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‘Of course.’
The group started to walk towards the marquee but she just stood there.
‘Beatrice?’ said Julius.
‘Er...no. I just came to buy some bulbs.’
‘I might have a scarf,’ Jordan said, scrabbling in her bag.
‘I’m really not here to go into the marquee,’ Beatrice insisted. ‘I just wanted to see the festival and have a day out...to offer Princess Jasmine my support...’
And it was the wrong thing to say, because they all had to stand there pretending she hadn’t just mentioned the missing princess again.
Beatrice didn’t know how to be part of a group—she was dreadful at it at the best of times, and obviously she was hopeless now.
‘I’ll leave you to it, sir.’
‘I might just have a quick word with Beatrice regarding...’
She didn’t hear regarding what, but whatever excuse Julius had given, Beatrice felt everyone knew it was a lie.
‘I wasn’t expecting you to be here,’ she was very quick to point out.
‘I’m aware.’
‘What’s going on?’ Beatrice asked. ‘Do they all know?’
‘About...?’ He frowned and then halted just for a second. ‘Actually, please don’t answer that. Of course not.’
‘So why is it all so awkward?’
‘It has nothing to do with you.’
Julius heard his own formal tone and knew it sounded like a put-down when he’d been trying to reassure her. However, there wasn’t a hope of any private conversation in the middle of a public festival.
‘There were some last-minute changes,’ he said.
‘Why?’
He halted, and they faced each other a suitable distance apart. She made the mistake of meeting his eyes, clearly believing for a second that she was speaking with Julius the man rather than the Prince.
‘What happened to Princess Jasmine? She was supposed to be—’
‘Excuse me?’ His voice was icily cold. ‘Ms Taylor, I pulled you aside to express polite regret that you’ve chosen not to join the household on a permanent basis.’
He pulled rank and reminded her very quickly that while they might have shared a bed for all of a few hours, that did not give her access to his life or the private actions of the royal family.
Beatrice knew she should politely nod and leave, but she was truly finding out in the middle of this festival that she was so not cut out for this. Not just the one-night stand game, but this—being spoken to as if there was nothing between them, nor ever had been.
It hurt to be a secret.
She’d been a secret growing up, and she felt the same way now.
To be standing in plain sight and yet not be one of the others—actually, she was less than the others, because she wasn’t suitably dressed for the marquee.
Had she stepped off his yacht in a bikini it would have been fine, of course. But not for a member of temporary staff.
Of all the things she hadn’t known about life, the worst was this: that when she’d opened herself up it hadn’t just made room for joy to flood in, it had also allowed pain to come sweeping in alongside it.
