The Runaway Princess (22 page)

“I think you’ll think it’s worth it.”

“If it’s Nelson’s Column by night, I’ve seen it. As the actress said to the bishop.”

Leo nuzzled the top of my head. “It’s not Nelson’s Column by night.”

He leaned forward and said something to Billy, then pulled me closer. I watched the yellow streetlights blur past, mingling with the orange taxi signs and red brake lights, like a messy border of wallflowers in the night sky.

Billy seemed to be driving us home. We passed the golden
Albert
Memorial, and the shopfronts of Kensington High Street, and—we
were
going home. This wasn’t a detour at all.

The car stopped in Trinity Square and Leo jumped out. He grabbed an umbrella from the backseat, opened it, and held it up with a wide smile.

It was chilly now, as well as wet. And I only had a cobweb of a shawl with me.

Billy turned round and saw my unenthusiastic expression. “If you’d prefer a coat, miss, I keep a spare one in the boot.”

I got out of the car rather reluctantly, I have to admit. Billy’s raincoat was about twelve sizes too big for me and didn’t do much for the couture evening look.

Leo reached out a hand. His eyes were bright. “Come on. I need to show you the garden!”

“The garden? Why do I want to see the garden? I know what’s in the garden.”

“Stop moaning and come with me.” Leo grabbed my hand in his and pulled me gently through the iron gate.

The leafy trees held off the worst of the rain as we crunched down the gravel path, which was illuminated with tiny
spotlights
—I couldn’t remember whether they’d been there the first night we’d come—and there were fairy lights in the trees too.

“There,” he said proudly. “What do you think?”

I drew a deep breath.

The Adelaide fountain from the English garden stood in the middle of my roses, shooting plumes of water into the air, and water-lily lights picked out each crystal splash. The dancing figure on the lip raised her throat to the London sky, even prettier by night-lights than she’d been in the Mediterranean sun.

She looked as if she’d been waiting to come here all her life.

“Leo,” I breathed. “It looks … magical.”

“You think it works?”

“It makes the garden complete.” My eyes filled with tears, and I stopped trying to remember everything and surrendered to the powerful surge of emotion sweeping through me. As with so many things that happened around Leo, I couldn’t quite believe that something so romantic could be real, here, happening to me.

I felt his strong arms wrap around me from behind, very real, very solid, and I leaned into his body, letting my tired eyes close with happiness.

He pulled me close and whispered down into my hair. “Thank you. Thank you for bringing this garden to life.”

“It was alive already,” I protested. “I just replanted this part.”

“No.” Leo nuzzled into my neck. “No, you’ve given it something else. You’ve given it a soul. Those roses you chose, their fragrances and names and history—that’s more than just sticking plants in soil. That’s creating a story that’ll continue year after year. And you’ve done the same with me. You’ve planted things in my life that I can see growing every day.”

“What? That sounds terrible—”

“No, really.” Leo turned me round very slowly and held me at arm’s length so he could look into my eyes. His blue eyes were serious, but something in his expression made me tingle with
anticipation.

I opened my mouth to say something to fill the awkward pause, but he stopped me.

“Amy. Before I met you, I worked, I played squash, and I bailed Rolf out of situations. Those were the highlights. After I met
you …
well, I can’t even remember what it was like before. I don’t ever want to live like that again.”

My heart hammered against the bones of my corset.

“I know it’s all happened very fast,” he went on, “and I don’t want you to think I’m being weird, but I feel as if we were only waiting to meet each other.” Leo paused and held my gaze. “Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes,” I said, and decided to take a leap of faith. I closed my eyes, so that if I ended up talking rubbish I wouldn’t have to see the look on his face. “I do. We’re not exactly the same, but we fit together. You feel right. You
smell
right. When I’m with you, it’s like I’m at home, even here in London, where I never thought I’d properly be happy. I don’t know what it is, but I could talk to you forever and never run out of things to say. And I could never get tired of looking at you. Ever.”

I drew a breath and opened one eye cautiously, and saw Leo smiling at me. A slow, relieved smile that made my insides turn to water. Splashy, moonlit fountain water.

“Plus, I can’t believe that someone I fancy so much can possibly feel the same way about me,” I blurted out.

Leo pulled me close. “I have felt exactly the same from the very first moment I saw you,” he murmured, his lips a breath away from mine.

He kissed me, gently at first, then hotter and harder, and my hands were starting to explore the fine cotton of his evening shirt when he pulled away and looked me straight in the eye.

“Amy. I think … we should drink a toast to the fountain.”

That wasn’t what I was expecting him to say.

“What?” I said, a bit ungraciously, since I felt as if my whole body was now throbbing with lust. He’d felt pretty lusty too a second ago.

“If you have a look in the water, you’ll find something I left there earlier. Come with me.”

Leo took my hand and led me right up to the fountain, where he passed me the umbrella, then rolled up his sleeve and fished about in the water until he found a silver ribbon. “Pull that.”

I pulled it, but it was attached to something heavy, which clanked against the stone basin with a familiar sound. I reached in and pulled out a chilled bottle of Krug champagne, and Leo reached up into the upper bowl of the fountain and produced two flutes. With a couple of practiced motions, he unfoiled the bottle and filled my glass.

“There. To the garden of love, and all who garden in it. From the roses in the beds to the daisies in the grass.”

I took a sip of champagne and felt the bubbles on my tongue. It was amazing how quickly I’d started to enjoy champagne. I’d drunk more in the four months I’d been dating Leo than my parents had probably consumed in a lifetime of weddings and christenings and office functions.

Leo was watching me drink, and I felt rather self-conscious.

“Am I supposed to say a few words too?” I asked. “I’d have prepared a speech if you’d given me notice.”

He frowned. “You probably ought to do something. Why don’t you throw the first coin in the fountain, for luck?”

“Okay.” I put my glass down on the edge and started to root around in my evening bag. I was a bit cack-handed, I have to
confess
—this wasn’t my first glass of the night.

“No, here.” Leo produced a two-pound coin from his pocket with suspicious speed. “Make a wish and toss it in.”

He had such a strange look on his face that I couldn’t take my eyes off him as I took the coin. My pulse sped up.

I fixed the fountain with my best intent gaze, then closed my eyes and wished. Unlike my wishing on Grace’s Dream Seeds, this time there was no arguing between the voices in my head. I wished for everything, greedily, like a child running through a sweet shop, just in case I never got a perfect moment like this again.

I wish that Leo and I can always be this happy together.

I wish that Mum and Dad could have our old house back.

I wish Kelly would come home and make things right again.

I wish that Jo would realize that Ted’s the man for her.

Was it greedy to wish for so much stuff?

As I was trying to put things in order, I felt Leo’s arms go round me again, and the thought that flashed through my brain like lightning was:

I wish Leo would ask me to marry him.

It was so loud in my head that I was scared I’d spoken it aloud, and threw the coin at the fountain more in surprise than anything else.

The coin landed with a splash and a clink and a tiny shower of water flew up; then one of the water-lily lights went out.

“I think you hit something,” said Leo.

Oh, God. That wasn’t a good sign.

“Oh no! I’m sorry,” I said, and dashed over to see what I’d
broken
.

Another silver ribbon was dangling over the side of the
fountain
.

“What’s this?” I asked stupidly. “Is this electrical?”

“Why don’t you pull it?” Leo suggested innocently.

“What? Is there a bowl of bar snacks at the other end to go with the champagne?”

“Try and find out.”

I pulled, but this ribbon was a lot longer. It was wound around the carving of the lower basin and I moved around slowly, untangling it, until finally something detached and floated up to the surface of the water.

A white plastic shell.

I looked up and, on the other side of the fountain, Leo nodded at me to open it.

Everything felt very quiet all of a sudden in the garden, behind the splashing of the fountain and the distant rumble of traffic. Inside one box was another, and another, until finally I found the smallest antique box. And inside that was a diamond ring sitting in a deep ruby-red bed of velvet. Three big diamonds, glimmering and glinting in the lights from the trees and the path.

I heard myself gasp and the blood pounded in my ears. I’d dreamed about how I’d want to be proposed to all through the lonely teenage years when I’d longed for a boyfriend, but I’d never dreamed of a proposal as sweet and private as this.

Silently Leo came up behind me and took the box out of my hands. He removed the ring and then dropped to one knee on the gravel in front of me, and took my cold, wet hand in his.

“Amy,” he said solemnly, “would you do me the great honor of being my wife?”

I couldn’t speak. I just stood there in my couture ballgown and Billy’s jacket, and made a jerky nod and smiled through the tears and rain running down my face.
Any second now,
I thought, as my heart swelled with too much joy for one woman,
I am definitely going to wake up.

He looked up at me from under his long lashes. “Is that a yes?”

I didn’t know whether to pull Leo up to standing or crouch down or what, but I dropped to my knees too and grabbed his face in my hands.

“Of course it’s a yes,” I said, kissing his eyes, his face, his lips. “The honor would be all mine.”

W
hen Leo and I announced our happy news to my parents, they managed to look surprised for all of ninety seconds, before Mum disappeared into the kitchen and came back bearing an enormous
Congratulations on Your Engagement
cake.

It had two tiers, topped with sugar-paste figurines of a girl with wild blond hair and a man with a tiny gold crown, and it looked suspiciously like a trial run for an even more enormous wedding cake.

“How did you know?” I demanded, then saw Leo and my dad exchanging proud manly looks, the sort that often end in back-slappage.

“Leo here did the decent thing and asked my permission first.” Dad’s chest was actually inflating with traditionalist joy. Then he spoiled it a bit by adding, “And I said, ‘Take her, by all means! If you’re daft enough!’”

“When?” I ignored the guffawing from both parents and eyeballed Leo, who shrugged modestly. “When did you find time to do that?”

“Oh, I popped up last week while I was in Manchester for work. Wanted to do things by the book.”

“Just a flying visit, ha-ha-ha,” added Dad helpfully. “In his
helicopter
.”

“It was very thoughtful.” Mum’s cheeks were bright pink. “We were so touched he asked us. As if we’d say no. …”

This was something of a turnaround, given that Martin Ecclestone, my last boyfriend, had virtually had to hand over three years of bank statements and his passport just to be allowed round for tea. But clearly they’d fallen for Leo as much as I had. And asking my dad if he minded this millionaire prince marrying his daughter told me Leo had somehow understood my parents without me having to explain an awkward thing, and for that, I loved him a tiny bit more.

I was very slightly niggled by his cavalier use of the cricket pitch, though. “Does the cricket club mind you using their crease as a heliport?”

“He gave them a donation,” Mum piped up. “Di Overend was telling me. Her Barry’s on the team, they’re building a new tea hut, very excited. You might get asked to open it!”

Leo grimaced. “Sorry, that was meant to be a discreet donation.”

“Nothing round here’s a secret for long,” I said, and then immediately wished I hadn’t because a cloud passed over Mum’s face.

“Tea!” said Dad quickly. “Where’s that tea! Let’s have a Yorkshire toast!”

*

L
ater, when Leo was patiently telling Mum about the various types of cakes native to Nirona, Dad cornered me over the washing-up.

“Now, just because I’ve given my blessing doesn’t mean you have to get married, love,” he said in a discreet undertone. “You’ve only known this chap, what? A few months. That’s not long at all. There’s no rush to get wed. You have a nice long engagement.”

“Dad, I want to marry Leo. I just … know he’s right for me.” I glanced at the windowsill where my priceless diamond ring sat on the cat-shaped ring tree Kelly and I had given Mum for a birthday ages ago.

Leo’d told me the ring had belonged to his great-grandmother, the Australian gold-mining heiress who’d planned the international gardens, and she’d worn it every day of her seventy-one married years, “even when she was in the bath or gardening.” It was sometimes hard making his world and my world match up, so it was nice when there was a tiny crossover. It made it feel more real.

“How, though? Can you know someone this quickly?”

I turned and saw the anxiety on my dad’s honest face. I could understand why he felt it. It was hard to explain, especially to a bank manager who’d dealt squarely in hard facts for so long. Even Jo had been a bit taken aback by our news, although she’d recovered well enough to ask if the Pippa Middleton role was up for grabs.

“I think you taught me to know a decent person when I see one,” I said.

Dad looked squarely at me, and a hundred unspoken things flew up between us like ashes.

I knew Dad wanted to believe it too, from the half-reticent, half-eager way he chatted to Leo while Leo ate everything Mum put in front of him. The fact that Leo was a prince was almost a drawback, compared with his steady job and his polite manners. But Dad had given his permission for a man to marry one of his daughters before, and it hadn’t ended well for anyone. Of all the things that Dad beat himself up about, I knew that was the one that still hurt most. However I wasn’t Kelly, and Leo certainly wasn’t Christopher “You can trust me, Stan” Dalton.

I grabbed his hand awkwardly. “I know he seems too good to be true, but honestly, Leo’s like this all the time. It’s not an act. He sometimes even irons his own shirts.”

Dad’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. He hadn’t ironed a shirt since August 18, 1972. The eyebrows then fell as another concern broke through.

“But what’d you have to do? What are you signing yourself up for? Would you have to parade around with horses, and …” Dad’s knowledge of royal duties abruptly ran out.

“It won’t have any real effect on us. Leo’s fifth in line—I’ll just be getting married to a City banker with an amazing holiday home. You’d love the gardens, Dad. I don’t know what they’ve done to the soil, but they’ve got roses there next to succulents, it’s like Kew Gardens.”

He sighed. Maybe the shirts had swung it. “Well, I’ll only say this once, love, but don’t forget—you can always change your mind. It’s like I said to him, ‘Leo lad, you might be a rich man, but Amy’s the most precious thing in the world to me, and if you don’t look after my beautiful girl as she deserves to be looked
after …’ ”

I never found out what Dad had threatened to do, because we were both in tears over the sink, and it took us a good few minutes to compose ourselves enough to go back and face another round of cucumber sandwiches.

*

L
eo wanted to put our engagement announcement in every paper, from the
Times
to the
Rothery Gazette
, but he couldn’t understand why I was so reluctant to phone my parents to give them the details, since etiquette decreed it had to come from them—and, of course, they had to pay for the privilege.

“The
Times
, fine,” I said, trying to work out how much that would cost per word, given Leo’s complicated name, “but not the
Rothery Gazette
.”

He seemed surprised. “Why not? They’re so proud of you! And they like me, right?”

“They love you.”

He reached across the crisp white tablecloth and laced his fingers with mine. We were in Claridge’s, waiting to have a celebratory dinner with Boris and Liza; they’d flown in the previous day and were staying in a suite upstairs, but they were still half an hour late for dinner. If Boris’s PA was sending updates, we weren’t getting them, as Leo had courteously turned off his phone as soon as we sat down.

“So why wouldn’t they want to announce it to the local community?”

I loved Leo’s relative normality, but he had some weird blind spots.

I gave him a patiently sarcastic look. “ ‘The engagement is announced between Lauren, daughter of Pat and Richard Lewthwaite, and Matt, son of Debbie and Keith Scoggins, blah-blah.’ Then, ‘The engagement is announced between Amy Rose, daughter of Pamela and Stan Wilde, and Prince Leopold William Victor, son of Prince Boris of Nirona and Svetland and Princess Eliza Top-Supermodel of New York and Milan, blah-blah.’ People would think they’d gone mad.”

“I’d be happy with ‘Amy Wilde is now engaged to Leo Wolfsburg of London.’ ” He raised an eyebrow. “That’s who I am—just some guy who’s met the girl he wants to spend the rest of his life with.”

“But you’re not just some guy. You’re a guy who lands his helicopter on the village cricket pitch and then buys them a new pavilion as a make-do heliport.” I fiddled with my napkin, trying to make it cover my stomach. I was wearing Jo’s pencil skirt again, and it was cutting into my circulation. I’d also been gardening all day to make up for the appointments I’d missed on my long weekend, and I hadn’t had time to straighten my hair. I hoped Liza wouldn’t comment on it.

“I beg your pardon?” Leo’s expression was surprised. “That wasn’t the right thing to do?”

“Well, no, it …” I wasn’t sure I could explain it without starting a row. But it had been eating away at me. It wasn’t just that Leo had money; it was his attitude to it that sometimes made me stop and wonder if we were actually living in the same world. That you could just throw money at a problem, and if you threw enough money, even people ceased to be a problem.

Like flying up that first weekend. He’d dressed it up as meeting my parents, but actually he’d wanted to take me to that concert. And he hadn’t asked them first. To be honest, the only time that Leo struck a wrong note with me was when he reminded me a bit too much of Rolf.

I tried to pin my elusive misgivings into words because I really didn’t want them to start driving an invisible wedge between us. “Leo, where I come from, even marrying someone from London is regarded as freakishly exotic. The better you do for yourself up there, the less you’re meant to tell people about it.”

God, the tight skirt was giving me indigestion and we hadn’t even eaten yet. I could really have done with a night on the sofa, just this once.

“Anyone would think you were embarrassed to be marrying me.” Leo’s voice was light, but I glimpsed a steeliness in his eyes that I hadn’t seen before, and I immediately wanted to row back.

“Don’t be daft!” I reached for my water glass, but he moved it to one side and made me look up.

“What’s the problem?” he said. “Tell me if there is one, and we’ll fix it.”

What could I say? How could I explain the entire “no showing off” mentality of the North of England to a man whose
eighteenth
-birthday photograph had been taken by Bryan Adams? (Yes, Jo and I found it online.)

“They’re just … private people, my parents,” I said. “They don’t like being talked about. And it’s such a hive of gossip up there because nothing ever happens. The helicopter’s taken over from last year’s power cut as the hot topic of conversation.”

Leo squeezed my hand, and turned my engagement ring round so the diamonds twinkled in the candlelight; I’d made more effort with my nails in the past week than I had done in my whole life, and he nodded toward them, noticing the fresh beige manicure. “Liking the nails,” he said.

I was distracted by that. For a second. “But the thing is—”

“It’s just that I’m so happy,” he said. “I want everyone to know, before …”

“Before?”

“Darling! Or darlings, I should say!”

Our hands sprang apart as Liza and Boris approached the table in a starry trail of charisma and personally blended perfume. Even in Claridge’s, stuffed with celebrities and millionaires, conversation paused, cutlery clattered against tableware, and, although heads didn’t turn, eyes definitely swiveled sideways as they passed through.

It was impossible to tell whether they were late because of a steaming row, or a wardrobe change, or a bout of passion—maybe all three. Liza looked regal in a simple dove-gray wool dress with a tangle of gold chains, and Boris was rumpled, but in a good way, in a lounge suit. He mouthed a few cheery hellos to tables as he passed, a bit like Frank Sinatra.

No one could accuse this royal family of being chilly: Liza reached us first and enfolded Leo in her arms; then she grabbed me. She put her slender hands on either side of my face and gazed into my eyes as if we were sharing a significant moment. I was suddenly grateful we’d been seated at a discreet corner table and not in the middle of the room.

“Amy,” she said in her silky-smooth coo. “Welcome. Welcome to our family.”

Her diamond rings dug into my cheeks. They were quite cold, and made my cheeks feel fat.

“Thank you,” I said. It came out a bit Donald Duck, on account of the way she was squeezing my face.

“You make my boy happy, all right!” she said, this time in a jokey Noo Yawk accent (I think it was New York, I was less sure she was joking), and I nodded nervously until Boris elbowed her aside and delivered two smackers on each cheek, then another for luck.

(Was that the official Nironan number of kisses? I made a note to check with Leo later. From now on I needed to know this stuff; I didn’t want to offend anyone by underkissing them.)

“Congrats to you both. Leo’s a smart guy,” he said. “Big girls are always good news in our family. As my own father said to Liza when I brought her home all those years ago—”

“Not that many years ago.”

“—the crowds love a tall girl—means they can see ’em better in walkabouts! What did he say to you that made you so mad? Oh, yeah! ‘At least we already know you can walk in a straight line and wear a tiara!’ ” Boris guffawed, ignoring the daggers shooting forth from Liza’s flashing eyes, and added, “Of course, in your case, at least we know you’re not allergic to bouquets either!”

Boris and Liza were both looking at me as if I should say something, so I obliged. “And I’m very handy with a shovel if you need to bury anything in a hurry!”

Oh. That sounded better in my head.

“What Dad means is that we know you’re no stranger to a day’s hard work,” said Leo, pulling out my chair and gesturing for us to sit down. “Right, Dad? It’s great that you’ve got a passion—like Mom has her campaigns. It shows people there’s more to us than just parades and hats.”

“Well, your grandfather clearly adores her,” said Liza, nodding at my engagement ring. “Did you ask him for that? I thought he was going to give it to Sofia.”

“Granddad offered it to me himself.” Leo calmly poured some water for her. “If you must know, he came by my room before dinner, that weekend Amy came to stay, and told me he thought I might be needing it sooner rather than later. And he was right.”

“Really?” I asked without thinking, and felt a flutter of affection for the old man. If I’d known there was a ring hanging on that conversation about climbing roses, I’d never have dared open my mouth.

“Really,” said Leo, and smiled. “He said your views on pruning were sound, and he liked the way you chatted to the tourists and didn’t give him away. Whatever that means.”

My tetchy mood evaporated. Leo had adjusted to my parents far better than I’d coped with royal life so far. We both had to learn how to handle this, and I ought to cut him the same slack that he was cutting me. He’d never even mentioned some of the daft things I’d said at that dinner.