Stepping into the Prince's World (16 page)

‘I already have. I booked this flight days ago, and then last night you showed me your
yoko geri
side-kick—that's what our security chief tells me it was—and any last niggles of doubt were gone. My brave girl. My heroine. My heart's yours, Claire Tremaine. I'm your faithful shadow. You can be a lawyer wherever you want and I'll be right there beside you.'

Then suddenly he paused, as if struck by inspiration.

‘Wait. I have it. You and I could be a team. We could train Rocky to be our killer attack dog. Attack Dog Security—how does that sound as a family business?'

‘Right...'

‘It
is
right, though, isn't it?' Laughter faded. Everything faded. ‘Claire, I'd give up the world for you. Indeed, I don't have a choice—because you
are
my world. Marry me, my love, and somehow we'll make a future together.'

‘Raoul...' But she couldn't say more.

He tugged her into his arms and kissed her and she let herself be kissed. She even melted into the kiss. But when the kiss drew to an end and she managed to tug away her eyes were still troubled.

‘I don't know what to do,' she whispered.

‘I do,' he told her. ‘Marry me.'

‘But the future...'

‘Will fall into place. It must because it doesn't have a choice. Marry me, my love. My Claire. Please.'

And what was a woman to say to that, when Raoul was looking at her with such a look?

Heart on his sleeve... She'd heard the expression so many times...wearing your heart on your sleeve...and she'd thought nothing of it.

But it was true. Raoul was hanging his heart on his sleeve right now. He was caressing her with his eyes, loving her, wanting her.

What did the future hold for both of them? She didn't know. But sitting beside him in the quiet of the plane, looking steadily into eyes that loved her, she knew she had only one answer to give.

‘Yes, my love,' she whispered. ‘Come what may, I guess...I'll marry you.'

* * *

They stopped to change to another flight in London, sat in the airport lounge and barely spoke. None of the passengers from the Marétal flight seemed to be going on to Australia, so no one knew them.

Claire leant on Raoul's chest and slept.

He sat and held her and felt his world shift and shift again.
What had he done?

He'd set things up as best he could at home. Henri was in charge. With the army manoeuvres finished, the best of Marétal's army was home again, so Franz himself could investigate the aftermath of the events of the ball.

His grandparents had been devastated at his decision to leave, but at least they understood.

He was free to hold this woman forever.

But he wasn't quite free.

A niggle of doubt still troubled him. He knew sometimes that niggle would become a shout, but still... To take the throne without her... He'd self-destruct—he knew he would. These last weeks had become a tangle of introspection, of self-questioning, and in the end he'd come up with what he knew was the absolute truth. He wasn't a loner, and the throne was essentially one of the loneliest places in the world.

Was it weak to say he knew he'd self-destruct? A lifetime on the throne without Claire? He'd looked long and hard at himself and known he couldn't face it.

He loved her.

He held her in his arms while she slept. His chin rested on her hair. She was trusting in sleep, her mouth curved into a faint, loving smile. He had the woman he loved most in the world right here in his arms and nothing else could matter.

He'd do everything in his power to keep Marétal safe, to see it into a prosperous future, but he couldn't give up Claire. This woman was his and he was hers.

The future stretched ahead in all its uncertainty, but for now... He was with Claire and that was all that could matter.

* * *

She shouldn't let him do it. For Raoul to abdicate...for
her
...

He mustn't.

She knew he mustn't but she'd said yes.

How selfish was that?

It was impossible, and yet she couldn't let herself think of impossibility. Soon she'd wake up to reality, she thought as she lay nestled in Raoul's arms, half asleep.

Soon she'd wake up—but not yet. Please, not yet.

Sydney, Australia.

‘We can't go to my apartment,' Claire had told him as they landed. ‘Firstly it's a shoebox, and won't fit us both, and secondly I've sublet it. I...
we
need to find something else. I meant to go to a hostel...'

‘Hostels mean dormitories,' he'd said, and had taken charge.

She woke up after a glorious twelve hours' sleep to find herself cocooned in Raoul's arms, sunlight streaming in through the windows of their hotel room and a view of Sydney Harbour that was truly breathtaking.

‘So...so much for being unemployed,' she managed as Raoul stirred with her. ‘Five-star luxury... We need to say goodbye to all this.'

‘Not this morning, woman,' he growled, holding her to him. ‘Not until I'm over jet lag—and I hear jet lag lasts a long time. And there's only one cure. Come here and I'll show you.'

And the spectre of unemployment went right out of the window as she turned within his arms and smiled at her beloved, and then melted as she surely must.
Oh, Raoul...

They loved and loved, and for the moment the cares of the world were put firmly aside in their joy with each other.

But finally the world had to intrude—of course it did. Hunger had a habit of asserting itself even in the most fabulous of settings.

They made themselves decent—sort of—and ordered breakfast, and Claire gasped when she saw it.

‘We can't do this. You've said you're an unemployed bouncer. Champagne for breakfast?'

‘If I'm not mistaken you've just agreed to marry me. There are some occasions when even unemployed bouncers require the best.'

And who was arguing this morning? Just for today she could put doubts aside and drink her lovely champagne and eat her gorgeous croissants and look lovingly at this gorgeous prince-cum-bouncer as he finished his own croissant and reached lazily for the newspapers that had been delivered with the breakfast tray.

She watched his face change.

‘What?' she said, and rose and went to stand beside him.

They were in the breakfast nook—a curved bay window overlooking the sparkling waters of Sydney Harbour. They were both dressed in the towelling robes provided by the hotel. It was the most beautiful, most intimate of settings—a breakfast to remember—and yet as she watched him she saw the dreamlike quality fall away and reality set in.

‘Problems?'

‘No,' he told her. ‘It's just...I didn't think it'd make the news here. You're going to be hounded again.'

And there it was—a front-page spread—and once again she was in the centre. Claire in her Cinderella dress. Claire in the moments after Raoul had reached the stage, the attackers disarmed. Raoul leading her to safety. Raoul in his beautiful prince's clothes, his arm around her, curved in protection.

And the headlines...

Australian Woman Saves Queen...

Assassination Attempt Foiled...

‘I might have known,' Raoul said. ‘All media's parochial. Your press will have picked up that there was an Australian in the middle of it and gone with that angle. Claire, I'm sorry.'

‘I can live with a few days' media attention,' she said, and managed a smile. ‘Especially if we can stay here. Hunker down. Let the world forget us.'

‘We might be able to manage that.' He tugged her down onto his knee. ‘That's what you want? For the world to forget us?'

And she thought,
Did she?

For herself? Definitely. Since when did publicity mean anything good? As a child she'd hated anyone looking at her. The taunts. The active discrimination against the child of a single mum...

Yes, she'd hated it and feared it. And the whole lawsuit thing had terrified her even more.

Raoul had had a lifetime of attention being trained on him. Surely he must hate it, too.

She knew he did, but now he was fetching his laptop from his bag, logging in to the internet.

‘I need to see what the papers are saying at home,' he told her.

And she thought,
Home?
Home is where?

He was sitting on the bed and she went to join him. He put the laptop where they could both see.

There'd been two mornings in Marétal since they'd left. Two lots of newspapers.

The first newspapers they read were those published in the immediate aftermath of the drama. There were photographs of the white-faced King and Queen, dignified but clearly shaken. There were fuzzy photographs of the attackers being led away by Security. There were photographs of the King and Queen, and of Raoul and Claire.

Saved by Our Prince!
the headline screamed, and Raoul winced.

‘That's hardly fair.'

‘You stopped him firing.'

‘And if it wasn't for you the Queen would have been taken and held for ransom,' Raoul told her, and flicked through to the next day's headlines.

Which were different.

The reporters had had time to figure out the details of what had happened.

There was a photograph of Alicia with the knife at her throat, being hauled back towards the wings.

There was a photograph, slightly blurred, of a make-believe princess, her dress hiked up, her legs bare, her shoes kicked off. The moment her foot had come into contact with the assailant's knee. A second photograph of her grip on his arm.

The third photograph was of Raoul, launching himself onto the stage to help her hold.

And the headlines?

The Woman We Called Commoner...

The Princess We Need.

She didn't say anything. She simply sat as Raoul read out the stark article underneath.

Our Prince and the woman he loves saved our King and Queen. This woman we've condemned has done our country a service we can scarcely comprehend. This newspaper wishes to unreservedly apologise...

And then there was a photograph of a shadowy Raoul being escorted to the plane. And another headline.

Bring Her Home, Raoul.

We need her.

‘Is that why you're really here?' Claire asked in a small voice. ‘To...to bring me back?'

And Raoul set his laptop aside and turned to hold her. ‘No,' he said, firmly and surely. ‘The media's fickle. They might now have decided they love you, but
I
fell in love with you approximately two minutes after I met you, and I'm not fickle. Claire, I booked my plane ticket almost a week ago. What I'm doing has nothing to do with how my country's reacting to you now. It's all about loving you.'

‘They think you're here persuading me to return.'

‘That's because we haven't released a statement yet,' he told her. ‘Henri made me wait until I was here, until I'd had time to ask you to marry me, before we made an official statement. He said—and he may be right—that if you told me to go to the devil then I might well decide to head back to Marétal with my tail between my legs.'

‘And be a solitary prince forever?'

‘Probably.' But he hugged her tighter. ‘Luckily that's not an option. You've agreed. Do you think we could sneak out today and buy a ring?'

‘Sneak out?'

‘We could go out the back way. Get one of those nice tinted limos. Go somewhere innocuous and buy a diamond.'

She thought about it. There was a lot to be said for it.

‘We could go out the back way. Get one of those nice tinted limos. Go somewhere innocuous...'

Coward.

The word slammed into her head and stayed.

Coward
.

She looked at Raoul—really looked at him. He was her soldier, her lover, her Prince.

He'd offered to give up his world for her.

He'd asked her to marry him and she'd said yes.

But had she said yes to Prince Raoul or had she said yes to the man she'd like him to be? A man disappearing into the shadows because she didn't have the courage to stand beside him?

She thought suddenly of that appalling time almost six months ago, when she'd been hounded by the thought of wrongful fraud charges. Running to Orcas Island.

Becoming a shadow.

She thought of the taunts of her childhood and how she'd hidden in her books. Keeping her head down. Being nothing. Hoping no one would notice.

She thought of her workplace, wearing black or beige. Making no waves. Cringing as she waited for criticism.

Coward
.

‘Raoul,' she said, in a voice that must belong to her but she barely recognised it. It was another woman's voice. Something inside her had shifted. Or come together.

Raoul met her gaze and she thought it was this man who'd changed her. Raoul had given her this. And she'd take it, she thought with sudden determination. Raoul loved her. What sort of gift was that? What was she about, continuing to run?

‘Yes?'

He sensed something had changed. He knew her, this man. He knew her so well.

They could stand side by side forever.

‘Would you help me bring Felicity to justice?' she asked, and he blinked.

‘Felicity?' He looked confused—as well he might.

‘She stole money from my law firm,' she said, clearly now, because suddenly her way was defined and there was no way she could deviate. ‘I was blamed, but with decent lawyers I could prove it wasn't me. I chose not to make a fuss. That was partly because I didn't have the funds to fight, but I could have borrowed to do it. I chose not to. I chose to disappear. Felicity and her nasty friends counted on it. But suddenly... Raoul, I don't want to disappear any more, and I don't want an accusation of fraud hanging over my head. Even though they've hushed it up I won't accept it. Will you help me?'