Princess of Convenience

‘Mama…’ Raoul started but she shook her head.

‘Enough. I need my bed. Jess, I’m so sorry your first dinner up was so badly interrupted. But you’ll have to excuse me.’

‘I’ll take you,’ Raoul told her but once again she shook her head.

‘No. You stay and take care of Jess. Henri, can you escort me upstairs? I think…I may need your arm.’

‘Certainly, Ma’am,’ Henri said.

This was a long-standing friendship, Jess realised. It was not just a mistress-servant relationship. Henri moved forward and took the support of Louise from Raoul. The two silver heads moved together in mutual distress and together they left the room.

Jess was left staring after them.

With Raoul.

There was a long silence. An awful silence. Jess could think of nothing to say.

Finally she caught herself. She had no place here in these people’s troubles. They were in distress. She needed to leave.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I’ll leave first thing in the morning. I’m only adding to your troubles by staying.’

‘You’re not adding to our troubles.’ She saw Raoul almost visibly stiffen, moving on. ‘It’s me who’s sorry,’ he told her. ‘We invite you to dinner, and here our soup’s cold and Henri’s gone. I’ll try and find someone to bring something more.’

She looked at him, appraising. He’d missed out on his dinner, too, she thought. Food. When she was in deep trouble she remembered kindly people forcing her to eat and she knew that sometimes it helped.

‘Could we give the servants a miss?’ she told him. ‘You show me a kitchen and I’ll feed myself.’

‘What?’ He almost sounded astonished.

‘You do have kitchens in palaces?’ she said in an attempt to keep it light. ‘You have toasters and bread and butter? And marmalade? I’m particularly partial to marmalade.’

He stared some more—and then the corners of his mouth twisted in a crooked smile as he realised what she was doing. She was doing her best to convert tragedy to the domestic.

‘I’d imagine so,’ he managed. ‘I’ve never investigated.’

‘You live here and you’ve never investigated the kitchen? You don’t even know if there’s marmalade?’

‘I’ve only been here for two weeks,’ he said, his smile fading. ‘I came to prepare for the wedding. After that I was going straight back to…to work.’

‘With your bride?’

‘Sarah was a bride of convenience,’ he said stiffly, his smile disappearing altogether. ‘It was a business proposition. I had no intention of staying here.’

A business proposition. She stared at his face and there was nothing there to show what he was thinking. Just the cold words: a business proposition. And then he was leaving. Leaving his mother with the child? Leaving his bride?

Running?

‘Were you afraid to stay?’

Why had she said that? It had just slipped out and it was unfair. She knew it as soon as she had said it and she bit her lip in distress. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just…’

‘If you meant was I leaving the care of my nephew to my mother, maybe I was,’ he told her. ‘But my mother wants to be here. I don’t.’

She was puzzled. ‘Even if you’d become regent? Wouldn’t that be a cool thing to be? A real royal?’

‘I intended to take care of the business side of the job from a distance. I’m certainly not interested in the ceremonial duties.’ He shrugged. ‘So no, it wouldn’t be cool. Not that it matters. I’m no longer in line for the job.’

Trouble slammed back with a capital T—and Jess took a deep breath and decided the only option here was to return to what she knew.

Food. Marmalade.

She actually was hungry, and she bet this man was, too.

‘So let’s find the kitchen,’ she suggested. ‘Do you really not know if there’s marmalade?’

‘No, I…’

‘You’ve been in a castle for two weeks and not explored?’

‘Why would I want to explore?’

‘Why would you not?’ she asked in astonishment. ‘A real live palace. A royal residence. I’ll bet you run to six types of marmalade, Your Highness.’ She smiled at him, teasing, trying to elicit his smile again. There was so much going on in this man’s life that light-hearted banter seemed the only way to go. ‘You know, I’ll bet you have a whole team of cooks lined up in the galley, ready with the next eleven courses of our twelve-course feast.’

‘I’m sorry to disappoint you,’ he told her, ‘but, if you recall, we’ve given the servants the night off. My mother was desperate for a little quiet, and thus we had only Henri. And I’m not Your Highness. I’m Raoul.’

‘So Henri’s been cooking—Raoul.’

It was odd calling him Raoul. There was a barrier between them that she seemed to be stepping over every time she smiled. And she stepped over it a lot more when she called him by his name.

Maybe he was aware of it, too. His tone had become strangely stiff and formal. ‘I gather the cook pre-prepared things but essentially yes,’ he told her, ‘Henri was cooking. Maybe I can contact the cook and ask her to come back.’

‘Why?’ Jess frowned—and then sniffed. And thought about the sequence of events until now. ‘So Henri was cooking. And now he’s taken your mother up to her apartments,’ she said. Still sniffing. ‘Your Highness—sorry—Raoul, I hate to say it but we may have a mess in the kitchen.’

‘How on earth…?’

‘How on earth do I know that?’ She even managed a grin. ‘Pure intelligence,’ she told him and sniffed again. ‘Sherlock Holmes, that’s me. The Hound of the Baskervilles has nothing on my nose. And you know something else? I figure that even if you don’t know where the kitchens are…’

‘I do know that.’

‘Even if you don’t, then I can follow my nose,’ she told him. ‘There’s something burning and I’m betting it’s our dinner. Let’s go save your castle from conflagration. That seems a really essential thing to do and, in times of trouble, essentials are…essential.’

CHAPTER THREE

THEY walked down a long corridor and through four arches. ‘You know, it’s amazing the soup was still warm by the time it reached the table,’ Jess said. ‘No wonder Henri’s thin. The poor man must walk a marathon every day.’

Raoul didn’t smile. He was preoccupied, Jess knew, and all she could do was try and keep it light.

When they finally reached the kitchen there wasn’t a conflagration, but there was Jess’s predicted mess. Henri had obviously just put the steak on when their unwelcome visitor had arrived. There were three plates laid out with a salad on the side, but now the steak was sending up clouds of black smoke and a saucepan of tiny potatoes had boiled dry. The potatoes were turning black from the bottom up, and they smelled disgusting.