To Marry a Prince

Chapter 20

‘Bridesmaids and Vikings’ – Morning Times

Oddly enough, it was Janet who came up with the solution to the problem. She had come up to Town for lunch with Bella since it was, she said, the only way she got to see her daughter. Conscience-stricken, Bella booked a table at a small wine bar round the corner from the charity’s offices. But, though her mother was in a determined mood, there were none of the reproaches that Bella was braced for.

‘Look, Bella,’ she said, ‘Kevin and I have been talking. I know that your father has washed his hands of the wedding. Has he even spoken to you?’

Bella had to admit he hadn’t. ‘But that’s happened before, Ma. You know what he’s like. And I was pretty rude to him.’

‘Good for you,’ said Janet, surprisingly. ‘It’s your life. But anyway, Kevin wanted me to say, he would be delighted to help out in any way. For instance, neither of us feels quite comfortable with the way the Palace seems to have taken you over.’

Bella was startled. ‘Doesn’t sound like you, Ma.’

Janet pressed her lips together. ‘I admire the Royal Family. But it does seem that they are riding roughshod over you sometimes. Whenever I speak to you, you have to break off to take a call from Lady Pansy in the middle of it. And it seems to me you’re rushing from pillar to post, trying to keep up with it all. So Kevin says what you need is a proper, trained Personal Assistant. He says that would take some of the strain off you. And he would like to pay for it.’

Bella was so touched that for a moment she could not speak.

Janet began to look nervous. ‘Is that all right? We don’t want to interfere. I just hate to see you looking so frantic.’

‘Ma, you’re wondrous. And Kevin is undoubtedly the best stepfather in the world. They did say they were going to employ me a PA. But in the end Lady Pansy just hired a couple of girls without consulting me, and they work for her in the office in the Palace. Lottie helps me think and keeps me sane, mostly. And there’s Carlos and everyone at the hair salon. But …’

‘I know,’ said Janet. ‘Everyone’s busy. So is that all right then?’

Bella nodded. ‘I’d be so grateful. I can’t tell you.’

Janet looked delighted. ‘I’ll tell Kevin. He will be so pleased. Um – any chance of you coming to stay at all?’

Bella consulted her schedule. These days she downloaded Richard’s week first and then fitted her own activities around his.

‘Well, Richard’s away on some Schools Sports thing this weekend. I could come though, if you don’t mind just me?’

Janet brightened. ‘That would be lovely. It’s beautiful at the moment. The daffodils are all out and there are primroses along the river.’

For a moment Bella had such a pang of longing it was almost physical. She loved London but she was a nature girl at heart and it was a long time since she had smelled the damp of impacted leaves and the sharp clean scent of things pushing up through the warming earth. Spring was always beautiful in the New Forest.

‘Oh, yes, Ma. I’d love that,’ she said from the heart.

‘Good. I’ll ask Neill and Val, if they’re free.’

‘You won’t get Neill. He’s got his Viking thing on Easter Monday. He’s training every moment he gets.’

‘Well, Val then. She seems much happier these days. And Georgia perhaps. Oh, it will be just like old times.’

Bella put it into her schedule and copied it to Richard and his office.

He texted back at once: Good idea. Wish I could make it. Give Janet my love.

She passed it on, they finished lunch and her mother went back to Hampshire.

Kevin was on the phone within half an hour of Janet’s departure. ‘Don’t know if you have anyone in mind as a PA,’ he said gruffly. ‘But the Head of HR here says they could probably help. Young woman with small children, delighted to work from home, that sort of thing. If you would like, I’ll send you her email. Don’t want to interfere, though.’

Don’t want to interfere. That’s what her mother had said too. How different Kevin and Janet were from Richard’s family, thought Bella. And then thought, no, it’s not his family. Apart from Queen Jane’s outburst in Andorra, none of them had even tried to interfere, and that had been much more about the Queen’s own life than Bella’s and Richard’s.

No, the interference, the plethora of petty details, the comments, the criticisms of anything she wanted to do, that all came from the blasted Private Offices via Lady Pansy, with Lady P herself putting her oar in at every opportunity. Were they making work to keep themselves important?

Bella squashed the thought at once. But could not quite banish it.

So she said to Kevin that she would be grateful for any help she could get.

Before the end of the week, she had a friendly human dynamo in the shape of Trudy, mother of two and hotshot administrator, who was going spare at home while the children were busy with nursery school and playgroup. Within two days she had set up a spreadsheet with a To Do list plus target dates and notes of people to be consulted.

She also gave Bella some shrewd advice. ‘Lady Pansy is straight out of the quill pen era. Not her fault, but she needs managing.’

Bella gave a hollow laugh. ‘But how?’

‘You have to pre-empt her. Be pro-active. Set up meetings with her, put them in the diary, keep them short. Make her feel key to the whole process, but stop her picking up the phone every time she thinks of something else.’

It worked.

Of course, Lady Pansy didn’t like it. To begin with she forgot to copy her messages to Trudy. But when she found that Bella re-routed all her text messages to her new PA and kept her telephone permanently set to voice mail, she gave in. There was a difficult little meeting when she suggested, with great sweetness, that Bella was finding her new role too overwhelming.

‘Maybe you ought to move into the Palace? I can mention it to Her Majesty. We are having coffee this morning.’

The prospect was hair-raising. Bella knocked it on the head fast.

‘That’s very kind, Lady Pansy. But not necessary, thank you. I think I have worked out how to balance my work life with everything I need to do for the wedding. I’ll review the situation with Richard in a few weeks. And this is how I see it working …’

She presented Lady Pansy with the new timetable. Bella would still go to the Palace to meet her, but she would do it on a regular timetable: at 2 p.m. on Monday to review stuff that had come in at the weekend and make any changes needed to the week; a quick catch up on Wednesday at 5.30 p.m.; the major review and planning meeting of the week to be two hours on Friday morning. With adjustment to her childcare management, Trudy thought she could generally manage to attend the Friday meeting. Lady Pansy was to pass any questions to Trudy who would prioritise and manage while Bella was at work.

Lady Pansy knew when she had been outmanoeuvred. Her phone calls slowed to a trickle.

Bella and Trudy spoke at lunch-time every day.

‘You need to pace yourself,’ Trudy advised. ‘Plan to do one thing at a time and stick to it. Wedding dress this week. Bridesmaids the next.’

‘Oh, God, bridesmaids! I haven’t thought about bridesmaids.’

‘Next week,’ said Trudy firmly.

Yet it was Richard who found the solution to the wedding-dress problem.

‘Of course you can’t have a dress you hate,’ he said vehemently. ‘You’ll be looking at photographs of it for the rest of your life.’

‘But tradition …’

He took her left hand and looked at the ring. ‘We can set some of our own traditions.’

She searched his face. ‘You’re sure?’

‘Of course.’

‘Your mother had the full meringue, and so did your grandmother.’

He snorted. ‘And my great, great ever so great grandmother wore a dress of total bling. Your point is?’

Bella was stunned. ‘Bling? How do you know? I don’t believe you.’

‘Would I lie to you? Look, I’ll prove it.’

They were in his flat, padding around in earlymorning disarray. He went over to his desk and switched on the laptop.

‘Look. Here.’

Bella went and peered over his shoulder. He had called up a Regency sketch of a man in knee breeches and an elaborate jacket leading a girl in a slim, high-waisted, low-cut dress, with puffed sleeves trimmed with lace. Her hair had been screwed into a knot on top of her head and she was not wearing a veil. Bella peered closely.

‘Silver lamé on net over a tissue slip,’ she read. ‘It was embroidered at the bottom with silver lamé shells and flowers. The manteau – oh, I see, that was the train – the manteau was of silver tissue lined with white satin, with a border of embroidery to answer that on the dress and fastened in front with a splendid diamond ornament.’ She looked up. ‘Heavens, she must have looked like a Christmas tree.’

Richard’s lips quirked. ‘Especially when you think of all the candles they’d have needed.’ He flickered his fingers. ‘Glitter, glitter, glitter. What about going the whole hog and reviving the traditions of 1816, then?’

Bella kicked him, not very successfully as her feet were bare.

He held her off, looking injured. ‘Only trying to be helpful.’

‘No, you weren’t. If you were really being helpful, you’d tell me who I should get to make the dress,’ Bella said with a sigh. She looked fondly at her ring. ‘You have a really good eye. Haven’t you got a favourite young dress designer as well?’

‘Well, I suppose I could ask around,’ he said doubtfully. ‘But it’s terrible bad luck, isn’t it? I don’t care, but a lot of people do. No point in giving the insects something else to exercise their mandibles on.’

‘You’re probably right. I think my mother would worry too. She’s quite superstitious. Oh, well. Back to the drawing board.’ Bella glanced at the screen again, and said wistfully, ‘Did you see that they got married in Carlton House? Family and fifty guests, that’s all. Those were the days.’

They had decided to marry in the Cathedral. It was beautiful, of course, but not, as Bella said, human-sized. Besides, there was a huge echo. It made their footsteps on the marble floor sound like Death treading ponderously up from the vaults to claim a soul. That was something she did not say.

Richard knew she wasn’t comfortable with it. He also knew – they both did – that there wasn’t really an alternative.

So now he gave her a quick hug and said, ‘Look, what about a Working Party?’

‘What?’

‘OK, you can’t see off the Meringue Party without support. So get some.’

‘What do you mean? How?’

‘Think who you would have asked if you hadn’t been marrying me.’ He winced a little at the thought. ‘I just bet your grandmother has ideas about wedding dresses.’

He had responded to the summons to meet Georgia far better than Bella had dared to hope, especially as her grandmother had grilled him with ladylike thoroughness and there had been several dodgy moments.

The turning point had come, though, when Georgia, ramrod straight and acid sweet, said, ‘Are you saying that you knew you would get my granddaughter the moment you saw her? Like buying a painting?’

Richard smiled down at her and said, very gently, ‘I love her, Mrs Greenwood. I don’t own her and I never will.’

Georgia’s eyes snapped and Bella held her breath.

But in the end her grandmother said grudgingly, ‘Ah. You see that. Good.’

And in the car home, Richard said, ‘It’s not a word I normally use but that woman is truly awesome. A Southern Belle with fabulous manners and an interrogation technique that MI5 could learn from. And she looks like one of those classy old movie stars, Lauren Bacall or someone. And she’s out saving the rain forest in person.’ He drew a long, astounded breath. ‘I thought your father would be great to meet. But – wow. Just – wow! I think I’m in love.’

So now Bella said teasingly, ‘You just want to meet my grandmother again.’

He nodded enthusiastically. ‘If we work the schedule right, I could even give her, I mean all of you, lunch.’

‘Machiavelli.’

He laughed, not denying it, but said soberly, ‘Call her, Bella. Your mother too. Every girl wants to consult her mother about her wedding dress, doesn’t she? No one could criticise you for that. Maybe Lottie, too? Get them all in a room together, schmooze a bit, and come out with a better brief for the designers. Include Pansy and whoever she wants to bring along. Just make sure she’s outnumbered. She looks like a sweet little old lady, but Pansy can be quite an operator when she wants to be.’

‘Thank you,’ said Bella, surprised and grateful. ‘That sounds like a plan. Er – have you any ideas about bridesmaids?’

‘Out of my league,’ he said with feeling.

But Bella found an unexpected ally on the bridesmaid issue and she didn’t have to go looking for her.

Princess Eleanor wandered into the Wednesday catch-up meeting with Lady Pansy and said, ‘Have you seen the daffodils by the lake, Bella? Do you fancy a walk? It’s so lovely and fresh outside now that the rain’s gone.’

Bella leaped up with alacrity and, as they wandered along the banks of the lake, her soon-to-be sister-in-law said, ‘Have people started lobbying you about being a bridesmaid yet?’

Bella bit her lip. ‘Yes. It was a bit of a shock, actually.’

‘Well, this is a bit of a cheek. But I’m lobbying, too.’

‘Eleanor—’

‘Call me Nell, like the boys do. I’ve been thinking about bridesmaids since I was at school. All my little friends fancied being mine.’ She pulled a face. ‘So I’ve got some theories. Wanna hear them?’

‘Very grateful,’ said Bella, touched.

‘You need your best friend. Plus a sister or cousin or whoever. And a sister or cousin from the bridegroom’s family. One small attendant. One to mind the small attendant. But the important thing is that they’re your bridesmaids. Not your husband’s. Not your mother’s. Not your mother-in-law’s. Yours. These women have to get you through the day, so you need to like them. Don’t be blackmailed into asking anyone you don’t want. If there’s someone you absolutely have to include but can’t face on the day itself, you can always ask her to your Hen Night.’

‘Hen Night,’ murmured Bella, committing it to memory. Something else she had forgotten.

However, when Lady Pansy produced her big file labelled Bridesmaids, and started to run through the daughters of the country’s senior aristocrats, along with their family’s service to the Crown over the last two hundred years, Bella was able to say that she had already decided who she was going to ask to be her bridesmaids, thank you.

Lady Pansy stiffened. But Bella had run her choice past Richard who had not only approved but said, when he stopped laughing, ‘And you called me Machiavelli!’ So she knew she was on firm ground.

‘Princess Eleanor. She’s already said yes. My second cousin Joanne. So has she. Tilly Lenane, because she’s Richard’s goddaughter and I think she’s a sweetie. Chloe, because I know how big a part she’s always been of the Royal Family’s life, as you are yourself.’

Lady Pansy inclined her head graciously. She seemed taken aback but pleased, definitely pleased.

So while she was preening, Bella slipped in the news that would make Lady P as sick as a parrot when she started to think about it. ‘And my best friend Charlotte Hendred will be my Chief Bridesmaid, of course. So if you would just find out from Tilly Lenane’s parents and your niece whether they’re happy to trot down the aisle after me, we’re sorted I think, Lady Pansy.’

‘Of course,’ said Lady Pansy. She looked sandbagged. Yes! Result.

With that, the arrangements went swimmingly. After consultation with the King, the Press Office organised a bunch of interviews and think pieces.

‘I told them to leave you alone to get on with it, my dear,’ the King told Bella, when she and Richard joined the rest of the Royal Family for supper, one cool spring evening. ‘I said to Julian Madoc, “I like her style. She’s got a good head on her shoulders and she’s very well behaved.” Unlike some,’ he added with a dark look at Nell, who pretended not to see.

‘We’ll send a minder along, of course. And you must ask for any advice you want. But basically be yourself. Ver’ charming. Ver’ charming.’

With the Royal seal of approval, it seemed Bella could not go wrong. Even Lady Pansy stopped arguing. Though the High Level Talks on the wedding dress nearly changed that.

It was Lady Pansy, of course, who arranged the conference room and the coffee in the Palace. So she decided to take the initiative and invite four of her favourite designers to come too, in the afternoon, to present their ideas.

‘You did what?’ said Bella aghast, arriving before her support group.

Lady Pansy was affronted. ‘Time is ticking away. You need to assign the contract today. Having the top four here will save time. Not all together, of course. You can talk to them in turn,’ she said kindly.

Bella was tight-lipped. ‘You knew quite well that this was to be a planning meeting only. This is not helpful. Get rid of them.’

But even her grandmother, when she arrived, said that it would be bad form to uninvite them at such short notice. So Bella gave in. She was still seething, though.

However, the discussion itself was very useful. Everyone had a different perspective. Bella realised she wouldn’t have thought of half the points on her own.

Janet said the most important thing Bella needed to think about was being comfortable. She would be standing a long time, she would have to move a fair amount, step backwards, go round corners, up steps, kneel and stand up again.

‘You have to feel that you can move in the dress without having to brace yourself every time, pet,’ her mother said earnestly. ‘There’s so much to do at a wedding. You want to be able to put your dress on and forget about it.’

Lottie was the self-appointed Look of Now expert. She set up her laptop and delivered a PowerPoint presentation of some of the options, given current fashions. She had cleverly produced images of Richard and Bella which were to scale and transferred dresses across to slot on to the Bella figure.

Every time anyone stopped speaking, Lady Pansy broke in with what the Queen had worn at her wedding, the Dowager Queen, Richard’s aunt the Princess Royal … She described the dresses in loving detail. They were all clearly meringue on the grand scale.

Bella said clearly, ‘Thank you, Lady Pansy. We have understood the precedents very clearly now.’

She was not seething any more. Her indignation had cooled to an icy determination to stop Lady P in her tracks. She stood up.

‘So let’s get this out of the way now. I will not go down the aisle to meet Richard wearing some vast crinoline that makes me look like the Dame in a provincial pantomime. It’s not my style. Please, everyone, strike that option now.’

She sat down. Lottie applauded. Lady Pansy was temporarily hounded out of sweet superiority and glared with fury. Bella ignored her and turned to her grandmother on the other side of the conference table.

‘Georgia? You haven’t said anything yet. What do you think?’

Georgia considered. ‘A wedding dress makes a big statement. And you need to remember what the back of it says. The photographs will all show the front. But in the church—’

‘Cathedral,’ put in Lady Pansy loudly.

They all ignored that.

‘In the church everyone will be looking at your back throughout the service. That young man who likes to design backless wedding dresses seems to me to be asking the congregation to join the bride in – well, almost deceiving the bridegroom. Sneering at him, even. I’m sorry, Lottie. I don’t think they’re very kind.’

‘Hadn’t thought of that one,’ said Bella cheerfully, her temper restored. You could always rely on her grandmother to come out of left field. ‘OK, Georgia. Dress must be kind. What else?’

Lady Pansy snorted audibly.

‘Of course, it’s all about the way line and colour are combined. Something very white and severe could say “I’m not for touching”, for instance. Myself, I think that some of those boned tops, which cut into the flesh, look as if the bride is constrained. In a straitjacket, if you will. Not comfortable and not … free.’

Lottie laughed aloud. ‘Well, that’s knocked out the collections of at least three designers I know, Georgia. That’s narrowed it down.’

‘If you want my advice, Bella dear, I think you have to consider the message you want to give the congregation. And, more important even than that, the message you want to give your husband. He’s the most important person there for you, after all. Isn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ said Bella, feeling her ears go pink and knowing there was not one single thing she could do about it. ‘Yes, he is. Good thinking, Batwoman.’

But if the discussion was a success, the beauty parade of designers was not. Once they grasped that meringue was out, they pitched hard for their own most recent collections. Bella sat there with a frozen smile on her face, feeling it was more and more hopeless, until eventually one man said, ‘Everything happens around the Bride. A wedding is a picture, with the church and congregation as the frame, and the Bride the blank canvas to which I apply the image of the Day.’

There was a brief flurry. Suddenly Georgia was on her feet, elegant and deadly.

‘May I clarify something?’ she said, very courteously. ‘You just said that my granddaughter is a blank canvas?’

He did sense danger but not enough to sidestep it. ‘Just for the purposes of the Day …’ he began airily.

He was stopped dead in his tracks.

‘You are a very silly man. You do not know how to do your job. Please leave.’

That was when things changed, Bella thought afterwards. Up till then, the Press had either loved her or given her the benefit of the doubt. Even the grumpy Daily Despatch hadn’t actually attacked her. But soon there was a rumour that Bella had told favourite-of-the-stars designer Jonas Krump that he was a silly man who did not know how to do his job. And the backlash started.

It wasn’t all bad. The Morning Times did a very nice piece about her family, including Neill’s upcoming appearance as a Viking, and ran a profile of her bridesmaids in their weekend supplement. A charities magazine did an evaluation of her first three months at the forestry project and said she was hard-working and inventive, with really sound hands-on experience from her time in the Indian Ocean. The women’s pages were generally pleased when she chose a younger British designer, Flora Hedderwick, to design The Dress.

But LoyalSubjekt101 said she was a control freak with an ego problem, who didn’t care about British trade, the Royal Family or even the Prince of Wales. And other bloggers started to creep out of the ether, repeating the same story.

‘Bloody nonsense,’ said the King, storming into Lady Pansy’s office while Bella was there one Wednesday. He was in a fine temper, and knocked over a small table stacked with files as he fulminated.

Lady Pansy, leaping to her feet, did not know whether to curtsey or rescue the files, so did a sort of wild salmon writhe until the King said, ‘Oh sit down, woman. Sit down.’

This grumpiness was so unlike him that Bella was astonished. His colour was high, too.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked him.

‘Bastard reptiles, he said, not answering directly. ‘All they want to do is tear into people. Never mind who gets hurt. You carry on, my dear. You tell the truth – and if they don’t like it, tough.’ He turned on Lady Pansy. ‘And if any of them ask you, it’s no comment. Right?’

And he stamped out, leaving Lady Pansy curtseying behind him.

‘I do think,’ she said in the soft, patronising voice that Bella was coming to loathe, ‘that it would be a lot easier if you were to move into the Palace, where you could be guided more, Bella dear.’

‘Bastard reptiles,’ floated back down the corridor.

Bella’s lips twitched. ‘I think I’ve got it about right as far as His Majesty is concerned,’ she said.

And left, with a spring in her step.

If only she had known.

She spent Easter with the Royal Family at the Castle and, after lunch on Sunday, she and Richard drove down to Devon to cheer on Neill and his fellow Vikings the next day. The fields were full of green shoots and a brilliant spring sun made the budding trees look as if they had been studded with tiny emeralds.

They had a perfect evening in the grounds of a small village pub tht led down to the river where the longboat was due to land the next day. In fact they were sitting there in the scented dark when Neill arrived, looking harassed.

‘We’ve got a problem, Sis,’ he told Bella. ‘Our celebrity has broken his hand, careless bugger, and we’re one oarsman short. Can you call Lottie? She said she’d try and get one of the Richmond lot to come along. At this stage, we can live without a celebrity. We just need someone to pull an oar.’

Richard stretched lazily. ‘I can pull an oar,’ he remarked.

Neill said, ‘I haven’t got her number. I’ve looked everywhere. I—’ He did a double take.

‘I can pull an oar. I was in the second eight at college. Of course, it wasn’t quite Viking style.’

Neill said eagerly, ‘But you were pretty good when we were playing around that weekend.’ And then, ‘No. No, you can’t. We haven’t got a costume for you.’

‘What happened to the celebrity’s costume, then?’

‘I mean we haven’t got a costume for you.’

‘I don’t think Viking raiders had Prince of Wales feathers on their sea coats,’ said Richard dryly. ‘I’m up for it, if you are.’

And of course, he did brilliantly. His springy hair kept pushing off his Viking helmet, so it had to be held on with elastic, but otherwise he looked the part fantastically. And when they came to land, he swaggered up with the rest of them, bare-chested and with a distinct glint in his eyes.

‘Sexy swine,’ said Bella, going to meet him along with all the other wives and girlfriends. ‘God, you smell good.’

There was a lot of laughter and making faces at the camera but the wind had got up and soon enough the mighty oarsmen decided they could do with tee-shirts. And the tee-shirts, carried the logo of the sponsor, a hand-crafted biscuit manufacturer.

It was on the internet by nightfall. Prince of Wales in Advertising Scandal. And there was Richard, in the green-and-white tee-shirt, with a tankard of ale in his hand and one arm round a laughing Bella, advertising Morgan’s Ginger Thins.

Some said he was stupid and drunk. Some said he was stupid and calculating. Some said he was stupid and did what his bride-to-be told him to. Of course, every version of the story started with the fact that his fiancée’s brother was the reason Richard had become a Viking in the first place.

Bella’s phone rang all the time. It felt as if the thing was vibrating with rage. Richard was inclined to shrug it off.

‘It’s bad luck about the sponsorship. But as long as Morgan’s don’t try to cash in – which would be very silly of them – I don’t think anyone will care, for long. The proceeds go to Sailing for the Disabled, after all. And I had a bloody good time. End of.’

Only then his Father heard about it.

By midnight the King was in hospital with a suspected heart attack.

Richard suddenly went very quiet. A helicopter was scrambled to take him to London.

‘I’ll come with you,’ said Bella.

But Richard shook his head. He looked pale and drawn but he was his usual calm self, contained, in control. Bella had never felt so far away from him, not even when they fought.

‘Better not,’ he said, as politely as if she were a stranger. ‘Someone has to drive the car back to London.’

‘You want me to do that?’

‘If you wouldn’t mind?’

‘Oh, my love.’ She went to put her arms round him but he evaded her embrace without really seeming to see it.

‘I’ll call you.’

He doesn’t want me, Bella thought. He blames me. And he’s right. It’s my fault. Neill would never have agreed to let him in the boat if it weren’t for that silly game, rowing on the carpet at home, before Christmas.

She swallowed. ‘Yes, do. Please. Call me as late as you like. I won’t go to sleep until you do.’

‘Yes. OK,’ he said, only half with her. ‘Got to go.’

A kiss – barely a kiss at all, really – and he was gone.