Her Royal Baby

CHAPTER NINE

IT WAS a really long night.

Marc would have had to search hard if he’d tried to find Tammy because, instead of seeking out one of the scores of empty bedrooms in the palace and hoping Marc wouldn’t find her, Tammy had escaped to where she belonged. He’d forgotten the standard gear that she always carried. A tent and a sleeping bag and the essentials to sleep under the stars. While Marc was struggling with diapers, Tammy was in her sleeping bag in her tent in the sheltered palace woodland.

But she wasn’t asleep. She lay with the tent wide open, watching stars that were totally different from the galaxies she was used to in the Southern Hemisphere. Upside down and strange.

Being upside down made sense, she thought ruefully. Everything else was topsy-turvy. Why shouldn’t the heavens match?

Why had she done this? What was she possibly hoping for?

A fair system of parenting, she told herself. But she knew it was far more than that. She wanted Marc to love his little cousin. She wanted Marc to…commit?

She wanted him to commit to Henry, she told herself savagely, and there was an aching void around her heart that she didn’t understand. She didn’t have a clue what to do with it.

Why had he kissed her?

She’d asked, ‘What’s changed?’

‘You, of course,’ he’d replied. ‘You. And me.’

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ she muttered, forcing herself to remember her mother’s words. ‘The man’s a womaniser.’ So he kissed me. So what? If you breathe and you’re female then you get kissed by His Royal Highness. I’m lucky it didn’t go any further.

‘Lucky?

‘Yes, lucky.’ She was talking out loud. She’d erected the tent well out of sight of the palace. Here she could conduct her conversation with herself without fear of interruption. Which was just as well. She had serious things to discuss.

‘But if he’d wanted…

‘To take things further? You’re out of your mind, Tammy Dexter. He’s just ditched Ingrid-in fact, you don’t know for sure that he has ditched Ingrid. You want to fall into his arms between his little affairs with society bimbos?

‘I wouldn’t mind.

‘Tamsin Dexter!’ She was scolding herself, even managing to sound shocked, and she grinned into the night. Good grief. What on earth was happening to her?

She was fantasising over one gorgeous specimen of manhood. Maybe she’d been celibate for far too long. That was all this was. Fantasy.

So how was her fantastic male going with Henry?

‘It’s none of my business. Go to sleep.

‘I could just sneak back and have a listen…

‘Yeah, and get caught. You know darned well that would be the way of disaster.

‘Why?

‘Because…

‘The servants will all be in bed. There’ll just be Henry, who’ll drift off to sleep pretty soon now. Which will leave me and His Highness, the Prince Regent.

‘Not a good idea,’ she told herself, zipping her sleeping bag up to her nose. ‘In fact a very bad idea.’

So why did she desperately want to do it?

Where was she?

Henry’s time clock was still out of kilter and he wanted to play, so Marc took his nephew back to bed, hauled open his laptop and started working on a design for a series of agricultural channels. He wasn’t working very seriously. Henry’s attention span was about thirty seconds, after which he demanded some new distraction. He’d come a long way from the baby who not a week before had known only that a window was the best distraction on offer.

Now Henry had found these wonderful new playthings called adults, and he intended to exploit them to the full. Teddy looked pretty boring compared to a clicking keyboard, and before long Marc’s canal system looked like nothing so much as the work of a very drunken spider.

‘So how are the farmers of Southern Broitenburg going to link up with this?’ Marc demanded of his nephew, and Henry chortled, put his fist into the keyboard and sent a spiral of water channels veering northward.

‘Oh, great. You realise you’re sending water from a drought-affected area to one where the rainfall’s the highest in Broitenburg?’

Henry clearly thought it was a great idea.

‘Where’s your aunt?’

Henry didn’t know and he didn’t care. Unlike Marc who found himself caring far too much.

‘She came over here to look after you. That’s her job.’

No comment.

‘Damn, where is she?’ He glanced at his watch. Two-thirty.

‘She’d better be here in the morning.’

He didn’t want her in the morning, he thought savagely. He wanted her now!

Tammy woke at dawn.

There was something about sleeping under the stars that made waking at dawn almost compulsory-which was just as well. She didn’t want to be found by the gardeners, so two minutes after waking she’d packed up and was returning to the palace.

She made herself slow. The servants would still be asleep. She’d ordered them not to stir before seven.

Maybe Marc would like a cup of tea, she thought dubiously, pausing in the front entrance, unsure what to do. If he’d been up all night with the baby…

If he’d been up all night the last thing he’d want now would be a cup of tea. He’d be fast asleep. She let herself into the kitchen, made herself tea and toast and kept on thinking about it.

Whether he’d like it or not, the temptation was irresistible.

‘What man wouldn’t want toast and tea at sunrise?’ she asked herself, and she grinned. She knew the answer to that. ‘But, hey, he deserves it. He’s been working hard.’

The temptation was too much. She made him toast, loaded it with marmalade, and brewed fresh tea.

‘Coming, ready or not,’ she said, and took a deep breath.

What on earth was she doing?

She didn’t have a clue.

He was dead to the world. They both were. Tammy’s knock on the door to the main royal bedroom went unanswered. She pushed the vast door wide and saw them at once: one big prince and one little one, deeply lost in sleep.

Marc had been working when he’d fallen asleep. His laptop lay on the floor beside him, still powered up, fluorescent and flashing with something that looked like spiderwebs on the screen. Lines were scrawling everywhere. He’d fallen back on his pillows with the baby cradled to him.

Naked from the waist up, Marc’s only covering was Henry’s already battered teddy. Henry himself lay cradled under his big cousin’s arm, sound asleep and looking for all the world as if this was his very favourite place in the whole world.

Tammy stood, rooted to the spot, taking in the scene before her. She had a plate of toast in one hand and a mug of tea in the other, but she made no move to set them down. She couldn’t.

The sight was enough to form a lump in her throat so large she could hardly swallow. She didn’t know what on earth was happening to her, but the sight of this big man and this baby…

She didn’t want relationships, she told herself fiercely. She wasn’t interested in men. She should walk away fast-back out of this room right now. Instead she stood as if her eyes were locked on the sight before her.

Marc was so…large. His chest was tanned and strongly muscled. The tiny teddy sprawled over his breast accentuated the raw strength of the man.

Man and baby. They looked right together.

And the realisation slammed home. They belonged.

She didn’t.

It was she who was the outsider. She’d come half a world to protect her small nephew but there’d been no need. If this man would protect him…love him…

She felt her eyes blur with tears.

Somehow she managed to back into the corridor, but the door hadn’t swung shut behind her when Marc’s eyes opened. For a long moment he stared at her, their eyes meeting across the room. Something passed between…

Good grief. She was so out of control. Her foot was holding the door open and she started shifting it. Still her eyes held his.

‘Don’t go.’

‘I…’

He was out of the bed so fast she hardly saw him coming-lunging across the room to catch the door before it shut. Then he was steadying her, catching the toast, which was threatening to slide. He was right beside her. Right…there!

He was wearing only boxer shorts and nothing else. He was too large. He was too male. He was too darned much of anything you liked to name!

And she was so close to tears.

‘Breakfast?’ he asked, his dark eyes quizzing hers with easy laughter. ‘You’ve brought me breakfast?’

‘I thought…’

‘You thought you should do something to make up for abandoning me last night?’ he said dryly. ‘How very kind.’

‘I’m not being kind at all,’ she managed, trying to make her voice indifferent. With no success at all. ‘I just came to check on Henry.’

‘Henry’s fine.’ Then his smile faded as he searched her face. His finger came up and touched her cheeks. It came away wet. ‘Tears, Tammy?’

‘No.’ She gave her face an angry swipe. ‘Why would I be crying?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’m not.’

Still he searched.

‘What is it?’ he asked gently and the tears threatened to fall all over again.

‘Nothing,’ she managed, and hauled herself together. Somehow. ‘I told you. I just wanted to check Henry.’

He gave her a long look, knowing he wasn’t getting the whole truth but powerless to take it further. Finally he turned to the bed. Henry was snuggled into the pillows-a baby at peace with his world. ‘Seeing as he’s only been asleep for a couple of hours, I guess he might be fine a while longer.’

‘He…he didn’t go to sleep until late?’

‘He didn’t go to sleep until early.’ Marc’s laughter was back behind his eyes. ‘Dawn was threatening to break, and so was I. Hell, Tam, I’m no babysitter.’

‘I’m sorry.’ The use of the diminutive of her name unnerved her still more, sneaking inside her defences so much she almost gave in right then. But then she thought about it and she knew.

They belonged together. More and more she knew it. Back in Australia she’d thought her relationship with Henry was the only one possible. Now she’d grown to realise that Marc needed his small cousin as much as Henry needed Marc. She’d fallen for Henry with every inch of her being, but loving him meant doing what was best for him.

Even if it meant her loss…

Marc was waiting for her to keep speaking. What had she said? That she was sorry? ‘Actually, I’m not,’ she corrected herself. ‘I’m not sorry. Sleepless nights go with the territory of baby-care. It’ll be my turn tonight.’

‘Take him now.’ Marc’s smile was all embracing-pleading. He’d be able to get anything he ever wanted in life just by smiling like that, she thought bitterly. He lifted the mug from her and placed the tea and toast on the bedside table, then turned to smile that gorgeous smile at her from across the room. He was practically naked, she thought, a little bit desperately. Did he have any idea of the effect the sight of his body was having on her?

Apparently not. He’d moved on. ‘You’ve made your point,’ he told her. ‘I’ve cared for him all night. Now take him back.’

But she was shaking her head. She had to stand her ground. She must. ‘No.’

‘What do you mean-no?’

‘I mean it’s a twenty-four-hour thing,’ she told him. ‘You take his care for twenty-four hours. Then it’s my turn. I come on duty at dinner tonight.’

‘But…’

‘But what?’

He sighed and ran his fingers through his thatch of dark hair. ‘I can always get Mrs Burchett to take care of him.’

‘Of course you can,’ she said coldly. ‘That’s a royal thing, after all. Hand over your responsibility to the servants.’

‘He’s not my responsibility.’

‘Whose responsibility is he, then?’

That was easy. ‘Yours.’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m here to make sure Henry’s cared for and loved. I’m not here to take on his full-time care. I’m not here waiting for you to palm off your responsibilities.’

‘I am not palming-’

‘Yes, you are.’ Somehow she managed a smile. ‘So there. I’ve delivered your breakfast and my job here is done.’

‘Your job?’ He glared. ‘You sound like Superman, who’s just saved the world as we know it. What do you mean, your job here is done?’

‘Toast and marmalade.’ She grinned again. ‘Not quite saving the world, but close.’ She had to get out of there. Now! ‘I’m glad you’re getting on so well,’ she told him. ‘Have a happy day. Leave Henry with Mrs Burchett if you must.’ Tammy knew enough of Mrs Burchett to realise that Henry would be very well cared for in that elderly lady’s arms. ‘But you must realise that he’s bonded to you.’

‘Tammy…’

‘I’m off to care for some trees,’ she told him, and kept right on determinedly smiling. ‘That’s my career.’ She motioned to the laptop on the floor. ‘Like yours. By the way, that looks like a really interesting irrigation system. I may not be too good at geography, but that water seems to be running up the mountains. Well done, you. What an engineer!’

And before he could say another word she turned and fled, leaving him staring after her, as stunned as he’d ever been in his life.

Marc ate his toast and drank his tea and watched Tammy’s slim figure through the window as she made her way back down the south lawn to the woodland beyond. She was carrying what looked from here to be a chainsaw. It was too big for such a slight girl, he thought, and then he thought of Ingrid carrying a chainsaw. He found himself wincing. The image was too ridiculous.

Tammy looked free and happy and intent on the task at hand. She didn’t look like someone who’d dumped a baby on him for effect. She truly looked as if she wasn’t going to spare a thought for him all day.

He wasn’t accustomed to women treating him like this, he decided. Women with chainsaws. Women who dumped babies on him.

Women who made him smile.

He wasn’t accustomed to women like Tammy.

Maybe there were no women like Tammy. She disappeared behind a beech grove and he felt her departure like a physical wrench.

Maybe he could wander down there some time today and see what she was doing.

No. He was going home today. He was leaving!

Or was he?

Beside him Henry slept on, blissfully unaware of the tension in the adult world. And why not? Henry was being cared for and played with and loved for the first time in his small life. Marc put a hand down to touch his tiny fingers and involuntarily Henry’s small hand curled around his. There was a clenching in his chest that was so sudden and so savage it was as if someone had kicked him.

He was supposed to be leaving! Today!

He could hand Henry over to Mrs Burchett, he thought desperately. Madge would love him to bits. Henry would be fine with Madge.

But Henry hadn’t bonded to Madge. He’d bonded to him. To Marc.

He did not want this!

What did he want?

Tammy.

Hell, and that was the way of madness.

He should go back to sleep, he thought. He’d only had two hours’ sleep. There was no reason to get up.

But Tammy was somewhere down in the woods, playing with a chainsaw.

He wasn’t going near Tammy. He was going home.

Yeah, right. He glanced down again at the linking of his large hand with the tiny one of his little cousin and he knew he was doing no such thing. He’d stay here today. He wouldn’t go near Tammy, though. Hell, a man had some pride and if she thought…

She thought nothing. She wanted nothing from him. She didn’t dress to attract. He’d seen her dressed to kill, but that had only been to stop Ingrid treating her as a poor relation. When Marc was around she didn’t care what she wore.

Had she even noticed that he was a man?

Of course she had. When he’d kissed her she’d kissed him right back.

The memory of those kisses was enough to make him groan and shove a pillow over his head. Hell, he didn’t respond like that to women. He didn’t.

He’d care for Henry today, and at dinner tonight he’d have it out with Tammy. They had to sort out some sort of sensible arrangement. She must agree to take on Henry’s permanent care.

He had to get out of here before he went nuts.

The day seemed endless. More than once Marc looked longingly at the housekeeping bell, but something held him back. Maybe it was the way Henry clung to him. Maybe it was the way the baby chortled when he tried to make him laugh, or maybe it was the thought of Tammy’s scorn if she returned to the house and found Henry handed over to the servants.

It wasn’t just Tammy, he conceded as the day wore on. It was the thought of Henry’s distress. The baby had somehow crept around his heart, and he didn’t have a clue what to do with how he was feeling.

He’d care for Henry today, but tonight he’d hand him over to Tammy and escape, he thought. Immediately! The way he figured it, if this was how he felt then Tammy must feel the same. He’d call her bluff. If he found it hard to dump Henry with the servants, then Tammy would find it impossible.

All it needed was his departure. So…he’d stick around until dinnertime tonight and then he’d go.

It was a really long day.

Tammy didn’t return to the house for lunch. She’d taken a packed lunch, Mrs Burchett told him, and the compulsion to carry Henry down through the beech grove to see what she was doing became almost overwhelming.

He did take Henry outdoors. The baby loved the garden, and to his own astonishment Marc found himself wandering round talking to the little boy as if he could really understand.

‘This is what you’ll inherit one day, Henry. Your responsibility. And your pleasure.’

And there was pleasure, he discovered. He’d always found this place oppressive, but today it was somehow different. The lakes and formal gardens, and beyond them the acres and acres of woodland, looked different. He found he was looking at it with Tammy’s eyes and finding it wonderful.

Tammy would do wonders with this place.

His steps turned involuntarily towards the beech grove. ‘Your Aunty Tammy is just through here…’

But he stopped himself-somehow. They’d lead different lives, Tammy had decreed, and he could only agree with her. He must.

So instead of taking Henry to see his aunty wielding a chainsaw he forced his steps back to the house. A couple of storybooks later and a good dinner and Henry was asleep. Finally.

Maybe he could leave now.

It was five o’clock. Henry was deeply asleep. Tammy had agreed to take over his care from seven o’clock, and it’d be a miracle if Henry woke before then. Mrs Burchett could easily and safely keep an eye on him. He could just walk out the door right now and drive away and that would be that.

But his laptop was still set up with his work on it, and it was sort of easier just to sit next to his big bed where Henry lay sleeping and make plans for a proper irrigation system-one where the pipes didn’t go up the mountain-and keep an eye on Henry as well. After all, if he woke…

Or he could just watch him and think about Tammy…

And then it was too late. ‘Dinner’s in ten minutes,’ Dominic told him. ‘Miss Tammy’s in the front salon. I’ve lit the fire.’

It sounded really good to him, and walking away now would be boorish. Wouldn’t it?

Tammy was in jeans.

Marc had dressed as he normally dressed for dinner in any of the royal residences-in a dark suit and tie-and her appearance by the fire set him aback. Maybe he’d grown accustomed to her in her sister’s gorgeous dresses. The jeans she was wearing were clean and fresh, but still they jarred.

‘I’m not a princess,’ she said, jutting her chin as he paused in the doorway and he thought, How the hell did she know what I was thinking?

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You were thinking I should have dressed appropriately. I have.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I think you do.’ She was eyeing him cautiously, noting the dark shadows under his eyes. ‘You didn’t go back to sleep, huh?’

He was thrown completely off balance. ‘After you left…?’

‘You need to sleep when you can with babies,’ she advised him kindly. ‘You can catch up tomorrow, but after that you might like to readjust your schedule.’

‘Look, Tammy-’

‘Shall we eat?’

‘No!’ It was almost an expletive. He crossed the three steps between them and gripped her shoulders, forcing her to meet his eyes. He had to make her see. ‘This plan of yours is crazy.’

‘Why is it crazy?’ Maybe he’d intended her to be thrown off balance by his nearness-by his gripping her like this-but the gaze that met his was direct and clear. ‘It’s the only possible plan in the circumstances.’

‘You came here to care for your nephew.’

‘I told you exactly why I came,’ she retorted. ‘I came to see that he’s loved and well looked after. You love him. You can look after him.’

‘I don’t love him.’

‘Don’t you?’ She smiled then, her eyes crinkling at the edges in a way he was starting to really, really like. ‘Maybe you don’t,’ she agreed cordially. ‘Yet. But I’ve seen his response to you and I’ve seen that you can’t bear for him to suffer. I might not have been near the palace today but I have my spies.’

‘What the hell-?’

‘I’ve had progress reports all day.’ It was as if he was across the room from her. She seemed completely unaware that he was still gripping her. ‘The staff told me about every move you made. You couldn’t bear to let him be, even when he was asleep.’

‘I don’t-’

‘You don’t do love?’ she said thoughtfully. ‘So you say. So everyone says. You’re a womaniser who goes from one relationship to another. But Henry’s not like that. Henry’s not a woman you can walk away from. Marc, you’ve never let yourself love anyone since your mother died, and here’s Henry about to cure you in a way that you never imagined possible.’

Her reply left him speechless. Almost. ‘For God’s sake,’ he told her, ‘when will you get it into your thick head that I don’t want to be cured?’

‘You don’t want to be loved?’

‘No!’

‘And you don’t think that maybe you’ve fallen head over heels in love with your little cousin?’

‘No!’

‘Liar.’

They were inches apart now. Her colour was heightened but still she met his gaze, unflinching. ‘I’m not going to let you walk away from this, you know,’ she told him. ‘Not now. I reared my sister practically single-handed and she broke my heart at the end of it. If you leave me in sole charge of Henry the same thing could happen again. But I’m not going to let it. I need help, and you’re it.’

‘You’re afraid.’ He said it with a note of discovery in his voice and saw her flinch. But still she met his eyes.

‘Yes,’ she agreed, with only a hint of a tremor in her voice. ‘Yes, I am. But at least I acknowledge it and I’m doing something about it.’

‘By coercing me…’

‘No one’s coercing you but your own heart. You could have walked away from Henry today and left him with Mrs Burchett. What held you back?’

‘You,’ he said explosively, and saw that damned smile peep out again.

‘What? Me?’

‘You are the most infuriating woman…the rudest, pushiest, mostly badly dressed…’

‘Hey!’

‘What?’

‘I’m not badly dressed. I’m dressed just fine for where I belong. Which isn’t here.’

‘You belong here.’

‘No.’

‘You do,’ he told her, goaded beyond endurance. ‘You think just because you speak in that damned Australian accent and swing from trees and carry chainsaws…’

‘That I can’t be royalty? Then I’d be right.’

‘You’d be wrong.’

‘If you want a princess bring back Ingrid. She’s aching-’

‘Damn Ingrid!’

‘Why on earth,’ she said slowly-thoughtfully, even-‘would I want to damn Ingrid?’

Silence. The tension in the room was almost unbearable. It was way past serving time, but Dominic was standing on the other side of the oak doors and he wasn’t entering for worlds. It was far below his dignified standing as royal butler to put his ear against the door, but he did have to wait for a pause in the conversation after all-and if his ear happened to be perilously close…

There was nothing to hear any more. Tammy was gazing up at Marc, her eyes bright with tension and the traces of anger clearly written on her face. And Marc was staring down at her, goaded beyond bearing.

Why would she want to damn Ingrid?

For no reason at all, he thought savagely. Ingrid didn’t come into the equation.

Her eyes were still watching him, bright with enquiry. His hands still gripped her shoulders and held, and she didn’t pull away. Why should she?

Why should she indeed?

And the fine line beyond forbearance and fury was broken. He was only human after all. He was a man…

Once more he pulled her into his arms and kissed her.