The Runaway Princess

  “But surely Rolf has to be sensible if his dad’s going to inherit?”

  Jo leaned forward again. “That’s the whole point, he won’t. Boris is the younger son—by about ten minutes. His brother Pavlos is the heir, and he’s spent the last however many years keeping his head down and making sure he’s photographed filling out his tax return and wearing a seat belt in his Prius. Like his dad, Rolf has all the money, none of the responsibility.”

  Jo was talking about these people as if she knew them. It sounded like the setup of an eighties miniseries starring Joan Collins. “But what I don’t understand is, if Leo’s a prince, why’s he working in Canary Wharf for a bank?”

  She shrugged. “It’s not a bank like the one you stick your salary in. He’s probably managing the family’s charity portfolio, or something. I suppose it’s the rebellious thing to do in his family, having a job. Maybe he wants to make sure no one confuses him with Rolf.”

  As Jo spoke, Badger’s ears flattened, and he got up from where he’d been lying on my feet. I ignored the sounds of his claws clattering like castanets on the hall parquet and stared at the table, trying to get my thoughts in order.

  Sensing my crestfallen mood, Jo didn’t launch into some excited story of exactly what her mother had seen in the marina, although I could tell it was an effort for her not to.

  There was a cross bark from the bathroom: Badger’s “I can’t reach this!” bark, the one he used to try to bark squirrels down from trees or Bonios down from countertops.

  “I’ll go.” I pushed my chair back. “Put some toast on. I need bread. It’s in the washing machine today, by the way.”

  Jo was “off carbs” for January, which wasn’t helping the sausage-roll mountain go down. I’d had to hide the bread in a different place each day to stop her raiding it.

  “Oh, you read my mind.” She sighed. “January is just too insufferable without toast. I nearly cried in front of Callie’s plasterers today. I can’t get stroppy on miso soup alone. And she’s pestering me about what happened at the party—who was there, what we wore. I’m starting to think it might just be easier to invite the lonely old bat to the next one.”

  In the bathroom, Badger was standing by the loo, his stumpy tail wagging back and forth. His beady brown eyes were fixed on my phone, propped against the candy-colored glass of the privacy window.

  I had a message.

  Thanks for a lovely evening—and for putting up with al fresco supper! How about Monday lunchtime to review garden situation? Will send car at twelve. L

  An hour ago, that message would have filled me with rocketing joy. Now it made me feel uncomfortable. And I couldn’t put my finger on why.

  Was that a date? Or a meeting? Was I embarrassing myself just by thinking that? And how was I going to retract what I’d said about Rolf without looking like I didn’t mind his appalling rudeness?

  “Do you want to take your newly washed hair out to a party tonight?” Jo shouted from the kitchen. “There’s a choice of two—one eighties-themed in Chelsea, one dinner-in-the-dark in Islington, which frankly sounds like an excuse for Freddie Henderson to molest people at will. Or do you fancy a pizza and a rom-com marathon at home?”

  I bit my lip and stared at the message. I needed to get this into perspective. I already had more than an entire forest of Dream Seeds could provide. Incredible flat, job I loved, brilliant flatmate who didn’t always understand but always tried to. How could any reasonable person be disappointed—because the ninth most eligible royal in the world hadn’t decided to unburden himself to a total stranger?

  Who do you think you are, demanded a flat Yorkshire voice in my head, Kate chuffing Middleton?

  “I’m leaning toward pizza myself,” yelled Jo. “If we’re going to have carbs, we might as well make a night of it. Oh no! I’m ordering dough balls! Stop me! Oh, garlic bread! Help!”

  Badger looked up at me and wagged his tail. We were a long way from Hadley Green, him and me.

  Hadn’t I told Leo what my ideal night in was? Pizza and a film? Well, here it was. It was as if someone somewhere was telling me something.

  “I’ll have a Quattro Formaggio,” I yelled through. “And get extra garlic bread!”

  It wasn’t as if I’d be snogging anyone tonight.

  Ten

  Having dropped the Prince Leo bombshell, Jo spent the weekend trying to distract me from examining the fallout. She banned any further conversation about Leo, Nirona, casinos, or Rolf, and propelled me into a weekend of nonstop London-market-browsing activity. Portobello antiques, Columbia Road flowers, some random organic farmers’ market in Victoria; she marched me round every single one, as if to prove that you didn’t need a tiara and/or millions of dollars to have fun.

  I mean, having-fun-for-no-money was what I did most weekends; although, this being Jo, it did involve a certain amount of spending. But I got a scary glimpse into what it must be like for her clients. I don’t know if she went so far as to confiscate their mobile phones to “encourage” them to keep their minds on the tiling/plastering/wiring and off the texts that were not arriving.

  She did allow me one text, the one replying to Monday’s date/nondate. When I told her about Leo’s text, her reaction was, I thought, a teeny bit of a projection.

  “He’ll send a car, eh? Without even checking you’re free? Rolf tried to send a car for me to go to Tramp last week, and I told him where he could send it. Honestly. Tell Leo you’ll make time to see him but you’ll get there yourself. Send a car. Honestly.”

  “He works in Canary Wharf,” I pointed out. “I have literally no idea how you’re meant to get there. Do you have to go on the river?”

  Jo narrowed her eyes. Columbia Road was about as far east as this Chelsea girl went in London without an armed escort and a map. Not even the Olympics had tempted her farther into the wilds of East London. “Fine. Let him send the car, but make sure you leave on the dot of two. If he wants to sweep you off your feet, he needs to send a helicopter, at least.”

  Once I’d sent the text, Jo shoved my phone in her own enormous tartan shopping trolley and I wasn’t allowed to see it again until Sunday teatime. She also yanked the Wi-Fi router out of the wall to stop me Googling, but that was a bit of a mistake, as we couldn’t work out how to install it again, and Dickon had to come downstairs and do it for us.

  *

  I did some cursory container-tidying at Grace’s on Monday morning, and the car arrived outside 17 Leominster Place on the dot of twelve, as Leo had said it would. But seeing it sweep up, all huge and silent and expensive, only reminded me that the first time I’d seen it, waiting in Berkeley Square, Leo had let me think he was just a businessman with a company driver, and I felt stupid all over again.

  It would have been very easy to drop a hint then. Or maybe he had and I’d just not noticed. I started to feel embarrassed, but then remembered what Jo had trumpeted—“It’s simply the height of bad manners to make someone feel stupid! He should know better. It’s the kind of thing Rolf would do!”

  (I don’t think Jo realized it, but she did turn into the Judge Judy of etiquette after a few glasses of wine. She started banging a virtual gavel all over the place.)

  I wasn’t even sure now that I was wearing the right clothes. For either work, or a business meeting, or a lunch appointment with the ninth-most-eligible prince in the world. And anyway, I’d got mud on my best jeans, so … great.

  Leo’s driver, Billy, started to get out to open the passenger door for me, but I lunged forward to stop him.

  “No, honestly, there’s no need!” I grabbed the handle myself. “I can open the door. I’m a gardener!”

  Billy’s friendly face creased in confusion. I couldn’t blame him.

  “I mean, I’m just a normal person,” I added. “Nothing special.”

  “As my old mum used to say, we’re all special in our own way, miss,” he said with a dry smile. I smiled back and started to get in, whereupon I was poleaxed with another fla
sh of panic.

  Did he think I thought it was a date with a prince, when he knew it was a business meeting about Leo’s garden? Or did he think it was a date, and that he was secretly spiriting me off for how’s-your-father in the gazebo? That was more likely. How many other women had Leo sent a car for? They were probably all supermodels, or socialites. Well, one of them would have been Flora Hardy-Torrence, for starters.

  She’d let chauffeurs open doors for her, I thought, tetchily. There were probably clauses in Flora’s modeling contract about not operating heavy machinery like Range Rover doors. My imagination obliged by conjuring up the long-lens image of those willowy arms wrapped around Leo’s neck on a yacht in the Bahamas, then added another of him and her at a black-tie gala for good measure. I really wished I hadn’t seen those photos. My arms had never felt so beefy.

  That’s why this is a business meeting to talk about his garden, said the voice in my head. The voice that sounded quite a lot like my sister Kelly’s.

  But what about the plants?! wailed a more hopeful voice. And the romantic midnight picnic?

  And that website? The bolshy voice was merciless. Do you know any of the people on it? Do any of them look like they might get a secret pleasure from popping Bubble Wrap?

  “Miss?” Billy was looking at me. To be fair, for someone who couldn’t hear the epic row going on among the various voices in my head, it did look as if I was struggling to decide how to get into a car.

  “What? Oh, sorry.”

  I made a quick decision. From now on I’d treat it as a business consultation only. Ted and I needed the work, and I needed to demonstrate that Leo being a prince didn’t make any difference to my ability to handle his garden. If he wasn’t going to mention it, neither was I.

  I told all the voices to shut up, and slid onto the leather backseat.

  *

  I sat with my knees clamped together, tormenting myself with the faux pas I’d made, until Billy asked me politely whether I had any useful tips about wisteria.

  Apparently, his wisteria had now blocked out two windows, and since pruning was one of my specialties, we were soon chatting about the best time to cut it back—right up to the moment when he stopped the car by the iron gates to Leo’s garden.

  My stomach had been fine till then, but now it leaped back into my throat. The railings looked more imposing in daylight. More exclusive.

  “… cut back all the side shoots to about finger-length …” My voice trailed off as my mouth went dry.

  Billy turned round with a friendly grin. “Thanks for that, most helpful.” He undid his seat belt and went to get out—to open my door.

  “No, really,” I insisted, embarrassed, but now I wondered if maybe Leo was watching, and if Billy would get into trouble if he didn’t go through the whole “there, milady” routine.

  I couldn’t remember a car journey that had required quite so much active thought. It was giving me a massive stress headache, and I hadn’t even seen Leo yet.

  Billy opened the door just as I was struggling with the handle, and I half-fell out and had to swerve to miss a taxi.

  While I fiddled with my clipboard and panicked about whether you were supposed to tip private drivers, Billy got back into the front seat and picked up a copy of the Racing Post.

  “I’ll be waiting right here when you’re finished,” he said easily. “I’ll have to take his lordship back to work anyway.”

  “Back to work?”

  “This is his lunch break.” Billy dropped his voice, and regarded me over the paper. “Told them he had a business meeting.”

  “He has!” I said hotly. “I’m helping him with his garden layout! I’m a gardener!”

  Leo had appeared behind the gate—on his phone—and unlatched it from the inside while he carried on talking, so I had no time to dwell on whether I’d just made myself look like I was protesting a bit too much.

  I tugged my parka tightly around myself to give my hands something to do. If the garden looked more impressive in daylight, Leo looked even more handsome than I remembered. But, like the car, somehow different. I didn’t want to think that—I wanted it to feel just the same—but it was different. I’d felt as if I’d known him for ages, but now I knew that I didn’t know him at all. I’d imagined something that wasn’t there, and in doing it, I’d been incredibly rude.

  Looking at him still sent a silvery shiver through me, even as I was telling myself it shouldn’t.

  Leo’s blue eyes twinkled as he tried to mime hello while winding up the call, and because I couldn’t quite bring myself to look at his handsome face, I stared at his wrists instead, just visible beneath the cuffs. I had a thing about a man’s hands—a strong hand with long fingers and clean nails made my knees go weak, and Leo had beautiful hands, slightly tanned with broad nails and—

  I tore my eyes away. I didn’t want Leo to think I was gawping at his posh watch. Or the signet ring I’d now noticed on his little finger.

  “Amy! Sorry about that. Thanks so much for coming.” He slipped the phone into his inside pocket and smiled at me.

  I started to smile back until it struck me that princes were probably trained to do that, in order to cope with all the random people they had to meet every day. Wasn’t that what everyone said afterward in the paper—“Prince Charles talked to me for ages. I had no idea he was so interested in antique snuffboxes/go-kart-racing/Barrow-in-Furness!”?

  Leo held his hands out in an ambiguous way that could have turned into a social kiss, but some indignant instinct got hold of me, and I shook his hand briskly instead.

  “My pleasure.” It came out more northern than I’d meant. “So, we got a bit sidetracked on the garden front last time. Which part were you wanting to redesign?”

  What?

  Leo looked wrong-footed by my greeting, and I wanted to stop and say, “No, let’s start again”—like I did when I’d rehearsed this whole conversation earlier and it went wrong—but we were walking down the path and there was no turning back. Literally, and metaphorically.

  He gestured toward some circular beds in a far corner, empty apart from some bedraggled shrubbery. “This is the main area I’d like you to look at, to begin with. There’s a lot to do, but I thought we could break it down into projects, so you can fit it in around your existing commitments.”

  “Maybe I should give Ted a ring and see if he can get over here too?” I couldn’t stop the stiffness. It was spreading up me. Soon my lip would be jutting. Why hadn’t he started by saying, Listen, there’s something we need to clear up? “This is potentially quite a big project.”

  “No, I want a creative opinion on the garden. A design opinion.” Leo paused, then added, “If I’d wanted Ted to be here, I’d have asked him along. It was you I wanted to see. I thought …”

  He was clearly trying to work me out, but two could play at being pointlessly mysterious, I thought crossly. I’d been so relaxed with him on Wednesday that I’d told him things I hadn’t told anyone in London, not even Jo. Things like imagining all the Tube stations as people (Victoria: elegant Sloane Ranger in pearls; Pimlico: little old lady in hat; Tooting Bec: lady trumpeter, etc.).

  Clearly, he’d been smiling because he didn’t even use the Underground.

  “You thought … ?” I prompted.

  “I thought you might be interested in creating a modern rose garden for me,” he said, persisting with the friendly tone. “There was originally a large rose garden in the center, but it was dug up by some previous committee. I thought it would be a nice project to restore it to the old design. Maybe track down some of the original roses, and find some new ones?”

  It was true. It was a real project. He did just want me to garden.

  At the same time that I saw the lifeline being thrown to my pride—Leo respected my skills enough to offer me the job—disappointment began to pool in my stomach. It was irrational. I know. But it was still there, curdling now with the embarrassment about Rolf.

  “I’ve
got the original sketches, if that would help,” he went on. “They’re rather lovely, watercolors.”

  “Really?” I couldn’t help a flash of curiosity breaking through my reserve. Historical garden plans were like maps of undiscovered lands for me, full of symbols and colors you could bring to life, and forgotten plants you sometimes had to track down like lost relatives.

  But at what point was he going to tell me that he lived here? And that he was doing this in his time off from being royal? I was really struggling with myself now; the more he kept talking about the stupid garden, the more I wanted to yell, “Why didn’t you tell me who you are?”

  But that would make me look like I thought it was a big deal; and if Jo had drilled one thing into me, it was that the posher someone was, the less you were supposed to refer to it, “even if they turn up to dinner in a crown and start knighting people over pudding.”

  I bit my lips while Leo carried on talking about the designer, and how his great-grandmother had used him for her own gardens “at home.” It was as if the elephant in the room were following us round with its hands behind its back like the Duke of Edinburgh, making discreet coughing noises every so often.

  We were at the edge of the central flowerbed, the area that had apparently once billowed with English tea roses and now held a few lone rosemary bushes. I forced myself not to get distracted by imagining which roses I’d plant back into it, and instead looked at Leo.

  He stopped talking, and he knew I knew.

  The silence between us grew, but he didn’t say anything at first. If anything, he looked a bit anxious. And that threw a match into the combustible mixture of embarrassment and humiliation inside me.

  I heard my voice blurting out into the silence, “Why didn’t you tell me you were Rolf’s brother?”

  “I—”

  “Did you and Rolf think it was funny that I didn’t know already? Because I feel so stupid now!”

  My hands were on my hips. I made a conscious effort to remove them.

  Leo’s expression froze. “I don’t think you’re stupid at all. That’s the last thing I think.”