A Royal Marriage Of Convenience

CHAPTER THREE

ROSE finished an excellent pudding, but it signalled that the night, for Rose at least, was over. She excused herself without waiting for coffee.

‘I was up before dawn, and I need to walk a bit before bed after all that champagne,’ she told them. ‘No, I don’t want company. I need head-space to plan the next few weeks. There’s so much I need to do. Finding someone to take care of a thousand square-miles of farm animals is the least of it.’

‘If there are no hitches then you can marry in four weeks,’ Erhard said. ‘Marrying in Alp de Montez is the wisest course. Can you be ready then?’

‘I’ll do my best,’ Rose said. She hesitated, and then she stooped and kissed the old man gently on the forehead. ‘You take care of yourself. Please. For me.’

And she left without another word.

Nick watched as she wove through the tables, smiling as a waiter paused to let her pass, smiling at the doorman as he opened the door for her, smiling as she went out into the night.

‘She’s some lady,’ Erhard said gently, and Nick came back to earth with a jolt.

‘Sorry. I was just thinking.’

‘She’s worth thinking about.’

‘I don’t…’

‘No, you don’t, do you?’ Erhard said. ‘I’ve had you thoroughly checked. The longest you’ve ever dated one woman is nine weeks.’

That took him aback. ‘You know that?’

‘The investigative agency I hired is very thorough.’

‘So you know all about me.’

‘It wouldn’t have been worth my while to approach you if I’d found you were another Jacques. But the reputation you have in legal circles is for integrity. You try to select cases where there’s moral imperative, as well as financial. Also, the woman who fostered you since you were small-Ruby-says that you’re honest, kind and trustworthy. As a reference I thought that was the best.’

‘How the hell did you get Ruby to talk about me?’ he demanded, and Erhard gave a small smile.

‘The investigative agency has an operative who enjoys macramé,’ he confessed. ‘She infiltrated your foster mother’s macramé group.’ His smile broadened at Nick’s astonishment. ‘Desperate times call for desperate measures. Ruby seemed to be the best person to give a character reference, but she’d never have answered an official request with such honesty.

‘As it was, she told our operative that you went through eight foster homes as your mother agonised whether she could keep you. That you grieved for your mother, even though she was…impossible. That once you joined Ruby and her family of foster sons you were fiercely loyal to every one of the family members. That you learned early to be a loner, but you were generous to a fault. There’s an Australian children’s home-Castle, at Dolphin Bay?-that you contribute to in any way you can. That if any of your foster brothers are in trouble you’re there before they ask.’ His smile deepened. ‘I read the report and I thought, yes, you’ll do.’

‘Ruby’s macramé group.’ He was still feeling winded. Rose was out the door now, and the room was dreary for her going. Well, then. Erhard and his ‘operatives’ had to be good for something. ‘Rose?’ he queried. ‘What did you find out about Rose?’

‘I’ve told you most of it.’

‘Tell me again,’ he growled. He hadn’t listened properly the first time. He hadn’t been as interested as he was now.

‘She’s had it hard too,’ Erhard said gently, with only a faint smile to tell he’d guessed at Nick’s reactions. ‘Maybe almost as hard as you. Her mother had rheumatoid arthritis and couldn’t work, and after she left the palace Eric simply ignored both of them. Rose worked her way through vet school. She met and married a fellow student-Max McCray. Max was an older student-he’d missed schooling because of time spent recovering from cancer. Max was the only son of a veterinarian in the Yorkshire Dales. Rose was embraced into Max’s family, and when Rose and Max graduated they took over the family veterinary practice. Then the disease recurred. Rose cared for Max devotedly-as well as running the vet practice-until Max’s death two years ago. She’s running it still.’

‘But she’s agreed to leave.’

‘You know, I suspect there’s almost an element of relief,’ Erhard said honestly. ‘The village she’s been living in is tiny, and she’s very much Max’s widow. Everywhere we asked we were told how wonderful Rose is, and how noble it is of her to carry on her husband’s work. There’s a large veterinary conglomerate based in a nearby town that would buy them out in a flash, but her parents-in-law won’t hear of it. So she’s stuck dealing with lots of farm work-horses and cattle-which her father-in-law and husband loved, but it’s hard physical work for one so slight. There’s also been a huge money problem. Max’s illness put her in debt, and she’d borrowed to put herself through vet school. Max had no family money.’

‘You know…’ He hesitated. ‘This isn’t a standard private-investigative report, but the firm I use is good-very good. Their brief is to compile character assessments of people in line for top jobs, so they give more than facts. Our investigator talked to one of the nurses who cared for Rose’s husband. The nurse’s assessment is that Rose is stuck in her husband’s life.’

‘But she is leaving.’

‘We’ve given her a huge moral imperative to leave,’ Erhard said. ‘A whole country depending on her instead of just a village. She can walk away without Max’s ghost dragging her back.’

‘So you’re expecting me to walk away from my profession like you’re expecting Rose to?’

‘No one’s expecting anything of you,’ Erhard said patiently. ‘Apart from a few weeks of your time and a name on a marriage document. There’s no need for you to stay in Alp de Montez. There’s no need for your life to change very much at all. Simply take a few weeks off work, marry Rose, wait until the fuss about the succession has died down and then take over your life again. Yes, you’ll be part of the royal couple, but apart from the coronation itself-and the wedding-your attendance is optional. Your interest is optional, and when Rose’s position is established you can divorce. Rose seems willing to put in the hard yards.’

‘You said she’s working too hard as it is,’ Nick said, frowning.

‘I’ll take care of her,’ Erhard said. ‘She won’t be delivering calves in icy paddocks at midnight.’

‘That’s what she’s doing now?’

‘That’s what she’s doing. Living with her parents-in-law. Stuck in the grief of her husband’s loss.’

There were so many facets of the woman, he thought. A cheeky imp. A beautiful, sophisticated woman. A magical dancer. A workhorse.

‘I guess I can,’ he said, and Erhard smiled.

‘There are worse women to marry than Rose,’ he said.

It seemed the thing was decided. By the time he turned up at work the next morning, Erhard had already initiated the first steps towards the royal wedding. Nick took a deep breath and quietly talked to the firm’s senior partners. To his relief, the partners saw nothing but benefit. Even Blake, Nick’s foster brother who also worked for the firm, was enthusiastic.

When Nick told him, Blake stared at his foster brother in amazement, and then quietly gone away and done the same research Nick had. Even to Blake the plan looked solid. ‘It’s your birthright, after all, and you’d be crazy not to,’ Blake told him. ‘There’s enough stability in the country for your marriage to be received with relief. You get in there and support Rose-Anitra for all you’re worth.’

‘But marriage…’ he said to Blake, and Blake grinned.

‘Yeah, well, maybe this is the only sort of marriage that can work for the likes of us,’ he’d said. ‘It’s not like you want a real marriage. Why not in name only?’

Why not? Because it wasn’t quite true.

Marriage, for Nick, had always seemed something others did. From the time he first remembered, it had been as if he was on the outside looking in. Happy families? How did you go about achieving that? He had six foster brothers and they’d all come from disasters-partnerships that had imploded. Even Ruby, his beloved foster mother, had suffered tragedy.

He’d dated many women-of course he had-but the step toward commitment had always seemed insurmountable. But this…

‘You’re only committing for a month, right?’ Blake asked.

‘The general idea is that we stay married for as long as we need to. Minimum a month. Once Rose is firmly entrenched, there’s no need for me to stay.’

‘But the thought of helping get the country on its feet again turns you on?’

‘It does, yeah,’ he admitted.

‘And the thought of being married to Rose?’

He grinned and didn’t answer. But the bubble of excitement was becoming a tidal wave. This was a challenge. It was potentially beneficial for a whole country. And he’d be marrying Rose. If it worked out…

See, there was the scary bit. For some dumb reason, that was the thing that gave him pause. The way he felt about her.

She was gorgeous. Her smile made him gasp. She felt…

She didn’t feel anything. What had she said? ‘The last thing I want is more attachments. I’ve done family for life. I am free’.

That should make him feel better about the whole deal. Instead, it only made him feel more uncertain.

The thought of taking on a country’s direction didn’t worry him. The thought of marrying Rose did. Or, it didn’t worry him as much as unsettle him. It made him feel like he was teetering on the edge of something he didn’t understand.

But Blake didn’t see that. No one did. He himself decided it was dumb, and as a week passed without seeing Rose he thought, okay, he was being a romantic fool. This was hardly a romantic wedding. It seemed more like a military operation, and he had to treat it as such.

Erhard was on the phone constantly, organising every tiny detail-when they’d arrive, when the wedding would take place, accommodation, transport, meetings with the council to take place as soon as the wedding was over, the ascendancy claim. The legal documents Erhard faxed for signature made even Nick’s eyes water.

What was Rose thinking? But he couldn’t know.

‘I have a mountain of organisation to get through before I leave,’ she’d told him in their one brief phone-call. ‘I’m dealing with mass hysteria here. You sort the legal stuff. I know it’s dumb, but I’ll sign whatever needs to be signed. I have to trust you on this, Nick. You and Erhard.’

A later phone call elicited a bit more background. Instead of Rose, his call was answered by her mother-in-law.

‘You have no right to do this,’ the woman hissed down the phone. ‘The whole town depends on her. She’s saying the district will have to join the vet co-operative in the next town. She says with the money they pay we’ll be well off, but we don’t want money. My poor son would turn in his grave. How dare that man tell her she has no choice? How dare…?’

She became almost venomous, and in the end Nick had put down the phone, and thought he could understand another of Rose’s conditions. She didn’t want any press release until she was out of the country.

Erhard agreed with that reluctantly, but Nick thought that was fine. The juggernaut that was royal ascension rolled on.

Then, in the last few days before he and Rose were due to fly out, Nick’s contact with Erhard had faltered. There was one stilted phone-call. ‘Nikolai, things are in place for you to take over. I need to fade into the background. Good luck to you and to Rose.’

He didn’t explain, but by the sound of his voice Nick thought that his health was probably a factor. Erhard had launched them, and was depending on them to take it from here.

Good luck to you and to Rose.

That caused another of those moments when panic seemed to overwhelm him. But there was no reason for panic. No logical reason.

A royal marriage of convenience. Why not?

So he went on planning for this strange wedding, and the world didn’t crash on his head.

But on that last day, when he walked out of his office before taking a month off, and he found the whole of the office decorated with bridal nonsense, he was forced to see this for the reality it was. It was Saturday. The office should have been deserted, but people had obviously come in especially. Obviously Blake and the partners had decided that today they’d break their silence. Champagne was flowing. The girls from the typing pool were handing round wedding-cake. Blake had found a picture of Rose in a local newspaper’s weddings column, detailing Rose’s wedding to Max years ago. Someone had blown her image up to banner size. Posters of a grainy, bridal Rose were plastered from one end of the office to another.

‘She’s gorgeous,’ everyone agreed, and even Rose, laughing down from every wall, seemed to concur.

Rose’s image unsettled him as nothing else could. This was a Rose without the care lines around her eyes. Rose before…life?

It felt weird that he could think of marrying this woman, he decided, trying to smile as he accepted congratulations. It even seemed dangerous. But he’d gone too far to back out now, and finally he escaped, under a shower of confetti and good-natured banter.

‘There goes the groom to collect his bride. Or the prince to collect his princess,’ they called after him, and he had to smile and concur.

‘You’ll be the second of Ruby’s foster sons to get leg-shackled,’ Blake said as he walked with his foster brother to the firm’s car-park. He and Blake had gone through a lot together. They’d come from similar dysfunctional backgrounds, ending up under Ruby’s care. They’d both been ambitious, and they’d made it through law school together. Nick had started work with this firm first, and Blake had followed the year after. They were about as close as brothers could be, which gave Blake the right to say what he liked. Which he intended to do right now.

‘You’re not looking happy,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Bridal jitters getting to you?’

‘You know this isn’t a real wedding,’ Nick growled, unnerved, but Blake smiled and shrugged.

‘You make the vows. It’s all the wedding the likes of us can do. What have you told Ruby?’

‘That I’ve agreed to be married for a month in order for Rose to ascend the throne. That it’s business only. That she needn’t worry about anything, and I’ll come over and pay her a visit when it’s all over.

‘And she said?’ Blake said cautiously.

‘She…um…sounded a little irate. I thought she might have phoned you.’

‘When did you tell her?’

‘This morning.’

‘You have to be kidding.’ He and Blake were pushing their way through a crowd of photographers on the pavement. The press had arrived seemingly out of nowhere. Someone must have told them what was happening, and they were now documenting every step. ‘She’ll probably have tried to phone me twenty times already.’

‘Just assure her it’s business,’ Nick said. ‘She shouldn’t worry about it. It’s nothing.’

‘Nothing.’ Blake stopped dead, his face a picture of incredulity. ‘You want me to explain to Ruby you’re marrying a princess but it’s nothing? I’d be lucky to get off with burst eardrums.’

‘Then don’t. Ruby’s agreed to do some babysitting for Pierce and his brood for a couple of weeks, so she won’t have time to think about it.’

‘They do have news services in Dolphin Bay,’ Blake said with asperity. ‘Australia’s not so far away as you’d think when it comes to royal weddings. I seem to remember they even have newspapers. You’re inviting guests to this wedding?’

‘Only dignitaries. You can tell Ruby that.’ He gave a rueful grin. ‘I tried, but she wouldn’t stop yelling.’

‘You’re seriously getting married without involving family?’

‘I don’t do family. You know that.’

‘Yeah, but does Ruby? She’ll be over here like a flash, taking Rose into the bosom of our peculiar family, finding out her sweater size, making a macramé spread for the marital bed, maybe even starting on a few booties.’

‘See, that’s what we don’t want,’ Nick said bluntly. ‘If I let Ruby near Rose, Rose would run like a scalded cat. This is business.’

‘A marriage made in heaven,’ Blake said wryly.

‘It’s the only sort Rose will consider,’ Nick told him, and didn’t notice when Blake gave him an odd look. They’d reached his car now. The photographers were still at it. Somehow they had to be ignored.

Problems needed to be ignored. Meanwhile he gripped his brother’s hand in a gesture of farewell. ‘Thanks, mate,’ he told him. ‘Keep my place here warm for me.’

‘You might not still want it,’ Blake said, still looking at him strangely.

‘Of course I will. This marriage is for a matter of weeks. That’s all it’s for. I’ll be back.’

‘Yeah,’ Blake said and shook his hand back. ‘Right. Just you be careful boyo, of marital threads as well as political ones.’

So what was the problem? Why did Blake sound dubious?

And where had those photographers come from? Surely they wouldn’t spread this news as far as Ruby in Dolphin Bay?

Maybe he should have given Ruby a few more details. Maybe even invited her to the wedding.

But Ruby at his wedding? She’d sob, he thought. She’d hug them both. She’d make it incredibly, intensely personal.

Which would scare Rose.

And him.

In the comparative privacy of his BMW, heading for his Kensington apartment to collect his baggage, Nick had time to think, and the more he thought the more he felt like he was heading into trouble. To hurt Ruby by not inviting her…

He couldn’t invite her. And he’d specified it was just business.

But it had his foot easing from the accelerator, thinking maybe even now it wasn’t too late to draw back.

His mobile phone rang. It answered automatically on the hands-free base. If it hadn’t, maybe he wouldn’t have answered. His need for solitude to get his head right was starting to be overwhelming. But the voice came on the other end of the line before he could prevent the connection. ‘Nick?’

‘Rose.’ She sounded as spooked as he was. ‘It’s good to hear from you,’ he managed.

‘There are photographers here,’ she said. ‘Everywhere. They arrived an hour ago and there’s more arriving by the minute. My mother-in-law’s weeping so hard she’s making herself ill. The phone’s ringing off the hook. I think…is this a disaster?’

So he wasn’t alone in feeling overwhelmed. ‘I guess it’s what we had to expect,’ he said cautiously, insensibly reassured that she was feeling the same as he was.

‘I hadn’t thought…’

‘Neither had I.’

‘It’s not too late to back out,’ she whispered.

‘Do you want to back out?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It seemed so easy when it was just fantasy. But now…’

‘What would you do if you backed out?’ he asked.

There was a long silence. ‘Stay here, I guess,’ she said, sounding unsure.

‘You don’t want to stay there?’

‘No.’ That was unequivocal, at any rate. Then, ‘We did decide to do this for the right reasons, didn’t we, Nick?’

He had to be honest here. ‘Yes.’

‘It will make life better for the people of Alp de Montez?’

‘I think so,’ he said reluctantly. ‘My law firm is heavily geared to international disputes. We have people on the ground all over the world. The consensus is that we really can make a difference.’

‘We don’t have a choice then,’ she said heavily.

‘There is a choice, Rose,’ he said. He’d pulled up at traffic lights. They’d turned green, but he wasn’t shifting. There were horns blaring behind him but he thought, no, he had to concentrate. ‘You can walk away.’

‘I can’t walk away,’ she said. ‘Unless I have an alternative.’

‘You can stay where you are.’

‘That’s what I meant,’ she whispered. ‘Alp de Montez is my alternative.’

He didn’t understand. ‘Look, we can call the whole thing off.’

‘Do you want to?’

‘Hold on a minute,’ he told her, and moved forward before the motorists banked up behind him got out of their cars and thumped him. He steered into a bus stop and stopped. ‘Rose, this is up to you,’ he said gently. ‘You’re the one first in line. I’m the supporting role here.’

‘I guess.’ She took a ragged breath. ‘But you will support me?’

Five minutes ago he’d been thinking he couldn’t. But now…It was only for a month or so, and it would make a difference. Rose was taking this on for much, much longer.

If she was prepared to do it, how could he say no?

‘Of course I’ll support you,’ he said gently. ‘We’re in this together.’

‘For a month.’

‘And then I’ll be on the end of the phone. I won’t leave you isolated. We’ll set up supports.’

‘But you’ll stay involved?’

He took a deep breath. ‘Yes.’ Where had that come from? The Nikolai de Montez mantra was ‘never get involved’. But this was different. This was for a country.

This was for Rose.

‘Yes,’ he said again. ‘I’ll stay as involved as you want.’

‘Then I guess I can cope with the press,’ she said, still sounding shaky. ‘The plane’s due to pick me up in Newcastle at two. You swear you’ll be on it?’

What was a man to say to that? Despite misgivings. Despite Ruby.

‘Yes,’ he said, and he was committed.