Everyone knows where you are. Ramon, think about what you’re doing. You’re no longer just responsible for yourself. You represent a country now! She’s a nice girl, I won’t let you ruin her, or trap her into this life.’
‘I won’t do either,’ Ramon said, coldly furious. ‘We’re not talking marriage. We’re not talking anything past this night. Jenny will be leaving…’
‘Ramon, if she goes to the island now… There’ll be such talk. To take her in the palace kitchen…’
‘He didn’t
‘No one can tell that from outside,’ Sofia snapped and walked across and tugged the door wide. ‘See? The harm’s done,’ she said, as two footmen stepped smartly away from the door.
‘You can’t be happy here,’ she whispered. ‘No one knows anyone. No one trusts.’
‘I know that,’ Ramon told her. ‘Sofia, stop this.’
‘I told her you should take her to the island. I told her. You should have waited.’
‘Excuse me?’ Jenny said. ‘Can you include me in this?’
‘It’s nothing to do with you,’ Sofia said and then seemed to think about it. Her anger faded and she suddenly sounded weary and defeated. ‘No. I mean…even if you were suitable as a royal bride-which you aren’t-you aren’t tough enough. To do it with no training…’
‘Sofia, don’t do this,’ Ramon said. Sofia’s distress was clear and real. ‘We aren’t talking about marriage.’
‘Then you’re ruining her for nothing. And here’s your valet, come to see what all the fuss is about.’
‘I don’t want my valet,’ Ramon snapped. ‘I don’t want any valet.’
‘You don’t have a choice,’ Sofia said with exasperation. ‘None of us do. Ramon, go away. I’ll stay here with Jenny until these…whatever you’re making…muffins?…are cooked. We’ll make the best of a bad situation but there’s no way we can keep this quiet. This, with your stupid insistence on dancing with her first tonight… She’ll have paparazzi in her face tomorrow, whether she leaves or not.’
‘Paparazzi…’ Jenny said faintly.
‘Leave now, Ramon, and don’t go near her again. She needs space to see what a mess this situation is.’
‘She doesn’t want space.’
‘Yes, I do,’ Jenny said. Philippe? Paparazzi? There were so many unknowns. What was she getting into?
She felt dizzy.
She felt bereft.
‘Jenny,’ Ramon said urgently but Sofia was before him, pushing herself between them.
‘Leave it,’ she told them both harshly. ‘Like it or not, Ramon is Crown Prince. He needs to fit his new role. He might think he wants you but he doesn’t have a choice.
‘Yes,’ Jenny said before Ramon could reply. She didn’t want to look at him. She couldn’t. Because the laughter in his eyes had gone.
The servants were waiting to take over. The palace was waiting to take over.
She lay in her opulent bed and her head spun so much she felt dizzy.
She was lying on silk sheets. When she moved, she felt as if she was being caressed.
She wasn’t being caressed. She was lying in a royal bed, in a royal boudoir. Alone. Because why?
Because Ramon was a Crown Prince.
Even when she’d lain with him in his wonderful yacht, believing he was simply the skipper and not the owner, she’d felt a sense of inequality, as if this couldn’t be happening to her.
But it had happened, and now it was over.
What else had she expected?
Since she’d met Ramon her ache of grief had lifted. Life had become…unreal. But here it was again, reality, hard and cold as ice, slamming her back to earth. Grief was real. Loss was real. Emptiness and heartache had been her world for years, and here they were again.
Her time with Ramon, her time tonight, had been some sort of crazy soap bubble. Even before Sofia had spelled it out, she’d known it was impossible.
Sofia said she was totally unsuitable. Of course she was.
But…but…
As the night wore on something strange was happening. Her grief for Matty had been in abeyance during the two weeks with Ramon, and again tonight. It was back with her now, but things had changed. Things were changing.
Ever since Matty was born, things had happened to Jenny. Just happened. It was as if his birth, his medical problems, his desperate need, had put her on a roller coaster of emotions that she couldn’t get off. Her life was simply doing what came next.
But the chain of events today had somehow changed things. What Sofia and then Perpetua had said had stirred something deep within. Or maybe it was how Ramon had made her feel tonight that was making her feel different.
She’d seen the defeat on Ramon’s face and she recognized that defeat. It was a defeat born of bleak acceptance.
Once upon a time she’d shared it. Maybe she still should. But…but…
‘Why should I run?’ she whispered and she wondered if she’d really said it.
It didn’t make any sense. Sofia and Perpetua were right. So was Ramon. What was between them was clearly impossible, and there’d be a million more complications she hadn’t thought of yet.
Philippe? The child Sofia had talked of?
She didn’t go near children. Not after Matty.
And royalty? She had no concept of what Ramon was facing. Threats? The unknown Carlos?
There were questions everywhere, unspoken shadows looming from all sides, but overriding everything was the fact that she wanted Ramon so much she could almost cry out loud for him. What she wanted right now was to pad out into the palace corridor, yell at the top of her lungs for Ramon and then sit down and demand answers.
She’d had her chance. She’d used it making muffins. And kissing her prince.
He’d kissed her back.
The memory made her smile. Ramon made her smile.
Maybe the shadows weren’t so long, she thought, but she knew they were.
‘I’d be happy as his lover,’ she whispered to the night. ‘For as long as he wanted me. Just as his lover. Just in private. Back on his boat, sailing round the world, Ramon and me.’
It wasn’t going to happen. And would she be happy on his island, being paid occasional visits as Sofia had suggested?
No!
She lay back on her mound of feather pillows and she stared up at the ceiling some more.
She stared at nothing.
Jenny and Ramon, the Crown Prince of Cepheus? No and no and no.
But still there was this niggle. It wasn’t anger, exactly. Not exactly.
It was more that she’d found her centre again.
She’d found something worth fighting for.
Gianetta and the Crown Prince of Cepheus? No and no and no.
The thing was, though, sense had gone out of the window.
The car crash that had killed his mother and his sister had left him with an aching void where family used to be. For years he’d carried the grief as a burden, thinking he could bear no more, and the way to avoid that was to not let people close.
He loved his work in Bangladesh-it changed people’s lives-yet individual lives were not permitted to touch him.
But there was something about Jenny…Gianetta…that broke the barriers he’d built. She’d touched a chord, and the resonance was so deep and so real that to walk away from her seemed unthinkable.
For the last three months he’d tried to tell himself what he’d felt was an illusion, but the moment he’d seen her again he’d known it was real. She was his woman. He knew it with a certainty so deep it felt primeval.
