kitchens.’
The palace kitchens. Alp de Ciel. Maybe… maybe…
‘I do have an electric stove,’ she said cautiously, feeling as if she were buying time. She opened a cupboard and tugged out a little electric appliance—two hotplates complete with knobs. ‘In summer when it’s really hot I cook with this.’
‘But in winter you cook with fire.’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s very interesting,’ Mathieu said, while Rafael still watched and said nothing. His gaze disconcerted her. She wanted to focus exclusively on Mathieu but Rafael had unnerved her.
‘Does it cook cakes?’ Mathieu asked.
‘There’s a cake in the pantry,’ she said. She’d been miserable last night and had baked, just for the comfort of it. There’d been a staff meeting planned for this morning and she’d intended to take it along, but then one of the guides had called in sick and she’d had to take his place. So the cake was intact.
She produced it now while the child watched with wide-eyed solemnity and the man kept watching her.
‘It’s chocolate,’ Mathieu breathed.
‘Chocolate’s my favourite,’ Kelly admitted.
‘Uncle Rafael says you’re my mother,’ Mathieu said, still not looking at her but eyeing the cake as if it might give a clue to the veracity of his uncle’s statement.
‘So he does.’
‘I don’t really understand,’ Mathieu complained. ‘I thought my mother would wear a pretty dress.’
It was too much. Kelly stared at the child and she thought she was crazy, this was crazy, there was no way this was real.
I thought my mother would wear a pretty dress.
This little one had a vision of his mother. As she’d had a vision of her child.
‘I feel like crying,’ she said to the room in general, thinking maybe that saying it might ward it off. But shock itself was stopping her from weeping. Every nerve in her body was focused exclusively on this little boy.
‘I don’t understand either,’ she said at last as both males looked apprehensive. They were also looking a little confused. No, she wasn’t wearing a dress. She was wearing dungarees and a flannel shirt and leather boots. She was caked in mud. She was no one’s idea of a mother.
She hadn’t been a mother for five years.
‘You know Mathieu’s father is dead?’ Rafael said gently, and her eyes jerked up to his.
‘Kass is dead?’ She stared wildly at him and then looked down at the little boy again. ‘Your papa?’
‘Papa died in a car crash,’ Mathieu said in a matter-of-fact voice.
‘Matty, I’m so sorry.’
Matty. The name Mathieu had been chosen by his father. It had seemed far too formal for such a scrap of a baby. Matty was what she’d called him for those few short weeks…
‘Aunt Laura calls me Matty,’ he said, sounding pleased. ‘Aunt Laura says the nurses told her my mama called me Matty.’
‘But…’ Her head was threatening to explode. She sank on to a chair because her legs wouldn’t hold her up any more. ‘But…’
‘Matty, why don’t you do the honours with the cake?’ Rafael suggested. With a sideways glance at Kelly—who was far too winded to think about answering—he opened the cutlery drawer, found a knife blunt enough for a child to handle, found three plates and set them on the side bench. ‘Three equal pieces, Matty,’ he said. ‘You cut and we’ll choose. As wide as your middle finger is long.’
Matty looked pleased. He crossed to the bench and held up his middle finger, carefully assessing. Clearly cake-cutting would take a while.
Rafael pulled out a chair and sat on the opposite side of the table to Kelly. He reached over, took her hands in his and held them. He had big hands. Callused. Work worn. They completely enclosed hers. Two strong, warm hands, where hers were freezing. She must be freezing, she thought. She couldn’t stop shivering.
She’d had the flu. She wasn’t over it yet. Maybe that was why she was shivering.
‘I should have phoned,’ he said ruefully. ‘This has been too much of a shock. But I was sure you’d have heard, and I didn’t understand why you didn’t contact us.’
‘It’s me who doesn’t understand,’ she whispered.
‘You don’t read the newspapers?’
‘I…not lately. I’ve been unwell. This place has been hopelessly understaffed. What have I missed?’
‘Alp de Ciel is only a small country but the death of its sovereign made worldwide news. Even right down here in Australia.’
‘When?’ What had happened to her voice? It was coming out as a squeak. She tried to pull her hands away but failed. She couldn’t stop this stupid shivering.
He was still holding her. Maybe he thought she needed this contact. But he was a de Boutaine. Part of her life that had been blocked out for ever.
Matty was a de Boutaine. Matty was in her kitchen cutting cake.
‘I’ve had flu,’ she whispered, trying to make sense of it. ‘Real flu, where you don’t come out from under your pillow for weeks. The whole park staff’s been decimated. For the last couple of months, if we haven’t been sick we’ve been run off our feet covering for those who are.’
‘Which is why you’re trudging round in the mud,’ he said softly. ‘My informants say you’re a research historian here.’
His informants. That sounded like Kass. ‘What I do is none of your business,’ she snapped.
‘The woman who is responsible for Mathieu is very much my business.’
She stared at him. Staring seemed all she was capable of. There was nothing else to do that she could think of.
‘Who…who are you?’ she whispered.
‘Kass was my cousin.’
She moistened her lips. ‘I don’t think…I never met…’
‘Kass and I didn’t get on,’ he said, with a sideways warning glance at Matty. There were things that obviously couldn’t be said in Matty’s presence. But Matty was doing his measuring and cutting with the focus of a neurosurgeon. These cake slices would be exactly equal if it took him half an hour to get it right.
‘My father was the old prince’s younger brother,’ Rafael said. ‘Papa married an American girl—my mother, Laura—and we lived in the dower house at the castle. My father died when I was a teenager, but my mother still lives at the castle. She and my father were very happy and she never wants to leave, but I left when I was nineteen. For the last fifteen years I’ve spent my life in New York. Until Kass died. Then I was called on. To my horror, I’ve discovered I’m Prince Regent.’
‘Prince Regent.’
‘It seems I’m the ruling Prince Regent of Alp de Ciel until Matty reaches twenty-five,’ he said ruefully. ‘Unless I knock it back. Which I don’t intend to.’
So the Prince Regent of Alp de Ciel was sitting at her kitchen table. Unbelievable. She didn’t believe it. She was fighting a mad desire to laugh.
How close to hysterics was she?
‘So you’re Prince Regent of Ciel.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’ve come to Australia…why?’
‘Because Matty needs his mother.’
That