What was he doing? He seldom had pudding. He had to get his mind back into gear. Now.
‘I don’t know the first thing about you,’ he said weakly to Rose as Walter headed off to fetch puddings for all. ‘How can we think about marriage?’
‘Are you worried?’ she asked. ‘I’m not an axe murderer. Nor a husband beater. Are you?’
He ignored the question. ‘Erhard says you’re widowed.’
‘Yes,’ she said in a voice that suddenly said ‘don’t go there’.
‘There’s no impediment to marriage,’ Erhard said, stepping into the breach.
‘Except that I don’t much want to be married,’ he said. Or he didn’t think he did. He hadn’t thought he did. There seemed to be two strands of thought here. The strand that he’d had before meeting Rose, and the post-Rose strand. Actually the ‘post-Rose’ was a really convoluted knot.
‘Neither do I,’ said Rose. ‘Isn’t that lucky? We wouldn’t need to stay married, would we, Erhard?’
‘Of course not,’ Erhard said. ‘This isn’t a happy-ever-after scenario I’m demanding of you. The idea is that you marry almost immediately. I’ll put the necessary paperwork in train, and then we present you to Alp de Montez as the Jacques-Julianna alternative. I’ve had private words with the committee. Nick, you stay in Alp de Montez for a few weeks, until things seem settled. Maybe a month. Then you use the excuse that you don’t want to give up your profession and return to London. Rose then stays in Alp de Montez until we can get things in train to get a decent government sorted. When affairs are under control, you can quietly divorce.’
‘You’d depend on Rose to get the affairs under control?’
‘You’re the international lawyer,’ Erhard said shrewdly. ‘I’m willing to wager you know exactly what can be done.’
He did. He’d been thinking about it all week. The chance to make a difference….
He’d never belonged. His mother, Zia, had left Alp de Montez as a troubled teenager. She’d ended up in Australia, addicted to drugs, pregnant with him. His childhood until he was eight had been a struggle to survive, lurching from fleeting intervals living with his increasingly erratic mother, to extended periods in a long string of foster homes.
Then Ruby had found him. She’d plucked him off the streets of Sydney, and from then on his base had been with Ruby and her tribe of foster sons. Ruby had given him security, but still he felt rootless.
At some really basic level Erhard’s proposition left him breathless. What had Rose said? An option ‘for the greater good’. It just might be the chance to make a difference.
He thought back to the frightened girl who’d been his mother. She’d want this. He knew she would. She’d been desperately homesick for Alp de Montez but there was no way her increasingly disgusted family would have funded her to go home.
He could go home on her behalf now. With this woman by his side.
Marriage. It wasn’t such a frightening thought if it was done for the right reasons. But were Rose’s reasons right? How could a woman like this want to marry a complete stranger?
She was his cousin.
No. She wasn’t even that, he thought. She was the product of his aunt-by-marriage’s affair with someone they knew nothing of.
It didn’t matter. She was gorgeous.
‘What about Julianna?’ he asked, looking for catches. ‘You can’t convince her to do the right thing?’
‘Julianna won’t speak to me,’ Erhard said.
‘But you?’ he asked Rose. ‘You’re her sister.’
‘She doesn’t speak to me either,’ Rose said sadly. ‘I know it’s dumb, but there it is.’
‘So this really is a serious proposition.’
‘It seems like it.’ She smiled ruefully into her empty wine-glass. ‘You know, I swore I’d never marry again.’
‘That’d be a waste.’
‘Says you, who’s never married at all,’ she retorted, suddenly sounding angry.
‘I’m sorry.’ But his thoughts were elsewhere. ‘I wouldn’t need to stay in Alp de Montez,’ he said slowly.
‘You would for a few weeks,’ Erhard said. ‘Could you use a holiday?’
A holiday. Strange concept. With Rose?
She really was the most extraordinary woman. Stunning.
‘Maybe I could,’ he said. ‘And you?’ he queried Rose. ‘How long would you have to be away from your vet practice?’
‘A year,’ Erhard said, answering for her. ‘At least. Maybe longer. I’m sorry, Rose, but it’d be more your commitment than Nick’s. You’d rule jointly, but it’s you who’s first in line. Unless anything happened to Julianna…’
‘Which isn’t going to happen,’ Rose said, and shivered. And then braced herself. ‘No matter. I’d have to close my doors anyway, and there are…reasons why that’s not such a terrible idea.’
‘I guess the idea of playing princess for a year would be fun,’ Nick ventured, and she frowned.
‘Now you’re being insulting,’ she retorted, and he paused.
Maybe he was.
There’s not so many times in your life that you’re presented with an option that just might be for the greater good.
She met his look with calm indifference, almost scorn. His gaze fell to her hands. Here was another difference—a huge difference—from the women he dated. This woman’s hands wouldn’t have looked out of place on a woman twenty years older. Work-worn hands, not something he saw a lot of.
But she was looking down at his hands, and he suddenly realised she knew exactly what he was thinking. His hands were those of an international lawyer. There was not a lot of work wear there.
If she was to have fun for a year, maybe there were reasons she deserved it, he thought. She’d lost a husband…
On the far side of the restaurant, a band struck up. It was a simple quartet, playing softly enough to not disturb the diners on this side of the restaurant. There was a small dance-floor, and a couple of diners rose and started dancing.
To Nick’s surprise Erhard rose. But not to dance.
‘No,’ he said as Nick rose as well. ‘I’m sorry.’ He sighed. ‘I’m not…completely well. If you’ll excuse me for a moment…’He looked across at the dance floor, almost wistfully. ‘Maybe you could dance while I’m away.’
‘I don’t—’ Nick started, but Erhard shook his head.
‘You do. My informants say you do. And so does Rose.’ He gave an uncertain smile at them both, but there was discomfort behind his eyes. ‘Excuse me. You go on.’ And he pressed his napkin to his lips and headed towards the rear of the restaurant.
Rose watched him go in concern. ‘He seems a nice man,’ she said. ‘He’s ill. I wonder what—’
‘He’s probably doing this to manipulate us,’ Nick retorted, and she smiled, but absently, still looking concerned.
‘I don’t think so. Even if he is, he’s doing it for the right reasons, and there is something wrong. I think.’
The silence stretched on. Behind them the band launched into a lively Latin-swing number.
Nick was already standing. He went to sit down again but then thought it seemed surly.
The