The Prince's Bride Read online

  He brimmed over with energy throughout the tree-felling expedition, carrying tools, heaving fallen branches off the tracks and wading into the stream to clear the beginnings of a fair dam. He even volunteered to stay behind and hammer all the waist-high DANGER signposts around the perimeter of the landslip. But Klaus said that he should do his share and no more.

  “Fair enough,” said Jonas, leaping out of the stream and striding off to the vehicles to fetch hammers. He whistled all the way there and back.

  Klaus raised his eyebrows. “Having a good holiday, then?”

  “The best,” said Jonas with enthusiasm.

  Back at the Centre he called Hope. “Hi. I’m back. How are you doing?”

  “Feeling new minted, to be honest.”

  Jonas felt as if his face was one huge smile. “Me too.”

  She gave a little gasp.

  If he closed his eyes he could see her expression. Witch-green eyes wide with surprise. Face soft. Lips parted. Desire hit him so hard that for a moment he couldn’t speak. He heard her swallow and knew she was feeling the same. Speak? He could barely breathe for a moment.

  Hope pulled herself together before he did. “I’ve got to come and collect the car.”

  He took control of his breathing. “I’ll bring it over.”

  “You’re not on the insurance policy.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m insured to drive anything but a tank.”

  But she was still uneasy. “It’s my responsibility.”

  “OK. I’ll come and collect you and bring you back here, then.”

  She demurred. Someone ran a taxi service in the village. The Antons had left her his number as a precaution. She could get a cab.

  He laughed aloud. “No need. I’m due a lunch break after a morning’s manual labour.”

  When consulted, Klaus agreed. “And you can go shopping while you’re at it. The energy bars are down to nothing after those boys got at them. Better change first though.”

  Jonas was impatient to get going. “Why?”

  The Chief Ranger was brutal. “You smell of rotting undergrowth and you look like a tramp.”

  Jonas laughed and followed his advice.

  Hope was waiting. Before he had cut the engine she was out of the kitchen door and running towards him. He jumped out of the vehicle, opened his arms and swept her off her feet. She laughed as he swung her round crazily. And then she stopped laughing and they kissed for a long time.

  When at last he let her go they stood there, smiling into each other’s eyes.

  “Now that’s what I call a homecoming. I could get used to this.”

  “Had a hard day at the office, dear?” she teased.

  “I should say so. Chopping and sawing and putting up notices.”

  “I’m impressed.” She meant it.

  “I could show you my bruises,” he offered hopefully.

  Hope shook her head, her whole body alight with their shared laughter. “Good try but the day isn’t over yet. Maybe after I’ve repossessed the Antons’ car and Moby has had his exercise.”

  The days that followed fell into a pattern. Jonas would leave early on volunteer Ranger duties. Hope linked up with Poppy for the morning ritual dog game, did necessary chores and then followed him to the Centre later. They spent the afternoons in the forest, or walking on the lower slopes of the mountains, skirting farms and vineyards, accompanied by an ecstatic Moby. In the evening, Jonas came home to her. They held hands a lot.

  It felt as if they were in a magic bubble, he thought. He’d never felt so happy, so right. OK, there were things he hadn’t told her yet. But these days were special. There would be plenty of time to let the outside world in later.

  She cooked for him, disastrously, when she misread the recipe and added a tablespoonful of chilli powder to a casserole requiring a teaspoonful. Jonas rescued the dish by removing a quarter of the mixture and adding vast amounts of vegetables to that quarter. He took over the cooking.

  In the tree-lopping, he tore a great triangle out of the sleeve of one of his shirts. Hope mended it with needle and thread from her travelling mending kit. He surveyed the neat, tiny stitches with astonishment.

  “That’s amazing.”

  She smiled, pleased. “When you travel light, a good mending kit is the best luxury.”

  She told him about her travels, learning skills, learning languages, always moving on. He told her about his time as a student, both in England and the States, learning stuff he’d never expected to.

  “My room-mate was a musician. It was a crash course in music, just living in the same space. He took everything seriously from monks singing plain chant to country.”

  “Sounds nice.” She seemed almost wistful.

  He flicked up an eyebrow. “No room-mates?”

  “Not so much. Of course, accommodation often came with the job. Anyway, I liked my own space. I’d lived in a village where everyone knew everyone else’s business all my life. It was great not to feel crowded.”

  That worried him. “Are you feeling crowded now, then?”

  “In all this forest?” She danced round him, like Moby. “Never.”

  Jonas hugged her, relieved. Mostly relieved.

  Hope had enchanted him from the moment he set eyes on her. Now he found that the more he knew her, the deeper he was falling in love. Falling in love like this had consequences. So his first instincts had been right. But what about Hope’s instincts?

  Sometimes he was certain she felt the same. But sometimes he just didn’t know.

  Carlo called him. Would he come back to the office, just for a day, well, a single meeting? The Very Difficult Client was passing through Liburno again and he really wanted to talk to Jonas.

  Jonas agreed. Of course he did. But he felt the cold breath of the outside world on the back of his neck. Time was running out.

  “Come with me,” he urged Hope.

  She knew he was a lawyer, he reasoned. She could absorb the additional trivia of royalty while talking to his lawyer brothers. It was the ideal transition.

  Only Hope wouldn’t co-operate. “What about Moby?”

  “We’ll leave him with Marko again.”

  “Last time we had no choice. It was an emergency. This would be just so I could jaunt off to the city.”

  “So?”

  She nearly lost her temper. “So this is my job. I’m paid to look after Moby. It’s only for four weeks, for heaven’s sake. You can wait another few days to show me the sights of Liburno.”

  And that was another, stronger waft of the outside world. Not so much a breath as a full-on gale.

  “But I want you with me,” he insisted.

  They argued.

  She really did lose her temper then and slammed the kitchen door after him when he left.

  Moby crept out from under the kitchen table when Jonas had gone. He looked so miserable that Hope sank down onto the tiled floor and put her arms round him. She pulled his ears gently, the way he liked, and he pushed his nose under her arm, with little grumbling noises of distress.

  “Oh, Moby,” she said. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t leave you, no matter what the silly man said.”

  But when she got up and tried to start clearing up the breakfast things, he followed her, shoving his whole head against her and looking at her worriedly until she started to pet him again. She hadn’t seen him so upset since he went looking for Poppy in the forest. His whiskery eyebrows made him look worried.

  “Maybe you don’t like loud voices,” she said, rubbing the soft velvety cap at the top of his head. “Nor do I.”

  She remembered the shouting at home those last few months before her father was arrested. He’d been like Jonas was this morning: wilful, stubborn, determined to have his own way, utterly refusing to acknowledge that anybody had a higher duty than to himself and his interests. She’d got used to it from her father, in those terrible months, but it had repelled her, almost frightened her, to see it in someone else. Especially Jon
as. He’d always seemed so reasonable until then.

  Maybe she didn’t know him as well as she thought she did.

  Or maybe it had something to do with how soon she would be leaving. She was increasingly aware of how short a time they had left. Jonas must be the same. Maybe he was worried that she’d try to cling past her sell-by date. Hope winced at the thought.

  There had been a guy like that in Australia – happy enough to swim and surf with her while the summer lasted but seriously worried when she made no plans to move on at the end of the season. “We have to talk,” he’d said as they closed up the bar one night. “You’re a great girl, Hope. But I travel alone.”

  “So do I,” she’d said, smartly, and booked her flight out the next day.

  She hadn’t been expecting their summer fling to last any longer than he had, but it had been a nasty slap in the face all the same. Even half a thought that Jonas might be contemplating something similar made her feel sick.

  Jonas drove recklessly. He made the short journey to the city in record time and was in the office, showered, shaved, hair newly cut and in his lawyer suiting, early enough to read the relevant briefing papers twice over. The Client was in a mood, so it was just as well.

  The meeting went on very late. Jonas texted Hope to warn her. She didn’t reply.

  “Thank you for doing this,” said Carlo. “I know it was a real pain. How is your – er –?”

  “My er is not so good, just at this moment.”

  “Then I’m even more sorry,” said Carlo, with genuine concern. “Look, why don’t you bring her to the Vintage Ball as consolation for missing your evening tonight?”

  Jonas snorted. “Because she’d loathe it. She says she hates dances and she’s never wearing a ball gown again.” He remembered a little too clearly the shake in her voice as she told him.

  Carlo blinked, clearly recognizing a direct quote. He flung up his hands. “Right. Wouldn’t work then. Sorry. I’ll get back in my box.”

  There was still no text from Hope. So Jonas went back to his Liburno apartment. He wouldn’t have got to the Antons’ villa before midnight, anyway, he reasoned. But it was really Hope’s silence that kept him in the city.

  He wandered round his own rooms and they felt strange. He had always liked living alone. It was partly why he had always refused an apartment in the castle, ever since he came of age. But now he felt – not lonely exactly. But as if something important was missing.

  Not a peaceful night.

  The next morning he received a sober text from Hope: Sorry I lost my rag.

  He replied: Me too.

  And, as simply as that, what had been missing came back.

  Jonas couldn’t believe it. He brewed coffee and tried to make sense of it. How could he possibly miss Hope in a place she’d never even been to?

  And then he realized: he missed not feeling at ease with her. He had got used to sharing his thoughts with her; teasing her and being teased; laughing at the same things; and arguing when she brought a completely new perspective to something he thought he already knew inside out.

  Yet that stiff little text message was not what he wanted. Looking at it logically, it could have been from a stranger. A wisp of the former loneliness touched him again.

  “NO,” he almost shouted.

  They belonged together. He knew it, bone-deep. He’d known it for ages. It had crystallized when they worked as a team to rescue the boy in the forest. But he’d known before that, really. And the feeling of rightness had just grown and grown over the last weeks.

  He’d never felt anything like that before. But hadn’t Jack said something like that when he got together with Celina? It had seemed unreal to Jonas back then. Now he thought maybe he could understand it.

  He wondered whether Hope knew how he felt. Whether she felt the same. He thought she did but he didn’t understand their fight this morning. It seemed just to have blown up out of nowhere.

  He tried to call her. But she wasn’t picking up. Maybe she was driving. Or taking Moby for his walk out of reception range. Frustrated, he bashed out a text.

  Taking you out for dinner. Let’s drop off Moby on Marko again. We need to talk.

  It wasn’t perfect. But at least it signalled that this was important.

  It wasn’t until he was in the car, heading back for the villa, that Jonas remembered all the things he hadn’t told her yet. It sent a chill through him.

  How on earth had he let it go on so long? He’d made that one decision, on the day they met, not to introduce himself as Prince Jonas of San Michele and after that he’d just taken one day at a time. He’d enjoyed being plain Volunteer Ranger Reval. He’d even started to think like plain Ranger Reval, for heaven’s sake.

  Driving back from Liburno, he faced it. For the last three weeks he’d been living in a soap bubble. And all that time he’d been storing up a load of stuff to explain and never realized it.

  Well, it was too late to change that now. He’d just have to do the best he could. And hope she’d understand.

  But somehow, as soon as they were together all his plans fell apart. In fact, they both seemed to feel they were in uncharted territory tonight.

  Maybe because he’d invited her out, she had dressed up a little. Oh, it was nothing grand, just different from what he was used to from Hope. She had put up her hair, so that little tendrils caressed her neck distractingly. And she was wearing a jaunty white blazer and a silky scarf he hadn’t seen before. The peacock colours made her eyes look very green. More witchy than woodland, he thought uneasily. And he had never seen her wear make-up before.

  He’d thought it would be a good idea to free them up from the need to cook so they could talk. But even before they reached the restaurant, it wasn’t working.

  Hope seemed determined to make bright conversation. The evening began to develop all the awkwardness of a first date. She even handed Moby over to Marko with all the careful courtesy of a woman meeting the boyfriend’s friends and family for the first time. Jonas began to feel as if he were drowning.

  He kept trying to find an opening for everything he needed to say. But every time he started the subject, she deflected the conversation on to Moby, Poppy, previous employers who had amused her or where she might move on to next in her attempt to see the whole world. It was as if they’d become strangers overnight, he thought, appalled.

  At last he put down his knife and fork and said, “Stop. Just stop. Please.”

  She went blank. “What?”

  “I need to talk to you. Properly.”

  She flinched. “Can’t we just have a nice meal and chat about nothing much? I’ll be gone soon.” She sounded almost desperate.

  Jonas had reached his now-or-never point. “Exactly. I don’t want you to go.” Not very romantic, he noticed in passing, but it would have to do for the moment. “But first I have to tell you –”

  But Hope had sat bolt upright, an expression of outrage on her face. “Is that why you’ve been sulking all evening?”

  It was so unfair, that he was moved to protest. “I don’t sulk. I’ve just got a lot on my mind –”

  But she interrupted. “That’s exactly what my father used to say.” All the social manners fell away. She leaned forward, eyes blazing. “Whenever he didn’t get his own way. Whenever anyone challenged him. Even when the police came along with a cast-iron case that he’d been misleading investors for years and the lawyers told him to plead guilty. He just said, ‘They misunderstood. I had a lot on my mind.’” The mimicry was savage.

  Jonas stared, stunned.

  “I hate it.” She was shaking her head, so that the pins that had skewered her beautiful hair into place cascaded down her shoulders. One fell onto her trout with almonds. She didn’t notice. “The lies! The evasions! The ghastly refusal to accept responsibility!”

  He couldn’t entirely deny that, he thought ruefully. He said, “I’m trying to be responsible now.”

  “I don’t want you to go?”<
br />
  It was Jonas’s turn to wince. He’d known that was a mistake as soon as he said it, after all. “I only meant that I need to clear up some things before I ask you ...”

  But she wasn’t listening. “I won’t tolerate it. Never again. Not from anyone else. Not from you.”

  Jonas looked at Hope’s glittering eyes and realized with shock that she was on the point of tears. A real storm of tears, too.

  Hurriedly he fished out one of the laundered handkerchiefs that he’d stuffed into his pocket in the apartment and passed it across the table to her. She blotted her face, then blew her nose defiantly and sank back against the settle.

  There was a long silence.

  She closed her eyes. “I’m – sorry. I don’t think that was about you.”

  “I know.”

  He reached across the table to take her hand but she shot backwards. Not looking at him, she mopped her eyes some more and sipped water.

  Jonas wanted desperately to take her into his arms. She looked so unhappy – spiky, exhausted and untouchable. His heart bled for her. But there wasn’t one thing he could do. This was her private struggle. Her whole body was shouting it.

  She drank more water, clearly deep in unhappy memories.

  He waited.

  “I suppose I’ve been bottling all that up for years,” she said at last in a small voice. “I was so angry with him. Only he was so bewildered. And then he got ill.” Her voice ran out. Her eyes filled again. “It would have been like kicking an old dog who couldn’t move,” she said bleakly. She swallowed.

  Jonas took a policy decision. He didn’t think either of them was going to eat any more and whatever happened next, he was sure it needed to take place on their own. He signalled for the bill.

  “Let’s go.”

  She didn’t say anything in the car. But when they got back to the villa she said, “Could we walk a little?”

  Jonas nodded.

  The moon was nearly full and very bright. He took her hand and she squeezed his fingers in silent acknowledgement. They walked down the lane a little and stood on the old bridge over the river, looking across the fold of valley and hills where the vines were invisible in the night. She shivered.