LITMIR.BIZ

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Lydia, whose heart had joined her legs in refusing to move, could do nothing but pray for the floor to open up and swallow her.

      The angel in charge of rescuing fools from moments of supreme embarrassment clearly had something more pressing to attend to. The marble remained solid and it was Lady Rose, the corner of her mouth lifting in a wry little smile, who saved the day.

      ‘I know the face,’ she said, extending her hand, ‘but I’m afraid the name escapes me.’

      ‘Lydia, madam, Lydia Young’ she stuttered as she grasped it, more for support than to shake hands.

      Should she curtsy? Women frequently forgot themselves sufficiently to curtsy to her but she wasn’t sure her knees, once down, would ever make it back up again and the situation was quite bad enough without turning it into a farce.

      Then, realising that she was still clutching the slender hand much too tightly, she let go, stammered out an apology.

      ‘I’m s-so sorry. I promise this wasn’t planned. I had no idea you’d be here.’

      ‘Please, it’s not a problem,’ Lady Rose replied sympathetically, kindness itself as she paused long enough to exchange a few words, ask her what she was doing at the hotel, put her at her ease. Then, on the point of rejoining the man waiting for her at the door—the one the newspapers were saying Lady Rose would marry—she looked back. ‘As a matter of interest, Lydia, how much do you charge for being me? Just in case I ever decided to take a day off?’

      ‘No charge for you, Lady Rose. Just give me a call. Any time.’

      ‘I don’t suppose you fancy three hours of Wagner this evening?’ she asked, but before Lydia could reply, she shook her head. ‘Just kidding. I wouldn’t wish that on you.’

      The smile was in place, the voice light with laughter, but for a moment her eyes betrayed her and Lydia saw beyond the fabulous clothes, the pearl choker at her throat. Lady Rose, she realised, was a woman in trouble and, taking a card from the small clutch bag she was holding, she offered it to her.

      ‘I meant what I said. Call me,’ Lydia urged. ‘Any time.’

      Three weeks later, when she answered her cellphone, a voice she knew as well as her own said, ‘Did you mean it?’

      Kalil al-Zaki stared down into the bare winter garden of his country’s London Embassy, watching the Ambassador’s children racing around in the care of their nanny.

      He was only a couple of years younger than his cousin. By the time a man was in his thirties he should have a family, sons…

      ‘I know how busy you are, but it’s just for a week, Kal.’

      ‘I don’t understand the problem,’ he said, clamping down on the bitterness, the anger that with every passing day came closer to spilling over, and turned from the children to their mother, his cousin’s lovely wife, Princess Lucy al-Khatib. ‘Nothing is going to happen to Lady Rose at Bab el Sama.’

      As it was the personal holiday complex of the Ramal Hamrahn royal family, security would, he was certain, be state-of-the-art.

      ‘Of course it isn’t,’ Lucy agreed, ‘but her grandfather came to see me yesterday. Apparently there has been a threat against her.’

      He frowned. ‘A threat? What kind of threat?’

      ‘He refused to go into specifics.’

      ‘Well, that was helpful.’ Then, ‘So why did he come to you rather than Hanif?’

      ‘I was the one who offered her the use of our Bab el Sama cottage whenever she needed to get away from it all.’ She barely lifted her shoulders, but it was unmistakably a shrug. ‘The Duke’s line is that he doesn’t want to alarm her.’

       Line?

      ‘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

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