‘I can keep the pup?’ Holly demanded, refusing to be distracted.
‘He’s yours. He’ll need to be quarantined when he goes back to Australia, but I’ll cover the costs in the marriage contracts.’
‘So I’ll have real, fully legal contracts.’
‘If you want, then yes.’
She stared at him. He gazed calmly back, waiting for her decision. On the sidelines Sophia started jiggling again and looked despairingly toward the kitchen. She looked so desperate that Holly allowed herself to be distracted. The big picture was just too hard to focus on. So…why not focus on the detail?
Soufflés. Maybe soufflés were as good a reason as any to agree to a marriage she thought of as mad.
Was she mad? Probably, she thought. She felt as she had when, as a little girl, her father had taken her to a huge swimming pool in Perth. When he wasn’t looking she’d climbed the diving tower, right to the top. Before she’d known it she’d been at the edge of the diving platform, and older, competent divers had been queuing up behind her waiting for her to dive.
‘Are you going to dive or not?’ a kid had asked scornfully and she’d looked down at the water way below her in horror-and she’d jumped.
And that was what she did now. Crazy or not, she believed what Andreas was telling her. And if she believed him…there didn’t seem to be a choice.
‘For the sake of the soufflé, then,’ she said, forcing her voice to be calm, steady, all the things that she absolutely wasn’t. ‘For no other reason in the world, other than one small pup and a soufflé. Yes, Your Highness, I agree to marry you.’
What did she do after she’d just agreed to marry a prince? She ate soufflé, of course, a feather-light confection of cheeses that melted in her mouth and felt as insubstantial as the night.
Everything felt insubstantial. She felt as if she were floating in some weird bubble. Any minute it’d burst and she’d be catapulted back to her lonely life; the realities of coping with Munwannay by herself.
It’d happen. But it’d happen with enough money for her to make her property viable.
She was trying to stay distant from the man seated at the other side of the table. She’d agreed to marry him, but it was a bargain. A means to the end for both of them.
She’d need to buy in cattle, she thought. Good cattle, the kind she’d always dreamed she could run at stud. She could rebuild the garden. She could get the dry rot out of the floorboards. Maybe she could also think about doing what she’d always wanted-taking in select holidaymakers who wanted a real cattle experience in the outback.
It’d mean it wouldn’t be so lonely.
She hadn’t set Deefer down. The pup had had a very long day and was more than content to lie draped over her knee while she ate her soufflé and the rest of the magnificent dinner Sophia put before her.
And all the time Andreas watched her, his eyes dark and fathomless.
‘This is what you want?’ Andreas said at last as Sophia poured coffee and left them.
‘Do I have a choice?’ she asked, surprised.
‘I can’t coerce you,’ he said. ‘You know that. But I believe it’s a fair bargain.’
‘It is.’ And of course she wanted it. Munwannay was where Adam lay. To be given the ability to stay there, for always…
‘The divorce won’t be possible until after my brother is crowned,’ Andreas reminded her, and that hauled her thoughts away from one tiny grave and back to the man across the table from her. ‘It seems presumptuous to talk about divorce before we’re actually married,’ he said. ‘But I believe it’s better that we have a plan.’
Plans sounded good. What was in her head now was an enormous knot of confusion. If he could somehow unravel it into bits she could understand then she might be able to cope.
‘Tell me where we go from here,’ she asked, and the little dog on her lap looked up at her as if in concern. She hugged him tight-a warm, familiar certainty in the face of internal chaos.
‘We need a royal wedding,’ he said. ‘Not a huge affair-we’ll leave the pomp and pageant for Sebastian, but the people will react well to a proper wedding.’
‘I can hardly wear white,’ she said and his brow snapped down.
‘Of course you can wear white. It’s not as if you’ve carried some other man’s child.’ It was said strongly, angrily-even possessively-and Holly flinched.
‘No,’ she murmured. ‘Only yours.’
‘So it means you can be a true bride if you wish,’ he said. ‘And maybe it’d be for the best if you are. There’s rumours sweeping the country that I seduced you and I abandoned you. That your child died through poverty and neglect. I know,’ he said as her eyes widened in shock. ‘We’ll set the story straight. But your isolation has meant that people will feel sorry for you, and maybe we have to play to that. The fact that you’ve had no other man-as far as we know-makes it possible for the people of my country to believe that you can be a truly worthy bride.’
‘Oh, very good,’ she managed. Only it wasn’t. Here were the echoes of an anger that had been put aside for a little. ‘So if I’d, say, had another boyfriend or six in the interim it would have been much…’
‘Better,’ he finished brusquely. ‘If my people believed you were a trollop, then I might not have to marry you.’
‘You don’t have to marry me.’
‘I do have to marry you,’ he snapped. ‘I have as little choice as you.’
Her coffee suddenly tasted like mud. She set the cup down on the delicately etched china saucer and pushed it away from her.
‘So we have two people forced into a royal marriage of convenience.’
‘That sums it up.’ He sighed and looked across the table at her. ‘Don’t look like that. You were starting to look…better. More cheerful. Like there was an advantage to this somewhere.’
‘There is,’ she said and hugged her dog. ‘Deefer and my farm. I’ll need to figure the quarantine regulations for getting him back into Australia.’
‘The breeder gave me the details but let’s not apply for that just yet,’ he said. ‘Let’s get married first.’
‘So…when?’