The Prince's Outback Bride

‘Phillippa can’t afford that,’ the lady behind the checkout snapped. ‘Her vats are contaminated.’

‘My vats aren’t,’ he retorted, inspecting the range of chocolate cookies and choosing four packets before moving on to confectionery. What was hot chocolate without marshmallows? Would six packets be enough?

Then there were more decisions. Did they like milk chocolate or dark? Three blocks of each, he decided, but the blocks looked a bit small. Okay, six of each.

On then to essentials. Dry pasta. Surely she wasn’t serious about wanting much of this. It looked so…dry. The meat section looked much more appetising. The steaks looked great.

But then, this wasn’t just about him, he reminded himself. The steaks looked wonderful, but maybe kids liked sausages. He replaced a couple of steaks, collected sausages, and then thought of Dolores and the great big eyes. He put the steaks back in his trolley.

Then he discovered the wine section. Australian wine. Excellent. And fruit? He wasn’t as sure as Pippa about the scurvything. That meant fresh produce. Bananas. Oranges. Strawberries? Of course strawberries. Would they have their own cream or should he buy some?

But there was more to shopping than food.

‘I need wood,’ he said, and discovered the ladies were staring at his trolley as if they’d never seen such things. ‘Where can I find fuel for a woodstove?’

‘You can’t cut wood in weather like this.’

‘That’s the problem,’ he said patiently. ‘And Pippa has a bad back.’

‘We know that,’ one of the ladies said, starting to sound annoyed. ‘She hurt it last week. The doctor told her to be careful. I expect all her fires are out by now.’ She sounded smug.

‘They are,’ Max said shortly. ‘No locals thought to help her?’

‘She’s not a local herself,’ another of the ladies said, doubtfully now, maybe considering that they might be considered remiss. ‘She only came here when the children’s parents died. And she won’t sell the farm. We all tell her she should sell the farm. It’s a huge problem for the district.’

‘Why?’

‘We want to put a new road in. There’s ten outlying farms—huge concerns—that have three miles or more to get into town. If Phillippa agreed to sell her place we could build a bridge over the creek. It’d be a lot more convenient for everyone.’

‘I see,’ he said slowly. ‘Would that be why her vats have been found to be contaminated?’

‘Of course not,’ Crimplene snapped, but she flushed. ‘But it’s nothing more than we expected. She has some stupid idea of keeping the farm for the children. As if she can ever keep it as a going concern until they’re adult. It’s ridiculous.’

‘So she doesn’t qualify for help when she’s hurt?’ He caught himself then. What was the use of being angry—and what business was it of his? Pippa was nothing to do with him. He just needed to do what he had to do and move on.

It was just she looked so…slight. David against Goliath. Or Pippa against Crimplene. He’d prefer to take on Goliath any day, he thought. Crimplene made him feel ill.

‘Where can I buy some wood to tide us over?’ he said, trying very hard to keep anger out of his voice.

‘We have barbecue packs,’ the checkout lady said. She also seemed unsure, casting a nervous glance at Crimplene as if she was bucking an agreed plan. ‘We sell them to tourists at a big…I mean for premium prices. There’s ten logs per bundle at five dollars a bundle.’

Max thought back to the enormous woodstove and he thought of Pippa’s fingers, tinged with blue from the cold. He looked at the four women in front of him. They stared straight back and he felt the anger again. Sure, he was a stranger, and it was none of his business, but he remembered the shadows under Pippa’s eyes and he couldn’t stop being angry.

Anger achieved nothing, he told himself. He was here on a mission. He had to focus.

‘How many bundles do you have in stock?’ he asked.

‘Forty maybe.’

‘If I buy them all will you deliver?’

There was a general gasp. ‘That’s wicked waste,’ Crimplene started but the checkout lady was seeing dollars.

‘Sure we will,’ she said. ‘When do you want them?’

‘You can’t,’ Crimplene gasped but the checkout lady was looking at a heady profit.

‘Now,’ Max told her.

‘I’ll get hubby from the back,’ she said, breathless. ‘For that amount Duncan can get his backside off the couch and I don’t care if it is against what you want, Doreen. Your precious road can wait. It’s uncivilised, what you’re doing to that family, and I don’t mind who I say it to.’ Then as Crimplene’s bosom started to swell in indignation she smiled at Max and gazed lovingly at the very expensive produce in his trolley. ‘Do you want me to ring these through?’

‘Not yet,’ Max said, moving further down the aisle, away from the women he wanted suddenly—stupidly—to lash out at. Pippa was to be neglected no longer, he thought. If he bought the entire store out and the population of Tanbarook went hungry because of it, then so much the better. Vengeance by Commerce. He almost managed a smile. ‘I’ve hardly started.’

‘Go tell Duncan to start loading wood,’ he told the ladies. ‘Now do you know where I can buy fish and chips? Oh, and a clothes dryer?’

‘He’ll probably abscond with my thirty-two dollars and fifty cents.’

Back at the farmhouse, the kids and Dolores were out on the veranda waiting for Max’s return and Pippa was starting to think she’d been a dope. What if he never came back? She hadn’t even taken the registration number of his car.

Who was he?

Max de Gautier. The royal side of the family.

Pippa smiled at that, remembering Gianetta’s pleasure in her royal background. Alice, Gina’s mother, had tried to play it down, but Gianetta had been proud of it.

‘My great-uncle is the Crown Prince of Alp d’Estella,’ she’d tell anyone who’d listen. After the old prince died, she’d had to change her story to: ‘I’m related to the Crown Prince of Alp d’Estella.’ It didn’t sound as impressive, but she’d still enjoyed saying it.

But it meant nothing. When Alice died there’d been no call from royalty claiming kinship. Gina had married her Australian dairy farmer, and, storytelling aside, she’d considered herself a true Australian. Royalty might have sounded fun but it hadn’t been real. Her beloved Donald had been real.

Marc came in then, searching for reassurance that Max would indeed return.

‘I don’t know why he’s so long,’ Pippa told him, and then hesitated. ‘Marc, you remember your mama showed us a family tree of the royal family she said you were related to?’

‘Mmm,’ Marc said. ‘Grandma drew it for us. I couldn’t read it then but I can now. It’s in my treasure box.’

‘Can we look at it?’

So they did. The tree that Alice had drawn was simple, first names only, wives or husbands, drawn in neat handwriting with a little childish script added later.

Marc spread it out on the kitchen table and both of them studied it. Marc was an intelligent little boy, made old beyond his years by the death of his parents. Sometimes Pippa thought she shouldn’t talk to him as an equal, but then who else could she talk to?

‘I wrote the twins and two thousand and two and stuff when I learned to write,’ Marc said and Pippa hugged him and kept reading.

‘Etienne was your great-great-grandfather,’ she told him, following the line back. ‘Look, there’s Max. His grandpa and your great-grandfather were the same. Louis. I guess Louis must have been a prince.’

‘Why aren’t I a prince?’

‘Because your grandma was a girl?’ she said doubtfully. ‘I think princes’ kids are princes but princesses’ kids aren’t.’ She hesitated and then admitted: ‘Actually, Marc, I’m not sure.’