‘No trouble at all,’ the maid assured her with a shy smile.
The princess, with her customary sensitivity, had found Carrie a cosy suite of rooms close to her own. Carrie’s balcony overlooked a pretty walled garden with welcoming proportions more like those of the home of a friend, rather than the vast palace grounds.
‘I prefer this wing,’ the princess had told her, and then Carrie had discovered to her astonishment that they had adjoining apartments. ‘Only special people stay here…’ Princess Laura had said.
Carrie was living a lie she had no stomach for. She wanted nothing more than for the truth to be out in the open, but couldn’t say anything while Nico stood like a roadblock in her way.
A discreet tap on the door of the apartment brought Carrie’s pacing to a halt. But when she opened the door there was no one there…Then she spotted the envelope on the floor. Carrie’s eyes widened as she read the handwritten note. It was from Princess Laura, offering her accommodation at the palace for the duration of her stay in Niroli, which the princess hoped would be for longer than a few days…‘We have far too many empty rooms here, Carrie, and I did enjoy your company. Please say you’ll stay…’
As Carrie clutched the sheet of paper to her chest she knew that if she could have chosen anyone in the world to be the grandmother of her baby it would be Princess Laura, but Nico would never allow it. Princess Laura was everything a grandmother should be, but the princess was like a golden chalice hanging just outside her baby’s reach.
This was one of the reasons he had left Niroli as a young man of seventeen, Nico reflected dryly as his mother advanced. Having finished his final lap, he checked his time: fifteen hundred metres freestyle in a few seconds over fifteen minutes. Not quite Olympic standard, but close. Planting his hands on the side of the swimming pool, he sprang out, water glistening over his tanned, athletic body.
Snatching up a towel, he buried his face to hide his smile. His mother was in full dragon mode. Behind a deceptively homely face Princess Laura hid a steely determination. He knew that was probably what had saved her when his father had been killed. Tossing his towel into a laundry basket, Nico was thankful for his mother’s strength of character. She had been broken when she had received the news of his father’s death, but had thrown herself into her charity work with renewed vigour, and that had been her salvation.
Straightening up, he wrapped a clean towel around his waist. Raking his hair into some semblance of order, he drew himself up to his full height…all the better to read the invisible banner his mother was waving above her head. It had a single name on it: Carrie Evans.
Carrie was going to stay how long? Grinding his jaw as his mother stalked back the way she had come, Nico vented his silent rage at the sky. He would not tolerate Carrie inveigling her way into the palace and winning over his mother into the bargain. The only reason he’d kept quiet was because he wasn’t ready to reveal Carrie’s state of health, or the lies she kept telling him. Fortunately, his mother didn’t appear to know about the so-called pregnancy, but to be told by her to back off and stop treating Carrie like an underling was insupportable. And to be assured that she was under his mother’s protection…
Right now he could cheerfully throw Carrie Evans over his shoulder and take her to the airport himself and put her on the first flight out of Niroli…But that wouldn’t solve a thing, because, knowing Carrie as he did, she’d get the first flight back again. For now, he would tolerate her presence. He would wait his moment, and then he would expose her for the liar she was.
‘You must have new clothes, my dear…’
Carrie had learned that Princess Laura didn’t do questions, and that statements were more her line. She couldn’t help smiling as she walked back towards the quaint arched doorway that marked the entrance to her apartment. When she had tried to tell Princess Laura that she didn’t need any clothes the princess had silenced her with nothing more than an arched brow. There was a formal dinner that night, she had said, to which Carrie was invited. Carrie hadn’t needed to be told that a market-stall dress wouldn’t do for that.
And now the princess had worked her magic again…Clapping her hands, she had invited dressmakers hovering just outside the open door to join them. And from that moment silks and satins, chiffons and jewelled net had been draped around Carrie, while pins and scissors had flashed in the light. A fabulous ball gown had been created where she stood.
It had been like a dream…
Maybe if it had been a dream she might have thrown herself with more enthusiasm into the pleasure everyone else was getting from her transformation, Carrie thought, but she knew that she would never belong to this life, and that Nico would never accept her. Hearing a tap on the door, she turned. ‘Come in…’