“I’m not sure what I should say—even what I want to say.”

“Gabriella, I brought you into the world. I ministered to your sniffles, treated you through chicken pox and took out your tonsils. Your body is no stranger to me, nor is your mind.” He paused while she took this in. “You have difficulty talking to your father for fear of hurting him.”

“Yes.” She looked at him then, the pleasant face, the white beard. “Him most of all. Before Bennett left—he went grumbling back to Oxford yesterday.”

“He’d prefer to stay here with his dogs and horses.”

“Yes.” She laughed, shaking back her hair. “With Bennett here, it was easier somehow. He’s so relaxed and open. With him I didn’t always feel compelled to say the right things—the kind thing. Alexander’s different. I feel I should be very careful around him. He’s so, well, proper.”

“‘Prince Perfect.’” Franco smiled at her expression. The vague disapproval was a good sign. “No disrespect, Gabriella. You and Bennett dubbed him so when you were children.”

She nearly smiled herself. “How nasty.”

“Oh, he can handle himself. Bennett’s called ‘Lord Sloth.’”

She made a sound suspiciously like a giggle and folded her legs under her. “Natural enough. I volunteered to help him pack. It wasn’t easy to believe anyone could live in such a sty. And me?” She lifted a brow. “Did my brothers give me a title?”

“‘Her Obstinacy.’”

“Oh.” Brie sat for a moment, then chuckled. “I take it I deserved it.”

“Then and now, it suits.”

“I think— I feel,” Brie amended, “that we’re a close family. Is this true?”

A simple yes would mean nothing, Franco thought. A simple yes was too easy. “Once a year you go to Zurich, en famille. For two weeks there are no servants, no outsiders. You told me once that this was what helped you cope with the other fifty weeks.”

She nodded, accepting. And, gratefully, understanding. “Tell me how my mother died, Dr. Franco.”

“She was delicate,” he said carefully. “She was speaking for the Red Cross in Paris and contracted pneumonia. There were complications. She never recovered.”

She wanted to feel. It would be a blessing to feel grief, pain, but there was nothing. Folding her hands again, she looked down at them. “Did I love her?”

Compassion wasn’t something a doctor carried in his bag, but something he carried with him. “She was the center of your family. The anchor, the heart. You loved her, Gabriella, very much.”

Believing it was almost, almost as comforting as feeling it. “How long was she ill?”

“Six months.”

The family would have drawn together, knotted together. Of that she was certain. “We don’t accept outsiders easily.”

Franco smiled again. “No.”

“Reeve MacGee, you know him?”

“The American?” Franco moved his shoulders in a gesture Brie recognized as French and pragmatic. “Only slightly. Your father thinks highly of him.”

“Alexander resents him.”

“Naturally enough.” Franco spoke slowly, intrigued by the turn of the conversation. Perhaps she didn’t know her family yet, but they were still, as they had always been, her chief concern. “Prince Alexander feels protective of you, and doesn’t welcome the assistance of anyone outside the family. The pretense of your engagement …” He paused at Brie’s narrowed look, but misinterpreted it. “I don’t gossip. As physician to the royal family, I’m in your father’s confidence.”