Marion Lennox - A Royal Proposition

‘Bert, I can’t go out with this man.’

‘You can,’ Bert said heavily, and the amusement was suddenly gone from his voice. ‘This is the man who’s paying us, girl, and he’s in trouble. You made me listen to him. Well, I have. You can put the good of the team before everything for the moment and give him a fair hearing. That’s all I ask.’

‘And that’s all I ask,’ Alastair said, his calm brown eyes resting on her face in a message of reassurance.

Which was all very well, she thought wildly as she sent him a savage glance. Reassure all you like.

Marriage!

The man was seriously nuts!

‘Six o’clock, then,’ he said. ‘You’re staying with the Berics? I’ll collect you there.’

‘How do you know where I’m staying?’

‘I know all about you.’

‘Then you know what I’m about to say to your crazy proposition,’ she flung at him. ‘No and no and no.’

‘Just listen.’

‘I’ll listen. And then I’ll say no.’

THE man who called for Penny-Rose four hours later was the same man-but only just. Madame Beric opened the front door, quivering in excitement. Penny-Rose didn’t blame her. She was waiting in the kitchen, trying not to quiver herself, and when Alastair was ushered in, she failed.

She definitely quivered.

Whew! This was Cinderella stuff. And where was her fairy godmother when she was needed? She’d put on her only dress that was halfway decent-a white sundress with tiny shoulder straps that was more useful for a day off than for a dinner date. She’d washed and brushed her curls until they shone, but that was as much as she’d done.

There wasn’t anything else to do. She wore no adornment. How could she? She didn’t have any adornment. Or any cosmetics. In fact, her entire outfit was worth peanuts!

Alastair, on the other hand, was wearing a formal suit that must have cost a mint. It was deep black, Italian made and fitted perfectly. The black was lightened by the brilliance of his crisp, white shirt and the slash of a crimson silk tie. His normally ruffled black curls had been groomed into submission, there was a faint aroma of very expensive aftershave about him and he looked every inch a man of the world.

Unlike Penny-Rose, who had the look of a woman who’d appreciate diving into a small, dark cupboard.

There wasn’t a small, dark cupboard available, and Alastair’s dark eyes were twinkling in amusement.

Good grief! She could see why Belle wanted him. In fact, she could see why any woman would want him! 28

‘You look beautiful,’ he told her, his wide smile taking in her discomfort and reacting with sympathy.

If she could have known it, he was also reacting with truth.

She did look lovely, Alastair acknowledged as he took in her simple appearance. Money made little difference when it came to pure beauty. Her glossy chestnut curls tumbled about her shoulders. Her face glowed with health and humour, her green eyes were edged with tiny, crinkling laughter lines and her diminutive figure was well suited by the simplicity of her dress. She was five feet four and beautiful, whatever she was wearing.

But Penny-Rose couldn’t tell what he was thinking, and the thoughts that were whirling around in her head were very different.

She was about as far from his beautiful Belle as any woman was likely to be, she thought bitterly. She wore little make-up, her nose had the temerity to sport freckles, and as for her hands…

Belle’s hands would be flawless-of course. They’d be groomed for wearing fabulous jewellery and doing little else. Penny-Rose’s hands had been put to hard physical work from the time she could first remember, and it showed.

Alastair reached out for her hand in greeting and she felt him stiffen as he came into contact with the roughened skin. He looked down involuntarily.

Her hands were worn and calloused. They were Cinderella hands, and no fairy godmother could have altered them in time for a date with a handsome prince.

She saw his face change-twist-in a half-mocking smile.

‘It is true,’ he said slowly, inspecting her fingers in a way that made her attempt to haul her hands out of reach. But he held on, and kept inspecting. ‘What my mother said about you is right.’

She was thoroughly flustered, by his words and the feel of her hand in his. ‘I have no idea what your mother said,’ she snapped, hauling free her fingers. ‘But if it’s that I have no time for nonsense then, yes, it’s the truth. So can we get this dinner over and be done with it?’

‘You sound like you aren’t looking forward to it.’

‘I’m not.’

But, in fact, that was a lie. There were few village families prepared to take in lodgers, so Penny-Rose had had to be grateful for what she’d been able to find. Madame Beric was a kindly enough soul but she was a gifted watercolour artist, with little time for anything else. Her cooking was therefore appalling. Penny-Rose was now up to turnip soup version thirty-four, and burned turnip soup version thirty-four at that…

‘Where are we going?’ she asked, despite herself, and Alastair’s face creased again into one of his blindingly attractive smiles.

‘Lilie’s, of course,’ he said softly. ‘Where else does a man take a woman when he’s asking her to marry him? It’s the best, and tonight only the best will do.’

It was a twenty-minute journey-twenty minutes while Penny-Rose sat in stunned silence in the passenger seat of Alastair’s car. A Ferrari. Of course. She’d never been near such a car in her life. Alastair’s shabby clothes of earlier had been token workman-like apparel, she thought resentfully. No wonder her hands fascinated him. He wouldn’t know what it was to work hard with his hands.

Everything about this man screamed money.

And now he wanted more and he was prepared to marry a stranger to get it.

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.