‘Um… Goodnight, then,’ she told him, hurriedly, before any other complications could occur.
‘Goodnight?’ He seemed surprised and maybe that was reasonable. She’d gone straight from inquisition mode to running away.
‘Goodnight. Thank you. I’m sorry for your troubles and I’ll stop adding to them.’
‘You’re not adding to anything.’
‘Nevertheless I’m leaving. I must.’
She meant to turn away. She meant to turn straight away. But he was watching her and his eyes were suddenly confused. As confused as hers were?
Maybe.
She needed to go.
But still his eyes held hers.
And then, suddenly, she knew what she had to do. It suddenly seemed the right thing to do, the only thing to do.
She stood on tiptoe and kissed him.
Lightly. Fleetingly.
Why? She hardly knew. It just seemed…appropriate.
It was appropriate.
And more.
The touch of him… It felt right, she thought wonderingly. Kissing this man. Touching this man. Standing in this vast kitchen with the smell of toast and the lingering aroma of burned steak and potatoes… Domesticity was all around them and it made kissing possible. Reasonable. This was a fairy-tale setting, but the toast and the marmalade made it real.
The kiss was real. Because he was real. Raoul was a prince of royal blood but he was a man alone. He was a doctor working where only the bravest went, a man whose country was being destroyed by corruption, an uncle watching his nephew being torn from him. He was a man coping with problems she couldn’t bear to think about.
She couldn’t help.
‘I wish you all the best,’ she whispered.
He didn’t move. There was a long, drawn-out silence. Too long.
‘You’ll say goodbye to my mother before you leave?’ he asked-heavily-and she nodded.
His hand moved then, his fingers lifting to touch the place on his face where she’d kissed him. It was as though he didn’t quite understand what the sensation was.
‘Of course I will,’ she told him, trying not to watch his fingers. ‘I know which her apartments are. I’ll say goodbye before I leave in the morning. Thank you, Raoul. For everything.’
She turned to go. And paused.
There was a woman in the doorway.
She was in her late thirties or early forties, Jess thought. She was tall and severely dressed in a nurse’s uniform. Her mousy brown hair was hauled severely back into a bun. She stood heavily in the doorway, surveying the couple before her with what seemed dislike.
This wasn’t one of the nurses who’d tended her, Jess thought. She hadn’t seen this woman before.
But Raoul obviously recognised her. ‘Cosette,’ he said, sounding surprised. ‘How can I help?’
The woman’s eyes flicked from Raoul to Jess and back again. Wary. ‘I came to tell you I’m leaving,’ she told him.
Raoul stilled.
‘You’re leaving? Now?’
The woman gestured to a cell-phone on her belt. ‘The viscount has rung,’ she told him. ‘He says the whole palace is under his control as of Monday. Including the child. And he’s furious. He said you insulted him tonight and he wants everyone out now. All the servants are to leave. If we don’t get out now, then we won’t have a job on Monday. He’s rung everyone. You don’t have a staff, Your Highness. I’m sorry.’
And she turned and walked out the back door, leaving them staring after her.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘HELL.’
Raoul stood, staring after her as if he’d been struck.
‘Um…is this a problem?’ Jess asked reluctantly. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to be sucked into this-no, she was
‘Hell,’ he murmured again. ‘Edouard.’
She had to ask it, although she already knew who they were talking about. The child she’d so carefully avoided thinking of. ‘Edouard being your nephew. He’s here in the palace?’
‘He’s here. Cosette has been looking after him.’
She hesitated. ‘I thought you said your mother wanted to care for him.’
‘My mother…can’t. He won’t let her. He…’ He paused and raked his fingers through his thatch of thick black curls. Despairing. ‘You don’t understand.’
No, and I don’t want to, Jess thought. Go to bed now, she told herself, feeling more desperate by the minute. Leave this mess before it sucks you in.
But-three years old? Alone?
‘What do you mean, he won’t let her?’ It was as if someone else was speaking, she thought. It was another Jess asking the questions. Not the Jess who’d walked away from Dom’s grave…
‘Edouard’s been badly neglected,’ he was saying. ‘And now, for Cosette to walk out just like this…’ He started toward the door. ‘Come with me. I need to check on him straight away.’
But I don’t want to, she thought wildly. I can’t go near any needful child.
But Raoul was holding the door for her and waiting and there was suddenly nothing for it but to pass him and then walk by his side as he strode swiftly down the corridors to…
To where?
‘My brother had no concept of parenting,’ he said, speaking almost under his breath and striding so swiftly she almost had to break into a run to keep up with him. He was explaining to her-but almost speaking to himself. ‘It was no wonder. My father had no interest and my mother wasn’t permitted to interfere. My brother was raised with little affection and far too much money. He had everything he wanted-materially-and the end result was that he’d developed a drug habit by sixteen.’
Jess did a double skip to keep up and glanced across at his set, angry face.
‘Was that how he died?’ she asked gently and his face darkened even further.
‘Of course it was,’ he said savagely. ‘By the time Jean-Paul was married he was almost off his head. My father simply didn’t care, and it suited the politicians of this country to have a puppet monarch. While my brother was spaced he didn’t interfere with them and that’s the way it suited them. The parliament here is made up of men just like Marcel. They vote themselves huge salaries and do nothing. It’s been like that for years. Until now.’
‘But Edouard…’ A little boy. A three-year-old in the middle of this tragedy. Where did he fit in?
‘Jean-Paul married a B-grade movie actress whose sole attribute seemed to be the size of her breasts,’ he continued, still as if he was speaking to himself. ‘She joined right in with the lifestyle Jean-Paul lived. They had Edouard and they handed him over to child-minders. Serial child-minders. Cosette’s been with Edouard for six months and that’s the longest anyone’s been with him. By the time we saw him… He’s hardly responding to anyone.’
‘Not to your mother?’
‘He simply holds himself rigid,’ he told her. ‘I’ve watched him. With Cosette he relaxes enough to eat, to sleep, to watch the television he seems to have been put in front of at birth. With anyone else he simply blanks out. Or sobs. My mother spends all the time she can with him but he doesn’t respond. And now…’ He grimaced. ‘Marcel
