A Royal Proposition

Sit? Good grief! She looked at the plush cream settee and fought a desire to giggle.

‘Um…I’m afraid I’d leave a signature,’ she said, and received a swift appraising look from Alastair for her pains. ‘If it’s all right with you, ma’am, I’m just as happy standing. If you’d just tell me what you want, I’ll be off before I spread dirt everywhere.’

‘But we need to get to know you,’ Alastair said, in a voice that sounded as if he didn’t believe what he was saying.

Penny-Rose shook her head. She’d hauled off her cap before she’d come inside so her curls bounced around her shoulders and dust floated free. ‘You don’t need to get to know me, and I’m not dressed for socialising.’ OK, she was being blunt but she was at a disadvantage and she didn’t like it. Belle was looking at her like she was some sort of interesting insect, and kowtowing to those higher up the aristocratic ladder had never come naturally to Penny-Rose.

‘Just for a minute.’ Alastair’s voice was strained to breaking point, and she cast him an unsure glance. What was wrong with the man?

‘My boss can tell you about me,’ she said discouragingly. ‘Or are you intending to get to know the whole team better?’ That made an interesting plan, but it didn’t make her smile. She felt more and more like an insect brought in as part of a collection, and she didn’t like the feeling one bit.

‘No, but—’ Marguerite started.

‘Let’s just tell her what we want,’ Alastair said heavily. ‘Don’t confuse her any further.’ His eyes hadn’t left Penny-Rose’s face, and they didn’t leave it now.

He seemed nice, Penny-Rose thought inconsequentially. He also seemed exhausted, strained to the limit, but still very, very nice. His voice was deep and grave and soft, and he sounded as if he was concerned for her.

His English was excellent—well, it would be, as his mother was English. It was only his words that were troubled.

‘I’ll come to the point,’ he told her, speaking slowly as if measuring each word.

‘What my mother wishes to know—what we all wish to know—is whether or not you can be persuaded to marry me.’

For a long, long moment nothing stirred. She stared at them in turn, taking in each of their faces. All of them looked…for heaven’s sake, they looked as if they were serious!

‘You have to be joking,’ she said at last, and it was as much as she could do to find her voice. Her words came out a sort of high-pitched squeak. She coughed and tried again. ‘I mean…you are joking, right?’

‘I’m not joking.’ The look of strain on his face intensified. ‘Would I joke about something so serious?’

‘Yeah, right.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Did you say marry?’

‘I said marry.’

‘Then you’re either having a laugh at my expense or you’re all about in the head,’ she said bluntly. ‘Either way, I don’t think I should stay.’ She gave them a last wild look. ‘I…I’ll see myself out, shall I?’

She didn’t wait for an answer. She took herself out of the door and out of the castle, without a backward glance.

CHAPTER TWO

THE prince found Penny-Rose an hour later, when she’d been persuaded, against her better judgement, to go back to work. She was sorting stones and Alastair came up behind her so suddenly that she missed a couple of heartbeats.

As before, his voice was deep and soft and calm—as if nothing lay between them at all.

‘Why do they call you Penny-Rose? Why not just Penelope or Penny? Or even Rose?’

As a question it was harmless enough, but the situation was ludicrous. She caught her breath, regretted her missed heartbeats—while this man was around she needed all the heartbeats she could get—sat back on her heels and glared.

The fact that his shirt was open at the throat and the sun was shining on the wispy curls on his chest didn’t help at all…

Good grief! Cut it out, she told herself. Put your hormones on the back burner!

‘Bert says I’m not to fraternise with the upper classes any more,’ she said frankly. ‘You’ve had your joke. If you want something else, ask Bert. Go away.’ Already she could see her boss rising from where he’d been working. He’d been disbelieving when she’d told him what had happened, and then he’d been furious.

‘It’s their idea of a sick joke,’ he’d said. ‘It’s too bad we’re not back in England where I can have a word with the union.’

But they weren’t back in England. They were in this tiny principality where normal rules didn’t apply, and if Bert wanted to keep his team employed he had to bite his tongue and tell her to get on with stone-walling as if nothing had happened.

‘They’re paying excellent rates, lass,’ he’d told her. ‘The best. And we’ve gone to a lot of expense to get over here. We put up with it if we can, for the good of the team, but you’re not to go near them again. Just keep working and forget it.’

So she’d agreed. It had been a big thing for Bert to take on a female apprentice, and she wanted to make it as trouble-free for him as possible. But now this creep wouldn’t leave her alone.

‘Go away,’ she said again, and turned back to her stones. She concentrated fiercely on fitting a neat wedge between two blocks and refused to look at him.

Thankfully she heard Bert’s heavy footsteps, and then her boss’s Yorkshire accent. ‘I’d be grateful if you could speak through me if you have anything to say to the workers, sir.’ Bert’s words were deferential enough, but his tone was pure bulldog.

She risked a glance up, and to her surprise she saw Alastair raking his fingers through his ruffled black hair. It was a gesture that made him seem almost as bewildered as she was.

And it was gesture that suddenly made him seem much less of a prince—and much more human.

And much more…hormone-confusing?

Get back to work, she told herself fiercely, turning back to her ill-fitting stone. Forget your stupid hormones. And don’t look again!

‘I need to speak to Penny—’

‘Penny-Rose isn’t speaking to you. She’s heard what you have to say and it doesn’t make sense. So leave the lass be.’

‘I’m not offering her any indecent proposals.’

‘If you were, I’d take my team and walk off your land right now,’ Bert told him. ‘Money or no money. Penny-Rose is a good lass and a damned fine worker, and I won’t have her badgered.’

Wow! Under her cap, she felt her ears go pink with pleasure. Praise from Bert was hard to earn, and valued for what it was. She’d worked hard to get this far.

And for Bert to offer to withdraw his team on her behalf… Goodness!

But Alastair was still trying to speak. ‘I don’t—’

‘Look, what is it you want?’ Bert said, exasperated. ‘You’ve upset the lass, you’ve upset me. If you have anything reasonable to say, then say it. Now. In front of Penny-Rose. Clear the air, like. And then we can say no and get on with our work.’

‘I hope you won’t say no.’

Bert was getting angrier by the minute.

‘Well, what is it?’

‘As I said, I want to marry Penny-Rose,’ Alastair told him, putting his hands up as if to deflect the storm of protest he knew Bert was capable of. ‘I want to marry her for a year. As a business proposition. Nothing more.’

The silence went on for several moments. Penny-Rose stayed crouched by her stones. She wouldn’t look up but her fingers had ceased even trying to fit her rocks together.

This was crazy.

She left the answering to Bert, because she couldn’t think of a thing to say. Even the normally voluble Bert was having trouble.

‘Where I’m from,’ Bert said at last, in a voice that sounded as if he’d been winded, ‘people don’t take brides as business propositions. They take brides for life.’ His belligerent jaw jutted forward. ‘And just the one of them at that. The locals say you’re engaged to some woman up in the house. Well, then. You hang onto her and leave our Penny-Rose alone. Bigamy is something I don’t hold with and never shall, and if you so much as come near our lass—’

‘This isn’t bigamy.’

‘Look, I don’t know what your rules are—’

‘I imagine my rules are exactly the same as yours,’ Alastair said wearily, and once again his fingers raked his hair. He looked like he was finding this impossible. ‘I’m not intending to marry twice. Or…not at once.’

This was getting crazier and crazier.

‘What we want here,’ Bert said conversationally, and speaking to the world in general, ‘is a strait-jacket. Anyone got one?’

Amazingly, it was Penny-Rose who came to the prince’s defence. That last gesture of his had got to her. For some reason this didn’t seem like someone making indecent propositions. This seemed like a man at the end of his tether.

‘Give him a break, Bert.’ She rose and shrugged off some dirt. Then she stood back so there was distance—and Bert—between them, but her eyes met Alastair’s and held.

And her chin tilted. This was the look she used when she was meeting trouble head on, and she had a feeling she was meeting it now.

This man’s trouble.

‘Let him say what he wants,’ she told her boss. ‘He isn’t making sense, but we might as well listen.’

The silence stretched out under the afternoon sun, and in the stillness Penny-Rose was aware that Alastair’s gaze never left hers. Their eyes were locked, and it was as if there were questions being asked—and answered—without words being spoken.

And whatever the questions were, her answers must have satisfied him because he gave a slight nod, as if he’d come to a final decision. Some of the confusion left his face.

‘It could work.’

‘What could work?’ Bert asked belligerently, and Penny-Rose laid a hand on her boss’s arm.

‘Let him say.’

And he did. ‘I’m serious,’ he said at last, his eyes still fixed on hers. ‘I don’t have a choice. If I don’t marry a lady of unimpeachable virtue, this entire estate will be split.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Bert told him.

‘It’s the terms of the old prince’s will,’ Alastair said wearily. ‘If I don’t make such a marriage then the estate will be sold and, no matter how I look at it, there’s no way I can buy it. God knows, I’ve tried every way over the past couple of months, but the thing’s impossible. I’d assume the castle itself will go to the government and be opened to the public as a tourist venue, but the acreage around here will be split up.’

Bert frowned, but he wasn’t too surprised. He’d heard the rumours. ‘And the village?’

‘That’s the hard part,’ Alastair told him. ‘It’s the reason I’m considering such a marriage. There are over a hundred families living around the estate. All of those homes will have to be sold, and the cousins who stand to inherit stipulate that they’ll be sold on the open market.’ He paused and gazed around him, over the river banks to the village beyond. ‘I guess you’ve realised by now how desirable this place is?’

It was. The Castaliae estate contained a fairy-tale village built on the cliffs of one of the most picturesque rivers in the world.

But it still wasn’t making sense. Bert was still confused.

‘So?’ Bert demanded.

‘So they’ll be sold for a fortune,’ Alastair said simply. ‘We know that. It’s already happened to villages like ours that haven’t been protected by one landlord. The locals are well enough off, but they’re not so wealthy that they can match the prices of city dwellers and overseas interests.’

He sighed, his gaze returning from the far-off village to the girl before him. Now he was talking directly to her. ‘If I can’t save it, the village will be deserted in winter and filled with wealthy tourists and designer shops in the summer. The locals will have to move away. They can’t bear it, and I can’t bear it. So I’m asking you, Penny-Rose, to marry me. If you’ll have me.’

More silence.

Penny-Rose’s gaze didn’t waver. She took him in. Not just his amazing good looks, but the grubbiness of his clothes—he wasn’t nearly as dirty as she was, but he obviously hadn’t had time to change since he’d been out working with his farm manager this morning—the tension of his stance and the dark shadows under his eyes. He looked like a man close to breaking point.

Then, finally, she allowed herself to look around, at the land he was talking of.

This estate went on for ever. The castle itself was built into the cliff overlooking the river, and at the base of the cliff was a tiny village. Penny-Rose was boarding with a family there, and they thought of this man as their landlord.

But this was indeed a fairy-tale village, with its soft sandstone buildings set into the cliffs on the gently flowing river. Alastair was right. Tourists would outbid any villagers for their homes. And if he couldn’t bear to have the villagers evicted, she could understand why not.

‘It’s a stupid clause,’ she said at last, and Alastair nodded.

‘It is. My uncle put it in place because my cousin was…wild. What it did was to stop Louis marrying at all, and then Louis died just three months after his father.’

‘So why don’t you just do what Louis did? Not marry?’ It seemed a reasonable solution. Surely the gorgeous Belle could be talked into being a mistress only—with so much money at stake!

‘I can’t inherit unless I marry.’

‘But Louis inherited.’

Alastair shook his head, and the impression of weariness intensified. ‘Louis never formally inherited, and the cousins started legal action to recover the property. His death forestalled that, and legal opinion is that the estate and the title is now mine—as long as I do marry. As long as I do what Louis didn’t.’

‘And…your Belle’s not a lady of virtue?’ Bert butted in. He had things in his stride here—almost. His fierce intelligence was working overtime. ‘No?’

‘Belle’s a wonderful woman,’ Alastair said quickly. ‘But there are…shadows…in her past.’

‘I’d imagine there might be.’ Bert’s team had little time for a woman they’d decided from the first was prone to giving herself airs. On the first few days of working here there’d been a wall collapse on one of the men. Belle had been seen at the window, watching, but hadn’t enquired as to the state of Steve’s health or even sent down to ask whether she should contact an ambulance.

With Bert carrying a cellphone, her disinterest had been a minor enough offence and hadn’t mattered, but it had rankled.

‘What…?’ Bert said slowly, his eyes moving from Penny-Rose to Alastair and back again. ‘What makes you think our lass here is any different? Virtue-wise, that is?’

‘Hey!’ Penny-Rose said, shocked into comment. ‘Can we leave my virtue out of it?’

‘Well, that’s it. We can’t,’ Alastair said heavily. ‘My mother—’

‘I might have known she’d come into it somewhere.’ Bert seemed to be almost enjoying himself now. He had the solid workman’s view of the aristocracy, and he didn’t mind this man’s discomfort. ‘Now, there’s a lady of virtue.’

Marguerite, when she’d heard of the same accident a day later, had been horrified and had sent every possible comfort to Steve. Settled into the local hospital with a broken foot, Steve had appreciated the attention very much indeed, and so had his mates on his behalf.

‘My mother’s a lady who thinks ahead,’ Alastair told them. ‘While I’ve been seeing to the everyday running of the estate and trying to figure out financial ways of saving it, she’s been figuring out the only logical way. Which is marrying Penny-Rose. For a year.’

‘But—’

‘Like I said, it’s a business proposition.’ Alastair spread his hands. ‘I know this sounds intrusive, but my mother had Penny-Rose’s background checked. She’s employed investigators, and there’s now little she doesn’t know. In every respect, this is the sort of woman I need.’

He paused, and then said in a softer tone, avoiding Penny-Rose’s eye, ‘My mother also says she badly needs money.’

It had stopped being even remotely amusing. Penny-Rose’s colour mounted to a fiery crimson and she took a step back. Investigators… ‘My circumstances are none of your business,’ she snapped. ‘How dare you?’

But Bert was looking back and forth at the pair of them. ‘It seems to me the conversation’s getting private,’ he said.

‘It seems to me the conversation is over,’ she flung back, and Bert nodded.

‘Yeah, OK. But the man’s right. You’re strapped for cash, girl, and you know it.’ It was Bert who organised a huge percentage of her wages to be sent back to Australia. She kept so little for herself that he’d been horrified. ‘Maybe it’s like the man says—you need to listen to his proposition.’ Bert’s sunburned face creased in resigned amusement. ‘Now, what I suggest—’

‘Is what you suggested first and send for a strait-jacket,’ she said through gritted teeth, but Bert shook his head.

‘No. The man’s got a problem, and it’s a real one. I’m seeing it now. I don’t say his solution will work but you could do worse than to listen to what he’s proposing.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘So… It’s two o’clock. We knock off at four. When we do, you go down to the village, Penny-Rose, get yourself washed and into something decent, and you…’ He turned and poked a finger into Alastair’s chest. ‘You take her out to dinner. Properly. Pick her up at her lodgings at six and do the thing in style.’

‘I don’t need—’ Alastair started, but Bert was on a roll.

‘You ask a lady to marry you, you do it properly.’

‘I don’t want—’ Penny-Rose tried, but the stubby finger was pointed at her in turn.

‘Give the man a chance. You can always refuse, and that’ll be the end of it. You made me listen to him. Now you do the same. If he badgers you after tonight, he’ll answer to me.’

‘Bert—’

‘No argument,’ Bert said. He’d wavered, but now his decision was made. It was time to get on with what he was here for—stone-walling. Everything else was a nuisance. ‘That’s my final word.’ He turned back to Alastair. ‘Now, you get back to your castle where you belong and you, girl, get back to sorting your stones. There’s to be no more talk of marriage before tonight.’

‘Bert, I can’t go out with this man.’

‘You can,’ Bert said heavily, and the amusement was suddenly gone from his voice. ‘This is the man who’s paying us, girl, and he’s in trouble. You made me listen to him. Well, I have. You can put the good of the team before everything for the moment and give him a fair hearing. That’s all I ask.’

‘And that’s all I ask,’ Alastair said, his calm brown eyes resting on her face in a message of reassurance.

Which was all very well, she thought wildly as she sent him a savage glance. Reassure all you like.

Marriage!

The man was seriously nuts!

‘Six o’clock, then,’ he said. ‘You’re staying with the Berics? I’ll collect you there.’

‘How do you know where I’m staying?’

‘I know all about you.’

‘Then you know what I’m about to say to your crazy proposition,’ she flung at him. ‘No and no and no.’

‘Just listen.’

‘I’ll listen. And then I’ll say no.’

CHAPTER THREE

THE man who called for Penny-Rose four hours later was the same man—but only just. Madame Beric opened the front door, quivering in excitement. Penny-Rose didn’t blame her. She was waiting in the kitchen, trying not to quiver herself, and when Alastair was ushered in, she failed.

She definitely quivered.

Whew! This was Cinderella stuff. And where was her fairy godmother when she was needed? She’d put on her only dress that was halfway decent—a white sundress with tiny shoulder straps that was more useful for a day off than for a dinner date. She’d washed and brushed her curls until they shone, but that was as much as she’d done.

There wasn’t anything else to do. She wore no adornment. How could she? She didn’t have any adornment. Or any cosmetics. In fact, her entire outfit was worth peanuts!

Alastair, on the other hand, was wearing a formal suit that must have cost a mint. It was deep black, Italian made and fitted perfectly. The black was lightened by the brilliance of his crisp, white shirt and the slash of a crimson silk tie. His normally ruffled black curls had been groomed into submission, there was a faint aroma of very expensive aftershave about him and he looked every inch a man of the world.

Unlike Penny-Rose, who had the look of a woman who’d appreciate diving into a small, dark cupboard.

There wasn’t a small, dark cupboard available, and Alastair’s dark eyes were twinkling in amusement.

Good grief! She could see why Belle wanted him. In fact, she could see why any woman would want him! 28

‘You look beautiful,’ he told her, his wide smile taking in her discomfort and reacting with sympathy.

If she could have known it, he was also reacting with truth.

She did look lovely, Alastair acknowledged as he took in her simple appearance. Money made little difference when it came to pure beauty. Her glossy chestnut curls tumbled about her shoulders. Her face glowed with health and humour, her green eyes were edged with tiny, crinkling laughter lines and her diminutive figure was well suited by the simplicity of her dress. She was five feet four and beautiful, whatever she was wearing.

But Penny-Rose couldn’t tell what he was thinking, and the thoughts that were whirling around in her head were very different.

She was about as far from his beautiful Belle as any woman was likely to be, she thought bitterly. She wore little make-up, her nose had the temerity to sport freckles, and as for her hands…

Belle’s hands would be flawless—of course. They’d be groomed for wearing fabulous jewellery and doing little else. Penny-Rose’s hands had been put to hard physical work from the time she could first remember, and it showed.

Alastair reached out for her hand in greeting and she felt him stiffen as he came into contact with the roughened skin. He looked down involuntarily.

Her hands were worn and calloused. They were Cinderella hands, and no fairy godmother could have altered them in time for a date with a handsome prince.

She saw his face change—twist—in a half-mocking smile.

‘It is true,’ he said slowly, inspecting her fingers in a way that made her attempt to haul her hands out of reach. But he held on, and kept inspecting. ‘What my mother said about you is right.’

She was thoroughly flustered, by his words and the feel of her hand in his. ‘I have no idea what your mother said,’ she snapped, hauling free her fingers. ‘But if it’s that I have no time for nonsense then, yes, it’s the truth. So can we get this dinner over and be done with it?’

‘You sound like you aren’t looking forward to it.’

‘I’m not.’

But, in fact, that was a lie. There were few village families prepared to take in lodgers, so Penny-Rose had had to be grateful for what she’d been able to find. Madame Beric was a kindly enough soul but she was a gifted watercolour artist, with little time for anything else. Her cooking was therefore appalling. Penny-Rose was now up to turnip soup version thirty-four, and burned turnip soup version thirty-four at that…

‘Where are we going?’ she asked, despite herself, and Alastair’s face creased again into one of his blindingly attractive smiles.

‘Lilie’s, of course,’ he said softly. ‘Where else does a man take a woman when he’s asking her to marry him? It’s the best, and tonight only the best will do.’

It was a twenty-minute journey—twenty minutes while Penny-Rose sat in stunned silence in the passenger seat of Alastair’s car. A Ferrari. Of course. She’d never been near such a car in her life. Alastair’s shabby clothes of earlier had been token workman-like apparel, she thought resentfully. No wonder her hands fascinated him. He wouldn’t know what it was to work hard with his hands.

Everything about this man screamed money.

And now he wanted more and he was prepared to marry a stranger to get it.

Maybe that was unfair, she acknowledged. Maybe it was true that he was concerned about the villagers.

She glanced across at him as they pulled to a halt in the restaurant car park, and found that he was twisting to survey her with the same intensity she was using on him. Their gazes met. She flushed and turned away.