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She tensed, wondering if he had heard the local gossip about her father’s crimes. ‘What do you mean?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘I understand that you organise the collection of plastic and other rubbish from local beaches.’
‘Oh.’ She released her breath slowly. ‘Yes, I take part in regular beach cleans and encourage other people to help out.’
‘I have campaigned for a similar scheme to be adopted in Fjernland.’ Prince Eirik gave Arielle a thoughtful look and she was sure she had not imagined the sizzle of attraction between them.
While they had been talking, Tamara had pushed her way to the front of the crowd of people standing near the Prince. She dipped into a sweeping curtsey while the commodore introduced her.
‘Your Royal Highness, it is an honour to meet you. I am a close friend of Arielle and I’m deeply committed to saving our oceans from plastic waste,’ Tamara told him earnestly. She managed to simultaneously smile at the Prince and shoot a warning look at Arielle.
Seriously! Arielle almost laughed out loud at Tamara’s blatant lies. She had never helped out at a beach-clean event. More people had crowded around Prince Eirik and Tamara was fluttering her eyelashes at him like a demented moth.
The Prince looked back at Arielle. ‘I would have liked the opportunity to discuss your work with the Clean Sea project in more detail,’ he murmured before he was ushered away by the commodore to greet other local business leaders.
Arielle packed up her products and drove home in a strange mood. Meeting Prince Eirik had left her feeling restless and dissatisfied with her life. Tamara’s words echoed inside her head.‘Do you really think a nobody like you would stand a chance with the Prince?’
Well, no, Arielle hadn’t expected that he would notice her, and she certainly wouldn’t admit to having a secret fantasy where the handsome prince saved her from her dead-end life. Prince Eirik had seemed genuinely interested in her plastics recycling initiative. He had treated her as an equal and listened to what she had to say, which was more than her father or the villagers of Penash had ever done. Living here, she would always be tainted by her father’s crimes.
Something inside her had changed and she vowed not to waste any more of her life waiting for a prince to rescue her. The cliff-top cottage held happy memories of her mother. But there had been sadness and despair within the cottage’s thick walls and the spilled blood of an innocent man. For as long as she could remember, Arielle had been under the influence of her father. He had been in prison for the last three years, but she had been trapped in a prison of her own making.
Meeting the Prince had given her a glimpse of a world where she did not feel judged, and she was determined to make a new life for herself far away from Penash.
CHAPTER TWO
THATNEWDRESSFEELING!Arielle’s doubts multiplied as she fiddled with the narrow shoulder straps on the black silk jersey dress. She frowned at her reflection in the mirror, dismayed by the amount of her flesh on display. The skirt was too short, and the neckline was more low-cut than she remembered from when she’d tried the dress on in the boutique.
She was tempted to change into her faithful navy blue dress that she’d bought four years ago for her graduation ceremony from university. Since then, it had lived at the back of her wardrobe. She’d worn it to a couple of job interviews and to the event at the yacht club earlier in the day when she had met Prince Eirik, hence the need for a new outfit.
An invitation to have dinner with the Prince had sent her hurrying off to Truro in search of something suitable to wear. Her aim had been to look sophisticated, but the dress screamed available and possibly even desperate.
She picked up the gold-edged card from the mantelpiece and her eyes followed the bold handwriting inviting her to dine with the Prince at his hotel. A handwritten note was unusual these days, when most people communicated electronically by email or text. It was signed informally Eirik, and the sight of his name set butterflies loose in Arielle’s stomach.
Soon after she had returned home from the yacht club, a limousine with dark-tinted windows had stopped in front of her cottage, and a man who she did not recognise had got out and knocked on the front door. Arielle had hidden behind the curtains. Memories of strangers who had arrived in cars with blacked-out windows to do secret business with her father made her feel tense. She had learned at his trial that Gerran Rowse had been a major drugs dealer and the mastermind behind an operation to smuggle huge quantities of heroin and cocaine into Cornwall on fishing boats.
But her father would spend the rest of his life behind bars, and Arielle had resolved not to live in fear any more. She’d opened the front door, prepared to tell the stranger to clear off. The smartly dressed man, greying at his temples, had introduced himself as Gustav Koch, Private Secretary to His Royal Highness, Prince Eirik.
‘It is the Prince’s wish that I convey your answer to him,’ he had told Arielle after she’d read the invitation. ‘He very much hopes that you will accept.’ Gustav’s inscrutable expression had not altered, but Arielle had noticed him glance at her scruffy jeans and sweatshirt that she had changed into because she’d planned to spend the afternoon working in her studio. Perhaps the royal assistant did not think she was good enough to meet the Prince.
Her chin had come up. ‘Dinner will be lovely,’ she had heard herself say before she’d had time to think of an excuse to decline.
‘Good. A car will collect you at seven thirty.’
It was nearly that now, and there was not enough time to change her dress or make another attempt to gather her hair up in a chignon. Her curls were always especially rebellious after she’d just washed her hair. Car headlights shone through the window. Cinderella’s coach had arrived. Arielle’s heart gave a lurch of nervous excitement. She wrapped the green silk shawl that had belonged to her mother around her shoulders and picked up her evening purse.
She had bought her first pair of stiletto shoes to wear with the new dress and wished she had practised walking in high heels when she stepped outside and made her way gingerly across the cobblestones to the waiting car. The chauffeur held open the door and she slid onto the back seat. The interior of the car smelled of plush leather and the faint but distinctive scent of the Prince’s aftershave.
Her stomach muscles involuntarily clenched at the prospect of seeing Prince Eirik again. But she reminded herself that he had said he wanted to discuss the Clean Sea campaign to rid the ocean of plastic waste. It was likely that he had invited other guests who were involved with the campaign to the dinner party.
The hotel a few miles along the coast from Penash was the most exclusive place to stay in Cornwall. The car turned onto the driveway but instead of stopping in front of the grand entrance, the chauffeur drove around to the back of the hotel. ‘I was instructed to bring you this way,’ he explained as he ushered Arielle through a door next to the kitchens. They walked along a corridor where there was a strong smell of cooking. ‘Wait here,’ the driver told her. ‘I will tell Gustav that you have arrived.’
Had the Prince’s private secretary been concerned that she might wear her old jeans, and that was the reason she been brought into the hotel unseen? Arielle wondered. The chauffeur had strolled further up the corridor and was holding his phone to his ear. The door to the kitchen swung open and a young man dressed in chef whites walked out.
‘Well, if it isn’t Arielle Rowse,’ he said in an unpleasant voice when he saw her.
‘Tremain,’ she corrected him quickly. But Tamara Bray’s brother, Danny, shook his head. ‘You might have changed your name, but it doesn’t change who your father is. Gerran killed my cousin Josh, and you did nothing to stop him.’
‘I didn’t know...’ Arielle broke off. There was no point trying to defend herself. A few people in Penash thought she had been involved in her father’s drug-dealing operation and Danny and his family believed she had known that Gerran had shot and killed a local police constable.
