‘She’s been in the public eye since she was dubbed the “people’s angel” on her sixteenth birthday. She hasn’t been able to move a finger for the last ten years without someone taking a photograph of her.’
‘Then she has my sympathy.’
‘She doesn’t need your sympathy, Kal. What she’s desperate for is some privacy. Time on her own to sort out where she’s going from here.’
‘I thought you said she was getting married.’
‘I said there were rumours to that effect, fuelled, I have no doubt, by the Duke,’ she added, this time making no attempt to hide her disapproval. ‘There comes a point at which a virginal image stops being charming, special and instead becomes the butt of cruel humour. Marriage, babies will keep the story moving forward and His Grace has lined up an Earl in waiting to fill this bill.’
‘An arranged marriage?’ It was his turn to shrug. ‘Is that so bad?’ In his experience, it beat the ramshackle alternative of love hands down. ‘What does Hanif say?’
‘In his opinion, if there had been a genuine threat the Duke would have made a formal approach through the Foreign Office instead of attempting to bully me into withdrawing my invitation.’
With considerably more success, Kal thought.
‘Even so,’ he replied, ‘it might be wiser to do everyone a favour and tell Lady Rose that the roof has fallen in at your holiday cottage.’
‘In other words, knuckle under, make life easy for ourselves? What about Rose? They give her no peace, Kal.’
‘She’s never appeared to want it,’ he pointed out. Barely a week went by without her appearance on the front pages of the newspapers or some gossip magazine.
‘Would it make any difference if she did?’ She shook her head, not expecting an answer. ‘Will you go with her, Kal? While I don’t believe Rose is in any actual danger, I daren’t risk leaving her without someone to watch her back and if I have to ask your uncle to detail an Emiri guard, she’ll simply be exchanging one prison for another.’
‘Prison?’
‘What would you call it?’ She reached out, took his hand. ‘I’m desperately worried about her. On the surface she’s so serene, but underneath there’s a desperation…’ She shook her head. ‘Distract her, Kal. Amuse her, make her laugh.’
‘Do you want me to protect her or make love to her?’ he asked, with just the slightest edge to his voice. He’d done his best to live down the playboy image that clung to the al-Zaki name, but he would always be the grandson of an exiled playboy prince, the son of a man whose pursuit of beautiful women had kept the gossip writers happily in business for forty years.
Building an international company from the floor up, supporting Princess Lucy’s charities, didn’t make the kind of stories that sold newspapers.
‘Consider this as a diplomatic mission, Kal,’ Lucy replied enigmatically, ‘and a diplomat is a man who manages to give everyone what they want while serving the needs of his own country. You do want to serve your country?’ she asked.
They both knew that he had no country, but clearly Lucy saw this as a way to promote his cause. The restoration of his family to their rightful place. His marriage to the precious daughter of one of the great Ramal Hamrahn families. And, most important of all, to take his dying grandfather home. For that, he would play nursemaid to an entire truckload of aristocratic virgins.
‘Princess,’ he responded with the slightest bow, ‘rest assured that I will do everything in my power to ensure that Lady Roseanne Napier enjoys her visit to Ramal Hamrah.’
‘Thank you, Kal. I can now assure the Duke that, since the Emir’s nephew is to take personal care of her security, he can have no worries about her safety.’
Kal shook his head, smiling despite himself. ‘You won’t, I imagine, be telling him which nephew?’
‘Of course I’ll tell him,’ she replied. ‘How else will he be able to thank your uncle for the service you have rendered him?’
‘You think he’ll be grateful?’
‘Honestly? I think he’ll be chewing rocks, but he’s not about to insult the Emir of Ramal Hamrah by casting doubt on the character of one of his family. Even one whose grandfather tried to start a revolution.’
‘And how do you suppose His Highness will react?’
‘He will have no choice but to ask his wife to pay a courtesy visit on their distinguished visitor,’ she replied. ‘The opportunity to meet your aunt is the best I can do for you, Kal. The rest is up to you.’
‘Lucy…’ He was for a moment lost for words. ‘How can I…’
She simply raised a finger to her lips, then said, ‘Just take care of Rose for me.’
‘How on earth did you swing a week off just before Christmas, Lydie?’
‘Pure charm,’ she replied, easing her shoulder as she handed over her checkout at the end of her shift. That and a cross-her-heart promise to the manager that she’d use the time to think seriously about the management course he’d been nagging her to take for what seemed like forever. He’d been totally supportive of her lookalike career, allowing her to be flexible in her shifts, but he wanted her to start thinking about the future, a real career.
‘Well, remember us poor souls chained to the checkout listening to Jingle Bells for the umpteenth time, while you’re lying in the sun, won’t you?’
‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ she replied, with the grin of a woman with a week in the sun ahead of her.
And it was true; this was going to be an unbelievable experience. Rose had offered her the chance of a dream holiday in the desert. An entire week of undiluted luxury in which she was going to be wearing designer clothes—not copies run up by her mother—and treated like a real princess. Not some fake dressed up to look like one.
The euphoria lasted until she reached her car.
She’d told her colleagues at work that she’d been invited to spend a week at a friend’s holiday apartment, which was near enough to the truth, but she hadn’t told a soul where she was really going, not even her mother, and that had been hard.
Widowed in the same accident that had left her confined to a wheelchair, Lydia’s ‘Lady Rose’ gigs were the highlight of her mother’s life and normally they shared all the planning, all the fun, and her mother’s friends all joined vicariously in the excitement.
But this was different. This wasn’t a public gig. The slightest hint of what she was doing would ruin everything for Rose. She knew that her mother wouldn’t be able to resist sharing such an incredible secret with her best friend who’d be staying with her while she was away. She might as well have posted a bulletin on the wall of her Facebook page.
Instead, she’d casually mentioned a woman at work who was looking for a fourth person to share a last-minute apartment deal in Cyprus—which was true—and left it to her mother to urge her to grab it.
Which of course she had.
