‘You can’t know…’ Louise started but Jess was too distressed to stop.

‘I’m remembering the deaths of the crown prince and his princess,’ Jess said. ‘And your grandson being orphaned. I heard of it back in Australia. I’d just…forgotten.’

Of course. When her own world had collapsed, so had her ability to take in tragedies of those about her. But the deaths had been front-page news at home at a time when her world had been blank and meaningless, and it had been dreadful enough to haul her out of her pool of misery, into someone else’s.

She remembered cringing inside. The prince and his princess, in a chalet high in the mountains. An avalanche? A storm? She couldn’t remember. But she remembered that the child was alive, unharmed, but with his parents both dead.

The world had been captivated.

Deep in her own personal tragedy, Jess had hardly taken it in. But now… She forced herself to think back to those half-remembered newspaper headlines. Rumours that it hadn’t been a storm that had killed them. That the storm had cut off access to the cabin and meant that normal checks couldn’t be made. The royal couple had escaped their minders and there’d been drugs.

This was not her scene, she told herself fiercely. It was not her business.

She looked up at Raoul and there was that look on his face that precluded questions-and how to ask a question like the ones that were forming in the back of her mind? She couldn’t. She didn’t need to. Thankfully.

She was so tired.

She lay back on her pillows and closed her eyes, allowing the exhaustion and distress to wash through.

Unexpectedly Raoul stepped forward and lifted her hand. The gesture was a measure of comfort that was surprisingly successful. It was strong and reassuring and compelling. ‘Don’t distress yourself,’ he told her. ‘You mustn’t.’

His touch warmed her more than she’d thought such a gesture could. It was unexpected, a gesture that he didn’t need to make. Maybe in the same circumstances she’d find it impossible to make this gesture herself, she thought. To touch the cause of more sadness…