front steps.
‘We’re travelling incognito,’ Raoul told her and she nodded. The gardener’s van was fine by her. Limousines might have been the last straw.
She was feeling so strange here that if she woke and discovered this was all a dream she wouldn’t have been the least surprised.
They were silent on the drive to Vesey. Down past the place where Sarah had crashed into her car. Down to the sleepy little city that was the capital of this country but in most countries would scarcely qualify as a city.
They found M. Marc Luiten at his breakfast. He was an elderly gentleman, long widowed, and as his housekeeper showed Raoul and Jess into his dining room he looked up from his omelette as if nothing in life had the power to surprise him.
‘Ha. Raoul.’ He waved a fork at the chairs on the other side of the dining table. ‘Take a seat, Your Highness. Forgive me but you can’t keep an omelette waiting.’
‘Nor would we want you to,’ Raoul said politely and he and Jess sat and drank the coffee the housekeeper produced and waited for the omelette to be demolished. It was. Then M. Luiten carefully mopped his moustache with his linen napkin and turned his attention to the pair before him.
‘I know I should have called you Prince Raoul,’ he growled, ‘but I’ve known you since you were in short trousers. Too damned old for ceremony. Sorry about your brother. And your bride. Bad business.’
‘That’s what I’m here for,’ Raoul told him directly. ‘
The man stilled, his coffee-cup hanging midway from table to mouth. ‘Say again?’
‘We thought we might try to get me married before Marcel takes charge. If you’re willing.’
M. Luiten turned his attention-carefully-from Raoul to Jess. He’d hardly noticed her before, she realised, and she wasn’t surprised. Raoul’s presence filled the room. He was a royal prince. She could well be considered a nobody.
The other half of a marriage of convenience?
‘Who did you say this was?’ the man said, and Jess smiled.
‘Jessica Devlin.’
‘The girl who smashed into Lady Sarah.’
She flushed but she didn’t turn away. ‘Yes.’
‘Good job there,’ the man said directly and turned again to Raoul. ‘If you’d asked me, boy, I would have told you there was bad blood. I know Lionel advised it but your father’s side of the family is nothing but trouble. Just look at Marcel.’
‘Yes, but it left us in a mess,’ Raoul said and the old man nodded.
‘Don’t I know it. Marcel and his cronies have been beside themselves with excitement. If they get their hands on the boy there’ll be no stopping them.’
‘If Jessica marries me then I’ll stop them.’
Once again the old eyes perused Jessica. He surveyed her for a long moment and something lit behind his eyes. Hope?
‘They say you’re Australian.’ The gruffness was suddenly gone, replaced by businesslike efficiency.
‘I am.’
‘Not married.’
‘I have been.’
‘Divorced? Widowed?’
‘Divorced a year ago.’
‘I don’t suppose you have your divorce papers with you,’ he said and there was a note in his voice that said this was important.
‘I have, actually,’ Jess told him. ‘I carry a copy of them with my passport.’ In the last few months of Dom’s life she’d taken him on a frantic trip to the US to try a new treatment. Because of tight international child-custody laws, she’d had to carry all her papers with her. Divorce papers. Birth certificates. Statutory declarations from Warren that she had his permission to take Dom wherever she liked.
She had a document folder that she travelled with and she hadn’t cleared it out. This morning she’d simply picked it up and shoved it into her jacket pocket.
The man took it, but he looked at her for a long, searching moment before he allowed himself to open the folder.
Then he adjusted his glasses low on his nose and read.
At the end, he laid the folder down and there was no mistaking the look in his eyes now. The flicker of hope had become a blaze of excitement.
‘These are in order. Raoul…’
‘I’ve never been married. You know that.’
‘I know that. You brought your birth certificate?’
‘Yes. Is there a time limit? Do we have to give notice?’
‘No notice at all,’ he said and his tone was expansive, joyful, exuberant. He rose and flicked back the curtains. ‘It’s a wonderful morning,’ he told them. ‘The garden’s looking magnificent. What say I ask my housekeeper and my gardener to act as witnesses? I’ll marry you right now.’
Thus they were married.
If they’d been a couple in love it would have been a marriage to remember, Jess thought as the strange little ceremony took place. M. Luiten spoke his own language but it was the hybrid of French and Italian Jess knew well. And she’d made these vows once before.
‘To have and to hold, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, for as long as we both shall live.’
It might just work this time, she thought as Raoul made his own vows, strong and sure. He’d taken her hand and the warmth and the strength of him made this seem…right. Her marriage to Warren had been a crazy mistake and even at the ceremony she had been having doubts. But now…she would be this man’s wife unto death.
Half a world away.
She looked down at the band of twisted gold Raoul was placing on her finger. That surprised her, but she liked it, she decided. Even though she’d be on the far side of the world, she liked it that she would be married to this man.
He was a husband to be proud of. A prince to be proud of?
‘I now pronounce you man and wife,’ M. Luiten said in a voice of supreme satisfaction. ‘You may now kiss the bride.’
She pulled her hand away, jerking out of her reverie with a start. ‘There’s no need…’
But Raoul took hold of her hand again. He smiled, and it was different from any smile she’d seen before. This was full of satisfaction-and more. There was release in his expression. This was a happy ending, and both of them knew it.
A happy beginning for Edouard? A happy beginning for this tiny country?
Raoul wasn’t the only one who was smiling. The housekeeper and the gardener were beaming their delight, and so was
The world was smiling.
‘Jessie, you’ve given me a gift,’ Raoul told her, and his smile was gentle. Reassuring. ‘You’ve given this country-all of us-a gift. If any bride deserved to be kissed on her wedding day, it’s you.’
‘But-’
‘No buts, Jessie. Hush and be kissed.’
His grip on her hands tightened. He stooped-and he kissed her.
And what a kiss. This was no feather kiss. This was no formal kiss of thanks. This was the kiss of a man claiming his bride. It was an absolutely spectacular kiss, planned and executed with precision and with style. Jess heard the collective intake of breath from housekeeper, gardener, magistrate…and then she heard nothing.
