Princess Of Convenience

CHAPTER TEN

HE DIDN’T take her to her bedroom.

They reached the turn in the corridor she knew and he turned left and not right.

‘Hey,’ she said and wriggled, and his hold on her tightened.

‘Yes, my darling?’

‘I am not your darling,’ she told him.

In reply he stooped and kissed her, effectively silencing her. Then, with his mouth only half an inch from hers, he whispered, ‘Hush, my love. We’re being followed.’

‘Followed?’

She glanced back over his shoulder. No easy feat this, glancing over the shoulder of the man who was carrying her. It involved a certain amount of contortion as he wasn’t loosening his hold and she felt a little like a minnow enveloped in a sea of embroidered satin-but somehow she did it.

There were men in the corridor behind them. Suits. There were suits following them?

‘Um…who?’

‘It’s the Minister for the Crown,’ he told her, ‘and his minions.’

That jolted her. Badly.

‘Please tell me they’re not intending to watch,’ she demanded, and he smiled.

‘No. We’re not in the Dark Ages.’

‘Then why are they here?’

‘They’ll settle outside the bedroom door and check we stay together overnight.’

‘Who said you’re not in the Dark Ages?’

‘It’s better than them watching. It’s a compromise and if we don’t agree to their presence then our wedding may be deemed not to be consummated.’ He hesitated. ‘There’d be no problem if you agreed to stay forever. Jess, I’d really like you to consider the advantages. You know, there are advantages-for all of us. Resettling here, bringing your work here, having us take care of you… But if you’re intent on leaving…’

For heaven’s sake, what was he proposing? ‘Of course I’m leaving.’

‘Then Marcel will fight to have the marriage annulled. I told you this.’

‘Yeah, but I didn’t really believe you,’ she said darkly. ‘It seemed a bit of a joke. Raoul…’

‘Let’s just go with the flow, shall we?’

She was so confused-but how could she not go with the flow? When he was holding her tightly against him? When he was making her feel…?

Ridiculous?

No. Not ridiculous. But there were no words to describe how she was feeling right now.

‘So where are you taking me?’

‘To the bridal chamber,’ he said, smiling his reassurance.

‘The bridal chamber!’

‘Just shut up and be appreciative,’ he told her. ‘You’re a princess for a night. Why not lie back and enjoy it?’

‘I’ll stand up, thank you very much.’

‘If you like.’ He grinned. ‘Whatever takes your fancy.’

‘Raoul…’

‘Yes, dear?’

‘You’re asking for your ears to be boxed.’

‘Not in front of witnesses,’ he told her. ‘Let’s wait until we get behind closed doors and then you can do anything to me that you want. I promise.’

Which left her speechless.

Her speechless state lasted until she reached the bridal chamber. Then she opened her mouth to speak, but discovered she was speechless all over again.

Marcel’s edict that no staff work in the castle must have gone out the window the moment it was realised that Raoul was married. Now two uniformed footmen flung open a pair of ornate oak doors. They ushered the newly marrieds inside, and closed the doors behind them.

Jess tried to say thank you-and failed.

From the firm hold of her husband’s arms, she gazed around and she gasped in stunned wonder.

‘Christopher Columbus,’ she breathed at last, and Raoul smiled. In truth, he looked more than a little gobsmacked himself. ‘Raoul, put me down.’

He did-but it seemed he did so reluctantly. And she stood, but she missed the feel of his arms.

Concentrate on the room, she told herself fiercely. Concentrate on the apartment.

It was certainly worth concentrating on.

Vast and opulent, the rooms dripped with crimson velvet and white satin canopies. Huge white settees were piled with white velvet cushions. More cushions were scattered over the floor-mounds and mounds of cushions on a carpet that was so thick that the pile hid her toes.

A huge fireplace blazed out a gentle heat, warming every corner.

What else? There were balloons, glistening white and silver and tied in vast bunches with white satin ribbon. Someone must have been working here all day putting the final touches to this opulent glory.

She gazed around her in wonder. The bathroom led off to the left. There was a sunken bathtub, as big as a small swimming pool, gently steaming and infinitely inviting. The tub was in the shape of a Botticelli shell.

‘That’s indecent,’ she said, and Raoul raised his brows and wiggled them in suggestive laughter.

‘It looks pretty damned good to me,’ he told her. ‘And it’s not indecent until we’re in it. Doing stuff.’

She glared. ‘Which we’re not going to be.’

‘Not?’

‘I may just try it on my own,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster. She turned her back on her husband-and turned her attention to the bedroom.

And saw the bed.

‘You could sleep a small army in that bed,’ she gasped-and Raoul looked through and nodded. Gravely.

‘I’d guess this must have been the troops’ quarters in the past.’

‘Oh, right. I can just see a whole regiment tucked up in that bed.’ She couldn’t suppress a smile at the thought, and some of the tension eased. A little. ‘This is amazing.’

‘Isn’t it just,’ he said, and his voice was as wondering as hers.

She turned and stared at him, surprised. ‘Haven’t you ever been in here?’

‘Not that I can remember,’ he told her. ‘When I was a kid I was never allowed in this section of the palace. Henri and Mama arranged that we come here tonight. They said it was appropriate.’ He stared around for a bit more in appreciation. ‘I don’t know about appropriate,’ he told her, ‘but it’s pretty good, huh?’

‘Um…right.’

He eyed her with caution. ‘Right?’

‘Right,’ she said, and glowered. Somehow a glower seemed necessary. In the face of his wonder. In the face of…him. She needed weapons here, she thought. She needed all the weapons she could muster and a glower was all she had.

And sense. She had to be sensible.

‘The bedroom’s mine,’ she told him. ‘You can have the rest.’

‘Don’t you need access to the bathroom?’

‘I’ll use two feet along the far wall to get there. When you’re not in it.’

‘You want to build a dividing wall?’ he asked, entering into the spirit of things. ‘With cushions? Hey, we could divide the bath. One of us on either side of the shell. Only maybe cushions wouldn’t work as a barrier.’ His face fell. ‘They might get soggy.’

‘Don’t be facetious.’

‘You don’t think you might be just the faintest bit paranoid?’

‘I’m not paranoid. I’m just…’

‘Yes?’

‘Scared,’ she said and the glower went out of her, just like that.

‘Scared of me?’ His laughter had died, too. He was looking down at her with tenderness and that was worse. It made her feel a whole lot more scared.

‘Raoul, we can’t do this.’

‘We can’t what?’

‘Have a marriage.’

‘No.’ He put a finger under her chin, tilting her face, forcing her to look up into his eyes. ‘No, we can’t.’ His look softened and his voice lowered. ‘I don’t think any real marriage is possible until we both move on from the past. I’m starting to think that maybe I’m prepared to take a risk, but you…maybe you’re not ready to do that. Are you?’

‘N…no.’

‘Then what I suggest is this,’ he told her, and he released her and turned away, seeming to search for something. ‘I asked Henri to find this. I’ve been waiting for this for almost thirty years and…yes!’

‘Yes?’ she said, cautiously bemused. Her royal prince was down on his hands and knees now, delving under a huge mahogany desk by the window.

‘He found it,’ he said, triumphant. ‘He’s left it here for me. Good old Henri.’

‘What?’ There was an element of surrealism behind this, she thought. Bride in mediaeval gown, in truly splendid bridal chamber, watching husband in full regimentals-he was still wearing his sword!-crawling under a desk. Hauling out a huge wooden box with a hinged lid.

‘It’s my slot-car set,’ he said and the level of satisfaction in his voice made her stare.

‘Your slot-car set.’

‘I turned six the day before my father kicked us out of the palace,’ he told her. ‘But on my sixth birthday I was given the sort of slot-car set any small boy dreams of. It’s sat here untouched for nearly thirty years and you can’t imagine how many times I thought of it with regret. It’s dumb, I know, but one of the first things I thought of when I knew I had to come back here was this. Then tonight…I figured if we had to stay locked in here all night and you intended to be cold and distant, then I was going to get it out and use it. So I asked Henri to search the attics and see if he could find it.’

A slot-car set. It was so far away from everything she’d been thinking that she couldn’t believe it. She stood and her jaw felt as if it was hitting her ankles.

But something had to be cleared up first.

‘I don’t intend to be cold and distant.’

‘What else do you call making cushion walls in the bath?’

He was impossible. ‘You really do want to play with your slot-cars?’

‘What else are we going to do? Beside divide rooms with cushions.’ He raised his eyebrows and grinned-a grin of pure mischief. ‘Unless you’ve changed your mind. It is a bridal suite, after all. We can always indulge in a spot of seduction. Seduction’s good.’ He wiggled his eyebrows some more. Seduction at its most alluring.

He didn’t know how alluring.

‘Play with your slot-cars,’ she told him-but she smiled. How could she not smile in the face of this man’s delight?

He sighed-but he moved on. ‘You can play, too, if you want,’ he told her and he grinned up at her again as he hauled his box open. ‘There’s a blue car and a red car and two controllers. And so much road… Bridges and tunnels and everything. It’s never been used. What a tragedy.’ He paused. ‘But maybe you’re not even up to playing with slot-cars. Do you want to go into the bedroom and lock the door?’

She hesitated.

She eyed him-cautiously.

She eyed the cars coming out of their box. They’d obviously been state-of-the-art thirty years ago. They looked amazing.

The decision was suddenly easy. ‘I want red,’ she declared and stooped to pick up her little red car. A Porsche. ‘It’s not a Lamborghini,’ she said, sighing, ‘but I guess the peasants have to make do with what they can get.’

He smirked. ‘The blue one’s a Lamborghini.’

‘I knew that.’

‘So why did you choose red?’

‘Red’s my colour.’ Thoroughly distracted, thoroughly disconcerted but thoroughly intrigued, she was now kneeling on the floor, pulling things out of his magic box. They had enough roadway to go all around the room. And the bridges were amazing. ‘Cool!’

‘I can so see that red’s your colour,’ he told her, eyeing her burnished curls with appreciation. ‘Blue’s royal. Red’s for temper. I can wear that.’

‘Raoul…’

‘Mm?’

She was way out of her depth and she knew it. What was she supposed to say?

She said the only thing she could think of.

‘Raoul, shut up and build.’

‘Yes, Your Highness.’

So they built, and they raced, and it was the craziest, funniest night that Jess could remember.

Maybe there had been great nights in the past, back in her childhood, nights where all else was forgotten in the face of pure fun, but an appalling marriage followed by tragedy had driven any such memory from her mind.

She wouldn’t forget this night. This was a night to remember forever.

It took an hour to set up the track. In the face of such an intriguing challenge, Jess’s exhaustion fell away. People around her at the reception, making polite conversation, appraising her as a princess, had made her feel dizzy with fatigue. But here… Here she got her second wind.

Raoul was trying to set up his complicated loop before she built her bridge. He was pinching the pieces she wanted. She’d slept this afternoon. She wasn’t truly tired. Besides, how could a girl go tamely into her bedroom and close the door with such a construction happening on the other side?

She couldn’t.

Especially as Raoul was here.

He’d hauled off his sash, his suit coat, his shoes, his tie and his sword. He still looked like a prince but he looked like…her prince. Yes, he was still very much a prince, she thought, and then tried hard not to think about it.

On the other hand, she was no longer a princess. She’d kicked off her sandals and taken off the great overskirt with train. She was still wearing the bodice and the silken underskirt but-after some hesitation-she’d asked Raoul to loosen the stays that were flattening her breasts. With the ties at the back unfastened, her breasts bounced up again, free. That was a crucial moment in the night. Raoul eyed the swell beneath her loosened bodice. He eyed her-and decided wisely to say nothing.

With that decision safely past, she relaxed. The tension eased.

They were free; two kids with their slot-car set.

The cars were fantastic, and the road they made was amazing; tunnels, bridges, sweeping curves that looped round and round the room. It made the racing excellent. Once the road was finished they raced in earnest. They pushed their cars to the limit, the curves making them overturn, sweep off the sides, fly off into the carpet, crash against each other…

Jess was caught up in a bubble of laughter that wouldn’t go away and Raoul’s rich chuckle sounded out over and over again.

‘You know, those guys outside from the ministry are going to think there’s something really kinky going on in here,’ Jess declared as they stopped laughing for long enough to line up for their final race. They’d decided on the best of three races. Then the best of five. Then the best of seventeen. Now it was the best of forty-seven. They were twenty-three wins apiece, the tiny cars were starting to smell of burned rubber and their little engines were starting to fade.

They lined them up and counted down. Round and round flew the cars, squealing against the rails, clashing against each other, screaming into the next lap, hitting full gear, fast, faster, faster…

They hit the kerb by the bedpost. Raoul’s car clipped her rear tyre. Her tiny red Porsche did a double back somersault and flew into the air.

And hit Raoul beneath the eye.

‘Ouch!’ He fell back against the bed, laughing so hard he could hardly hold his hand to his face. But with his spare hand he was still gripping the controls. Pressing harder…

The crash had done its damage. His tiny blue Lamborghini slowed. It slowed still further.

It stopped six inches from the finish.

Raoul looked sideways at his opposition-and reached out a finger and pushed it over the finishing line.

‘Hey.’ Jess retrieved her little car, which was smoking ominously from the rear end. It was going to need major love to get it going again. ‘You’re not allowed to push.’

‘There’s no rule that says I’m not allowed to push.’

‘I’ll bet there is. You’ve won by foul means.’

‘Whereas you’ve won by throwing a car at me,’ he told her. ‘You’ve even drawn blood. Talk about foul means.’

‘Blood?’ she said cautiously. ‘You can’t be serious.’

‘It’s serious.’ He lifted his fingers and revealed a scratch a quarter of an inch long. ‘I think it’s mortal.’

She couldn’t stop laughing. The room was a shambles. As a honeymoon suite, it made a great Formula One track.

‘Let me see again?’ she demanded and he lifted his hand away.

‘I think I need plasma,’ he said, mournfully. ‘And I’m a doctor. I’d know. Or at least a kiss better.’ He looked hopeful.

‘I have a better idea. I’ll stitch it,’ she told him. ‘You might be a doctor but I can sew!’

‘Get away from me.’ Still he was laughing. ‘And don’t distract me from what really matters. I demand complete disqualification on the grounds of attack.’

‘You don’t know what attack is.’

‘I won,’ he said smugly.

‘You cheated.’

‘The royal decree is that I won.’

‘I’m royal, too,’ she told him. ‘And my royal decree is that you cheated.’

‘I’m more royal than you are.’

For answer she lifted a cushion-and tossed. The big, squishy cushion fell plump against his face.

He let it fall, then eyed her with caution. He took his hand away from his face and checked his fingers. The really very minor scratch had stopped bleeding.

‘I might live,’ he said grudgingly.

‘If you think you’re getting a sympathy victory, think again. Wuss.’

‘Wuss?’ He lifted a cushion. ‘You can’t call a prince of the blood a wuss.’

‘I can call a prince whinging about an infinitesimal scratch anything I want.’ She eyed the cushion he was raising with a certain amount of trepidation. ‘Don’t you dare.’

‘All’s fair,’ he said softly ‘in love and war.’

He tossed the cushion straight at her.

She lifted her hand to ward it off. Her hand was still holding the tiny, scratched and battered racing car. The car caught the side of the down-filled cushion-and it ripped.

Feathers flew from one end of the room to another.

She sneezed. She was laughing so much there were feathers going into her mouth. She was blinded by a sea of white down.

‘Where are you?’ Raoul was fighting feathers, pushing them away from him, laughing as much as she was. ‘Hell, woman, I can’t fight you if I can’t see you.’

He was reaching for her in the feathers.

‘There are more cushions where they came from,’ she managed, spluttering. ‘And you threw it.’

‘So I did.’

He reached for her.

She reached for a cushion.

She reached the cushion as he reached her. He seized her hands in his before she could lift it. He was gripping hard, trying to keep the cushion from smacking him in the face.

She was fighting him…fighting him…

‘Desist, woman,’ he spluttered.

And suddenly she wasn’t fighting him at all.

How it happened she could never after explain. One minute they were intent on killing each other with cushions. The next…

There was a patch in the carpet where there was no road, a looping curve with carpet in the centre. The rug was piled with feathers, and that was where they were.

He was holding her but he was no longer fighting. He was no longer defending himself from cushions.

He was pulling her against his chest, and she was sinking into him, still laughing but melting…melting into his arms as if everything that had happened in this night had been leading to this moment.

His mouth was claiming hers. His arms were holding her. He was laughing with her in a mixture of exasperation and laughter and tenderness, but the exasperation and the laughter were fading and the tenderness was growing. And with it…

With it an aching, surging need that had no hope of being denied. She was curving against his body as if she belonged, and that was how she felt.

For this moment-right now-this was her man. The vows she’d made… She’d made them as mock-vows-or she’d meant to make them as mock-vows-but her heart hadn’t caught up with her head, and her heart was screaming that she’d vowed to love and honour this man for the rest of her life.

As he’d vowed to love her. No wonder then that he was claiming her as his wife and there was no way she could gainsay him.

For she wanted him as much as he wanted her. More. He was the other half of her whole. They’d joined, loved, declared their commitment before God and man, and they’d been made one.

‘Raoul.’ Somehow she whispered his name. Somehow.

Raoul.

Her hands were under his shirt, feeling the raw strength of him, glorying in his masculinity. Her husband. Hers.

And he was claiming her. The last of the ties were being unfastened. Her bodice was falling away and she didn’t care.

Wrong. She did care. She wanted this. This man was her husband.

Her love.

A thought. A desperate little thought, made at the outer edges of her consciousness where only the last ragged shreds of sanity prevailed, surfaced and started screaming. No. But it had to be said.

‘Raoul, we can’t…’

He pulled away from her then. Just a little, and he was smiling in the firelight with such tenderness that he took her breath away.

‘Why can’t we-my wife?’

‘I… We don’t have protection. Raoul, I can’t…get pregnant.’

How had she found the strength to say it? She didn’t know but it was out. And she caught her breath in dismay.

She wanted him. Oh, she wanted him.

Where was the nearest convenience store to this place?

But there was no need. He was turning her in his arms, cradling her, holding her close but gesturing to something by the bedroom door.

On a hall stand there was a tiny bundle of things that looked like golden coins.

‘This is a bridal chamber,’ he told her, his voice husky with tenderness and with passion. ‘It comes supplied.’

She gasped. She tried to work up indignation.

She failed. ‘How…how…?’ she stammered. Then, ‘If they’ve been sitting there since the last marriage in this place-’

He silenced her with a kiss. When he drew back his eyes were even darker, more intense, loving her with his smile. ‘Henri told me he’d put them in here personally this afternoon,’ he told her. ‘Just in case.’

‘Well, good old Henri,’ she said-trying to make her voice dry. Trying not to let her voice crack with emotion.

‘He is good,’ Raoul told her, his dark eyes flaring with passion. ‘He’s wonderful. But he’s not as wonderful as you, my love.’ His voice lowered then, and it was suddenly husky with passion. ‘You know, I’ve never thought I could feel like I do now. All the decisions I made after Lisle’s death, that I couldn’t love anyone… Jess, I thought that I couldn’t love, because to love and lose again would break my heart. But I’m falling so hard for you. This love thing… Any minute I’m going to be so irrevocably tied that to lose you would tear me apart. I intend to hold you to me forever. Please God, forever.’

‘Oh, Raoul…’

It was too much. She was so close to tears, and all she could do was stare at him with eyes that were lost. Was he saying he loved her?

‘But you’ve lost, too, my love, and a child,’ he said softly and she knew he could see her pain. ‘And your loss is so much more recent-more raw than mine. The leap you’re making here now… I know how brave it is. For you to love me…’

What was he saying? ‘I don’t… I can’t…’

‘You do and you can,’ he said softly and he kissed her long and hard, so deeply that she knew his words were absolute truth. She loved him. Oh, yes, she loved him.

And did that love betray her love for Dominic?

She didn’t know. She couldn’t think straight. She couldn’t think at all. Not when he was smiling at her. Not when he was loving her, holding her as the most precious thing in the world.

He was her husband. Raoul.

‘And now, my beautiful bride, my princess…my love,’ he whispered, ‘would you like your true wedding setting to be the troop bed beyond? Or would you like your wedding night to be spent between the bridge and the second tunnel of the world’s best racing track?’

There was no need to answer.

She was right between the bridge and the second tunnel of the world’s best racing track.

She took his beloved face in her hands, she drew him into her. Her doubts about her baby son disappeared-to be faced at some time in the future but not now. Please…not now.

For tonight there was only Raoul.