Invitation to the Prince's Palace (6 page)

Rikardo then told the hog to ‘sit’ just as you would say to a dog. The pig planted her haunches and cast an adoring if rather beady gaze up at him. She got a scratch behind each ear for her trouble. Rikardo took the lead.

They were at the groves before Mel had come to terms with her prince having a pet pig, because, whether he’d said so or not, this animal had been raised to his hand.

Mel would guarantee it. She could
tell
. They arrived also before Mel could recover from the beauty of Rikardo’s twinkling eyes and that hint of a smile.

And what did Mel mean by ‘
her
prince’ anyway? He certainly wasn’t! She might have him for a few more hours, if that, and all of which only by default anyway because she’d been silly enough to think he was a cab driver.

Later, after she’d been returned to Australia, she could write her story and send it in to one of those truth magazines and say she’d spent a few hours with a royal.

She wouldn’t, of course. She wouldn’t violate Rikardo’s privacy in that manner.

Today, in the broad light of Rikardo’s…kingdom, Mel couldn’t imagine how she’d mistaken him for anything other than what he was, whether she’d been overtired and overwrought and under the influence of an allergy medication or not.

It wasn’t until they reached the actual truffle groves that Mel started to register that Rikardo seemed to have somehow withdrawn into himself as they drew closer to his destination. She wasn’t sure how to explain the difference. He still had her arm. The pig still trotted obediently at his side on its lead. Rikardo spoke with each person they passed and his words were pleasant, if brief.

But Rikardo’s gaze had shifted to those rows of oak trees again and again, and somehow Mel
felt
the tension rising within him as they drew nearer.

‘Winnow.’ Rik greeted a spindly man in his fifties and shook his hand. ‘Allow me to introduce my guest, Miss Watson.’

So that was how Rik planned to get around that one. But would that be enough? Because for all the people that mistook Mel for her cousin, plenty more…didn’t.

‘Do you have the results of the soil test, Winnow? Are we infected again with the blight?’

This time Mel didn’t have to try to hear the concern in Rikardo’s tone.

‘The test shows nothing, Prince Rik.’ The man stopped and glanced at Melanie and then back to the prince. ‘I beg your pardon. I mean, Prince Rikardo.’

‘It’s fine, Winnow. We are all friends here.’ Rik dipped his head. ‘Please go on.’

Winnow pulled the cap from his head and twisted it in his hands. ‘The test shows nothing, but last year and the year before…’

‘By the time the tests showed positive, it was too late and we ended up losing the crop.’

‘Yes. Exactly.’ Winnow’s face drew into a grimace. ‘I cannot prove anything. Maybe I am worrying unduly but the soil samples that I pulled this morning do not
look right
to me.’

‘Then we will treat again now.’ Rikardo didn’t hesitate. ‘Yes, it is expensive and a further treatment we hadn’t planned for will add to that expense, but our research and tests show that enough of the treatment will keep the blight at bay. If you have any concern whatever, then I want the treatment repeated.’

The older man blew out a breath. ‘I am sorry for the added expense but my bones tell me—’

‘And we will listen.’ Rikardo clapped the man on the back. ‘Order the treatment. I will draw funds for it.’

From there Rikardo examined the soil samples himself, and took Rufusina into one of the groves to sniff about. Mel didn’t fully understand the process. The older Winnow kept lapsing into the beautiful local
dialect as he spoke with Rikardo.

It was worth not being able to understand, to hear Rikardo respond at times in kind. She felt as though she’d heard him speak to her in the same language but she must have imagined that. In any case it was very lovely, a melodious harmony of tones and textures.

‘We will take breakfast up there, if you are agreeable.’ Rikardo pointed to a spot partway up a nearby mountainside. He’d handed the truffle hog over to Winnow, who was about to put her to good use in the groves before seeing her returned to her home. And with an admonishment to ensure the pig didn’t run off, as she was apparently wont to do on occasion.

But right now…

There was a natural shelving of rock up high where a bench seat and table had been set into it. The view would be amazing. ‘Oh. That would be lovely.’

They began the climb. ‘The truffles. Will they be okay?’

‘I hope so. We’ve had two years of failed harvests. That has resulted in a devastating financial blow to the country’s economy while we searched for a preventative treatment that would work without affecting the quality of the truffles.’ He led her to the bench seat and table.

Opposite was a mountain with large sections covered in ice. Mel sat, and her glance went outward and down, over groves of trees and over the village named after the royal family. ‘There must be so much rich history here. I’m sorry that there have been difficulties with the truffle industry. From Winnow I gather you play a key role in this truffle work?’

‘I run the operations from ground level to the marketing strategies.’

Mel’s gaze shifted to the village below. ‘You must care about the people of Braston very much.’

‘I do, and they are suffering. Not just here and in Ettonbierre village, but right across the country.’ He drew a breath. ‘I had planned that we should eat while I led up to my request but perhaps it is best to simply state it now and then explain.’

Mel’s breath locked in her throat. Rikardo had a request of her? She glanced again at the scene below. Rikardo led a privileged life compared to the very ordinary ones playing out down there. There was a parallel to her life with Nicolette and her cousin’s parents. But there was also a difference.

Rikardo seemed willing to go to any lengths to help those who depended on his family for their livelihoods. ‘What can I do to help you? To help…them?’

‘You are kind, aren’t you?’ It wasn’t a question, and he seemed as concerned by it as he was possibly admiring of it. ‘Even though you don’t know what I may want.’

Mel lowered her gaze. ‘I try to be. What is it that you need?’

‘If it is at all possible, if it’s something you can do without it interfering unreasonably with your life or plans and I can convince you that you will be secure and looked after throughout the process and after it, I would like to ask you to take Nicolette’s place.’ Blue eyes fixed on her face, searched.

‘T-take her place?’ She stuttered the question slightly.

If Mel had peered in front of her in that moment, she felt quite certain she would have seen a hole. A rabbit hole. The kind that Alice in Crazyland could fall down.

Or leap into voluntarily?

‘Just to be clear,’ Mel said carefully, ‘are you asking
me
to be the one to temporarily marry you?’

CHAPTER FOUR

‘
I
KNOW
a marriage proposal must seem quite strange when you expected to be sent back to Australia today.’ Rik searched Melanie’s face.

He felt an interest and curiosity towards her that he struggled to explain.

And an attraction that can only get in the way of your goals.

He couldn’t let that happen. And right now he needed to properly explain his situation to her. That meant swallowing his pride to a degree, something he wasn’t used to doing. Yet as he looked at the carefully calm face, the hands clenched together in the folds of her skirt as she braced herself for whatever might come next, it somehow became a little easier.

At worst she would refuse to help him.

That would be a genuine ‘worst’, Rik. You need her help, otherwise you’ll end up locked into a miserable marriage like that of your parents, or unable to help the people of Braston at all because this plan of yours has failed.

‘May I be plain, Melanie?’

‘I think that would be best.’ She drew an uneven breath. ‘I feel a little out of my depth right now.’

She would feel more so as he explained his situation to her. He had to hope that she would listen with an open mind.

‘The arrangement that I made,’ he said carefully, ‘was to bring your cousin over here and marry her a month later.’

Melanie responded with equal care. ‘You indicated that would be a temporary thing?’

‘Yes.’ He sought the right words. ‘The marriage was to end with a separation after three months and Nicolette would then have been returned to Australia and a quick divorce would have been filed for.’

‘I see.’ She drew a breath and her lovely brown eyes focused on his blue ones and searched. ‘You didn’t intend to let your father know those circumstances until after the marriage, I’m guessing? What did you hope to gain from that plan?’

‘Aside from my brothers, Nicolette, and my aide, no one was to know of the plan.’ He’d intended to outplay his father, to get what he wanted for the people without having to yield up his freedom for it. ‘This plan probably sounds cold to you.’

‘It does rather reject the concept of marriage and for ever.’ Melanie sat forward on the bench seating and turned further to face him. Her knee briefly grazed his leg as she settled herself.

The colour whipped into her cheeks by the cold air around them deepened slightly. That…knowledge of him, that awareness that seemed to zing between her body and his even when both of them had so much else on their minds…

Is something that cannot be allowed to continue, Rik, particularly if she is willing to agree to the business arrangement you’re asking for with her.

‘In my family, many lifelong marriages have been made to form alliances or for business reasons.’ He hesitated, uncertain how to explain his deep aversion to the idea of pursuing such a path. ‘That doesn’t always result in a pleasant relationship.’

Melanie’s gaze searched his. ‘It could be quite difficult for children of such a marriage, too.’

‘It’s not that.’ The words came quickly, full of assurance and belief as though he needed to say it in case he
couldn’t
fully believe it?

Rik had his reasons for his decision. He was tired of butting heads with his father while the king tried to bully him to get whatever he wanted. His father needed to acknowledge that Rik would make his own decisions. That was all. ‘There have been myriad problems in the past couple of years.

‘The first year the truffle crop failed it was difficult.’ People relied on the truffle industry for their survival. ‘Around that same time, my mother, the queen, moved out. That was an unprecedented act from a woman who’d always advocated practical marriages and putting on a good front to the public, no matter what.’

Melanie covered her surprise. ‘That must have caused some complications.’

‘It did. For once my father found himself on the back foot.’

‘And you and your brothers found yourselves without a mother in residence. I’m sorry to hear that. It’s never pleasant when you lose someone, even if they choose to leave.’ A glimpse of something longstanding, deep and painful flashed through her eyes before she seemed to blink it away. ‘I hope that you still get to see her?’

‘I see my mother infrequently when there are royal occasions that bring us all together.’ Would Mel understand if he explained that his contact with his mother hadn’t changed much? That the queen had never spent much time with her sons and what time she had spent had been invested in criticising their clothing, deportment, efforts or choices in life? Better to just leave that alone.

‘My parents died years ago.’ She offered the confidence softly. ‘I went to live with Nicolette and my aunt and uncle after that happened.’

He took one of her hands into his. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

Dominico had informed him of some of these things this morning after the security check the aide ordered on her came through. The invasion of Melanie’s privacy had been necessary, but Rik had refused to read the report, asking only to be told ‘anything that might matter’. Though he had to protect himself, somehow it had still felt wrong.

‘Thank you.’ She gently withdrew her hand, and folded both of them together in her lap.

She went on. ‘You’ve explained about the truffle crops failing, how that’s impacted on your people. One year is a problem but two years in a row—’

‘Brought financial disaster to many of our truffle workers.’ And while Rik pursued every avenue to find a cure for the blight to the truffle crops, his father had denied the depths of the problem because he was absorbed in his anger and frustration over his queen walking out on him.

‘On top of these issues, the tourist industry also waned as other parts of Europe became more popular as vacation destinations. Tourism is Anrai’s field. He has the chain of hotels and the country certainly still gets a tourist market, but when there is so much more to do and see just over the border…’

‘You have to have something either comparable, or totally unique, to pull in a large slice of the tourist market.’ Melanie nodded her head.

‘Exactly. Our country needs to get back on its feet. My brothers and I have fought to get our father to listen to the depth of the problems.’ They’d provided emergency assistance to the people out of their own pockets as best they could but that wasn’t a long-term solution. None of them had endless supplies of funds.

In terms of available cash, nor did the royal estate. It had what it had. History, a beautiful palace and the means to maintain it and maintain a lifestyle comparable to it for the royal family. Their father oversaw all of that, and did not divulge the details of what came and went through the royal coffers. It was through careful investment of a shared inheritance that Rik and his brothers had decent funds of their own.

‘Despite these difficulties you came up with a plan.’ Mel searched Rikardo’s face. Her heart had stopped pounding in the aftermath of his remarkable request, though even now she still couldn’t fully comprehend it, couldn’t really allow herself to consider it as any kind of reality.