Jessica Hart - His Temporary Cinderella

‘No.’

‘You’re supposed to be in love with me,’ she pointed out as she straightened.

‘I’d have to be besotted before I let you drive my car,’ he said, and opened the passenger door for her. ‘Most girls would be happy to be driven.’

‘I’m not most girls,’ said Caro, but she got in anyway and he closed the door after her with a satisfying clunk.

‘You can say that again,’ said Philippe, walking round to get in behind the wheel. Now she was stroking the seat and the wooden trim, leaning forward to gaze at the dashboard, wriggling back into her seat with a sigh of pleasure. It was practically pornographic! Not enough oxygen was getting to his brain and he had to take a breath, horrified to find that the hands he laid on the steering wheel weren’t entirely steady.

The clear glass starter button glowed invitingly red, reminding him that he was in control. Philippe pressed it and the engine purred into life.

‘What about Yan and the luggage?’ Caro dragged her attention back from the car for a moment.

‘He’ll follow in the other car,’ said Philippe, nodding back to a black SUV with tinted windows.

‘Isn’t he supposed to be protecting you?’

‘He’ll be right behind.’ Philippe put the car into gear. ‘But for now it’s just you and me.’

‘Oh,’ was all Caro said, but a little thrill shivered through her all the same.

Just you and me.

It wouldn’t be just the two of them, of course. Lotty had told her about the palace servants, and there would always be Yan or a member of the public wanting their hand shaken. Just as well, Caro told herself firmly. It would be much easier to be friends when there were other people around.

‘Where did you learn about cars?’ Philippe asked as they turned onto the main road.

‘From my father.’ The road was clear ahead, and Philippe put his foot down. The car responded instantly, surging forward. Caro felt the pressure in the small of her back and settled into it with a shiver of pleasure. ‘He loved cars. He always had some banger up on the blocks and he’d spend hours tinkering with it. When I was little I’d squat beside him and be allowed to hand him a spanner or an oily rag. Even now the smell of oil makes me think of Dad.’

Caro smiled unevenly, remembering. ‘Driving an Aston Martin was his dream. He’d be so thrilled if he could see me now!’ She stroked the leather on either side of her thighs. ‘And envious!’

Distracted by the stroking, Philippe forced his attention back to the road. ‘It sounds like you had a good relationship with your father.’

‘I adored him.’ She touched the lapels of the jacket she wore. ‘This is Dad’s dinner jacket. He wore it for a school dance once, and no one recognised him. It was as if none of them had ever looked at him when he was wearing his handyman overalls, but put on a smart jacket and suddenly he was a real person, someone they could talk to because he was dressed like them.’

Caro fingered the sleeve where she’d rolled it up to show the scarlet lining. ‘I remember Dad saying that some people are like this jacket, conventional on the outside, but with a bright, beautiful lining like this. He said we shouldn’t judge what’s on the outside, it’s what’s inside that really matters. I think of him every time I put this jacket on,’ she said.

‘My father thinks the exact opposite,’ said Philippe. ‘For him, it’s all about appearances. No wonder I’m such a disappointment to him.’ He was careful to keep his tone light, but Caro looked at him, a crease between her brows.

‘He can’t be that disappointed if he trusts you to stand in for him while he’s sick.’

‘Only because it wouldn’t look right if he didn’t make his only surviving son regent in his absence, would it? What would people think?’

In spite of himself, Philippe could hear the bitterness threading his voice, and he summoned a smile instead. ‘Besides, it’s not a question of trust. It’s not as if they’re going to let me loose on government. My father thinks it’ll be good for me to experience meetings and red boxes and the whole dreary business of governing, but all that’s just for show too. There’s a council of ministers, but the Dowager Blanche will be keeping a firm hold of the reins. I’m trusted to shake hands and host a few banquets, but that’s about it.’

‘You could take more responsibility if you wanted, couldn’t you?’

‘They won’t let me.’ Caro could hear the frustration in his voice, and she felt for him. It couldn’t be easy knowing that any attempt to assert himself would be met by his father’s collapse. ‘And I daren’t risk insisting any more,’ Philippe said. ‘Not when he’s so sick, anyway. My father and I may not get on, but I don’t want him to die.’

‘Why doesn’t he trust you?’ Caro asked, swivelling in her seat so that she could look at him. ‘I know you were wild when you were younger, but that was years ago.’

‘It’s hard to change the way your family looks at you.’ Philippe glanced in the mirror and pulled out to overtake a lumbering truck in a flash. ‘Etienne was always the dutiful, responsible son, and I was difficult. That’s just the way it was.

‘Etienne was a golden boy—clever, hardworking, responsible, handsome, charming, kind. I could never live up to him, so I never tried. I was only ever “the spare” in my father’s eyes, anyway,’ he said. ‘I didn’t even have the good sense to look like him, the way Etienne did. Instead, I take after my mother. Every time my father looks at me, he’s reminded of the way she humiliated him. I sometimes wonder if he suspects I’m not even his son.’

Philippe hoped that he sounded detached and ironic, but suspected it didn’t fool Caro, who was watching him with those warm blue eyes. He could feel her gaze on his profile as surely as if she had reached out to lay her palm against his cheek.

‘I never heard anything about your mother,’ she said. ‘What did she do?’

‘Oh, the usual. She was far too young and frivolous to have been married to my father. It’s a miracle their marriage lasted as long as it did. She ran away from him eventually and went to live with an Italian racing driver.’

He thought he had the tone better there. Careless. Cynical. Just a touch of amusement.

‘Do you remember her?’

‘Not much,’ he said. ‘Her perfume when she came to kiss me goodnight. Her laughter. I was only four, and left with a nanny a lot of the time anyway, so I don’t suppose it made much difference to me really when she left. It was worse for Etienne. He was eleven, so he must have had more memories of her.’

Philippe paused. ‘He would have been devastated, but he used to come and play with me for hours so that I wouldn’t miss her. That was the kind of boy he was.’

‘I didn’t realise you were so close to him.’

Caro’s throat was aching for the little boy Philippe had been. Her father had been right. You could never tell what someone was like from the face they put on to the world. All she’d ever seen of Philippe had been the jacket of cool arrogance. It had never occurred to her to wonder whether he used it to deflect, to stop anyone realising that he had once been a small boy, abandoned by his mother and rejected by his father.

‘He was a great brother,’ said Philippe. ‘A great person. You can’t blame my father for being bitter that Etienne was the one who died, and that he was left with me. You can’t blame him for wishing that I’d been the one who died.’

‘That’s … that’s a terrible thing to say,’ said Caro, shocked.

‘It’s true.’ He glanced at her and then away. ‘It was my fault Etienne died.’