To Marry a Prince

Chapter 24

‘Good to Go!’ – Tube Talk

And then, out of the blue, her father rang.

‘Bella?’ he yelled. He always yelled as if he were in the midst of the Siberian wastes, even if it was only Clapham Common.

Bella felt her heart lift. Finn was a meteor, whizzing at top speed and possibly destructive, but he always sizzled with energy. ‘Hello, Finn. Where are you?’

‘I’m staying with your brother. He’s worried about you. We’re coming to see you. Time we broke you out of the Bastille.’

Maybe it was Finn’s renegade influence, but quite suddenly Bella had had enough of being a ladylike prisoner, with Lady Pansy vetoing her every choice and all her own friends unreachable on the other side of the Palace’s curtain wall.

‘No, I’ll meet you,’ she said decisively. ‘St James’s Park. On the bridge. Today at four.’

Lady Pansy, a creature of habit, took tea with the Queen at four on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

And while Lady Pansy was away, Bella just walked out. Nobody stopped her. The policeman on the gate didn’t even question her, just tipped his hat.

Why didn’t I think of doing this before? she thought. I must have been going stir crazy in there. I could have walked out any time I wanted.

She walked gently round the park, smelling the honey and musk of the early roses, savouring the great blowsy displays of annuals in the beds, and the lush green grass. It felt good to have the warm air on her face again. At last, Bella felt she could breathe.

She got to the bridge at four o’clock exactly. Finn wasn’t there. Par for the course, thought Bella tolerantly, and leaned over the railing watching a family of ducklings show off their prowess at swimming in a straight line – except for the tail-end Charlie, who kept getting distracted and was endlessly chivvied back into line by his father. She laughed aloud.

‘That doesn’t sound too bad,’ said a voice.

And she turned and there was Finn: disreputable holed jeans, appalling old lumberjack shirt, open to the waist, several days’ worth of beard and an Akubra hat. He raised his a hand, which was the closest he ever got to giving anyone a hug.

‘Live long and prosper.’

He was also a fan of cult TV. How could she have forgotten that? Bella was so pleased to see him, she grinned from ear to ear.

Her phone started to ring. She switched it off. This was Bella time. No one else was muscling in on that.

‘Finn, it’s good to see you. You look a complete down and out.’

He took it as a compliment and preened like one of the ducks. ‘Got back two days ago. Went straight to Neill’s. That Viking stunt of his looked good fun. Sorry I missed it.’

‘Well, stick around. He may do it again.’

‘I might. I might stick around to see you married, too. How do you feel about that?’

Bella thought about Finn slouching into the Cathedral and coming face to face with Lady Pansy. She could have danced with glee. ‘Oh, yes, please, Dad.’ Suddenly her eyes were brimming over.

He blinked. She never called him Dad. ‘Hey. No need to cry. If you want me there, I’m up for it. I’ll even walk you down the aisle if you want.’ His tone said it would be an enormous sacrifice.

‘You don’t have to go that far. Kevin has offered and he actually doesn’t mind wearing a morning suit.’

Finn gave a sigh of relief. ‘Great chap, Kevin. Always said so. Now walk round this pond with me and tell me what’s wrong.’

To her amazement, she did. Finn, who normally found human relationships both difficult and boring, listened with unusual attention. In the end he said, ‘You know, something seems to have happened to this chap of yours. He hasn’t had a blow to the head or anything, has he?’

‘No,’ said Bella, with a tearful chuckle.

‘Well, then, you’d better ask him what’s going on,’ said Finn. ‘Because sure as hell, something is.’

‘I don’t see what it could be—’

Finn raised his eyes to heaven. ‘God, this is why I can never live with women. They go off into corners and think, maybe it’s this, maybe it’s that. Ask, woman. Ask.’

Bella hesitated.

‘Call him now and I’ll buy us both an ice cream.’

She laughed. ‘Oh, all right.’

She switched the phone back on and at once texts started whizzing across the screen. Well, tough. She called Richard.

He picked up so fast, it was like a cat pouncing. ‘Bella. Oh, thank God! Are you all right? Where are you?’

‘I’m in St James’s Park,’ she said. ‘Looking at the ducks. In front of the ice-cream stand. Look, you and I need—’

‘Stay there. Stay there,’ he said urgently. ‘Don’t move. I can see you. I’m coming to get you.’

Bella let the phone drop, her mouth open.

Her father called out something.

She turned to him, shaking her head. ‘What?’

‘I said—’

And out of the bushes pounded Richard, Prince of Wales, and hit him. Actually, he felled Finn by the unscientific but effective method of knocking him behind the knees and then jumping on him.

‘What the f*ck?’ gasped Bella.

‘It’s OK,’ said Richard, with a knee in Finn’s back. ‘I’ve got the bastard. You’re safe.’

Safe?

Bella glugged but no words came. Finn made some protesting noises.

‘Shut up,’ said Richard, so fiercely that even Finn shut up.

Richard pulled out his phone. ‘It’s OK, I’ve got her. She doesn’t seem to be hurt.’ He looked at Bella, his face haggard. ‘You’re not, are you?’

She shook her head.

‘She’s safe. Now come and arrest this bastard before I wring his neck!’

Bella got back the power of speech. ‘What are you doing, you, you thug?’ she shouted. ‘Get off my father! Get off my father now.’

Richard stared at her blankly. ‘Your father?’

Bella calmed down somewhat. ‘The man you are sitting on,’ she said, very precisely, ‘is my natural father, Finn Greenwood.’

Richard got off his victim automatically. ‘But he shouted at you. Abuse … I heard him.’

Bella turned to her father, who stood up, spitting grass and rubbing the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘What did you shout, Finn?’

His eyes crinkled up at the corners. Say what you like about footloose and irresponsible, Finn was good at riding life’s punches. ‘I said, “Chocolate, vanilla or coffee flavour?”’ he repeated mildly. ‘I take it you’re my intended son-in-law? Good to meet you.’

Richard shook hands on auto-pilot.

Down the path came two security officers. One, Bella saw, was Ian.

‘What’s going on?’ she said.

He came panting up to them. ‘Are you out of your mind?’ he yelled at Richard, entirely forgetting the respect due to the Prince of Wales. ‘For all you knew, he could have been armed.’

‘Exciting,’ said Finn, mildly interested. This was the sort of human interaction he could handle, thought his daughter fondly, plenty of action, none of the soppy stuff.

Richard rubbed his hand over his face. ‘I thought I’d lost you,’ he croaked.

He pulled Bella into his arms, heedless of his prospective father-in-law, security officers, ice-cream vendors and a tribe of interested mothers and children who entirely forgot to feed the ducks.

He became aware at last that everyone was staring. ‘Oh, God. Let’s get out of here.’

‘I still have Lottie’s key,’ said Bella. She was torn between bewilderment, relief and sheer spitting fury. She definitely didn’t want to go anywhere Royal, just at the moment, and was quite prepared to say so. Nobody asked.

So they went back to the Pimlico flat and Bella brewed tea. Richard went into the kitchen with her.

‘God, I’ve missed you,’ he said.

Looking at his face, Bella could believe it. He had dark grooves around his mouth and his eyes looked haunted. Much of her fury dissipated. She touched his poor tense mouth and he seized her hand, kissing the palm and holding it against his cheek as if he could not quite believe she was there.

Bella lost the urge to yell at him. On the other hand …

‘You’ve been keeping me in the dark,’ she said levelly. ‘You’ve got to stop that, you know. I’m a grown-up.’ She tugged her hand away.

‘I know. I know. But you were in danger, all because of me. If you hadn’t met me, if I hadn’t chased you, it would never have happened. You’d have had a safe and happy life. So it was my fault. Besides, I had to keep you safe. Do you see?’

Yes, she saw. She went on making tea, putting mugs on a tray. ‘But why didn’t you just tell me?’

‘I didn’t want you to be afraid,’ he said simply.

She snorted. ‘Great! Just great. So you put me in prison instead?’

He winced. ‘I didn’t think.’

‘No. You didn’t. And you don’t seem to think that I can either. Marriage is a partnership, Richard.’

She took the tray through to the sitting room, while he held the door for her.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘I want to know what’s been going on. All of it.’

Ian and the other security officer looked at Richard for guidance. Bella could have screamed. But he nodded quickly and she decided to let it go.

‘There’s a blogger we’ve been watching for a while. He’s particularly hostile to you, Bella,’ said Ian. ‘The profilers say he is fixated on Richard. The threats get worse every time you two are seen together in public.’

So that’s why Richard had been keeping away from her. Idiot! But she didn’t say it aloud. Not yet. It could wait.

Richard said, ‘I thought if you went to live in the Palace, you would be safe. And you were. But it’s made you look like a ghost. And so sad. When you asked me if I still wanted to marry you, I nearly stopped it. But – well, LoyalSubjekt101 was still out there. Still is, since this hobo isn’t our man.’

He gave Finn a complicated look, somewhere between apology and irritation. Well, at least he’d got over hero-worshipping her father, thought Bella, suddenly amused. That was a good sign.

‘What sort of things does the blogger say?’ she asked.

Richard recoiled. ‘You don’t want to know.’

She just looked at him.

‘Oh, very well. Some of it’s vile and some of it’s just stupid … like saying you looked fat because the wind was blowing up your windcheater, or that you dressed like a frump because you wore some terrible striped dress to the New Year Ball, which you didn’t even wear …’ He tailed off. ‘Bella?

She had sat bolt upright. ‘He said I was going to wear a striped dress?’

‘Yes.’

She went into her old bedroom and brought out The Striped Horror. ‘This one, I imagine?’

Everyone stared at it.

‘I never saw you in that,’ said Richard slowly.

‘No one did except Lottie. She was here when it was delivered. Some dressmaker must know about it, since she made the damn thing. But the person who gave it to me was Lady Pansy.’

There was a moment’s silence, as they all assimilated the implications.

Then Richard surged to his feet. ‘And that – that – Judas is having tea with my mother right now. Come with me!’

He seized the dress as they went.

When Bella and Richard burst in to her sitting room, the Queen was looking tired. Not surprisingly, thought Bella, who recognised one of Lady Pansy’s interminable monologues when she walked in on one.

‘Shut up,’ said Richard ferociously.

Lady Pansy did.

‘Richard dear,’ said the Queen, alarmed.

He flung The Striped Horror into the middle of the carpet. ‘Trapped by your own spite, Pansy. If you hadn’t tried to make my Bella wear the ugliest dress in the world, you would never have given yourself away. Mother, this loyal lady-in-waiting of yours is LoyalSubjekt101.’

The Queen went pale. It was clear she knew about the mad blogger. But she said bravely, ‘That has to be nonsense. Pansy …’

Lady Pansy said nothing. She didn’t have to. Guilt was written all over her face, as soon as she saw the dress.

Ignoring the Queen, she turned on Richard, the horse face suddenly ugly.

‘You had no right to marry that,’ she said. ‘You had to marry someone with breeding, with dignity, with a history of …’

‘Service to the Royal Family? Yadda, yadda, yadda,’ said Richard, suddenly a lot less dignified than Bella had ever seen him in front of other people. ‘Shut up, you poisonous parasite. Shut up!’

Lady Pansy screamed then and went on screaming. It took a couple of the security officers, waiting in the corridor, to subdue her, and then a doctor to sedate her ravings.

The Queen was distraught. Richard called his father. When the King came hurrying in, Queen Jane was standing in front of the fireplace, wringing her hands in agitation.

‘How could I have been so mistaken? How could I? She always seemed to be my friend. Why didn’t I see? Your poor Bella, Richard. I’ve been so blind.’

The King stepped over to her, stilled her frantic hands and said, ‘It’s not your fault, my dear. If it’s anyone’s it’s mine.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘I don’t like unpleasantness or I would have got rid of Pansy a long time ago.’

‘What?’ said Richard. ‘You knew?’ He looked very grim suddenly.

Bella put a hand on his arm instinctively.

The King said steadily, ‘My father did not treat Pansy well. I knew it. And I never said.’

‘Oh,’ said Bella, enlightened. ‘So when she kept on about service to the Royal Family, what she really meant was that she was in love with the late King.’

‘He couldn’t marry her, of course. Not that he would have done anyway. Not a loving man, my father. But we didn’t marry commoners in those days.’

‘Commoner?’ echoed Bella faintly. Lady Pansy of the horse face and ancestors who had served the Royal Family for a hundred years was a commoner?

‘A technical term,’ said Richard dryly. ‘My father means not of the blood Royal. Bicycling Royals count. Daughters of an earl don’t. Pansy would never have been a candidate for a Royal wife and she knew it.’

‘And then you wanted me, without any sort of title in my family! No wonder she hated me!’

‘Poor woman,’ said the Queen. ‘No husband and children of her own. Just us and that flaky niece. And none of us really seeing her properly. She used to drive me mad, and I was so determined to be nice to her …’ Her voice trailed off.

She turned to the King then. For the first time since Bella had known them, she saw the King put an arm around his wife. He did it awkwardly. But it did not look insincere.

‘Right,’ said Bella, ‘I have something to say. Please listen. You’ve got to stop trying to live other people’s lives for them,’ she said, first to the Queen and then to Richard.

‘I know you do it with the best of intentions. It’s very sweet. I really appreciate it. Richard was willing to throw himself in front of an assassin’s knife for me and I don’t take that lightly, I really don’t. And the very first time we met, he took care of me. It’s very good of you, my darling, but it has to stop. If I can’t make my own mistakes, I’m not human. You ought to know that if anyone does.’

She turned to the Queen next. ‘And you have to stop trying to prevent him from taking risks. He’s so tender of you and his father, always trying to spare you worry. But he shouldn’t. He’s a grown man. He knows his own abilities. He needs to test himself, without thinking about you and the country and everyone else all the time.’

Nobody said anything. But the Queen rested her head against the King’s chest.

‘Now …’ Bella went to the door. ‘I am going back to stay with Lottie. Richard and I will go out, in public, whenever and wherever we want. I will come to the Palace the night before the wedding and not before. I’m taking my life back.’