Playing the Royal Game

‘I can’t just invent someone—you might have to join me in Santina at some point.’ He anticipated her reaction, because as she opened her mouth he spoke over her. ‘You would have your own suite—a couple cannot be together until they are married. All you would have to do is smile and hang on to my every word.’

‘Until?’

‘Until the people dictate otherwise.’ He gave a shrug. ‘It might be days, it might be weeks.’ He looked to the cheque and so, too, did Allegra, and she thought about it—hell, she really thought about it. He wasn’t asking for her to sleep with him, just to smile and hold his hand. And what she could do with the money... She could get a flat, a job—actually, she could do what she really wanted....

‘You could finally write that book.’ It was as if he had stepped into her mind. She heard his voice as if he was inside it, but it was madness, it couldn’t work.

‘We’ll make it work,’ he answered her unvoiced words. ‘Is that a yes?’ Alex asked.

She looked back at him, thought not just of the book she could write but a link to this man, this beautiful man who had entered her life, and somehow she simply wasn’t quite ready to let go of him. ‘I think so.’

They stepped out onto the street, and she was wrong about taxis, for a luxurious car was waiting and it took them just a few streets down.

‘Shouldn’t you deposit it?’ Alex asked.

‘Okay.’ She grinned and walked into the bank and watched the eyebrow of the cashier rise a good inch. ‘Funds won’t be available till the cheque is cleared.’

‘Ring my bank and get it cleared now,’ Alex said, and she looked at the name on the cheque and did as told. There was the strangest feeling in her stomach as the cashier handed her a slip with her bank balance, a sort of great weight she hadn’t been aware she’d been carrying suddenly lifted.

‘Now, we shop.’

‘Shop?’

‘A fiancée needs a ring.’

They poured back into his car, laughed all the way along the street.

‘Shouldn’t I have royal jewels?’ God, she was tipsy.

‘You should, but...’ They were outside a very smart jewelers. ‘At least this you will be able to later sell. The acting starts here,’ he warned as he pushed a bell and the door opened. She stood there and looked at rings as the jeweler came out, and the acting did start here, because he held her hand as he spoke with jeweler, told them what he had in mind and they were whisked away, to view jewels kept well away from the window.

‘What about this?’ Alex turned to his fiancée but he had lost her attention, her eyes drawn not to the diamond ring he was holding, but to another that to Allegra was far more exquisite.

‘It’s heavenly.’ She picked it up—a brilliant emerald, so huge that it looked like a dress-up ring, but Alex shook his head.

‘Should be a diamond...’

‘Oh!’ She put it back down, remembered her place, that this was not real; she was merely playing a part. He put his head to her ear in a supposed romantic murmur. ‘Diamonds are more valuable.’

‘Perhaps.’

And he saw her longing for the ring, saw the moss of Santina in the jewel of her eyes. Perhaps an emerald would be more fitting and he hesitated for just a moment. After all, what did it matter? Soon it would be done, she would be gone, so she might as well have a ring to her liking.

He slid it on her finger.

‘We’ll size it,’ the jeweler said.

‘No need,’ Alex said. ‘It fits perfectly.’

‘I’ll give it a polish and box it,’ the jeweler said, but Alex’s hands were still holding hers, and they looked for all the world like a young couple in love, on the edge of their future, and she felt this wash of emotion for all that was not.

‘I don’t want to take it off,’ she admitted.

Allegra was confused and a little embarrassed to face him after he’d paid and they’d stepped outside.

‘Well done,’ Alex said. ‘You almost had even me convinced, though that is not the ring a future queen would choose.’