“What on earth did you find to talk about?”
“It was some of the stuff your grandpa told me, about your royal ancestors.”
“But you told me you couldn't remember that.”
“I can't when I'm sober, but last night I wasn't sober.”
“So what was it?”
Mike looked rueful. “Sorry Dot, I'm sober again now.”
“Oh well,” Dottie sighed, “she was bound to try to find out if I'm an impostor. So now she knows that I'm the real thing. Not that it matters. They'll find someone else soon, and then you and I can go home and get married.”
She was eager for their departure. There was something about this place that made her behave unlike herself. It wasn't Dottie who'd insisted on kissing Randolph. Nor was it Dottie who'd teased him with her half-clad body, determined to get a response from him and bitterly satisfied when she received one. Dottie would never behave like that because she loved Mike, and it was love that mattered, not lust.
Lust. She considered it, trying to see it in relation to herself. All right, she admitted at last. She fancied Randolph. Fancied him like mad, if the truth be told. But that wasn't real life.
She didn't see him for a couple of days. He'd left in the early hours after the ball and gone to an estate he had nearby. She left a message for him, and he came to her as soon as he returned.
“You should have found another heir by now,” she said quietly.
“But I haven't. There's only you.”
“But I have to go back to England.”
“Are you going to abandon us?” Randolph demanded fiercely. “You have a short memory if you can forget how the people of this country have welcomed you. You know what our fate will be if you desert us.”
“They can put you back on the throne,” she said desperately. “It should be you by rights. I'm all wrong. You've said so often enough, and it's true.”
“Yes, it is, but it doesn't matter. I'm illegitimate and therefore barred from the throne.”
“Well, they can have a what d'you call it? Referee-”
“Referendum.”
“Referendum. People can vote for you to be king and then you can marry Sophie and everything will be all right.” She hadn't meant to add that last bit.
“If I tried to claim the throne, even with the consent of parliament and the people, Harold would use that as an excuse to start a war. And if I stand back and let him become king, he'll plunder the country and crush its people. The only person who can stop that is you.”
“And where does Mike come in your grand scheme of things?”
“He doesn't. You can't marry him. Surely you've realized that?”
“You mean I should just dump him? Oh, lovely. Sorry Mike, it's been nice knowing you but something better has turned up. A nice opinion of me you have! Remember how it felt to lose Sophie?”
The bleak, guarded look that she dreaded appeared in Randolph's eyes. “Why don't we go and talk to Mike?” he asked smoothly. “He's surely entitled to express an opinion.”
“I see your game. You'll give him the fancy speech you've just given me, and then you think he'll make the grand sacrifice.”
“I admit I don't associate him with grand sacrifices. He impresses me as a very down-to-earth young man, doing everything for prosaic reasons.”
“Right! And he'll tell you to jump in the lake.”
“I'm trembling.”
“And then I'll tell you to jump in the lake, and since I'm the crown princess you'll have to do it.”
“At Her Royal Highness's command I'll jump in any lake you care to name. Would you like me to wear a lead weight about my neck?”
“Don't be funny with me, buster!”
As they talked Randolph had contrived to urge her out of the door that led to one of the hidden corridors. Dottie followed him, furiously angry. At last she found herself on a little landing, outside a nondescript door. Randolph took a key and unlocked it, ushering her forward. She strode into the room, ready to confront Mike, but the sight that met her eyes drove everything else out of her mind.
Stretched out on the grandiose bed, her eyes closed in pleasure, lay a naked young woman. The rest of her face was obscured by the back of Mike's head. He was also naked, and far too occupied with what he was doing to realize that his fiancée had entered the room. Only drastic action was going to get through to him, so Dottie took it, raising her hand high above her head and bringing it down hard on his vigorously working rump.
His yell of surprise and outrage hit the ceiling. Wriggling away to escape, he contrived to fall right off the bed, landing in an undignified heap at her feet, and revealing the identity of his companion, who screamed as she saw Dottie's doom-laden face.
“You've got a nerve, Bren,” Dottie told her. “But I'll come to you later, when I've thumped him to kingdom come and back.”
“Now, Dot,” Mike said from the floor where he was haplessly trying to cover himself and squirm away from her at the same time. “Don't lose your sense of proportion.”
“I don't have one,” she growled. “As you're about to discover. Oh, get up for pity's sake!”
He did so, his hands clutched protectively in front of him, his eyes fixed warily on Dottie. Randolph had been discreetly locating Brenda's robe and helping her put it on. Mike's clothes were scattered about the room, suggesting some urgency in their removal, which did nothing to improve Dottie's temper.
“What are you doing here anyway?” she demanded of Brenda.
“I won a holiday,” Brenda said sullenly.
“Oh really!” Dottie turned her fire on Randolph. “Courtesy of the Ellurian Tourist Authority, I suppose? You weren't offered a honeymoon as well, by any chance?”
“None of your business!”
“Oh yes it is,” Dottie said wrathfully. “You forget you're talking to the queen.”
“Not quite yet-” Randolph murmured.
“You hush!” she told him firmly. “You've told me often enough about my power. Well, how's this for power?” She swung back to the other two. “I could have both of you arrested, locked up and nobody would ever hear of you again.”
Brenda gave a little squeak, and Mike edged closer to her. “She can't do it, love,” he muttered. “We haven't broken the law.”
“Think treason,” Dottie suggested dangerously. “Think firing squad.”
“Her Royal Highness is naturally disturbed by this breach of protocol,” Randolph said smoothly, “and she desires only to find a way out of the unfortunate situation.”
“A firing squad,” Dottie said stubbornly.
“Aw, c'mon Dot,” Mike said placatingly. “You'd finished with me anyhow. You just hadn't gotten around to telling me yet.”
Before she could answer Randolph drew her aside. “Perhaps you shouldn't blame him too much,” he murmured. “After all, you too have permitted yourself-shall we say the odd moment of dalliance?”
She met his eyes and saw in them something that made her gaze fall. He was reminding her of scurrying excitements that he could cause in her, thrills that she'd never known with Mike. They were starting again, reviving the memory of the kiss that had made her feel so guilty. But she'd fled temptation, she remembered. Mike had embraced it full-on.
“That's different,” she muttered. “I didn't go in for…what they were doing.”
“Are you sure it might not have happened, if the circumstances had been right?”
“Quite sure.”
His eyes called her a liar. She whirled away from him and confronted Mike, who'd hastily resumed his clothes, and with them, some of his confidence.
“What do you mean by saying I'd finished with you?”
“You've belonged here from the start. And you knew it really. What would you do in Wenford after this? Besides,” he indicated Randolph who was talking kindly to Brenda, and dropped his voice to say, “you've gotta marry him.”
“I-he-what are you talking about? I'm marrying you. At least, I was before you turned out to be a devious, treacherous, unfaithful…”