To Marry a Prince

Chapter 17

‘The Date!’ – Royal Watchers Magazine

Bella did not act immediately on her grandmother’s advice, not even when Georgia sent her a list of possible dates for bringing Richard to dinner. But she did think about it.

Richard was on a brief tour of middle European capitals, in support of trade promotion. After that he was going on to a ski-ing holiday in Andorra. He had asked Bella to go too, but hadn’t argued when she said that she couldn’t start a new job and take a holiday after only a month.

‘I can’t duck out of this,’ he said apologetically. ‘It’s a family tradition. We go every year. We stay with my mother’s cousins and take friends. Including, this year, my goddaughter, who has a birthday that week. I can’t disappoint her.’

‘Of course you mustn’t cancel,’ said Bella, shocked. ‘Include me when you book the next one.’

‘You got it.’

But later he rang and said, ‘How would you feel about coming for just the weekend? I’d like you to meet everyone.’

So she left work at lunch-time on Friday and flew to Barcelona. She wondered if Richard would meet her there himself. She remembered how they had fallen into each other’s arms that first time at Waterloo Station. But a uniformed airport official picked her out while she was walking from the plane and led her off through silent corridors to a waiting limousine, having her passport stamped en route.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

The official bowed. ‘Our pleasure. We hope that you will be very happy, you and Prince Richard.’

‘Good heavens! I mean, thank you for your good wishes.’ I’m starting to sound like Georgia, she thought.

The car took her to a substantial villa behind an even more substantial wall. There were a few sightseers and the inevitable photographers waiting in the country lane that led to it. Bella had learned the form now. She leaned forward, so they could see her face, and gave everyone her best smile.

No waving, Lady Pansy had warned. Not unless she was accompanying the Prince. People wouldn’t like her pretending she was Royal before she was. So Bella kept her hands locked tight in her lap and beamed for Britain as gates swung silently open and the limo drove out of their sight. The people in the road waved like mad. It was a real physical effort not to wave back.

Richard did come to meet her as the car arrived, though. He ran down the steps and kissed her, with a slight air of restraint.

‘Lady P been getting at you too, huh?’ muttered Bella.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ She slipped her hand into his and they went into the house. ‘Tell me who’s here.’

‘My mother is resting at the moment. Nell is on the slopes with the whole Lenane family and our cousins. George is sprawled in the rumpus room getting over a hangover.’

‘Still?’

Richard grinned. ‘He and the younger ones went into town last night. Most of them came back around midnight, but Chloe tells me that George got into some heavy salsa action. Don’t ask me when he got home. I don’t want to know.’

Bella smiled but said slowly, ‘Chloe Lenane’s here?’ So the ditzy blonde who had looked at her with such hatred on New Year’s Eve was included in the family party. Just great!

Richard was saying, ‘She’s a fellow godparent to The Monster, Tilly, which isn’t really fair as she’s a cousin and should cough up for a birthday present anyway. That’s why I’m so important, The Monster tells me. All her godparents are relatives except me.’

‘I look forward to meeting her.’

‘You won’t enjoy it unless you’ve brought her something,’ Richard warned. ‘But she’s very entertaining.’

He was right on both counts. In fact, Bella was surprised to see how cool, courteous, dignified Richard got down and dirty with the make-up kit of Tilly Lenane’s Suki doll.

‘There is an irresistible appeal to a grown man sitting on the floor wearing pink lipstick and gold dust,’ she told him. ‘Do you think perhaps some rouge on his cheeks, Tilly? Nice round spots, about the size of a tenpence piece.’

His eyes promised vengeance but he sat calmly while the small girl polished his face to a shining carmine. The child’s mother, coming in with the Queen to put Tilly to bed, was taken aback. Queen Jane, however, was as charmed as Bella.

‘Very nice, Tilly. I think he looks very handsome. Don’t you, Bella?’

‘Stunning,’ she said gravely.

His lips twitched. ‘Do you think I ought to stay like this for dinner then?’

Even the Queen did a double take at that.

Bella, however, considered the suggestion, ‘Could be a bit rococo for a simple family meal?’

He allowed his shoulders to droop. ‘I’m really sorry, Tilly,’ he told his goddaughter mournfully. ‘You’re an artist but supper is no place for your art.’

But she didn’t mind at all. ‘I can do it again tomorrow,’ she offered generously.

Bella swallowed hard. ‘Maybe it’s time I changed for dinner,’ she said unsteadily.

‘Good idea, I’ll come with you. See you later, Mother, Nicola. Goodnight, Tilly.’

They escaped together. ‘How do you get this stuff off?’ hissed Richard as they ran up the stairs.

Bella was bubbling over. ‘No idea. That make-up is toy stuff, intended for dolls. They’re plastic. I don’t know whether ordinary make-up remover will take it off skin. You might have to use a blow torch.’

‘Alternatively, a good long session in the shower with an expert might do the trick,’ he said, whisking her inside their bedroom and locking the door. ‘Let’s go to it.’

They came down to dinner a little late but very, very clean.

The next day everyone went off to the slopes. Bella didn’t really like ski-ing and had only done it a couple of times, so she was glad to see that there were lots of easy runs and a relaxed family atmosphere to the place. The cousins, a dispossessed Grand Duke turned industrialist and his wife, were hospitable and the Lenanes jolly. Prince George treated Bella in exactly the same way as he treated his sister, giving her his spare stuff to hold while he shot off to buy a burger to fill the gap between mid-morning coffee and late lunch.

‘What? I’m still growing, you know!’ he said when Princess Eleanor called him a greedy pig. ‘I burn up a lot of energy.’

‘Not on the ski slopes, you filthy porker,’ she said, prodding him. They were clearly great friends though Bella suspected that they were both a little in awe of Richard. Of course, he was five years older than George, seven years older than Eleanor. It was a big gap, even if he wasn’t also carrying all the responsibilities of being the Prince of Wales.

Eleanor was not as cheerfully accepting of Bella as George was. She seemed friendly enough but remained distant, almost as if she were embarrassed.

That afternoon the cause of this became clear.

‘I’m glad that you’re with Richard,’ Eleanor said, awkwardly, when she and Bella found themselves drinking warming soup together while Tilly proudly showed off what she had learned that morning.

‘It’s been a bit difficult. Everyone thought he was going out with Chloe again.’

‘Again?’

Eleanor looked surprised. ‘You might not know but he’d been dating this Deborah person. We all knew it wouldn’t last. She was always looking round for the cameras. When that finished, he took Chloe to some party and then they went on to a nightclub. I don’t know the details. But he had a little walk out with her years ago, just after he left university and before he did his year in the Navy.’

Eleanor looked up at the mountain.

‘I don’t know how serious it was. You know Richard, he doesn’t talk about his feelings, and I was only a teenager. But Pansy said that Chloe was waiting until he came back. And when he did …’

‘Deborah?’

‘No. Nobody for a long time. Then there was Anastasia for a bit.’

Bella looked blank.

‘Princess Anastasia? Of Finland? She married last year. Big spread in Royalty Watchers.’

Bella nodded as if she knew what Eleanor was talking about. Whereas she had never heard of Royalty Watchers Magazine until last year.

Eleanor wasn’t deceived. ‘You don’t know, do you? OK. She was an Art History major at Smith. Whenever he was in the States, he saw her. And then she came over here and worked for the National Gallery. Her father is on the Olympic Committee?’

Bella clicked fingers. ‘Got it. King Edvard or something. One of the bicycling Royals, right?’

Eleanor choked with laughter.

Coming up behind them Richard took off his sunglasses and surveyed Tilly’s composed run. ‘She’s not bad. What were you laughing about?’

Eleanor looked agonisingly embarrassed.

‘Bicycling Royals,’ said Bella crisply. ‘It’s rude to eavesdrop.’

‘What’s wrong with them? I’ll have you know that some of my best friends are bicycling royals.’

He put his arm round Bella and pushed his woolly ski hat further back. She saw that he had got rid of his skis.

‘Ready to go?’

‘What about you? Don’t you want another run?’

He shook his head. ‘I’ve had my fresh air for the day. Anyway, Mother’s tired. I thought we could go back with her?’

‘Sure.’

He drove with that controlled competence Bella was coming to learn he brought to everything. The Queen sat next to him and she did, indeed, look tired.

‘I will go and lie down for half an hour,’ she said when they arrived at the house. ‘Let’s have tea together in the conservatory at half-past three. I want to talk to you both before everyone gets back.’

What she wanted to talk about, it turned out, was the wedding. ‘Your father tells me that the Prime Minister’s Office has a list of possible dates, most of them this year. It is your decision, of course. But I want you to think about it very seriously.’

Bella looked at Richard. Did he know this was coming?

Richard was calm. ‘I think we’ve got that, Mother. The PM sent the list of dates over in the second week of January. That’s a fortnight ago now. Someone has been sitting on it. I know it’s not me and it doesn’t seem to be Father’s office. So it had to be you. What exactly is going on?’

The Queen folded her lips together. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have done that.’

‘No,’ Richard agreed, not angry but not very friendly either.

His mother flushed. ‘I really wanted to get to know Bella …’

He said very coolly, ‘No, you didn’t. Have you even called her since the New Year?’

The Queen looked miserable. Bella felt sorry for her.

‘So, I repeat, what’s this about?’

The Queen drew a long breath. ‘This engagement, this affair, it has all happened too fast. You’re still starry-eyed about each other, I can see that. I think it’s lovely. But it’s no – no foundation for your future life.’

She turned to Bella.

‘You don’t come from our world. Don’t misunderstand me. I think that’s a good thing, I really do. But it means that you have no idea what your life would be like if you married my son.’

‘Will,’ said Richard, with steely quiet. ‘Will be like. When she marries me.’

The Queen ignored him. ‘All I’m asking is that you give yourself a year. You’re his fiancée. It’s official. You can be his companion anywhere you want. Just see what it’s like.’

Bella leaned forward. ‘I know he’s public property. He told me so right at the start and I’ve seen it with my own eyes. We don’t have to wait a year for me to learn that.’

The Queen shook her head. ‘And do you realise what it’s going to be like being Princess of Wales? It’s a job, you know.’

‘Richard will help me—’

The Queen drummed her fists on the arms of her chair. ‘But that’s just it! He won’t. He can’t. He’ll be off doing his own programme. Do you know his diary already has events booked in for five years ahead? Five years. When his grandfather died, it took the Private Offices three months to rework everyone’s calendars. My poor George was launching ships. He was eleven. My little boy, all on his own in front of a horde of men in uniform, throwing a bottle at a damn’ great ocean liner. But his father said that someone had to do it and George was old enough and liked the sea. Liked the sea …’

She fought with herself, drew several calming breaths. Richard watched her with dawning concern.

‘He enjoyed it, Mother. He still talks about it.’

‘That’s not the point. He was on his own.’

‘No, he wasn’t—’

‘I wasn’t there!’ she screamed. And banged her hand down so hard that dust flew out of the upholstered arm of the chair.

There was a shocked silence.

Bella said slowly, ‘This is about the children, isn’t it? You’re worried about our children.’

Richard drew a sharp breath.

The Queen shook her head. ‘Not just the children. It’s hard on them. But you can’t imagine what it’s like when you can’t stop them being pushed on to the public stage when they’re little. You feel so helpless.’

Bella remembered Richard telling her that the Queen had been good at protecting the family from the old King and his schemes. She looked at him now. He was very pale.

She couldn’t bear it. She said fiercely, ‘Richard and I will take care of each other and our children. I promise you.’

‘I know you think you will, dear. We all think that. But the pressures never stop. In the end, you get so tired. And lonely,’ she added, almost imperceptibly. And quite suddenly the Queen’s eyes filled with tears. She jumped to her feet.

‘I’m sorry. This is your business. I should never have delayed that list. I’m sorry. Please talk to your father about it, Richard. Excuse me. I’m not well.’

She hurried away, leaving a shocked silence.

‘Poor lady,’ whispered Bella.

‘Oh, Lord,’ said Richard. He looked at Bella. ‘What do you want to do, love? Sleep on it?’

She thought about what Georgia had told her. It made a lot of sense.

She took his hand. ‘I think you and I need to work out what we want before anyone else gets a vote.’

‘O – K. And that is?’

Bella looked at the little lines round his eyes which always deepened when he was worried about something. He was being so careful not to push, not to put her under pressure, to step back and let her take an independent decision. And yet she could see how desperately he didn’t want to wait for a year.

Well, neither did she. She knew that without any doubt at all.

She slipped out of her chair and knelt beside him. ‘I love you so much, it’s like being soaked in sunshine. I’d marry you tomorrow if I could.’

She watched the lines disappear. He gave a long, long sigh as if he’d put down a great burden.

But all he said, in his practical way, was, ‘What about June?’