through. ‘We’ll get those snakes out of these trees before you come back here,’ she told Edouard as Raoul had to duck to avoid a couple of particularly long and vicious fangs. ‘Things are going to change. You wait and see. Just follow.’
And she took off down the corridor, leaving two very confused princes to follow.
She took them to her apartment.
Edouard didn’t say a word the whole way and neither did Raoul. It was as if they were both stunned.
In truth, so was Jess. What she was doing seemed crazy, but she no longer had a choice. If she walked away she’d regret it and she already had enough regrets to last a lifetime.
Her apartments were better than Edouard’s, she decided when they reached her rooms. Sure, her rooms were still opulent but they were much more cheerful. The nursery must have been warmed by some form of central heating. Here there was a fire in the grate. Jess had lain on the bed this afternoon and the covers were rumpled and cushions were scattered. There were magazines on the floor and Louise had put a vase of random, cottage- type flowers in a vase by her bed.
After Edouard’s decorator nursery, this looked almost homey.
She led them into her bedroom. ‘Take a seat,’ she told Raoul and he sat on the bed, gingerly, with Edouard still clutched firmly to his neck.
‘You’re stopped,’ she told them kindly. ‘You can readjust. It gets pretty uncomfortable to keep piggybacking in the sitting position. Edouard’s allowed to sit on your lap now.’
‘My lap?’ Raoul said, sounding French, and Jess grinned.
‘Your knee. I guess princes of the blood don’t have laps. Edouard, would you like some lemonade?’
Edouard looked astounded.
‘We’ll all have lemonade,’ she decreed. There was a small refrigerator in her sitting room. She went out and poured three glasses of lemonade and returned to find Edouard sitting on Raoul’s…knee.
They both looked so apprehensive that she giggled.
‘Hey, I don’t bite,’ she said and handed over the glasses.
Edouard stared into his glass in absolute suspicion.
‘There are bubbles?’ he whispered and there was another shock. A royal prince reaching three years old without meeting lemonade?
‘Sure there are bubbles,’ she said, trying not to get choked up. ‘They tickle your nose. Try it.’
Edouard glanced at his uncle. Raoul smiled and drank some of his.
Edouard stared at Jess, who drank some of hers.
He hesitated-and then he took a sip.
His eyes widened. He took another sip. And another.
It had been a test, Jess thought, letting breath out that she didn’t know she’d been holding. And they’d just passed.
‘I like it,’ he said, on a long note of discovery, and Jess grinned.
‘Me, too. What about you, Uncle Raoul?’
‘Me, too,’ he said definitely and he smiled-and suddenly they were grinning at each other like fools again, and that crazy twist inside her that she’d been trying to put aside all evening slammed back so hard that her breathing got tricky.
She wasn’t sure how to manage this breathing business. What was going on?
‘Um…teddy,’ she managed, but Raoul was still smiling at her and it took all the strength she possessed to break contact.
‘Teddy?’ he said, softly, almost wonderingly, and she knew that whatever was twisting her insides was having a similar effect on him.
She ignored it. Or she tried to ignore it. She walked over to the wardrobe where her suitcase lay stored in its cavernous depths. She knew exactly where Teddy was. In a moment she had him out, and was walking back to the bed.
Dammit, she wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t.
She reached the bed, and she held out one small bear.
‘Edouard, this is Sebastian,’ she told him. She crouched down so her eyes were on a level with Edouard’s. Raoul had him on his knee so she was almost touching his legs. It was a crazily intimate setting. But then, it was a crazily intimate gesture.
It might not work. It might be stupid. What made her think so strongly that it was the right thing to do? That Dom would have wanted this…?
‘Edouard, Sebastian is a very old bear,’ she told him. ‘He was my bear when I was a little girl, and then he belonged to a little boy called Dominic. Dominic can’t look after him any more, and for the past few weeks he’s been sitting in the bottom of my suitcase. But that’s a very sad place for a special bear to be. He’s been lonely and he badly wants a friend. Would you like Sebastian, Edouard?’
Edouard considered. His small face was intent, as if knowing instinctively that this was a very serious charge.
Sebastian lay in Jess’s hands. He’d been patched and re-patched. His eyes didn’t quite match. His nose was fraying, and one leg was very much shorter than the other. He gazed out at the world with world-weary, crooked eyes and a crooked little smile that had been stitched and re-stitched but had never stopped smiling in all the years of his life.
He was one special bear.
Jess held him out, and she felt her gut wrench as she did so. But it felt right. It felt…fine.
She looked up into Edouard’s face and she saw the intent look he was giving Sebastian and she thought, yep, here was his home.
‘He looks sad,’ Edouard said even though the little bear was smiling.
‘He’s been in the bottom of a suitcase in my cupboard,’ Jess told him. ‘He’s been very lonely. He needs a friend.’
‘Sebastian needs me?’ His voice was too old for his years, Jess thought, and more and more she knew this was the right thing to do.
‘I guess he does,’ she told him and waited while Edouard considered some more. Finally, he reached out a finger and touched the ragged nose.
Then very carefully, as if Sebastian might break at any minute, he accepted him into his hold. He held him at arm’s length for a long minute-and then hauled him in closer. Protectively.
‘He doesn’t have any clothes,’ he whispered. ‘He’s sad because he doesn’t have anything to wear.’
‘Do you think so?’ Raoul was smiling. She noticed his smile, and even more she thought, this felt good. Very good. And not just for Edouard. The wash of grey fog she’d been living in for the last few months had lifted. Just a bit. Just a fraction, like the sun glimmering out from the clouds, but the sun was on her face and she felt, for this magic moment, a shard of glorious freedom. And she intended to pursue it for all it was worth.
‘We could make him some trousers,’ she said, and her two princes looked puzzled.
‘Now?’ Edouard whispered and she nodded.
‘Now.’
‘How?’ Raoul demanded, surprised out of his sideline role.
She smiled. ‘Magic. Watch.’ She disappeared back to her wardrobe, to her suitcase, then returned carrying a frame-a tiny loom already threaded with black warp thread. She also carried a handful of brightly coloured balls.
‘We’ll start from the ground up,’ she told the boys. ‘I have this set up so I can try out various yarns for effect. Raoul, set Edouard down. There’s work to be done.’
She dropped her balls at her feet and skeins of brightly coloured yarn rolled over the imperial carpet. These were amazing skeins, carefully collected from one producer, each one sourced and labelled. At this one place Jess had visited before her accident she’d known she’d been right to come. Alp’Azuri was a weaver’s paradise.
The balls were unique, vibrant colours and amazing textures. Magic. She’d produced only the coarser of her selection-there was no time for fine weaving now-but the coarser ones were magic enough.
She knelt on the carpet, setting her frame on the floor.
