‘I…not lately. I’ve been unwell. This place has been hopelessly understaffed. What have I missed?’

‘Alp de Ciel is only a small country but the death of its sovereign made worldwide news. Even right down here in Australia.’

‘When?’ What had happened to her voice? It was coming out as a squeak. She tried to pull her hands away but failed. She couldn’t stop this stupid shivering.

He was still holding her. Maybe he thought she needed this contact. But he was a de Boutaine. Part of her life that had been blocked out for ever.

Matty was a de Boutaine. Matty was in her kitchen cutting cake.

‘I’ve had flu,’ she whispered, trying to make sense of it. ‘Real flu, where you don’t come out from under your pillow for weeks. The whole park staff’s been decimated. For the last couple of months, if we haven’t been sick we’ve been run off our feet covering for those who are.’

‘Which is why you’re trudging round in the mud,’ he said softly. ‘My informants say you’re a research historian here.’

His informants. That sounded like Kass. ‘What I do is none of your business,’ she snapped.

‘The woman who is responsible for Mathieu is very much my business.’

She stared at him. Staring seemed all she was capable of. There was nothing else to do that she could think of.

‘Who…who are you?’ she whispered.

‘Kass was my cousin.’

She moistened her lips. ‘I don’t think…I never met…’

‘Kass and I didn’t get on,’ he said, with a sideways warning glance at Matty. There were things that obviously couldn’t be said in Matty’s presence. But Matty was doing his measuring and cutting with the focus of a neurosurgeon. These cake slices would be exactly equal if it took him half an hour to get it right.

‘My father was the old prince’s younger brother,’ Rafael said. ‘Papa married an American girl-my mother, Laura-and we lived in the dower house at the castle. My father died when I was a teenager, but my mother still lives at the castle. She and my father were very happy and she never wants to leave, but I left when I was nineteen. For the last fifteen years I’ve spent my life in New York. Until Kass died. Then I was called on. To my horror, I’ve discovered I’m Prince Regent.’