In the Royal's Bed: Wanted: Royal Wife and Mother

‘I want you to ride with me,’ Matty said and her heart closed—snap—like a clam closing on expected pain.

‘Matty, I can’t.’

‘You can’t ride?’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘There’s lots of that about,’ Laura said sadly, standing and starting to clear plates. ‘Let’s just take each day as it comes. Starting now. We’ll get these trucks unpacked and that’ll make Rafael happy. He’ll have his dungeons to play in.’

‘And Mama will stay in her attic,’ Matty said. ‘Aunt Laura, it’s you and me who’ll have to be Prince and Princess.’

‘Aren’t you the lucky ones?’ Anna said and smiled, but Laura looked at her son’s partner as if she were a sandwich short of a picnic.

‘Anna, I’m afraid you don’t have a clue what these two are fighting,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, my dears, I wish I could help. But Matty…yes, until Rafael and your mama work themselves out then I guess we’re it.’

In the end, keeping herself to herself was easy. She just had to be ruthless. She just had to say no firmly to Matty and walk away.

The castle libraries were amazing. Distressed and confused on that first morning, while Laura took Matty down to the stables to chat to the horses and to listen to his adventures in Australia, Kelly roamed the shelves and found tomes and documents and charts that could keep a historian happy for a century or more.

She blocked out the sound of Matty’s voice drifting up from the courtyard. She blocked out the sound of the men’s voices unloading the trucks, Rafael giving orders, Anna arguing…

The gong sounded for lunch but she’d already warned Cook and Matty that she seldom stopped for lunch. She didn’t want to be part of that big familiar kitchen again. She worked on, trying to figure where to start. Maybe cataloguing to begin with. Mindless work while she got her bearings.

At about three in the afternoon she decided the castle was silent and she might conceivably have the kitchen to herself. She went down to make herself a sandwich.

She didn’t have the kitchen to herself. Rafael was seated alone at the vast table. He had a bottle of beer before him, and the remnants of a sandwich.

She blinked. Prince Regent of Alp de Ciel with a beer and a sandwich?

He looked up as she entered, like a kid who’d been caught in a crime.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, suppressing an involuntary smile, and tried to back out.

‘I know. I should be eating caviare patties and drinking champagne,’ he said mournfully. ‘But I kinda like beer. I’m happy to share, though. I’m not sure where the caviare is, but the makings of sandwiches are in the first refrigerator.’

‘I don’t need…’

‘If you’re like me, you do need. It’s just the whole company bit that worries you.’

She hesitated. Okay, it would be surly to back away now. She might as well eat. ‘So why does it worry you?’ she asked.

‘It’s not as bad as it used to be,’ he admitted. ‘Castle meals used to be a nightmare. A dining table twenty feet long with a damned great epergne set in the middle of it, so you couldn’t see who was at the far end. The minute Kass died my mother decreed that everyone—servants and all—would eat in here. Actually, until Kass died Matty would mostly eat at the dower house, but now Kass is dead my mother thinks Matty’s place is here.’

‘Matty thinks his place is here,’ she said cautiously and he nodded.

‘Yeah. How to give a man a guilty conscience…’ He swigged his beer from the bottle and watched her make a sandwich.

‘So where’s Anna?’ she asked.

‘Gone.’

‘Already?’

‘I’m guessing she thinks she might get stuck if she stays any longer,’ he said. ‘She came under protest, to make sure the more delicate bits of equipment were treated with respect. She hates that I’m staying. She gave me a blast and a half and then she retreated. She wants me to go back to Manhattan to talk to the kids.’

‘And will you?’

‘Not until after the coronation,’ he said morosely. ‘And even then…there’s a vast amount to do here. Sure, I don’t want to care. I think I’m forced to. I don’t have an attic.’

‘Don’t give me a hard time,’ she growled. ‘And, by the way, don’t try kissing me again.’

‘That was a mistake,’ he agreed gravely.

‘It certainly was.’

He watched her, considering. ‘You didn’t like it just a little bit?’

‘No.’

His eyes creased at the corners, with just the faintest hint of lurking laughter. ‘Liar.’

‘I fell in love with Kass,’ she reminded him. ‘One de Boutaine in a lifetime is enough.’

It took the teasing right away from his eyes. The laughter disappeared.

‘You kissed me because I look like Kass?’

‘Why else would I kiss you?’

‘Right,’ he said flatly. ‘Right.’

‘And you kissed me because?’ She shouldn’t ask, she thought, but the question had just sort of popped out before she could stop it.

‘God knows,’ he said bluntly. He shrugged. ‘God knows why I want to kiss you again now.’

‘You want to kiss me again now?’ Her voice broke on a squeak.

‘I do,’ he conceded. ‘Maybe it’s because I find your sweater almost irresistibly sexy.’

She looked down at her shapeless wool smock and she winced. It really was dreadful. She’d bought it mid-winter at a clearance sale and wore it for comfort. It was almost as old as Matty. Until now, she’d never worn it out of doors.

Once it had been crimson but it had faded with constant washing so now was a dreary pink. There was a moth hole in the bottom hem. She’d worried it a bit and the hole had extended.

‘Who knows what would happen if I ever saw you in lingerie,’ Rafael said bluntly. ‘Though, by the look of that sweater, I can only imagine what your lingerie’s like.’ He shook his head, set his beer bottle aside and rose. ‘A man could go hot and cold just thinking about it. I think I need to go and take a cold shower. If you’ll excuse me…’

‘So there’ll be no more kissing?’ she whispered before she could stop herself and thought frantically, Why did I do that? It was as if she was pushing to extend the conversation. Which surely she wasn’t.

She hadn’t.

‘If you’re kissing me back because I look like Kass, what do you think?’ he said heavily and left her to her sandwich.

It was the pattern of their days. Working on their private projects. Avoiding each other.

In a way it was the ideal method of getting to know her son, Kelly thought as the days progressed. Matty had his own life mapped out in this castle. Up until now he hadn’t had a mother and hadn’t really seen the need for one. To have her thrust upon him, demanding a part of his life, would be likely to overwhelm him.

But Matty loved the idea that he had a mother. He was disappointed that she didn’t seem interested in his passion—which was definitely horses—but the rest… He took to including her rooms as part of his domain. He followed the routine set down before his father had died—rigid meal times, introductory school work, working with Crater—but in between he’d hurry up to his mother’s rooms to report the latest news, to make her feel included.

He was a gracious, loving little boy, Kelly thought. She was blessed. And when, at the end of the first week, he announced that Marguerite had sore legs and she couldn’t go very far and would Mama like to come with him instead on his afternoon walks, Kelly thought this was as good as it got.

She had her son again. She didn’t have to include herself any more than occasionally in the life of the castle.

She could swallow guilt about the load Rafael was carrying. He was still a de Boutaine, and the way he made her feel scared her witless. She was right to stay aloof.

But, ‘Why don’t you like my Uncle Rafael?’ Matty asked as he skipped ahead through the fabulous woodland around the castle and she thought, uh-oh, had it been as obvious as that?

‘I don’t not like him.’

‘You haven’t even seen his dungeon.’

‘He hasn’t asked me.’

‘Yes, he did. He asked you to see it on the day all his tools arrived and you didn’t say anything. It’s really cool down there. You should see the things he’s making. He’s working on a new base at the moment that will fit spaceships. He says I can have the pro…prot…protype.’

‘Prototype?’

‘Yes,’ Matty said in satisfaction. ‘Will you come and see it?’

‘I think your Uncle Rafael is too busy for visitors.’

‘That’s silly,’ Matty said and tucked his hand confidingly into hers. ‘I want to show you the… prototype. Can you come and see when we get back from the walk?’

There was a cost, she thought. She’d accepted Matty’s invitation to walk with him with pleasure. How could she make the boundaries clear when she kept crossing them?

He was looking up at her, anxious, sensing that things weren’t right. ‘My Uncle Rafael is very kind,’ he said, as if he felt the need to reassure her.

‘I’m sure he is.’

‘He might even make you something.’

‘He makes things for children.’

‘And for big kids too,’ Matty said. ‘Aunt Laura and I read about Robo-Craft on the Internet. It says it’s for kids from five to a hundred and five. How old are you?’

‘Twenty-nine,’ she said faintly.

‘See,’ Matty said. ‘It’s perfect for you. You will come and see it, won’t you? Oh, look, Mama! There’s a deer with a baby.’

He was finding it really hard to concentrate. There were so many intrusions.

Back in Manhattan, the intrusions had all been work-related. They’d been annoying but Anna had protected him from the worst and they hadn’t taken him out of his head like the intrusions here.

He was trying to develop a new base. He had it almost right. Manhattan was gearing up for production for the Christmas rush—that meant he had to get it perfect by the end of this month.

But so far today he’d had Matty three times, Crater twice about finances for the treasury and now an alderman from the town with a list a mile long and a need to talk to him about land stabilization above Zunderfied.

He knew nothing about land stabilization.

He had to learn.

At the end of the basement room there was a narrow window almost at ceiling level. It was ground level outside.

He could see Kelly and Matty out on the far side of the forecourt, heading into the woods.

For one daft minute he felt an almost irresistible urge to join them.

Yeah. As if he needed domesticity added to his duties.

He had to focus.

‘Maybe we need to get the land surveyed,’ the man said. ‘There are some who say the need is urgent. What if we contact the university and see if we can get experts to tell us what they think?’

‘Who says the need is urgent?’ Rafael asked uneasily, still looking out of the window. They looked great, he thought—Kelly and Matty.

She was still wearing that appalling sweater.

‘Only a couple of the old men,’ the alderman said soothingly, but he still looked anxious. ‘There seems no immediate threat. I’ll contact the university.’

‘Let’s do that immediately,’ Rafael said, thinking about the raw scar above the town and feeling more uneasy. ‘Can you set that in train? If we offer generous funding we should get people here straight away.’

The man’s anxious look faded. He left, relieved, and Rafael turned again to his mechanical base.

His mind wasn’t on it.

Instead, he stared out of the window again. Kelly and Matty were out there somewhere.

And a little town with erosion above it and waterlogged soil.

There was nothing more he could do. Was there?

Damn.

And then they came. The knock on the door was more tentative than Matty’s usual bang, but that was the only unusual part. Before he could respond, Matty had the door open and was dragging his mother inside.

‘He’s here. You don’t have to wait. He always says come in. Uncle Rafael, Mama has come to look at your prototype.’

Matty was tugging his mother by the hand. Kelly looked completely disoriented, embarrassed, confused…

Adorable.

He could so easily slip into this, he thought. He could pick up where his cousin had left off.

Right. As if Kelly would ever want that. And where did that leave him? Right in the middle of the royal mess with no way of walking, even after twenty years.

Maybe he could have a good time for twenty years.

‘Hi,’ he said and smiled and she looked even more confused. Even more adorable.

‘Matty wanted to show me your toys.’

‘Would you like a guided tour?’

She gazed round, clearly astonished. ‘It’s a workshop.’

It was. The big underground cavern had been transformed. Back in Manhattan, he’d had a workshop set apart from the normal production premises, specially set up so he could have time alone to think, to work peaceably on his latest ideas. He’d had the entire contents transported here. Anna had supervised the shift. Nothing had gone wrong, and already he had a workplace he loved.

And he had the work he loved. His father had introduced him to woodwork, and to rudimentary mechanics. The two of them had worked together when Rafael was a kid, in the slivers of time his father had been able to spare from his royal duties.

Those slivers of time had seemed like gold. They’d instilled in Rafael a love of working with his hands, and now it was the place he found peace.

Did Kelly find such peace in her books?

‘You know how Robo-Craft works?’ he asked her.

‘I’ve seen it in the shops,’ Kelly said and that was enough encouragement for Matty to gasp in shock and drag her to the table.

‘You mean you don’t even know how it works? Look, Mama. It’s very, very wonderful. Uncle Rafael invented it all by himself.’

He set a tiny mechanism on the middle of the table, then grabbed a sizeable plank, balanced it on top of the mechanism and flipped the switch.

The plank swung round like a slow ceiling fan.

‘Now look,’ Matty ordered and fiddled with the controls.

The plank swayed like a drunken ceiling fan.

‘And now…’

The mechanism lifted, rolled. Amazingly the plank stayed balanced. The whole thing started moving steadily to the side of the table.

‘Will it go up?’ Matty demanded.

‘I suspect our plank is too heavy for launch,’ Rafael said. ‘Why not make something that looks like a rocket? Make it a bit lighter than the plank. In fact, make it a lot lighter than the plank.’

Matty was already gazing round the room, looking for materials.

‘Can I use that?’ he asked, pointing to some plywood.

‘Go right ahead. Here’s a hacksaw and here’s some craft glue. Kelly, are you going to watch?’

But Kelly was gazing at the little mechanism with longing. It looked awesome.

‘Can I make a bus?’ she asked and he grinned at the wistfulness in her voice. He loved it when he caught a kid’s attention, even if that kid was twenty-nine years old.

‘Any special reason why you’d like to make a bus?’

‘It’s just that rolling action. I had to spend hours on a school bus when I was a kid and the thing bucketed just like your plank. I reckon I could make a bus to sit on it and…’

‘Go right ahead,’ he said and beamed and she was sucked in, hook, line and sinker.

What followed was peace.

It was probably the first time Rafael had felt at peace since he’d heard of Kass’s death.

He’d always found solace in his work—it had always been an escape for him—but for the past few weeks he hadn’t been able to disappear. Even when he was alone, when the demands of his new role weren’t pounding on his door, his conscience was doing its own pounding. So was his worry for the future—for the fact that he had no choice in the role he was expected to play. He worked with his hands down here but even as he worked his thoughts wriggled and twisted and tried to find an escape.

But just here…just for now…there was no need to escape. He had no wish to escape. This was great.

Kelly and Matty were totally entranced. They had the material they needed. They sat on high stools at his biggest work bench, their heads bent over their projects, deep in concentration.

He’d hardly seen the similarity between mother and son, but he saw it now. The way their brows creased together, puckering into a tiny line just above their noses. The way they focused absolutely. When they picked up the hacksaws and made their first tentative notch, then paused and held the plywood out to make sure they were doing the right thing, their actions were identical.

They looked…

Like mother and son.

More. They looked endearing. Enchanting. He was giving them both pleasure and the thought was enough to settle a deep, aching pain in his gut that had been there…maybe ever since his father had died.

A measure of the success of Robo-Craft was that it pulled people in regardless. If you could put a plain, unadorned plank on this tiny mechanism and watch it transform into something that suggested an old school bus or a spaceship—anything—and if you could see that very easily you could make such a thing and watch it work…

‘Yeah, it’s brilliant,’ Kelly said, smiling, and he grinned at her across the table.

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