her she had no recourse but to leave.
‘He’s felt appalling for five years,’ Rafael told her. ‘He said that six years ago Kass left the castle, furious with his father, and met you working on site on an archaeological dig. He said you were pretty and shy and Kass almost literally swept you off your feet. He could be the most charming man alive, my cousin Kass. Anyway, as far as Kass was concerned you fitted the bill. You were a nobody. You had no family. He married you out of hand, settled you in France and made you pregnant. Only then, of course, his father died. Kass was stuck with a wife he didn’t need or want. So he simply paid his henchmen to dig up dirt on you—make it up, it now seems. Crater had doubts—he was the only one who’d met you before you were married when Kass had called on him to draw up the marriage documents—but there was little he could do. The prenuptial contracts were watertight and you were gone before he could investigate further.’
‘Yes…’ She remembered it every minute of her life. A paid nanny holding the baby—her baby. Matty had been four weeks old. Kass, implacable, scornful, moving on.
‘I’m cancelling your visa this minute, you stupid cow. You won’t be permitted to stay. Stop snivelling. You’ll get an allowance. You’re set up for life, so move on.’
She’d been so alone. There had been a castle full of paid servants but there had been no one to help her. She remembered Crater—a silver-haired, elderly man who’d been gentle enough with her—but he hadn’t helped her, and no one else had as much as smiled at her.
She had to go, so leave she had. And that had been that. She’d gone back to France for a while, hoping against hope there’d be a loophole that would allow her access to her little son. She’d talked to lawyers. She’d pleaded with lawyers, so many lawyers her head spun, but opinion had all been with Kass. She could never return to Alp de Ciel. She had no rights at all.
She’d lost her son.
Finally, when the fuss had died—when the press had stopped looking for her—she’d returned to Australia. She’d applied for the job here under her mother’s maiden name.
She’d never touched a cent of royal money. She’d rather have died.
And now here he was. Her son. Five years old and she knew nothing of him.
And Matty? What had he been told of his mother?
‘What do you know about me?’ she asked the little boy, while the big man with the gentle eyes looked at her with sympathy.
‘My father said you were a whore,’ Matty said matter-of-factly as he carried over the plates, obviously not knowing what the word meant. ‘But Aunt Laura and Uncle Rafael have now told me that you’re a nice lady who digs old things out of the ground and finds out about the people who owned them. Aunt Laura says that you’re an arch…an archaeologist.’
‘I am,’ she said softly, wonderingly.
‘My mother and I have told Matty as much of the truth as we know,’ Rafael told her. The cake plates were in front of them now, and they were seated round the table almost like a family. The fire crackled in the old wood-stove. The rain pattered on the roof outside and the whole scene was so domestic it made Kelly feel she’d been picked up and transported to another world.
‘Kellyn, my mother and I would like you to return,’ Rafael said, so gently that she blinked. Her weird little bubble burst and she couldn’t catch hold of the fragments.
‘Return?’
‘To Alp de Ciel.’
‘You have to be kidding.’ But she couldn’t take her eyes from Matty.
‘Mathieu is Crown Prince of Alp de Ciel.’
She couldn’t take this in. ‘I…I guess.’
‘I’m Prince Regent until he comes of age.’
‘Congratulations.’ It sounded absurd. Nothing in life had prepared her for this. Matty was calmly sitting across the table eating chocolate cake, watching her closely with wide brown eyes that were…hers, she thought, suddenly fighting an almost irresistible urge to laugh. Hysteria was very, very close.
Matty was watching her as she was watching him. Maybe…maybe he even wanted a mother. He wanted her?
This was her baby. She longed with every fibre of her being to take him in her arms and hug him as she’d dreamed of holding him for these last five years. But this was a self-contained little person who’d been brought up in circumstances of which she knew nothing. To have an unknown woman—even if it had been explained who she was—hugging and sobbing, she knew instinctively it would drive him away.
‘I’ll never go back to Alp de Ciel,’ she whispered but she knew it was a lie the moment she said it. She’d left the little principality shattered. To go back… To go back to her son… Her little son who was looking at her with equal amounts of hope and fear?
‘It would be very different now,’ Rafael said. ‘You’d be returning as the mother of the Crown Prince. You’d be accepted in all honour.’
‘You know what was said of me?’
‘Kass said it over and over, of all his women,’ Rafael said. ‘The people stopped believing Kass a long time ago.’
‘Kass was Matty’s father,’ she said with an urgent glance at Matty, but Rafael shook his head.
‘Matty hardly knew his father. Matty, can you remember the last time you saw Prince Kass?’
‘At Christmas?’ Matty said, sounding doubtful. ‘With the lady in the really pointy shoes. I saw his picture in the paper when he was dead. Aunt Laura said we should feel sad so I did. May I have some more chocolate cake, please? It’s very good.’
‘Certainly you can,’ Kelly whispered. ‘But Kass…Kass said he intended to raise him himself.’
‘Kass intended nothing but his own pleasure,’ Rafael said roughly. ‘The people knew that. There’s little regret at the accident that killed him.’
‘Oh, Matty,’ Kelly whispered, and the little boy looked up at her and calmly met her gaze.
‘Ellen and Marguerite say I should still be sad because my papa is dead,’ he said. ‘But it’s very hard to stay sad. My tortoise, Hermione, died at Christmas. I was very sad when Hermione died so when I think of Papa I try and think of Hermione.’
‘Who are Ellen and Marguerite?’
‘They’re my friends. Ellen makes my bed and cleans my room. Marguerite takes me for walks. 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
