Marion Lennox: A Royal Proposition

Maybe that was unfair, she acknowledged. Maybe it was true that he was concerned about the villagers.

She glanced across at him as they pulled to a halt in the restaurant car park, and found that he was twisting to survey her with the same intensity she was using on him. Their gazes met. She flushed and turned away.

‘You don’t approve of me, do you?’ he asked cautiously and she bit her lip.

‘I’m not here to make a judgement,’ she said at last. ‘I’m here because my boss told me to be here.’

‘And to eat a wonderful dinner?’

There was that. She had the grace to concede the point and her lips gave an involuntary twitch into a smile. ‘Um…OK.’

‘My mother says you know what it is to be hungry.’

That comment killed her smiling urge. She returned to glaring, shoved the car door open and then stood and waited for him to get out and lock his damned expensive car.

‘I said the wrong thing,’ he said ruefully, as they turned toward the restaurant.

‘My stomach is my business,’ she said with dignity.

‘I guess it is.’

She said nothing-just concentrated on where they were going. Damn him, he had her right off balance and she didn’t know how to deal with it. Somehow she just had to get this over with. Concentrate on dinner…

Luckily, Lilie’s was worth concentration.

The restaurant was built into the parapets of another mediaeval castle. Well, why not? This was fairy-tale country, with castles here to spare.

But there were modern touches. A lift swept them to the rooftop, where the restaurant was situated among the battlements. Floor-to-ceiling windows were now installed where archers had once stood to protect their fortress-and Penny-Rose saw the view and gasped in delight. She’d been trying to disregard Alastair’s disturbing presence until now, but the view made her almost forget him.

Almost? Well, almost a little bit…

Focus on the view, she told herself. And what a view! It was as if they were perched in an eagle’s nest high over the river. Below were river plains, golden with buttercups and inhabited by placidly grazing cattle. At every turn of the river were more ruins, more castles, and more…

More stone!

‘What are you thinking?’ Alastair asked, watching her with bemused interest.

‘I’m thinking…’ she said slowly, and paused.

‘Yes?’

‘That there’s a lifetime of work for me in this country,’ she managed, and his eyebrows shot to his hairline.

‘What on earth…?’

‘Stone-walling,’ she breathed. ‘Look at it out there-all those stones. All those crumbling walls, just waiting for repair.’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t believe this.’

‘What don’t you believe?’

That he’d taken a woman out to dinner-and she was talking about stone?

‘Um…stone walls are just stone walls,’ he managed, and she gazed at him as if he’d just uttered a profanity.

‘That’s like saying every house is just a house. And they say you’re a well-respected architect. Is that what you believe?’

‘I… No.’ He was flummoxed. This woman was like no woman he’d ever dated.

‘Well, there you go, then.’ She smirked. ‘I rest my case.’

He grinned. They were being led to a discreet table tucked into a niche where all they had for company was the view. ‘OK,’ he conceded. ‘But…’

‘But?’

‘I never thought I’d be wining and dining a woman who’d look at rock and gasp.’

She gave him a look of gentle mockery. ‘Surely not. You must be using the wrong rock. Have you tried diamonds?’

He cast her an amused glance-she certainly was different-but then was distracted by the need to order champagne.

Penny-Rose didn’t protest. She could count the times she’d tasted champagne on one finger. She cast another long look out over the valley, she gazed around her again at the opulent restaurant setting-and she decided there and then that she wasn’t about to let scruples get in the way of a very good dinner.

And Alastair saw it. ‘You’re intending to milk this for everything it’s worth,’ he said dryly, and she had the grace to blush.

‘Um…yes.’

‘Because?’

‘Because I shouldn’t be here. I have no intention of agreeing to any crazy marriage proposal but, as you say, I’ve been hungry.’ She beamed, abandoning herself to enjoyment, and gave a small bounce on the beautifully padded chair. ‘Wow. This looks like a very nice place to eat.’

He was fascinated. She’d bounced. She’d definitely bounced.

‘What?’ she demanded, seeing his expression. ‘What did I do wrong?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I just said it looks a great place to eat.’

He took a deep breath. ‘That, Miss O’Shea, is an understatement. Can I interest you in some snails?’

‘You can interest me in anything that’s not turnip soup,’ she said, and received another startled look. ‘That’s what the Berics live on,’ she explained. She shook her head. ‘Every night, M’sieur Beric sits down to turnip soup, and every night he finishes it, looks up and tells his wife it was delicious. So she makes it the next night. And if she doesn’t, he gets all disappointed.’ She grinned. ‘So you see why I finally agreed to eat with you?’

‘Despite disapproving of me?’

Her smile widened. ‘Despite that.’

He paused, but he had to ask. ‘Why?’

‘Why what?

‘Why do you disapprove of me?’

‘Because you’re a prince and I’m a worker,’ she said frankly. ‘Cinderella was a fairy story. It doesn’t happen in real life.’

‘It might.’

‘Oh, yeah?’ It was a gentle jeer. ‘Even Cinderella’s prince didn’t propose marriage just for a year!’

Alastair thought that through and disagreed. ‘Her guy had his deadlines, too,’ he told her, semi-seriously. ‘Like midnight. Seeing carriages turn to pumpkins just as the going gets romantic might put a man right off his stride.’

‘I’d imagine it might,’ she said faintly.

‘So Cinderella’s beloved had to work fast.’ He paused again, and then his smile died. ‘As I do.’

‘If you want to be Prince.’

‘No.’ Alastair shook his head.

The champagne arrived. There was a moment’s silence while the bubbles were poured, and he waited until she’d taken her first gorgeous sip. He waited for her verdict, and he got it.

‘Yum!’ she said, and he smiled at her pleasure. Yum. It was a word Belle hadn’t used in her life!

But he couldn’t afford to be distracted by this strange Cinderella his mother had found for him. He had this one meal to persuade her, and he already knew persuasion would take some doing.

‘I really don’t want to be a prince,’ he said, and his eyes met hers over the glass. ‘Will you believe that?’

‘Um…’ She took another cautious sip and made her decision. ‘No.’

He had to make her believe. Otherwise nothing would make sense. ‘Fame,’ he said slowly, ‘isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. This principality is small, but as the eldest-indeed, only-male of the royal family, the spotlight is now on me. There’s a population of a tiny country waiting to see what I do.’

He motioned out the window to the tiny holdings scattered along the river. ‘There are so many families whose lives depend on my choice-and your choice, too.’

‘Don’t you dare try to blackmail me,’ she snapped, suddenly angry, and his expression softened.

‘No. I won’t. But according to my mother, our needs mesh.’

She glared some more. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘A year as my wife would set you up for life.’

‘I don’t need to be set up-’

‘You can barely afford to eat now,’ he pointed out. ‘Michael is still at secondary school and he wants to be an engineer. How are you going to afford three of them at university?’