So the Prince Regent of Alp de Ciel was sitting at her kitchen table. Unbelievable. She didn’t believe it. She was fighting a mad desire to laugh.
How close to hysterics was she?
‘So you’re Prince Regent of Ciel.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’ve come to Australia…why?’
‘Because Matty needs his mother.’
That was enough to take her breath away all over again.
‘Kass decreed he didn’t need his mother five years ago,’ she whispered. She shot Matty a quick glance to make sure he wasn’t a figment of imagination. She’d been delirious for twenty-four hours with influenza. She was still as weak as a kitten. This was surely an extension of her illness.
But no. Matty was here. He was evening up his slices, taking a surreptitious nibble of an equalizing sliver.
‘My cousin,’ Rafael was saying, softly so the words were for her alone, ‘had the morals of a sewer rat. I heard what he did to you. You were a kid; he married you and then you were in no man’s land. Mother of a future Crown Prince. Only of course you’d signed your rights away. As a commoner marrying into royalty, you had to sign an agreement saying if the marriage ever broke down full custody of any children would stay with the Crown. So when you had an affair…’
‘I had no affair,’ she said, dragging desperately on to truth as a lifeline.
‘It seems now that you didn’t,’ Rafael said grimly. ‘It was the only thing that made it palatable to the world. That there were men who claimed to be your lovers. That you were proven to be immoral. Everyone knew Kass never had any intention of being faithful to a wife—he only married you to make his father furious. But…’
‘I don’t want to talk about this.’
‘No, but you must.’ His hands were still holding hers. She stared down at the link. It seemed wrong but it was such an effort to pull away. Did she have the strength?
Yes. This man was a de Boutaine. She had no choice. She tugged and he released her.
‘The story as I knew it,’ he said softly, ‘is that Kass married a commoner who was little better than he was. Together you had a child, but the only time you came to the castle was in the last stages of your pregnancy. By the time you had the child, the word was out. Your behaviour was said to be such that the marriage could never work. Kass’s public portrayal of your character was so appalling he even insisted on DNA testing to prove Mathieu was his son. Then, once Mathieu was proven to be his, he sent you out of the country. He cancelled your visa and he didn’t allow you back. The terms of the marriage contract left you no room to fight, though the people of Alp de Ciel always assumed you were well looked after in a monetary sense. You disappeared into obscurity—not even the women’s magazines managed to trace you. You weren’t a renowned beauty looking for publicity. You weren’t flying to your lawyers to demand more money. You simply disappeared.’
‘And Matty?’ she whispered. For five years… every minute of every day he’d stayed in her heart. What had been happening to him?
But Rafael was smiling. Matty had the three slices even now, but there’d been a few crumbs scattered in the process. He was carefully collecting them, neatening the plates before he presented his offering to the adults.
‘Matty’s been luckier than he might have been,’ Rafael told her. ‘Kass couldn’t be bothered with him and abandoned him to the nursery. My mother had been in the US with me for the few weeks while you were at the castle—she knew nothing about you, and as far as she was concerned the reports about you were true—but when she returned there was a new baby. He had no mother and a father who didn’t care. My mother loves him to bits. Every summer when Kass closed the palace and disappeared to the gambling dens in Monaco or the South of France, she brought him to New York to stay with me. Kass didn’t care.’ He smiled. ‘My mother cares, though. Which is where I come into the picture.’
There were too many people. There was too much information. ‘My head hurts,’ she managed.
‘I imagine it must,’ he said and smiled again, a gentle smile of sympathy that, had she not been too winded to think past Matty, might have given her pause. It was some smile.
‘My mother took Kass’s word for what sort of woman you were,’ he said. ‘We knew Kass had married to disoblige his father and that he’d married a…well, that he’d married someone really unsuitable seemed entirely probable. When Kass told the world how appalling you were he was believed—simply because to marry someone appalling was what he’d declared he’d do. You disappeared. The lie remained. Then, when Kass died, his secretary finally told me what really happened.
‘Crater…’
‘You remember Crater?’
‘Yes.’ All too well. An elderly palace official— the Secretary of State—with an armful of official documents, clearly spelling out her future. He’d sounded sympathetic but implacable. Telling her she had no rights to her son. Showing her the wording of the documents she’d signed in a romantic haze, never believing there could be any cause to act on. Telling her she had no recourse but to leave.
‘He’s felt appalling for five years,’ Rafael told her. ‘He said that six years ago Kass left the castle, furious with his father, and met you working on site on an archaeological dig. He said you were pretty and shy and Kass almost literally swept you off your feet. He could be the most charming man alive, my cousin Kass. Anyway, as far as Kass was concerned you fitted the bill. You were a nobody. You had no family. He married you out of hand, settled you in France and made you pregnant. Only then, of course, his father died. Kass was stuck with a wife he didn’t need or want. So he simply paid his henchmen to dig up dirt on you—make it up, it now seems. Crater had doubts—he was the only one who’d met you before you were married when Kass had called on him to draw up the marriage documents—but there was little he could do. The prenuptial contracts were watertight and you were gone before he could investigate further.’
‘Yes…’ She remembered it every minute of her life. A paid nanny holding the baby—her baby. Matty had been four weeks old. Kass, implacable, scornful, moving on.
‘I’m cancelling your visa this minute, you stupid cow. You won’t be permitted to stay. Stop snivelling. You’ll get an allowance. You’re set up for life, so move on.’
She’d been so alone. There had been a castle full of paid servants but there had been no one to help her. She remembered Crater—a silver-haired, elderly man who’d been gentle enough with her—but he hadn’t helped her, and no one else had as much as smiled at her.
She had to go, so leave she had. And that had been that. She’d gone back to France for a while, hoping against hope there’d be a loophole that would allow her access to her little son. She’d talked to lawyers. She’d pleaded with lawyers, so many lawyers her head spun, but opinion had all been with Kass. She could never return to Alp de Ciel. She had no rights at all.
She’d lost her son.
Finally, when the fuss had died—when the press had stopped looking for her—she’d returned to Australia. She’d applied for the job here under her mother’s maiden name.
She’d never touched a cent of royal money. She’d rather have died.
And now here he was. Her son. Five years old and she knew nothing of him.
And Matty? What had he been told of his mother?
‘What do you know about me?’ she asked the little boy, while the big man with the gentle eyes looked at her with sympathy.
‘My father said you were a whore,’ Matty said matter-of-factly as he carried over the plates,