The shoot lasted over an hour. By then the children were drooping again. Pippa looked exhausted too, Max thought, but she wasn’t letting on.
‘Enough,’ He decreed at last, and the photographer sighed and straightened from her tripod.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said. ‘You’re all so photogenic I could keep on for hours. But this will keep the press happy. I’ll let the media have whatever they want.’
‘Great.’ That was why they’d done it. To keep the pressure off. Now they were free of pressure until Friday week.
Then, if Pippa agreed, he’d be free of media pressure for ever.
It should feel good. But now he looked at Pippa’s strained face and he thought she’d found this harder than he had. She’d worked at making it cheerful-she was still bouncing, swiping kids with her wand and threatening them with fairy dust if they didn’t head straight to bed-but there was something akin to desolation behind the facade.
He’d hauled her out of poverty, he thought, but she knew that riches and glitter weren’t enough.
He knew that, too. Could he walk away from this mess? Pick her up and carry her to Paris?
With three kids and a dog?
His mother would adore them.
‘Can I help put the kids to bed?’ he asked.
‘Not tonight.’ She carefully didn’t look at him. ‘And, Beatrice, we don’t need you either. We’ll be fine. We’ll see you in the morning.’ She prodded the closest princess with her wand. The princess gave a sleepy giggle and headed bravely to the stairs, fairy godmother in pursuit.
‘Goodnight, sir,’ Beatrice said, with all the deference in the world. And then she paused.
‘You know, Pippa loves you,’ she whispered. ‘That has to count for a lot.’
Max stared at her.
How did Beatrice know?
But maybe…maybe…
He wanted to sleep himself, but first he had to front Levout. The official had disappeared for days. He appeared now, standing in the entrance hall, waiting for him, smiling urbanely.
‘I believe there was some problem in the village earlier in the evening.’
Max nodded curtly. ‘Your friend Daniella.’
‘And the players in the town hall.’
‘There was no problem with the players.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Levout said smoothly and he smiled. His smile made Max uneasy. ‘There’s always been conflict between the people and the palace. I just came to let you know it’s sorted.’
‘What’s sorted?’
‘Daniella came to see me, and we’ve looked into it straight away. We don’t like those type of people intimidating our trades-men and women. These gatherings are clearly inappropriate for our village. So…The hall they’ve been using is dilapidated. All those tatty costumes in the back are home for vermin. It’s surely a safety risk. We’ve boarded it closed, and in the morning we’ll send in bulldozers.’
Max stilled. ‘You have no right.’
‘We have every right,’ He said urbanely. His smile was surface only-behind his eyes was pure venom. ‘You might, as Prince Regent, be able to institute changes at parliamentary level, but according to the constitution only a ruling Crown Prince can interfere with daily minutiae. As there will be no ruling Crown Prince for thirteen years we have no problem.’
‘A prince has no right to interfere…’
‘Exactly.’ Levout’s oily smile broadened, but underneath there was something akin to hate. ‘Which is what I dropped by to tell you. We-the current mayor and our associates-will keep on running the day-to-day affairs of this country as we see fit, regardless of what you do at a higher level. You can return to Paris as you plan and leave it safely to us. Oh, and we don’t despair of the future, either. The young prince is already eight years old. By the age of twelve we may be able to persuade him to let things run as generations of monarchs have done before him.’ His smile became a sneer. ‘What you do, he can be persuaded to undo.’
‘Pippa will never allow him-’
‘Teenagers revolt,’ Levout said softly and smiled. ‘Especially if they’re encouraged to do so. And Miss Donohue has no authority at all.’
Was Levout right? The lawyers he’d talked to before going to Australia had talked about changing the constitution from an overriding sovereignty to a democracy. They hadn’t gone into minutiae.
If Levout was right, it was a mess. For Pippa to cope with it…He couldn’t ask it of her. But to walk away…
He had to talk to the lawyers again, he thought. He had to figure out just what Levout and his cronies could really do.
But by next Friday? By the time decisions had to be irretrievably made?
He couldn’t leave Pippa.
That was the crux of the matter. The more he thought, the more his mind came back to Pippa. Pippa tonight in her crazy fairy godmother dress, acting as if she hadn’t a care in the world, making everyone here smile. Tomorrow she’d make the whole country smile as they woke to their morning newspapers.
His mind stilled, retaining that indelible image of Pippa smiling for the camera.
And the players tonight…
Enough.
He didn’t need to contact lawyers.
He went inside to telephone his mother.
It was two in the morning. He should be asleep, but he’d lain in the moonlight and stared at the ceiling and thought he’d go nuts. Pippa would be asleep. It was crazy to go to her now. She needed to sleep and so did he.
He couldn’t.
At three he gave it up for a bad job. He rose and paced to the window. And paused.
There were people on the lawn in front of the castle. The scene was lit by the moonlight. Three figures. One was one long and lean and stooped. One was smaller. Digging? Another figure was a little apart, moving about in the rose bed.
Pippa. And Blake. And Beatrice.
He reached for his clothes and in less than a minute he was out there.
What the hell…?
No one reacted as he came catapulting out the entrance. They kept doing what they were doing. He strode across the lawn, past the fountain and the new decking. Yes, it was Beatrice, snipping roses in the moonlight. Pippa and Blake were digging by the side of the rose garden, just out from the windows of the sitting room.
By the time he reached them he had it figured, and he felt sick.
‘Pippa,’ he said as he reached them, but she kept right on digging. Blake, however, paused for a breather, resting gratefully on his spade. The ground was dry and hard, Max thought. Blake was too old to be digging.
‘Beatrice and I wanted to wake you,’ Blake said, sounding relieved. ‘But Pippa wouldn’t let us.’
‘Dolores?’ he asked, and Blake nodded.
‘She died earlier this evening. Before the photo shoot.’
‘Before the photo shoot?’ He stared at Pippa, and then muttered an expletive. ‘Before the shoot! What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
‘What does it look like we’re doing?’ Her voice was laced with tears. ‘We have to bury her.’
‘Tonight?’
‘I don’t want the children to see…’ She gulped, and wiped her face fiercely with her sleeve. ‘They said goodbye to her. When they woke to get dressed for the photographer she was still sleeping, almost normally. But I could feel her heart…It was missing. It was so weak. She could no longer stand, and she was barely conscious. Back home the vet said he’d expected this to happen. Maybe if I’d let you call the vet she could have had a little more time. But she spent today with the children. Beatrice said the children were all over her, exactly as she loves. Then tonight
