A Royal Marriage

She was not a sleeping princess about to be kissed.

She was a single mom trying to do the best for her baby.

And then Carly bumped, on her padded rump, sleeper-encased feet first, down the narrow staircase, her blond curls scattered around cheeks flushed from the exertion and delight she attacked life with.

Rachel went down on one knee, and threw open wide her arms.

“Mommeee!”

Carly barreled across the floor, arms flung wide, balance precarious. She slid on the oval rag rug, tilted and then fell into Rachel’s arms with such force that Rachel was nearly knocked over. Laughing, forgetting her dignified visitor, losing herself to the exuberance of her daughter’s greeting, Rachel hugged Carly to her, buried her nose in the child’s silky hair, rose and swung the baby around until she shrieked with delight.

She froze mid-swing. He was too still. She tucked Carly in tight and looked at him. Prince Damon Montague was ashen.

It reminded her of that moment in the car, when he had so definitely gone away, and the place where he had gone had caused him terrible sadness. “What is it?” she asked.

He shook himself, as a man coming out of a dream. Carly leaned toward him, her arms widespread, nearly wriggling out of Rachel’s arms.

It was an invitation to be held that only the hardest heart would have been able to refuse. Damon hesitated, looked amazingly as though he was going to bolt. Instead, he smiled, though it looked as if it cost him.

“The head dwarf, I presume?” he said with complete composure. He did not take Carly, but leaned instead and touched her cheek with his hand. “Hello. Which one are you? Surely not Grumpy? Definitely not Sleepy. Or Doc. Or Dopey. You must be Happy.”

Carly chortled at this, caught his hand and chomped on one of his fingers. He extricated his finger from her mouth with good grace. “Jaws wasn’t one of the seven, was he?”

“No biting,” Rachel admonished sternly. “Your Highness, my daughter, Carly.”

“I really do want you to call me Damon,” he said, and then he bowed, deep at the waist, which charmed Carly completely. Not to mention her mother. “The pleasure is all mine,” he said.

Rachel realized that in her mind he was already Damon, that there was a feeling of having always known him that made formality between them seem stiff and ridiculous.

When he straightened, Carly regarded him solemnly for a minute, ran her plump fingers over the planes of his face, tugged his nose experimentally. Then she nodded her approval, and ordered loudly, “Down.”

Rachel set her down, and Carly plummeted across the floor, arms out like a tightrope walker, always teetering on the very edge of a spill. She made it without hazard, however, to her overflowing toy basket, the contents of which she dumped unceremoniously on the floor. With a sigh, she plopped down on the floor beside her heap of treasures.

“Do you find yourself holding your breath a lot?” Damon asked.

“I think it’s called motherhood. I’ll be holding my breath until her eighteenth birthday.” She thought of her missing sister, who was twenty-seven, and her recent worries, and added woefully, “And probably beyond.”

“She’s an unusually beautiful child,” Damon said, watching with a small smile at the energy with which Carly’s possessions were now being thrust back in the basket.

Of course he would know all the right things to say. They probably taught him that at prince training school, or wherever young royals went to learn to be gracious and courteous and sophisticated.

“Thank you.”

He hesitated. “Her father?”

“The last I heard, running a ski lift in Canada.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not. We’re both better off without him.” She said this with a trace of defiance. She did not want his pity. His gaze had drifted from the baby, and he was scanning her small living room with casual interest.

Though he kept his expression deliberately blank, no doubt he parked his car in a larger space.

And she knew the furnishings of the cottage were humble; most of them had come with it. But she had delighted at the cozy atmosphere she had created with a few plaid throws, jugs of dried flowers, bright paintings, small wicker baskets containing books and apples and papers, and the larger basket, the only one Carly could reach, which held her toys.

In one corner was the only thing in the room that qualified as state of the art, the computer that she did her writing on.

The sitter, the elderly lady who lived in the manor house on the property, came down the steps. A few strands of her gray hair had fallen out of her tidy bun, her glasses were askew, her sweater was tugged out of shape at the hem, and she was not looking nearly as sprightly as when she had come in the door several hours ago.

“My goodness,” Mrs. Brumble said with weary graciousness, “she has so much energy. I’ve never seen a baby that age quite so energetic.”

“Mrs. Brumble, was she awful?” Rachel asked, wide-eyed at her dignified landlady’s disheveled appearance.

“Not awful. No, no. Demanding. Inquisitive. Into everything.” The old lady paused, sighed and smiled. “Awful,” she said. “But I meant it. I adore children, and I’ll look after her whenever you have to be away.”

“That’s so kind,” Rachel said, and meant it. Life since Carly seemed to have gotten somewhat harder. Bryan had made it clear he wanted no part of her life, and nothing to do with his child. And then her mother had died. And now her sister was missing.

And yet it almost seemed the harder life got, the more kind people were put in her path, as if to help her through it. Gifts from heaven.

Mrs. Brumble was squinting at Damon with interest. “My, my. Aren’t you that Montague boy?”

Rachel did not think this was a very suitable way to address a prince, but he didn’t seem to mind at all.

He grinned. “That would be me, all right. That Montague boy.”

Mrs. Brumble offered her hand, and he took it in his, covered it with his other one for a brief moment, a gesture that Rachel could tell pleased Mrs. Brumble to no end. “I’m Eileen Brumble. I’ve had tea with your mother, Princess Nora, several times when I’ve been over to Roxbury. We have the Cancer Society in common. I met your lovely wife on one occasion, as well. I was so distressed by her death. Such a tragedy.”

Rachel thought Damon’s smile had become somewhat fixed, but he said pleasantly enough, “I’ll remember you to my mother.”

Rachel realized her little old landlady moved in the same circles as him, among dukes and duchesses, marquises and earls. Perhaps the huge manor house that shared the same property as this humble cottage should have given her a clue. Imagine asking someone of that stature to baby-sit!

“Thank you! That would be a darling thing for you to do.”

The entryway was too small for all of them, so Damon slipped into the living room while Mrs. Brumble got organized, and Rachel shed her jacket. Underneath, she was wearing a white sweater that matched her skirt, an outfit that had failed her at the police station, and which she felt failed her now because it was decidedly “blah,” a selection an old-maid librarian might have made to wear to the church tea.

Maybe she did know life was not a fairy tale, maybe she had taken a vow of celibacy until Carly was safely grown-up, but she also knew there was not a woman alive who could be alone with an attractive man and not want to look her absolute best.

When the door finally closed behind the unlikely nanny, Rachel turned to find Damon studying a painting on her wall that suddenly struck her as tacky and cheap, not fun and bright.

Mrs. Brumble popped her head back in the door and called in a whisper that must have carried nearly to the Thorton estate, “This one’s a keeper, child. Don’t let him get away.”

It was an embarrassing remark, but a kind one, too. It made Rachel feel as though the social barriers between them were not so important these days as they once had been—probably far larger in her mind than they were in either Damon’s or Mrs. Brumble’s.

The door closed again.

Since Rachel had expected Damon would drop her off and go, she stared at his big back with some vexation, and then said, “Would you like tea?”

Of course he wasn’t going to want tea. He was waiting for an opportunity to say goodbye, and take his leave.