Alastair opened his mouth to answer, but his bride-to-be was in her stride and unstoppable.
‘They’re right, of course.’ Her twinkle stayed firmly in place. The only way to meet an accusation of an arranged marriage was partial honesty. ‘I imagine you know the terms of my future husband’s inheritance? If he doesn’t marry then the estate will be dispersed and that’ll cause hardship. So…’
Her eyes strayed around the members of the press and it was as if she was speaking to each person in turn. In moments, she’d made a big impersonal gathering seem like a cosy afternoon-tea chat. ‘It’s convenient for Alastair to be married to me, and it’s convenient for me to be married to Alastair.’ She smiled, and her hand reached out to lightly touch his. ‘Very convenient. And apart from that, we think we’ll like it very, very much.’
‘You’re in love with him!’ one of the female reporters said, on a note of discovery, and Penny-Rose refused to be disconcerted.
‘Of course. Aren’t you?’ she asked innocently. ‘I thought everybody was.’
There was general laughter and then the questioning turned back to Alastair. ‘So what makes this lady special?’
Alastair took a deep breath. But suddenly his rehearsed answer went out the window because the touch of her hand on his had thoroughly unnerved him, and so had the way she’d handled this terrifying occasion. Then there was the fascination of the cotton-tail question…
All at once there was only one answer to make.
‘If you can’t see that, you must be blind,’ he said, and there was a note of sincerity in his voice which gave Penny-Rose pause. Her laughter died.
If it were this easy…
‘Where’s your engagement ring?’ someone asked, and she put up her hand to display a family heirloom. That rightly took the press’s attention, giving them both much-needed breathing space. Things were moving way, way too fast!
And it was some rock, Penny-Rose thought, gazing down at her ring. Alastair had only produced it this morning and she wasn’t accustomed to its weight on her finger. Its weight wasn’t insignificant.
Pity it wasn’t granite…
What had Alastair had once said?
She looked up and found his eyes on hers-and she knew he realised exactly what she was thinking. Laughter sprang between them. And something else…
‘Where’s your dog?’ a voice called, breaking the moment. Which was just as well, because neither of them knew where the moment had been leading. Into unknown territory… She broke from Alastair’s gaze to see the cameraman from Paris beaming at her from across the room. ‘Where’s the pup you found?’
‘You mean…’ Her voice wasn’t quite steady. She adjusted it and tried again. ‘You mean Leo?’
‘Leo!’ the man said, and his grin broadened. ‘I might have known you’d call him something daft like that.’
The rest of the press gallery were fascinated.
‘He was a stray,’ the cameraman explained to the room in general. Maybe he was giving away a scoop, but it was he and only he who had the pictures from Paris. Generating interest would do no harm at all. ‘The lady rescued him.’
That had everyone enthralled-as did the looks that were being exchanged between Alastair and Penny-Rose. A love story and a rescued dog… Well, well. This, then, was the human-interest story they’d craved.
Readers didn’t want to hear about a marriage of convenience. Readers wanted romance-and, amazingly, it seemed as if it was romance they were being given.
‘Can we see your dog?’
Penny-Rose raised her eyebrows at Alastair and he gave an imperceptible nod. Anything to get the spotlight off them, his eyes told her.
She knew exactly how he felt. ‘No flashlights, then,’ she said sternly, and escaped Leo-wards.
‘Is it true Miss O’Shea is a stone-waller?’ she heard as she left the room.
‘Of course it is,’ Alastair replied. ‘It’s an unusual occupation, but you have to agree that Miss O’Shea is an unusual woman.’
‘You’ve never met anyone like her?’
‘Why do you think I’m marrying her?’ was the last thing she heard as she fled.
With Leo in her arms, she managed to regain her composure-sort of.
‘Isn’t he gorgeous?’ she demanded of the room full of cynical, case-hardened reporters. Leo was clean-almost- but he was bandaged, he’d lost a heap of hair, one ear was torn and his rib cage protruded for all to see.
But Penny-Rose had decreed he was gorgeous, and there wasn’t a person there who would have disagreed.
‘Do you like the dog, too?’ someone rounded on Alastair, and he managed a grin. The dog… Oh, right. The dog. He’d been looking at the lady.
‘I like the dog.’
But he was still looking at the lady.
‘This is seeming more and more like a love match,’ someone whispered. This was suddenly a very different marriage to the one the press had expected.
Penny-Rose sat by Alastair’s side and fielded questions with aplomb-without the least hint of shyness and uncertainty. And she glowed. Nestled on her lap, her disreputable pup wagged his tail and licked her face, then shifted to lick Alastair’s face in turn. Alastair pushed the shaggy face away, but it was a very half-hearted push.
‘He likes it,’ a reporter whispered to a colleague. ‘Hell!’
‘We have headlines,’ another said. ‘A royal romance!’
‘Followed by a royal marriage,’ her colleague agreed. ‘All at once, I can’t wait!’
There was one more question to ask. A reporter had checked his notes. ‘It says here that your name is Penelope,’ he said to Penny-Rose. ‘But you’ve been introduced as Rose. Will you be Princess Penelope?’
‘No,’ Alastair butted in before she could get a word out. ‘She’ll be Princess Rose.’
Princess Rose…
Penny-Rose looked at him with eyes that were suddenly bright with unshed tears. Princess Rose…
It might be too darned formal-but in that one unguarded moment he’d spoken her name almost as if he loved her!
‘Have you seen the newspapers?’
Belle’s voice woke Alastair from sleep. He’d spent the night on interminable paperwork and just before dawn he’d fallen into a troubled sleep where Rose and Leo had mingled with uncertain duty. An hour later the phone had rung.
‘How could you humiliate me like this?’ Belle’s voice was as shrill as he’d ever heard it. ‘Our friends know this is a marriage of convenience, but this…’ She took a deep breath. ‘This is disgusting!’
‘What’s disgusting?’ Alastair’s heart sank. Uh-oh.
‘Every newspaper has these headlines… ROYAL WEDDING. PRINCE FINDS HIS CINDERELLA…’ She seemed to be sorting newspapers as she spoke and he could hear as she tossed them aside. ‘They’re dreadful.’
‘You knew this was going to happen,’ Alastair ventured, still not sure what the problem was. ‘It was a mutual decision to do this.’
‘Yes, but I didn’t know this would happen. Alastair, these pictures… You’re sitting on the pavement in Paris, she’s cuddling a dog and you’re
‘Hey, hang on…’ But he was in trouble. He knew it.
And there was the nub of the matter. Alastair closed his eyes, exhaustion washing over him in waves.
‘I don’t love her,’ he told Belle, making his voice as firm as he could. ‘She was nearly hit by a car. The dog
‘And you were stupid enough to be photographed.’
