Little Lady Agency and The Prince (2 page)

I bit my lip now. The wig would be the final cherry on the cake. Things always turned up a few notches when I wore it. And I needed to look a real knockout to convince Daisy of Jethro’s devotion . . .

I turned on my heel and wiggled off to the spare room.

‘Oh, Mel,’ groaned Nelson. ‘I’m not sure I can cope.’

Heading straight to a filing cabinet that housed the personal details of enough London bachelors to fill a
Tatler
Eligibles list, I lifted the lid off a fabulous old red satin box.

Carefully, I opened it, and withdrew a coil of gleaming blonde hair. The golden strands shone as I smoothed and stroked the wig around my hand. My secret weapon.

Between you and me, I did miss it.

Jonathan was in Paris. He would never know. Nelson wouldn’t tell. And Jethro would thank me later.

Deftly, I began pinning up my own thick brown hair.

We’d arranged to meet for lunch at Cecconi’s in Burlington Gardens, and I spotted Jethro and Daisy through the big windows as we got out of the taxi. They were holding hands over the table, and Daisy looked the image of sweetness in a white sundress and strawberry-blonde Heidi plaits.

‘Is Jethro looking at me?’ I asked Nelson, as I paid the driver.

‘Mel, of course he’s looking at you. That policeman’s looking at you. So’s that tourist. There are people in
offices
looking at you.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ I said, blushing. ‘And call me Honey.’

As we made our way into the restaurant, I was rather aware that Nelson was right: people were looking at us. That was the wig – my very own exclamation mark. It suddenly dawned on me that though I’d run through the
theory
of my cunning plan with Jethro. I hadn’t told him about the blonde wig. He wasn’t expecting a blonde. That, presumably, was why he was looking so startled. I tried to look at him reassuringly but Honeyishly at the same time and psyched myself up into Honey Think Mode.

‘Jethro! How long’s it been? You haven’t changed at all!’ I cried, opening my arms and advancing on him for a social kiss or two.

I sensed Nelson stiffen behind me, and at once a dark cloud passed across Daisy’s pretty face, rather like when you try to take a bone off a Jack Russell.

‘H-h-honey,’ he stammered. ‘Lovely to see you again. This is Daisy, my girlfriend. Daisy, this is Honey, an . . . an old friend.’

‘Hello!’ I said, mwahing her pink cheek. ‘This is Nelson Barber – Nelson, Jethro Lorton-Hunter and Daisy . . .’

‘Daisy Thomsett. We’ve been together eighteen months,’ she said at once, shooting daggers at me.

I made to sit down and both Nelson and Jethro went to pull my chair out. I shook my head warningly at Jethro and glared at Daisy’s half-empty glass.

‘More water, Daisy?’ he said, instead, turning his attention back to her, as we’d practised at his consultation.

‘Yes, please, darling,’ she said, without taking her narrowed eyes off me.

I leaned my elbows on the table so my cleavage rose up in my red shirt like two fresh white loaves. ‘Goodness, Jethro,’ I purred, ‘you’re looking well.’

‘Yes,’ he said robotically, staring at my cleavage. ‘That’s domestic bliss. Daisy really looks after me. I’ve never been so happy.’

I coughed, and he dragged his gaze upwards. ‘Lucky Daisy,’ I cooed.

‘Lucky in what way?’ demanded Daisy.

‘Lucky Daisy to have a boyfriend who’s complimentary about her in public,’ said Nelson, opening his menu. ‘Something Honey here is always complaining about.’

‘Nelson!’ I began, knowing he meant Jonathan, who wasn’t what you’d call demonstrative in public, but he flashed me a quick smile and put his arm around me.

‘Although she knows I adore her,’ he added, giving me a boyfriend-ish squeeze.

I glared at him from under my fringe.

‘Who could resist that smoulder?’ he went on, unnecessarily, I felt. ‘Certainly not me.’

‘Or me,’ added Jethro. ‘I mean, I
could
resist. Ha! I don’t have eyes for anyone but Daisy!’

‘Then stop looking down her top,’ snapped Daisy.

This wasn’t going quite as planned: for my cunning reverse psychology to work, Jethro’s ignoring needed to match my flirting exactly, and – it wasn’t. I’d obviously wrong-footed him with the wig. Daisy was looking crosser by the minute.

‘Funny, Jethro never mentioned you before,’ she said suspiciously. ‘I’d say you were the sort of old schoolfriend who’d stick in the mind.’

‘Oh, Jethro, I’m crushed!’ I pretended to look hurt, then shrugged towards Daisy. ‘He’s a one-woman man, obviously!’

With excellent timing, the waiter appeared before anyone could say anything else.

‘Ready to order?’ he asked, pen poised.

‘Oh, I think we’re ready,’ glowered Daisy. ‘More than ready.’

I opted for spaghetti and ate it in a deliberately Sophia Loren manner, all slow twirling and lip-licking. Daisy stabbed her ravioli viciously, and I had to keep kicking Jethro under the table to stop him gawping and start him talking up Daisy’s many charms. If it hadn’t been for Nelson heroically taking charge of the conversation I don’t know what I’d have done.

‘So, Honey,’ said Daisy as our plates were cleared, ‘does it take you ages in the morning to look so . . . glamorous?’

‘I prefer the natural look, personally, Dais,’ said Jethro at once. ‘Some women don’t need all that make-up and what have you.’

‘You think I don’t make any effort?’ she demanded.

He looked bewildered. ‘No. No, just that . . . Oh, God.’

‘Women!’ said Nelson, as if he knew anything about it.

‘It does take a while,’ I said, shooting Jethro a flirty glance. ‘All the hooks . . . and clips . . .’

Honestly, I couldn’t help it. It was the wig.

I saw him swallow hard. ‘Waste of time!’ he croaked.

‘I don’t think I could be bothered,’ snapped Daisy. ‘And I have a job to get to in the mornings. Unless it’s part
of
your job?’

‘It is,’ I agreed.

‘Oh, she’s a different girl at home,’ Nelson assured her. ‘You wouldn’t recognise her.’

‘Anyone got room for pudding?’ asked Jethro, trying to change the subject. ‘The strawberry tart sounds nice.’

‘Yes, you do have a bit of a thing for
tarts
,’ seethed Daisy. ‘Don’t you?’

‘I’ll just have a black coffee, I think.’ I put my napkin on the table. ‘Would you excuse me?’ I said, as Nelson and Jethro half-rose from their seats.

‘What a good idea!’ said Daisy grimly. ‘I’ll come with you.’

She practically hustled me into the loos, then as soon as the door swung closed, turned on me with a ferocity I hadn’t seen since my sister Allegra had her car clamped.

‘What are you playing at?’ she demanded. ‘Jethro is off-limits! Off-limits! Leave him alone, you hear me?’

‘Darling,’ I said, leaning against a wash basin and affecting a sorrowful expression. ‘If only. Jethro is utterly devoted to you. He told me so when I—’

Daisy’s eyes boggled. ‘When you what? Has he been meeting up with you behind my back? I knew it! Right, I’m going to have it out with him this minute.’

Oops.

‘God, no,’ I said quickly, grabbing her arm. ‘I mean, we spoke on the phone and . . .’

Nelson’s constant warnings about not spinning a web of complicated lies reverberated in my head.

Keep it simple.

I put a hand to my throat and smiled bravely.

‘. . . I must admit . . . Jeth is a
wonderful
man. But he made it very, very clear to me that you’re the only woman for him!’

Which was true.

‘He said that?’ she asked hopefully. ‘And he wasn’t . . . drunk?’ Her guard fell and revealed a sudden flash of something I recognised: vulnerability. Poor Daisy. She must have had a bounder in her past. I’d had enough bounders myself to spot the ugly scars of paranoia.

‘Absolutely not. He’s mad about you.
Adores
you. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he—’

Daisy’s eyes lit up and she grabbed my hands. ‘Really? OhmiGod! You think he’s about to
propose
?’

‘Um! Who knows?’ I gasped, but she was already barging back into the restaurant, doors swinging behind her.

‘I think that went off all right,’ I said, as Nelson and I strolled arm in arm down Piccadilly afterwards. I’d changed out of my crippling high heels into the more manageable pair I kept in my big handbag, and shaken out my brown hair from underneath the wig. It was one of those rare early spring days in London when the trees are out, the sun is shining and you feel as if you’re breathing in summer instead of the usual grime.

What with that, and a strong sense of a job well done, I was positively floating along.

‘Indeed,’ Nelson agreed. ‘It was nice of the manager to give us that champagne. Not that they had much choice after Daisy announced her engagement, mind you. I heard her telling the waiter how like Jethro it was to have arranged lunch so near Bond Street, for Tiffany’s.’

‘Well, what about you being such a great pretend boyfriend?’ I gave his hip a nudge with mine. ‘If you’re that good at making tactful conversation, I have no idea why you’re still single.’

He looked sideways at me. ‘I learned from the mistress. Look, this is my office – are you taking the rest of the day off?’

‘Certainly not,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a wardrobe consultation, a broody mother and an unknown family drama to fix this afternoon.’ I leaned up to kiss Nelson on his cheek. ‘Thanks for your help.’

‘My pleasure,’ said Nelson. ‘I’ll see you back home.’

The flat Nelson and I called home was a few streets away from the office, in a friendly but rather run-down residential area behind Victoria Coach Station. We had nearly the same postcode as Buckingham Palace, which impressed Jonathan’s mother no end, but it really wasn’t that posh at all. Still, I thought, noticing the first flickers of pink blossom on the cherry trees as I walked home, I’d miss its shabby gentility when I moved to Paris.

My living arrangements at the moment were rather complicated, due to the fact that Jonathan had just taken a job running the upmarket Parisian branch of his estate agency, Dean & Daniels, while I still had to run the one and only branch of the very London-based Little Lady Agency. Consequently, I was working hard in SW1 from Monday to Thursday lunchtime, and living at Nelson’s, then hopping on Eurostar to Paris and into the arms of Jonathan for the rest of the week.

Not seeing each other all the time did have its romantic advantages, if you know what I mean. He’d been there for nearly four months and we still hadn’t found time to go up the Eiffel Tower.

However, I couldn’t go on living in two places, and Jonathan had been nudging me for a while about exactly
when
I was going to move to Paris permanently. I did want to, honestly. It was just . . . quite a wrench.

When I got in, Nelson was going through the post and yelling at a radio phone-in, as was his wont. I kicked off my shoes, and put a bottle of wine on the table next to him.

‘A little thank you for this morning,’ I said. ‘Do you want to open it now? I’ve had a hellish afternoon trying to coach a client into telling his dragon of a mother he’s living with his girlfriend and has been for the last five years. Not to mention the fact that his father’s practically got him lined up to marry his cousin. God, sometimes I just don’t know where to start.’

Nelson looked up from a selection of bills. ‘It’s a good job these people don’t know you and your own family arrangements, or else they’d find it hard to take your Nightmare Family Management very seriously.’

I would have disagreed with him if it wasn’t true. The Romney-Joneses were, not to put too fine a point on it, a bunch of melodramatic, self-centred schemers. Jonathan thought they should all be in therapy, which of course we had been, for about a month in the early nineties, until my father found out that the therapy bills would cost the same as the mortgage.

‘More to the point,’ Nelson went on, ‘I hope you’re going to put some of that into action this weekend.’

‘Oh, don’t. At least I’m taking Jonathan home with me for back-up.’ I sighed. ‘We need to start talking about the wedding, and Mummy’s invited everyone for a family dinner – Allegra and Lars, Emery and William, Granny . . .’

‘The whole lot. Blimey.’ He wandered over towards his room, pulling off his tie. ‘Maybe you should take the wig with you? Might help you put your foot down.’

‘I don’t think Jonathan would go for that,’ I said. ‘He has quite strong views on the wearing of the wig.’

Nelson paused on the other side of the room. ‘Mel, I was joking.’

‘Any chance of a foot rub?’ I asked hopefully. Nelson’s foot rubs were legendary. He had very strong thumbs and could turn me to jelly in seconds. That and the cooking made him Flatmate of the Year, indefinitely. ‘I’m walking on knots here.’

‘Sorry, I’m running late,’ he said, catching sight of the kitchen clock. ‘Maybe later?’

He vanished into his room, and while I was still making pleading noises he reappeared, wrapped in a towel at his waist, and headed for the bathroom. ‘You’ll have to get your own supper tonight. And can I borrow that fancy bath oil of yours? I’ve run out,’ he yelled over the sound of the boiler cranking into action.

My jaw dropped. One, Nelson was suggesting
I
made supper. Even when he’d been rushed into hospital overnight with blood poisoning he’d left instructions about what I should heat up from his freezer of delights. Two, he wanted to use
bath oil
. Three, he was wandering around the flat
in a towel
.

The sight of Nelson’s upper body, which he kept Englishly under wraps for as much of the year as possible, was a rare thing indeed. Even though we’d known each other for ever – possibly
because
we had – we’d agreed on dressing gowns as part of my moving in.

So it was quite startling to have it so suddenly unveiled, and I couldn’t help noticing his biceps, newly rounded and flecked with a thick crop of freckles where his T-shirt arms had stopped and his tan started. He’d spent a few weeks in the Med crewing some yacht with his mate Roger, and heaving all those mainsails around had clearly had an effect.