You’re his mother again, Kellyn. Starting now.’
TO SAY Kelly was stunned would be an understatement. She was blown away. For five years she had dreamed of this moment—of this time when she’d be with her son again. But she’d never imagined it could be like this.
It was ordinary. Domestic. World-shattering.
‘Why don’t you take a bath and get some dry clothes on?’ Rafael suggested, and the move between world-shattering and ordinary seemed almost shocking.
‘Excuse me?’
‘You’re wet through,’ he said. ‘You’ve been shivering since we met you, and it’s not just shock. You’ve been ill. You shouldn’t stay wet. Matty and I aren’t going anywhere. We’ll stay here and eat your chocolate cake and wait for you.’
‘But…where are you staying?’
‘We have a place booked in town,’ he said. ‘But there are things we need to discuss before we leave. Go take your bath and we’ll talk afterwards.’
She had no choice but to agree. Her head wasn’t working for her. If he’d told her to walk the plank she might calmly have done it right now.
And she couldn’t stop shivering.
So she left them and ran a bath, thinking she’d dip in and out and return to them fast. But when she sank into the hot water her body reacted with a weird lethargy that kept her right where she was.
She had no shower—just this lovely deep bath tub. The water pressure was great, which meant that by the time she’d fumbled through getting her clothes off the bath was filled. The water enveloped her, cocooned her, deepening the trance-like state she’d felt ever since she’d seen Matty.
She could hear them talking through the door.
‘She makes very good cake.’ That was Matty. As a compliment it was just about the loveliest thing she could imagine. Her grandmother had given her the chocolate cake recipe. Her son was eating her grandma’s chocolate cake.
‘I think your mama is a very clever lady.’ That was Rafael. His compliment didn’t give her the same kind of tingle. She thought of the lovely things Kass had said to her when he’d wanted to marry her, and she still cringed that she’d believed him. This man was a de Boutaine. Every sense in her body was screaming beware.
‘Why is she clever?’ Matty asked.
‘She’s an archaeologist and a historian. Archaeologists need to be clever.’
‘Why?’
‘They have to figure out…how old things are. Stuff like that.’
‘Was that why she was at our castle? Trying to figure out how old it is?’
‘I guess.’
‘It’s five hundred and sixty-three years old,’ Matty said. ‘Crater told me. It’s in a book. Mama could have just read the book.’
‘People like your mama would have written the book. She could have worked it out. Maybe you could ask her how.’
‘She does make good cake,’ Matty said and Kelly slid deeper into the hot water and felt as if she’d died and gone to heaven.
What did they want? Where would she take things from here? No matter. For this moment nothing mattered but that her son was sitting by her kitchen fire eating her grandma’s cake.
She hadn’t taken dry clothes into the bathroom. This was a tiny cottage and her bathroom led straight off the kitchen. She hadn’t been thinking, and once she was scrubbed dry, pinkly warm, wrapped in her big, fuzzy bathrobe and matching pink slippers she kept in the bathroom permanently and with her hair wrapped in a towel, she felt absurdly self-conscious about facing them again.
There was hardly a back route from bathroom to bedroom unless she dived out of the window. Face them she must, so she opened the door and they both turned and smiled.
They’d been setting the table. There were plates and spoons and knives in three settings. Rafael had cut the bread on the sideboard. The sense of domesticity was almost overwhelming.
‘That’s much better,’ he said approvingly, his dark eyes checking her from the fluffy slippers up.
‘You look pretty,’ Matty said and then amended his statement. ‘Comfy pretty. Not like the ladies my papa brought to the castle.’
She flushed.
‘You’re pink,’ Matty said, and she flushed some more.
‘I guess the water was too hot.’
‘At least you’re warm,’ Rafael said. ‘Sit down and eat. I know we’ve done this the wrong way round—cake before soup—but it does seem sensible to eat. That is, if you don’t mind sharing.’
‘I…no, of course I don’t mind. But it’s all I’ve got.’
‘Until next pay day?’ he asked, teasing, and she flushed even more. Drat her stupid habit of blushing. Though, come to think of it, she hadn’t blushed for a very long time.
‘I meant soup and toast is all there is.’
‘After a hard day down the gold-mines? It’s hardly workman’s fare.’
‘I need to get dressed,’ she said.
‘You’re not hungry?’
She was hungry. She’d fiddled with her cake, not able to pay it any attention. Now she was suddenly aware that she was ravenous.
But to sit in her bathrobe…
‘We’re jet lagged,’ Rafael said, seeing her indecision. ‘We need to get some sleep pretty soon, but this soup smells so good we’d love to share. If you don’t mind eating now.’
She gave up. Thinking was just too hard. ‘Fine.’
‘Great,’ he said.
‘We can’t find your toaster,’ Matty told her, moving right on to important matters.
‘I make my toast with the fire.’
‘How?’
Okay. She was dressed in a bathrobe and fluffy slippers and nothing else. She was entertaining the Prince Regent and the Crown Prince of Alp de Ciel in her kitchen. A girl just had to gather her wits and teach them how to make toast.
She tied another knot—firmly—in the front of her bathrobe, flipped open the fire door and produced a toasting fork. She pulled a chair up to the stove, lifted Matty on to it—she couldn’t believe she did that—she just lifted him on to the chair as if it were the most natural thing in the world—she arranged a piece of bread on the toasting fork and set
