Invitation to the Prince's Palace / The Prince's Second Chance: Invitation to the Prince's Palace / The Prince's Second Chance. Brenda Harlen
abruptly.
This wasn’t a commercial flight.
There were no rows of passengers, just some very well-dressed attendants who all seemed to make her taxi driver the centre of attention in a revering kind of way.
Mel’s allergy was gone. The effects of the medication had worn off. That was good, but it also meant she couldn’t be hallucinating right now.
She had vague memories of sleeping … on an accommodating shoulder.
Yet she didn’t remember even boarding a flight!
This plane was luxurious. It had landed somewhere. Outside it was dark rather than the sunshiny day she’d looked forward to in Melbourne, and Mel could feel freezing air coming in through the aperture where another attendant waited for a set of steps to be wheeled to the edge of the plane.
She should be feeling Sydney summer air.
Memory of that expensive-looking car rose. Had she been kidnapped? Tension coiled in her tummy. If anything was wrong, she’d left a note saying she was moving to Sydney. Her relatives might be angry to lose their underpaid cook, but she doubted that they would go looking for her. Not at the expense of their time or resources.
Breathe, Melanie. Pull yourself together and think about this.
The driver had asked her if she was ‘sure about this’. As though they already had an arrangement? That would make it unlikely that she’d been kidnapped.
But they didn’t have an arrangement!
Mel turned her head sharply, and looked straight into the stunning gaze of the man who’d placed her in that car.
She’d thought, earlier, that he was attractive. Now Mel realised he was also a man of presence and charisma. All those around him seemed to almost feel as though … they were his servants?
Words filtered through to Mel again. French words and, among those words, ‘Prince Rikardo’.
They were addressing her driver as a prince?
That was easy, then, Mel thought a little hysterically. She’d fallen down a rabbit hole into some kind of alternative world. Any moment now she would sprout sparkling red shoes. That’s two different fairy tales, Mel. Actually it’s a fairy tale and a classic movie. Oh, as though that mattered! Yet in this moment, this particular rabbit hole felt all too real. And maybe there’d been a book first, anyway.
Stop it!
‘You’re fully refreshed? How are the allergies? You slept almost twenty-four hours. I hope the rest helped you.’
Did kidnappers sound calm, rational and solicitous?
Mel drew a breath, said shakily and with an edge of uncertainty she couldn’t entirely hide, ‘I feel a bit exhausted. The allergies are gone. I guess I slept them off while we travelled between Melbourne and … ?’
‘Braston.’ He spoke the word with a slight dip of his head.
‘Right. Yes. Braston.’ A small country planted deep in the heart of Europe. Mel had heard of it. She didn’t really know anything about it. She certainly shouldn’t be anywhere near it. ‘I’m just not quite sure—You see, I thought I’d be flying from Melbourne to Sydney—’
‘We were able to fly very directly.’ He leaned towards her and surprised her by taking her hand. ‘You don’t need to be nervous or concerned. Just stick to what we’ve agreed and let me do the talking around my father, the king.’
‘K-king.’ As in, a king who was the father of a prince? As in, this man, Rikardo, was a prince? A royal prince of Braston?
Stick with the issue at hand, Mel. Why are you here? That’s the question you need answered.
‘You are different somehow to what I have remembered.’ His words were thoughtful.
‘Remembered from our drive to the airport? I don’t understand.’ Her words should have emerged in a strong tone. Instead they were a nervous croak drowned by the clatter of a baggage trolley being wheeled closer to the plane.
Well, this was not the time for Mel to impersonate a scaredy frog waiting to be kissed into reassurance by a handsome prince.
Will you stop with the fairy-tale metaphors already, Melanie!
‘You’re nervous. I understand. I’ll walk you through this process. Just rely on me, and it will be easy for both of us to honour our agreement.’
Mel drew a deep breath. ‘Seriously, about this “agreement”. There’s been—’
‘Your Highness, if you and your guest would please come this way.’ An attendant waved them forward.
The prince, Rikardo, took Mel’s elbow, tucked the wonderful warm wrap more snugly about her shoulders, and escorted her to the steps and down them onto the tarmac.
Icy wind whipped at Mel’s hair and stung her face but, inside the wrap, she remained warm. Floodlights lit the small, private airstrip. A retinue of people waited just off the tarmac.
Mel had an overwhelming urge to turn around and climb back onto the plane. She might not be down a rabbit hole, but she was definitely Alice in Crazyland. None of this would have happened if she’d been completely herself when she ordered that ride to the airport and believed it had arrived. Mel would never take someone else’s medication again, even if it were just an over-the-counter one that anyone could buy!
‘Please. Prince … Your Highness …‘ As she spoke they moved further along the tarmac. ‘There truly has been some kind of mistake.’
What could have happened? As Mel asked the silent question puzzle pieces started to come together.
If he’d called at the right address, then he had expected to collect a woman from there.
Her cousin had been in a strange mood, filled with secrecy and frenetic energy. At the end of the dinner party, Nicolette had rushed to her room and started rummaging around in there. Had Nicolette been … packing for a trip?
Rik had said he’d arrived earlier than he’d expected to. That would explain Nicolette not being ready. Mel had thought that he’d called her by her first name of Nicole, but it could have easily been ‘Nicolette’ that he said. She and her cousin looked heaps alike. Horror started to dawn. ‘It must have been Nicolette—’
‘Allow me to welcome you on to Braston soil, Nicolette.’ Rikardo, Prince Rikardo, spoke at the same time. He stopped. ‘Excuse me?’
Oh. My. God.
He’d mistaken Mel for Nicolette. Mel’s cousin had made some kind of plan with this man. That meant Rikardo really was a prince. Of this country! As in, royalty who had made an arrangement with Nicolette.
Mel, the girl who’d worked in her aunt and uncle’s kitchen for years, was standing here in a foreign country with an heir to the throne, when it was her cousin who should be here for whatever reasons she should be here. How could the prince not realise the mistake? Surely he’d have seen that Mel wasn’t Nicolette, even in dawn light and with Mel affected by allergies? Just how well did this prince know Nicolette?
Yes, Mel? And how many times has Nicolette become furious when one of her acquaintances mistook you for her when they called at the house?
‘Unless we’re in the public eye, please just call me Rik.’ He hustled her into the rear of another waiting car and climbed in beside her. A man in a dark suit climbed into the front, spoke a few words to the prince in French, and set the vehicle in motion.
The prince added, ‘Or Rikardo.’
‘You probably have five given names and are heir to a whole lot of different dukedoms or things like that.’ Mel sucked up a breath. ‘I do watch the news and see the royal families coming and going.’