What, in God’s name, had Lotty been thinking?
‘Would you like some tea?’ Caro asked.
Tea? It was eight o’clock in the evening! Who in their right mind drank tea at this hour? Philippe stifled a sigh. He’d need more than tea to get himself through this mess he’d somehow got himself into.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve got anything stronger?’
‘If I’d known you were coming I would have stocked up on the Krug,’ she said sharply. ‘As it is, you’ll have to make do with herbal tea.’
Philippe liked to think of himself as imperturbable, but he clearly wasn’t guarding his expression as well as he normally did, because amusement tugged at the corner of Caroline Cartwright’s generous mouth. ‘I can offer nettle, gingko, milk thistle…’
The dark blue eyes gleamed. She was making fun of him, Philippe realised.
‘Whatever you’re having,’ he said, irritated by the fact that he sounded stiff and pompous.
He was never pompous. He was never stiff either. He was famous for being relaxed, in fact. There was just something about this girl that rubbed him up the wrong way. Philippe felt as if he’d strayed into a different world, where the usual rules didn’t apply. He should be at some bar drinking cocktails with a gorgeous woman who knew just how the game should be played, not feeling disgruntled in this tip of a house being offered tea— and herbal tea at that!—by a girl who thought he was amusing.
‘A mug of dandelion and horny goat weed tea coming up,’ she said. ‘Sit down, I’ll just be a minute.’
Philippe couldn’t wait.
With a sigh, he pushed aside the clutter on the sofa and sat down. He’d let Lotty talk him into this, and now he was going to have to go through with it. And it suited him, Philippe remembered. If Caroline Cartwright was half what Lotty said she was, she would be ideal.
She’s not pretty, exactly, Lotty had said. She’s more interesting than that.
Caro certainly wasn’t pretty, but she had a mobile face, with a long upper lip and expressive eyes as dark and blue as the ocean. Philippe could see that she might have the potential to be striking if she tidied herself up and put on some decent clothes. Not his type, of course—he liked his women slender and sophisticated, and Caro was neither—but that was all to the good. The whole point was for her to be someone he wouldn’t want to get involved with.
And vice versa, of course.
So he was feeling a little more optimistic when Caro came in bearing two mugs of what looked like hot ditchwater.
Philippe eyed his mug dubiously, took a cautious sip and only just refrained from spitting it out.
Caro laughed out loud at his expression. ‘Revolting, isn’t it?’
‘God, how do you drink that stuff?’ Philippe grimaced and pushed the mug away. Perhaps he made more of a deal about it than he would normally have done, but he needed the excuse to hide his reaction to her smile. It had caught him unawares, like a step missed in the dark. Her face had lit up, and he’d felt the same dip of the stomach, the same lurch of the heart.
And her laugh … that laugh! Deep and husky and totally unexpected, it was a tangible thing, a seductive caress, the kind that drained all the blood from your head and sent it straight to your groin while it tangled your breathing into knots.
‘It’s supposed to be good for you,’ Caro was saying, examining her own tea without enthusiasm. ‘I’m on a diet. No alcohol, no caffeine, no carbohydrates, no dairy products … basically, no anything that I like,’ she said glumly.
‘It doesn’t sound much fun.’ Philippe had managed to get his lungs working again, which was a relief. Her laugh had surprised him, that was all, he decided. A momentary aberration. But listen to him now, his voice as steady as a rock. Sort of.
‘It isn’t.’ Caro sighed and blew on her tea.
She had been glad to escape to the kitchen. Philippe’s presence seemed to have sucked all the air out of the house. How was it that she had never noticed before how suffocatingly small it was? There was a strange, squeezed feeling inside her, and she fumbled with the mugs, as clumsy and self-conscious as she had been at fifteen.
Philippe’s supercilious expression as he looked around the cosy sitting room had stung, Caro admitted, and she had enjoyed his expression when she had offered the tea. Well, they couldn’t all spend their lives drinking champagne, and it wouldn’t do him any harm to have tea instead for once.
Caro thought about him waiting in the sitting room, looking faintly disgusted and totally out of place. In wealth and looks and glamour, he was so out of her league it was ridiculous. But that was a good thing, she decided, squeezing the teabags with a spoon. It meant there was no point in trying to impress him, even if she had been so inclined. She could just be herself.
‘I’m reinventing myself,’ she told him now. ‘My fiancé left me for someone who’s younger and thinner and more fun, and then I lost my job,’ she said. ‘I had a few months moping around but now I’ve pulled myself together. At least I’m trying to. No more misery eating. I’m going to get fit, lose weight, change my life, meet a nice man, live happily ever after … you know, realistic, achievable goals like that.’
Philippe raised an eyebrow. ‘It’s a lot to expect from drinking tea.’
‘The tea’s a start. I mean, if I can’t stick with this, how am I supposed to stick with all the other life-changing stuff?’ Caro took a sip to prove her point, but even she couldn’t prevent an instinctive wrinkling of the nose. ‘But you didn’t come here to talk about my diet,’ she reminded him. ‘You’re here about Lotty.’
‘AH, YES,’ said Philippe. ‘Lotty.’
Caro put down her mug at his tone. ‘Is she OK? I had a very cryptic email from her. She said you would explain about some idea she’d had.’
‘She’s fine,’ he said, ‘and yes, I am supposed to be explaining, but it’s hard to know where to start. Presumably you know something of the situation in Montluce at the moment?’
‘Well, I know Lotty’s father died last year.’
The sudden death of Crown Prince Amaury had shocked everyone. He had been a gentle man, completely under the thumb of his formidable mother as far as Caro could tell, and Lotty was his only child. She had taken her dead mother’s place at his side as soon as she’d left finishing school, and had never put a foot wrong.
Lotty was the perfect princess, always smiling, always beautiful, endlessly shaking hands and sitting through interminable banquets and never, ever looking bored. There were no unguarded comments from Lotty for the press to seize upon, no photos posted on the internet. No wild parties, no unsuitable relationships, not so much as a whiff of scandal.
‘Since then,’ Philippe said carefully, ‘things have been. rather unsettled.’
‘Unsettled’ was a bit of an understatement, in Caro’s opinion. Montluce was one of the last absolute monarchies in Europe, and had been in the iron grip of the Montvivennes family since Charlemagne. Small as it was, the country was rigidly traditional, and the ruling family even more so. Lotty’s grandmother, known as the Dowager Blanche, was only the latest in line of those who made the British royal family’s attitude to protocol look slapdash.
Since Lotty’s