‘You wouldn’t,’ he said.
And once again he knew he’d said the wrong thing.
She’d never hit anyone in her life. She’d never dreamed of doing it. But now, as they stood in this gilded hallway full of ancient, over-the-top artwork, chandeliers, servants in the doorways, Levout standing open-mouthed behind them, the emotions of the last few days found irresistible expression.
As a slap it was a beauty. It was straight across his cheek. The sound of the slap was louder than the voice she was using.
She backed off and stared at him. What little vestige of color she’d had before was completely gone now.
‘Pippa…’ he said, uncertainly, and she raised her hands to her face as if her head needed support. As if it were she who’d been slapped.
‘I-I’m so sorry,’ she stammered, aghast.
‘You don’t-’
‘I’d never slap. I never would. It’s just…’
‘We’ve hauled you right out of your comfort zone.’
‘I don’t have a comfort zone,’ she whispered. ‘The farm? Taking care of the kids by myself? That’s not comfort. What I use as a comfort zone is independence. I don’t need anyone. I don’t need you. And for you to assume that just because you kissed me I’d see you as some kind of love interest…’
‘I never assumed that.’
‘Yes, you did,’ she said steadying a little. ‘And maybe you’re right. Maybe I have been a bit too attracted to you. But now…’ She shrugged. ‘Well, I’ve been told and I’m not stupid, regardless of what you think. We’re here for a month while I figure out whether the kids could have a future here. You’re my…bond, if you like. My surety. I’m demanding that you stay here too. But only until I figure out whether we’re safe. If that’s tomorrow then you can take yourself back to Paris.’
He hesitated. He should finish this. But there were imperatives. ‘Pippa, the press…’
‘What about the press?’
‘They want to see you again.’
‘Not me.’
‘They want to see the children. They need a photo opportunity.’
‘Then we’ll set one up. Let Beatrice know and I’ll make sure they have clean faces.’
‘They want to meet you. Tonight if possible.’
‘No deal.’ She backed again so she was at the foot of the stairs. ‘Now is there anything else?’
‘Then Thursday. For an official portrait? We have to let the press see us.’
‘Thursday,’ she snapped. ‘Fine. I’ll sew on my button for the occasion. Make sure it’s at night ’ cos twin-set and skirt looks dumb in this heat.’
‘Dinner is served,’ the butler intoned from behind them and Max winced.
‘Can we delay it for a little?’
‘No,’ Pippa said and squared her shoulders. ‘We’re all hungry but we’re not eating together.’ She walked over to the tray the butler was carrying-three bowls of soup. She lifted one and smelled. ‘Yum. Asparagus. My favourite. I’ll take mine out on the terrace.’
‘You can’t,’ Max said blankly.
‘Watch me. Or don’t watch me. In fact I forbid you to watch me. You and Mr Levout go back to your dress-ups. This provincial’s going to eat her meal outside. That way I can burp and slurp just the way I like.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘I’m not ridiculous,’ she snapped. ‘You’re the one with the sword.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
PIPPA might be in a fairy tale, but three days later she was starting to be just a bit…bored? When they were on holidays on the farm the kids played happily independently. Here she stuck with them like glue, but after three days she was wondering if it was more to protect herself than to protect the kids.
Carver still gave her the creeps, but it was Max she was avoiding. Max and his wonderful uniform. How dared a man look so sexy?
All the staff were treating him as if it were Max who was the Crown Prince.
They weren’t treating him as if he was an illegitimate outsider.
She was uneasy, puzzled, and increasingly she was restless.
‘The last two princes spent very little time at the castle,’ Beatrice told her. ‘The casinos at Monte Carlo were more their style, and our rulers encouraged them.’
‘Your rulers?’
‘We have a President and a Council. Mr Levout is on the Council. They run this country.’
‘Why haven’t we met this President?’
‘I suspect he’s desperately trying to work out how these children can be blocked from the throne. If he can, there’s no one else in direct succession and the Principality will disappear. That would leave the Levout family in control.’
‘Max doesn’t want that.’
‘And thank God for Max,’ Beatrice told her. ‘He is a wonderful prince, and he seems to be a good man.’
There it was again, the blank acceptance of an outsider as a prince.
‘Yeah, but not necessarily a nice one,’ she managed, and Beatrice regarded her with the beginning of a tiny smile.
‘I don’t know about that,’ she said. ‘Maybe we’ll wait and see.’
So she waited. But by the fourth day she was openly admitting she was climbing walls.
How could she be bored in a place like this? she wondered. There was as much wonderful food as she and the children needed. There was no need to milk a hundred and twenty cows twice a day. In fact, the dairyman had refused her offer to help. ‘It wouldn’t be proper,’ he told her and he refused to budge. There were swimming pools and wonderful gardens. There were gentle people waiting on her every whim, even eager for her to have whims.
For Pippa, who’d worked hard every day of her adult life, it felt wrong. Max wasn’t used to this either, she thought, and she wondered how he was taking it. She wasn’t asking him, though. Whenever she saw him she’d head for the nearest child.
She was being a coward, she knew, but he seriously unsettled her, and life was strange enough without being…unsettled.
‘Let’s leave this relationship businesslike,’ she told him when he confronted her. ‘If there’s something you need then of course we’ll talk, but the castle staff got the wrong idea when I slapped you and there’s no way we want to encourage that.’
‘The wrong idea?That I’ve brought back with me a termagant?’
‘I don’t know what a termagant is,’ she said huffily. ‘And I’ve got far too many good manners to ask.’
She waited for him to respond. He didn’t, though. He stood and gazed at her for a long moment and then turned away.
Good.
But increasingly their disassociation seemed ever so slightly silly. And she had to admit that she missed him. She looked up termagant in the dictionary and huffed in indignation-but it was a bit lonely to huff by yourself.
‘You’ve been by yourself for years,’ she scolded herself, but it didn’t work.
She’d sort of got used to Max.
But the avoidance seemed to be working both ways, and a girl had some pride.
On the fourth day she finished breakfast, looked at the day stretching out in front of her and decided on a walk. ‘Right round the castle grounds,’ she told the kids and they groaned.
‘But Beattie’s grandkids are coming,’ Marc said. ‘Beattie says Sally’s the same age as me and Rodrick’s the same age as Sophie and Claire. Aimee’s bigger than everyone but Beatrice said she knows skipping games.’
‘They’ll be fine with me,’ Beatrice told her. She’d been making their bed-Pippa wasn’t even permitted to do that. ‘I promise I’ll keep them with me all the time. Why don’t you go for a walk by yourself?’
Because I’m scared of meeting Max, she thought, but that was a dumb reason. She couldn’t voice it. She looked helplessly across at Beatrice and Beatrice smiled.
‘He’s not an ogre, dear,’ she said gently. ‘Blake says he’s a sweetheart. He says he takes after his lovely mother. Bless him.’
Oh, great. Yeah, he�
��s a sweetheart and that’s the whole problem, she thought, but she couldn’t say that either.
Right. A walk. She gave herself a firm talking-to, which consisted of standing in front of her six-dimensional mirror and talking severely to all six of her. Then she waved goodbye to her various images and went to find Dolores.
But Dolores wasn’t interested either. Sixteen was really old for such a big dog, and she’d suffered badly this winter. Here she moved from fire to sunbeam and back again, soaking up the warmth with the same intensity she’d once reserved for rabbits. She was stretched out now on the patio, soaking in sun, and as Pippa bent to pat her she barely raised the energy to wag her tail. As Pippa stroked her she gave a long, slow shudder of pure, unadulterated bliss.
‘At least I’ve done the right thing by you, girl,’ Pippa whispered, blinking hard. She knew Dolores didn’t have long. To give her another summer…
She’d done something right.
But she missed her dog by her side. She now had no kids, no work, no dog. The sensation as she took herself off for a walk was strangely empty.
‘Other people have holidays,’ she told herself. ‘Get over it.’
But she couldn’t. What she saw stretching out before her was strange-a life here as the children’s guardian. A life that wasn’t her life.
A life even without Dolores?
‘Oh, forget it with the maudlin,’ she told herself. ‘Walk.’
She walked. It was a long way around the castle grounds-too far to walk in a morning. She walked for an hour, around a vast lake, through woods where she startled deer, into the hills behind the castle, but she still wasn’t halfway round. Finally she gave up on the perimeter and veered cross country.
The woods here were so dense they were almost scary, but there was hammering and shouting and sounds of construction in the distance. Where there was construction there was civilisation, so she pushed her way through overgrown paths to find it.
It was a construction site. It was a small cottage, with what looked like an extension being built at the back.
Max was up on the roof. He was wearing faded jeans and a heavy cotton workman’s shirt, open at the throat and with sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He was fitting roofing slates. The sun was glinting on his dark hair. He was laughing at something someone below had just said.
He looked…
Whoa.
She would have backed away-fast-but he saw her. His hands stilled. The slate in his hand was set down with care.
‘Pippa,’ he said and the pleasure in his voice gave her a completely inappropriate wash of warmth. Maybe he’d found the last four days as long as she had.
He didn’t look bored, she thought with a pang of jealousy. He looked…
Whoa again.
‘Hi,’ she managed, trying to keep her voice in order. ‘I’ve been walking.’
‘Hiking, more like. You’re miles from home. Did you bring a packed lunch?’
‘No, I-’
‘You’re bored?’
‘No,’ she lied, looking about her. There were three other men on the site, elderly men-of course-working on a pile of bricks.
‘They don’t need help at the dairy?’ Max asked.
‘They say it’s not seemly.’ She glowered. ‘How come it’s seemly for you to fix roofs but not for me to milk cows?’
He grinned. ‘Desperate times lead to desperate measures. Sleeping by the pool is great for an hour but I get itchy fingers. You want to clean some bricks? Is your back up to it?’
‘My back’s fine. Why are you cleaning bricks?’
‘This house is for Blake and Beatrice.’ He motioned to one of the elderly men who raised his cap in a deferential greeting. ‘You’ve met Blake? He and Beatrice lived here for over forty years. But five years ago there was a storm and the back section collapsed. See that pile of bricks over there?’ She looked to where he was pointing. ‘That’s the remains of the fireplace. Anyway Blake and Beatrice moved into the servant’s quarters in the palace but the servant’s quarters needs a bomb. It’ll take time and patience to get it brought up to scratch. Meanwhile I thought we could rebuild.’
We. She looked cautiously around her, recognising the butler, the valet, and one of the footmen. Average again about ninety.
‘Right,’ she said.
‘The boys are chipping old mortar off the bricks. Want to help?’ And he smiled.
Damn him, why did he do that? He just had to let those dark eyes twinkle and she was lost.
She should go.
But this was a real job. She ached for a job. Of the three geriatrics, one was holding the ladder in case Max ever came down. The other two were chipping gamely at old mortar.
She watched them work for a minute. At this rate they’d be lucky if they had the bricks cleaned by the end of the millennium.
But why was Max here? ‘I thought you said there were lots of administration things that needed doing.’
‘Not until the succession’s in place. The lawyers are working on it.’ He picked up his slate with purpose. ‘Meanwhile are you going to help or are you going to stand there distracting me?’
‘I’m not distracting you.’
‘Little you know,’ Max growled. ‘Give the lady a pair of gloves, Blake, and let’s get this moving.’
He sat on the roof replacing tile after tile, his hands moving methodically but his mind all on the lady beneath him.
She was amazing. She was cleaning at a rate more than double that of the old men, but she chattered to the men as she worked, distracting them just as much as she was distracting him, but for a purpose. As she cleaned she slipped her finished bricks into one of three piles, so the piles in front of her companions were growing at the same rate as hers. Giving them back their pride.
The men were enjoying her. They worked together, they paused and laughed and wiped their brows and they stopped for a drink, but she methodically worked on. Jean, the footman who’d been holding the ladder, decided it didn’t really need holding and went over to help.
Well, why wouldn’t he? She was…magnetic.
And she was surely used to hard work. The bricks were hard to clean but they were flying through her hands. At the thought of what she’d been facing for the last four years his gut clenched.
So he’d solved that problem. He’d brought her here.
But she’d never be seen on the same pegging as the children, he thought. Levout was making that perfectly clear. She was a provincial, no blood relative of the heir to the throne, and with no delineated role as his was.
Maybe she’d leave.
No. She’d never leave the children.
But what would her position be?
They stopped for half an hour at lunch time and Max used his cell-phone to check the children.
‘Our visitors are staying for lunch,’ Beatrice said happily. ‘And then they’ll all need a nap. Tell Pippa to come home if she wants to, but there’s no need.’
Max relayed the message and saw confusion wash across her face.
‘They still need you,’ he said gently.
‘Of course.’
‘Have a sandwich.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, and took a huge cheese sandwich from the pile, biting into it like a man.
He grinned.
‘What?’ she demanded.
‘Nothing.’
‘Yeah, and I wipe my mouth on my sleeve too,’ she said darkly. ‘Butt out, Your Highness.’
‘Of course.’
The men had brought beer. ‘We’ll send to the house to get something more suitable,’ Blake told him. He seemed distressed that Max and Pippa were sharing their plain luncheon. Pippa shook her head and lifted a bottle.
‘Hey, we’re not proper royalty,’ she said. ‘We’re just hangers on. This is wet and it’s cold and if anyone tries taking this from me I’ll spray them with it.’
‘You are royalty,’ Blake said, eyeing Max with reproof, but Max ignored him. Finally the men chuc
kled and relaxed. Gentle banter continued as they sat under a huge oak and surveyed their hard work.
Max hardly participated in the banter. He leaned back and listened to Pippa laughing with the men, joking with them, teasing with them.
Her jeans and her T-shirt were coated in brick-dust. There was dust in her curls and a streak down her cheek where dust had mixed with sweat. She’d scraped her arm and there was a trickle of dried blood to her wrist. She was laughing at something one of the men was saying, and she was drinking beer straight from the bottle.
She was the loveliest thing he’d ever seen.
Yeah, right, and where was that going to get him? Into disaster?
He couldn’t go there even if he wanted to, he thought. How the hell would his mother react? I’ve fallen in love with the guardian of the new Crown Prince. I have to stay in Alp d’Estella.
She’d break her heart. After all that had been done to her…After all she’d done to herself…How could he ask it of her?
He looked up and saw Pippa watching him.
‘It looks grim,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘What you’re thinking.’
‘I was thinking about slates.’
‘Really?’ she said and hiked her eyebrows.
Their telepathy wasn’t a one-way thing, he thought, and he turned away, ostensibly to pack up the lunch gear but in reality so she couldn’t see his face any more. He had to get this under control.
It was bad enough that he was here now, and his mother knew he was here. After the official photo shoot she’d see him in every glossy magazine in Europe.
He grabbed a handful of slates and carted them up onto the roof. No one saw him go-even Jean, his ladder holder, was chuckling over something Pippa had just said, hanging onto every word. Good, he thought. It was good that they were falling in love with her. It was great for the people. It was great for the country.
But what would her position be?
It had to be made formal, he thought, or she’d be shunted into the background for ever. Which meant that he had to drag her into this photo shoot, whether she liked it or not.
The Prince’s Outback Bride Page 13