What would the ramifications of being rude to royalty be? The two men watched as she clearly thought about it and decided her best option was to swing a while longer.

‘Hi,’ she said at last to Marc-the good-looking one-and then she looked across to Charles. The podgy one with the sweaty collar. ‘If your friend’s a prince, who are you?’

‘I’m Charles Debourier. I’m ambassador to-’

‘Don’t tell me. Let me guess. Ambassador to Broitenburg?’

‘Yes.’

‘And Broitenburg is…um…somewhere in Europe?’ She grinned, a wide, white smile that was so totally different from Lara’s careful painted smile that Marc caught his breath at the sight of it.

What was he thinking? She was too much like Lara to interest him, he told himself savagely, and he didn’t have time to waste thinking about women. Especially this one.

‘You don’t know where Broitenburg is?’ Charles demanded, and the woman’s smile widened. She had a huge advantage over them-thirty feet, in fact.

‘I’ve never been much interested in geography,’ she told them. ‘And I left school at fifteen.’

Great. She was Lara’s sister and illiterate besides. Marc’s feelings of dismay intensified.

‘Broitenburg’s bordered by Austria on one side and Germany on the other,’ Charles was saying, but Tammy was clearly unimpressed.

‘Oh, right. Come to think of it, I have heard of it. It’s small, huh?’

‘It’s an important country in its own right,’ Charles snapped.

‘I guess it must be, to send an ambassador to Australia.’ She grinned again. ‘Well, it was nice to met you, Your Highness and Your Ambassadorship, and it was good of you to drop by, but I have a job to do before dusk.’

‘I told you,’ Marc said stiffly. ‘I need you.’

She’d been preparing to climb again, but she stopped at that. ‘Why? Do you have trees in Broitenburg?’