Wow! Under her cap, she felt her ears go pink with pleasure. Praise from Bert was hard to earn, and valued for what it was. She’d worked hard to get this far.
And for Bert to offer to withdraw his team on her behalf… Goodness!
But Alastair was still trying to speak. ‘I don’t—’
‘Look, what is it you want?’ Bert said, exasperated. ‘You’ve upset the lass, you’ve upset me. If you have anything reasonable to say, then say it. Now. In front of Penny-Rose. Clear the air, like. And then we can say no and get on with our work.’
‘I hope you won’t say no.’
Bert was getting angrier by the minute.
‘Well, what is it?’
‘As I said, I want to marry Penny-Rose,’ Alastair told him, putting his hands up as if to deflect the storm of protest he knew Bert was capable of. ‘I want to marry her for a year. As a business proposition. Nothing more.’
The silence went on for several moments. Penny-Rose stayed crouched by her stones. She wouldn’t look up but her fingers had ceased even trying to fit her rocks together.
This was crazy.
She left the answering to Bert, because she couldn’t think of a thing to say. Even the normally voluble Bert was having trouble.
‘Where I’m from,’ Bert said at last, in a voice that sounded as if he’d been winded, ‘people don’t take brides as business propositions. They take brides for life.’ His belligerent jaw jutted forward. ‘And just the one of them at that. The locals say you’re engaged to some woman up in the house. Well, then. You hang onto her and leave our Penny-Rose alone. Bigamy is something I don’t hold with and never shall, and if you so much as come near our lass—’
‘This isn’t bigamy.’
‘Look, I don’t know what your rules are—’
‘I imagine my rules are exactly the same as yours,’ Alastair said wearily, and once again his fingers raked his hair. He looked like he was finding this impossible. ‘I’m not intending to marry twice. Or…not at once.’
This was getting crazier and crazier.
‘What we want here,’ Bert said conversationally, and speaking to the world in general, ‘is a strait-jacket. Anyone got one?’
Amazingly, it was Penny-Rose who came to the prince’s defence. That last gesture of his had got to her. For some reason this didn’t seem like someone making indecent propositions. This seemed like a man at the end of his tether.
‘Give him a break, Bert.’ She rose and shrugged off some dirt. Then she stood back so there was distance—and Bert—between them, but her eyes met Alastair’s and held.
And her chin tilted. This was the look she used when she was meeting trouble head on, and she had a feeling she was meeting it now.
This man’s trouble.
‘Let him say what he wants,’ she told her boss. ‘He isn’t making sense, but we might as well listen.’
The silence stretched out under the afternoon sun, and in the stillness Penny-Rose was aware that Alastair’s gaze never left hers. Their eyes were locked, and it was as if there were questions being asked—and answered—without words being spoken.
And whatever the questions were, her answers must have satisfied him because he gave a slight nod, as if he’d come to a final decision. Some of the confusion left his face.
‘It could work.’
‘What could work?’ Bert asked belligerently, and Penny-Rose laid a hand on her boss’s arm.
‘Let him say.’
And he did. ‘I’m serious,’ he said at last, his eyes still fixed on hers. ‘I don’t have a choice. If I don’t marry a lady of unimpeachable virtue, this entire estate will be split.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Bert told him.
‘It’s the terms of the old prince’s will,’ Alastair said wearily. ‘If I don’t make such a marriage then the estate will be sold and, no matter how I look at it, there’s no way I can buy it. God knows, I’ve tried every way over the past couple of months, but the thing’s impossible. I’d assume the castle itself will go to the government and be opened to the public as a tourist venue, but the acreage around here will be split up.’
Bert frowned, but he wasn’t too surprised. He’d heard the rumours. ‘And the village?’
‘That’s the hard part,’ Alastair told him. ‘It’s the reason I’m considering such a marriage. There are over a hundred families living around the estate. All of those homes will have to be sold, and the cousins who stand to inherit stipulate that they’ll be sold on the open market.’ He paused and gazed around him, over the river banks to the village beyond. ‘I guess you’ve realised by now how desirable this place is?’
It was. The Castaliae estate contained a fairy-tale village built on the cliffs of one of the most picturesque rivers in the world.
But it still wasn’t making sense. Bert was still confused.
‘So?’ Bert demanded.
‘So they’ll be sold for a fortune,’ Alastair said simply. ‘We know that. It’s already happened to villages like ours that haven’t been protected by one landlord. The locals are well enough off, but they’re not so wealthy that they can match the prices of city dwellers and overseas interests.’
He sighed, his gaze returning from the far-off village to the girl before him. Now he was talking directly to her. ‘If I can’t save it, the village will be deserted in winter and filled with wealthy tourists and designer shops in the summer. The locals will have to move away. They can’t bear it, and I can’t bear it. So I’m asking you, Penny-Rose, to marry me. If you’ll have me.’
More silence.
Penny-Rose’s gaze didn’t waver. She took him in. Not just his amazing good looks, but the grubbiness of his clothes—he wasn’t nearly as dirty as she was, but he obviously hadn’t had time to change since he’d been out working with his farm manager this morning—the tension of his stance and the dark shadows under his eyes. He looked like a man close to breaking point.
Then, finally, she allowed herself to look around, at the land he was talking of.
This estate went on for ever. The castle itself was built into the cliff overlooking the river, and at the base of the cliff was a tiny village. Penny-Rose was boarding with a family there, and they thought of this man as their landlord.
But this was indeed a fairy-tale village, with its soft sandstone buildings set into the cliffs on the gently flowing river. Alastair was right. Tourists would outbid any villagers for their homes. And if he couldn’t bear to have the villagers evicted, she could understand why not.
‘It’s a stupid clause,’ she said at last, and Alastair nodded.
‘It is. My uncle put it in place because my cousin was…wild. What it did was to stop Louis marrying at all, and then Louis died just three months after his father.’
‘So why don’t you just do what Louis did? Not marry?’ It seemed a reasonable solution. Surely the gorgeous Belle could be talked into being a mistress only—with so much money at stake!
‘I can’t inherit unless I marry.’
‘But Louis inherited.’
Alastair shook his head, and the impression of weariness intensified. ‘Louis never formally inherited, and the cousins started legal action to recover the property. His death forestalled that, and legal opinion is that the estate and the title is now mine—as long as I do marry.