either side.
She had her handkerchief to her eyes as he walked in. She whisked it away the moment she saw him, swiping her sleeve angrily across her eyes and concentrating on washing the next udder.
She’d been crying?
He tried to think of this situation from her point of view. Surely help with the responsibility of raising three kids had to be welcome?
But, he thought with sudden perspicacity, he was related to the children and she wasn’t. She loved these kids. Maybe he’d scared her.
Hell, he hadn’t meant to.
‘I’m here to help,’ he told her, and she finished wiping the udder of the nearest cow and started fitting cups.
‘Stay back. Cows don’t like strangers.’
‘They can handle a bit of unease. Let me put on the cups.’ He stepped down into the pit before she could protest. ‘You bring them in for me. Once they’re in a bail they’ll hardly notice I’m not you.’
She looked up then, really looked, blatantly astonished. ‘You do know how to milk?’
‘I don’t tell lies, Pippa,’ he said gently. ‘I’ve spent time on a dairy farm, yes. And our farm had an outdated herring-bone dairy just like this one.’
Without a word she backed a little, then watched as he washed the next udder and fitted cups. The cow made no protest. Max was wearing familiar waterproofs and in this sort of weather one waterproofed human was much like another.
Satisfied-but still silent-she headed into the yard to bring the next cow in.
This would essentially halve her time spent in the dairy, Max thought. If Pippa had been forced to bring cows in herself, stepping out of the pit and back down time and time again, it’d take well over three hours, morning and night. Six hours of milking in this weather as well as all the other things that had to be done on a farm, plus looking after the children-and now the vats were contaminated and the milk was running down the drain.
What the hell was she doing here?
But he wasn’t the first to ask questions. ‘So tell me about this royal thing,’ she called as the next cow came calmly into the bail. She had a radio on as background noise, so she had to speak loudly. ‘What do you mean different parental names? Is that why Alice put a question mark against your name on the family tree?’
‘You’ve seen the family tree?’
‘Alice drew me one for us, a long time ago. It’s what she remembered and heard from friends back home, but it’s sketchy. You’re on there. So’s Thierry. But there’s a question mark after you. Why?’
‘It’s a sordid family story.’
‘It can’t be any more sordid than mine,’ she said flatly. ‘If it affects Marc, then I need the truth.’
He shrugged. He’d hated saying it, but then it had achieved what it was meant to achieve. ‘My mother was married to Edouard, the Crown Prince Etienne’s grandson. Bernard’s cousin. She and my father had Thierry. Then my mother had an affair. She was still married when I was born but my father doesn’t appear on the birth certificate.’
There was a moment’s silence while she thought that through. Then: ‘So you can’t inherit?’
‘No.’
‘But you’ve had a lot to do with royalty?’
‘No. My mother had nothing to do with Bernard or his father. We’ve been in France since I was a baby.’
‘You speak great English.’
‘My Grandma on my mother’s side is English. She drummed English into me from the time I was a tot, refusing to let me grow into what she called a little French Ruffian. She’d be delighted you noticed!’
‘Right.’ She nodded, more to herself than to him. She hauled her handkerchief from her pocket and gave her nose a surreptitious blow. Then she put her shoulders back, as if she was giving herself courage. She ushered another cow forward, and then, astonishingly, she started to sing.
An old pop song was playing on the radio. Max recognised it from years ago. Many years ago. His grandmother had liked this song. ‘Tell Laura I Love Her’ was corn at its corniest, but Pippa was suddenly singing as loud as she could, at full pathos, relishing every inch of tragedy.
The cows didn’t blink.
He did. He straightened and stared. Pippa was a wet, muddy, bedraggled figure in a sea of mud and cows. Five minutes ago she’d been crying. He was sure she’d been crying.
She was singing as if the world were at her feet.
He went back to cleaning, putting on cups, taking cups off. Listening.
‘Tell Laura’ was replaced by ‘The Last Waltz’ and she didn’t do a bad rendition of that either. Then there was Olivia Newton-John’s ‘I Am Woman’ and she almost brought the house down. He found himself grinning and humming-but a lot more quietly than Pippa.
‘You don’t sing?’ she demanded as she sang the last note and gave her next cow an affectionate thump on the rump.
‘Um…no.’
‘Not even in the shower?’
‘I’m admitting nothing.’
She chuckled. ‘That means you do. Why don’t you sing along?’
‘I’m enjoying listening to you.’
‘So sing with me next time.’ But the next song was one neither of them knew, which was clearly unsatisfactory.
‘I’ll write to their marketing manager,’ she said darkly. ‘Putting on newfangled songs I don’t know the words of is bad box office.’
‘So what do you have to sing about?’ he asked into the lull.
‘I can’t find anything to sing about with this song.’
He glanced at the source of the music-a battered radio sitting at the end of the bales. ‘You want me to change the channel?’
‘There speaks a channel surfer,’ she said. ‘Men!They spend their lives looking for something better and miss out on the good stuff.’
‘Good stuff like “I Am Woman”?’
‘Exactly.’
‘So what’s put you off men…exactly?’
‘Life,’ she said theatrically and gave an even more theatrical sigh. ‘Plus the fact that no one finds my fashion sense sexy.’
Fashion? He could hardly see her. She was a diminutive figure in waterproofs that were far too big for her. Her boots were caked in mud and there was a fair bit of dung attached as well. She was a shapeless, soggy mass, but she was patting the cow before her with real affection, waiting for the next song to start before launching herself into her own personal theatrical performance.
Was she sexy? Maybe not but here it was again, a stirring of something that was definitely not unsexy interest.
Which was crazy, he told himself again, even more severely than the last time he’d told himself. He’d come here for one reason and one reason only. He expected to put Marc on the plane to Alp d’Estella-with or without attachments-and then get the hell out of this mess. He’d thought this through. He could fit the requirements of the regency in with his current work. He’d install Charles Mevaille as administrator. Charles was more competent than he’d ever be. Sure there’d be times when he needed to inter-vene personally, but for the most part he could get himself back to the life that he loved.
Did he love his life?
Whoa. What was he thinking? He surely loved his life better than a life of being in the royal goldfish bowl-and he liked his life better than the one this woman was leading.
But she sang. She sang straight after she cried.
So she was better at putting on a cheerful face than he was. The singing must be a part of that, he realised. It was a tool to force herself away from depression.
