In it Raoul outlined his hopes and his plans for this country. His intentions to transform the hospitals, the schools, the living conditions of the country’s impoverished elderly.
He finished with the words, ‘With Princess Jessica’s help, all of these things are possible.’
‘You’ve had my help,’ she whispered to his photograph. ‘Now you’re on your own.’
She read on. Inside was a photograph of Edouard. ‘We’re so grateful to Princess Jessica,’ Louise was quoted as saying. ‘Edouard will now have a grandmother. He needs a mother, but it’s not possible. We’re all he has.’
He needs a mother. Jess stared down into the small boy’s tentative smile, and she didn’t smile back.
She couldn’t.
Because of Dominic?
‘I can’t expose myself to that sort of pain,’ she said out loud.
‘How selfish is that?
‘Really selfish. But that’s just the way you are.’
An elderly couple at the next table were looking at her strangely and she gave them an embarrassed smile. Talking to yourself. The first sign of madness. She was going nuts.
Her cell-phone rang.
Who…?
The only person to have her number was Cordelia, and why would her cousin ring?
Maybe she’s found out about the wedding, Jess thought, and she didn’t answer.
But the ringing went on. It stopped and started again. The lady at the table opposite leaned over and said, ‘Excuse me, dear, your phone is ringing.’
She sighed-but finally she answered.
And of course she’d given the number to one person other than Cordelia. The rumbling voice was unmistakable.
‘Your Highness? Am I speaking to the lady who bought my twins? The wife of our prince?’
The farmer.
‘Yes.’ She cleared her throat and tried to focus. ‘Yes, it is.’
‘Angel’s in trouble. My Angel.’ There was a sound very like a sob from the other end of the line. ‘The mother of the twins.’
‘What’s wrong?’ she said cautiously, and her question started a flood.
‘Oh, Your Highness, I brought Angel home, but by the time she got here she was looking over her shoulder as if she’d forgotten something. And then she refused to drink…and we’d walked for so long…and she refuses to eat. And now she’ll hardly stand. And this morning my wife and I are to leave. My daughter is due to have a baby right now and my wife says we go or she’ll divorce me and how can I leave my Angel?’
There was no doubt about it. He was sobbing.
‘Maybe you should ring the palace,’ she told him. This was Raoul’s problem, she thought, feeling dizzy. This was not her problem. She was going home.
‘There’s no one at the palace who will speak to me,’ he told her. ‘There’s a receptionist who says no calls are being taken. And it’s in an hour that we need to catch the train, and my Angel’s dying and how can I leave her like this?’
The same way I did, Jess thought bitterly. You just walk away.
‘I’m sure they still need their mother,’ the farmer told her. ‘I should have tried harder. I jumped into selling them because it seemed the easy solution. I should have had courage.’
Ouch.
‘Please, Your Highness, can you help? You’re at the castle. You could organise a horse trailer and take Angel back to her babies. If you manage to save her then she’s yours. Your wedding gift. And if you don’t…how much better to have tried and failed than not to have tried? Please, Your Highness, will you try?’
There was a long, long silence.
‘Are you still there?’ he asked.
‘I’m thinking,’ she managed. ‘Hush.’
He hushed.
She thought some more.
Ouch!
Angel was dying because she’d lost her babies.
If she went back now… All it took was courage.
‘Can I do it, Dominic?’ she asked out loud; right out loud, so that people were turning to see who she was talking to. ‘Can I start over? Can I possibly let myself love again?’
There was a moment’s hush from those around her. Then,
‘Sure you can, sweetheart,’ someone told her from the other side of the table, and she realised that she had an audience.
‘Loving again is what life is all about,’ someone else said. ‘The more you love, the more you get loved.’
‘You sound like a fortune cookie,’ someone else said, and everybody laughed.
But they were with her. The people around her were smiling in sympathy. All these people-this odd assortment of random airport humanity, some of whom would have been lucky in love, but there must be others whom tragedy had hit. Somehow they’d picked themselves up and kept going, and maybe it was those who’d been hit worst who were giving her advice now.
‘I can try,’ she told the assemblage, almost defiant. ‘I can go back and think about it. Maybe it could work.’
‘Of course it’ll work.’ The farmer clearly had no idea what was happening, but he was prepared to stick in his oar in any way that sounded even vaguely optimistic.
‘I might need help,’ she said, and the middle-aged woman who’d thought she was Princess Jessica touched her arm. Clearly she was wondering if help meant leading her gently to a lunatic asylum.
‘What sort of help?’
‘I need a car,’ Jess told her. And then she took a deep breath. ‘I need to hire a car with an alpaca trailer attached. Right now.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
SHE should be driving on this side of the road. Surely?
She was back where this had all started. The road was spiralling around snow-capped mountains, with the sea crashing a hundred feet below.
As it had before.
There were mediaeval castles, ancient fishing villages, lush pastures dotted with long-haired goats and alpacas-every sight seemingly designed to take the breath away.
She was past losing breath over this scenery.
The twist she’d just taken had given her a fleeting glimpse of the home of the Alp’Azuri royal family. Built of glistening white stone, set high on the crags overlooking the sea, the castle’s high walls, its turrets and its towers looked straight out of a fairy tale.
Yeah, right. Not such a fairy tale. Raoul’s home.
But she wasn’t concentrating on Raoul’s home. Up above she’d caught a glimpse of a brilliant-yellow sports car, coming fast.
She wasn’t even going to think about what side of the road it was on this time. She was driving an ancient rent-a-heap and she was towing an even more ancient horse-trailer. She made a really big target.
Carefully she pulled off the road, onto a verge which was wider than the one she’d pulled onto when she’d crashed with Sarah. She was safe here, whatever side of the road the car was on.
The Lamborghini came around the bend fast, but not so fast to make it unsafe. It was a truly elegant sports car.
It was on the right side of the road.
