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It had been too long. Far too long.
Rafael…
She was kissing him back, as fiercely as he was kissing her, taking as well as giving, quenching her own desperate needs.
Needs she’d told herself didn’t exist.
Only of course they did. Six long years of nothing. Isolation and loneliness and betrayal.
Rafael…
The kiss went on and on. Neither wanted it to end. Neither could conceive of it ending. The night was still and warm. There was no movement in the forecourt—the castle staff had long gone to bed. There was only this man and this woman, taking what they both desperately needed.
Marion Lennox is a country girl, born on an Australian dairy farm. She moved on—mostly because the cows just weren’t interested in her stories! Married to a ‘very special doctor’, Marion writes Medical™ Romances as well as Mills & Boon® Romance. She used a different name for each category for a while—if you’re looking for her past Mills & Boon® Romances, search for author Trisha David as well.
In her non-writing life Marion cares for kids, cats, dogs, chooks and goldfish. She travels, and she fights her rampant garden (she’s losing) and her house dust (she’s lost). Having spun in circles for the first part of her life, she’s now stepped back from her ‘other’ career, which was teaching statistics at her local university. Finally she’s reprioritised her life, figured out what’s important, and discovered the joys of deep baths, romance and chocolate. Preferably all at the same time!
Dear Reader
Palaces, princes, and the sheer indulgence of having someone else run the bath can be the basis of a fabulous indulgent read. But—and here I confess to a sad lack of first-hand knowledge—some aspects of royalty aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. My heroine knows this first-hand. She marries one prince in haste, and it takes another, the fabulous, sexy Prince Rafael, to transport my lovely princess and her child to her own personal happy-ever-after.
I do love a royal romance, and I’m hoping you do, too. I’m sorry if you’re forced to run your own bath, but needs must. Hop in and do what I do—be a truly royal princess within the pages of this book.
Enjoy.
Marion
WANTED: ROYAL WIFE AND MOTHER
BY
MARION LENNOX
With love and grateful thanks to the Maytoners.
True friends are gold.
Or should that be opals?
CHAPTER ONE
IT WAS the end of a long day in the goldfields, and Kelly had personally found almost a teaspoon of gold. The slivers of precious metal were now dispersed into scores of glass vials, to be taken home as keepsakes of a journey back in time.
Her tourists were happy. She should be, too.
But she was wet. She was dressed in period costume and raincoats hadn’t been invented in the eighteen-fifties. As the day had grown colder Kelly had directed her tour groups down the mines, but she’d been wet before she’d gone down and the cold had stayed with her. Now she emerged from underground, desperate to head to her little cottage on the hill, strip off her dungarees and leather boots and sink into a hot bath.
She might be a historian on what was the recreation of a piece of the Australian goldfields but, when it came to the offer of a hot bath, Kelly was a thoroughly modern girl.
The park horses—a working team that tugged a coach round the diggings during the day—lumbered up the track towards the stables and she stood well back. Horses… Once she’d loved them, but even now, after all this time, she hated to go near them. She waited.
Once the horses passed she expected her way home to be clear, but there were always one or two tourists lagging behind, as eager to stay as she was eager to leave. She had to manoeuvre her way past a last couple. A man and a child. They seemed to have been waiting for the horses to pass so they could speak to her.
Who were they? She hadn’t seen them on the tour and she’d surely have noticed. The guy was strikingly good-looking: tall, tanned, jet-black hair—aristocratic? It was an odd description, she thought, but it seemed strangely appropriate. He was lean and strongly boned. Almost…what was the word… aquiline?
The little boy—the man’s son?—was similarly striking, with olive skin, glossy black curls and huge brown eyes. He looked about five years old, and the sight of him made Kelly’s gut clench as it had clenched countless times over the past five years.
How many five-year-old boys were there in the world?
Could she ever move on?
* * *
Could this be her?
Rafael stared across the track at the slip of a girl waiting for the horses to pass. Princess Kellyn Marie de Boutaine of Alp de Ciel? The thought was laughable.
She was wet, bedraggled and smeared with mud. She was dressed like an eighteen-fifties gold-miner, only most eighteen-fifties gold-miners didn’t have chestnut curls escaping from under their felt brimmed hats.
He’d read the report. This had to be her.
But this was harder than he’d thought.
Back home it had seemed relatively straightforward. He’d been appalled when he’d received the investigative report. Like the rest of the population of Alp de Ciel, he’d thought this woman was a…well, no fit mother for a prince. He’d thought she’d left of her own free will, as unwilling to commit to her new baby as her royal husband had been.
But what the report had told him…
He cast a glance down at the child at his side. If the report was true… If she’d been forced away…
He had to step forward. If he did only this one thing as Prince Regent, it had to be the righting of this huge injustice.
Mathieu was gripping his hand with a ferocity that betrayed his tension. They’d come all this way. The child couldn’t be messed around.
The woman—Kellyn?—was about to leave. The park was about to close.
This had to be done now.
The horses were gone and yet they were still here. Man and child. Watching her.
‘Can I help you?’ Kelly managed, forcing forward her stock standard I’ll-make-you-enjoy-your-experience-here-or-bust smile that most of the staff here practised eternally. ‘Is there anything you need to know before we lock up for the night? I’m sorry, but we are closing.’
The rest of the group were moving away, making their way towards the exit. Pete, the elderly security guard, was leaning on the gates, waiting to close.
‘I can give you a booklet with pictures of the diggings if you like,’ she offered. She smiled down at the child, trying really hard not to think how like…how like…
No. That was the way of madness.
‘I see you came late,’ she said as the child didn’t answer. ‘If you like, we can stamp your tickets so you can come back tomorrow. It’s not much extra.’
‘I’d like to come back tomorrow,’ the child said gravely, with the hint of a French accent in his voice. ‘Can we, Uncle Rafael?’
‘I’m not sure,’ his uncle replied. ‘I’m not actually sure this is who we’re looking for. The guy on the gate…he said you were Kellyn Marie Fender.’
Her world stilled. There was something about this pair… There was