To Marry a Prince (32 page)

‘I love you, Georgia,’ said Lottie with fervour.

‘When you have done so, you may bring him to dinner. I will telephone you tomorrow with dates when I am free.’

Bella gulped.

Georgia stood up and turned gracefully to Lottie. ‘It is always delightful to see you again, Lottie. I so enjoy our talks. Goodbye. Thank you for a lovely evening.’

Subdued, Lottie stood up and they air-kissed.

Bella said, ‘I’ll call you a cab.’

‘No need. I can always find one round here. If necessary I’ll go to Victoria Station. There are always cabs there.’

‘I’ll walk with you,’ said Bella firmly.

She helped Georgia into her warm coat – a chocolate brown, waisted, full-skirted thing, with a discreet fur collar and military buttons. Georgia set her big Russian hat at just the right angle and pulled on fur-lined
leather gloves. It was all very warm and practical but, thought Bella, even for a domestic evening of shepherd’s pie with the girls, her grandmother was catwalk elegant.

Bella shrugged on her own coat, stuffed her keys in her pocket and they went out into the night air. The street was deserted. Not a cab in sight.

They began to walk.

Georgia said, ‘Honey, I know you’re getting a lot of advice, from all over the place, and most of it is frankly crap. I don’t want to add to that, I really don’t. But I am certain that you and Richard need to work out what you want before everybody else gets to have their say. It’s just so easy to be taken over by the rest of the world. I was. And it took me half a lifetime to get myself straight.’

This was news to Bella.

‘I didn’t know that,’ she said cautiously.

‘When you’ve made your bed, you lie on it,’ said Georgia dryly. ‘Old saying. No reason for you or anyone else to know. But, believe me, when I say talk to the man, I speak from experience. Oh, look, there’s a taxi with its light on. I do so love London taxis! They’re so big and solid and uncompromising, and you have room to spread out the skirts of your dance dress. Heaven. Just heaven. I have great hopes for you, Bella.’

On which gnomic utterance she raised an arm to hail the cab, kissed her granddaughter quickly, jumped in and was gone.

‘The Date!’ –
Royal Watchers Magazine

Bella did not act immediately on her grandmother’s advice, not even when Georgia sent her a list of possible dates for bringing Richard to dinner. But she did think about it.

Richard was on a brief tour of middle European capitals, in support of trade promotion. After that he was going on to a ski-ing holiday in Andorra. He had asked Bella to go too, but hadn’t argued when she said that she couldn’t start a new job and take a holiday after only a month.

‘I can’t duck out of this,’ he said apologetically. ‘It’s a family tradition. We go every year. We stay with my mother’s cousins and take friends. Including, this year, my goddaughter, who has a birthday that week. I can’t disappoint her.’

‘Of course you mustn’t cancel,’ said Bella, shocked. ‘Include me when you book the next one.’

‘You got it.’

But later he rang and said, ‘How would you feel about coming for just the weekend? I’d like you to meet everyone.’

So she left work at lunch-time on Friday and flew to Barcelona. She wondered if Richard would meet her there himself. She remembered how they had fallen into each other’s arms that first time at Waterloo Station. But a uniformed airport official picked her out while she was walking from the plane and led her off through silent corridors to a waiting limousine, having her passport stamped en route.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

The official bowed. ‘Our pleasure. We hope that you will be very happy, you and Prince Richard.’

‘Good heavens! I mean, thank you for your good wishes.’ I’m starting to sound like Georgia, she thought.

The car took her to a substantial villa behind an even more substantial wall. There were a few sightseers and the inevitable photographers waiting in the country lane that led to it. Bella had learned the form now. She leaned forward, so they could see her face, and gave everyone her best smile.

No waving, Lady Pansy had warned. Not unless she was accompanying the Prince. People wouldn’t like her pretending she was Royal before she was. So Bella kept her hands locked tight in her lap and beamed for Britain as gates swung silently open and the limo drove out of their sight. The people in the road waved like mad. It was a real physical effort not to wave back.

Richard did come to meet her as the car arrived, though. He ran down the steps and kissed her, with a slight air of restraint.

‘Lady P been getting at you too, huh?’ muttered Bella.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ She slipped her hand into his and they went into the house. ‘Tell me who’s here.’

‘My mother is resting at the moment. Nell is on the slopes with the whole Lenane family and our cousins. George is sprawled in the rumpus room getting over a hangover.’

‘
Still?
’

Richard grinned. ‘He and the younger ones went into town last night. Most of them came back around midnight, but Chloe tells me that George got into some heavy salsa action. Don’t ask me when he got home. I don’t want to know.’

Bella smiled but said slowly, ‘Chloe Lenane’s here?’ So the ditzy blonde who had looked at her with such hatred on New Year’s Eve was included in the family party. Just great!

Richard was saying, ‘She’s a fellow godparent to The Monster, Tilly, which isn’t really fair as she’s a cousin and should cough up for a birthday present anyway. That’s why I’m so important, The Monster tells me. All her godparents are relatives except me.’

‘I look forward to meeting her.’

‘You won’t enjoy it unless you’ve brought her something,’ Richard warned. ‘But she’s very entertaining.’

He was right on both counts. In fact, Bella was surprised to see how cool, courteous, dignified Richard got down and dirty with the make-up kit of Tilly Lenane’s Suki doll.

‘There is an irresistible appeal to a grown man sitting on the floor wearing pink lipstick and gold dust,’ she
told him. ‘Do you think perhaps some rouge on his cheeks, Tilly? Nice round spots, about the size of a tenpence piece.’

His eyes promised vengeance but he sat calmly while the small girl polished his face to a shining carmine. The child’s mother, coming in with the Queen to put Tilly to bed, was taken aback. Queen Jane, however, was as charmed as Bella.

‘Very nice, Tilly. I think he looks very handsome. Don’t you, Bella?’

‘Stunning,’ she said gravely.

His lips twitched. ‘Do you think I ought to stay like this for dinner then?’

Even the Queen did a double take at that.

Bella, however, considered the suggestion, ‘Could be a bit rococo for a simple family meal?’

He allowed his shoulders to droop. ‘I’m really sorry, Tilly,’ he told his goddaughter mournfully. ‘You’re an artist but supper is no place for your art.’

But she didn’t mind at all. ‘I can do it again tomorrow,’ she offered generously.

Bella swallowed hard. ‘Maybe it’s time I changed for dinner,’ she said unsteadily.

‘Good idea, I’ll come with you. See you later, Mother, Nicola. Goodnight, Tilly.’

They escaped together. ‘How do you get this stuff off?’ hissed Richard as they ran up the stairs.

Bella was bubbling over. ‘No idea. That make-up is toy stuff, intended for dolls. They’re plastic. I don’t know whether ordinary make-up remover will take it off skin. You might have to use a blow torch.’

‘Alternatively, a good long session in the shower with an expert might do the trick,’ he said, whisking her inside their bedroom and locking the door. ‘Let’s go to it.’

They came down to dinner a little late but very, very clean.

The next day everyone went off to the slopes. Bella didn’t really like ski-ing and had only done it a couple of times, so she was glad to see that there were lots of easy runs and a relaxed family atmosphere to the place. The cousins, a dispossessed Grand Duke turned industrialist and his wife, were hospitable and the Lenanes jolly. Prince George treated Bella in exactly the same way as he treated his sister, giving her his spare stuff to hold while he shot off to buy a burger to fill the gap between mid-morning coffee and late lunch.

‘What? I’m still growing, you know!’ he said when Princess Eleanor called him a greedy pig. ‘I burn up a lot of energy.’

‘Not on the ski slopes, you filthy porker,’ she said, prodding him. They were clearly great friends though Bella suspected that they were both a little in awe of Richard. Of course, he was five years older than George, seven years older than Eleanor. It was a big gap, even if he wasn’t also carrying all the responsibilities of being the Prince of Wales.

Eleanor was not as cheerfully accepting of Bella as George was. She seemed friendly enough but remained distant, almost as if she were embarrassed.

That afternoon the cause of this became clear.

‘I’m glad that you’re with Richard,’ Eleanor said, awkwardly, when she and Bella found themselves drinking warming soup together while Tilly proudly showed off what she had learned that morning.

‘It’s been a bit difficult. Everyone thought he was going out with Chloe again.’

‘Again?’

Eleanor looked surprised. ‘You might not know but he’d been dating this Deborah person. We all knew it wouldn’t last. She was always looking round for the cameras. When that finished, he took Chloe to some party and then they went on to a nightclub. I don’t know the details. But he had a little walk out with her years ago, just after he left university and before he did his year in the Navy.’

Eleanor looked up at the mountain.

‘I don’t know how serious it was. You know Richard, he doesn’t talk about his feelings, and I was only a teenager. But Pansy said that Chloe was waiting until he came back. And when he did …’

‘Deborah?’

‘No. Nobody for a long time. Then there was Anastasia for a bit.’

Bella looked blank.

‘Princess Anastasia? Of Finland? She married last year. Big spread in
Royalty Watchers
.’

Bella nodded as if she knew what Eleanor was talking about. Whereas she had never heard of
Royalty Watchers Magazine
until last year.

Eleanor wasn’t deceived. ‘You don’t know, do you? OK. She was an Art History major at Smith. Whenever
he was in the States, he saw her. And then she came over here and worked for the National Gallery. Her father is on the Olympic Committee?’

Bella clicked fingers. ‘Got it. King Edvard or something. One of the bicycling Royals, right?’

Eleanor choked with laughter.

Coming up behind them Richard took off his sunglasses and surveyed Tilly’s composed run. ‘She’s not bad. What were you laughing about?’

Eleanor looked agonisingly embarrassed.

‘Bicycling Royals,’ said Bella crisply. ‘It’s rude to eavesdrop.’

‘What’s wrong with them? I’ll have you know that some of my best friends are bicycling royals.’

He put his arm round Bella and pushed his woolly ski hat further back. She saw that he had got rid of his skis.

‘Ready to go?’

‘What about you? Don’t you want another run?’

He shook his head. ‘I’ve had my fresh air for the day. Anyway, Mother’s tired. I thought we could go back with her?’

‘Sure.’

He drove with that controlled competence Bella was coming to learn he brought to everything. The Queen sat next to him and she did, indeed, look tired.

‘I will go and lie down for half an hour,’ she said when they arrived at the house. ‘Let’s have tea together in the conservatory at half-past three. I want to talk to you both before everyone gets back.’

What she wanted to talk about, it turned out, was the
wedding. ‘Your father tells me that the Prime Minister’s Office has a list of possible dates, most of them this year. It is your decision, of course. But I want you to think about it very seriously.’

Bella looked at Richard. Did he know this was coming?

Richard was calm. ‘I think we’ve got that, Mother. The PM sent the list of dates over in the second week of January. That’s a fortnight ago now. Someone has been sitting on it. I know it’s not me and it doesn’t seem to be Father’s office. So it had to be you. What exactly is going on?’

The Queen folded her lips together. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have done that.’

‘No,’ Richard agreed, not angry but not very friendly either.

His mother flushed. ‘I really wanted to get to know Bella …’

He said very coolly, ‘No, you didn’t. Have you even called her since the New Year?’

The Queen looked miserable. Bella felt sorry for her.

‘So, I repeat, what’s this about?’

The Queen drew a long breath. ‘This engagement, this affair, it has all happened too fast. You’re still starry-eyed about each other, I can see that. I think it’s lovely. But it’s no – no
foundation
for your future life.’

She turned to Bella.