The Runaway Princess

  “Well, I feel stupid.” I kicked a stray stone back into the flowerbed. “I mean, it was rude. I was rude. There’s no way I’d have said some of the things I said about Rolf if I’d known you were related to him.”

  “You haven’t said a thing I don’t agree with.” He wiped a hand across his face. “I just assumed you knew who we were. Most people do. Sorry, I hate the way that sounds. Surely Jo told you about Rolf when you were planning the guest list?”

  “Well, if Rolf had been on the guest list, maybe she would have done.”

  “Of course.” Leo looked embarrassed now. “But what about when I saw you for dinner? Didn’t she say something then? Didn’t anyone at the party mention it?”

  There was something about his assumption that everyone at my own party knew who he was except me that made me feel even more of an outsider.

  I lifted my chin. “I’m friends with Jo, but I don’t exactly move in the same social circles as she does. But she told me everything the other night. We Googled you.”

  More images of Leo and Flora slid sideways into my head, and I struggled to push them out.

  “You Googled me.” He groaned, almost like a normal person. “Oh, tell me you didn’t. What did you find?”

  “That you’re a ski-champion prince with a personal fortune and an ex-girlfriend who is the spokes-bum of Lady F jeans.”

  Leo gave me a level look. “I’m a fund manager.”

  Oh, that was a bit much. I couldn’t stop myself. “Just a fund manager?”

  “Just a fund manager?” He pretended to look outraged. “It’s a full-time job, I’ll have you know. I’m there from eight till eight most days. Don’t believe everything you hear about bankers. Some of us work pretty hard for the money.”

  For some reason, that annoyed me more than the car and being sent for.

  “No, you’re not a banker! You’re a prince! Why didn’t you just tell me that I’d just had a drink with the ninth most eligible prince in Europe?”

  He winced. “Up to ninth, eh?”

  “Rolf’s seventh. I don’t know what they grade it on.”

  It came out a bit too sharp and I hated myself for messing it all up so badly. This wasn’t how it had gone when I’d rehearsed it in my head all last night, but again there was no way of going back and trying it with more diplomatic phrasing. Jo had suggested some easy ways of getting this conversation over and done with, but they all needed to be delivered with her breezy confidence. And deep down, I knew I was overreacting. This wasn’t about Leo being a prince—it was about someone not being who they’d led me to believe they were. I had a real loathing of that, for good reason.

  Even if we did get the gardening contract now, I thought unhappily, it would just remind me, every day, of how I’d cocked up this whole situation.

  “Not that it matters,” I said, too quickly. “Ted and I have no objections to taking on royal clients. We just like to know for … security reasons.”

  “But that’s not what you’re …” Leo gave me a clear look then pressed his lips together. “Shall we have a walk?” Before I could answer, he’d started to crunch down the gravel path that ran around the flowerbeds.

  I considered not following him, but I had the sickening feeling I’d been melodramatic enough already. And I found it easier to talk while walking, or gardening, or doing something else entirely, so maybe it was for the best, to get the air cleared.

  We walked in silence for a few paces; then Leo dug his hands into the pockets of his overcoat, and shot me a guarded look from under his lashes.

  “I’m sorry if I made you feel stupid,” he said. “Really, I am. Most people make a huge deal about my family background, and to be honest, I find it embarrassing. When I realized you didn’t know, it was so refreshing to be starting off without any of the usual assumptions that I didn’t want to …” He paused, searching for the diplomatic word.

  I plowed into the silence. “I’m sure you’d have given it away eventually. Some mention of the palace. A spare scepter in the back of the Range Rover. A supermodel in the summerhouse.”

  Leo stopped. The unexpected vulnerability in his eyes sent a shiver through me. “I meet a lot of girls who know exactly who I am. Not what I’m like, or what I do, just who I am. They know everything about me before they meet me, but they’re not the kind of girls I’m interested in meeting. They want to meet a prince. Not necessarily me.”

  “Rolf doesn’t seem to have a problem with it.”

  Leo rolled his eyes. “No. But I don’t want to meet the kind of girls Rolf likes to hang out with. Jo being the honorable exception, of course.”

  “She’s not that keen on hanging out with him.”

  “That’s why I like her. Because she doesn’t care about the title, just the man. And …” He hesitated, then the words spilled out. “I’m not like Rolf. I mean, Rolf’s not as bad as Jo thinks he is, and as I said the other night, a lot of it’s an act, and I do love the guy, but just because we’re related doesn’t mean I am anything like him. …”

  Leo didn’t finish, but I understood the conflict in his face so well that something leaped out of me.

  I touched his arm and said, “I understand that just because you share the same genes as someone doesn’t mean you have to be alike. You and Rolf couldn’t be more different. There are people in my family that I can’t even believe …”

  This is not the moment to bring up Kelly.

  I stopped myself, just in time, but he was turning to me with a relieved expression in his eyes and that familiar connection I’d felt before crackled between us.

  “Leo, I wish you had told me,” I said seriously. “I already worry enough that I’m putting my foot in it somehow. I mean, Jo seems to know everyone, and how they met and where they went to school, and—”

  “Look,” said Leo, “would you have treated me any differently if you’d known?”

  I shook my head. Then nodded, confused. Then shook it again. “No, but—”

  “You would. You’d have been uptight. You wouldn’t have told me about the Tube stations, for a start. See?” he half-laughed, as I reddened. “Amy, I don’t know what websites you’ve been reading, but my life really isn’t all fancy balls and flybys. I bet on a day-to-day basis it’s not so different from yours.”

  “Oh, come on!” I protested. “You’ve got a driver!”

  “Well, there’s a reason for that.” He started walking again, casually tucking my arm into his as he did so. There were at least four layers of clothing between us, but the contact still made me feel warm inside. “Driving in London’s a nightmare when you don’t know it very well. And parking—have you tried parking round here? Of course you have. You park your van every day.”

  “I do. I’ve got a resident’s permit for Westminster. It’s one of the reasons Ted lets me do the driving—where there’s parking permits, there’s power.”

  “But you drive round town all day. That would scare the pants off me.”

  I allowed myself a glimmer of pride, but tried not to let it show. “You don’t get a special prince permit?”

  “That is a very sore subject. We had a diplomatic permit up till last year, but Rolf ran up over five grand in various fines, congestion and otherwise, and it’s suspended till the bill’s settled. Dad won’t pay it, Rolf refuses. Mom would pay it, but Rolf’s too scared to tell her. Meanwhile, I have to have a driver.” He looked at me pointedly. “Which I pay for myself, to save the arguments. Now, does that sound like the glamorous life of a royal family to you? Or just a normal bloke who doesn’t want to drive in London?”

  My irritation was ebbing away with every glance Leo gave me. His eyes kept flicking my way, as if he was genuinely anxious about my reaction. I was bad at maintaining a huff.

  “It wouldn’t have made a difference to me,” I said. “My mum’s met Princess Anne, you know. We’re like this with the Windsors.” I held up two crossed fingers. “Great Yorkshire Show, 2001. She said Mum’s Eccles cake was �
�perfectly fruited.’”

  When Leo realized I wasn’t trying to wind him up, he smiled, and an echo of Wednesday night’s romance sang back at me. He had a way of locking my gaze that made everything else go out of focus in the background.

  “Can you forgive me?” He tipped his head. “I’m so sorry for not being up-front. From now on, I’ll tell you everything you ask me.”

  “As long as there’s nothing else you’re holding out about. Like, you actually own this square?” I knew I should shut up and let the moment breathe, but I couldn’t. “Like, you’re actually a vampire? Or married?”

  Oops. Too far.

  “I’m not married, or a vampire. But in the interests of full disclosure, yes, my family does own this square. But no, wait, I should also say we’ve owned it since it was built on a particularly unfashionable bit of marshland. My great-great-great-whatever owed the developer a favor, so put up the cash. It was a lucky break. We’re a notoriously lucky bunch, the Wolfsburgs. We got most of the family fortune gambling, one way or another.”

  I shot him a sideways glance. “Luck is banned in our family. My dad says the harder you work, the luckier you get.”

  “Well, I believe in fate,” said Leo. “If Mom hadn’t given me orders to keep Rolf under control that weekend, then I wouldn’t have followed him to your party, and he wouldn’t have wrecked your balcony, and I wouldn’t have met you.”

  He paused, and I stopped walking. I felt as if Leo were looking all the way through to the secret me inside, with the arguing voices and practiced conversations, and he didn’t seem to mind. He smiled, and shivers ran up and down inside my many layers, tingling up to my scalp.

  Very gently, he put his hands on my arms and leaned forward, until I could feel his warmth against my half-frozen cheek.

  Shut up, Amy, warned the voice, even though for once I had no intention of saying a thing.

  He paused like that for a moment, as if he wanted to give me every opportunity to say Oi, no. But I didn’t say no. I didn’t say anything.

  And then he leaned forward and pressed his lips against mine, and kissed me very gently on the mouth.

  I closed my eyes, leaned forward, and kissed him back, as if I were in some sort of dream, and tried to impress every single breath and touch and smell onto my brain for later. He smelled of that herby cologne, and tasted of coffee, and his lips were really soft, like the underside of a perfect nectarine, and I could smell hyacinths and the pale-gray tang of wintry city air around us.

  After a few delicious seconds of exploration, Leo pulled away and I was left, my eyes still closed. I didn’t want to open them. I didn’t want this moment to end.

  He cupped my jaw with his hand, and stroked the smooth skin under my ear with his thumb.

  “Your eyelids are moving,” he observed. “Are you thinking?”

  Not another one who claimed to be able to see my brain working. What was it about my face?

  I squinted, and saw him studying me with an amused expression. “If you treat all your gardeners like this, I’m not surprised you’re in charge of the gardening committee.”

  “And I was thinking you were stunned by the romance of the moment.”

  “I thought you were summoning me to a business meeting about your herbaceous borders.” I paused and opened my eyes properly. “What, um …” Awkward. But necessary, I reminded myself. “What, um …”

  “Yes, I need your advice about my garden. But mainly I wanted to see you again.” There was something touchingly hesitant in his tone, as if he wasn’t quite sure what my reaction would be.

  “The two aren’t mutually exclusive, you know.”

  Leo pulled me close, kissed my forehead, and then slipped his arm around my waist. “How about we separate them out? Do you want to come over and see the garden plans, and give me a quote on the work as my garden consultant—and then let me take you out for dinner as a date?”

  “That would be great,” I said. “I mean, on both counts.”

  “Excellent,” he said, and I was quite glad of the gravel chip of reality that had once again worked its way into my boot, because even in the watery light of day, Leo’s garden felt more like a waking dream than like real life.

  Eleven

  Jo took the news of my lunch-date/business-meeting/prince-kissing better than I’d expected, given that we were both still suffering the aftershock of Rolf’s latest attempt to win her attention: a crystal-studded iPod loaded, as it turned out when we plugged it into the speakers, with Barry White’s greatest hits and a playlist called, chillingly, “One Night with Rolf.”

  “I’m so glad you’ve finally let some romance into your life!” she cheered, bouncing us both up and down as we tried to wipe away the mental image of Rolf sprawled over satin sheets miming along to “I’m Gonna Love You Just a Little More, Baby.” “What are you going to tell your mum and dad?” She mimed me on the phone and did her useless Yorkshire accent. “Hi-ya, Moom. I kissed a prince and I liked it!”

  “I’m not,” I said at once. “I’m not going to tell them anything. They get very …”

  I hunted for the right word. Mum and Dad weren’t the sort of puritanical parents who refused to believe I was no longer six, but they were naturally protective. Plus I was now living in London, home to serial killers and handsome caped men with twiddly mustaches and evil intentions. The first few times I’d been out on dates with Jo’s friends, my mum had made me phone home to reassure her (by which she meant, my dad) that I was safely at home and not tied to a train track with my purse stolen, or similar.

  Jo arched her eyebrow. “Very what? Very excited? Very involved?”

  “They get very protective,” I finished.

  “Ah, but you’ll have to give them plenty of notice if you’re going to hook your own royal boyfriend.” Jo waggled her fingers. “They’ll need a while to set up their own multimillion-pound Internet business, for a start! And you need to get your mum booked in for her skinny jeans fitting if she’s going to compete with Carole Middleton!”

  I stiffened. The protectiveness went in both directions in my family. If Jo had actually met my mum, in addition to the long phone chats they’d had, she’d have known that there was about as much chance of Mum getting into Carole Middleton-esque skinny jeans as there was of me getting into the Vatican’s fast-track seminary. It was something else we never talked about, and another reason why my parents had gone from being pillars of the community in Hadley Green to very private people in Rothery.

  Jo sensed my sudden awkwardness and released me with a playful swat.

  “Oh, I’m just teasing. I’m pleased you’ve found the one gent in London who wouldn’t try to have his wicked way in a locked garden. He honestly didn’t try to grope you under the pergola? Wow.”

  “Let’s not get carried away,” I said, more to myself than her. “It’s dinner. And a garden with possible beehive opportunities for Ted.”

  “The romance. Divine.” She looked wistful for a moment; then the familiar Jo came back. “Do one thing for me, though, darling?”

  “What?”

  She picked up the sparkly iPod between her perfectly manicured fingers as if it were one of Badger’s poo bags. “Ask Prince Charming to tell Prince Rogers Nelson to knock it on the head before I send my stepbrothers round there to scrub out his tiny mind with soap and water.”

  *

  I didn’t normally share the ups and downs of my private life with Ted, but I had to explain where the sudden flurry of work had come from. Our new contract with Trinity Square Residents’ Association—several hours a week, plus planning—made a great start to our business expansion plans. I could expand my design portfolio, and, Ted was particularly pleased to hear that Leo was amenable to letting us put some hives and flowerbeds up on the roof of his four-story townhouse.

  We climbed up to Leo’s roof one morning the following week—Leo was at work, but he’d left the key with his housekeeper (Aggie, Scottish, very stern, “probably ex–secret
service,” according to Ted, who suddenly seemed to know a lot about royal bodyguards)—and while Ted busied himself with his new laser tape measure and muttering about hive access, I sneaked a moment to take in the perfection of the scene. The flat roof space with its thick redbrick chimney stacks was ideal for hives, but also offered a stunning aerial view of the city. I could have stayed there leaning against the fire escape for hours, gazing out at the curling terraces and thumbprint parks and the church spires poking through the bare-branched trees, but Ted was more alive with interest than I’d seen him in ages. It was almost certainly the prospect of introducing more gadgetry into his working day.

  “Four hives here … Maybe some wildflower beds here around the chimney stack. …” He looked up and caught me gazing dreamily at a water butt. I was daydreaming about dancing on the rooftop with Leo and watching the sun come up over the private garden, but obviously Ted didn’t know that. His voice was providing a soothing sound track of blahblahblah to my choreography.

  “Hello,” he said sarkily. “Are you listening to anything I’m saying?”

  “Er, yes?” I said.

  Ted carried on clicking his measuring whatsit. “You know what would really help? If your dad could come down and set this up for us. I know roughly what I’m doing, but he’s the bee expert.”

  I chewed my lip. “Um, I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  “Why not? He could invoice us for the train fare, if that’s an issue.”

  “It’s not that,” I said quickly. “My parents aren’t … big on London. Anyway, I’m going home for Dad’s birthday in a few weeks’ time. I’ll talk to him then. I’ll get a whole list of stuff we need.”

  Ted’s face lit up at the mention of “stuff.” Sometimes I thought he’d only gone in for gardening because it required more heavy equipment than teaching.

  “Anyway,” I said, “don’t you want to know about the rose garden? It’s fascinating—so many old varieties, from all over the place. I’ve been making a list of the original roses, and not all of them are going to be easy to get hold of.”