Silence.
Alastair thought that through and he didn’t like it. He didn’t respond, and after a moment of silence Belle decided that maybe she’d gone too far.
‘Are you still there?’
‘I’m here.’ He let the weariness creep into his voice and she heard that, too.
He could hear her rethink. She was playing for a major prize here. It might be wise to draw back.
‘Then can I tell my friends it was an accident? That you were playing the hero for a moment-nothing more?’
‘I hope you don’t tell your friends anything,’ he retorted. ‘Belle, you know how much is at stake. The marriage has to seem like it’s permanent.’
The silence was from Belle’s end now.
‘I hate it,’ she said at last, and Alastair nodded. So did he. Didn’t he?
‘But, Belle, if we back out now…’
‘We’ll lose everything.’ She was still focussed on that ultimate prize, he realised, and it was giving her pause. ‘I don’t want that.’
‘So what do you want me to do?’
‘Act formally,’ she ordered. ‘These photos make you look ridiculous. Like a schoolboy with a crush.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he told her, and then he said his goodbyes-as formally as she intended that he act when Rose was around-and he tried for sleep again.
It didn’t work.
Formal?
Formal and Rose didn’t make sense!
Formal and Belle made sense, but he wasn’t marrying Belle.
He was marrying Rose.
The thought suddenly made the thought of sleep impossible.
The next few weeks passed in a blur. There was so much to be done!
Marguerite came down with influenza and retired to bed. ‘It must be from too much excitement,’ she told her son, and Alastair thought of how much effort his mother had gone to in the past couple of months and felt guilty to the core. He couldn’t load her with anything else.
Penny-Rose’s knowledge of what was needed for a royal wedding could be written on the palm of one hand. The organisation therefore fell to Alastair, dredging up memories of relatives’ weddings in the past.
Finally he located and re-employed the man who’d acted as his uncle’s social secretary. He was a godsend, but he wasn’t enough.
There were wedding organisers, caterers, state officials-everyone had to put their oar in. Almost the whole principality had to be invited and the production looked bigger than
‘Can’t we just elope?’ Penny-Rose asked as she saw the lists. Every night when she came in from her stone- walling there were more decisions to be made. She did what she could, but the look of exhaustion on Alastair’s face was making her feel dreadful.
‘It’s a State wedding,’ Alastair sighed and raked his hand through his hair. ‘To be honest, I never imagined it’d get so out of hand. Every politician, every person with any clout, any deserving local…everyone would be offended to their socks if not invited.’ He gave a twisted smile. ‘It’s made use of the chapel unthinkable. There’s simply not room. The big marquee has to come all the way from Paris.’ He shook his head. ‘At least…’
He paused, and she prodded him to continue. ‘At least?’
‘At least I’ll only have to do this once,’ he admitted. ‘Belle and I will have a simple civil affair.’
‘Well, bully for you and Belle.’ But she said it under her breath. Alastair was back concentrating on his lists.
She looked across the dining table at him for a long moment. The man looked almost haggard, and the urge to rise from the table and go to him was almost irresistible. To touch him on the shoulders… To massage the tension from his back and to ease the strain…
But she couldn’t. She wasn’t wanted.
She was simply a name in the marriage ceremony, she thought, and any female would do. His real wife would be Belle.
The thought was almost unbearable.
And dinner was finished.
‘Goodnight, Alastair,’ she said softly, but he didn’t look up from his interminable lists. He was blocking her out.
She pushed back her plate and quietly went back to her living quarters.
Back to Leo.
‘He’s driving himself into the ground,’ she told her little dog. ‘As well trying to make everyone happy with the wedding, the estate management’s a mess, and he’s also trying to keep his architectural projects going. The thing’s impossible.’
But he had no choice. The only thing he could give up was his architecture.
‘And he can’t do that because that’s what he is,’ she continued. ‘An architect.’
Leo wagged his tail in agreement and she gave a rueful smile.
‘You understand. He’s an architect. Not a prince.’
As Penny-Rose was a stone-waller-not a princess.
‘So you and I keep to ourselves, Leo’ she murmured. ‘We’re not wanted. I’m just a name on a marriage certificate.
‘For now…’
Penny-Rose might have gone back to Leo, but her presence stayed on with the man she intended to marry, an insistent consciousness that followed him everywhere.
He hadn’t said goodnight. He’d been a bore.
But if he’d looked up, he might have said-he would have said, Help me with this. And she’d have stayed and sat beside him and the smell of her would have permeated his consciousness even more and…
And he wouldn’t have been able to keep it formal. As he must!
So he’d let her go back to her dog, and he’d gone back to his paperwork, and his exhaustion and sense of confusion deepened by the hour.
He saw her again at breakfast-briefly. They were curt with each other, as formal as Belle would have wanted. Then he saw her from a distance during the day.
It was strange how often his eyes strayed to where the new west wall was gradually taking shape.
Because there’d be his intended bride, filthy and happy, chipping away at stones with Leo scrabbling in the dust beside her. Woman and dog were inseparable and Alastair had to fight an almost irresistible urge to join them.
But… ‘Keep it formal,’ Belle had demanded, and it was the only sensible thing to do.
Formality increased as the wedding grew closer. It was the only safe barrier. But unknown to Alastair, Penny- Rose was learning more and more about the castle and its workings.
And finally she had to break through Alastair’s barriers to use it.
‘Henri has bunions,’ she informed him as they sat down to dinner a week before the wedding. Marguerite was still keeping to her room-her flu had left her worryingly frail-so Alastair and Penny-Rose dined alone. Formally. But for once Penny-Rose was breaking the ice. ‘You should do something about it,’ she told him.
Bunions… Alastair frowned. Henri… ‘Did you say bunions?’
‘I certainly did.’ She attacked the last of her salmon with vigour, and as the butler came in to clear the plates, she beamed up at him. ‘That was great, Henri. Can you tell Claude that we loved it?’
‘Certainly, M’selle. Cook will be delighted.’ The elderly man beamed, with a smile that left Alastair in no doubt that Rose was twisting his staff around her little finger. Henri was searching to please her now. ‘Claude has made you something called lamingtons for dessert,’ he told her. ‘He bought a book on Australian cooking, just to make you feel at home.’
