Except…Tammy?
Dammit, Henry needed Tammy.
No. He was holding Henry in his arms and Henry was at peace with his world. He was munching the note into a soggy pulp, his spare hand gripped his already battered teddy, and he was being held by a man in whom he had implicit trust.
Henry had everything he needed right here. Tammy was right. Somehow Henry had elected two grown-ups to be his people and Marc was one of them.
Henry was happy.
But Marc wasn’t. Marc was feeling as if the world was closing in on him. All he’d tried to escape was right here, contentedly mulching paper. Ties. Family. Responsibility.
Love.
‘I can care for you until breakfast, but not after that,’ he said grimly, and Henry paused and thoughtfully tried to jam a piece of paper into Marc’s mouth. ‘No thanks, kid; I’ve had dinner.’
Undeterred, Henry went back to chewing.
‘You need to go to bed.’
Did he? Henry looked unconvinced.
‘I tell you what else you need…’ There was a hint of sogginess under Marc’s arm, and it didn’t come from the paper. ‘I guess your diapers will be up in Tammy’s…I mean up in the nursery.’
The rooms were adjoining, Marc remembered. Tammy’s bedroom was set up for a nanny. There was no door between it and the nursery. He’d take Henry up there, he decided, and if Tammy was still awake…
Surely she couldn’t be asleep? Or if she happened to wake…
‘Serve her right,’ he decided. ‘Who the heck does she think she is, trying to run my life? This is her job, not mine.’
She wasn’t there.
Marc carried Henry into the nursery and just happened to glance-straight away-at the door to Tammy’s bedroom. He’d expected a hump under the bedclothes. She’d pretend to be sleeping, he decided, and hadn’t figured out whether to call her bluff and wake her or just leave Henry in the crib and let him wake her himself.
Her bed was beautifully made up, as it had been since it was made by the servants that morning. It hadn’t been slept in. The clothes she’d been wearing that night were lying on a bedside chair. Instinctively his eyes went to the wardrobe.
Hell! He couldn’t help himself. In seconds he had the wardrobe door open, and when he saw her clothing still there he felt his breath escape in a sigh of relief.
She hadn’t left the palace for good, then.
Why had he thought she would?
He hadn’t, he told himself. He was just…checking.
So where was she?
‘Tammy?’
No answer. Frustrated, he hit the servants’ bell and listened to it echoing away in the distance. What had Tammy written?
Where was she? Here he was, held close by Henry, when all he wanted to do was haul open the door and stride out into the night to find Tammy.
She’d be hidden in the servants’ quarters, he decided. Or in any of the thirty or so empty bedchambers around the palace. Or out in the garden and up a tree. Anywhere.
Alone.
Damn.
Henry gave the beginning of a grumble of protest and the sogginess grew. He was going to have to cope with this crisis alone. He couldn’t fetch Tammy even if he wanted to.
Damn, where was she?
Nowhere. He was by himself.
‘This sort of thing isn’t supposed to happen to royalty,’ he told his cousin. ‘I should head down to the servants’ quarters and wake someone-rescind Tammy’s orders-have someone else change you and look after you.’
Wouldn’t that be what she’d expect him to do?
Yes.
She was expecting him to walk away. After all, that was just what he’d said he was going to do.
He closed his eyes and when he opened them he discovered Henry was watching him with wide-eyed wonder- as if he knew his future hung on what happened right this minute.
‘I can change a diaper,’ Marc said grimly, carrying Henry through to the change table. ‘I can take care of a baby.’
He could.
But as he laid Henry down and tackled the first domestic duty it had ever fallen to him to undertake-as Henry beamed up at him in delight at the removal of something that had clearly been starting to irk him-Marc looked down into his little cousin’s eyes and thought there was more to this than domestic duty. He wasn’t just taking care of a baby.
He was falling in love!
The thought scared him so much that it took all the control he could muster not to walk out of the room right then. All he wanted was to take Henry down, knock on the housekeeper’s bedroom door, hand over his responsibilities and run.
His responsibility gurgled up at him and smiled a fine baby smile, and the fine gossamer threads of responsibility tightened so firmly Marc thought he’d choke.
Instead, he somehow fastened a new diaper-in a fashion-lifted Henry into his arms and took him back to his suite.
And settled down to wonder where in hell Tammy was?
CHAPTER NINE
IT WAS a really long night.
Marc would have had to search hard if he’d tried to find Tammy because, instead of seeking out one of the scores of empty bedrooms in the palace and hoping Marc wouldn’t find her, Tammy had escaped to where she belonged. He’d forgotten the standard gear that she always carried. A tent and a sleeping bag and the essentials to sleep under the stars. While Marc was struggling with diapers, Tammy was in her sleeping bag in her tent in the sheltered palace woodland.
But she wasn’t asleep. She lay with the tent wide open, watching stars that were totally different from the galaxies she was used to in the Southern Hemisphere. Upside down and strange.
Being upside down made sense, she thought ruefully. Everything else was topsy-turvy. Why shouldn’t the heavens match?
Why had she done this? What was she possibly hoping for?
A fair system of parenting, she told herself. But she knew it was far more than that. She wanted Marc to love his little cousin. She wanted Marc to…commit?
She wanted him to commit to Henry, she told herself savagely, and there was an aching void around her heart that she didn’t understand. She didn’t have a clue what to do with it.
Why had he kissed her?
She’d asked, ‘What’s changed?’
‘You, of course,’ he’d replied. ‘You. And me.’
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ she muttered, forcing herself to remember her mother’s words. ‘The man’s a
