To Marry a Prince

Chapter 14

‘What’s your worst New Year Ever?’ – Tube Talk

It was their last chance to be alone together in the run-up to Christmas.

Ian said he couldn’t give Bella the updated diary pages. She suspected that was Wormtongue’s doing. But she didn’t sneak on him to Richard. For one thing it seemed feeble. For another, Richard was desperately busy, rushing about all over the country and out of it. She knew that because she saw pictures of him in the papers and on the News.

He did a good-will trip to New York, with a bunch of industrialists in tow, and sent her a text from the dance floor of Bar Bahia: I’m boogieing for Britain here. Where are you when I need you?

She laughed and texted back: Ready to boogie any time.

It was really late by then, the small hours in London, and Bella knew she should have been asleep. Instead she was sitting cross-legged on her bed, with a pashmina shawl round her shoulders and thick ski socks on her feet, trying to sort out some files for the evil dentist. Work was becoming increasingly busy as people dashed in to sort out their dental problems before the holidays. She wanted to get the whole system indexed and in perfect order before she left on Christmas Eve. There would be no handover period with her successor.

Bella had rented a car and would be picking up Granny Georgia at the airport before driving the two of them and Lottie down to the New Forest for Christmas. Bella would spend the rest of Christmas week with Janet and Kevin, before heading north to Drummon House, the Royal residence on the edge of the Highlands, for the New Year.

She was not looking forward to the New Year.

On Richard’s advice, Bella had braced herself for another Little Talk with Lady Pansy in advance of the invitation. It was an afternoon gig and Lady Pansy had served up a terrifying list of traditions and customs for the New Year, along with China tea in cups of porcelain so thin that their contents were cold before the first sip. Bella liked builder’s tea with a good slug of milk, or Earl Grey if she was pushed. She nearly gagged at the smoky, herbal stuff that Lady Pansy favoured. It was, as she told Lottie afterwards, somehow slimy and sharp at the same time.

‘Vomitorious,’ said Lottie, repelled.

‘Tell me about it. And then she went on for ever about the Family Traditions and how they had been spending New Year there since 1839 or something. I tell you, Lotts, my head began to spin.’

‘I’m not surprised. The woman sounds a complete pill.’

‘I don’t think she means to be. She’s very gentle and pleasant. I think she’s doing her best to turn me into a good little courtier in the time available. But my family hasn’t done anything since 1839, and I can’t get worked up about traditions unless they have some point to them.’

Lottie grinned. ‘That’s my girl. Red Finn would be proud of you.’

Bella groaned. ‘Don’t talk to me about my father. I think he’s deliberately trying to make things worse. He was threatening to write to the Despatch about Royalty grinding the faces of the poor in the dust, the last time we spoke.’

‘One thing I’ll say for Finn – he’s consistent.’

‘So is Lady Pansy,’ said Bella, returning to her original grievance. ‘Just look at that.’ She flung a bulky envelope on to the kitchen table.

Lottie turned it over curiously. It had the Royal monogram on the back and weighed a ton.

‘What’s this?’

‘Briefing,’ said Bella in a voice of doom.

‘Briefing? For the New Year party?’

‘Yes.’

‘For two days?’

‘Yes.’

‘The woman’s mad,’said Lottie, with conviction. ‘Nobody reads briefing of more than a page. What’s in all this bumf, for God’s sake?’

‘Protocol. When you get up. When you eat breakfast. Where you eat breakfast. Where you’re expected to be at all times of the day. How to curtsey. How to drink the loyal toast. Did you know that some people are allowed to say “The King, God bless him”? Not very many. Most people are expected to say “The King” and shut the f*ck up.’

Lottie boggled.

‘Then there’s the Ball. Instructions on what to wear, skirt length (and fullness of), shoes.’

‘Shoes?’

‘Soft-soled Princess pumps are preferred,’ read Bella out loud. ‘Oh, God, it’s like I’ve fallen through a wormhole into another universe. Individually the words make sense but I don’t know what they mean when you put them together like that.’

She soon found out. Lady Pansy, it transpired, had taken the initiative. First off a small box arrived from a Scottish footwear manufacturer, containing shoes that were more like unstructured ballet slippers. They were light and pretty but too big for Bella’s feet.

‘Why doesn’t the woman bloody ask?’ fumed Bella, phoning the company. She was horrified to find that Lady Pansy had blagged them out of the company for free, as a gift to the Prince of Wales. ‘They are nothing to do with the Prince,’ said Bella tightly, down the phone to the Highlands. ‘Please send me an invoice. Yes, for both sizes. I shall be paying.’

But that wasn’t the only thing that Lady Pansy had ordered to turn Bella into a halfway decent guest at the Royal Family’s New Year house party. A large, flat box also arrived.

Lottie and Bella surveyed it cautiously. ‘It looks like one of those old-fashioned laundry boxes my grandmother used to have,’ said Bella.

They opened it. Inside was a ball dress.

‘That’s a ball dress and a half,’ said Lottie, extracting it from loads of tissue paper, an expression of fascinated horror on her face.

It was shiny. And very, very full. The material was so rigid, the thing could have stood up on its own, but it had a stiff underskirt anyway, just in case. It was patterned in huge vertical stripes of purple, turquoise, midnight blue and cerise. When Bella put it on, it turned out to have sleeves puffed to such bloated proportions she would have to go through doors sideways.

It was beyond dreadful.

‘But it ticks all the sodding boxes,’ said Bella, beginning to gibber. ‘No slits, no bare upper arms, full-length, full skirt, not black. AAAAARGH!’

Lottie was studying Lady P’s briefing. ‘“Tiaras may be worn.” Wonder if she’s going to send you one of those, too?’

But Lady P’s initiative had worn itself out with The Striped Horror. ‘Stripes,’ she said, when Bella rang to query the purchase, ‘are Very Slimming. And puffed sleeves are so youthful. The Queen,’ she added as a clincher, ‘agrees with me.’

Bella put the phone down, defeated.

But Lottie was made of sterner stuff. ‘Look, there could be a misunderstanding. Hope on, hope ever. Take a dress of your own as well.’

Bella looked at The Horror with loathing. ‘I don’t have anything that meets the criteria. I’ve got to do Scottish dancing in the thing. Me. You know me and dancing. I wish I was dead.’

Lottie was sobered.

‘Lady P has sent over instructions on how to dance Scottish reels. There are bits on the footwork and bits on the arm gestures. Only gentlemen raise their arms above their heads in the Highland Schottische, whatever that is. There’s no namby-pamby gender equality on a Highland dance floor, I’ll have you know. And there are even bloody road maps on the dances themselves!’

‘Bella,’ said Lottie very quietly, ‘I’m sorry, but I think you’re going barmy.’

‘So do I.’

‘Dances don’t have road maps.’

‘Scottish dances do. It’s deeply depressing.’

Of course Richard, bopping away for King and Country in Bar Bahia didn’t know that. He texted: We’ll boogie in the New Year.

To which Bella replied: Wanna bet?

Almost immediately her phone rang.

‘What is it, sweetheart? You’re not getting cold feet about coming to Drummon?’

‘Not cold feet, no. But I haven’t got time to do the necessary homework.’

‘Sorry, I missed that. Did you say homework?’

‘Yes.’

She could hear the latin rhythms in the club behind him.

‘Don’t follow.’

She told him about Lady Pansy’s package. ‘The dress makes me feel ill to look at. And the dance instructions are like preparation for an Outward Bound course,’ she said in horror, ‘with crossword puzzles and charades thrown in. I may run away to sea.’

‘Nah. Not you. You’re not a runner.’

‘I could be. How the hell do you make an arch without raising your arms above your head?’

‘Ah, the Reels,’ he said, enlightened. ‘Look, forget all that. I’ll make sure you only dance with me or guys who know what they’re doing.’

‘Hmm,’ said Bella, unconvinced.

‘Trust me. Just close your eyes and I’ll drive. I came reeling out of the womb.’

‘Oh, God.’

‘Don’t worry, Dream Girl. I’ll get you through it.’

‘You’ll need to,’ she said grumpily. But she felt better for talking to him.

The week before Christmas was mad, with lots of parties at which she saw people she hadn’t heard from for ages. Some of them knew she was seeing the Prince of Wales but very few of them cared. Very few of them, Bella thought with a little chill, expected it to last.

By lunch-time on Christmas Eve the shops were empty and the London streets nearly deserted. There was a fine fall of rain but it was too warm to turn to snow. Both girls stowed their overnight cases and presents in the back seat of the rented car, leaving the boot free for Georgia’s international luggage, and went off to Heathrow to meet her flight. She was coming via Madrid.

Georgia strolled out through Passport Control looking, as she always did, a miracle of understated elegance. She was wearing slim jeans, cowboy boots, a fringed alpaca jacket and a pearl-white poloneck sweater. Her nut-brown hair was shoulder-length, drawn back at the neck with a thin band. Her hair shone. Her eyes sparkled. She looked like a million dollars and totally in control of her world.

‘Who travels for twenty-four hours in a white poloneck?’ said Lottie in awe.

‘She changed in the ladies, after she landed,’ said Bella, who had travelled with her grandmother and knew her strategy.

They surged forward and embraced her.

‘You look wonderful,’ Georgia told them both impartially.

Bella took charge of her case and led the way to the car park.

‘Did you have a good flight?’

‘Her grandmother was wheeling the smallest possible carry-on case.

‘I had a good book. The flight passed.’ She shrugged. ‘Now tell me about you two. Bella has a young man and a new job, I know. Lottie, what about you? Still enjoying London?’

Most of the traffic had gone by the time they got on to the M3. So they had a straight run, in a light grey drizzle, with Lottie talking about her job, very amusingly, and Georgia asking all the right questions, just as she always did, in her soft Southern drawl.

They delivered Lottie to the Hendreds, had a cup of tea and a mince pie there, and drove on to Janet and Kevin’s.

‘Now,’ said Georgia, as Bella pulled out of the Hendreds’ drive, ‘tell me about him. I can’t get any sense out of either of your parents. How long have you known him?’

‘Not long at all.’ Bella gave her a rapid outline of events to date.

‘Hmm. No, you’re right. That’s fast.’ It was interesting. When she was thinking aloud, Georgia’s Southern drawl became more pronounced. It was, decided Bella, very attractive – calm and somehow poised.

‘I wish I were poised,’ she said involuntarily.

Her grandmother looked at her quickly. ‘That’s an interesting word. Does he make you feel inadequate? Socially, maybe?’

‘He doesn’t but, well—’ She described the New Year’s briefing package.

Georgia’s sculpted lips tightened perceptibly. ‘How discourteous. Who did you say this person is?’

‘Lady Pansy. She’s Queen Jane’s right-hand woman, as far as I can see. Been with her for ever.’

Georgia drummed her fingers thoughtfully. ‘That suggests she has no life of her own,’ she drawled. ‘You need to watch these loyal retainers. They can become very gothic in their devotion.’

Bella laughed heartily. ‘Not Lady Pansy! If she weren’t so elegant you’d say she was a horse.’

‘Horses are very gothic,’ said Georgia obstinately. ‘You watch her. And watch your back around her.’

Of course she didn’t say any of that in front of Janet and Kevin. Georgia’s idea of good behaviour demanded a high degree of forbearance, as well as refraining from giving advice in public or arguing either. So when Janet started to complain about Finn baiting the newspapers with his antipathy to the monarch, Georgia just smiled faintly and drifted away to somewhere more congenial.

But she did take Bella on one side and say, ‘Are you really worried about spending the New Year with Richard’s family?’

‘No-o-o.’ But in the end it all poured out: the dancing-by-numbers Bella had never done before, The Striped Horror, the pumps.

Georgia laughed. ‘My dear child! You just need a posh frock.’

‘I’ve got one,’ said Bella gloomily. ‘And how.’

‘No. One you like and feel comfortable in. Look, you may not care for the idea, but I have a lot of my own frocks stored in London. We still just about made a debut in my day. Why don’t we see if there’s anything that you suitable among them? We’re quite similar. I think the size will be about right. They may be a little short, but if you have complicated dancing to face, that is hardly a fault.’

Bella agreed, but without much hope.

She spent an edgy Christmas, sustained mainly by Richard’s phone calls from various places in the world where British forces were serving. No wonder Ian had kept the diary from her, thought Bella, watching the TV News to see Richard jump lightly from a helicopter on to the deck of an aircraft carrier. He looked instantly at home, eager and friendly, and always a concerned, good listener. Oh, she did love him.

She looked up suddenly and found her grandmother’s eyes on her. Georgia said nothing, just inclined her elegant head, but Bella felt as if she had been given her grandmother’s blessing. She hugged herself.

‘You’ll love him,’ she said, suddenly certain that she was right.

‘I probably will, dear. As I said, you and I are very alike.’

Richard met Bella at the station on New Year’s Eve. Just him. No security officer, no Press Adviser. The stationmaster touched his cap in a friendly way and wished them both Happy New Year, and Richard drove the big 4WD off up into the hills, along an unmade track to the house.

‘Best view,’ he said, waving at folds of snow-covered hills to his left and a sparkling, darting brook in the white valley below them.

‘It’s gorgeous,’ Bella said, truthfully.

‘But freezing. Hope you brought plenty of warm clothes?’

‘Yes, I came prepared.’ Conscious of Georgia’s Alternative Posh Frock in her suitcase, Bella said carefully, ‘What will people wear to the ball tonight?’

Richard glanced down at her. ‘Yes, OK. Don’t rub it in. I’ll be prancing around in a kilt with a lace jabot and a velvet jacket. And so will all the other guys. I don’t get a vote.’

She was taken aback. ‘No? Really? You mean, I get to see your knees?’

His eyes glinted. ‘You’ve seen my knees, you baggage.’

‘Not in public. Not to really stand back and admire them.’ She let herself dwell on the picture with pleasure for a moment. Then said, ‘No, actually, what I meant was the ladies.’

He shrugged. ‘It’s easier for them. They wear their usual rig. With mountaineer’s underwear underneath to keep them warm, of course.’

‘Their usual rig?’

‘Yes. Why?’ he said puzzled

She thought of The Striped Horror. Puffed sleeves like a Michelin Man’s biceps were nobody’s idea of normal.

‘I think I may have got the wrong end of the stick,’ she said diplomatically. ‘Look, do me a favour. I’ve borrowed a dress … well, actually, like your boat, it’s more sort of inherited. Will you come and give me your opinion on it before we have to join the party?’

Richard agreed with enthusiasm.

And later he took one look at her in a Grace Kelly number, with a soft skirt of misty grey silk crepe, and, ‘Very elegant.’

So that was all right. At least it would be until Lady Pansy caught sight of it. Her niece, the Honourable Chloe, was among the guests as well. It would be interesting, thought Bella with a touch of cattiness, to see whether Chloe’s gown was out of the School of Striped Horror.

Richard took her down to the drawing room at Drummon House, at the cocktail hour. There was a handsome fire blazing in the great hearth, but a combination of stone walls and ill-fitting windows meant that the warmth did not permeate very far into the room.

The Queen, greeting Bella kindly, seemed not to notice that she had failed to curtsey.

Prince George, a taller, gawkier version of Richard, flapped a hand in greeting. ‘Hi. The sooner the physical jerks start, the sooner the sound of chattering teeth will die away.’

A steward offered her a tray. Richard inspected it and explained its contents. ‘You can have one of three sorts of malt whisky or a concoction of blended Scotch, amaretto and cointreau, which George invented last year. I don’t advise it.’

‘I call it Drummon Hell,’ Prince George told her proudly.

He had the reputation of being a bit of a hell-raiser and Bella had been wary of meeting him, but she found she liked him. It was impossible not to; he was a Labrador puppy in human form.

Bella took one of the glasses, with a word of thanks, and they moved further into the drawing room. As soon as they were out of earshot of the Queen she hissed, ‘I hate whisky.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll drink it.’

‘And I forgot to curtsey to your mother.’

‘She’ll get over it.’

‘But Lady Pansy won’t. She looked really disappointed. You know, more in sorrow than in anger.’

‘Pansy’s an old fart,’ he said brutally. ‘Don’t worry about it. Lots of people don’t curtsey these days.’

‘I have tried, honest. But I just can’t get the hang of it.’

‘No sweat. When you have to, it will come naturally.’

Bella was alarmed. ‘When I have to? What do you mean, have to? You just said lots of people don’t.’

Richard looked mischievous. ‘Wait and see.’

Bella looked round the room. There was a smattering of dinner jackets but the men were mostly in kilts, worn with crisp white shirts, a frilled or lacy stock, and a waisted black velvet jacket with gold buttons. They looked very fine. The women were more varied in their dress. If they had had the same instructions as Bella, none of them had resorted to stiff shiny satin and puffed sleeves. Some of the older ladies were wearing long white gloves, above the elbow. The cannier ones kept pashminas to hand. Bella saw that Lady Pansy herself was in a stiff violet crinoline that she had probably been wearing in the eighties.

No black permitted, Bella remembered from Lady Pansy’s notes, low necklines discouraged and sleeves were obligatory. Lottie had howled with laughter: ‘Where do they think they are? In a cathedral?’ she’d said. But now, looking at one of her fellow first-timers who had ignored the spirit of the notes and opted for festive décolletage, Bella felt sorry for the woman. Diamonds and gooseflesh was not a good look.

She did not have long to pity her, however. There were three mighty raps at the door, followed by an earsplitting noise like an elephant farting. Then the doors were flung open and in marched a piper, kilt swinging.

At once there was a scramble to fall in behind him.

George hissed in her ear, ‘We all march round the room after him, and divide so women go to the left and men to the right. Then we go down either side of the room and meet in front of the doors and join up with a partner and go into a Grand March.’

The name was vaguely familiar but that was all. ‘Sorry. My mind’s a blank.’

‘Don’t worry about it. It’s dead easy. Just do what everyone else does. All you need to do is make sure that nobody queue jumps when you go to meet your partner. It’s a favourite trick.’

‘I didn’t realise it was so competitive.’

‘Blood on the floor,’ said George cheerfully. ‘Keep your eye on Richard. You may need to make a grab.’ And he waved cheerily as he peeled off in the other direction.

‘I will.’

Bella nearly lost him, though, when Chloe, in a figure-hugging lacy dress that was only just this side of decent, darted in front of her at the last moment, just as Bella was about to step out in front of the big doors to meet him.

‘Excuse me,’ she said in a breathy, little girl voice that exactly matched her wide-eyed stare.

But Richard was too quick for her. With a nifty softshoe shuffle that Fred Astaire would not have been ashamed of, he slid momentarily out of his line and in again behind a grey-haired man, who at once stepped up to the place in front of the doors. The Hon Chloe had no choice. She gave the elderly party her hand and they marched off together down the middle of the drawing room, now cleared of furniture.

As they met and followed, Richard took Bella’s hand and laid it gently on his velvet-jacketed arm,

‘Fifteen love to us,’ he murmured.

A terrible desire to giggle took hold of her, as they marched solemnly down the freezing cold, overfurnished room, and round the edge again to join up in fours. The servants just about managed to clear a wide enough path through the furniture for the column of four to pass. But Bella had begun to see what was going to happen next. And there was no way they were going to be able to march down that room eight abreast.

‘Someone’s going to get impaled on a suit of armour,’ she said, half fascinated, half appalled.

Richard kept a straight face. ‘It has been known. It is rumoured that someone forgot to clear away the piano one year and my Uncle Leopold marched straight over it, dragging his partner after him.’

Bella folded her lips tightly together. Her shoulders were starting to shake. Oh, God, I’m not going to be able to get through this lunacy without disgracing myself, she thought.

And then they did all join up in an eight, and the lady at one end of the line and the man at the other did indeed have to vault over occasional tables and slalom round chairs. Above the clatter of falling objets d’art and cries of anguish from those who had stubbed their toes, the King’s voice could be heard saying testily, ‘Keep time. Keep time, damn you.’

Richard bent his head sideways. ‘Don’t worry. He’s almost certainly talking to the piper rather than my mother,’ he confided in a whisper.

Bella’s ribs ached. She moaned. Suppressing laughter was becoming agony for her.

‘You’re a swine,’ she said conversationally, keeping her bright smile in place.

‘Yeah. But I know how to do this stuff. So,’ he went into a mobster voice, ‘you need me, baby.’

That was when the double doors at the far end were flung wide and they progessed, eight by eight, into what Bella could only describe as a baronial hall: high ceiling, banners, serfs gathered round the walls watching, the lot. She gasped and would have stopped dead, but for the momentum of the group which kept surging forward. She stumbled but Richard and George between them half lifted her off her feet, keeping her upright and moving until she had regained her balance.

‘Keep up. Keep up,’ muttered Prince George in a very good imitation of the King.

Bella gave a strangled gulp and her ribs started to hurt again.

The piper got to the far end of the hall and turned to face them. The eights all peeled off and formed squares, and the serfs – who, now she came to look, were just as well dressed as the Royal party – bundled on to the floor too.

The piper started to tap his foot. You could feel the whole room counting. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. And they were off, circling round to the right, and then back, hell for leather, like a cavalry charge.

Richard said over his shoulder, ‘Next, stick out your right hand, left round my waist. You’re going round in a star with the other ladies.’

Bella was still trying to assimilate this when he put his arm round her waist, flung her into the circle and was galloping off, round again. And when they completed the circuit, he switched places with her and they went back and around the other way. Her head started to spin …

It seemed as if every time she learned how to do a move, and started to enjoy herself, the damn’ dance did something different. And did it fast. There was a good bit in the middle where you were allowed to stand still while other people did their thing. But sometimes you had to do your thing and that was torture. Richard was really good at sending Bella off into the fray, with a gentle push in the small of the back. But the other people in the set all seemed to know what they were doing, and helped too, reaching out a hand to steer her when it was feasible, giving her good clear hand signals when it wasn’t.

The music finally came to an end on a long chord and she and Richard were bowing to each other.

‘Curtsey,’ he mouthed.

‘What?’ But she looked sideways and saw what the women across the set were doing. Bella copied them and didn’t wobble too much at all.

‘I told you it would come naturally,’ said Richard smugly, taking her hand as she rose out of the curtsey. He tucked it under the crook of his arm. ‘I’m going to have to do lots of duty dances, but I’ve lined up friends and experts to take you through when I can’t dance with you. Have you got your dance card?’

‘A dance card? I’m supposed to have a dance card?’ Bella shook her head, caught between laughter and dismay. ‘What is this, Gone with the Wind? Georgia won’t believe it when I tell her.’

‘Pansy was supposed to have sent it to you. It has the list of dances in it and a small pencil.’

‘Well she sent me a paper mountain, but I don’t remember a dance card.’

‘Not a problem. There will be spares.’ He turned to his brother. ‘George, would you—?’

‘I’m on it.’ George disappeared into the throng like an eel and returned with the prize.

Richard squiggled his distinctive black R beside several dances and made sure that her other partners were both kind and expert. ‘You can dance with George,’ he instructed, ‘but not in the Duke of Perth, when he goes crazy, or the Irish Rover because he always gets lost.’

George agreed cheerfully. He didn’t seem worried. ‘Everyone has one dance that brings them to their knees. Actually, that’s half the fun of reels – the catastrophes.’

Richard sighed. ‘See what I mean? Dance with him if you must, but watch yourself.’

But it wasn’t George who brought about the disaster. That was all Bella’s own fault.

Her partners, briefed by Richard, got her through the figures by a combination of timely crisp instruction and sheer muscle power. She danced a thing called Postie’s Jig with a gentle-faced, middle-aged man, who was clearly an expert.

‘It’s an interesting dance,’ he told her in a soft Highland accent. ‘Like a piece of paper that keeps being folded in on itself. Two couples dance at the same time, while the other four dancers stand still at the corners and help them round. Very pleasing when it’s well performed. It has balance.’

‘Um, good,’ said Bella doubtfully. She just wanted to scramble through it without falling flat on her face or poking someone’s eye out, but she didn’t tell her kindly partner that.

And they would have been fine, she was sure, if they had joined one of the friendly sets she had been dancing in up until then, where the other dancers were happy to give her an informal push in the right direction. But unfortunately she and her gentle partner were summoned to join the Queen’s set, in which Lady Pansy was also dancing. And Lady Pansy tried to help by shouting instructions at Bella across the set. Sometimes these conflicted with her partner’s. It was a nightmare, with Bella turning right when she should have gone left, blundering too far down the set, grabbing the hand of the wrong man when they came to turn in the middle … And then real disaster struck. They were dancing in the middle of the set, towards the Queen and her partner, in full regimentals. One couple had to make an arch; one had to go under it.

‘If you’re going up the set, you put your arms up,’ her kind partner whispered.

But Bella had no idea which direction was up. She thought she felt a tug and started to raise her arm, but Lady Pansy, standing at the top left-hand corner of the set, frowned and shook her head. So Bella snatched her hand back again – just as the Queen and her soldier lowered their heads to come through the arch they were expecting.

Well, Bella recovered but not fast enough. The Queen’s priceless tiara slid over one ear and started to fall.

It lasted only a moment, less than a bar of music. Bella tried to look over her shoulder but her partner forced her to dance on. So did everyone else, including the Queen, who for the rest of the dance held her tiara in place with the hand that she should have been giving to other dancers. Lady Pansy looked as if she would cry.

Afterwards everyone apologised. The Highlander was mortified, he could not understand it, nothing like that had ever happened to him on the dance floor before. He begged the Queen’s pardon again and again. Bella felt like a murderer.

Queen Jane, of course, could not have been nicer. ‘These things happen, Henry. It’s not the end of the world.’ And to Bella, ‘My dear, it couldn’t matter less. Postie is always fast and furious. At least no one was hurt.’

Which didn’t make Bella feel any better.

Prince George, when he heard, went into mourning. ‘You knocked Mother’s crown off and I missed it? Not even a photograph, since Father went and banned phones! Bugger, life’s unfair.’

The Queen re-attached her tiara and they danced for an hour and a half. Then dinner was served, the serfs at long trestles which were put up in the baronial hall, the Royal party in the dining room. Formal dinner with the King and Queen was not fun. There were rules about when you could eat and when you had to stop. Twice Bella had her plate whisked away from under her nose before she had finished. Practised courtiers like Lady Pansy, she realised, hoovered their food in as soon as possible, to avoid exactly that.

‘You could have warned me,’ she said to Richard, on her left.

He grinned, unrepentant. ‘My father hates long meals. He wants to get this over with and go back to his engines. You watch. He’ll be out of the hall at midnight plus a nanosecond.’

‘Really?’

‘Maybe not quite a nanosecond. We all have to sing Auld Lang Syne and give three cheers for the King. But after that he legs it as fast as he can.’

‘So the party ends at midnight?’

He looked startled. ‘In practice, the King goes, the party gets going. Two parties, usually. The reeling will carry on till dawn but there’s an alternative gig in one of the barns for anyone under thirty. George is usually involved. Dodgy lighting, crazy music, that sort of thing. Do you want to go?’

Bella smiled straight into his eyes.

‘Do you want to?

‘Maybe for half an hour or so,’ he said, his voice suddenly thickened.

He took her hand under the table and held it so hard she could feel the pulse in his fingers.

She said softly, ‘Any chance of seeing you tonight?’

He looked so astonished that she caught herself saying, ‘No, of course not, I’m sorry. Silly thing to say. Not under your parents’ roof. Not with all those rules about when and where you can walk in the corridors …’

‘What do you think all those rules are about, for God’s sake?’

‘Um – tradition?’

‘Yup. A tradition that grew up so that everyone could get back to the right bedroom in the morning without being seen by anyone who could tell on them.’

‘What?’

‘Think about it. You spend the night with the lady of your heart. She may, or may not, be married. But anyway, you shouldn’t be there. So what happens if someone sees you creeping back to your own room? Well, they shouldn’t be there either, so it’s mutual blackmail. Works like a dream.’

‘You’re not serious?’

‘Trust me. No servant will set foot above the ground floor until eight o’clock, on express orders. Apparently, in my grandfather’s heyday, it could get like the rush hour. Mind you, he had a particularly libidinous set of friends.’

Bella shook her head. ‘So all these rules are just so you can behave disgracefully?’

‘Behave disgracefully and not get found out, yes.’

She looked severe. ‘It’s not very honest. Not sure I approve.’

His eyes glinted. ‘Tell me that and I’ll go back to my own room, I promise.’

He silenced her by carrying their clasped hands to his lips and feathering a quick kiss along the knuckles of hers, before tucking them back under the table again.

Bella gasped.

But the servants were removing the plates and she felt someone’s eyes on her. When she looked up, she saw Chloe Lenane staring down the table at her with an expression almost of hatred. It was so unexpected that Bella blinked. Yet when she looked again, the previous ditzy vague expression was back. It was unsettling.

At a signal from the Queen, the ladies retired. Bella would have missed it if Richard hadn’t hissed, ‘Off you go, follow my leader.’

In the boudoir set aside for the female guests, Lady Pansy came up to Bella.

‘I see you found a different dress.’

She murmured something about the difficulties of packing when you were coming by train.

Lady Pansy gave her a sweet smile that made her eyes glisten like flaming arrows. ‘I do hope you’re enjoying yourself, dear. Just a word to the wise.’

‘Yes?’

‘Do be careful not to put yourself forward too much. This is the big event of the year for these people. They look forward to it for twelve months. The young girls, and not just the young ones –’ she tittered in a way that Bella suddenly found rather unpleasant ‘– all hope to dance with the Prince of Wales. Like a fairytale. Something to tell the children. It would be very selfish of you to monopolise him and spoil their evening.’

Bella was not going to tell her that it was Richard who had decided how many times they would dance together.

‘Thank you. I’ll remember,’ she said tonelessly.

‘I was sure you would.’ And Lady Pansy’s violet crinoline bobbed away.

Bella uncurled her fingers. Lady Pansy was seriously starting to get on her tits. Oh, Lord, she’s the Queen’s best friend and I want to slap the woman, Bella thought ruefully.

The rest of the evening passed as Richard had predicted. At two minutes to midnight the band finished a lively reel and someone switched on the radio. People began to look round for the person they wanted to be with at the turn of the year. The Queen, Bella saw, went to the King’s side. George had acquired a stunning redhead, and Eleanor … but then Bella saw Richard powering his way towards her through the crowd and forgot Princess Eleanor and everyone else but her own lover.

He was standing in front of her. They smiled into each other’s eyes. There might have been no one else there.

The room fell silent. The countdown started. One, two, three …

Everyone joined in, even the King. The Queen, Bella saw, was watching her and Richard. She looked unhappy.

Seven, eight, nine …

George had produced squeakers and was passing them round his immediate neighbours with an evil grin.

Ten!

There was the first boom from Big Ben.

Bella flung her arms round Richard’s neck and kissed him fiercely. She didn’t stop kissing him until the final boom was dying away. She fell back, startled by her own intensity. The light in his eyes made him almost unrecognisable.

‘Oh, God, I love you,’ she said under her breath, more to herself than to him.

His hands tightened on her waist. ‘Never mind about that damned bop in the barn. I need to see you alone. OK?’

‘Yes,’ she said, shivering for the first time that evening. And not from cold.

George’s squeakers went off in an appalling chorus. Even people inured to the drone of the bagpipes clapped their hands over their ears.

‘Happy New Year,’ everyone was saying to everyone else. ‘Happy New Year.’

There was a lot of kissing. As Lady Pansy had warned, Richard came in for a good deal of it from female tenants of all ages. And, Bella saw, Chloe Lenane into the bargain.

‘Auld Lang Syne,’ cried the King, seizing a couple of hands and backing against the wall with his newly acquired partners. The Queen was not one of them.

There was even a protocol to ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ Bella found. She was used to a cheerful, drunken shambles with people hanging on to the person next to them and then diving into the middle, cheering. In Drummon House you sang the first verse (there are verses? she thought) standing upright with your hands by your sides. It was only the second verse – And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere, and gie’s a hand o’ thine – that you were actually licensed to take hands. She began to long for a good old-fashioned bop where you could do anything you wanted, with your own hands or anyone else’s.

The singing done, everyone kissed some more, though more sedately. They cheered the King. The King waved a gracious hand and bolted for home. The Queen did not go with him.

‘Uh–oh,’ said Richard. ‘Not good. Will you be OK? I need to dance with my mother. Then we’re going to be on our own and nobody is going to stop us.’

He was gone for one dance only. When it was over, Bella saw him take his mother’s hand. He seemed to be reassuring her. Then she saw a courtier hovering and turned away, dismissing her son.

Richard came back to Bella. ‘Ready to return to the twenty-first century now?’

She looked at him. ‘Is your mother OK?’

‘You’ve got sharp eyes.’ He was rueful. ‘We had a slight difference of opinion, that’s all.’

‘And it’s settled?’

‘She’s cool. Now, tell me, do you really want to go and dance in George’s barn?’

She shook her head.

‘Then come on, let’s go sort out the rest of our lives.’