‘He thought the simplest solution would be if I made some excuse and withdrew the invitation.’
The one thing that Kal could do was read women-with a mother, two stepmothers and more sisters than he could count, he’d had a lot of practise-and he recognised an as if shrug when he saw one.
‘You believe he’s making a fuss about nothing.’
‘He lost his son and daughter-in-law in the most brutal manner and it’s understandable that he’s protective of his granddaughter. She wasn’t even allowed to go to school…’
‘Lucy!’ he snapped. This all round the houses approach was unlike her. And why on earth she should think he’d want to babysit some spoiled celebrity ‘princess’, he couldn’t imagine. But Lucy was not the enemy. On the contrary. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’ve no doubt there’s been something,’ she said, dismissing his apology with an elegant gesture. ‘Everyone in the public eye gets their share of crank mail, but…’ there it was, the but word ‘…I doubt it’s more than some delusional creature getting hot under the collar over rumours that she’s about to announce her engagement to Rupert Devenish.’
‘You’re suggesting that it’s no more than a convenient excuse to apply pressure on you, keep her under the paternal eye?’ He didn’t believe it. The woman wasn’t a child; she had to be in her mid-twenties.
‘Maybe I’m being unjust.’ She sighed. ‘I might believe that the man is obsessively controlling, but I have no doubt that Rose is very precious to him.’
‘And not just him.’ He might suspect the public image of purity and goodness was no more than a well-managed PR exercise, but it was one the media were happy to buy into, at least until they had something more salacious to print on their front pages. ‘You do realise that if anything were to happen to Lady Roseanne Napier while she’s in Ramal Hamrah, the British press would be merciless?’ And he would be the one held to blame.
‘Meanwhile, they’ll happily invade her privacy on a daily basis in the hope of getting intimate pictures of her for no better reason than to boost the circulation of their grubby little rags.’
‘They can only take pictures of what she does,’ he pointed out.
‘So she does nothing.’
‘Nothing?’ He frowned. ‘Really? She really is as pure, as angelic as the media would have us believe?’
‘It’s not something to be sneered at, Kalil.’ Her turn to snap. ‘She’s been in the public eye since she was dubbed the “people’s angel” on her sixteenth birthday. She hasn’t been able to move a finger for the last ten years without someone taking a photograph of her.’
‘Then she has my sympathy.’
‘She doesn’t need your sympathy, Kal. What she’s desperate for is some privacy. Time on her own to sort out where she’s going from here.’
‘I thought you said she was getting married.’
‘I said there were rumours to that effect, fuelled, I have no doubt, by the Duke,’ she added, this time making no attempt to hide her disapproval. ‘There comes a point at which a virginal image stops being charming, special and instead becomes the butt of cruel humour. Marriage, babies will keep the story moving forward and His Grace has lined up an Earl in waiting to fill this bill.’
‘An arranged marriage?’ It was his turn to shrug. ‘Is that so bad?’ In his experience, it beat the ramshackle alternative of love hands down. ‘What does Hanif say?’
‘In his opinion, if there had been a genuine threat the Duke would have made a formal approach through the Foreign Office instead of attempting to bully me into withdrawing my invitation.’
With considerably more success, Kal thought.
‘Even so,’ he replied, ‘it might be wiser to do everyone a favour and tell Lady Rose that the roof has fallen in at your holiday cottage.’
‘In other words, knuckle under, make life easy for ourselves? What about Rose? They give her no peace, Kal.’
‘She’s never appeared to want it,’ he pointed out. Barely a week went by without her appearance on the front pages of the newspapers or some gossip magazine.
‘Would it make any difference if she did?’ She shook her head, not expecting an answer. ‘Will you go with her, Kal? While I don’t believe Rose is in any actual danger, I daren’t risk leaving her without someone to watch her back and if I have to ask your uncle to detail an Emiri guard, she’ll simply be exchanging one prison for another.’
‘Prison?’
‘What would you call it?’ She reached out, took his hand. ‘I’m desperately worried about her. On the surface she’s so serene, but underneath there’s a desperation…’ She shook her head. ‘Distract her, Kal. Amuse her, make her laugh.’
‘Do you want me to protect her or make love to her?’ he asked, with just the slightest edge to his voice. He’d done his best to live down the playboy image that clung to the al-Zaki name, but he would always be the grandson of an exiled playboy prince, the son of a man whose pursuit of beautiful women had kept the gossip writers happily in business for forty years.
Building an international company from the floor up, supporting Princess Lucy’s charities, didn’t make the kind of stories that sold newspapers.
‘Consider this as a diplomatic mission, Kal,’ Lucy replied enigmatically, ‘and a diplomat is a man who manages to give everyone what they want while serving the needs of his own country. You do want to serve your country?’ she asked.
They both knew that he had no country, but clearly Lucy saw this as a way to promote his cause. The restoration of his family to their rightful place. His marriage to the precious daughter of one of the great Ramal Hamrahn families. And, most important of all, to take his dying grandfather home. For that, he would play nursemaid to an entire truckload of aristocratic virgins.
‘Princess,’ he responded with the slightest bow, ‘rest assured that I will do everything in my power to ensure that Lady Roseanne Napier enjoys her visit to Ramal Hamrah.’
‘Thank you, Kal. I can now assure the Duke that, since the Emir’s nephew is to take personal care of her security, he can have no worries about her safety.’
Kal shook his head, smiling despite himself. ‘You won’t, I imagine, be telling him which nephew?’
‘Of course I’ll tell him,’ she replied. ‘How else will he be able to thank your uncle for the service you have rendered him?’
‘You think he’ll be grateful?’
‘Honestly? I think he’ll be chewing rocks, but he’s not about to insult the Emir of Ramal Hamrah by casting doubt on the character of one of his family. Even one whose grandfather tried to start a revolution.’
‘And how do you suppose His Highness will react?’
‘He will have no choice but to ask his wife to pay a courtesy visit on their distinguished visitor,’ she replied. ‘The opportunity to meet your aunt is the best I can do for you, Kal. The rest is up to you.’
‘Lucy…’ He was for a moment lost for words. ‘How can I…’
She simply raised a finger to her lips, then said, ‘Just take care of Rose for me.’
‘How on earth did you swing a week off just before Christmas, Lydie?’
‘Pure charm,’ she replied, easing her shoulder as she handed over her checkout at the end of her shift. That and a cross-her-heart promise to the manager that she’d use the time to think seriously about the management course he’d been nagging her to take for what seemed like forever. He’d been totally supportive of her lookalike career, allowing her to be flexible in her shifts, but he wanted her to start thinking about the future, a real career.
‘Well, remember us poor souls chained to the checkout listening to Jingle Bells for the umpteenth time, while you’re lying in the sun, won’t you?’
‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ she replied, with the grin of a woman with a week in the sun ahead of her.