Marguerite is married to Tony who works in the garden. Tony gives me rides in his wheelbarrow. He helped me to bury Hermione and we planted a rhod…a rhododendron on top of her.’
He went back to cutting cake. Rafael watched her for a while as she watched her son.
‘So you’re in charge?’ she managed at last.
‘Unfortunately, yes.’
‘Unfortunately?’
She gazed across the table at his hands. They were big and strong and work-stained. Vaguely she remembered Kass’s hands. A prince’s hands. Long and lean and smooth as silk.
Rafael’s thumb was missing half a nail and was carrying the remains of an angry, green-purple bruise.
‘What do you do for a living?’ she asked. ‘When…when you’re not a Prince Regent.’
‘I invent toys. And make ’em.’
It was so out of left field that she blinked.
‘Toys?’
‘I design them from the ground up,’ he said, sounding cheerful for a moment. ‘My company distributes worldwide.’
‘Uncle Rafael makes Robo-Craft,’ Matty volunteered with such pride in his voice that Kelly knew this was a very important part of her small son’s world.
‘Robo-Craft,’ she repeated, and even Kelly, cloistered away in her historical world, was impressed. She knew it.
Robo-Craft was a construction kit, where each part except the motor was crafted individually in wood. One could give a set of ten pieces to a four-year-old, plus the tiny mechanism that went with it, and watch the child achieve a construction that worked. It could be a tiny carousel if the blocks were placed above the mechanism, or a weird creature that moved in crazy ways if the mechanism was in contact with the floor. The motor was absurdly strong, so inventions could be as big as desired. As kids grew older they could expand their sets to make wonderful inventions of their own, fashioning their own pieces to fit. Robo-Craft had been written up as a return to the tool-shed, encouraging boys and girls alike to attack plywood with handsaws and paint.
‘They say it encourages kids to be kids again,’ Kelly whispered, awed. ‘Like building cubby houses.’
‘Uncle Rafael helped me build a cubby house in the palace garden,’ Matty volunteered. ‘We did it just before we left.’
‘So you do spend time in the castle?’ she asked him. She was finding it so hard to look at anything that wasn’t Matty, yet Rafael’s presence was somehow…intriguing? Unable to be ignored.
‘I’ve been there since Kass died.’
‘But not before.’
‘My mother still lives in the dower house. I didn’t see eye to eye with Kass or his father and left the country as soon as I was able, but my mother…well, the memories of her life there with my father are a pretty strong hold. And then there’s Matty. She loves him.’
So it seemed that at least her little son had been loved. Her nightmares of the last five years had been impersonal nannies, paid carers, no love at all. But thanks to this man’s mother… And now thanks to this man…
‘What do I do now?’ Kelly whispered, and Rafael looked at her with sympathy.
‘Get to know your son.’
‘But…why?’
‘Kelly, my mother and I have talked this through. Yes, Matty’s the Crown Prince of Alp de Ciel, but you’re his mother. What happens now is up to you. Even if you insist he stay here until he’s of an age to make up his mind…no matter what the lawyers say, we’ve decided it’s your right to make that decision. You’re his mother again, Kellyn. Starting now.’
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