They paused only for meals. He took her to quiet little restaurants where he wasn’t likely to be known. They ate wonderful food, but Penny-Rose slipped into a quietness which even Alastair knew was out of character. On their second day he collected her from her room to find she had dark shadows under her eyes, and when questioned she admitted she hadn’t slept.
‘It’s the bed,’ she told him. ‘It’s too big and too cold and too…’
‘Too?’
‘Lonely.’ There. She’d said it. She looked at him, expecting to see laughter, but instead she saw concern.
‘Five-star hotels by yourself are a bit echoing,’ he agreed. ‘My suite’s just as barren. But I don’t think sharing’s an option, do you?’
‘No!’
‘Then we just get on with it. One more night and then home tomorrow…’
‘Home to your castle!’
He thought of the sumptuous guest room in the castle and frowned. ‘Do you find that just as lonely?’
‘I’m not homesick,’ she said, seeing what he was thinking. ‘I’m never homesick.’
‘No?’
‘No,’ she lied. ‘I’m enjoying myself. These clothes are…fabulous.’
‘We have bought some lovely things,’ he said gravely. ‘And there’s more to come.’
Her determined cheerfulness faltered. ‘I… Yes.’
‘You’re not enjoying the shopping either?’
‘I feel like a kept woman,’ she blurted out. ‘It’s awful. I don’t know that I’m going to be able to stand it for a year.’
‘Being a princess?’
‘Being a princess.’
He surveyed her face with caution. If he wasn’t careful he could blow it, and he knew it.
Most women would jump at the chance she was being offered, he thought, but he knew enough of her now to know that most women didn’t include Rose.
‘You can back out,’ he told her.
‘And then what?’
‘And then I’d lose my estate and Michael wouldn’t go to university.’
‘See? We’re up against a brick wall-both of us.’
‘It’s a comfortably padded brick wall,’ he said lightly, and she flushed and bit her lip.
‘I know. I’m being stupid.’
‘It’s harder for you than for me,’ he acknowledged. ‘I’m not being hauled out of my comfort zone.’
Penny-Rose thought that through and found flaws. ‘It’s not very comfortable, living on turnip soup,’ she said, and he smiled. She had courage.
And the only way through this was through it.
‘Breakfast?’ He proffered his arm.
‘Oh, yup, why not? A smorgasbord of two hundred different dishes…’
‘Don’t tell me you’d prefer a baguette.’
‘Well, actually…’
‘Actually, yes?’
And there was only one answer to that. The choice in the hotel’s lavish restaurant simply overwhelmed her. ‘Yes.’
He looked her up and down, and then he sighed. ‘Come on,’ he said in exasperation. ‘Breakfast here is the most magnificent that Paris has to offer, but don’t mind that. Let’s turn our backs on the Carlon’s stupendous breakfast and go find ourselves a baguette.’
‘Alastair…’
But he was brooking no argument. ‘I can slum it with the best of them,’ he told her. His arm linked with hers and held. ‘Just watch me.’
CHAPTER FIVE
SO INSTEAD of eating the hotel’s sumptuous breakfast they found a patisserie and Alastair proceeded to show Penny-Rose that he had absolutely no idea what slumming meant. As a peasant, he failed miserably. Penny-Rose’s simple baguette was simply not enough, not faced with the choice of Paris’s magnificent pastries.
So while she watched in open-mouthed amazement, he proceeded to buy one of everything he could see. A baguette, croissants and mouth-watering pastries filled with fruit, something chocolate that Penny-Rose, with her limited French, decided was called Death by Explosion, and more…
Then there was coffee in huge take-away mugs, the smell of which made her mouth water.
They emerged finally from their patisserie to find piles of grapes and mandarins on a next-door stall. Ignoring her protests-‘You’ve dragged me away from the Hotel Carlon’s breakfast, woman-you can let me buy what I want’- he loaded them with so much breakfast they were having trouble carrying it. And Penny-Rose was caught between laughter and exasperation.
She was given time for neither. ‘Now to the Bois de Boulogne,’ Alastair decreed. ‘It’s the closest.’
It was also the loveliest.
The sun was already warm with the promise of a magnificent day to come. The park was filled with mothers and pushchairs, elderly couples sitting soaking up the sun, and small children playing tag or racing with balloons…
In true royal fashion Alastair found a tree and claimed it as their own. He signalled to someone in the distance, and before she knew it there were two deckchairs set up for their comfort.
‘Now…’ Alastair surveyed his scene with satisfaction. ‘Breakfast as Parisians do it.’
‘Oh, right. Parisian princes, would that be?’
‘You don’t like this either?’ His face fell ludicrously and it was all Penny-Rose could do not to laugh.
But he was watching her with such an expression of anxiety on his face-and the sun was warm on hers-and it was Paris in the springtime and the coffee smelled tantalising and the pastries were exquisite…
‘I’d have to be a mindless idiot not to enjoy this,’ she said softly, smiling up at him. ‘No, Alastair, I don’t like this. I love it!’
After that the shopping was better, though Penny-Rose still found it uncomfortable. She was now wearing some of the clothes she’d purchased the day before. That made her feel less conspicuous in these over-the-top salons, but every time she dressed at the end of each fitting she couldn’t help thinking, These aren’t my clothes.
These aren’t me.
She was buying clothes for a princess, she thought. Not for Penny-Rose O’Shea. Or two-bob Rose. Or whoever she was. She was beginning not to know any more.
Once he’d made the decision to accompany her, Alastair took his duties seriously. He insisted on seeing her as she emerged in each outfit, and his smiles of approval disturbed her still more. She was turning into what he wanted, she thought.
She was becoming no longer herself. She was becoming Alastair’s wife-for-a-year, and the prospect was more and more disturbing.
But finally Alastair was satisfied. Almost. At four o’clock he announced her major wardrobe complete, and he escorted her to a tiny shop off the main boulevard.
The shop needed some explaining, and he did it fast. ‘Before you get the wrong idea, my mother told me to bring you here,’ he told her hastily. At the look on her face, his dark eyes glinted with laughter. ‘This,’ he said with an evil grin, ‘may well be the best part of the whole shopping experience. It’s knicker time.’
And as Penny-Rose gazed into the window she could only gasp.
These weren’t just knickers. They were flights of fancy. Here were silken wisps of elegance that had nothing at
