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Marco struggled to focus on the road. Only the image of Kate, in a shower with the water streaming off her lily-pale skin, made him glad to turn into the driveway.
CHAPTER EIGHT
KATELEANEDINas she applied the finishing touch to her make-up, which was a generous skim of soft pink lip gloss applied with far more precision than she would normally have used.
‘Too much?’ she asked her reflection of the stranger in the mirror. Some people did this every day but in her view life was too short. She was strictly a flick of mascara, smudge of shadow and smear of gloss kind of girl.
But for special occasions, and she was pretty sure that a ball in a royal palace counted as special, it was good to make the effort. And yes, she was pleased with the results, she decided, turning her face from side to side. She’d skipped a few steps in the online guide to the perfect but subtle party face but the results were pretty good. She quite liked the way the eyeliner emphasised the almond shape of her eyes, and on the third attempt she had nailed the blusher.
As Freya would have said, it was science...or maybe art?
She twirled around on her stool as a small serious voice responded, ‘No, not too much. You look...you look shiny.’
‘Thank you, Freya.’ Kate smiled at the little girl, whose eyes were bright with suppressed excitement.
‘Can I put on my dress now, please? I won’t spill anything on it again...promise.’
Kate smiled. ‘I know you won’t, and it was only lemonade, it should be dry now. Ask Julia.’
Her pink robe, adorned with cartoon cats, flapping around her, Freya ran from the room.
Kate slipped off her own robe and laid it on her bed. Her underclothes, which had been bought at a ridiculous price to match her dress, did not cover much. She had passed on the braless option, but the strapless silky bra afforded only a token stab at modesty. And the matching silk knickers cut low across her hips and virtually non-existent on her bottom were held together with bits of silk ribbon. They had been designed to incentivise their removal.
Not tonight though, she told herself before her imagination could enter forbidden territory as she shook out the dress and slid down the neatly hidden zip. She ran a hand over the buttery ice-blue fabric and let it slide through her fingers. The other hand remained pressed to her stomach to ease the quivering sensation low in her belly where there was a pack of butterflies running riot.
Kate had smiled at the child’s antics, but the truth was she was probably just as excited and apprehensive as Freya, which was stupid. This was just a party. She’d been to parties before. This one was just bigger and involved the odd orchestra and film star. She wasn’t even a guest...she was just there as a glorified babysitter.
Admittedly the dress didn’t look like one your average babysitter would wear. Reverently she stared at the dress before she wriggled into it. As she reached for the zip she wondered how many times you had to tell yourself you were totally cool before you actually were.
Tomorrow morning, probably, when it was all over.
She practised her cool nanny expression in the mirror and held it about four seconds longer than the last time, before, her heart racing with a mixture of anxiety, excitement took control.
Hardly surprising. Tension was contagious and the palace had been buzzing with it for days, culminating in a general organised mass hysteria today as the final preparations kicked in.
She pushed away the suspicion that the presence of one tall handsome prince might be an extra contributing factor for her. More than the presence of news crews nabbing their spots and doing their soundchecks, or having an entire orchestra stream past her in full evening dress, or hearing the constant buzz of helicopters ferrying guests landing on the lawn.
Looking in the mirror, she adjusted her dress, being assailed by the possibility of a wardrobe malfunction as she visualised the shoestring straps going south and leaving her standing in a pool of silk.
Blinking away the waking-nightmare image, she enjoyed the feel of the silk fabric that hugged her body in all the right places, making the most of her slender curves. She relished the sensuous swish of silk against her legs as she moved, the discreet split in the folds down one side revealing a flash of pale thigh.
Her only jewellery was a pair of amber drop earrings that had been an eighteenth-birthday present from her parents. They’d said the stone was the same colour as her eyes.
Remembering the day brought a fleeting shadow to her eyes, a sadness that a sudden stab of pain offered her an escape from. Tongue between her teeth, she carefully freed the curl that had snagged in one of the butterfly clips behind her ear, carefully untangling it without ruining her hair.
She had weighed up the option between loose or an up-do and in the end settled on a compromise—ahalfup-do, that left her hair long and flowing but showed the delicacy of her facial features and emphasised the slender length of her neck.
Kate was slipping her feet into a pair of satiny high-heeled mules when Freya reappeared, her dimples on show as she tried not to grin. When she saw Kate she clapped.
‘Wow, you really will be the belle of the ball!’ The maid behind Freya clamped a hand to her mouth. ‘Sorry.’
‘Julia is right. I’m a princess but you look like a princess tonight.’
‘But you are arealprincess.’
‘I have something for you, for your hair.’
Kate was fully anticipating that she’d be offered some plastic hair ornament that she would be obliged to wear, and her smile faded when she saw what Freya was holding.
