Princess of Convenience. Marion Lennox
that thought aside as well. Black? When had she ever?
At least she had her stock-in-trade—the reason she was in this country. Her wardrobe had been brought more to show suppliers what she wanted than to wear herself. Tonight she chose a simple skirt, cut on the bias so it swirled softly to her knees. The skirt combined three tones of aquamarine, blended in soft waves. The colours were almost identical but not quite, and when spun together they were somehow magical. She teamed the skirt with an embroidered, white-on-white blouse with a mandarin collar and tiny sleeves. It hid her bruises perfectly.
That was that. No make-up. Like black, make-up was also something she didn’t do. Not since long before Dominic.
She brushed her close-cropped chestnut curls until they shone, then gazed at her reflection in the mirror.
These were great clothes, she conceded, but it was a pity about the model. This model had far too many freckles. This model had eyes that were too big and permanently shadowed with grief.
The model needed a good…life?
‘You’ve had your life,’ she told her reflection. ‘Move on. They’re waiting for you to go to dinner.’
But still she gazed in the mirror, and something akin to panic was threatening to overwhelm her.
This was a suite of rooms. ‘It’s one of several guest suites we have, dear,’ Louise had told her. It consisted of a vast bedroom, a fantastic bathroom and a furnished sitting room where the fire had crackled in the hearth the whole time she’d been here, its heat augmenting the spring sunshine that glimmered through the south-facing windows. The windows looked down over lawns that stretched away to parks and woodland beyond.
The whole place was breathtakingly beautiful, yet until now Jess had simply accepted it as it was. It was as if her mind had shut down. For the last few days she’d simply submitted to these people’s care.
Now she had to move. She’d said she’d go to dinner. She was dressed and ready. But outside was a castle. A castle!
How had Cinderella coped with collywobbles?
But then there was a knock on the door and Henri was there. The elderly butler was someone she was starting to recognise, and his smiling presence was steadying and welcome.
Her own private fairy godfather?
‘I thought I’d accompany you down, miss,’ he told her, his twinkling eyes letting her know that he recognised her butterflies and that was exactly why he was here. ‘It’s easy to get lost in these corridors.’ He surveyed her clothes with approval. ‘And if I may say so, miss, you look too lovely to lose.’
Jess smiled back, knowing if she was inappropriately dressed he would have warned her, but his smile said she was fine. He held out his arm and she hesitated a little and then stepped forward to take it. Yep, he was definitely a fairy godfather and she wasn’t letting go of his arm for anything.
‘You know, they’re just people,’ he told her as they started the long trek toward the distant royal dining room. ‘They’re people in trouble. Just like you.’
That initial time Jess had seen Raoul—the one time he’d entered her bedroom—she’d thought he was stunningly good-looking. Now, as Henri opened the dining-room door, she saw he was dressed for the evening, and good-looking didn’t come close.
The cut of his jet-black suit and his blue-black silk tie clearly delineated his clothes as Italian-designed and expensive. The crisp white linen of his shirt set off his deeply tanned skin to perfection. And his smile…
Good-looking? No. He was just plain drop-dead gorgeous, she decided. Toe-curlingly gorgeous.
Henri paused at the dining-room door, smiling, waiting for Raoul to react. And he did. He rose swiftly, crossed to take her arm from Henri’s, led her to her seat and handed her into it with care.
It’s just like I’m a princess, Jess thought, and she even managed to get a bit breathless. OK, she’d been shocked into a stupor where she’d hardly noticed her surroundings these last few weeks, but there were certain things that could pierce the thickest stupor.
Raoul Louis d’Apergenet was certainly one of them.
Her outfit was too simple for this setting, she thought fleetingly, with a tiny niggle of dismay, but Raoul was smiling at her as if she was indeed a princess and Louise was gazing at her skirt with admiration and saying,
‘Snap.’
‘Snap?’ Jess sat down—absurdly aware of Raoul’s hands adjusting her chair—and gazed at the array of silver and crystal before her. Snap? Card games was the last thing she was thinking about.
The table must be one of the palace’s smallest. It was only meant for eight or ten—but it was magnificent. The array of crystal and silverware made her blink in astonishment.
‘I think the word is wow,’ she said softly. ‘Snap has nothing to do with it.’
‘I meant your skirt.’ Louise was still smiling. ‘If I’m not mistaken that’s a Waves original. The same as mine.’
Jess focused—which was really hard when there was so much to take in. And when Raoul was smiling with that gentle, half-sad smile, the smile that said he knew…
She was being ridiculous.
Louise’s skirt. Concentrate.
Her hostess was indeed wearing a Waves skirt. It was one of Jess’s early designs, much more flamboyant than the one she was wearing, a calf-length circle of soft spun silk, aqua and white, the colours mingling in the shimmering waves that were Jess’s trademark—the colours of the sea.
‘I love the Waves work,’ Louise was saying. ‘And you must, too. But then you’re Australian. Waves is by an Australian designer, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Jess said and then because she couldn’t think of anything else to say she added, ‘Um, she’s me. Waves, that is. It’s what I do.’
‘You work for Waves?’
‘I am Waves,’ she said a trifle self-consciously. Actually, until a year ago she wouldn’t have said that. She would have said she was half of Waves. But then, that had never been true. She’d supported Warren, and when she’d needed him…
No. She closed her eyes and when she opened them Henri was setting a plate before her.
‘Lobster broth, miss,’ he said and it gave her a chance to catch her breath, to look gratefully up at him, to smile and to recover.
‘I own Waves,’ she told them, conscious of Louise’s eyes worrying about her and Raoul’s eyes…doing what? He seemed distant, assessing, but then maybe he had room for caution. ‘I started designing at school and it’s grown.’
‘You’re not serious? You own Waves?’ Louise’s expression was one of pure admiration. ‘Raoul, do you hear that? Waves is known throughout the world. We have a famous person in our midst.’
‘I’m hardly famous,’ she managed. She tried the broth. ‘This is lovely,’ she told Henri, though in truth she tasted nothing.
‘Are you here on a holiday?’ Raoul was gently probing, his eyes resting on her face. He seemed to be appraising, she thought, as if maybe he suspected his mother needed protecting from impostors and she might just be one.
She was being fanciful.
‘I… No. I’m here on a fabric-buying mission.’
‘There was no fabric in your car,’ Raoul said.
Once again, that impression of distrust.
‘Maybe because my plane landed the morning of the crash,’ she told him and there was an edge to her voice that she hadn’t intended. She tried to soften it. ‘I’m here to buy but I’ve hardly started. I’d heard that the Alp’Azuri weavers are wonderful and