Wanted: Royal Wife and Mother. Marion Lennox
She could see his father. She could see the de Boutaine side. But she could also see little things about herself. She had funny quirky eyebrows, too thick for beauty. Whenever she had a haircut, the hairdresser tut-tutted and thinned them out.
Here were those same thick brows.
On a guy they’d be gorgeous.
On Matty they were gorgeous.
Her son.
There were vague sounds from outside and she looked out of the window in time to see the security guards wandering past her back fence. Yes, she should get up and close the blind. It wasn’t safe.
It was safe, for just through the door Rafael de Boutaine was stretched out on her settee.
Her son was in bed beside her. The Prince Regent of Alp de Ciel was just through the door.
‘As if that makes us safe,’ she muttered into the night.
But…but…
‘He’s different from Kass. He’s honourable, I know.
‘How do you know?’ She was whispering in to the dark. Her hand was lying on Matty’s pillow. She wouldn’t touch him. She wouldn’t for the world wake him, startle him. But with her hand on his pillow she could feel his breathing. It was enough.
‘Rafael brought him home.
‘There must be some underlying motive.
‘Maybe, but he’s brought him home,’ she whispered and the thought of Rafael lying in the darkness just through the door remained solid. Good. Comforting in a way she hadn’t been comforted for years.
Her little boy was asleep beside her. Rafael had brought him to her.
What more could a woman want?
‘I have my son,’ she whispered into the dark and thought how could she sleep with such happiness?
But she was still recuperating from the flu. She hadn’t slept well for weeks.
She leaned up on her elbows and gazed for one long last moment at her son. She touched her lips with her finger and then transferred the kiss to her son with a feather touch that wouldn’t disturb him for the world.
She snuggled down on to her pillows where she could watch her son’s breathing.
He breathed. He breathed.
Rafael was just through the door. Prince Regent of Alp de Ciel. A prince who’d brought her son to her.
She felt warm and safe and almost delirious with love.
She slept.
Kelly woke to the smell of coffee. She opened one eye. They were standing at the bedroom door, smiling. Both of them. Identical smiles, where warmth and mischief combined.
Rafael was dressed in the same casual cords and soft sweater he’d been wearing the night before. Last night Matty had been wearing jeans and a soft blue coat. Now he was wearing almost identical cords to Rafael and a sweater of the same colour as well. They looked… They looked…
She blinked fiercely. She’d been awake for seconds and she was close to tears already.
‘H…hi.’
‘Hi, yourself, sleepyhead,’ Rafael said, carrying in a mug of steaming coffee. ‘Mathieu. Toast.’ Mathieu almost saluted, but his hands were occupied in balancing a plateful of toast.
The toast was spread liberally with marmalade and butter. Yum. But…
She glanced at the bedside clock and sat bolt upright as Matty reached the bed with the toast. It was almost a calamity, but not quite, for Rafael moved like a big cat, pouncing on the plate, lifting it away while spilling not a drop of coffee.
She was stunned, but she was still staring at the clock. ‘It’s after nine,’ she stammered. ‘How…’
‘We turned off your alarm clock,’ Matty said proudly and removed the plate of toast from Rafael’s grasp and put it carefully on her knee. ‘Uncle Rafael and me woke up really early because it doesn’t feel like morning. Uncle Rafael says it’s because we’re all the way round the other side of the world and the sun hasn’t caught us up. Uncle Rafael says if we keep flying we’ll catch up with it again but we don’t want to keep flying yet ’cos we have to give you toast. And the man outside in the uniform said you’ve been really, really sick and someone ought to look after you ’cos you sure as hell don’t look after yourself.’
He paused, looking up at Rafael with uncertainty. ‘Did I say that right? In Anglais?’
‘You certainly did,’ Rafael said. ‘I told you my mother’s American,’ he told Kelly. ‘Matty’s been brought up bilingual. Isn’t he terrific?’
‘Terrific,’ Kelly said and managed a smile. Terrific? He was more than terrific. He was…he was…
Her son.
But there was still the little matter of the time.
‘I’m supposed to be at work.’
‘You’re not. Rob’s back,’ Rafael said. ‘The two tour guides are back at work today. There’s no urgency. The powers that be say you’re to take the day off if you need.’
‘The powers that be…’
‘We’ve been busy,’ he told her. ‘We went back to the hotel to get our gear. Then we visited your administration. The lady there—Diane?—she was in at eight. We introduced ourselves.’
‘You never told her…’
‘We said we were relations,’ he said, placating her. ‘And we were worried about you. It seems Diane is worried about you too.’
‘She’s a mother hen,’ Kelly said fretfully, wondering what Diane would be thinking. Knowing what Diane would be thinking. ‘Look, thank you for the thought but I need to…’ ‘Take us through the theme park,’ Rafael said. ‘Matty’s aching to go down a gold-mine. We thought we might do that first, if it’s okay with you.’ He smiled down at her with that heart-stopping smile that sent her brain straight into panic. ‘That is, unless you’d like to stay in bed and sleep while Matty and I explore?’
Matty explore without her? The idea had her reaching to toss off her covers but Rafael caught her hands and stopped her.
‘No,’ he said, gently but firmly. ‘You stay in bed until you’ve had your toast. Matty and I are going to eat more toast until you’re ready. You’re not to rush. We have all the time in the world.’
‘Really?’
The smile faded. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘Not really. But for today I’m going to pretend that’s true, so I’d like you to play along if you will. Let’s get ourselves breakfasted and go find some gold.’
She wore her favourite dress. Matty’s words stayed with her—I thought my mother would wear a pretty dress. So she did.
Most of Kelly’s work in the theme park was done in the administration. She researched new displays, she assessed the veracity of potential tenants for the commercial sites—were their wares truly representative of the eighteen-fifties? She worked with the engineers as they combined authentic mining methods with new-age safety. She examined artefacts as they were found, donated or offered for sale.
In the short times she was off site she wore what the park staff loosely termed civvies, but while she was in the park, like every other employee, she dressed for the times.
She loved her clothes. Yes, she had the hard-wearing moleskins and flannels for when she needed to go underground, but mostly she was a woman wearing clothes that a woman would have worn in the eighteen-fifties—hooped skirts, shawls, bonnets. She loved the way her skirts swished against her, how they turned her into a citizen of a bygone age. She loved disappearing