A Royal Marriage Of Convenience

CHAPTER SEVEN

THEY were indeed going to the palace. The car pulled up in the forecourt of a building that brought Rose’s memories flooding back. The grand palace of the royal family of Alp de Montez.

‘I’d forgotten it was so grand,’ Rose whispered, staring up at gleaming white turrets, battlements, fountains in the forecourt two stories high, marble steps leading to an entrance that took up an area the size of a tennis court. ‘My mother was never given an independent allowance. So here we stayed. I was tutored here, and we hardly left the place. But I’d forgotten…’

It looked like something out of a fairy tale. Could she really be a princess?

And then the car door was hauled open by men in uniform, and the fairy tale evaporated like the bursting of a bubble.

‘Out,’ someone snapped, and a hand grabbed her arm and tugged so hard she fell out onto the gravel.

But she had a protector. In seconds Nick was on her side of the car, lifting her to her feet, pushing the uniformed thugs aside as if it was he who was in charge and not these people. He set Rose firmly before him, and placed a hand strongly on each shoulder. He smiled at her, a ‘we’re in this together’ smile. And then he faced Jacques. The black car that had drawn up right behind them had disgorged Jacques and his lady. Julianna.

‘If you lay a finger on the Princess Rose, you’ll be facing enquiries from the international community,’ Nick said in a carrying, commanding voice he must have perfected in years of work as a lawyer. Now he deepened his voice, making it louder, as if wanting to carry his words as far as possible.

‘Princess Rose-Anitra and I-Nikolai de Montez-have been escorted to the Imperial Castle of Alp de Montez against our will,’ he said strongly, loudly, to the world at large. ‘The date is…The time is…We’re being held in custody by Jacques and Julianna de Montez. Jacques and Julianna are here right now, in my sight, with direct authority over the people holding us.’

What was he doing?

‘At any moment my mobile phone will be taken from me,’ he continued. ‘I will then stop transmitting, but this message is recorded. Blake, you know what to do.’

There was a moment’s taut stillness-and then a roar of fury from Jacques as he realised what Nick had just done. The man who’d done the talking back at the river and at the airport-Dupeaux-snapped a curt order. Nick was summarily searched and a mobile phone tugged from his shirt pocket.

‘It’s still transmitting,’ Nick said blandly as Dupeaux handed it to Jacques. Again he raised his voice. ‘The phone’s been forcibly removed from me.’

Jacques threw the phone on the ground and ground it with his heel.

‘I’d guess it’s stopped transmitting now,’ Nick said and smiled, tugging Rose tight against him. ‘But it’s been transmitting to my foster brother, Blake, partner in the international law-firm Goodman, Stern and Haddock. I commenced recording back at the river, and what I just said has been transmitted as well. If Blake-and my friends at almost every international embassy in London-don’t hear from us soon they’ll know where to look. Wouldn’t you say?’

He smiled again. But Jacques wasn’t smiling.

‘Take them away,’ he snapped, staring down at the ruined phone as if it was a live scorpion.

But…Julianna?

‘Julianna?’ Rose asked, turning to her sister. Julianna seemed almost stunned with what was happening. Surely the transmission thing hadn’t been necessary. Surely in this day and age…

‘You’re threatening us,’ Julianna whispered, and her face was white with shock.

‘You’re threatening this country,’ Rose said.

‘We’re not. Jacques isn’t.’

‘Ask the hard questions, Julia,’ Rose told her, but she had to yell her last two words over her shoulder. They were being hustled away.

To…a dungeon?

Not quite.

They passed through three thick doors, hustled so fast they hardly had time to be aware of their surroundings. Then they were unceremoniously shoved through a final door, and the clang of metal against stone echoed solidly as they were left alone.

Breathless with shock, Rose stared around her in dismay. By this time she’d almost been expecting to see a torture chamber. She’d never seen such a thing when she was a child, but circumstances now made her fear the worst.

It wasn’t a dungeon. Not even close. It was an austere room, whitewashed with a concrete floor, and she recognised it as one of a number of windowless storerooms under the castle. Two single beds were simply made with white coverlets. A small, wool mat lay between each bed, a solitary concession to comfort. Through a door on the other side of the room she could see simple bathroom facilities.

Austere, but not scary.

‘So much for me wanting to be a princess with tiaras and everything,’ she whispered, and she couldn’t keep her voice steady.

‘Rose…’

‘It’s alright. It’s still better than Yorkshire.’

Nick was right. This was her choice, she told herself. There’d had to be some imperative to give her the moral strength to walk away from Max’s life. Well, this was surely a moral imperative. And a physical imperative. She couldn’t return if she tried.

She touched the door, tentatively, putting pressure on the handle.

‘It’s locked,’ Nick said unnecessarily.

‘I guessed.’

‘Hell, Rose…’

‘It’s okay,’ she whispered.

‘Would you mind very much if I hugged you?’ Nick asked.

‘I…’

‘You see, I don’t much like enclosed places,’ he confessed. ‘I think I’m claustrophobic.’

‘You think?’

‘I need a hug,’ he said, and he turned and took her into his arms.

He was claustrophobic?

She didn’t believe it for a minute. He was just saying it because he thought she needed a hug herself.

He was absolutely right. This was deeply, deeply scary. And where, where, was Hoppy?

She let herself be drawn against him. Again. She was getting almost accustomed to it, she thought as she let him tug her into his arms, and then she forgot to think.

He needed a hug to drive away fear? Well, maybe he was right at that, for a hug from this man did drive away fear. It drove away everything. The strength of him, the sheer arrant maleness of him…This man had a reputation as a womaniser and she was starting to see why. What woman wouldn’t react to Nikolai de Montez exactly as she was reacting now?

He was gorgeous. And she was afraid. For all her bravado, for all his assurances of her long-term safety, she’d seen the look on Jacques’ face, and it had been hatred. She was being held a prisoner.

She’d lost Hoppy.

The last was the worst. She shuddered and he tugged her closer, his fingers raking her hair with gentle reassurance.

‘Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay, Rose. This is just a hiccup. We’ll get out of here, you’ll see.’

‘It’s you who’s supposed to be afraid,’ she retorted, but she didn’t pull away. Not when he was raking her hair, just as it should be raked.

‘Someone will take care of Hoppy,’ he said, and she froze against him.

‘I’m a vet,’ she whispered into the muffling anonymity of his shoulder. ‘Hoppy’s had a couple of his lives already. I shouldn’t care so much.’

‘If you didn’t care so much you wouldn’t be you,’ he told her. ‘Did you have to stay with your in-laws for so long?’

She frowned, but she was frowning against the warmth and strength of his shoulder. She had no intention of pulling away just yet.

‘What’s that got to do with the price of fish?’ she managed, and she felt rather than saw him smile.

‘Nothing. But we’re in prison. We might as well fill the time socially.’

‘By cuddling.’

‘And talking,’ he said gravely. ‘Saving me from claustrophobia.’

‘You’re not really claustrophobic.’

‘Let go of me and I’ll start climbing walls. And hollering. You want to see a grown man turn into a caged animal?’

She smiled, but she did manage to pull away. Just a little.

A lock of his hair had fallen over his eyes. He did look anxious. But there was a hint of laughter behind his dark eyes that belied the anxiety he was expressing. This man was dangerous, she told herself. This whole situation was dangerous, but the most dangerous thing of all was that she was locked in a single cell with Nick.

‘You’re on your own,’ she said, broke away and went to sit on the far bunk. She sat with the expectation that there’d be a bit of spring in the bed. There wasn’t. Her backside hit with a solid thud.

‘Ouch!’ Nick said, seeing the way her body reacted.

‘Hard as nails.’ Then as he made to sit beside her she slid along further so the area he’d attempted to sit on was blocked. ‘Bounce on your own bed.’

‘What fun is that?’

‘There isn’t any fun in what’s happening.’

‘Let’s assume there is,’ he said. He sat down on the other bed, seemingly obedient, and smiled at her with a smile that wasn’t the least bit obedient. ‘Just to stop me being claustrophobic.’

‘Cut it out with the claustrophobia,’ she told him.

‘Telling someone to cut it out isn’t exactly a tried and true therapeutic approach to the problem. Whereas my idea-distraction-is much more likely to work.’

‘So how long do you think they’ll keep us here?’ she demanded, and he shrugged.

‘This is unknown territory, Rose.’ His voice was suddenly serious. ‘But we’ve done all we can. We’ve presented our case to as many people as we could. As long as that message isn’t able to be suppressed, then things will happen. Erhard said this country has been suppressed for so long that it’s a powder keg waiting to blow.’

‘With us in the middle.’

‘No, because we’re an alternative to blowing,’ he said, still serious. ‘The people here don’t want anarchy-you just have to look at how long they’ve put up with dreadful rulers to see that. So with us they don’t have to change the status quo. All they have to do is insist on the application of the law.’

‘So how are they going to do that-ask Julianna and Jacques politely to let us take over?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘You’ve gone into this as blindly as I have.’

‘Maybe not quite,’ he admitted. ‘I did have the reassurance of almost everyone else on the staff. And my brother.’

‘Your brother,’ she said, thinking things through and not able to work it out.’

‘I have six foster-brothers,’ he told her. ‘One of whom is Blake, who’s in the same law firm as I am. He was on the other end of the telephone. “If in doubt, ring and I’ll record”-that’s what he told me as we left. I did. So everything we’ve said since we landed has been recorded.’

‘So Blake will come with a battalion of armed SAS agents.’

‘It won’t come to that.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘No,’ he admitted.

‘And Blake doesn’t have an army, does he?’

‘Um, no.’

‘And my dog’s wandering the country, friendless.’

‘He won’t be.’

‘I think I’m going to bed,’ she said, giving her hard bed another tentative poke. ‘My conversation with you is getting me nowhere.’

‘You’ll sleep?’

‘It’s almost midnight,’ she said. ‘So maybe I will. You don’t think if we asked nicely they might give us our luggage?’

‘Um…’

‘You don’t know that either,’ she said, and sighed. And then brightened. ‘Hey, but I’m set.’

‘You’re set?’

She tugged off her duffel coat and foraged in an inner pocket, then triumphantly produced a battered-looking toothbrush and a half-empty tube of toothpaste. She held it up like it was the crown jewels.

‘Bet high-flying lawyers don’t carry toothpaste on their persons,’ she said smugly.

‘Um…no. Can I ask why?’

‘I keep getting stuck,’ she told him. ‘I’ll go to a calving and it’ll be four in the morning, and as I finish the farmer will say can I hang around until his pig farrows or his neighbour’s cow calves. It’s too far to go home, so I kip on the couch and keep going. Hence the toothpaste.’ She smiled. ‘I’ll lend you toothpaste, but you’ll have to use your finger cos I’m not sharing toothbrushes. Even if we are going to be married, which I’m starting to seriously doubt.’

And she smiled, took herself to the bathroom and closed the door behind her.

She slept.

He was quite frankly astonished. To have the ability to close her eyes and sleep…It was a gift.

He wished he had it. Even as a kid he’d never been able to sleep. Bad things happened when you slept…

Where had that come from? The weird background of his past, where his mother was a shadowy figure moving in and out as life’s events lurched around her.

‘She was a frightened kid,’ Ruby had told him when he was old enough to respond to his foster mother’s deep concerns about his nightmares-where people had come and gone in the dark, and sometimes his mother had wept, sometimes she’d disappeared with the shadows, and when he’d woken she wasn’t there. ‘Your mother had nightmares of her own,’ Ruby had told him. ‘They didn’t let her grow up properly. The trick is-the thing we have to do-is to take charge of your nightmares and see if we can find you a way to live through them.’

She was a wise woman, Ruby. His one true thing. He and his six foster-brothers had been blessed by her taking charge of their shattered lives.

Ruby had been sensible enough to know he could never escape completely from the nightmares. Just learn to live around them.

So, dredging up a Ruby lesson from the past, he didn’t try to sleep now. He lay and watched the ceiling as he’d lain and watched the ceiling, countless nights in his past, not trying to sleep, just letting his thoughts go where they would.

But the ceiling wasn’t interesting. There was a light on through the other side of their prison’s thick doors, and he could see faintly by the chink of light it permitted in.

He could watch Rose.

Brave, he thought. Brave and lonely. But so practical. So accustomed to moving through grief.

She’d lost her dog this day. He knew already how much Hoppy meant to her, but had she wept or made a fuss?

There was nothing she could do about it. He’d been watching her eyes as she’d spoken of Hoppy and he knew how much it had hurt, how much she’d wanted to be out looking.

But there was nothing to be done, so a fuss hadn’t been made. There was nothing to do, so she’d settled for sleep.

She was some woman. A woman in a million. Like Ruby.

Ruby would love her, he thought, and then thought maybe, just maybe, he should have told Ruby more of what was happening. He’d described this marriage to his foster mother as a political move, nothing more. She’d been horrified, for she wanted so much more for her beloved sons.

Maybe Ruby was wiser than he was, he thought ruefully, for there was nothing political about how he was thinking of Rose.

He watched on. An hour. Two. This place was cold. They’d been given one blanket each. He was still wearing all his clothes, bar his shoes. The room was chill and getting colder.

‘I’m cold,’ Rose said into the silence, and he jumped about a foot.

‘I thought you were asleep.’

‘I was,’ she said. ‘But I just woke up. One blanket isn’t going to cut it.’

‘You’ve got your duffel coat.’

‘I have,’ she agreed equably. ‘So my top half is cosy. My bottom half is jealous. Do you only have one blanket?’

‘I…Yes.’

‘Could I trust you if I said you were welcome to share my bed?’

That took his breath away. ‘You’re proposing we sleep together?’ he asked cautiously.

‘Not in the metaphoric sense,’ she said lightly. ‘In the literal sense.’

‘You mean sleep as in sleep.’

‘Take it or leave it,’ she said. ‘It’s a once-in-a-lifetime offer.’

‘Never knock a lady back,’ he said, and two seconds later he was spreading his blanket over her and then diving under the covers as well.

‘I have another suggestion,’ she said before he could attempt to settle.

‘Which is?’

‘My feet are freezing,’ she said. ‘We’ve both got jackets on. If I spread my nice woolly duffel over our feet, you could put our limousine driver’s jacket over our tops. Note that this is a major concession on my part,’ she said before he could move. ‘Because my duffel is very, very warm, and your leather jacket won’t be nearly as warm, not to mention that it’s really been lent to both of us. So I could be within my rights to keep my duffel just for me, but insist that your leather jacket goes over our feet. But I’m magnanimous,’ she said in a truly magnanimous voice.

He chuckled.

They spent a convivial couple of minutes arranging their bed. Two blankets. The duffel spread-eagled over the bottom half. The leather jacket over the top. Then they were both under.

She was in her jeans and a cotton shirt. He was in his trousers and linen shirt. His tie was still in his pocket.

Sleeping in her jeans would be uncomfortable. They now had sufficient coverings that taking off their outer clothes would be sensible, but he wasn’t about to suggest it.

The bed was too narrow for them to lie apart. Their bodies touched, side by side. He lay rigid.

This was impossible. They were two mature people, and…

‘This is crazy,’ she said. ‘We’re never going to sleep like this.’

‘So what do you suppose we do about it?’

‘Relax,’ she said. ‘If I lie on my side and you lie on the same side, you’ll curve round me and keep me warm. I’m a widow. I know.’

‘I…I guess,’ he said doubtfully, trying to figure how this could stay a nice, platonic sharing of beds-and she was so close.

‘And you’re not a widower, but I’m betting you know as well that people can sleep together without wanting sex,’ she said. ‘So stop lying there like you’re standing at attention, only lying down. Relax.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘That’s better,’ she said, and he felt rather than saw her smile as she turned on her side, waited patiently for him to do the same and then wriggled until her spine was curved against his chest.

Unbidden, his arms came round to hold her.

She stiffened-just for a moment-and then she relaxed again.

‘See, it’s not just me coming up with the ideas,’ she said. ‘Excellent. Now, relax and go to sleep. Unless you’re worried about being taken out at dawn and shot. But we have Blake to stop that happening, right?’

‘Um, right.’

‘Then what else is there to worry about?’ she said. ‘Apart from Hoppy, and there’s nothing I can do about him until they let us out of here. So we might as well sleep. Sleep!’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

And he did. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again to his unutterable astonishment he’d slept for hours.

Rose was still deeply asleep, curled against his breast as if she belonged there. He was still holding her, his left arm underneath her, tugging her tight against him even in sleep. His right arm was resting lightly on her shoulder. He had to move slightly to see his watch, but she didn’t stir.

She must have been exhausted, he thought. Damn, he should have researched her background further. He wanted to know…

He did know.

He’d never lain with a woman like this. Never. She felt different, amazing, exciting…warm, and…as if she belonged.

She did belong, he thought, with a sure knowledge starting deep within. It had started that first night he’d met her, and it had grown deeper last night as he’d watched her work the crowd with an intuitive empathy he’d never seen in his years of working in the international legal community. Then last night, tossed into prison with a man she hardly knew, losing a dog she obviously loved deeply, thrown into an uncertain future…

She’d been brave beyond belief. She’d been upbeat and courageous, laughing whenever she could, refusing to be intimidated, treating the situation as something to be faced with optimism.

She stirred a fraction in his arms and his hold on her tightened.

This woman was affianced to be his wife, he thought with something approaching incredulity. His wife.

In name only.

But now things had changed. What was inside him had changed.

Had he fallen in love?

The thought was so startling that he must have moved or gasped-or maybe she could feel the sheer force of what he was thinking. She lay motionless in his arms, but he could feel that she was awake.

He didn’t speak, letting her make the first move. If she wanted to wake up slowly, well, she’d earned the right. She’d earned the right to do whatever she wanted, he thought. Rose…

‘What’s the time?’ she whispered, and he knew she didn’t want this time to stop.

‘Seven.’

‘Do you think they’ll feed us?’

As if on cue the door swung open. A tray was put on the floor and shoved forward, and the door was slammed shut before they could see who their jailer was.

‘I guess the answer to that is yes,’ he said, and as she stirred he reluctantly released her and sat up. It was unbelievable what he was feeling about her right now. His world had changed.

‘Don’t look like that,’ she said, suddenly getting businesslike, sliding to the end of the bed so she could get out without pushing past him.

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know what you’re thinking, and I don’t intend to ask,’ she said briskly. ‘I bags the bathroom first, and don’t you dare eat all the toast.’

There wasn’t toast. There was cereal and long-life milk, tepid water and instant coffee.

‘Not what I had in mind when I decided to be a princess again,’ Rose muttered. ‘Is this a good time to tell you I’m addicted to good coffee and if I’m deprived I’m scary?’

‘Me too,’ Nick said.

‘So what do we do now?’ Rose asked, finishing her coffee resolutely, even though wrinkling her nose in distaste.

‘I guess we wait.’

‘How long do you reckon?’

‘Twenty years?’

‘They’ll have to give us a pack of cards, then,’ Rose said, seemingly unperturbed. ‘Otherwise I’ll write a letter to the United Nations.’

He smiled. Things firmed even further.

They sat down to wait.

If anyone had told Rose that she’d tell her complete life story to a man she’d met once almost a month ago, she would have said they were crazy. Nuts. She wasn’t an extrovert. She’d married Max, but even Max had needed time to coax her out of her shell. Finally she’d learned to trust him, but that trust had landed her into a mess over her head. Her privacy had become the shared concern of Max’s family. Everything she told him his family had known too, as well as the whole village. So she’d learned once more to shut up.

Yet here she was, handing out private information like it was free.

Why? Maybe it was because Nick didn’t really want it, she told herself. He was asking because he was bored and there was nothing else to do. When this whole fiasco was over, no matter how it ended, he’d head back to his city law-firm and she’d be isolated, just as she desperately wanted.

So he was asking questions, and there was no pack of cards, and she didn’t want to spend time thinking about all the various fates in store for someone who tried to take the crown-so what was a girl to do, but answer his questions honestly and ask questions herself and pretend to be interested in the answers?

Actually she was interested, and that was the problem. It was a little like a game of snap, she thought. They’d both had bleak childhoods-their legacy from their connection to this ill-fated royal family. They’d learned to be independent, which was only a tiny factor in their shared passions.

‘Do you play tennis?’

‘No, but I love hockey. I was hopeless, as I didn’t play until I got to England, but I love it now. I still play. Or, until last week I played.’

‘You’re kidding. I played hockey for my university.’

‘Forward?’

‘Centre-forward mostly. You?’

‘Mostly right full-forward,’ she said. ‘I hit harder to the left.’

‘If we had a couple of sticks now we could have a battle.’

‘If we’re stuck in this place much longer we could pull the bed apart and use the planks,’ she said. ‘So let’s delay the hockey match till tomorrow. Meanwhile, what about ice cream? What’s your favourite flavour?’

‘I’m a chocolate man.’

‘With choc chips?’

‘Ugh, no. I like my chocolate melted in, triple or quadruple-strength chocolate, and no crunchy bits to deflect the taste.’

‘Yum,’ she said, feeling suddenly hungry. ‘When do you reckon lunch will arrive?’

‘I think our chances of ice cream for lunch are minimal. What about swimming?’

‘Five strokes and then I go under,’ she said. ‘This place never ran to a swimming pool. Maybe it has one now. Here’s hoping. What about you?’

‘My foster mother’s cottage just outside Sydney had a dam in the back paddock. We all had to learn to swim across it before we were allowed out of Ruby’s sight.’

‘So Ruby taught you?’

‘Ruby taught me everything.’

‘Lucky you,’ she said.

‘For having a foster mother?’

‘I…I guess. Sorry. Dumb comment.’

‘No, it’s okay. But you-when we get to live in this luxurious palace with an Olympic-sized swimming pool…’

‘Then we buy me some floaties and don’t let photographers near. Nick, what do you think is happening outside?’

‘I don’t know.’

They’d been aware of the noise since just after breakfast. At first it had sounded like a faint far-off rumble, as if maybe they were not too far away from a sports pavilion. It wasn’t so much individual sound-more a steady murmur, slowly building. But it was building. In the last few minutes it had become so close they could hear individual voices.

‘It’s well over time for lunch,’ she said nervously. ‘Maybe we should complain.’

‘Let’s not,’ Nick said. ‘I have a feeling whoever’s on lunch duty might be distracted.’

They listened for a while longer. The shouts became louder. Whoever it was, they weren’t going away.

‘How are you at singing?’ Nick asked, and Rose thought about singing and then thought, no, this sound was getting too loud to permit distraction. It was definitely loud. It was definitely close.

‘You know, if this is a revolution, the age-old way to depose monarchy is to do a bit of head chopping,’ she whispered.

‘The Russians were the last,’ he said, obviously distracted too. ‘But royalty’s been ousted efficiently since, with nary a bruised neck to show for it. Look at the women’s magazines. There are prince and princesses all over the place, minus thrones, but necks nicely intact.’

‘Nick…’

‘I know,’ he said. He’d crossed to the door, trying hard to hear individual noises from the background din. But there’d been need in her voice. She’d heard it, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it.

This was supposed to be an adventure. How could it suddenly have got so serious? And where was Julianna? Her sister.

And Hoppy…

‘Nick,’ she said again, not even trying to disguise her need this time. And he reacted. In three long strides he’d crossed the room and hugged her close.

‘We’re in this together,’ he whispered, and his lips brushed the top of her hair.

That should make her feel safer. It did-sort of. It made her feel as if she could face anything with his arms around her for support, but that was scary all by itself. The feeling that she was starting to depend on him.

This man was an international businessman-a jet-setter who’d agreed to a marriage of convenience.

What had she done? A normal woman would have listened to Erhard’s proposition and treated him like a very polite madman. To leave her home and come halfway across Europe to claim a throne-to threaten her sister, to involve herself in a power struggle where she had no idea who the players were, much less how to deal with them…It was like she’d stepped into a James Bond movie, but it was real.

She’d guessed there’d be risks. At some subliminal level she’d figured that this couldn’t be as easy as Erhard had suggested-arrive here, say ‘move over’ to Julianna, and become a princess. Yet things had been closing in on her so tightly at home that she’d come regardless. And the really frightening thing now was that although she should be terrified of outside factors-like a crowd of what sounded like thousands gathering in the castle surrounds-she hugged tight to this man and she still thought that it was okay. Better to go down fighting with this man by her side than to stay for ever in Yorkshire and keep calmly on living Max’s life.

‘We’re in this together,’ he whispered into her hair, and that was terrifying as well. She’d have to do something about it. He was holding her as if he loved her.

As if he loved her…

She hadn’t slashed one set of silver chains to be caught by another, she told herself fiercely. No more emotional baggage. Ever.

Except right now she couldn’t pull away from Nick’s arms. Right now she lacked the strength to be independent, so she held on while the noise from outside grew to an ear-shattering roar. There was a sudden burst of gunfire, and that made her cling tighter, and it made Nick hold her closer. What was happening-a revolution outside their prison door? What? What?

The gunfire stopped as abruptly as it had started. There was a sudden lull, and then a vast, roaring cheer of approval.

It went on and on, but finally it grew muted. The roar subsided and sounds of confusion took its place. People yelling. Individual voices growing closer.

Was this what war was like? Rose had stopped thinking about how close she was holding Nick. If he tried to pull away now she’d fight him. And by the feel of his arms he was feeling exactly the same as she was.

The shouts grew louder. People yelling to each other. Jubilant yells. But why jubilant?

They stared at the locked door as if it was a time bomb. The minutes ticked by.

And then a shout of approval from just through the door. Men’s voices, shouting, demanding. The sound of a key in the lock.

The door swung inward, and a crowd of people stood in the doorway.

Facing them was the earnest young reporter who’d interviewed them the night before. Behind her was the cameraman, his camera raised over his head, flash flaring.

And pushing through was a child-the boy with the scraggy collie from the night before. There was a man holding the child by the shoulders, trying to make him stay back a little, but he was still pushing through.

‘Let him through,’ the man said earnestly as the door swung wider still and people started surging in. ‘The boy has the lady’s dog.’ He pushed hard, the reporter gave way and the child burst into the room.

He was holding out Hoppy. Rose gasped. And then she smiled.

‘Hoppy!’ she said, and knelt and held out her arms. ‘Oh, Hoppy. I might have known I’d be rescued by a dog.’