The Runaway Princess (9 page)

It didn’t bear thinking about.

“Rolf isn’t a member here, but he knows I am,” Leo murmured, leaning forward so only I could hear. I tried not to look at the couple at the table opposite, who had stopped trying to talk to each other and were openly staring to see why the waiter had come over. I ended up nearly bumping noses with Leo. He pretended not to notice, but my breath suddenly became shallow as I breathed in his cologne.

“I don’t come very often,” Leo went on, “so sometimes Rolf says he’s me and tries to blag his way in. Which is stupid, because the guys on the door here know everyone in London.”

“But wouldn’t they just let him in, I mean, what with him being a prince and—” I realized too late how gauche that sounded, and clapped a hand over my mouth. Which was a habit I thought I’d broken up till then.

Leo didn’t react. “Listen, if you could bear it, I think it’d be easier to have a quick drink with him and then make some alternative plans,” he murmured, as the sound of someone making a fuss at the door drifted through the room. A few people tutted and turned their heads to see what on earth was kicking off by the coat check.

As they did, it dawned on me why the couple at the next table looked familiar. He was our local MP, the very posh one who’d turned up to a protest Jo and I had been on to save some local theater from closure. And the woman he was with had been in a film we’d just had out on DVD. A straight-to-DVD one, but
a film
nonetheless.

When I looked back, Leo was talking to the waiter in that discreet under-the-breath tone. Since his attention was fixed elsewhere, I snuck a good long look at the firm line of his jaw, and the soft slope of skin just under his ear. Jo and I often mused how rare it was to find a man with a perfect mouth, but Leo’s mouth was just right—a pillowy lower lip and a top lip that had just the right amount of fullness.

A mouth that would be very good at kissing. I went red.

“The man at the door is a guest of mine—we’re expecting him to join us, he’s obviously running late,” he was murmuring to the waiter. “And can I ask a favor of the kitchen, please?” He muttered something else I couldn’t catch, and the waiter nodded and scurried off.

Leo turned back to me and reached out to touch my hand, and again the stream of sparks tingled up my arm as his fingers lingered a little longer than they needed to. “I’m really sorry. I’ve got a backup plan, don’t worry.”

“It’s not a problem,” I said, trying to look cool but probably failing. He wanted to spend the evening with me, rather than with his best mate? “I’m having a great time already. I’ve never been somewhere like this.” I waved my free hand at the plush walls of the club, covered in gilt-framed pictures and swagging.

Leo smiled. His hand was still on mine, but he removed it, just to take a large, preparatory gulp of wine. I followed suit.

There was a swish of coats and cold air, and the maître d’ appeared, apologetically herding in Rolf and his “small party” of two skinny, shivering model types with bare legs, blue underneath the fake tan. They weren’t the same girls from our party, as far as I could tell.

“Leo! And who’s your lovely young friend?”

Rolf started bellowing three tables away, causing a ticker-tape tutting reception as he drew nearer. He was wearing a green velvet dinner jacket over a purple striped shirt. Despite the chilly weather, three buttons were undone to reveal a lot of tanned chest and a flash of well-tended chest hair, and he didn’t seem to be wearing any socks with his deck shoes.

“Rolf. Are you too hot?” Leo inquired, rising from his seat
politely.

“Me? Too hot? Ask Paloma here!” Rolf hooted and slapped the bottom of the nearest girl, and she giggled.

“It’s just that you might want to do up a button or two,” said Leo. “Before someone asks you to.”

Rolf started to argue, but something in Leo’s eyes stopped him, and he did up one button as if he were being asked to don a burka.

Since Rolf’s manners didn’t extend to introductions, Leo introduced himself, shook each girl’s hand, and indicated our table. “Would you girls like to sit down?”

A chair appeared for Rolf, and I scooched round the velvet couch to make room for Paloma and her friend, painfully aware of the comparison that would now be going on. From where Leo was sitting, it probably looked as if Badger had gate-crashed the Afghan hound final of Crufts. I reminded myself that at least all my features were my own, and I wasn’t here with Rolf.

“Do I know you from somewhere?” Rolf squinted at me. “I don’t forget a pair of—”

“Rolf,” said Leo in a warning tone.

“—green eyes like that.” Rolf grinned, and I heard the girl next to me (Sienna, I think) giggle, although her face didn’t move.

“We met at my party,” I said, rather crushed. I didn’t look
that
different out of pajamas. How drunk had he been? “I’m Amy.”

“Your party?” Rolf’s shaggy brown eyebrows met in the middle. He was clearly having to think hard. “I go to lots of parties. Need more than that. Location? Theme?”

I stared at him. Was he trying to be funny? Was he trying to make
me
look stupid? Did he have any idea how much of this
conversation
I’d be relaying to the object of his orchid bombardment?

“In Victoria! The theme was heaven or hell! You weren’t wearing a costume.”

Unless you’d come as a complete cliché of a playboy prince,
I managed to stop myself saying.

“You kicked a lot of plants off my balcony,” I went on, annoyed by the amused grin on Rolf’s face. And the way he was cutting into my date with Leo with every minute I had to spend telling him who I was. “You punched my friend Ted? You nearly fell thirty feet off my balcony and broke your neck? You were at the helm of the Rolf Express? You won’t accept my friend’s very reasonable request to leave her alone?”

“Jo’s party! That was you?” He looked amazed. “You look so different in clothes.”

“You what?” The other girl spoke this time, and she would have looked furious if her brow had been up to it.

Leo coughed. “I think our car is here.”

“Really? You have to go?” Rolf was looking at me very differently now he knew I was Jo’s flatmate. The arse. I glared back at him, and when Rolf looked over my head to Leo, I could see by his reaction that Leo was glaring too.

Leo stood up and gestured for the waiter to bring them another bottle of wine. “You’ll excuse us, won’t you, ladies? We have a reservation.”

“Have you indeed? Hotel or restaurant?” Rolf winked, and the two-hundred-quid undies floated before my eyes. I felt a bit hot.

“Dinner,” said Leo firmly, and put his hand on the small of my back to steer me away from Rolf’s leering face. Possibly to stop me from smacking it.

A couple of beads of sweat had formed on Rolf’s upper lip as his brain caught up with itself.

“Lovely to meet you all,” said Leo. “The wine’s on me. Please leave quietly and without upsetting anyone.
Rolf
.”

And with a smile, a nod to the maître d’, and a discreet tip to the coat-check girl, we were swanning back up the stairs to the outside world.

My heart, though, didn’t know whether to burst or sink—was that the end of our date, or just the beginning?

T
he moon was unusually full over Berkeley Square, like a waxy pearl in the navy sky. The air felt chill after the warmth of the bar, and I shivered. Something else had changed too: I’d been quite relaxed until now, but I was off-balance again. I wasn’t quite sure what happened next. Usually, it was a shouted conversation in a late-opening bar, then the last Tube home, but with Leo, none of the usual usuals applied.

“Cold?” said Leo at once. “Want my coat? My car’s just here.”

He pointed to the other side of the square, where a Range Rover with blacked-out windows was parked next to a yellow streetlight.

His car? Not a taxi? He couldn’t drive, surely. We’d knocked back a bottle of wine between us and had just started the one that Rolf was now guzzling inside.

And did “my car’s just here” mean … he was going home? Was it over?

Was that an invitation? Could I say yes—or no?

My heart plunged in my chest.

“I’m fine,” I said, hugging my jacket nearer me. My feet were aching, but I wanted to hang on to the glamour of my heels a bit longer. “But should you be driving? We can share a cab if you want.”

“Oh,
I’m
not going to drive, don’t worry. I’ve got a driver. It’s cheaper than keeping a car in London,” he added, seeing my surprise. “I always forget where the congestion charge zone is. Costs me a fortune in late fines. But … a cab? Are you heading home already?”

“No, I …” I stammered. “I wasn’t sure if …”

“Not hungry?” Leo tilted his head hopefully. “Can’t I tempt you to dinner? ’Cause I’m quite peckish. And we haven’t even talked about my garden yet.”

“Well, if you put it like that …”

He grinned, and the mood slid back nearer to where it had been before. Somewhere between easy and charged.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Ah. Surprise.”

As we approached the car, a driver in a long gray coat jumped out and opened the nearside door, and Leo paused to wave me into the backseat.

I was about to get in, then saw the driver’s black gloves and had a bit of a
Crimewatch
flashback. The Dad voice in my head would have plenty to say about this. Getting into a car with a man I’d just met? That was on the list of things Dad had warned me never to do, along with lend a boyfriend money, believe everything he told me, and get on a motorbike. (There were more. A lot more. But those were the main ones.)

I struggled with my inner voices, the one telling me that Dad had a point, and the one telling me that Dad had gone semi-
bananas
after Kelly’s antics and that the world was not filled with men like Christopher Dalton. Leo clearly wasn’t like
Christopher
—he had no facial hair, for a start, and I’d seen him pay for something.

But I didn’t know that much about him, even if every instinct was telling me that he was far more of a prince than Rolf would ever be.

“It’s just that …” How could you say it without sounding rude?

“What?”

“It’s just that I don’t really know you,” I blurted out. “You don’t seem like the abducting type, but then who does? I mean, I don’t know where we’re going, no one knows where I am. …”

Brilliant, Amy. That’s exactly what you should say to a potential abductor: “No one knows where I am.”

To his credit, Leo didn’t laugh or look outraged. “That’s fair enough. Do you want to get a cab instead? That’s fine with me too. Do you want to call Jo? You can give her the registration if you want.” He kept a straight face.

“You could have false plates.”

“That’s true.” He pressed his lips together. “What if I give you my wallet?” He took it out of his inner pocket and offered it to me.

I actually considered that, but then reasoned that if he was an abductor, he’d probably have fake ID too. “No, it’s okay. But be warned, I have a really sharp shin-kick move.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” he said gravely, and got into the back of the Range Rover. After a second’s pause, I did too.

*

W
e headed away from Berkeley Square through the illuminated carriage drive of Hyde Park, and out toward the lights of Kensington; then the car stopped in a square of white townhouses surrounding a gated garden with tall bare-branched trees arching over the perfectly flat-topped hedge that hid the gardens from public view.

Leo leaped out and went to talk to the driver, then opened my door for me.

“What are we doing here?” I asked. “Is this where you live?”

“Ah, nearby.”

Blimey,
I thought. Even the flats round here ran into the millions, let alone the houses. Ted and I didn’t have many clients in this area; if you could afford a house, you could afford a full-time gardener, as well as a nanny, a cook, a driver, and an assistant.

Leo walked up to the padlocked gate and rummaged in his pocket. He held up an old-fashioned key on a ring, undid the padlock, and swung the gate wide for me to go through.

Any lingering paranoia was swept away by rampant curiosity; I’d always longed to nose around a private garden. They were rarely open to passersby, even on those Show Off Your Garden open days in London; and I didn’t know what the groundskeepers did to their hedging shrubs, but they were so dense there was no way you could see through. Even if you practically shoved your head in there (cough).

These gardens were about as exclusive a chunk of London air as you could get—even owning one of the astronomically expensive houses around it didn’t guarantee you entry. There were committees to go past, and key-holder agreements, and annual fees. Jo had a friend of a friend who lived near one with a tennis court in the middle that was about as easy to get a game on as Centre Court at Wimbledon.

I stepped into Leo’s private garden, my eyes darting everywhere as I tried to take it all in at once. It was a medium-size gem, and although it was meticulously tended, it had park benches and croquet hoops—signs that the resident actually enjoyed spending time in it. The garden was laid out formally, in squares like a Battenburg cake, with sections of mown lawn next to knot gardens, all separated by low box borders that sent a dark green scent into the night air. Converted Victorian gas lamps threw warm yellow pools of light over raked flowerbeds, while scatterings of delicate snowdrops stippled the clean borders—not in the ramshackle clumps I planted but in elegant sprays like paper doilies.

“Wow,” I breathed, completely enchanted.

“I thought we’d eat in the summerhouse,” said Leo, indicating a wooden gazebo in the middle, with white-painted shutters and a beautiful scalloped roof. “If that’s fine with you? I know it’s not exactly summery, but there are heaters. And blankets.”

“It’s fine with me,” I said, virtually running toward the summerhouse to see what was inside.

Leo followed me and flicked on a couple of electric lights, which spoiled the
Secret Garden
effect, but he flicked them back off and started opening cupboards instead, using the moonlight to see by.

“There should be some candles. … Would you mind inspecting the garden for a minute, please?” he said, flapping his hands to make me leave.

It wasn’t easy to walk on the gravel in my heels, but I didn’t want to take them off; fortunately the third glass of wine was taking the sting out of my blisters. I followed one of the paths round to a stone fountain and pretended to inspect a statue of a leaping salmon, but I couldn’t concentrate. I was buzzing with delight. The only thing that felt real about this entire evening was the tiny stone now wedged in my shoe.

I reached for my phone to text Jo, to prove to myself that this was actually happening, but stopped. Bad idea. She’d ask me where I was, I’d be bound to blurt something out about seeing Rolf, then she’d want to know where I was and with whom.

I knew I
should
tell her, or someone, where I was—but every minute I spent with Leo made me feel more and more as if I’d known him forever. In fact, the worst thing that could happen would be to text Jo or, worse, Ted.

“Amy?”

I saw Leo on the steps of the summerhouse, waving me over, and my feet started to move without me even having to think.

Inside, it smelled dark and green, but in a nice way. The wooden table was spread with a white cloth, and in the middle were three big candles, casting shadows around the already shadowy room. On either side was a china plate with proper silver cutlery and a snowy napkin, and between them were three small domed dishes.

“Where did they come from?” I asked.

“I asked the chef at the club if he could rustle up a takeaway, and Billy brought it in from the car. The cutlery and stuff is here all the time, for picnics.” Leo looked pleased. “My idea, actually. It’s a great garden for picnics in the summer—quick game of croquet after, convenient for cabs. …”

The sensation of being inside a fabulous dream went up another notch. This was Leo’s idea of a takeaway? Silver dishes and porcelain? What was going to be under the domes? Swan fricassee? The Mad Hatter?

“Dinner is served!” He flicked out his napkin with a flourish, then peered under one of the domes. “But don’t get your hopes up too high. If I’d had a bit more time to warn the kitchen, they might have been able to do something a little more, um …”

Leo whisked off the dome to reveal a pair of club sandwiches. The second dome revealed three packets of crisps.

“Perfect picnic food. And they’re good crisps,” I pointed out. “Organic. Handmade.”

“Only the best.” Leo decanted half a packet onto my plate as if he were sharing out caviar. Then he opened the wine—pre-chilled in a silver sleeve—and poured us each a glass.

“Cheers,” I said, and raised it. “To picnics and gardens.”

He smiled, dimpling in the candlelight. “Picnics and gardens.”

I inched off my heels under the table and heard the lump of gravel fall out.

“So.” I took a sip of wine. It was probably the nicest wine I’d ever tasted, all honeyed and crisp. “Tell me how you come to have a key to this amazing garden.”

“I’m a volunteer on the gardening committee.” Leo picked a gherkin out of his club sandwich. “And I can tell you that, because you won’t think it’s sad. Most people do.”

“By most people, do you mean Rolf?” We’d already had a few jokes about Rolf in the car on the way over. I’d confessed all about the fate of the thong and how we’d been using the latest box of chocolates as a tea tray; Leo had told me how much worse some of his earlier ideas had been. I didn’t think Jo would have thanked him for a Vietnamese house pig. Neither would Badger.

“Rolf’s idea of a good garden is anything with a sun lounger in it,” said Leo. “I once won a hundred quid off him, betting that oranges grew on trees and not in a big orange pod. I’m sure you could make a fortune off him.”

“I’m sure I could,” I said, then, before I could stop myself, I added, “if he can’t even remember who I am, there’s no way he’d remember I’m a gardener.”

I wished I hadn’t said it, because at once Leo looked mortified.

“Not that he has any reason to remember me.” I scrambled to fix it but it was too late; Leo was fiddling with the stem of his wineglass as if he was just waiting for me to stop talking so he could launch into something himself. “I’m sure he meets a lot of people … being a prince and … going to four parties a night. But, you know, I
am
taking deliveries for him most days, and I’m not
that
 …”

“The fact that he’s a prince means he should know better than to hurt someone’s feelings so carelessly,” Leo interrupted, with a Mr. Darcy-ish impatience that turned my insides to pure water. “He should be grateful for the gracious way you handled his ridiculous behavior earlier. Is it too much to ask you to ignore it? Rolf’s honestly not that bad when he doesn’t have an audience. His reputation goes ahead of him and he always chooses the wrong people to try to impress. And …” He paused, obviously weighing whether or not to share a confidence.

“Go on,” I said. “Whatever you’re going to tell me about Rolf can’t be worse than him thinking a girl would take the gift of a piglet in a good way.”

Leo smiled. “Not that. I was going to say that the reason he didn’t recognize you tonight was that one of his lenses fell out on the way to Jo’s—please don’t ask me how—and he was too vain to wear his glasses. He’s blind as a bat without his lenses, but he’s too scared to get laser treatment. I think that might be why he almost fell off the balcony.”

“He managed to find the loo all right,” I pointed out. “And the drinks.”

“Rolf’s developed a bat-sense for loos and drinks. Years of practice in darkened environments.”

“It’s fine,” I said. I didn’t want to look as if I was
bothered
that I hadn’t registered on the Rolf Scale. If anything, I was a teeny bit more bothered that Leo hadn’t told Rolf who he was seeing for dinner. “I don’t have a very memorable face.”

“No,” said Leo. “No, I don’t think you could
be
more wrong about that.” He looked at me intensely from under his lashes. “There’s no way I’d have forgotten it, lenses or no lenses.”

My heart expanded in my chest like a peony opening in speeded-up motion. This was an actual date, wasn’t it? This wasn’t about his garden at all. He couldn’t mean this garden; it clearly had gardeners already. We hadn’t even talked about his own place. Unless …

I knew I should say something, but my mind went blank; and then a clock somewhere outside struck the hour, and Leo looked at his watch in surprise.

“Midnight? How did that happen?”

“Do you turn into a pumpkin now? Or do I?” I inquired. My voice sounded a bit too high. I really didn’t want this evening to end.

“Neither. I’m afraid I turn into someone with a squash lesson tomorrow morning at seven. And I’m useless enough on a full night’s sleep.” He wrinkled his nose apologetically. “Sorry to be so boring, but I have to call it a night.”

“I never thought I’d meet someone who actually played squash at seven in the morning,” I said, impressed. “I thought that was just in films.”

“If only. I bet you get up early, though.” Leo offered me the last profiterole (under the third dome) and then finished it himself when I declined. It was nice to see a man who enjoyed a pudding, I thought; Mum would
love
that.