To Marry a Prince (24 page)

But either Queen Jane had got over her ill humour or else she was very good indeed at hiding her real feelings. She could not have been more welcoming.

‘My dear, what a pleasure,’ she said, kissing Bella on the cheek. ‘Richard never tells us what he is doing, so it is a great relief to find that he has a private life.’

Richard stood like a rock and said nothing.

The Queen’s rooms were charming, with great bowls of flowers in every corner and some fine modern paintings. Not a hint of gold tasselling or steam engines, thought Bella. And the Queen didn’t mention her husband, though she did say that the evening’s music had been very modern and she was glad to be home.

‘We’ll eat at once. You must be very hungry. We’re in the small salon … quite informal.’

She led the way to a dining room where, as far as Bella could see, places had been set for at least four courses.

‘Now, tell me where you met my son.’

So Bella told her and the Queen laughed a good deal at the story of the collapsing ivy.

‘I’m glad Richard had the good sense to stay and rescue you. Do you find you have a lot in common?’

‘Bella is Finn Greenwood’s daughter, Mother. She’s very adventurous.’

The Queen looked worried. ‘Oh, dear. Do you sail, my dear?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Then don’t let my son persuade you to try it. He has been wanting to go ocean racing since he was a child. And of course it’s out of the question.’

‘Is it? Why?’

The Queen bit her lip and did not answer.

It was left to Richard to say with heavy irony, ‘The safety of the heir to the throne must be assured at all times. Isn’t that right, Mother?’ To Bella it sounded as if he were quoting an official document.

The Queen clearly thought the same. ‘That’s not quite fair, Richard. Your father and I obviously don’t want you to put yourself in danger.’

He sighed and said tonelessly, ‘Of course.’

She turned to Bella and said, a bit too brightly, ‘What do you do, my dear?’

So Bella explained about her research into fish in the Indian Ocean and her new job in forestry research.

‘And what are you doing now? Spending time at home with your parents?’

Here we go, thought Bella. Dirty linen, one pile, on the table now, quick smart.

She said, ‘No, Ma’am. I’m living in London with a
friend and doing a temporary job. My parents are divorced.’

‘Oh,
dear
,’ said the Queen. And to Bella’s surprise went on, ‘Was that very difficult for you? Broken homes can be so disorienting for the young.’

Bella said, ‘Actually, I never really felt I had my feet on the ground until my mother married my stepfather. He’s a solid citizen, which my father isn’t, and more importantly he is always there when my mother needs him. My father is just as likely to be up a mountain or in the middle of the desert somewhere.’

The Queen leaned forward. ‘How interesting. Didn’t you miss your father?’

‘If your father’s an explorer, you kind of get used to it.’

‘Yes, I suppose you do. I hadn’t thought of that. And are you an explorer too?’

‘I wanted to be,’ admitted Bella. ‘but I don’t think I have the temperament somehow.’

The Queen smiled at her suddenly. It was a real smile, full of fun and a sort of intimacy. Briefly, she looked very like Richard, Bella realised, startled. She found herself smiling back, without reservation.

‘I think you are a wise young woman. I look forward to getting to know you better.’

In spite of all the courses, the meal moved along briskly. Bella couldn’t face cheese or the delicious-looking chestnut and meringue pudding, and was starting to look hopefully at Richard for a signal that he was OK to go when the Queen rose to her feet.

‘Let us go and tidy ourselves, my dear.’

Richard stood up. ‘Oh for God’s sake, Mother.’

The Queen raised elegantly shaped eyebrows. ‘Language, dear.’

He waved that aside. ‘Hasn’t this charade gone on long enough?’

The Queen stiffened. ‘Charade?’ she said icily.

Very
like Richard, thought Bella.

He gestured widely. ‘
Quite informal?
Three different wine glasses and four courses for a simple supper? What are you playing at … putting Bella in her place right from the start?’

‘Richard!’ The Queen sounded genuinely shocked.

He said to Bella, ‘Don’t be fooled by this “We are so pleased that Richard has a private life” guff. The last time I had a private life and made the mistake of introducing my girlfriend to the family, my mother told her that she was my “little rebellion”, and I would get over it. Isn’t that right, Mother?’

The Queen looked away, as if he had not spoken.

‘Come, Bella.’

He was almost savage. ‘Are you seriously going to leave me to port and cigars on my own? Get real.’

‘Bella and I want some girl time alone, dear. If you don’t want port and cigars, get them to make you a chocolate milk shake,’ flashed his mother. ‘It’s about your age group.’

And she swept out. Bella looked at him in alarm, but he just jerked his head to send her after his mother and sank back into his chair. Bella bundled after the Queen.

She found Queen Jane had retired – there was no other word – to a beautifully appointed boudoir, with
mirrors and soft lights and cushioned window seats plus three loos and half a dozen hand basins. The Queen was sitting in an exquisite little tub chair, blowing her nose rather hard. The air was heady with the scent of many perfumes.

Bella sat down on the edge of the window seat and waited.

‘Oh, he makes me so mad sometimes,’ said the Queen. ‘I know it’s not easy being Prince of Wales and I try to help. But he just bites my head off.’

She blew her nose one more time and then blotted carefully under her eyes for good measure.

‘I’m sorry you saw that. Normally we don’t fight in front of other people. I suppose I was just so worried when I saw all the nastiness all over the web.’

Bella was surprised. ‘I didn’t see much nastiness. People were curious, of course. But it all seemed quite kindly.’

‘They were saying he was – well, let’s not talk about it. A dear friend showed me some messages that you may not have come across. And just as well.’ She patted Bella’s hand. ‘Now, listen. Richard won’t like me saying this, but you’re going to need some help. The Press was bad enough in the old days, but now, with the web and all those social networking sites, it’s just out of control. I think you need a mentor, someone you can call any time that you have a problem.’

‘Thank you,’ said Bella. ‘But my flat-mate is in PR and she’s been pretty good at guiding me up to now.’

Queen Jane looked relieved. ‘Oh, that’s good. So there’s really only protocol to worry about.’

Bella was non-committal.

The Queen laughed. ‘I see Richard has been telling you what he thinks of protocol. I don’t blame him, really. It must seem very artificial to your generation. But it eases the wheels with a lot of people of different ages and from different cultures, if you just tell them what the rules are.’

‘I suppose I can see that.’

‘Good. I will ask a good friend of mine to call you and talk you through it. Lady Pansy helped me when I came here as a bride. She’s utterly reliable and very kind. You will like her.’

The Queen stood up, went to the mirror, fluffed up her hair and tidied her make-up.

‘I’m glad we’ve had this talk. I do want you to feel that I am on your side. Shall we go back and see whether Richard has murdered someone?’

He was in the Queen’s drawing room, pacing. The coffee tray was brought in. Both he and Bella refused a cup, but they sat dutifully making conversation about books and the weather until the Queen had finished hers. Then Richard leaped to his feet and they said their goodbyes and were gone.

On their way to the car, he said, ‘Have you had enough of me tonight?’

Bella gave him naughty look. ‘What do you think?’

At once he lost his impatient frown and bellowed with laughter. ‘Thank God for you, Bella Greenwood,’ he said when he could speak. ‘You might just turn me human again. Right. Where? Back to the flat or my pad?’

‘The Palace?’ she said doubtfully.

‘God, no. I hate the Museum. My flat is in Camelford House. George and Nell both have apartments there, and so has my grandmother for when she leaves Wales and comes to London. But we don’t interfere with each other and you won’t see them. Fancy it?’

‘Yes!’

‘Good.’

‘Can this Last?’ –
Royal Watchers Magazine

The entrance to Camelford House was more forbidding than the Palace’s, with huge blank black gates. But once inside, it felt a lot smaller and a great deal friendlier. The gates opened as soon as Richard’s car approached and closed noiselessly behind it, as a security officer came out of the small guard house to check them in.

‘Good evening, Sir. I don’t have a guest on my list for tonight, Sir.’

‘Spur of the moment, Fred. Bella meet Fred, who keeps the bad men out. Fred, this is my lady, Bella Greenwood. I’ve no doubt you know all about her by now.’

Fred smiled. ‘Very nice to meet you, miss. I’ll add Ms Greenwood to the Approved Visitors List, shall I, Sir?’

‘You bet. Good night, Fred.’

‘Good night, Sir. Miss.’

Richard drove round a corner into a sort of square formed by an substantial eighteenth-century house, a small Jacobean block, and what looked like a nineteenth-century school house, its front covered in ivy.

‘You’ll need to check in with Security whenever you come here, if you’re not with me. If I’m not around, just poke your head though the guard-house door and the guys will sign you in. You’ll need keys, too. I’ll organise that.’

He led the way into what Bella was privately thinking of as the school house. Inside it was warmer and more comfortable than the Palace. The ceilings were lower and the art was less warlike. There was even an elevator, with gilded bars and a leather-covered bench seat around three sides of it. Richard flung open the doors for her.

‘You must take a ride in Gertrude. Don’t look down if you get vertigo, but Gertrude is a work of art. They wanted to put in something modern and silent that opened straight into my apartment, but I said no. She’s part of my childhood, Gertrude.’

He patted the leather seat as if it were a friendly dog and swung the hands of a floor indicator as big as a grandfather clock face. Gertrude clanked into life and juddered sedately to the top floor.

Richard’s apartment was a shock. Bella had seen him in someone else’s cottage, in Lottie’s flat and in the shared houseboat. All those places were friendly, book-filled, cosy. This flat was enormous. The main room ran the entire length of the building, as far as she could see, with a pale blond-wood floor and minimalist furniture: deep ivory-coloured sofas surrounded a low wooden table inlaid with an intricate pattern of pale woods. There was a cocktail cabinet at one end, currently closed up to reveal its flowing Art Deco lines, and a
floor-to-ceiling bookcase at the other. No flowers or knick-knacks here, but a spotlit alcove housing a beautiful urn, the colour of the sunlit stone of the Acropolis, and a huge painting occupying the whole of one wall. At first glance it looked like a black-and-white architectural study of a ruined castle in the middle of a mediaeval town. But the longer you looked at it, the more you saw anomalies: tiny touches of colour, staircases that couldn’t possibly exist, hints of people just out of sight, a shoe, a drifting scarf.

‘That,’ said Bella, staring, ‘is amazing.’

He stood beside her and looked too. ‘I never tire of it. Every time, I see something different.’ He put an arm round her. ‘The Palace is full of
stuff
. People are always giving you things and some of my ancestors were avid collectors, too. And you never throw anything away, on principle, in case the next generation would like it. So my mother lives in an upmarket junk yard and tries to hide it with flowers. I didn’t want that.’

‘You haven’t got it. This is beautiful.’

There were windows all along another wall. She went to them and saw that they looked out across lawns to another building.

‘Is that part of Camelford House too?’

He shook his head. ‘Government building.’

‘So you’re in this great big place all on your own?’

His eyes started to dance in the way she loved; the way they hadn’t for too long. He took her hand and pulled her towards him.

‘Not,’ he said, ‘tonight.’

It was a good start but things went wrong almost immediately.

Richard had to leave to take a flight to Edinburgh the next morning, so he left before Bella did. And no one had told her that she had to sign out when she left Camelford House. So in the middle of the day she got a frantic phone call from someone in Richard’s entourage of the day, asking her to call the Guard House. She did, and a meticulous functionary insisted that she come back
at once
and sign out. She would do well to apologise to the Officer of the Watch as well, he said. Bella suspected that he was the Officer of the Watch. But she remembered that these were people whom Richard saw every day, and liked, so she complied.