‘Which is what I want,’ she whispered into the dark, ‘isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ her mind screamed but there was a tiny part of her that was stubbornly refusing to agree.
Why had he kissed her? Did he have no sense at all?
Yes, he’d agreed to take on the Regency, but that was as far as it went. He didn’t want to get any more fond of Matty than he already was, and he sure as hell didn’t want to get any more fond of Matty’s mother.
But he’d kissed her.
The thought shocked him. He hadn’t known what he intended to do until it happened and then…then it was too late. It was lucky that Kelly had sense for the pair of them.
It’s like quicksand, he thought savagely, the royal quagmire hauling him in.
He thought back to the days after his father’s accident. Up until then, Rafael had been cool with being royal. Kass, his older cousin, had been an arrogant, egotistical bore. Worried about the influence Kass might have, his parents had sent Rafael to boarding school. He’d thoroughly enjoyed it, but he’d loved coming back in the holidays. He’d lived on horseback, roaming this beautiful little country with an ever-growing appreciation.
But then his father had been injured, and over the course of one summer life had changed. Kass and his father had simply cut off the brother and uncle who’d once been useful to them, but whose use-by date had been the moment he’d become uncomfortable to look at.
The last time he’d come outside… It had been just before Rafael was due to go back to school. Laura had convinced her husband to get some sun, so she and Rafael had pushed him into the garden.
Kass had walked past and had stopped dead. ‘He’s not to stay here,’ he’d said harshly, speaking to Laura and not directly to his uncle. ‘It upsets the staff. It makes me feel sick. He’s not to come within sight of the castle.’
That one vicious order had been enough to make Rafael’s father return to the house. He’d died two months later, without having set foot in the garden again.
Rafael had made that vow as well. There was no way he ever intended to be of use to royalty. He wouldn’t set foot in the castle. He’d hoped his mother would move. She hadn’t and their access to each other had become confined to Laura’s visits to the States.
And now, like it or not, here he was—of use to royalty as his father had once been of use to the old Prince and to Kass. It made him feel ill.
And tonight he’d kissed Kass’s wife.
Why?
It was a web, he thought, a fine, gossamer web drawing him in tighter and tighter. Conscience and duty had him stuck here.
Like Kelly was stuck.
She wasn’t stuck, he thought savagely. She could stay up in her attic and be an academic and not do anything, not be a part of it. Or do as she’d done tonight, emerge from her attic for a moment and then retreat the moment things got intense.
So why had he kissed her?
‘Because I’m a fool,’ he told the darkness and he rolled over in the royal bed and thought he could roll over six or seven times and not reach the edge.
‘It’s ludicrous.
‘It’s life as you’ll know it for the next twenty years,’ he said grimly. ‘So get used to it. And keep your hands off that woman!’
KELLY woke to the sound of shouting in the forecourt. For a moment she couldn’t remember where she was—the strange bed and the thick stone walls and narrow casement windows confused her. Then, as the events of the last few days flooded back, her bedroom door was flung open and Matty launched himself across her bed.
‘Uncle Rafael’s toys are here,’ he said. ‘Mama, come and see. Come and see.’
‘I don’t…’
‘You have to come,’ he said before she could protest. ‘There’s pancakes for breakfast and Cook’s made heaps and heaps ’cos the truck drivers have come all the way from the border this morning and Anna’s here and she’s really crabby and I’ll sit on your bed and wait for you to get dressed.’
She stared at her little son, helpless in the face of his enthusiasm. How could she tell him she’d been thinking of putting a little kitchenette up here, so that she didn’t have to go down to the royal kitchens?
What sort of mother would say that?
He wanted her to come.
She peered through the casement. Men were unloading vast crates, carrying them into the main entrance.
‘Where’s Rafael?’
‘He’s in the dungeons,’ Matty said with relish, as if the dungeons were truly gruesome. ‘Cook said once upon a time there were ghosts in our dungeons with clanking chains, but Uncle Rafael said that the best way to get rid of ghosts is to bury them with sawdust. He’s working already. Anna says he’s burying his head in the sand but I think he’s burying it in sawdust.’
‘Well,’ Kelly said cautiously, digesting this with care. She’d spent a lot of time figuring things out before she’d gone to sleep. Rafael had kissed her. Rafael was a de Boutaine. The man was obviously a womaniser, just like Kass.
She could deal with this situation, she thought. Disdain—that was the way to go. And distance.
‘Maybe if Rafael’s working I can come down to breakfast.’
‘And then come to the stables?’ Matty pleaded. ‘Will you come riding?’
‘I don’t ride,’ she said flatly. She pushed back her bedcovers. The silk dress was draped over the bedside chair. She pushed it back so it fell on to the floor behind, out of sight. ‘Sorry, Matty, but that’s an absolute.’
It was like a vast family. The huge kitchen was filled with people and noise and food.
For Kelly, whose only experience at the castle was silence, fear and formality, the sight that met her eyes as she walked into the kitchen was almost astonishing.
There was a big, buxom woman flipping pancakes in the world’s biggest frying-pan on the vast electric range. There were two younger girls, one stirring what seemed to be a vat of batter, the other peeling a mound of potatoes a foot high. The men Kelly had seen carting the crates were seated at one end of the table, wrapping themselves round mounds of the pancakes, looking as if all their Christmases had come at once. Laura was there, talking to a man Kelly recognized as Crater. Crater. The sight of him made her flinch. She hadn’t seen him since she’d arrived yesterday.
There was a younger woman as well—tall, almost statuesque, looking svelte in cream linen trousers and a lovely Aran pullover. Her blonde hair was piled high in an elegantly casual knot, she wore fabulous, dangling silver earrings and she looked amazing.
Kelly recognized her from the photograph she’d seen on the Internet—Anna.
‘I’ve brought Mama down to breakfast,’ Matty said in his clear voice, and everyone in the kitchen turned and looked at her. Kelly wanted to run.
But Matty had her hand and was tugging her forward. ‘I said we were having pancakes so she came,’ he said and Crater rose from his seat next to Laura and came round the table with his hand outstretched in welcome.
‘Princess Kellyn. Your Highness.’
‘Kelly,’ she whispered, and dropped Matty’s hand and backed instinctively away. The last time she’d talked to this man he’d been talking through the impossibility of her ever seeing her son again.