Cinderella: Hired by the Prince

afraid of. It’s time you met your grandfather and your uncle,’ his father had told him.

His mother had said later that the decision to take him had been made, ‘Because surely the Prince can’t refuse his grandchild, a little boy who looks just like him.’ But his mother had been wrong.

Not only had he been refused, some time in the night while Ramon lay in scared solitude, in a room far too grand for a child, somehow, some time, his father had died. He remembered not sleeping all night, and the next morning he remembered his grandfather, his icy voice laced with indifference to both his son’s death and his grandson’s solitary grief, snarling at the servants. ‘Pack him up and get him out of here,’ he’d ordered.

Pack him up and get him out of here… It was a dreadful decree, but how much worse would it have been if the Crown Prince had ordered him to stay? As he was being ordered to stay now.

Not Philippe, though. Philippe was free, if he could just be made happy with that freedom.

‘Tell me about your cat,’ he asked, trying a smile, and Philippe swallowed and swallowed again and made a manful effort to respond.

‘He’s little,’ he whispered. ‘The other cats fight him and he’s not very strong. Something bit his ear. Papa doesn’t permit me to take him inside, so he lives in the stables, but he comes when I call him. He’s orange with a white nose.’

‘Are there many orange cats with white noses at the palace?’ Ramon asked, and for some reason the image of Jenny was with him strongly, urging him on. The little boy shook his head.

‘Bebe’s the only one. He’s my friend.’ He tilted his chin, obviously searching for courage for a confession. ‘Sometimes I take a little fish from the kitchen when no one’s looking. Bebe likes fish.’

‘So he shouldn’t be hard to find.’ Ramon glanced at Consuela and Ernesto, questioningly. This place was a farm. Surely one cat…

‘We like cats,’ Consuela said, guessing where he was going. ‘But Senor Rodriguez tells us the palace cats are wild. They’re used to keep the vermin down and he says no one can catch one, much less tame one.’

‘I’m sure we could tame him.’ Ernesto, a wiry, weathered farmer, spoke almost as defiantly as his wife. ‘If you, sir, or your staff, could try to catch him for us…’

‘I’ll try,’ Ramon said. ‘He’s called Bebe, you say? My aunt has her cat at the palace now. She understands them. Let’s see what we can do.’

Jenny would approve, he thought, as he returned to the palace, but he pushed the idea away. This was his challenge, as was every challenge in this place. It was nothing to do with Jenny.

As soon as he returned to the palace he raided the kitchens. Then he set off to the stables with a platter of smoked salmon. He set down the saucer and waited for a little ginger cat with a torn ear to appear. It took a whole three minutes.

Bebe wasn’t wild at all. He stroked his ears and Bebe purred. He then shed ginger fur everywhere while he wrapped himself around Ramon’s legs and the chair legs in the palace entrance and the legs of the footman on duty. Jenny would laugh, Ramon thought, but he shoved that thought away as well. Just do what comes next. Do not think of Jenny.

Bebe objected-loudly-to the ride in a crate on the passenger seat of Ramon’s Boxster, but he settled into life with Philippe-‘as if Philippe’s been sneaking him into his bed for the last couple of years,’ Consuela told him, and maybe he had.

After that, Philippe regained a little colour, but he still looked haunted. He missed the palace, he confided, as Ramon tried to draw him out. In a world of adults who hadn’t cared, the palace itself had become his stability.

Pack him up and get him out of here…

It made sense, Ramon thought. If the servants’ reaction to Philippe was anything to go by, he’d be treated like illegitimate dirt in the palace. And then there was his main worry, or maybe it wasn’t so much a worry but a cold, hard certainty.

There was so much to be done in this country that his role as Crown Prince overwhelmed him. He had to take it on; he had no choice, but in order to do it he must be clear-headed, disciplined, focused.

There was no link between love and duty in this job. He’d seen that spelled out with bleak cruelty. His grandmother had entered the palace through love, and had left it with her dreams and her family destroyed. His father had tried again to enter the palace, for the love of his mother, and he’d lost his life because of it. There were threats around him now, veiled threats, and who knew what else besides?

And the knowledge settled on his heart like grey fog. To stay focused on what he must do, he could put no other person at risk. Sofia was staying until after the coronation. After that she’d leave and no one would be at risk but him. He’d have no distractions and without them maybe, just maybe, he could bring this country back to the prosperity it deserved.

But Philippe… And Jenny?

They’d get over it, he told himself roughly. Or Philippe would get over his grief and move on. Jenny must never be allowed to know that grief.

And once again he told himself harshly, this was nothing to do with Jenny. There’d never been a suggestion that they take things further. Nor could there be. This was his life and his life only, even if it was stifling.

This place was stifling. Nothing seemed to have changed since his grandfather’s reign, or maybe since long before.

Lack of change didn’t mean the palace had been allowed to fall into disrepair, though. Even though his grandfather and uncle had overspent their personal fortunes, the Crown itself was still wealthy, so pomp and splendour had been maintained. Furnishings were still opulent, rich paintings still covered the walls, the woodwork gleamed and the paintwork shone. The staff looked magnificent, even if their uniforms had been designed in the nineteenth century.

But the magnificence couldn’t disguise the fact that every one of the people working in this palace went about their duties with impassive faces. Any attempt by Ramon to penetrate their rigid facades was met with stony silence and, as the weeks turned into a month and then two, he couldn’t make inroads into that rigidity.

The servants-and the country-seemed to accept him with passive indifference. He might be better than what had gone before, the newspapers declared, but he was still royal. Soon, the press implied, he’d become just like the others.

When he officially took his place as Crown Prince, he could make things better for the people of this county. He knew that, so he’d bear the opulence of the palace, the lack of freedom. He’d bear the formality and the media attention. He’d cope also with the blustering threats of a still furious Carlos; along with the insidious sense that threats like this had killed his father. He’d face them down.

Alone.

Once Philippe had recovered from his first grief, surely he’d be happy on the farm with Consuela and Ernesto.

And also… Jenny would be happy as a muffin-maker?

Why did he even think of her? Why had he ever insisted that she come here? It would have been easier for both of them if he’d simply let her go.

For she was Jenny, he reminded himself harshly, a dozen times a day. She was not Gianetta. She was free to go wherever she willed. She was Jenny, with the world at her feet.

Yet he watched the Marquita’s progress with an anxiety that bordered on obsession, and he knew that when Jenny arrived he would see her one last time. He must.

Was that wise?

He knew it wasn’t. There was no place for Jenny here, as there was no place for Philippe.

He’d been alone for much of his adult life. He could go on being alone.

But he’d see Jenny once again first. Sensible or not.

Please…

Eleven weeks and two days after setting sail from Auckland, the Marquita sailed into Cepheus harbour and found a party. As they approached land, every boat they passed, from tiny pleasure craft to workmanlike fishing vessels, was adorned in red, gold and deep, deep blue. The flag of Cepheus hung from every mast. The harbour was ringed with flags. There were people crowded onto the docks, spilling out of harbourside restaurants. Every restaurant looked crammed to bursting. It looked like Sydney Harbour on a sunny Sunday, multiplied by about a hundred, Jenny thought, dazed, as she made the lines ready to dock.

‘You reckon they’re here to welcome us?’ Gordon called to her, and she smiled.