It was just as well he couldn’t, he thought. What he wanted wasn’t…sensible.
So he carried her dog upstairs. Pippa hurried up before him, and by the time he reached the bedroom beside the children’s she was spreading a feather-down quilt she’d tugged out of the blanket box.
‘That’s probably an heirloom,’ he said and she put her hands on her hips.
‘Well?’
‘Nothing,’ he said meekly, and set Dolores down.
Dolores opened one eye and her tail gave an infinitesimal wag.
‘I’ll light the fire,’ He said. It was already set in the grate. The room hardly needed heating yet he knew she’d want the dog warm. Besides, it gave him a reason to stay an extra few moments.
‘We’ll be right,’ Pippa said, and walked to the door and held it wide, waiting for him to go. ‘Thank you, Max.’
He was being dismissed. She needed a rest, he thought. Or she needed to be alone with her dog.
‘Photographs at eight?’
‘I’ll be there.’
‘What about dinner?’
‘I’ll ask Beatrice to bring something up. I need a nap if I’m going to be beautiful for photos.’
He didn’t want to go. She looked so alone. But she was waiting for him to go, glancing sideways at her dog, holding the door wide.
‘If there’s anything I can do…’ He said uselessly and she nodded.
‘Thank you. But there isn’t. Please, Max, just go.’
Max returned to his bedroom. He paced.
Then he went down to the sitting room Dolores had just vacated. The fire was still burning in the grate. The room was in darkness but he didn’t turn the light on.
He paced some more.
‘Will you be dressing for dinner, sir?’ Blake sounded apologetic, as if he knew he was interrupting serious thought.
‘No.’ He dragged himself back to the here and now. Blake was standing in the doorway looking worried. ‘I’ll skip dinner.’
‘Cook has prepared roast duck,’ he said reproachfully. ‘Miss Pippa has said she’s not hungry. I believe Cook will be hurt if no one eats her duck.’
Max closed his eyes. Obligations everywhere. Pippa’s obligations. His obligations. An obligation to duck.
This one at least he could fulfil.
‘Fine. I’ll dress and then I’ll eat Cook’s duck.’
CHAPTER NINE
MAX felt ridiculous.
He’d thought the uniform he’d worn the night they arrived was stunning. This one though was even more so. Deep blue and brilliant crimson, it was so startling that when he saw himself in the mirror he started to laugh.
‘Sir, it’s wonderful,’ Blake said with reproach. ‘You look so much more handsome than the old prince.’
‘I’m only Regent,’ he said, staring at the rows of honours on his chest. ‘This is crazy.’
‘You’re our sovereign,’ Blake said reproachfully. ‘At least until the little prince comes of age.’
Damn the man. He’d had it with the reproach.
‘Well, as long as Pippa has something to match,’ he growled, thinking of Pippa as he’d last seen her, a waif with tear-filled eyes and an ancient dog. She was as far away from this as it was possible to be.
‘Beatrice tells me Pippa’s dress is just the solution,’ Blake said reassuringly. ‘She says it will make us all smile.’
As she’d said, Pippa didn’t appear for dinner. He ate in solitary splendour in the grand dining room. Levout was absent as well-which made Max nervous, but he’d rather eat without him than with him. The duck was magnificent. He said all the right things, even though he was having trouble tasting.
He kept thinking of Pippa.
And Dolores. Dammit, he was worrying about a dog.
‘Ask Miss Pippa if she’d like us to call a veterinarian,’ He told Blake, and Blake looked at him with even more reproach.
‘Sir, we asked her that ourselves. She says no, there’s nothing wrong with the dog but old age.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘There’s nothing a veterinarian can do about that.’
‘I guess not.’ He half rose.
‘Chocolate meringues, sir,’ the butler said reproachfully. ‘And then coffee and liqueur.’
Reproach, reproach, reproach.
So there was no time to return to Pippa’s room before the shoot. He made his way to the ballroom as requested at eight.
Beatrice was there, with the three children all rigged out as royal children had been rigged throughout the ages.
‘Wow,’ he said, astonished. ‘You look like something out of Hans Christian Andersen.’
‘We look beeyootiful,’ Claire said, pirouetting to prove it.
‘You’ve got a sword,’ Marc said with deep envy. ‘How old do I have to be to have a sword?’
‘Twenty-one.’
‘But aren’t I a Crown Prince?’
‘Yes, but I get to carry the sword.’
‘’ Cos Max is the boss of us,’ Sophie said, pirouetting with her sister. ‘Max fights the baddies.’
‘There aren’t any baddies,’ Beatrice said. ‘Let me fix your hair ribbon, Claire.’
‘Where’s Pippa?’ he asked. This was to be the official royal portrait. The photographer-a woman in her seventies-and her two spritely-only sixty if a day-assistants were set up and ready. One of the assistants was approaching him with a palette and brushes.
‘What’s this?’
‘Make-up,’ she said. ‘So you don’t shine.’
‘No,’ he growled. ‘I like shine. Where the hell is Pippa?’
The door swung open.
Pippa.
What the hell…?This was a transformed Pippa. She was a sugar-plum confection in pink and white and silver. She was a gorgeous apparition that made him blink in disbelief.
Her dress was a floor-length ballgown, with hoops underneath to make it spread wide. Her scalloped neckline was scooped to show a hint of her beautiful breasts. The pink and silver brocade curved in and clung to her waistline, as if the dress had been made for her.
She smiled at them all and twirled in much the same manner as the twins.
She had gossamer wings attached to her shoulder blades.
She was carrying a silver wand.
‘Who needs a wish?’ she said, and she giggled.
‘You’re a fairy godmother,’ Sophie said, awed, and Pippa chuckled.
‘You have it in one. I spent today trying to figure what my role tonight could be. I was feeling a little like Cinderella but then I thought, no, my role is already decided. I’m your godmother. I agreed to bring you guys here-with or without pumpkins-so that’s obviously who I am. We have two Prince Charmings and two Sleeping Beauties-’ she grinned at the twins ‘-only you’re not asleep any more. So here we are.’
‘We could bring Dolores in and she could be the horse,’ Marc said, entranced, and a touch of a shadow flitted across Pippa’s face. It was so fleeting that Max almost missed it. But he was sure.
‘How’s-?’
‘Dolores really is Sleeping Beauty,’ she said, cutting across Max’s question. ‘You wake her and you’ll be the Wicked Witch of the West. Okay, you guys, let’s get ourselves photographed.’ She twirled again. ‘Don’t you think this is just the right outfit?’
‘No,’ Max said, frowning. He was out of his depth here, he thought. But surely Pippa shouldn’t be the godmother. What the hell should she be?
Not Cinderella, that was for sure. No maid in tatters, this.
‘You look really, really pretty,’ Marc said stoutly, casting Max a look of…reproach. Et tu, Brute? He dived forward to grab her hand. ‘We have to stand right here, Pippa.’
‘You look wonderful,’ the photographer said, smiling with real appreciation. ‘The tabloids will love you to bits.’
‘You’ll win hearts,’ Beatrice said.
Everyone was smiling. Except him.
It felt wrong. Gossamer or not, she didn’t feel like a fairy godmother.
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She felt…She felt…
She felt like Pippa.
The shoot lasted over an hour. By then the children were drooping again. Pippa looked exhausted too, Max thought, but she wasn’t letting on.
‘Enough,’ He decreed at last, and the photographer sighed and straightened from her tripod.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said. ‘You’re all so photogenic I could keep on for hours. But this will keep the press happy. I’ll let the media have whatever they want.’
‘Great.’ That was why they’d done it. To keep the pressure off. Now they were free of pressure until Friday week.
Then, if Pippa agreed, he’d be free of media pressure for ever.
It should feel good. But now he looked at Pippa’s strained face and he thought she’d found this harder than he had. She’d worked at making it cheerful-she was still bouncing, swiping kids with her wand and threatening them with fairy dust if they didn’t head straight to bed-but there was something akin to desolation behind the façade.
He’d hauled her out of poverty, he thought, but she knew that riches and glitter weren’t enough.
He knew that, too. Could he walk away from this mess? Pick her up and carry her to Paris?
With three kids and a dog?
His mother would adore them.
‘Can I help put the kids to bed?’ he asked.
‘Not tonight.’ She carefully didn’t look at him. ‘And, Beatrice, we don’t need you either. We’ll be fine. We’ll see you in the morning.’ She prodded the closest princess with her wand. The princess gave a sleepy giggle and headed bravely to the stairs, fairy godmother in pursuit.
‘Goodnight, sir,’ Beatrice said, with all the deference in the world. And then she paused.
‘You know, Pippa loves you,’ she whispered. ‘That has to count for a lot.’
Max stared at her.
How did Beatrice know?
But maybe…maybe…
He wanted to sleep himself, but first he had to front Levout. The official had disappeared for days. He appeared now, standing in the entrance hall, waiting for him, smiling urbanely.
‘I believe there was some problem in the village earlier in the evening.’
Max nodded curtly. ‘Your friend Daniella.’
‘And the players in the town hall.’
‘There was no problem with the players.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Levout said smoothly and he smiled. His smile made Max uneasy. ‘There’s always been conflict between the people and the palace. I just came to let you know it’s sorted.’
‘What’s sorted?’
‘Daniella came to see me, and we’ve looked into it straight away. We don’t like those type of people intimidating our trades-men and women. These gatherings are clearly inappropriate for our village. So…The hall they’ve been using is dilapidated. All those tatty costumes in the back are home for vermin. It’s surely a safety risk. We’ve boarded it closed, and in the morning we’ll send in bulldozers.’
Max stilled. ‘You have no right.’
‘We have every right,’ He said urbanely. His smile was surface only-behind his eyes was pure venom. ‘You might, as Prince Regent, be able to institute changes at parliamentary level, but according to the constitution only a ruling Crown Prince can interfere with daily minutiae. As there will be no ruling Crown Prince for thirteen years we have no problem.’
‘A prince has no right to interfere…’
‘Exactly.’ Levout’s oily smile broadened, but underneath there was something akin to hate. ‘Which is what I dropped by to tell you. We-the current mayor and our associates-will keep on running the day-to-day affairs of this country as we see fit, regardless of what you do at a higher level. You can return to Paris as you plan and leave it safely to us. Oh, and we don’t despair of the future, either. The young prince is already eight years old. By the age of twelve we may be able to persuade him to let things run as generations of monarchs have done before him.’ His smile became a sneer. ‘What you do, he can be persuaded to undo.’
‘Pippa will never allow him-’
‘Teenagers revolt,’ Levout said softly and smiled. ‘Especially if they’re encouraged to do so. And Miss Donohue has no authority at all.’
Was Levout right? The lawyers he’d talked to before going to Australia had talked about changing the constitution from an overriding sovereignty to a democracy. They hadn’t gone into minutiae.
If Levout was right, it was a mess. For Pippa to cope with it…He couldn’t ask it of her. But to walk away…
He had to talk to the lawyers again, he thought. He had to figure out just what Levout and his cronies could really do.
But by next Friday? By the time decisions had to be irretrievably made?
He couldn’t leave Pippa.
That was the crux of the matter. The more he thought, the more his mind came back to Pippa. Pippa tonight in her crazy fairy godmother dress, acting as if she hadn’t a care in the world, making everyone here smile. Tomorrow she’d make the whole country smile as they woke to their morning newspapers.
His mind stilled, retaining that indelible image of Pippa smiling for the camera.
And the players tonight…
All our young have left to try and find work in Italy or France so we are left to do what we can.
Enough.
He didn’t need to contact lawyers.
He went inside to telephone his mother.
It was two in the morning. He should be asleep, but he’d lain in the moonlight and stared at the ceiling and thought he’d go nuts. Pippa would be asleep. It was crazy to go to her now. She needed to sleep and so did he.
He couldn’t.
At three he gave it up for a bad job. He rose and paced to the window. And paused.
There were people on the lawn in front of the castle. The scene was lit by the moonlight. Three figures. One was one long and lean and stooped. One was smaller. Digging? Another figure was a little apart, moving about in the rose bed.
Pippa. And Blake. And Beatrice.
He reached for his clothes and in less than a minute he was out there.
What the hell…?
No one reacted as he came catapulting out the entrance. They kept doing what they were doing. He strode across the lawn, past the fountain and the new decking. Yes, it was Beatrice, snipping roses in the moonlight. Pippa and Blake were digging by the side of the rose garden, just out from the windows of the sitting room.
By the time he reached them he had it figured, and he felt sick.
‘Pippa,’ he said as he reached them, but she kept right on digging. Blake, however, paused for a breather, resting gratefully on his spade. The ground was dry and hard, Max thought. Blake was too old to be digging.
‘Beatrice and I wanted to wake you,’ Blake said, sounding relieved. ‘But Pippa wouldn’t let us.’
‘Dolores?’ he asked, and Blake nodded.
‘She died earlier this evening. Before the photo shoot.’
‘Before the photo shoot?’ He stared at Pippa, and then muttered an expletive. ‘Before the shoot! What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
‘What does it look like we’re doing?’ Her voice was laced with tears. ‘We have to bury her.’
‘Tonight?’
‘I don’t want the children to see…’ She gulped, and wiped her face fiercely with her sleeve. ‘They said goodbye to her. When they woke to get dressed for the photographer she was still sleeping, almost normally. But I could feel her heart…It was missing. It was so weak. She could no longer stand, and she was barely conscious. Back home the vet said he’d expected this to happen. Maybe if I’d let you call the vet she could have had a little more time. But she spent today with the children. Beatrice said the children were all over her, exactly as she loves. Then tonight she went to sleep in a sunbeam, by the fire, and you carried her up to my bed. When her breathing got weaker I thought…I thought, for her this day has been perfect. I’m not going to ask her to go on.’
‘The children knew she only had a limited time,’ she whispered. ‘When they woke for the photo shoot I told them to pop in and say goodnight to her. They all did. I packed her with hot water bottles and tucked her under the duvet. Then, just as I was thinking I couldn’t leave her to go to the photo shoot, she just…died.’
‘Beatrice knew,’ Blake said heavily. ‘But Pippa wouldn’t let us tell anyone.’
‘I didn’t want the children to see her dead,’ she said fiercely. ‘They don’t need to. If I thought it would help then, yes, but Marc’s had enough death and talk of death. He’s old for his years as it is. Tomorrow I want to tell them Dolores died in the night and we buried her here, under her beloved sunbeams. We’ll decorate her grave. It’ll be sad, but it won’t be…’
‘It won’t be gut-wrenching like burying her is.’ Max thought back to Thiérry’s funeral. ‘No, Pippa,’ he said gently. ‘You’re right. But for you there’s no choice but to do the gut-wrenching. How you managed to do the photo shoot…’
‘It was the bravest thing we’ve ever seen,’ Blake said, and sniffed. ‘She wouldn’t let Beatrice tell you…’
‘She’s my dog,’ Pippa said, almost fiercely. ‘It’s my grief.’
‘It’s a shared grief,’ Max said, and enough, enough. He took the spade from fingers that were suddenly lifeless, and he let it fall as he took her in his arms. He held her close, hard against him, kissing the top of her hair but just holding her. Just holding…
And at last, here they came. The searing sobs that had been so long coming.
Had she cried when her mother died? he wondered. Or Alice? Or Gina and Donald? Somehow he doubted it. All that time she’d been alone, or supporting others.
She’d never be alone again. He made himself that promise, then and there. Never.
There was an ancient stone seat nearby. When the worst of the sobs subsided he lifted her and set her down, beckoning Beatrice and Blake to sit beside her.
‘Hold her,’ he said to the elderly servants. ‘Just sit there, Pippa, and wait. I’m starting what I should have started five weeks ago.’
‘Five weeks ago, Your Highness?’ Blake queried.
The Prince’s Outback Bride Page 17