Cinderella: Hired by the Prince

But to drag her into the royal limelight, into a place where the servants greeted you with blank faces…into a place where his father had died and barely a ripple had been created…where Carlos threatened and he didn’t know which servants might be loyal and which might be in Carlos’s pay…here his duty lay to his people and to have his worry centred on one slip of a girl…

On Jenny.

No.

Could he love her enough to let her go?

He must.

He had a deputation from neighbouring countries meeting him first thing in the morning to discuss border issues. Refugees. The thought did his head in.

Royalty seemed simple on the outside-what had Jenny said?-cutting ribbons and making speeches. But Cepheus was governed by royalty. He’d set moves afoot to turn it into a democracy but it would take years, and meanwhile what he did would change people’s lives.

Could he do it alone? He must.

He had no right to ask Jenny to share a load he found insupportable. To put her into the royal limelight… To ask her to share the risks that had killed his father… To distract himself from a task that had to be faced alone…

There was no choice at all.

CHAPTER NINE

JENNY didn’t see Ramon all the next day. She couldn’t. ‘Affairs of State,’ Sofia told her darkly, deeply disapproving when Jenny told her she had no intention of leaving until she’d spoken to Ramon. ‘There’s so much business that’s been waiting for Ramon to officially take charge. Senor Rodriguez tells me he’s booked for weeks. Poor baby.’

Poor baby? Jenny thought of the man whose boot she’d pulled off, she thought of the power of his touch, and she thought ‘poor baby’ was a description just a wee bit wide of the mark.

So what was she to do? By nine she’d breakfasted, inspected the palace gardens-breathtakingly beautiful but so empty-got lost twice in the palace corridors, and she was starting to feel as if she was climbing walls.

She headed out to the gardens again and found Gordon, pacing by one of the lagoon-sized swimming pools. It seemed the darkness and the strange city last night had defeated even him.

‘All this opulence gives me the creeps,’ he said, greeting her with relief. ‘I’ve been waiting for you. How about if we slope off down to the docks? It’s not so far. A mile or so as the crow flies. We could get out the back way, avoid the paparazzi.’

‘I do need to come back,’ she whispered, looking at the cluster of cameramen around the main gate with dismay, and Gordon surveyed her with care.

‘Are you sure? There’s talk, lass, about last night.’

And there it was again, that surge of anger.

‘Then maybe I need to give them something to talk about,’ she snapped.

The meetings were interminable-men and women in serious suits, with serious briefcases filled with papers covered with serious concerns, not one of which he could walk away from.

This country had been in trouble for decades-was still in trouble. It would take skill and commitment to bring it back from the brink, to stop the exodus of youth leaving the country, to take advantage of the country’s natural resources to bring prosperity for citizens who’d been ignored for far too long.

The last three months he’d spent researching, researching, researching. He had the knowledge now to make a difference, but so much work was before him it felt overwhelming.

He should be gearing up right now to spend the next six months supervising the construction of houses in Bangladesh, simple work but deeply satisfying. He’d had to abandon that to commit to this, a more direct and personal need.

And this morning he’d had to abandon Jenny.

Gianetta.

The two words kept interplaying in his head. Jenny. Gianetta.

Jenny was the woman who made muffins, the woman who saved whales, the woman who made him laugh.

Gianetta was the woman he took to his bed. Gianetta was the woman he would make his Princess- if he didn’t care so much, for her and for his country.

Where was she now?

He’d been wrong last night. Sofia had spelled out their situation clearly and he could do nothing but agree.

He should be with her now, explaining why he couldn’t take things further. She’d be confused and distressed. But there was simply no option for him to spend time with her today.

So… He’d left orders for her to be left to enjoy a day of leisure. The Marquita was a big boat; it was hard work to crew her and she’d been sailing for three months. Last night had been…stressful. She deserved to rest.

He had meetings all day and a formal dinner tonight. Tomorrow, though, he’d make time early to say goodbye. If she stayed that long.

And tomorrow he’d promised to visit Philippe.

He glanced at his watch. Tomorrow. It was twenty-two hours and thirty minutes before a scheduled visit with his woman. Wedging it in between affairs of state and his concern for a child he didn’t know what to do with.

Jenny. How could he ever make sense of what he felt for her?

He knew, in his heart, that he couldn’t.

The Marquita meant work, and in work there was respite.

The day was windless so they could unfurl the sails and let them dry. The boat was clean, but by common consensus they decided it wasn’t clean enough. They scrubbed the decks, they polished brass, they gave the interior such a clean that Martha Gardener would be proud of them.

Jenny remade the bed in the great stateroom, plumped the mass of pillows, looked down at the sumptuous quilts and wondered again, what had she been thinking?

She’d slept in this bed with the man she loved. She loved him still, with all her heart, but in the distance she could see the spires of the palace, glistening white in the Mediterranean sunshine.

The Crown Prince of Cepheus. For a tiny time their two disparate worlds had collided, and they’d seemed almost equal. Now, all that was left was to find the courage to walk away.

Perhaps.

Eighteen hours and twenty-two minutes. How many suits could he talk to in that time? How many documents must he read?

He had to sign them all and there was no way he could sign without reading.

His eyes were starting to cross.

Eighteen hours and seven minutes.

Would she still be here?

Surely she wouldn’t leave without a farewell.

He deserved it, he thought, but please…no.

They worked solidly until mid-afternoon. Gordon was checking the storerooms, taking inventory, making lists of what needed to be replaced. Jenny was still obsessively cleaning.

Taking away every trace of her.

But, as the afternoon wore on, even she ran out of things to do. ‘Time to get back to the palace,’ Gordon decreed.

‘We could stay on board.’

‘She’s being pulled out of the water tonight so engineers can check her hull in the morning. We hardly have a choice tonight.’