To Marry a Prince

Chapter 7

‘Unexpected Delights in Décor’ – Mondaine Magazine

He took her hand and walked her out to the South Bank. There were swags of lights looped along the Embankment on the other side of the river. They went to the parapet and stood there, arms round each other. Trains rumbled across Hungerford Bridge above them and the dark water rippled and surged around its struts.

‘It’s like fairyland. All those lights. I’ve never seen this before. Or never noticed.’

‘Nor me,’ said Richard, rubbing his chin against the top of her head.

‘I’ve missed you.’

He groaned. ‘Me too.’

‘I couldn’t wait to get away from my mother today. Just because some silly woman at her club said I must be in love.’

His arms tightened and for a moment he said nothing at all.

‘I’ve been moping around like an idiot.’

‘I’ve been snarling at everyone. Poor Ian thinks I’m losing my mind.’

‘Ian the security man?’

‘Ian the provider of anonymous cars and multiple alibis,’ he said, that note of laughter back in his voice at last. ‘You’re going to have to meet him.’

She rubbed her face against his jacket. ‘So we’re not going to be entirely secret then.’

He kissed her. ‘We’re going to need a couple of coconspirators, I think. Your Lottie will have to know anyway. Do you mind?’

‘Mind Lotts knowing? Of course not. She’s my best friend. Anyway, she’d smell a rat if I suddenly went round beaming from ear to ear without telling her why.’

‘Are you? Beaming from ear to ear?’

‘What do you think? Just look at me!’

They kissed for a lot longer this time.

In the end he raised his head and said shakily, ‘We’d better walk or this will get out of hand.’

‘Goody.’

‘Walk, woman. Walk.’

They did, for at least a couple of steps. Then he stopped and turned her in towards him and they kissed again. In spite of the cold, Bella felt as warm as toast, all yielding and open. She was really glad that Lottie had given her that sapphire kimono, she thought. What to wear in bed wasn’t a problem but it was hard to keep the magic going if you had to prowl round in cast-off clothes afterwards.

Sapphire kimono!

She hauled herself away from him with a yelp.

‘I had a bloody suitcase. Where is it? What have I done with it? Did I walk away and leave it on Waterloo Station?’

He dropped his arms and looked round. ‘No. No, I had it. Ah, it’s there.’

He sprinted back to the place where they had leaned against the wall looking out across the water. The suitcase still stood there, its handle pulled up. It looked like a small, abandoned alien, hunched and reproachful.

He dragged it back to her, bubbling with laughter.

‘Think we got a bit carried away. If we’d left the thing much longer someone would have reported it and the police would have come along and blown it up. Maybe we ought to get inside before we cause a major incident.’

‘Sounds good to me.’

He placed the suitcase in front of them and fished out his phone. ‘Ian, we’re on the South Bank. Can you pick us up by the National Theatre? Usual place.’ A pause while Ian clearly asked a question. And Richard, looking at her, answered him. ‘No. Everything’s perfect. Just perfect.’

They went to a house in a village off the M40 somewhere. Ian drove with Richard sitting beside him.

He murmured an apology about that but Bella said, ‘Just as well. Don’t know how much longer I can keep my hands off you,’ and he gave a squawk of laughter and thrust her into the back seat without ceremony.

Ian, very sensibly, pretended not to hear.

Once they were on their way, Richard swung round to talk to her. ‘This is a secret, right? Not just because of you and me. Ian’s job is to keep me safe from assassins and people who throw paint. He’s not my driver and it is not part of his duties to fix me up with bolt holes.’

Ian grinned. ‘You’re welcome.’

‘Yes, and I’m very grateful. But this is the last time.’

Bella mimed a kiss and watched with deep satisfaction the way Richard’s eyes kindled.

‘I’ll take charge of the bolt hole aspect, shall I?’ she said sweetly.

‘Probably easier,’ said Ian. ‘His Highness has credit cards in – er – pen names. But these things always get out. And, if I may make a suggestion, probably best not to make a habit of going anywhere too often. Even if the press don’t sniff it out, you can never be too careful with the general public.’

‘Thank you. I’ll bear that in mind.’

Richard looked irritated. ‘I don’t like leaving it to you.’

‘Good for you to have someone else in charge. I bet you get your own way all the time.’

But both Richard and Ian laughed noisily at this idea.

Ian said, ‘The Prince is a slave to his diary.’

‘Which reminds me,’ Richard said. ‘I’ll put a copy on a memory stick for you. It won’t change much between now and Christmas, at least.’

‘Thank you. I think. So where are we going now?’

Richard said, ‘House belonging to a friend of Ian’s who’s away. We have to be extra careful with this one. It could be traced back.’

‘How careful is extra careful? No lights? No flushing the loo in case the neighbours hear?’

Richard’s eyes danced. ‘I don’t think we have to be that self-denying. Just not answering the door will do.’

But Ian said, ‘Actually, no lights on in the front of the place would be a good idea.’

‘See?’ said Bella. ‘I’m a natural at this undercover stuff.’ And stuck her tongue out at Richard naughtily, just so she could watch his eyes kindle all over again. ‘You are so rewarding,’ she murmured, as Ian looked over his shoulder and pulled out into the fast lane on the motorway.

Richard’s expression promised revenge. She wriggled in happy anticipation.

The house was a tiny detached stone cottage next to an untidy farm entrance, off a single-track lane with high hedges. Ian drove in off the road, parked out of sight in the lee of a privet hedge and they all got out.

‘Couldn’t be better,’ said Richard.

But Ian was not happy. ‘This place is a kidnapper’s wet dream. Let me book you into the pub.’

But Richard waved the idea away. ‘You know the guy. I know the guy. Nobody followed us. Relax.’

‘But—’

‘Ian?’

‘Yes?’

‘Go inside and check it out. Do whatever you must. Then push off to the pub and don’t come back till morning.’

Ian threw his hands up. ‘Whatever you say, boss.’

The moment he’d disappeared into the house, Richard and Bella went into each other’s arms, kissing frantically.

‘You’re a dirty rotten tease,’ he said

‘Would you say rotten? I thought I was quite good.’

‘God, I want you.’

‘Glad to hear it.’

Ian came back. He approached them with caution and a certain amount of throat-clearing.

‘No problem. The back door is rotten, so anyone could kick it in. I suggest you lock the door from the kitchen to the rest of the house. Everything else looks fine. And keep your pager with you at all times.’

‘Yus, h’officer.’

‘I’ll take the food in and then I’ll be at the pub. It’s a quarter of a mile further on. I can be here in three minutes, if you call.’

‘We won’t. And we’ll take the food in,’ said Richard firmly. ‘You push off and have fun.’

‘Likewise,’ said Ian. Heard what he’d said, clearly wished he hadn’t, slapped the key into Richard’s hand and left in disarray.

If he’d looked in his rear-view mirror he would have seen his delinquent charges hopping about, clutching their sides with mirth.

Richard wouldn’t let Bella help unload.

‘This is Man’s Work,’ he said, inflating his chest and beating it King Kong-style. But, rather to her surprise, he got her case, a carrier bag of food from Marks and Spencer and his own overnight bag indoors in record time.

He closed the door, locked it, pulled the rusty old curtain draught excluder across it and said softly, ‘Come here, you wicked tease. You’ve been taunting me for fifty-seven miles. Now you pay.’

‘Promises, promises.’

But neither of them could hold out any longer. Richard just about managed to shrug off his coat before Bella jumped at him, hauling at his sweater and shirt so that she could get her hands on his skin, kissing his throat, his ear, the hard jaw and soft hair. And then she reached his mouth.

She found the button at the top of his jeans.

‘Jesus!’

She leaned back in his arms. She was breathless and every nerve quivered. But she was still ready to challenge him.

‘Oh, sorry, do you want to unpack first?’

‘AAAARGH!’ he shouted, and went into full King Kong mode.

He picked her up and thundered up the narrow stairs, so that they shook. He hesitated, briefly, at the top.

‘Not the front,’ Bella managed. ‘Ian said. Nothing facing the road.’

So Richard plunged into the back bedroom and they fell together on to the bed, their clothes coming off in a tangle and falling where they were thrown.

A long lovely time later, Bella lay with her head against his shoulder and his arm wrapped round her, holding her close. She considered the strange shapes in the moonlit room.

‘Is that your shirt on the the lampshade? Heck, is it even a lampshade?’

‘As far as I remember, he said sleepily, ‘my shirt is somewhere on the stairs.’

‘Umm …’ She wriggled, remembering. ‘Think you could be right. So what’s that?’

He didn’t open his eyes. ‘No idea.’

She pummelled his ribs. ‘You could at least look.’

He opened one eye. Then the other. ‘No idea – hey, that’s not clothes. That’s a cat.’

‘It can’t be a cat.’

‘I can see whiskers,’ he said, really interested now.

He got out of bed – when had they got under the covers? – and, after carefully drawing the curtains together, put on the light.

‘Ow … ow!’ said Bella, pulling a pillow over her head to cover her eyes.

‘It is a cat,’ Richard said triumphantly.

She pushed the pillow away, to see him reach up – he was so tall, he could lay the palm of his hand flat against the low ceiling – and carefully remove something from the wildly swinging light fitting.

‘There,’ he said, lobbing it on to the bed.

Bella prodded it cautiously. But the fur was definitely fake and it felt more like a limp cushion than anything that had ever been alive.

‘I think you’ll find,’ said Richard in the tones of a connoisseur, ‘that it’s a nightdress case. Probably hand-made.’

‘You’re joking. Aren’t you?’

‘Nope.’

Bella picked the thing up cautiously and shook it out. He was right. It was made of orange-coloured fake fur, with limp, stubby paws and pipe-cleaner whiskers. On one side these were bent out of shape. Richard took it away from her and straightened the whiskers briskly. Then he turned it upside down and parted the fur to reveal a pouch where someone was supposed to install their night attire.

‘There. You see?’

He flipped it back and made pouncey movements over the covers towards her. The cat had a louche, piratical expression.

‘It’s winking at me,’ said Bella, affronted.

‘Can you blame it?’

He took it away from her and put it on top of the wardrobe.

‘How did you know it was a nightdress case?’ she said, suspiciously.

‘It goes with the job. When you’ve opened as many school Bring and Buy sales as I have, you get to know the product.’

He kissed her casually. It was breathtakingly possessive.

He thinks we belong together, she thought, startled.

‘Hungry?’

She yawned and stretched. ‘Mmm. ‘S’pose so.’

‘I could eat a giraffe,’ he announced cheerfully. ‘I’ll go and see what Ian has brought us.’

He thundered off downstairs.

Bella got out of bed more slowly and patted the covers, as if they were the blanket on a friendly horse. There was distinct chill in the air but, with nothing obvious to wrap herself in, she ran downstairs too. She flipped open her case, dragged out the sapphire kimono, and padded barefoot into the kitchen.

Richard was in the kitchen. He had found his trousers at some point on the journey and was standing, be-trousered but bare-chested, at the kitchen table, unpacking the Marks and Sparks bag.

Bella went up to him and put her arms round his waist. ‘What have you found?’

He picked up her hand and kissed her knuckles absently. ‘It’s a real boy’s bag, I’m afraid. Everything for the microwave. How do you feel about pizza?’

She kissed his shoulderblade and watched the muscles twitch responsively. ‘Whatever.’

The kitchen spanned the width of the house. It had a sagging sofa at one end, covered in a hand-knitted throw, beside an open fire. This, Bella saw, was already laid.

‘Do you think we can light it?’

‘Of course,’ said Richard, puzzled.

‘That means we have to clear it out and re-lay it before we leave,’ she said warningly.

‘Naturally.’

‘Well, have you ever done it before?’

‘How hard can it be?’

‘It’s a skill,’ said Bella, who had lived with open fires several times in her life and never got the hang of them.

He waved a lordly – no, princely – hand and announced, ‘If we can’t work out how it’s done, we’ll Google it.’

She was sceptical. ‘If you say so, dear.’

He kissed her quickly. ‘Trust me. I’m not as useless as I look.’

She shivered voluptuously. ‘Not useless at all.’

His eyes darkened. ‘Now look. Do you want feeding or don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she said hurriedly, retreating behind the table. ‘Yes, you’re hungry and I was telling myself only today that I need to remember to eat. So break out your pizza.’

But Ian had provided red wine and olives and garlic bread and various cold meats as well.

So Richard lit the fire and Bella pulled cushions off the sofa and every chair in the place and made a nest in front of the flames. She found glasses and plates and even a corkscrew – though Richard said he knew how to open a bottle of wine with just a key, a trick he had learned from his obligatory stint in the Navy – and they ate nibbles and pizza in front of a friendly blaze.

He was, she found, surprisingly good at knowing when to feed the fire to keep it crackling away merrily.

‘Norman castles run in the family,’ he said lightly. ‘I once met a World War II veteran who told me that life was so hard when he was child that he had ice on the inside of his bedroom window in winter. I didn’t like to say that there’s still ice on the inside of mine in Scotland.’

Bella was appalled. ‘But why?’

‘Tradition. And living in a Listed Building that is also an Ancient Monument. And it’s character-forming, allegedly.’

She was oddly moved. ‘It’s not all joy being a prince, is it?’

He kissed her nose. ‘It’s not all joy being an ecologist counting fish either. Into each life a little rain must fall. Shall I put on another pizza? Artichoke or American Hot?’

‘Hot.’

When he brought it back, she nibbled at a slice, partly to be companionable, partly to soak up the wine, which was truly delicious.

‘Ian’s taste in wine is better than his food,’ she said idly. ‘Next time I’ll cook for you.’

‘I’ll hold you to that.’

She held up the glass of wine so that the firelight played through it, turning it ruby red.

‘What’s your best memory?’

‘What?’

‘You must have a good memory. A place you go to when everything else is shite.’

He raised himself on one elbow, staring at her curiously. ‘Sounds as if you have one, at least. Tell?’

Bella smiled reminiscently. ‘My grandmother Georgia’s birthday one year. You will –’ she corrected herself ‘– may like my grandmother Georgia. She made us all go for a huge walk, so my parents couldn’t argue. And then my brother and I got to recite things she’d taught us. Neill had “Lord Lundy” but she said I was too young for politics, so I had to do a bit of Winnie-the-Pooh. She’s a tough cookie, my grandmother.’

‘And …?’

‘My mother laughed and so did my father and they both said we were wonderful and my father took photographs. And then I knocked over some sodding enormous Chinese urn with a massive spiky plant in it and they all laughed even harder.’

‘Was this when your father told you not to be an actress?’

She was momentarily side-tracked. ‘Did I tell you that? I’d forgotten.’

‘I hadn’t,’ he said, his mouth full of pepperoni pizza.

‘And then my grandmother said it was too late to go home and everyone had had too much to drink to drive, and we all stayed the night in this little pub. Wales, I think it was. They only had three rooms, so my brother and I had to share. And he decided that I was too little to be left up there on my own while they all had grown-up dinner, so he came and read me a story. It was something he was learning at school. Might have been Dickens. I don’t know. I just remember falling asleep to this exciting story and the grown-ups talking away downstairs as if they liked each other. There were oak beams in the ceiling and creaky floors and the smell of furniture polish and summer …’

She stopped.

‘Am I making sense?’

His eyes were warm. ‘Lots of sense.’

She held up the glass again, looking at him through the firelit wine. ‘Your turn.’

He put his wine glass down and stretched out, looking into the fire.

‘A good memory? My first climb, I suppose.’

It was so unexpected, she lowered the glass and stared at him blankly.

He was rueful. ‘I got into terrible trouble. For the first time ever.’

She was even more confused. ‘Your best memory is getting into trouble?’

‘No, of course not. Especially as everyone else involved was carpeted too. I never wanted to get anyone into trouble. But I suffered from congenital good behaviour. Still do, I suppose. And it was such a great feeling.’

She was intrigued. ‘How old were you?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Eleven, twelve. Not old enough or strong enough, anyway. But I’ve always liked climbing things. And this father of a school friend said that if I was going to climb anyway, I’d better learn how to do it properly.’

‘You climb?’

‘Anything that goes up high enough,’ he said serenely. ‘Rocks. Mountains. Masts. I’m a reasonable sailor but that’s always the best part of it for me, climbing the mast in a brisk wind. There are several good walls in assorted palaces, too. I’ve been up most of ’em. But you never forget that first climb, when you actually get to the top and don’t give up. I scrambled up this bit of scree in Skye. I remember standing on the top with my head in the clouds. It felt as if I could do anything.’

‘Good heavens.’

He picked up his wine again and slugged it back, looking into the fire, as logs shifted and fell apart.

‘You know what’s really sad? When most people feel like that, they say they feel like a king.’

‘So?’

A muscle was working in his jaw. Bella wanted to reach out and calm it, but somehow she thought that this was something he needed to tell himself, not her.

‘Well?’ she prompted gently.

‘My father’s been King most of my life. I don’t think he’s ever felt like that. And neither will I when—’ He broke off. ‘Hell. We’re not supposed to be talking about bloody families. I want to know about you.’

Bella punched a couple of cushions, and took the glass away from him. She set it down carefully on the hearth.

‘My pleasure. Let me introduce you to my very smart new kimono. Gift of my friend Lottie. For some reason they’ve put a ducky little tassel on the belt.’ She folded his fingers round the tassel. ‘Got it?’

‘Got it,’ he said gravely, leaning over her and starting to pull the silk sash very, very slowly.

‘Well done,’ she said, approving and just a little breathless.

‘Mmmm?’

She felt hot and cold, between the flames and the shadows; weak as water under his hands – and, at the same time, the most powerful force in the world.

She smelled wood smoke and wine, with a side order of garlic bread. The old cushions felt heavenly. The intensity in his eyes was dazzling. It felt so right to be here, in this place, at this moment.

They stopped talking.