A Royal Marriage of Convenience

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

‘ROSE-ANITRA, we have a surprise for you.’

Rose sighed. In her experience surprises from her in-laws were like surprises in a fairground ghost-train: ‘Surprise!’ followed by green slime—or worse. Rose had spent the evening on a windswept scree, delivering a calf which had taken one look at the outside world and elected to stay put. It had taken her hours to persuade it to change its mind. She’d been up before dawn and she hadn’t stopped since. More than anything else in the whole world, she wanted to go to bed.

There was also the issue of the letter. The stiff, formal communication had arrived, registered mail, in the midst of a bunch of condolence cards. She’d read it briefly, then had stuffed it in her overall pocket to try and make sense of later. She’d like to think about it now, but Rose knew better than to try and deflect her in-laws. So she perched on the edge of an overstuffed chair in their overheated sitting room, she clasped her hands obediently, and she braced herself.

‘It’s a wonderful surprise,’ Gladys said, but for once she sounded a bit nervous.

‘You’ll be really pleased,’ Bob said, and Rose cast him an uncertain glance. Ever since her husband Max had died two years ago, Rose suspected Bob empathised with her a little. But only a little. Not so much that he’d stand up to his wife.

‘You know, it’s the anniversary of Max’s death today,’ Gladys said, casting a quelling glance at her husband.

‘Of course.’ How could Rose have forgotten? Yes, she still grieved for the man she’d loved, but maybe it was a little over the top that her veterinary clinic had been filled with as many flowers today as it had been two years ago. Max had been a loved son of the village. His memory would be kept alive for ever.

‘We waited until now to tell you,’ Gladys said. ‘Because Max asked us to wait. He said we were to let you get the worst of your grieving over, for you couldn’t have coped with a child until now.’

‘I…What are you saying?’ Rose’s fingers clenched involuntarily into her palms. Of course she couldn’t have coped with a child. Not when she’d been fighting to earn her way though vet school. Not when she and Max had been battling his illness. And not now, when she was struggling to earn enough for this tiny vet clinic to support them all.

‘But now it’s time,’ Gladys said, and she smiled.

‘Time?’ Rose managed. ‘For what?’

‘It’s his sperm,’ Bob said, and the elderly man’s voice was eager. ‘It’s Max’s sperm, Rose. When he first got sick, years and years ago, he was naught but a lad, but they told us that the treatment might make him infertile. Even then we thought who’d inherit this life? Who’d take this place forward?’

Who indeed? But Rose wasn’t asking the question. She was staring at them in dawning horror.

‘So we had it frozen,’ Gladys said. ‘And we wanted it to be a surprise. It’s his two-year anniversary present. From Max to you. Now you can have his babies.’

Five hundred miles away in London, in the illustrious international law firm Goodman, Stern and Haddock, another surprise was being played out.

Nikolai de Montez, barrister-at-law, was staring at the elderly man across his desk in stunned silence.

He’d walked in five minutes before the scheduled appointment he’d made a week earlier, neatly dressed, stooped with age, and with hands that trembled. The card he’d handed over had said simply: ‘Erhard Fritz. Assistant to the Crown.’

‘My question is simple, really,’ Erhard said without preamble. ‘If it meant you were to inherit a throne, would you be prepared to marry?’

As partner in this internationally renowned law firm, Nick was accustomed to listening to all sorts of outrageous proposals, but this was one to take the breath away.

‘Would I be prepared to marry?’ he said now, really carefully, as if his words alone could make the situation explode. ‘May I ask…marry who?’

‘A woman called Rose McCray. You might know her as Rose-Anitra de Montez. She’s a veterinarian in Yorkshire, but it seems that she might also be first in line to the throne of Alp de Montez.’

How could she walk away? She couldn’t, but for the last two days Rose had felt like she was walking in a nightmare—-the nightmare that was the remains of her husband’s life.

Everywhere she went she was surrounded by memories. She woke and Max looked down on her from the framed photograph beside their wedding bed. Gladys had collapsed in hysterics when Rose had wanted to give away his clothes, so Max’s shirts and trousers still hung in the closet. Max’s coats still hung in the entrance hall, his boots still stood on the back porch. ‘I’ll not be forgetting our Max,’ she said fiercely when anyone challenged her.

Rose’s grief over the death of her husband had been as deep as it had been sincere, but now it was starting to overwhelm her. She felt like she was living in a perpetual shrine to Max—and now they wanted her to have Max’s child.

The request had been playing over and over in her head for the last two days—along with the contents of the letter. She was so weary she was about to fall over, but one truth was starting to emerge: this couldn’t go on. Max had been dead these two years. If there’d been the money she would have moved out to a place of her own, but her income paid the upkeep on this place. She couldn’t leave. Unless…Unless…

The proposal outlined in the letter was crazy, but so was this situation. The proposal was almost like a siren song. Alp de Montez…a country she loved. She lifted the photograph that had come with the letter, a picture of one Nikolai de Montez. He was long, lean and darkly handsome. His Mediterranean good looks were stunning.

He was about as different from Max as it was possible to get, she thought, reading the letter for the tenth time and then putting it firmly away. No. It was stupid. The letter was a lunacy, a crazy escape-clause with no guarantees that she wouldn’t be worse off.

This was Max’s community. She had to give it one last try, no matter how trapped she was feeling. If only they’d back off about the baby.

She walked into the sitting room, determined to say what had to be said. They were waiting for her. Bob was pouring her a sherry.

‘We’ve been thinking,’ Gladys said before she could say a word. ‘We’re so excited about the baby, but you need to hurry. There’s enough sperm for you to have more than one, and you’re almost thirty. If you don’t have a boy first, then we…’ She caught herself. ‘You’ll want another. Rose, we’ve made an appointment for you with the specialist in Newcastle tomorrow, and Bob’s arranged for a locum so you can go.’

‘That’s good,’ Rose said faintly, but she didn’t take the sherry. Gladys smiled her approval.

‘Good girl. I told Bob no alcohol. Not if you’re pregnant.’

‘I’m not pregnant yet.’

‘But you will be.’

‘No,’ Rose said faintly, and then more forcibly. ‘No. If you’ll excuse me…’ She took a deep breath. ‘It’s good that you’ve organised a locum. I need to go to London for a couple of days. I’ve received a letter.’

‘A letter?’

‘It came registered post to the surgery,’ she said, knowing full well that any post out of the ordinary that came via the private letter-box was likely to be steamed open. ‘You remember my family has royal connections?’

‘Yes,’ Gladys said, stiffening in disapproval.

‘It seems someone came here to see me a week ago,’ she said. ‘Someone from Alp de Montez. You told him I was away?’

‘I…’ Gladys looked at Bob and then she looked at the carpet. ‘He said he had a proposal for you,’ she muttered, defensive. ‘What would you be wanting with a proposal?’

Rose nodded. Two proposals in two weeks. The one facing her here made the other one seem mild in comparison.

But what Gladys had just said firmed things for her. If she agreed to have a child, a daughter would never be enough. If she finally had Max’s son, then the child would be a living memorial to Max. What crazy reason was that to bring a child into the world?

‘It seems I’m needed,’ she said, thinking it through as she spoke. ‘I mean…needed by someone other than you. By someone other than my dead husband’s family and his community. When I first read the letter I thought it was crazy, but it seems as if it’s not crazy after all. Or no more crazy than this. Either way, I’m going to find out. I’m going to London to see if I’ve inherited a crown.’

CHAPTER TWO

THE restaurant Nick had organised as a rendezvous was a good one. It was old-fashioned, full of oak wainscotting, linen table-cloths, and individual booths where people could talk without struggling to hear or worrying about being heard.

He walked in and Walter, the head waiter, met him with the familiarity of an old acquaintance. ‘Good evening, Mr de Montez.’ He looked at Nick’s casual Chinos and cord jacket and he smiled. ‘Well, well. Holiday mode tonight, then, sir?’

Holiday. Yeah, maybe this was his holiday. Nick hardly did holidays at all, so he might as well term this one. Oh, every now and then he’d fly back to Australia to see his foster mother, Ruby, with whom he kept in touch and phoned every Sunday without fail. He skied now and then with a few important clients, but mostly Nick lived to work. He was on holiday tonight because he’d donned casual clothes. That’d do him for while.

He was led over to the booth he generally used. Erhard was there already, and Nick appraised him more thoroughly as he rose to greet him. The old man looked thin, wiry and frail, with a shock of white hair and white bushy eyebrows. He was dressed in a deeply formal black suit.

‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you arrived,’ Nick said, and he looked ruefully down at his clothes, regretting he hadn’t opted for formal. ‘And I’m sorry for these.’

‘You think Rose-Anitra might be uncomfortable with formality?’ Erhard asked, smiling.

‘I did,’ he confessed. Some time in the last few days, as Erhard had talked him through the situation, he’d handed over a photograph of Rose, taken a month ago by a private investigator. Rose had been working—the shot had her leaning against a battered four-wheel-drive vehicle, talking to someone out of frame. She was wearing dirty brown dungarees, Wellingtons and a liberal spray of mud. She was pale faced, with the odd freckle or six, and the only colour about her was the deep, glossy auburn of the braid hanging down her back.

She was a good-looking woman in a ‘country hick’ sort of way, Nick had conceded. The women in his world were usually sophisticated chic. There was no way this woman could be described in those terms, but she’d looked sort of…cute. So when dressing tonight he’d decided formal gear might make her uneasy.

‘You may be underestimating her,’ Erhard said.

‘She’s a country vet.’

‘Yes. A trained veterinarian.’ Still the hint of reproof. ‘My sources say she’s a woman of considerable intelligence.’ And then he paused, for Walter was escorting someone to their table.

Rose-Anitra? The woman in the dungarees?

Nick could see the similarities, but only just. She was wearing a crimson, halter-necked dress, buttoned at the front from the below-knee hemline to a low-cut cleavage. The dress was cinched at the waist in a classic Marilyn Monroe style, showing her hourglass figure to perfection. Her hair was twisted into a casual knot, caught up with soft white ribands, and tiny tendrils were escaping every which way. She was wearing not much make-up—just enough to dust the freckles. Her lips were a soft rose, which should have clashed with her dress but didn’t.

She was wearing stilettos. Gorgeous red stilettos that made her legs look as if they went on for ever.

‘I believe I had it right,’ Erhard said softly to him, and chuckled and moved forward to greet their guest. ‘Mrs. McCray.’

‘Rose,’ she said and smiled, and her smile lit up the room. Her pert nose wrinkled a little. ‘I think I remember you. Monsieur Fritz—you were assistant to my uncle?’

‘I was,’ Erhard said, pleased. ‘Please, call me Erhard.’

‘Thank you,’ she said gravely. ‘It’s been almost fifteen years, but I do remember.’ She turned to Nick. ‘And you must be Nikolai? Monsieur de Montez.’

‘Nick.’

‘I don’t think I’ve met you.’

‘No.’

Walter was holding out her seat and Rose was sitting, which hid her legs. Which was almost a national tragedy, Nick decided. What was she about, disguising those legs in dungarees? He surveyed her with unabashed pleasure as Walter fussed about them, taking orders, offering champagne. ‘Yes, please,’ Rose said, and beamed. When the champagne arrived she put her nose right into the bubbles and closed her eyes, as if it was her first drink for a very long time.

‘You like champagne, then?’ Nick said, fascinated, and she sighed a blissful smile.

‘You have no idea. And it’s not even sherry.’ She had a couple more sips, then laid her glass back on the table with obvious reluctance.

‘We’re very pleased you were able to come,’ Erhard said gently, and looked at Nick. ‘Aren’t we, Nick?’

‘Yes,’ said Nick, feeling winded.

‘I’m sorry it took a while to contact me,’ Rose told them, glancing round the restaurant with real appreciation. ‘My family has an odd notion that I need protection.’

‘You don’t?’ Nick asked.

‘No,’ she said, and took another almost defiant sip of champagne. ‘Absolutely not. This is lovely.’

It was, Nick thought. She was.

‘Maybe it’d be best if I outline the situation,’ Erhard said, smiling faintly at Nick as if guessing his degree of confoundment. ‘Rose, I’m not sure how much you know.’

‘Not much at all,’ she admitted. ‘Only what you told me in the letter. The whole village seems to have been playing keepings off, from telling you I was away when you called, to refusing to pass on phone messages. If Ben at the post office hadn’t been a man of integrity I might never have heard from you at all.’

‘Why would they be worried about Erhard?’ Nick asked, puzzled.

‘My in-laws know I’m the daughter of minor royalty,’ she said. ‘My husband used to delight in it. But since he’s died anything that might take me away from the village has been regarded with suspicion. I gather Erhard came, looked dignified and spoke with an accent. That’d be enough to make them worry. My in-laws have a lot of influence, and they don’t like strangers. I’m sorry.’

‘It’s not your fault,’ Erhard said gently. He hesitated. ‘At least you’re here now, which means that you may be prepared to listen. It might sound preposterous…’

‘You don’t know what preposterous is,’ she said enigmatically. ‘Try me.’

Erhard nodded. It seemed he was prepared to do the talking, which left Nick free to, well, just look.

‘I’m not sure how much you know already,’ Erhard said. ‘I’ve talked the situation through with Nick this week, and I did outline this in the letter, but maybe I need to start at the beginning.’

‘Go ahead,’ Rose said, sipping some more champagne and smiling. It was an amazing smile. Stunning.

Nick was stunned.

Erhard cast him an amused glance. He was an astute man, was Erhard. The more Nick knew him, the more he respected him. Maybe he should look away from Rose. Maybe what he was thinking was showing in his face.

What the heck? Not to look would be criminal.

‘I’m not sure if you know the history of Alp de Montez,’ Erhard was saying, smiling between the pair of them. ‘Let me give you a thumb sketch. Back in the sixteenth century, a king had five sons. The boys grew up warring, and the old king thought he’d pre-empt trouble. He carved four countries from his border, and told his younger sons that the cost of their own principality was lifelong allegiance to their oldest brother.

‘But granting whole countries to warlike men is hardly a guarantee of wise rule. The princes and their descendants brought four wonderful countries to the brink of ruin.’

‘But two are recovering,’ Nick said, and Erhard nodded.

‘Yes. Two are moving towards democracy, albeit with their sovereigns still in place. Of the remaining two, Alp de Montez seems the worst off. The old Prince—your mutual grandfather—left control more and more in the hands of the tiny council running the place. The chief of council is Jacques St. Ives, and he’s had almost complete control for years. But the situation is dire. Taxes are through the roof. The country’s on the brink of bankruptcy, and people are leaving in the thousands.’

‘Where do you come into this?’ Nick asked curiously. He knew much of this, and not all of it was second hand. Several years ago, curious about the country where his mother had been raised, he’d spent a week touring the place. What he’d seen had horrified him.

‘I’ve been an aide to the old Prince for many years,’ Erhard said sadly. ‘As he lost his health, I watched the power shift to Jacques. And then there were the deaths,’

‘Deaths?’ Rose asked.

‘There have been many,’ Erhard told her. ‘The old Crown Prince died last year. He had four sons, and then a daughter. You’d think with five children there’d be someone to inherit, but, in order of succession, Gilen died young in a skiing accident, leaving no children. Gottfried died of a drug overdose when he was nineteen. Keifer drank himself to death, and Keifer’s only son Konrad died in a car crash two weeks ago. Rose, your father Eric died four years back, and Nick, your mother Zia, the youngest of the five children, is also dead. Which leaves three grandchildren. Eric’s daughters—you, Rose, and your sister Julianna—are now first and second in line for the throne. You, Nikolai, are third.’

‘Did you know all this?’ Nick asked Rose, and she shook her head.

‘I knew my father was dead, but I didn’t know any of the ascendancy stuff until I had Erhard’s letter. My mother and I left Alp de Montez when I was fifteen. Have you ever been there?’

‘I skied there once,’ Nick admitted.

‘Does that mean you can inherit the throne?’ she asked, smiling. ‘Because you skied there?’

‘It almost comes down to that,’ Erhard said, and Nick had to stop smiling at Rose for a minute and look serious. Which was really hard. He was starting to feel like a moonstruck teenager, and he’d only had half a beer. Maybe he’d better switch to mineral water like Erhard.

But, regardless of what he was feeling, Erhard was moving on. ‘We need a sovereign,’ he said. ‘The constitution of the Alp countries means no change can take place without the overarching approval of the Crown. I’d love to see the place as a democracy, but that’s only going to happen with royal approval.’

‘Which would be where we come in, I guess,’ Rose said. ‘Your letter said you needed me.’

‘Yes.’

‘But I’m not a real royal. Eric really wasn’t my father.’ She touched her flame-coloured hair and winced in rueful remembrance. ‘Surely you remember the fuss, Erhard? Eric called my mother a whore and kicked her out of the country.’

‘Not until you were fifteen. And you went with her,’ Erhard said softly.

‘There wasn’t a lot of choice.’ She shrugged. ‘My sister—my half-sister—wanted to stay in the palace, but my mother was being cut off with nothing. There wasn’t a lot of love lost between me and Julianna even then. My sister was jealous of me, and my father hated my hair. No. That’s putting it too nicely. My father hated me. I had no place there.’

‘He acknowledged you as his daughter until you were fifteen,’ Erhard said. ‘Yes, there was general consensus that you weren’t his, but the people felt sorry for your mother, and they loved you.’

‘And my grandfather wanted my mother in the castle,’ Rose said bluntly. ‘My grandfather didn’t care about the scandal which had produced me. He knew his son was a womaniser, and he knew my mother’s affair happened through loneliness. My mother was kind, in a family where kind was hard to get. It was only after Grandfather became so ill, and he wasn’t noticing, that my father was able to send her away.’

‘To nothing,’ Erhard said bleakly. ‘To no support.’

‘We didn’t care,’ Rose said, sounding defiant. ‘At least…it would have been nice at the end, but we got by.’

‘So you left the throne for Julianna.’

‘I didn’t,’ Rose said, sounding annoyed. ‘My mother and I assumed Keifer and then Konrad would inherit. We weren’t to know they’d die young.’

‘So you’ve never officially removed yourself from the succession?’

‘I didn’t think I had to. If I’m not real royalty…’

‘You are real royalty,’ Erhard said, emphatic. ‘You were born within a royal marriage.’

‘I have red hair. No one in my extended family has red hair. And my mother admitted—’

‘Your mother admitted nothing on paper.’

‘But DNA…’

‘If DNA testing were done, half the royal families of Europe would crumble,’ Erhard told her. ‘Your mother married young into a loveless marriage, but such things aren’t unusual. Your parents are dead. There’s no proof of anything.’

‘Julianna looks royal.’

‘You think?’ Erhard asked, with a wry smile. ‘There’s no proof of that either, and no one dare suggest DNA. So we turn to the lawyers. There’s an international jurisdiction—legal experts chosen for impartiality—set up by the four Alp principalities for just this eventuality. They decide who has best right to the crown. Rose, I told you in the letter, Julianna has married Jacques St. Ives and they’re making a solid play for the crown. Their justification is that Julianna is the only one of the three of you who lives in the country, and moreover she’s married to a citizen who cares about the place. You, Rose, walked away almost fifteen years ago. Regardless of your birth, your absence by choice sits as an implacable obstacle. The panel will decide in Julianna’s favour, unless they’re given an alternative.’

He hesitated. He looked as if he didn’t want to continue—but it had to be said, and they all knew it. ‘Rose, if there are questions about your parentage there are also questions about Julianna’s,’ he said softly. ‘Regardless of DNA testing, the panel acknowledge that. Your parents’ marriage was hardly happy. You remain the oldest. And behind you both there’s Nikolai, whose mother was definitely royal. I’ve thought and thought of this. The only way forward is for the two of you to present as one. Together you must outweigh Julianna’s claim. A married couple—the questioned first and the definite third in line—taking on the throne together.’

Whatever Erhard had said in his letter, Rose must have been forewarned, Nick thought, as she was showing no shock. The idea had stunned him, but she was reacting as if it was almost reasonable. She sat and stared at the bubbles in her glass for a while, letting things settle. She wasn’t a woman who needed to talk, he thought. The silence was almost comfortable.

‘A marriage of convenience,’ she said at last, as if the thing was worthy of consideration.

‘Yes.’

‘That’s what I thought you meant after I read the letter. I guess it’s why I came. It seemed that this way I might be able to help. But…’ She smiled up at Walter as he delivered their meals, and she nodded absolute affirmation when he offered her wine. ‘Are you sure Julianna and Jacques won’t make good rulers?’