The Virgin's Proposition. Anne McAllister

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СКАЧАТЬ cave painting all day. It got her out of the flat. And it was public service—something princesses did.

      She loved children, and spending a few hours with ones whose lives were often severely limited seemed like time well-spent. But what had started out as a distraction and a good deed quickly turned into the time she looked forward to most each week.

      At the clinic she wasn’t a princess. The children had no idea who she was. And when she came to see them it wasn’t a duty. It was a joy. She was simply Anny—their friend.

      She played catch with Paul and video games with Madeleine and Charles. She watched football with Philippe and Gabriel and sewed tiny dolls’ clothes with Marie-Claire. She talked movies and movie stars with eager starry-eyed Elise and argued—about everything—with “cranky Franck,” the resident fifteen-year-old cynic who challenged her at every turn. She looked forward to it.

      “I’m always at the clinic until five at least,” she’d protested to her father this morning. “Gerard can meet me there.”

      “Gerard will not visit hospitals.”

      “It’s a clinic,” Anny protested.

      “Even so. He will not,” her father said firmly, but there was a sympathetic note in his voice. “You know that. Not since Ofelia…”

      He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to.

      Ofelia was Gerard’s wife.

      Had been Gerard’s wife, Anny had corrected herself. Until her death four years ago. Now beautiful, charming, elegant Ofelia was the woman Anny was supposed to replace.

      “Of course,” she’d said quietly. “I forgot.”

      “We must understand,” her father said gently. “It is hard for him, Adriana.”

      “I do understand.”

      She understood that there was every likelihood she’d never replace Ofelia in Gerard’s affections. She only knew she was supposed to try. And that was at least part of the reason she was feeling apprehensive.

      “He’ll meet you in the lobby at five. You will have an early dinner and discuss,” her father went on. “Then he must leave for Paris. He has a flight in the morning to Montreal. Business meetings.”

      Gerard was a prince, yes, but he owned a multinational corporation—several of them, in fact—on the side.

      “What does he want to discuss?” Anny asked.

      “I’m sure he will tell you tonight,” her father said. “You mustn’t keep him waiting, my dear.”

      “No.”

      She hadn’t kept him waiting. It was Gerard who wasn’t here.

      Now Anny did tap her foot. Just once. Well, maybe twice. And she shot another surreptitious glance at her watch, while in her head her father’s voice murmured, “Princesses are not impatient.”

      Maybe not, but it was already almost quarter til six. She could have stayed at the clinic and finished her argument with Franck about the relative merits of realism in television action hero series after all.

      Instead, when she’d had to leave early, he’d accused her of “running away.”

      “I am not ‘running away’!” Anny told him. “I have to meet my fiancé this afternoon.”

      “Fiancé?” Franck had frowned at her from beneath his mop of untidy brown hair. “You’re getting married? When?”

      “In a year. Maybe two. I’m not sure.” Sometime in the foreseeable future no doubt. Gerard needed an heir and he wasn’t prepared to wait forever.

      He had agreed to wait until she had finished her dissertation. Barring disaster, that would be sometime next year. Not long.

      Not long enough.

      She shoved the thought away. It wasn’t as if Gerard was some horrible ogre her father was forcing her to marry. Well, yes, he’d arranged it, but there was nothing wrong with Gerard. He was kind, he was thoughtful. He was a prince—in more than one sense of the word.

      It was just—Anny shook off her uneasiness and reminded herself that she was simply relieved he understood that finishing her dissertation was important to her and that he hadn’t minded waiting until she had finished.

      Apparently Franck did mind. He scowled, his dark eyes narrowed on her. “A year? Two? Years? What on earth are you waiting for?”

      His question jolted her. She stared at him. “What do you mean?”

      He flung out a hand, a sweeping gesture that took in the four walls, the clean but spartan clinic room, his own paralyzed legs. He stared at her, then at them, then his gaze lifted again to bore into hers.

      “You never know what’s going to happen, do you?” he demanded.

      He had been playing soccer—going up to head a ball at the same time another boy had done the same. The next day the other boy’s head was a little sore. Franck was paralyzed from the waist down. He had a bit of tingling now and then, but he hadn’t walked in nearly three years.

      “You shouldn’t wait,” he said firmly. His eyes never left hers.

      It was the sort of pronouncement Franck was inclined to make, an edict handed down from on high, one designed to get her to argue with him.

      That was what they did: argued. Not just about action heroes. About soccer teams. The immutable laws of science. The best desserts. In short, everything.

      It was his recreation, one of the nurses had said to Anny back in January, and she’d only been marginally joking.

      “So what are you saying? That you think I should run off and elope?” Anny had challenged him with a smile.

      But Franck’s eyes didn’t light with the challenge of battle the way they usually did. They glittered, but it was a fierce glitter as he shook his head. “I just don’t see why you’re waiting.”

      “A year’s not long,” Anny protested. “Even two. I have to finish my doctorate. And when we do set a date there will be lots to do. Preparations.” Protocol. Tradition. She didn’t explain about royal weddings. Ordinary everyday weddings were demanding enough.

      “Stuff you’d rather do?” Franck asked.

      “That’s not the point.”

      “Of course it is. ’Cause if it isn’t, you shouldn’t waste time. You should do what you want to do!”

      “People can’t always do what they want to do, Franck,” she said gently.

      He snorted. “Tell me about it!” he said bitterly. “I wouldn’t be locked up in here if I didn’t have to be!”

      Anny felt instantly guilty for her prim preachiness. “I know that.”

      Franck’s СКАЧАТЬ