to such a thing? Even from here it seemed the little town was in peril. She wanted to get out of the car and start replanting now.
No! NMP, she told herself fiercely.
Not My Problem.
There was no hiding in the background when they arrived at the palace. She was expected.
The first time she’d arrived here it had been with the archaeological dig team. They’d worked out of sight of the main castle, sifting through the remains of ancient castle sites. So the only time she’d been in this forecourt had been the time she’d arrived with Kass.
She’d been eight months pregnant. Her pregnancy had been dreadful. She’d been sick all the time, and Kass had hardly been near.
But then his father was dead and he was triumphant. He’d hauled her home, almost as a trophy.
‘This is my wife,’ he’d said, tugging her out of the limousine and not caring that she almost fell. ‘She’s carrying my heir. A son. This is now my country. My country.’
The domestic staff had all been there to greet him—they’d lined up on either side of the castle entrance. She remembered the silence. The silent, cold disapproval.
Kass had swept inside, leaving her to follow.
‘Take care of her,’ he’d snapped to a couple of the domestic staff. ‘She’s to have everything she needs to deliver a perfect child.’
It had stayed with her. The dismay in the eyes of everyone around her. The contempt. Even…pity?
But now…
This was very, very different.
Yes, the staff were assembled. Not as many. It was a pared down staff, maybe only a quarter as big.
Every one of the staff was smiling.
‘Ellen,’ Matty yelled, launching himself out of the car and heading straight for a buxom woman at the end of the line. Then, as she scooped him into her arms and hugged, he turned from her shoulder and whooped as he saw more friends, ‘Marguerite. Aunt Laura.’
They were all beaming at her little son. Rafael was smiling too. A man she remembered…Crater—the palace Secretary of State, more stooped than she remembered and his hair more silver—was stepping forward to grasp Rafael’s hand.
‘It’s good to have you back, sir.’
‘It’s good to be back,’ Rafael said. He turned to hug a woman near him—a lady around the same age as Crater. She was wearing a flowing skirt, a cardigan that reached almost to her knees and a paint-spattered pinafore over everything. Her abundance of silver hair was tied up in a knot and there was paint there too. She was smiling with everyone else but sniffing into a paint-smudged handkerchief.
‘Mama, don’t you dare cry.’ He picked her up and whirled her round as he might have whirled a child. ‘I’ve been away only a week. Kelly will think you’re soppy.’
‘Kelly,’ the lady whispered and Rafael set her down and turned her to face Kelly.
‘Mama, this is Kelly. Everyone, this is our own Princess Kellyn Marie de Boutaine. She’s been sorely wronged but she’s finally consented to take her place where she ought to be. It gives me huge pleasure to tell you all that our Kelly has finally come home.’
And for a moment—for just a moment—Kelly wished she looked more like a princess. The last thing she wanted was to be thought of as a poor relation. She hadn’t thought it through…
But she couldn’t think it for long for Laura gave her no chance. With a cry of delight, Laura abandoned Rafael and took swift steps to where she was standing. Kelly could hardly be self-conscious of her clothes in the face of layers of paint. There was even a daub of purple on Laura’s left eyebrow.
And there was no disguising the sincerity of her welcome. Smiling warmly, Laura took her by both hands and held her at arm’s length, surveying her from head to toe. But Kelly thought she wasn’t seeing the clothes. She was looking deeper.
‘So you’ve come home,’ Laura whispered. ‘Oh, my dear, we are so sorry. This country’s done you such a wrong. I don’t know how you can ever forgive us, but from now on…we’re overjoyed to have you here. Welcome home, Kelly, dear.’
She turned and held Kelly’s hand high in hers.
‘Our Matty has his mother home,’ she said to the assemblage. ‘And we have our princess. Thank you, Rafael, for bringing our Kellyn home.’
But of course she wasn’t ‘our Kellyn’. She’d never been part of this royal family and she had no intention of being slotted neatly into an allocated space now.
The next few hours passed in a haze of shock and confusion and jet lag. Somehow, however, she managed to keep her wits about her enough to insist on her independence from the first.
With the first greetings over, with Matty scampering off to greet his friends, to make sure nothing had changed in his absence and to distribute the myriad of souvenir gifts he’d stocked up on, Laura and Rafael showed her to her rooms. To her horror, she found she was expected to sleep in the same ghastly, opulent suite she’d been confined to while she’d waited for Matty to be born. It had been closed when she left and hadn’t been used since. She glanced through to the bathroom and the dressing gown she’d worn when she was pregnant was folded neatly on a side table. Cleaned and pressed. Waiting for her to return?
She backed out in horror. No and no and no.
Rafael raised his eyebrows in bemusement. ‘These are the best we have,’ he said. ‘Rooms fit for a royal bride. Kass never felt any desire to put anyone else in them.’
‘Then get yourself a royal bride to put in them,’ she said crisply, staring round at the gilt and chandeliers and rich crimson velvet with loathing. ‘I think I get to be described as the royal relic from now on. I don’t want anything to do with this stuff.’
‘You don’t look like a relic.’
‘If she doesn’t want gilt she doesn’t have gilt,’ Laura said stoutly. ‘There’s not a scrap of gilt in the dower house. Not that I’m offering to share. It’s a wee bit cosy.’
‘My mother paints,’ Rafael said unnecessarily, smiling at his mother in affection. ‘The dower house has five bedrooms. Or it did have five bedrooms. Now it has five studios, one of which has my mother’s bed crammed in the corner.’ He hesitated, looking at Kelly’s face and registering her real distress. ‘Meanwhile this lady wants an attic,’ Rafael said softly. ‘Mama, which are our most respectable attics?’
The staff seemed flummoxed but she was then given a guided tour of the place.
Matty had almost a wing to himself—the palace nurseries. Right above was an attic wing—two rooms with turret windows, facing south, with sunlight streaming in through the ancient, hand-blown glass.
The furnishings were faded. ‘I think someone’s maiden aunt might have used these rooms a long time ago,’ Laura said, looking about her at the doilies and antimacassars and overstuffed armchairs. And the tiny narrow bed.
‘It’s
