Princess of Convenience. Marion Lennox
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.
‘Ugh.’ Jess looked around her, taking in the vast range built to cook for an army, the huge beams overhead, the massive wooden table and the ancient flagstones on the floor. This kitchen was the size of a normal house. It was fantastic. But right now it was horrid.
Still Raoul seemed bemused. He was thinking of tragedy, Jess thought, whereas right now was the time for thinking of right now. ‘You want to open a few windows and doors, Your Highness?’ she prodded, moving toward the frying-pan with a handful of dishcloths and a martial look. ‘I’ll get rid of this.’
Raoul stared at her for a moment as if he didn’t understand—and then crossed to the sink. ‘Shove it in here,’ he told her.
She raised her brows in incredulity. He really was distracted. ‘You’re proposing we pour cold water on red-hot cast iron?’
‘Well…’
She grinned. ‘What do you do in real life, Your Highness? Don’t tell me. You’re an engineer?’
‘I’m a doctor,’ he told her and she paused.
‘A doctor. A people doctor?’
‘That’s right.’ He frowned, almost as if he was hauling himself back to the here and now. ‘Why did you think I might be an engineer?’
That was easy. ‘On account of your practicality,’ she told him, grinning. ‘My cousin’s an engineer and he has a four-inch-diameter scar on his shoulder because of just the practicality you’re proposing.’
Raoul’s brows snapped down in confusion. ‘Pardon?’
‘Patrick’s brilliant,’ she told him, folding her dishcloths into a pad. She was trying not to stare at the way his eyebrows worked when he was confused. It was sort of…sort of very attractive. ‘One late night when he was still at university, Patrick got hungry—so he did what any brilliant engineer would do, faced with a can of baked beans and hunger. He heated them on his college-room gas heater. Without opening them. When he finally applied the can opener, the can