His Temporary Cinderella: Ordinary Girl in a Tiara / Kiss the Bridesmaid / A Bravo Homecoming

Just you and me.

It wouldn’t be just the two of them, of course. Lotty had told her about the palace servants, and there would always be Yan or a member of the public wanting their hand shaken. Just as well, Caro told herself firmly. It would be much easier to be friends when there were other people around.

‘Where did you learn about cars?’ Philippe asked as they turned onto the main road.

‘From my father.’ The road was clear ahead, and Philippe put his foot down. The car responded instantly, surging forward. Caro felt the pressure in the small of her back and settled into it with a shiver of pleasure. ‘He loved cars. He always had some banger up on the blocks and he’d spend hours tinkering with it. When I was little I’d squat beside him and be allowed to hand him a spanner or an oily rag. Even now the smell of oil makes me think of Dad.’

Caro smiled unevenly, remembering. ‘Driving an Aston Martin was his dream. He’d be so thrilled if he could see me now!’ She stroked the leather on either side of her thighs. ‘And envious!’

Distracted by the stroking, Philippe forced his attention back to the road. ‘It sounds like you had a good relationship with your father.’

‘I adored him.’ She touched the lapels of the jacket she wore. ‘This is Dad’s dinner jacket. He wore it for a school dance once, and no one recognised him. It was as if none of them had ever looked at him when he was wearing his handyman overalls, but put on a smart jacket and suddenly he was a real person, someone they could talk to because he was dressed like them.’

Caro fingered the sleeve where she’d rolled it up to show the scarlet lining. ‘I remember Dad saying that some people are like this jacket, conventional on the outside, but with a bright, beautiful lining like this. He said we shouldn’t judge what’s on the outside, it’s what’s inside that really matters. I think of him every time I put this jacket on,’ she said.

‘My father thinks the exact opposite,’ said Philippe. ‘For him, it’s all about appearances. No wonder I’m such a disappointment to him.’ He was careful to keep his tone light, but Caro looked at him, a crease between her brows.

‘He can’t be that disappointed if he trusts you to stand in for him while he’s sick.’

‘Only because it wouldn’t look right if he didn’t make his only surviving son regent in his absence, would it? What would people think?’

In spite of himself, Philippe could hear the bitterness threading his voice, and he summoned a smile instead. ‘Besides, it’s not a question of trust. It’s not as if they’re going to let me loose on government. My father thinks it’ll be good for me to experience meetings and red boxes and the whole dreary business of governing, but all that’s just for show too. There’s a council of ministers, but the Dowager Blanche will be keeping a firm hold of the reins. I’m trusted to shake hands and host a few banquets, but that’s about it.’

‘You could take more responsibility if you wanted, couldn’t you?’

‘They won’t let me.’ Caro could hear the frustration in his voice, and she felt for him. It couldn’t be easy knowing that any attempt to assert himself would be met by his father’s collapse. ‘And I daren’t risk insisting any more,’ Philippe said. ‘Not when he’s so sick, anyway. My father and I may not get on, but I don’t want him to die.’

‘Why doesn’t he trust you?’ Caro asked, swivelling in her seat so that she could look at him. ‘I know you were wild when you were younger, but that was years ago.’

‘It’s hard to change the way your family looks at you.’ Philippe glanced in the mirror and pulled out to overtake a lumbering truck in a flash. ‘Etienne was always the dutiful, responsible son, and I was difficult. That’s just the way it was.

‘Etienne was a golden boy—clever, hardworking, responsible, handsome, charming, kind. I could never live up to him, so I never tried. I was only ever “the spare” in my father’s eyes, anyway,’ he said. ‘I didn’t even have the good sense to look like him, the way Etienne did. Instead, I take after my mother. Every time my father looks at me, he’s reminded of the way she humiliated him. I sometimes wonder if he suspects I’m not even his son.’

Philippe hoped that he sounded detached and ironic, but suspected it didn’t fool Caro, who was watching him with those warm blue eyes. He could feel her gaze on his profile as surely as if she had reached out to lay her palm against his cheek.

‘I never heard anything about your mother,’ she said. ‘What did she do?’

‘Oh, the usual. She was far too young and frivolous to have been married to my father. It’s a miracle their marriage lasted as long as it did. She ran away from him eventually and went to live with an Italian racing driver.’

He thought he had the tone better there. Careless. Cynical. Just a touch of amusement.

‘Do you remember her?’

‘Not much,’ he said. ‘Her perfume when she came to kiss me goodnight. Her laughter. I was only four, and left with a nanny a lot of the time anyway, so I don’t suppose it made much difference to me really when she left. It was worse for Etienne. He was eleven, so he must have had more memories of her.’

Philippe paused. ‘He would have been devastated, but he used to come and play with me for hours so that I wouldn’t miss her. That was the kind of boy he was.’

‘I didn’t realise you were so close to him.’

Caro’s throat was aching for the little boy Philippe had been. Her father had been right. You could never tell what someone was like from the face they put on to the world. All she’d ever seen of Philippe had been the jacket of cool arrogance. It had never occurred to her to wonder whether he used it to deflect, to stop anyone realising that he had once been a small boy, abandoned by his mother and rejected by his father.

‘He was a great brother,’ said Philippe. ‘A great person. You can’t blame my father for being bitter that Etienne was the one who died, and that he was left with me. You can’t blame him for wishing that I’d been the one who died.’

‘That’s … that’s a terrible thing to say,’ said Caro, shocked.

‘It’s true.’ He glanced at her and then away. ‘It was my fault Etienne died.’

‘No.’ Caro put out an instinctive hand. ‘No, it was an accident. Lotty told me.’

‘Oh, yes, it was an accident, but if it hadn’t been for me, he’d never have been on the lake that day.’ The bleak set to Philippe’s mouth tore at her heart. ‘Lotty’s father was Crown Prince, and his brother still alive, with his two sons,’ he went on after a moment. ‘There was no reason to believe we’d ever inherit. My father had a vineyard, and Etienne was going up to look at the accounts or something equally tedious. He envied me, he said. To him it seemed that I was the one always having a good time. He said he wished he could do the same, but he was afraid that he didn’t have the courage.’

He overtook a car, and then another and another, the sleek power of the Aston Martin controlled utterly in his strong hands.

‘“Come water skiing with me”, I said,’ he remembered bitterly. ‘“For once in your life, do what you want to do instead of what our father wants you to do.” So he did, and he died.’

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ said Caro.

‘My father thinks it was.’

‘It wasn’t.’ Without thinking, she put her hand on his shoulder. Through the yellow polo shirt, she could feel his muscles corded with tension. ‘It was Etienne’s choice to go. You didn’t make him fall, and you didn’t kill him. It was an accident.’

‘That was what Lotty said. She was the only one who stood by me then,’ said Philippe. ‘If it had been up to my father, I wouldn’t even have been allowed to go to the funeral. “If it wasn’t for you, Etienne would still be alive,” he said. The Dowager Blanche persuaded him to let me go in the end, for appearance’s sake.’ His voice was laced with pain.

‘As soon as it was over, I left for South America. I didn’t care where I went, as long as it was a long way from Montluce, and my father felt exactly the same. If it hadn’t been for inheriting the throne, he’d have been happy never to see me again, I think, but when he became Crown Prince, he didn’t have much choice but to be in touch. He’ll never be able to forgive me, though, for the fact that Etienne didn’t have time to get married and secure the succession.

‘There’s a certain irony in that,’ Philippe said with a sidelong glance at Caro. ‘Etienne was gay. He was very, very discreet, and my father never found out.’

‘You didn’t tell him?’

‘How could I? It would have destroyed him all over again. All he’s got left is his image of Etienne as his perfect son. I’m not going to spoil that for him. It wouldn’t bring Etienne back and, anyway, he was perfect and, clearly, I’m not.’

‘But why don’t you tell him that you’ve changed?’

‘Who says that I have?’

‘The old Philippe wouldn’t have flown in emergency supplies,’ said Caro, and he lifted a shoulder.

‘It would take more than a few flights to change my father’s view of me,’ he said. ‘My father isn’t a bad man, and if it’s easier for him to keep thinking of me as difficult, why should I insist that he changes his mind? He’s had enough grief without me demanding his attention and approval. I’m not a child,’ said Philippe.

‘I think it’s unfair,’ said Caro stoutly. ‘I think if they’re going to make you regent, they should give you the responsibility to act too.’

‘Lots of people live with unfairness, Caro. I’ve seen people struggling to get by without food or shelter or a stable government. They haven’t got schools or hospitals. There’s no running water. That’s unfair,’ he said. ‘Compared to that, I think I can bear a few months of not being allowed to make decisions. I’ll use the time to familiarise myself with how the government works and then, when I’m in a position to make a difference, I will. Until then, I can live with a few pointless rituals.’

Caro was still looking dubious. ‘It’s not going to be much fun for you, is it?’

‘No,’ said Philippe, ‘but we’re not there yet.’ Leaning across, he turned up the volume on the sound system and slanted a smile at her. ‘We’ve got about an hour until we hit the border. Let’s make the most of being able to behave badly while we can, shall we?’

Caro never forgot that drive. The poplars on either side of the road barred the way with shadows, so that the sunlight flickered exhilaratingly as the car shot beneath them with a throaty roar, effortlessly gobbling up the miles and sliding around the bends as if it were part of the road.