Marrying Up (37 page)

‘Thank you, Hortense. You can go now.’

Astrid dawdled on her way down the great oak main staircase of the castle. At the foot of it she paused, looking up, as if
for the first time, at the vast ceiling frescoed with the de Sedona crest. Three big keys; they suddenly looked very jail-like
to the Queen.

Was there to be no escape for Max?

The pretty dark-haired girl in the white dress turned on her long, slim, sheer-stockinged legs and waved a demure, white-gloved
hand at the people who had come to see her. ‘Scrub up well, you do, for a commoner,’ Barney had giggled as he looked her over
before departure. He was in the crowd now, Alexa knew, and willing her on in her moment of triumph. The triumph he had worked
so tirelessly to create. He was her fairy godfather – in more ways than one.

She looked the part, Max found himself thinking as Alexa bestowed dazzling smiles in every direction. She looked, in fact,
perfect. Just the right amount of make-up, the right clothes, exactly the right note struck between girlish freshness and
womanly sophistication. The crowd were waving and cheering. The press were fascinated; crouching, shooting, exclaiming superlatives.
And his family, standing around him at the top of the stairs, were obviously charmed. The Queen had still not arrived, admittedly,
but his father was smiling and Giacomo was whistling under his breath.

Max found that he no longer felt angry towards Alexa. He felt weary and depressed. Her motives were so obvious, it was actually
rather hard to hate her. He still had no clear idea of how she had got here, but that there had been subterfuge of some sort
he had no doubt. And yet, what difference did it make? She was, after all, only doing what socially ambitious women had done
for years, and with possibly more ingenuity than most. Why didn’t he just go with the flow and marry her? If he didn’t, some
other ghastly woman would undoubtedly be produced.

The real problem wasn’t even her fault. The issue wasn’t that he had been manipulated; it was that he had been born royal
in the first place. He would never be free to marry who he wanted, to work as he wanted, and it had been madness to imagine
otherwise. Never, it seemed to Max, had he felt quite so lonely, quite so alienated and quite so out on a limb as now.

He saw how utterly at home Alexa looked as she walked gracefully up the stairs towards them. She exuded the kind of happy,
relaxed confidence he personally had never come close to. She turned once more and waved at the crowd, her lithe figure twisting,
her dark hair swinging out slightly with the movement. He saw the colour in her cheeks and the sparkle in her eye; that she
was loving every minute was obvious. She bowed and waved to the snapping, exclaiming press corps and to the exultant crowd.

Beside Maxim, Giacomo leant forward. ‘Talk about milking it,’ he muttered. ‘Jesus, she’s going to make a bloody speech.’

Straightening up again, Alexa placed one hand to her breast and shook her head, apparently overwhelmed. ‘Thank you, everyone,
so much,’ she said in a light, yet clear voice. ‘This has been the most wonderful welcome. A dream come true. I feel,’ she
said, in an ardent, breathy voice, ‘just like a fairy princess.’

Even the King started at this. Giacomo gasped. Max, meanwhile, just slowly shook his head. Clever old her, Hippolyte thought.
That’s tomorrow’s headline written.

The crowd remained silent, in case Alexa had anything else to say. Suddenly there came a cry from several rows back.

‘It’s her! I told you it was, Selwyn. It’s our Allison!’

The girl now reaching the top of the chateau steps seemed to have heard. She turned a face grey with horror in the direction
of the voice.

A plump hand was waving above the heads of the crowd. ‘Allison! Coo-ee! It’s Mum! We’re just over on a coach tour. You look
very smart. What are you doing here, love?’

It had come. In the afternoon post. Finally, Astrid had the envelope with the laboratory stamp in her hand.

Her knees were shaking and her breath was shallow and rapid. Eyes still fixed on her own address, she groped backwards to
a chair and sat down.

Slowly, carefully, she had opened the envelope and drawn out the letter inside. She read it. Her hand moved through the air
to her mouth.

She sat back gingerly in the chair. The letter fell from her hand and she sensed the devastating paper float to the carpet
as gently as thistledown, rather than drop like the bomb it undoubtedly was.

After the first shock, she felt an odd sense of relief. The result was, she knew, unquestionably right.

Impressions whirled through her head. She caught the ones she could, examined and absorbed them. Gradually, the storm in her
mind calmed down and she could think rationally.

She had sent off her own, Engelbert’s, Giacomo’s and Max’s mouth swabs for DNA analysis. And the conclusion of the laboratory
was that while she was most certainly the mother of both boys, Giacomo and Maxim had different fathers.

Only Giacomo was Engelbert’s son.

The swabs had been tested three times, with the same result every time.

Astrid clutched the chair arms. It was a dizzying feeling, knowing she held the fate of the family in her hands. She had suspected
as much, possibly even hoped as much. But it was still a shock that His Royal Highness Prince Maxim, heir to the throne of
Sedona and about to get engaged to be married, was not actually related to the King at all.

She broke it to Engelbert first. His face, as she began to speak, had been white with horror. He had taken the news without
comment and remained ominously silent after she had spoken, staring at the fire irons and avoiding her gaze.

They were sitting in his gloomy study, she on a small, hard chair opposite him on the sofa. Nothing moved apart from the pendulum
in the grandfather clock, glimpsed through a glass panel in the base. Watching it swing, listening to its deep, slow, unhurried
tick, Astrid felt she was on trial – for her past, for her marriage, for her son.

Waiting for the verdict, she twisted her hands in her lap. She had never liked the royal study, but it had been the only place
private enough for the purpose. There were no footmen here. The white and gilt walls had ears everywhere else.

As the silence wore on, fear gathered to a hard knot in Astrid’s stomach. She had expected him to be jealous and angry; shocked,
too, that she had not been pure when he married her. Double standards, of course; he had had many girlfriends himself, by
his own not infrequent admission. Presumably he had slept with some of them. But there had been no child – at least, not so
far as she knew. And the child was the thing.

Eventually, she put a hand out and took his. ‘You can divorce me if you like,’ she said sadly. She felt very sorry for him.
Engelbert had been knocked for six already by the other events of the day. That Lady Alexa was a fraud from the English Midlands
whose parents were coincidentally visiting Sedona on a bus trip had been shocking too. Even if, in Astrid’s private view,
it had a certain comic aspect.

And now this, which of course was not funny at all.

The King made no reply to her offer. He looked utterly crestfallen. Which was of course only to be expected. Would he ever
recover? Astrid wondered miserably. Would their marriage?

But perhaps it was better that they should part. Especially if for Engelbert to look at her from now on was to be reminded
that she had once loved someone else. Even if the someone had been before her marriage to him; someone, in addition, no longer
alive.

Astrid sighed. Only now, it seemed, did she realise what her marriage actually meant to her. What her husband meant to her.

Engelbert might be pig-headed and stubborn, blinkered and impatient, but she had been by his side for twenty-five years. She
knew what a good man he was. This afternoon, for example, following the revelations about ‘Lady’ Alexa, he had not raged and
stamped, as she might have expected. He had simply gathered the royal family together and taken them all back inside the chateau.
Doors had been closed. No comments had been issued. He had been supremely and impressively in charge.

However much she mourned her first love, it was her second love that mattered now, Astrid knew. But was it too late to convince
him of that?

After what seemed an eternity, Engelbert looked up. His face, turned to hers, seemed to have aged a decade. To her horror,
the Queen saw his tired eyes fill suddenly with tears. His head plunged into his hands. The royal shoulders began to heave.
Engelbert was weeping.

Gingerly she put her arms about him, fearful that he would hurl them off in fury. The King wept on.

‘What did you say?’ she whispered, catching some unintelligible words. It sounded like ‘leave’.

She swallowed. So he did, after all, want her to go. She could not blame him; it was the risk she had run. She must live with
the consequences of her actions. She raised her chin and stood up, slowly detaching her hands from him.

The King raised his head. ‘I’m so relieved,’ he hiccupped.

‘
Relieved?
’ Astrid was electrified. Was she hearing correctly?

The royal red eyes fixed on hers. ‘I thought that when you said Max was another man’s child, you were going to tell me his
father was Stonker Shropshire. I think I could bear anything but that.’

‘Oh Engelbert!’ Astrid was back beside him in a second. ‘Why ever would you think that?’

The King was gazing at the carpet. His plump shoulders in their grey suit heaved in a mighty sigh. ‘I’ve never quite felt
I was worthy of you.’

‘Not worthy of me?’ the Queen exclaimed. ‘Oh my darling!’

As she drew him into her arms again, he clutched her hard and looked up into her anxious face. ‘I’m sorry about Max’s father,’
he said softly. ‘That must have been very difficult.’

Astrid kissed the top of his well-combed head. She felt she would burst with love and relief. ‘It’s over now, darling. All
over.’

It was a beautiful soft summer evening with pink-orange light stippling the rocky sweep of hills visible from Max’s room.
The soft glow slanted through the windows and lit the carved and gilded posts of the bed.

There was a knock at the door; Maxim looked up as his mother came in. She had a piece of white paper in her hand.

‘I’ll come straight to the point,’ Astrid said.

‘Do.’ Maxim could barely lift his eyes. He could not imagine what fresh hell was next, nor was he interested. The fracas with
‘Lady’ Alexa outside the chateau had been both undignified and ridiculous. But he was some distance beyond caring. No doubt
his mother was coming to advise him that yet another potential bride had been dug up somewhere. The whole circus would start
all over again.

‘You’re going to be very shocked,’ his mother warned.

The Prince shrugged. He didn’t think so. Especially after this afternoon. No doubt his mother meant it was unexpected that
they had found someone else so soon. But nothing would surprise him any more.

‘Prepare yourself,’ Astrid said, over the thundering of her own heart.

Max looked up impatiently. ‘I thought you were going to come straight to the point.’

‘I will. Maxim, I’ve done a DNA test at the labs.’ The Queen
took a deep breath. ‘My darling, you’re not royal.’

Maxim was completely still. He could feel the news exploding slowly within him. Not royal.
Not royal
. He knew at once that it was true.

You’re not royal
. He could feel his brain actually seizing on the words, examining them and probing their meaning. He realised that, instinctively,
he had known all along. It explained so much. The way he had never felt allegiance to crown and ceremony the way the rest
of the family did. The fact that he looked so different from Giacomo and his father. The almost psychotic reluctance he had
always felt to take up his royal duties.

His mother had laid her hand over his. She was explaining gently something about an old boyfriend of hers. Maxim wanted her
to stop. He wanted to know, of course, but not now. There was not time. There was other business, much more pressing business.

Where did he start?

Over a booming heart, he gathered his thoughts. A wedding. The throne. Surely he could avoid them both now. He could not inherit
the throne if he wasn’t royal, nor did he need to be married . . .

‘Quite a lot to take in, I know,’ the Queen was saying. She was looking into his face. She looked, he saw, worried.

Maxim smiled at her. Why was she worried? He leapt to his feet and hugged her.

Her face, as he released her, was a mixture of relief and surprise. ‘So you don’t mind?’ Astrid asked slowly.

‘Mind?’ He beamed at her. ‘Why should I mind? You’re still my mother, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, but your father. He’s not . . .’

‘That doesn’t matter either. He’s still my father. But even better – I don’t have to be King!’ He hugged his mother again.
‘I don’t have to marry!’ He felt as if something had detached itself from his shoulders and was floating up, up and away.
He felt light. Free.

‘I can go back to England!’ he exclaimed.

There was no time to lose. It was finished with Polly, of course, there was no hope there. But he could return to his studies.
That would be something. Not everything, but something. Slowly, he could rebuild his life.

He rushed to a wardrobe, dragged out a bag and began throwing a motley collection of objects into it. Odd shoes, magazines,
a scrunched-up jumper.

‘Wait, though,’ Astrid advised, hurrying forward to take out the odd shoes. ‘There’s no rush.’

‘But there is a rush. There’s a plane at ten o’clock from Nice.’ He knew when every flight to London left and had never seen
the last one of the day lift into the sky from the airport up the coast without wishing he was on it.

‘What – you’re going
now?
This minute?’ That her son’s first instinct was to escape was rather hurtful; in vain did Astrid remind herself that everything
she had done recently was to make this moment possible.