A Royal Marriage

Somehow, when picturing his own impending fatherhood, he had only pictured magical moments. Reading baby a story while Sharon held him. Having the baby lie across his chest in front of a warm fire. Kissing him in his cradle. Teaching him to ride a pony. It had not even occurred to him how much later that step came.

Of course, with a large staff, neither he nor Sharon would have ever had to deal with shrieking.

Never mind that rather pungent odor he now noticed was coming from Miss Adorable Pink Fluff.

It occurred to him that he and Sharon, considered golden and blessed, might have missed something very, very important.

He picked the baby up, gingerly, expecting the grief inside him would shatter like glass. Expecting he would feel the bottomless sadness that he would never hold the lively weight of his own little child in his arms.

But that was not what he felt.

Instead, he took strange comfort from the solid weight of the baby, the warmth of her—even the smell of her seemed to be making his heart feel. Not broken. Whole.

She leaned her head into his shoulder, thrust her thumb in her mouth. She pulled it out, pronounced him a good boy, and her eyes fluttered closed. In seconds, she was sleeping.

Just like that. From shrieking instructions to sleeping in the blink of an eye.

He stood there like stone, not quite sure what to do, not sure what he had done to deserve such exquisite trust, and not quite sure about the great ball of tenderness that seemed to be unfurling in the center of his chest.

He glanced down at the shining gold of her curls, at the sweep of her lashes, at the roundness of her cheeks.

She was like her mother. He guessed her hair would eventually darken to that exact shade of auburn.

She nestled into him, sighed, and blew a few little bubbles out parted lips, and he found himself relaxing. When he was positive that neither he nor she was going to break, he dared look around again, and was again amazed by how compact this space was.

How did two people live in a space so tiny?

He marveled, too, at how Rachel had managed to make it look so lovely with nothing more than her own sense of style. Nothing in the room was expensive—there was no crystal, no beautiful carpets, no priceless paintings. And yet the room seemed more warm and inviting than any he had ever been in.

With the exception of the yellow nursery at home.

A thought came into his head, so preposterous that he dismissed it.

But the kettle had stopped wailing, and the child had stopped wailing and now he could hear Rachel humming in the other room, and the thought would not be chased away.

Marry her.

It was, of course, a ridiculous notion. A spell being cast on him by the little minx who was now drooling down the front of his silk shirt.

And yet, was it so ridiculous?

His parents were putting unbelievable pressure on him to find a new partner.

He liked this woman as much as any they had shoved his way. In a very short time she had earned his respect. She seemed to him to be courageous, capable and kind.

And it was a chance for him to do someone a good turn. Who would be more deserving than Rachel to be given a brand-new life? One where she could have all the time and money she needed, where she could pamper this little girl to her heart’s delight?

It would be a marriage in name only.

His heart was not into anything else. But his parents wouldn’t know that. Or his countrymen. They would just see what they wanted to see. If he provided the beautiful bride, they would provide the fairy tale.

Rachel came back into the room with tea things on a lovely, rustic tray. She looked at him holding the sleeping baby, and shook her head wryly.

“She couldn’t do that for poor Mrs. Brumble, could she?”

She set down the tea things, and took the baby from him. Her nose wrinkled. “Don’t you know how to make a great first impression?” she scolded the sleeping baby. Sending a wry look his way, she disappeared through another door.

His arms felt strangely empty when Carly was gone, his chest suddenly cold where her warmth had puddled against him. Rachel came back a few minutes later, the baby still sleeping, the wonderful aroma of baby powder coming into the room with them. She set her daughter gently in a playpen on one side of the room, tucked a little blanket around her.

He wondered if that was the baby’s bed, and thought of the empty crib at home, a beautiful piece of furniture not being used.

“Sit down,” she said. He sat on the sofa. She eyed the spot beside him for a moment and then, to his regret, took the chair at right angles from it. She poured tea in lovely, if mismatched, teacups. Probably from the thrift store, too.

He glanced at the sleeping baby, and was shocked to find that having just met her, he wanted things for her. No, more accurately, did not want certain things for her. Did not want her to grow up wearing hand-me-downs and thrift store clothes, did not want her sleeping in a playpen instead of a crib.

And there were certain things he did not want for Rachel, either. Crenshaw’s offer of a job bothered him. Despite what she had said about writing, she would obviously need to get reestablished here. He did not want her to be getting up early in the morning, kissing her baby goodbye to go spend a day doing God knew what. Being at someone like Crenshaw’s beck and call.

It blasted through his mind again. Marry Rachel.

Though, of course, there were all kinds of other things he could do if he wanted to help Rachel and Carly. He could have the crib packed up and sent to them, anonymously, along with a nice check.

Yes, that was what he would do. Very sensible.

He reminded himself sternly, when he found his eyes fastened on the fullness of Rachel’s bottom lip, why he had come here.

He wondered how he could ask her delicately if she and her sister were full sisters. If they were, naturally the missing girl could not be the Grand Duke of Thortonburg’s illegitimate daughter.

How to probe?

“Tell me about your sister,” he suggested. “What makes you think she’s missing?”

Rachel sighed, and tucked her feet under her. The floor was cold. He tried not to think of the baby playing on a cold floor. He tried not to think of Rachel opening her heating bill with dread.

“We aren’t as close as we once were,” she admitted. “Victoria didn’t like Bryan, Carly’s father, and it drove a wedge between us. Maybe even more so, when she was proved right. Still, we have always exchanged letters and calls, though maybe not as regularly as we once did. I guess I understand why the police are skeptical. It really is only a feeling I have. A feeling that something is wrong and my sister is in trouble. We’ve always been like that—very in tune with each other.”

He listened carefully as she talked about her sister. Nothing she said indicated they were anything other than full sisters. Was it possible she might not know the truth? Because he heard unspoken threads that struck him as odd. Subtle hints in her conversation told him her father favored Rachel over Victoria, and her mother Victoria over Rachel. Why?

He asked, on a hunch, to see a picture of Victoria, and Rachel went and plucked one off the top of a bookshelf. She looked at it with a tender smile, wiped a fleck of dust off it with her sleeve before she passed it to him.

He struggled to keep his face impassive. Victoria was fire compared to Rachel’s earth. She was beautiful, with cascading dark hair, and vibrant blue eyes that danced and sparkled. Her smile held a certain devilment.

Because he had just had close contact with Roland Thorton, he saw immediately the similarity. It wasn’t just her coloring, either. It was the way her lips slanted upward, the way she cocked her eyebrow, the way she tilted her head. It was in the straight line of her nose and the angle of her cheekbones. Her resemblance to this island’s most famous family was so striking, he wondered that people had not stopped in the streets to stare at her.