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СКАЧАТЬ not just Nick, then?’ Rose demanded.

      ‘He’s an unknown,’ Erhard said flatly. ‘I didn’t know him myself until a week ago. He’s been to the country as a tourist, but nothing else. The people will never accept him.’

      ‘Maybe I could support Rose’s claim without marriage,’ Nick heard himself say, albeit reluctantly. There was a crazy voice in the back of his head saying ‘take her and run’. He suppressed it with an effort. He had to be sensible. ‘As someone in line myself, even if further away and the child of a royal daughter and not a son, I can surely add weight to Rose’s position?’

      ‘So can the President of our Council,’ Erhard said bluntly. ‘He supports Julianna. Julianna is a citizen of Alp de Montez, and she’s married to another citizen. Rose was a people’s favourite in the past. The press loved her, portraying her as a natural, friendly kid who always had a stray animal attached. But that knowledge of Rose has faded, and her father’s vitriolic denunciation of her stands in her way. It will take a huge factor to swing the thing in Rose’s favour. The only thing that will do it is your marriage.’

      ‘And you?’ Nick said, turning to Rose, puzzled. There was so much about this woman he didn’t understand. ‘You’d seriously consider marriage to gain a throne?’

      She froze at that. She’d been smiling, but now her face stilled.

      ‘Whoa,’ she said. ‘Let’s not paint me a gold-digger.’

      ‘I never said…’

      ‘Yes, you did,’ she said bluntly. ‘So let’s get things clear. Erhard’s letter made me think. I’m not the least bit interested in playing the Crown Princess—-that was always Julianna’s preferred option—but there’s not so many times in your life that you’re presented with an option that just might be for the greater good.’

      Then she smiled up at Walter, who was clearing the plates from the main course. ‘Do your puddings match your mains?’

      ‘They certainly do, miss,’ Walter said, and he beamed.

      ‘I’d like something rich and sticky.’

      ‘I believe we can accommodate that, miss.’ Walter was smiling down at her like an avuncular genie. It was as if she had him mesmerised. Well, why not? Nick thought. He was feeling pretty mesmerised himself.

      ‘Pudding for you, too?’ Walter said, beaming still, and Nick nodded before thinking about it.

      What was he doing? He seldom had pudding. He had to get his mind back into gear. Now.

      ‘I don’t know the first thing about you,’ he said weakly to Rose as Walter headed off to fetch puddings for all. ‘How can we think about marriage?’

      ‘Are you worried?’ she asked. ‘I’m not an axe murderer. Nor a husband beater. Are you?’

      He ignored the question. ‘Erhard says you’re widowed.’

      ‘Yes,’ she said in a voice that suddenly said ‘don’t go there’.

      ‘There’s no impediment to marriage,’ Erhard said, stepping into the breach.

      ‘Except that I don’t much want to be married,’ he said. Or he didn’t think he did. He hadn’t thought he did. There seemed to be two strands of thought here. The strand that he’d had before meeting Rose, and the post-Rose strand. Actually the ‘post-Rose’ was a really convoluted knot.

      ‘Neither do I,’ said Rose. ‘Isn’t that lucky? We wouldn’t need to stay married, would we, Erhard?’

      ‘Of course not,’ Erhard said. ‘This isn’t a happy-ever-after scenario I’m demanding of you. The idea is that you marry almost immediately. I’ll put the necessary paperwork in train, and then we present you to Alp de Montez as the Jacques-Julianna alternative. I’ve had private words with the committee. Nick, you stay in Alp de Montez for a few weeks, until things seem settled. Maybe a month. Then you use the excuse that you don’t want to give up your profession and return to London. Rose then stays in Alp de Montez until we can get things in train to get a decent government sorted. When affairs are under control, you can quietly divorce.’

      ‘You’d depend on Rose to get the affairs under control?’

      ‘You’re the international lawyer,’ Erhard said shrewdly. ‘I’m willing to wager you know exactly what can be done.’

      He did. He’d been thinking about it all week. The chance to make a difference….

      He’d never belonged. His mother, Zia, had left Alp de Montez as a troubled teenager. She’d ended up in Australia, addicted to drugs, pregnant with him. His childhood until he was eight had been a struggle to survive, lurching from fleeting intervals living with his increasingly erratic mother, to extended periods in a long string of foster homes.

      Then Ruby had found him. She’d plucked him off the streets of Sydney, and from then on his base had been with Ruby and her tribe of foster sons. Ruby had given him security, but still he felt rootless.

      At some really basic level Erhard’s proposition left him breathless. What had Rose said? An option ‘for the greater good’. It just might be the chance to make a difference.

      He thought back to the frightened girl who’d been his mother. She’d want this. He knew she would. She’d been desperately homesick for Alp de Montez but there was no way her increasingly disgusted family would have funded her to go home.

      He could go home on her behalf now. With this woman by his side.

      Marriage. It wasn’t such a frightening thought if it was done for the right reasons. But were Rose’s reasons right? How could a woman like this want to marry a complete stranger?

      She was his cousin.

      No. She wasn’t even that, he thought. She was the product of his aunt-by-marriage’s affair with someone they knew nothing of.

      It didn’t matter. She was gorgeous.

      ‘What about Julianna?’ he asked, looking for catches. ‘You can’t convince her to do the right thing?’

      ‘Julianna won’t speak to me,’ Erhard said.

      ‘But you?’ he asked Rose. ‘You’re her sister.’

      ‘She doesn’t speak to me either,’ Rose said sadly. ‘I know it’s dumb, but there it is.’

      ‘So this really is a serious proposition.’

      ‘It seems like it.’ She smiled ruefully into her empty wine-glass. ‘You know, I swore I’d never marry again.’

      ‘That’d be a waste.’

      ‘Says you, who’s never married at all,’ she retorted, suddenly sounding angry.

      ‘I’m sorry.’ But his thoughts were elsewhere. ‘I wouldn’t need to stay in Alp de Montez,’ he said slowly.

      ‘You would for a few weeks,’ Erhard said. ‘Could you use a holiday?’

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