told her. ‘Until my mother’s settled. I’ll try and organise access for her to Edouard. But after that, I’ll go back to Africa.’

  ‘Africa?’ She sounded astounded. Maybe because she was astounded. ‘What are you doing in Africa?’

  ‘I’m a doctor with Médecins Sans Frontières,’ he told her. ‘I’ve been working in Somalia for the past three years.’

  ‘You’re kidding me.’

  ‘Why should I kid you?’

  No reason. No reason at all. Except it required just a bit of readjusting.

  ‘So you’d given up your medicine,’ she said slowly, ‘to be a prince.’

  ‘If you think I wanted to…’ There was a sudden surge of anger, bitten back fast. He hesitated, striving for a reasonable answer to a question he clearly thought was unreasonable. Or a demand on him he clearly thought was unreasonable.

  ‘Jess, this country has been known as one of the most corrupt places in Europe,’ he told her, his voice calm again. Logical. But still she could hear the suppressed anger behind the words. ‘When Jean-Paul died I had a visit from no less than three heads of state of neighbouring countries. The ordinary citizens here have been bled dry. They’ve been taxed to the hilt and given nothing in return, so much so that there’s the threat of real revolt. The country has become a hotbed of illicit activity with corruption undermining neighbouring stability as well as ours. Change has to occur and it can only change through the constitution-through the ruling prince or regent. And Marcel is appalling. Which was why I was persuaded to marry Sarah and try and do some good. The idea was that I’d come, I’d accept the guardianship of my nephew and leave him with my mother, I’d set in place the changes that have to happen if this country’s citizens are not to be exploited-and then I’d leave again.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You don’t think I want to be a prince?’

  ‘Most people would jump at the chance.’

  ‘I’m not most people,’ he said grimly. ‘Who was it said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely? I watched my father and my brother and I want no part of it.’

  ‘Médecins Sans Frontières is hardly a life career,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Doctors Without Borders… They go to the most desperately needy places in the world. I’ve heard that most people burn out after one or two years. You’ve been doing it for three?’

  ‘It’s not long enough. I’m hardly burned out.’

  ‘Maybe you could stay here and work on the Alp’Azuri medical infrastructure,’ she said, and for a fraction of a moment she let her guard slip. ‘It’s hardly on a par with most western countries. In truth, it’s appalling.’

  And he got it. He heard the pain of someone speaking from personal experience. She saw the recognition in his eyes. Recognition of tragedy.

  ‘There is that about you,’ he said softly, on a note of discovery. ‘You’re running.’

  ‘I am not running,’ she snapped, angry with herself for revealing more than she wanted. ‘Any more than you, practising medicine in Somalia when your people need you here.’

  ‘This is not my country. These are not my people.’

  ‘No?’

  She took a deep breath. What was she doing? she thought suddenly. What drove this man was nothing to do with her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said at last while he stared at her with anger showing clearly on his face. ‘OK. This is not your country and you’ll be leaving it almost immediately.’ She hesitated, trying to find some safer ground. Her perceptions were swinging wildly. This man was a prince. This man was a doctor who fought for lives in third-world countries.

  He’d make a wonderful doctor, she thought suddenly and glanced down at his hands. Big, caring, skilled…

  Move on, she told herself fiercely. Once again there was that twisting inside that she scarcely understood. She had to find some safe ground.

  ‘And your mother?’ she managed. ‘What will she do?’

  He smiled, albeit faintly. ‘My mother has an apartment on the Left Bank. And before you accuse me of deserting her as well as my country, she has Henri.’ He saw her look of surprise and explained. ‘Henri left the palace when my mother left my father thirty years ago. He’s been with my mother ever since, her loyal and devoted servant. Where she goes, Henri goes.’

  So all questions were answered. Sort of.

  That only left the child, Jess thought. Edouard? Somewhere in this palace there was a three-year-old, a child Jess had never seen.

  That was hardly safe ground. She didn’t want to see a needful three-year-old, or think about him, or know anything more than she knew already. He was a shadow of trouble and she had no room to cope in her heart with a three-year-old’s trouble.

  Her heart was devoid of children. Blank. And that was the way it had to stay. Anything else was the way of madness.

  Move on.

  ‘Um… Goodnight, then,’ she told him, hurriedly, before any other complications could occur.

  ‘Goodnight?’ He seemed surprised and maybe that was reasonable. She’d gone straight from inquisition mode to running away.

  ‘Goodnight. Thank you. I’m sorry for your troubles and I’ll stop adding to them.’

  ‘You’re not adding to anything.’

  ‘Nevertheless I’m leaving. I must.’

  She meant to turn away. She meant to turn straight away. But he was watching her and his eyes were suddenly confused. As confused as hers were?

  Maybe.

  She needed to go.

  But still his eyes held hers.

  And then, suddenly, she knew what she had to do. It suddenly seemed the right thing to do, the only thing to do.

  She stood on tiptoe and kissed him.

  Lightly. Fleetingly.

  Why? She hardly knew. It just seemed…appropriate.

  It was appropriate.

  And more.

  The touch of him… It felt right, she thought wonderingly. Kissing this man. Touching this man. Standing in this vast kitchen with the smell of toast and the lingering aroma of burned steak and potatoes… Domesticity was all around them and it made kissing possible. Reasonable. This was a fairy-tale setting, but the toast and the marmalade made it real.

  The kiss was real. Because he was real. Raoul was a prince of royal blood but he was a man alone. He was a doctor working where only the bravest went, a man whose country was being destroyed by corruption, an uncle watching his nephew being torn from him. He was a man coping with problems she couldn’t bear to think about.

  She couldn’t help.

  ‘I wish you all the best,’ she whispered.

  He didn’t move. There was a long, drawn-out silence. Too long.

  ‘You’ll say goodbye to my mother before you leave?’ he asked-heavily-and she nodded.

  His hand moved then, his fingers lifting to touch the place on his face where she’d kissed him. It was as though he didn’t quite understand what the sensation was.

  ‘Of course I will,’ she told him, trying not to watch his fingers. ‘I know which her apartments are. I’ll say goodbye before I leave in the morning. Thank you, Raoul. For everything.’

  She turned to go. And paused.

  There was a woman in the doorway.

  She was in her late thirties or early forties, Jess thought. She was tall and severely dressed in a nurse’s uniform. Her mousy brown hair was hauled severely back into a bun. She stood heavily in the doorway, surveying the couple before her with what seemed dislike.

  This wasn’t one of the nurses who’d tended her, Jess thought. She hadn’t seen this woman before.

  But Raoul obviously recognised her. ‘Cosette,’ he said, sounding surprised. ‘How can I help?’

  The woman’s eyes flicked from Raoul to Jess and back again. Wary. ‘I came to tell you I’m leaving,’ she told him.

  Raoul stilled.

  ‘You’re leaving? Now?’

  The woman gestured to a cell-phone on her belt. ‘The viscount
has rung,’ she told him. ‘He says the whole palace is under his control as of Monday. Including the child. And he’s furious. He said you insulted him tonight and he wants everyone out now. All the servants are to leave. If we don’t get out now, then we won’t have a job on Monday. He’s rung everyone. You don’t have a staff, Your Highness. I’m sorry.’

  And she turned and walked out the back door, leaving them staring after her.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘HELL.’

  Raoul stood, staring after her as if he’d been struck.

  ‘Um…is this a problem?’ Jess asked reluctantly. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to be sucked into this-no, she was sure she didn’t want to be sucked into this-but the expression on Raoul’s face made it impossible for her to walk away.

  ‘Hell,’ he murmured again. ‘Edouard.’

  She had to ask it, although she already knew who they were talking about. The child she’d so carefully avoided thinking of. ‘Edouard being your nephew. He’s here in the palace?’

  ‘He’s here. Cosette has been looking after him.’

  She hesitated. ‘I thought you said your mother wanted to care for him.’

  ‘My mother…can’t. He won’t let her. He…’ He paused and raked his fingers through his thatch of thick black curls. Despairing. ‘You don’t understand.’

  No, and I don’t want to, Jess thought. Go to bed now, she told herself, feeling more desperate by the minute. Leave this mess before it sucks you in.

  But-three years old? Alone?

  ‘What do you mean, he won’t let her?’ It was as if someone else was speaking, she thought. It was another Jess asking the questions. Not the Jess who’d walked away from Dom’s grave…

  ‘Edouard’s been badly neglected,’ he was saying. ‘And now, for Cosette to walk out just like this…’ He started toward the door. ‘Come with me. I need to check on him straight away.’

  But I don’t want to, she thought wildly. I can’t go near any needful child.

  But Raoul was holding the door for her and waiting and there was suddenly nothing for it but to pass him and then walk by his side as he strode swiftly down the corridors to…

  To where?

  ‘My brother had no concept of parenting,’ he said, speaking almost under his breath and striding so swiftly she almost had to break into a run to keep up with him. He was explaining to her-but almost speaking to himself. ‘It was no wonder. My father had no interest and my mother wasn’t permitted to interfere. My brother was raised with little affection and far too much money. He had everything he wanted-materially-and the end result was that he’d developed a drug habit by sixteen.’

  Jess did a double skip to keep up and glanced across at his set, angry face.

  ‘Was that how he died?’ she asked gently and his face darkened even further.

  ‘Of course it was,’ he said savagely. ‘By the time Jean-Paul was married he was almost off his head. My father simply didn’t care, and it suited the politicians of this country to have a puppet monarch. While my brother was spaced he didn’t interfere with them and that’s the way it suited them. The parliament here is made up of men just like Marcel. They vote themselves huge salaries and do nothing. It’s been like that for years. Until now.’

  ‘But Edouard…’ A little boy. A three-year-old in the middle of this tragedy. Where did he fit in?

  ‘Jean-Paul married a B-grade movie actress whose sole attribute seemed to be the size of her breasts,’ he continued, still as if he was speaking to himself. ‘She joined right in with the lifestyle Jean-Paul lived. They had Edouard and they handed him over to child-minders. Serial child-minders. Cosette’s been with Edouard for six months and that’s the longest anyone’s been with him. By the time we saw him… He’s hardly responding to anyone.’

  ‘Not to your mother?’

  ‘He simply holds himself rigid,’ he told her. ‘I’ve watched him. With Cosette he relaxes enough to eat, to sleep, to watch the television he seems to have been put in front of at birth. With anyone else he simply blanks out. Or sobs. My mother spends all the time she can with him but he doesn’t respond. And now…’ He grimaced. ‘Marcel knows the child needs Cosette and he knows my mother will break her heart over a distressed child. She’ll do anything to have Cosette stay. Edouard’s lost so much already.’

  ‘So he’s trying to push you out faster.’

  ‘He’s trying to punish us for his treatment tonight.’ Raoul’s hands were clenching so hard by his sides that Jess could see the whites of his knuckles beneath his skin. ‘Damn him. This will work. My mother will be so distressed that she’ll agree to leaving. Cosette will be reinstalled and Edouard will go back to being placed in front of a television every waking minute.’

  ‘And you?’ she asked softly. They were climbing stairs now, the grand staircase, and Raoul was taking them three steps at a time. ‘You’ll go back to Somalia, to your medicine.’ She hesitated. ‘Raoul, if you’d succeeded in marrying Sarah…what then?’

  ‘I’d have allowed Cosette to stay until Edouard got some sort of link established with my mother,’ Raoul snapped. ‘Then I’d have asked her to leave. More. I’d have sacked the parliament…’

  ‘Can you do that?’

  ‘I’d have had the constitutional power call a general election,’ he told her. ‘And I’d have had the power to oversee that it was fair, as no election has been in the history of this country. Marcel’s appalling friends would be out on their ear and they know it. But it’s not possible.’ He reached the top of the stairs and headed left. ‘Sarah was our last chance. Now it’s over. If Edouard’s distraught then there’s nothing for it. We’ll have to hand over straight away. Give him back his precious Cosette.’

  ‘But how can you do that? Cosette mustn’t care too much for him if she’s prepared to abandon him as she did tonight.’

  ‘But she’ll have him permanently from Monday,’ Raoul said savagely. ‘Making him suffer for the next few days achieves nothing. Nobody cares about Edouard and the damnable thing is that there’s not one thing I can do about it. You know…’ He hesitated, waiting for her to catch up and she had to puff a bit to do so. ‘People have pitied me because I’ve been the second son and didn’t stand to inherit the throne. If they only knew.’

  He strode on and all she could do was follow.

  Finally he paused. At the end of a long corridor there was a pair of baize doors. He hesitated-once more waiting for her to catch up-and then he threw them wide.

  ‘Welcome to hell,’ he said enigmatically and stood aside for her to enter.

  This, then, was the nursery. It must be a quarter of a mile from the main rooms, Jess thought. It was as far away from the main apartments as it was possible to be. If the little boy’s parents had lived in this castle it must have been a ten-minute trek for them to reach him.

  Maybe they’d rarely made the trek.

  The suite was opulent. That was hardly surprising-everything in this castle was opulent. But this was more than opulent. Some designer somewhere had obviously been given a brief to turn this into a child’s fantasy and they’d done just that.

  There seemed to be a number of rooms. There was a huge one, the one they’d just entered, with smaller rooms leading off at the side.

  The main room was set up as a jungle.

  Nothing had been spared. No cost. No flight of imagination. No impingement to copying reality. The setting seemed straight out of Kipling’s Jungle Book, Jess thought, staring round in incredulity.

  There were vast tree trunks-real-and artificial hanging vines. There were stuffed monkeys in the branches. There were snakes slithering down from the trees, stars were painted on the high ceiling, the stars were twinkling through the trees-though dark clouds hovered to the side of the crescent moon as if a giant storm was about to sweep through. Underneath lay a lush green grass-carpet, higher than her ankles.

  It was so real that she felt like lifting her feet gingerly in case of snakes.

&n
bsp; There was a clearing mid-jungle, where two huge beanbags lay, and here was the only discordant note. In front of the beanbags was a television. A huge television. And on the screen…

  ‘It’s Extreme Makeover.’ Jess stared at the screen in disbelief as some unfortunate larger-than-life woman was having a knife applied to her fatty abdomen. Liposuction? She closed her eyes and turned away.

  ‘Your nurse and your nephew have been watching Extreme Makeover?’ she whispered. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  Raoul strode forward and flicked it off. Fast. The fatty abdomen faded to nothing. ‘I’d imagine it’s just Cosette who’s been watching,’ he said but his tone was defensive. Maybe justifiably. Maybe she had sounded accusatory.

  ‘So where’s Edouard?’ she asked. ‘If he’s not learning how to liposuck.’

  He glowered at her.

  ‘Just asking.’ She gazed around her in growing anger and decided accusations were well-justified. ‘You’re a doctor. Maybe you got to watch liposuction at three as well. Maybe that’s why you’re a doctor now.’

  His glower deepened. ‘There’s no need to get on your high horse. Cosette says he’s always sound asleep after six. She says we just disturb him if we come after that. And he gets upset if we come early in the mornings. He sleeps until late.’

  ‘I’ll bet he does,’ Jess muttered. ‘What sort of three-year-old sleeps more than twelve hours at a stretch? None that I know of. So that’s why Louise sat with me in the evenings and mornings. She wasn’t permitted here. But to be locked out by a servant? You know, if I was a nurse who liked my television, that’s what I might tell the family as well. Don’t come bothering me in the evenings. Or the mornings. Leave me to do what I want with my charge. Or leave me to watch television while I ignore my charge.’

  Raoul’s face darkened, as well it might. This was none of her business, Jess told herself. She had no right to vent her anger.

  There was no way she could stop herself.

  ‘You must understand that we’ve come into this as strangers,’ Raoul said heavily, defensively. ‘Until a month ago we had no contact with Edouard at all. Cosette is his only stability and we’ve had to respect that.’