But she was no longer listening. She’d been caught by a word. A very major word. Succession… She almost choked again.
‘Hey, you don’t want me to have a baby, do you?’ she demanded, and Alastair smiled. Drat! How could she concentrate when he smiled like that? But she
And now he was laughing at her. ‘No. I think Belle and I can manage that. Eventually.’
‘That fits in the category of what an elegant hostess does?’ Penny-Rose enquired politely, and his smile faded.
‘There’s no need-’
‘To be impertinent?’ Her equilibrium almost restored, she managed a chuckle as Alastair finally sank down again into his chair. ‘I’m sorry but I’m always impertinent. You should know that if you intend marrying me.’
‘Then you will marry me?’
She put up a hand. ‘I’m thinking about it. Nothing more.’
‘That’s all I ask.’
‘How long do I have to make up my mind?’
‘Until coffee,’ he told her, and her equilibrium disappeared all over again.
‘Help…’
‘If you don’t agree, I need to find someone else,’ he said apologetically. ‘And pragmatic single women of unimpeachable virtue…’
‘Are a bit thin on the ground?’ Penny-Rose was fighting for composure. ‘I guess you could always put an advertisement in the international press. WANTED:PRINCESS FOR A YEAR. I imagine you’d be swamped by callers.’
‘Maybe I would be.’ He smiled faintly. ‘But I can’t do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘This marriage,’ he said slowly, ‘has to appear real.’
‘To appease the cousins?’
‘And the lawyers. That’s right.’
‘But…’ She thought this through. ‘Bert and the team already know it’d be a marriage of convenience.’
He shrugged. ‘A marriage of convenience doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not a real marriage. Royal marriages have been just that for thousands of years. But advertising seems a bit over the top, and I can’t publicly stipulate a time frame. I’m running a fine legal line.’
‘You certainly are.’ She glanced up at him and then away again. He was starting to disconcert her. He was speaking of business. He was planning out his whole life-first with her and then Belle-as if he was planning a commercial venture.
The thought left her feeling almost ill.
What a waste, she thought suddenly. Arranged marriages might be what was expected of royalty, but… With Alastair’s wonderful smile, and his caring nature-and his money and his castle…
He was some catch!
That wasn’t the way to think, she told herself hastily. Alastair was planning this as a business proposition, and so must she.
‘A million pounds,’ she murmured, forcing her thoughts sideways and letting herself dwell on what that could mean. ‘A million… Do you have any idea how tempting that sort of money is for a girl like me?’
‘I can imagine.’ Alastair smiled at her across the table and she had to give herself the same business-only lecture she’d given herself thirty seconds ago. It was either that or go take a cold shower. But he didn’t seem to notice. Maybe he had that effect on all women! ‘You’d never have to work again,’ he was saying.
His words startled her, breaking through her fog of masculine awareness. Of Alastair awareness… ‘Not work?’ Penny-Rose frowned. ‘I wouldn’t know how to not work.’
‘You could learn,’ he said gently, ‘during your year as a princess.’
‘Oh, right. Just swan around, adjusting my tiara and polishing my throne. I don’t think so.’
‘You’d be a figurehead…’
‘A figurehead who still has to get herself a master stone-waller certificate. I’m not going home without it.’
He stared at her. ‘You won’t need to stone-wall. A million pounds will set you up for life.’
She looked blankly at him, as if he were speaking some foreign language. ‘But I
‘You couldn’t possibly stone-wall as my wife.’
‘If you stuck me in a castle on a velvet cushion I’d go into a decline,’ she said. And then she chuckled. ‘Or I’d cause trouble. I just know I would. I’d be sticking my nose into all sorts of things that don’t concern me. You need to accept me as a stone-walling bride or not at all.’
Wordless, he sat back and stared some more. Finally he reached across and lifted her fingers again, gazing down at her callouses and scratches left from the day’s work. ‘You don’t want to leave all this?’
‘A stone-waller is what I am,’ she said simply. She took a deep breath, trying to make him see. ‘Alastair, money would be very nice-because of my sisters and my brother-but at the end of the year I’ve no intention of becoming your pensioner for the rest of my life.’
‘There’s a lot of women who’d jump at the chance.’
‘I’m not a lot of women.’
‘I can see that.’ He laid her hand down on the table. ‘But…if you don’t agree to marry me, there’s many families here who’ll lose their homes.’
‘That’s the only reason I’m listening.’
‘We could make it work.’
Penny-Rose hesitated. ‘You’d want a fairy-tale wedding? Lace and chariots and archbishops and the whole catastrophe?’
‘Maybe not archbishops. If we’re making vows we don’t intend to keep, I’d prefer not to do it in a church. The church here is tiny so that can be our excuse. But otherwise, yes, pretty much the whole catastrophe.’ And he sounded suddenly as unsure as she felt. They were hurtling into this together and in truth it scared them both.
She stared at him, and she saw his uncertainty-and his need. For some reason, his hesitancy reassured her.
As did his decision not to use a church.
His scruples were the same as hers.
‘You’d have to fly my sisters and brother over to watch,’ she told him slowly, and for the first time she sounded as if she was starting to think of this marriage as a serious possibility. ‘They’d never forgive me if I didn’t include them, and if they don’t see it for themselves they’ll never believe it’s real.’
Alastair didn’t hesitate. ‘I can do that. Of course.’
‘And…’ She bit her lip, stared at the table for a while and then raised her eyes to meet his. There was something else she had to be sure of, and this was major. ‘It really is business only? You wouldn’t come near me? As a wife, I mean.’ Her face turned pink. ‘Um…there’d be separate bedrooms?’
‘There are royal precedents for such arrangements.’ He grinned, relaxing a little. ‘The marriage suite in the castle is two bedrooms with a dressing room in between.’
‘How very romantic. And locked doors?’
‘Of course,’ he said gravely. ‘Because you’re a lady of unimpeachable virtue.’
‘I’m not infringing on Belle’s domain.’ Her mind was working in overdrive. This was going to be hard, but it had to be said.
‘Speaking of Belle… Alastair, she’ll have to go.’ She hesitated, trying to think of an alternative, but there wasn’t one. With Belle included in the arrangement, the marriage idea was preposterous. ‘For the full twelve months of our marriage, Belle will need to stay away from the castle. I can’t play the part of your wife if you have a mistress in the same house. I’d feel like Belle was watching me, daggers drawn, for the whole year. I’d hate it. She’d hate it. So…’ Her troubled eyes managed a twinkle. ‘I need to put my wifely foot down.’
Alastair thought that through. It was a reasonable request. Sort of. Belle would resent it, he thought, but on reflection Penny-Rose was right. The whole sham marriage could well founder if she stayed.
