A Royal Marriage Of Convenience

‘I couldn’t find the bluebirds. It’s bumblebees.’

He nearly tripped and fell all the way to the bottom. Somehow he kept his feet and managed to follow her through the maze of corridors to the conservatory. Bumblebees. They passed three of the domestic staff on their way, and each had a smile as wide as a house plastered on their faces.

This wasn’t a house shocked to the core by news of an assassination attempt, he thought. Their movements since the intrusion had obviously been noted and were giving pleasure. Maybe news of the butterflies was winging its way round the castle right now.

But not the bumblebees. He was feeling decidedly proprietary about those bumblebees.

His mind was having trouble focusing on anything it should be focusing on, and it was almost a relief when they reached the conservatory and Rose pushed open the door. This was an orangery, a conservatory planned in the days when oranges had been an inconceivable luxury in a climate too cold for them. There were orange trees in beautifully ordered lines under the magnificent glass-roof. A truly royal tiled floor-a coat of arms in tiles-was magnificent enough to take the breath away.

But Nick scarcely saw it. There was a table in the bow window at the end of the long, glass-panelled conservatory. There were three people sitting at it.

Erhard. Julianna.

Ruby.

Uh-oh.

Maybe he shouldn’t have told her, he thought nervously. But she’d have found out anyway. Ruby was a diminutive white-haired lady. She was dressed in her customary pastel twin-set, tweed skirt and sensible shoes. A string of pearls her foster sons had given her for her sixtieth birthday showed she’d considered this day worth dressing up for, but there was little of the celebration about her small person now. She looked very, very hostile.

She rose, and Nick had the same urge to run that he’d had when he’d been ten years old and she’d discovered him ‘making lollies’-rolling dollops of butter in brown sugar and eating them with delicious abandonment. Half a pound of butter had disappeared before she’d found him.

‘Nikolai Jean Louis de Montez,’ she said now, in exactly the same voice as she’d used then. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

He had an almost irresistible urge to hold Rose in front of him like a shield. Only the knowledge that Rose was staring at Julianna like she was seeing a ghost stopped him.

‘I did say I’d fly you over if you wanted to come,’ he said weakly, and Ruby stalked towards him with such determined anger that for an awful moment he was afraid she’d box his ears.

When had she ever, though? Even after ‘the butter incident’ she’d simply made him walk the two miles to the nearest dairy to buy some more, and then go without butter on his toast for a week.

But she was angry. Boy, was she angry.

‘You told me,’ she said icily, ‘that you were marrying a European princess in name only so she could claim the throne. You said it wasn’t a real marriage. A contract only, if I’m not mistaken. Two signatures on a piece of paper. Why would I want to come and watch that?’

‘It was only supposed to be…’ He shook his head, not knowing where to go from here. ‘How did you get here?’ he tried instead.

‘Never you mind,’ she snapped. ‘Sam said I was never to tell anyone. Such nice soldiers. They had me here before breakfast.’

He might have known. Ruby had her own means of getting where she wanted, when she wanted. And he wasn’t off the hook yet.

‘I would have come before,’ she said, darkly glowering. ‘But I was babysitting Pierce’s children. There I was, stuck with four kiddies, when I opened this week’s Woman’s Journal-it has the best macrame patterns-and there you were! And there was Rose, bending over a whole litter of piglets, and I knew the moment I saw her that this wasn’t a paper contract. Then I had to wait for Pierce to get home and for Sam to organise transport before I could come. And I missed it.’

She fixed him with a look that said, ‘stay right there; I’ll deal with you later’. And she turned to Rose.

But Rose was facing her own demons. Julianna.

It was Julianna, but she was barely recognisable.

This wasn’t the elegant young woman Nick had met the first night they’d been in the country. Julianna was dressed in quality trousers and blouse, as she had been that night, but that was as far as the elegance went. A savage bruise marred her left eye. Something had hit her hard. Her hair, twisted into an elegant chignon the last time Nick had seen her, was now a riot of unmanaged curls. Her face was blotched from weeping, and rivulets of mascara had edged down her cheeks. She looked much older than Rose, he thought. Drawn. Haggard.

‘Rose, I never meant…’ she was saying, while Rose kept staring at her like she was seeing a ghost.

‘Never meant what?’ she whispered.

‘Last night. I swear, I didn’t know. I thought…’

‘What are you talking about?’ Rose asked, and Julianna choked on a sob, reached for her sister’s hands, but then seemed to think better of it. She retreated, backing against the table, holding to the table edge for support.

‘I thought Jacques had given up,’ she whispered. ‘He said we’d go to Paris-he said we’d skimmed all we needed and the panel was never going to come down on our side. Rose, I married Jacques when I was seventeen. I know that’s no excuse, and I could have left him, but I kept hoping things would be better. I thought I loved him. I never-’

‘You wanted to rule,’ Rose said bluntly, and Julianna blenched even further.

‘From the time I was little our father told me it was my right. He said I was the one. He made it sound so wonderful, and I always felt the chosen one. But of course there was always Keifer and Konrad, and ruling seemed impossible. Only now it turns out Jacques knew Konrad would die young. Because-’

She faltered, then took a deep breath and continued, forcing every word out as if she could scarcely bear it. ‘I swear I didn’t know, but maybe our father knew. I think now that’s why Jacques married me.’

‘Oh, Jules.’

‘What did your father know?’ Erhard asked, but she shook her head. Whatever had to be said must be said in her own time.

‘I knew by the time Konrad died that Jacques didn’t love me,’ she said, and she tilted her chin in a gesture that mirrored Rose’s. ‘I’ve been so miserable, I just stopped…seeing. When Erhard came to see me after Konrad was killed, I told him that Jacques could do what he wanted with the country. I didn’t care.’

They were all focused on her now. Ruby had turned from Nick and was looking at Julianna with a look Nick recognised. Ruby had raised seven foster-sons. When a new boy had arrived at her home, this was the look she’d used.

Here was a chick that needed a mother hen, her look said. But Julianna was in her late twenties.

‘You sound like you have that depression thing,’ Ruby said sympathetically. ‘I had it after my husband died. It was like I was in a fog, and the fog was too thick to push through.’

‘I did,’ Julianna said, choking on a sob. ‘I do. Last week, after that awful time with the crowd, we went to Paris. But then yesterday Jacques said we had to come back. He said we weren’t coming to the wedding, but we had to be near.’

‘Why?’ Erhard asked, and she put her hands to her face again as if she couldn’t bear to go on.

‘He didn’t tell me,’ she whispered. ‘He’s stopped telling me anything. I think he’s even stopped thinking I can hear. It’s my stupid fault. It’s just been easier to agree, to do what he says, to be left alone.’

‘Only last night…’ Erhard prodded.

‘He was excited,’ Julianna whispered. ‘We were staying in one of the palace hunting-lodges, which was weird, all on its own. But I wasn’t thinking. Or maybe I was thinking-of you, Rose, and your wedding, and how you were my sister and you were being married and I wasn’t there.’

‘You weren’t either?’ Ruby said, and sniffed her disgust. ‘I might have known.’

‘I went to bed,’ Julianna said, too miserable to be deflected. ‘But I heard him downstairs, pacing, pacing. And then I started thinking. The fog lifted a little. I heard him on the phone saying we were only twenty miles away and