The Runaway Princess, Page 34

  “Yes, you do,” said Leo. “And let’s let it drop.”

  “That’s what all the girls say,” Rolf replied with a smug grin, and then yelped as Jo kicked him under the table.

  We were sitting in the Wolseley on Piccadilly after another dancing lesson. It was a compromise venue, in that it was flashy enough for Rolf to be seen in, but far too noisy for even his conversation to be particularly audible. Our table was in the mezzanine balcony, with a great view of all the other diners, and the food looked delicious, but I had no appetite for my scallops.

  On top of the stress now filling my head at the thought of having to dance in an actual spotlight at the ball when I still couldn’t turn without stamping on Leo’s foot, another picture of me had popped up on the Internet that morning. I was pushing a wheelbarrow under the heading “Her Royal Thighness.” It also referred to me as “blooming,” which everyone knows is code for “is she fat or pregnant?” I wasn’t even fat. I’d lost another four pounds, but there wasn’t much I could do with my thighs. They were just muscular.

  Jo saw me frowning and gave me a kick too, for good measure.

  “This grace sounds like an honor,” she said brightly. “Is it a tradition, Leo?”

  He nodded. “It’s supposed to reflect the family supper held after the first coronation. That’s why it’s usually read by a junior member of the family.”

  “Although it’s bollocks, because the first coronation was a huge affair with half the crowned heads of Europe squashed into the cathedral.” Rolf leaned over with a confidential tap of the nose. “We just like to pretend that the family’s been around since ‘ooh, let’s break foccaccia over this campfire’ times. We haven’t. The Wolfsburgs are a medium-old family that other royal families marry their reserve children into. And we’re German, not Italian.”

  Leo glared at him, but Rolf grinned back. “It’s true. And now we’re half American.”

  “And the shoe?” Jo went on, as if Rolf hadn’t spoken.

  “The shoe tradition comes from a coronation ball in 1790 when the princess lost her slipper before the dancing,” said Leo, before Rolf could say whatever he was going to. Leo had clearly spent a lot of his school holidays following the tour guide around the palace. “The night was almost ruined, it looked like an awful omen, and she was about to leave when a page found the slipper under a table.”

  “Someone’s lapdog had run off with it, according to legend,” Rolf interrupted. “What kind of lapdog not specified. So maybe you should bring Badger and reenact the whole—”

  “No!” said Jo and I at the same time.

  “It’s honestly nothing to worry about.” Leo topped up my wineglass. “It won’t take more than a few moments. A page from the household will bring you a cushion with a fancy gold shoe on it, you give it to Mom, she’ll thank you, you’ll curtsy, she’ll put it on, and then she and Dad will do a demonstration waltz and we’ll all clap.”

  “And then we’ll all get drunk. Wa-hey.” Rolf waved at the waiter for more wine. Jo ignored him. She was using the “ignore the bad, reward the good” training method I’d used on Badger, with about the same success.

  “And then when you’ve got a lovely smiley photo of Amy and your mother, the papers will stop printing all that nonsense about how there’s a War of the Princesses on?” she asked.

  “Oh. So you saw the papers?” Leo frowned.

  “ ’Fraid so,” said Jo. Giselle had biked an early edition of another paper round to our flat this morning; I was “at loggerheads with fashion icon Liza Bachmann about the double wedding snub.” And we weren’t allowed to engage—for which read, I wasn’t allowed to go back to Rothery and beat up Jennifer Wainwright. Who was probably thrilled to be singled out in the newsroom by a royal writ.

  “Our legal team is on the case,” said Leo. “We’ve given one newspaper exclusive access to the ball and a seat at the coronation in return for an assurance that they’ll lay off Amy, and the rest are on a warning.”

  “And that’s definite?” I asked.

  “We have very good lawyers,” said Leo.

  Next to him, Rolf nodded, like a man who knew. “Serge and Guillermo have been out in town every night this week, wearing the most tasteless jeans and snogging anything that moves,” he said. “And no one’s said a word.”

  “Quite,” said Jo. “Decadence is so last-year. Charity work and gardening is where it’s all happening now.”

  A look of sheer horror flashed across Rolf’s face, but he didn’t say anything. Maybe Jo was kicking him very hard.

  *

  My parents, of course, were mortified about the newspaper stories, and had rung me immediately to assure me they’d had nothing to do with it.

  I knew they hadn’t, and told them so, but nothing I said could assuage their guilt. I offered to send them off on holiday for a week, to ride out the sniggers in the high street, but Dad refused, on the grounds that it would make it look more true.

  He was right, and I was proud of his dignity in the face of the twine-belt trousers pic, but a dark cloud now hung over the Yorkshire wedding plans. Even taking Mum’s beautiful Zoë Weiss dress up the following weekend didn’t entirely wipe out the strange feeling of déjà vu in the house.

  “Is that my frock from the shop?” Mum said when I carried the box in from the car. Her whole body was braced for disappointment, and she shut the door quickly in case anyone was looking.

  “It is.” Despite my low-level gloom, excitement bubbled inside me at the surprise I was about to give her. I knew Zoë wouldn’t let me down. I’d sent photos of Mum and the measurements from the other dress, and Zoë’d presented me with a ribbon-tied box and a promise that if Mum didn’t like it, she’d wear the thing herself to my wedding.

  I’d tried to pay her with my credit card, but she’d waved it away with a horrified expression. “Pay me later,” she said. “In column inches, when you’re on the best-dressed lists. And your mom’s my new poster girl for royal bridal mothers.”

  I smiled encouragingly at Mum. “Want to try it on? Show Dad?”

  She gritted her teeth.

  “Pop it on, Pam,” said Dad. “I’m looking forward to seeing the knockout I’ll be escorting to the reception.” Dad had never ever made a reference to Mum’s ballooning weight, despite his spade/spade attitude to most things. It was the only area in his life where he managed to exercise some tact, out of sheer love.

  She looked at us both and sighed, then turned toward the stairs.

  My old bedroom had the biggest mirror, so we went in there. Mum removed the blouse and wide-leg trousers she always wore, and I tied my scarf round her eyes so she’d get the “wow factor” like in the shop.

  “Maybe you need to hand those out to the rest of the congregation,” she said awkwardly.

  I said nothing and lifted the pool of holly-green silk jersey from the tissue paper and slipped it over her head, pulling all the folds and pleats into place until it hung as Zoë had meant it to. Then I stood back and felt my throat choke up with emotion.

  Zoë wasn’t a dress designer, she was an artist. A sculptress. The luxuriant fabric fitted and draped as if it had been precision-cut to Mum’s marble curves, and the color, a rich Christmassy green, made her skin glow and her baby-blond hair gleam. Mum’s best bits—her unlined neck and her strong shoulders—were framed by the swooping design, and any lumps vanished into the draping.

  “This doesn’t feel like the dress I tried on,” said Mum, worried. “Have they sent the right one?”

  I didn’t say anything—I couldn’t, not without a telltale sniff—but I pulled the scarf off her eyes.

  The instant Mum saw herself in the mirror, her hands went to her mouth and her eyes filled with tears. Neither of us spoke. Slowly, she shook her head from side to side, as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She moved her hips a little, this way and that, marveling that every angle was more flattering than the last.

  Zoë hadn’t tried to hide her size, but
she’d made her statuesque, in the real sense of the word. Mum looked like a Greek goddess of plenty, ample and magnificent; and as I watched, her spine seemed to straighten and her chin lifted unconsciously.

  Her eyes met mine in the mirror, and though her mouth formed words, they wouldn’t come out.

  “What’s going on up there?” Dad was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. “Can I see? Are you decent?”

  Mum turned to me and clutched my hands. She couldn’t speak. I couldn’t speak. Her expression, though, said everything her heart couldn’t—gratitude and delight and surprise and a touch of pride. It was the pride that finished me off.

  “Do you like it?” I croaked.

  She nodded, and laughed at her own daftness.

  “It’s my wedding present to you,” I blubbed. “For being such a wonderful mum. I wanted you to look as special outside as you are inside.”

  “Oh, Amy,” she wept. “You needn’t have. You needn’t have.”

  “I’m coming up,” announced Dad, ready with his usual brave encouragement; but when he got to the top of the stairs, he stopped, dumbfounded by what he saw.

  “Pamela,” he said simply, his face awestruck with adoration. He couldn’t manage any more.

  I watched them communicating silently in that instant, all the happiness and sadness of their long marriage swirling between them in a torrent of love. I wished with all my heart that Leo and I would have a bond that lasted like that. It was magical and real at the same time.

  I crept downstairs, and left them to it.

  *

  What felt like a week but was really three weeks later, Leo, Rolf, Jo, and I were at Heathrow Airport waiting for our flight to Naples for the Crown Princess Ball.

  We were flying business class, mainly because that meant we could hide out in the VIP lounge out of reach of the photographers who’d followed us to the airport. Liza had ramped up her publicity efforts in the run-up to the coronation, and her latest stop in her Be an Everyday Princess campaign was the White House, where “Princess Eliza of Nirona” had conducted an exclusive interview with the First Lady for the Times, about how the correct underwear and a wide range of intelligent conversational openers could improve the quality of life for you and everyone around you.

  Leo was reading it while we waited. Rolf was scrolling through his e-mails on the phone. Jo was over by the complimentary coffee facilities, trying to talk Callie Hamilton down from her latest episode. I was mainly preoccupied with not staring at our fellow business-class travelers and working out if I should know them or not.

  Leo glanced up from the double-page spread of Liza standing next to a fireplace looking imperial. “Okay?” he mouthed.

  I nodded and stifled a yawn. It was very early, and I was knackered. I’d been gardening nonstop all week, and had finished a makeover for a garden in Pimlico that even Ted said was the best I’d done. Following the feature in the magazine, I’d been contacted by someone from English Heritage about wildflower meadows, and they’d asked if I wanted to get involved with their community project to transform various unloved bits of London scrubland into butterfly and bee meadows.

  I’d said yes, obviously—making up wildflower mixes like a gardening cocktail-maker was my idea of heaven, not a paid consultancy role.

  “Got everything?” Leo mouthed, and I nodded again.

  In my bag was my ballgown—couture Vivienne Westwood this time, fitted in her Mayfair atelier with Liza commenting via Skype—and the folder of official info about the grace/shoe ceremony that Sofia had forwarded, where I’d have to stand, what I’d have to do, etc. The grace was only a few lines long, but it was in German, which I didn’t speak. Even before it arrived, Leo had suggested hiring a speech coach/drama teacher to help me, but I’d pointed out that I lived with a drama coach. Jo had introduced me to one of her German clients, and I’d practiced it with her until I was pretty confident my accent wasn’t unwittingly turning the words into filthy swearing.

  Leo winked, and I managed a smile. He seemed to think my grace-giving and shoe-presenting was an honor I’d pull off with aplomb; but even though I now knew it off by heart, I was still worried that what I could do perfectly well in the privacy of my own flat would feel very different with thousands of eyes on me.

  I was determined to overcome my nerves, though, because I wanted to show him that I was trying to meet him halfway with this whole mad deal. The assistant/investing in the business hadn’t been mentioned again, but I knew he’d been biting his lip about the amount of time I’d spent working when he’d wanted me to be in Nirona with him. We hadn’t rowed—we just hadn’t talked about it. I hated having things we didn’t talk about, when we were so open about everything else. But then, I hated rows more than anything.

  Leo winked again, more flirtily, and I reminded myself that once the ordeal was over, I’d be dancing, in a palace, with the man who’d now shot up to number two in the hot European prince rankings, thanks to some candid beach holiday shots of us on our recent two-night Saint-Tropez minibreak. No one looked as good as Leo did in a pair of swimming trunks. Absolutely no one.

  And a matter of weeks after that? I’d be married to him.

  I sank into my leather armchair, and winked back at Leo.

  *

  The palace was overflowing with organizers when we disembarked from the royal helicopter from the mainland, and while Rolf and Leo went off to check in with the palace officials, Jo and I were swept off to our rooms in the main part of the house, where Boris and Liza were now installed.

  There was no sign of Pavlos, and as we followed the maids down the main hall, I noted that the gloomy chess portrait had been moved to the other end of the portrait gallery and replaced with a full-length Mario Testino photograph of Liza in a tiara and fur coat.

  Jo was ushered off to the guest wing, and I was taken to Leo’s new suite, which overlooked the Mediterranean gardens. It was a huge room with full-length windows, decorated in a tasteful palette of cream and gold with bright splashes of color in the modern art that filled the walls. (I should have known what the modern art was, clearly, but I didn’t.)

  When the maid had left, I spotted two leather folders on the desk, each containing a timetable of events for me and for Leo, and I opened mine with relief—I liked to know exactly what was going on.

  It was nearly 11 a.m. now, I noted, and the hairdresser and makeup artist would be arriving in my room to beautify me at 4 p.m. There would be drinks with Boris and Liza at 6 p.m., official drinks with the guests at 6:30 p.m.; dinner would commence with the grace at 8 p.m. and then the first dance of the Coronation Ball would take place at 10:30 p.m.

  Carriages—or in our case, a piggyback up the stairs—would be at 2 a.m.

  I took out my phone and took a photo of the timetable to send to Mum. It was quite surreal. The unsettling sensation of floating through a dream was getting stronger all the time, along with the butterflies in my stomach.

  The best person to settle those was Jo, but as I stepped out of my room to find hers, I bumped straight into Sofia.

  Her hair was wet and she was wearing a gray tracksuit that looked very designer, and she didn’t look thrilled to see me, possibly because she wasn’t wearing any makeup and her eyes were a lot smaller without her usual swooping liner.

  “Hello!” I said. “Have you been swimming?”

  Sofia looked at me—as if I might have meant something more interesting—and then nodded. “The pool’s right outside your window. Didn’t you notice?”

  “No. No, I didn’t.”

  She smiled tightly. “Leo’s got the second-best room in the whole palace. Lucky him.”

  I didn’t want to go down that whole penis-and-luck road, thanks. “Are you looking forward to tonight? Least you can relax!”

  Hmm. That might not have been very tactful, Amy.

  Sofia ran a hand through her damp hair, as if I was holding her up from drying it. “It’ll be nice to relax after the week I’ve had. Litigation i
s very draining. Especially when you’re dealing with some of the richest families in Switzerland.”

  “It must be. Wow. Um, I’ve got the timetable of events …” I wasn’t sure how to put this, but I didn’t want to bother Liza. “. . . and there isn’t a time on for me to do a run-through of the grace? Or the shoe ceremony. Have I got the wrong copy?”

  Sofia shook her head. “No, it wouldn’t be on the timetable, because it depends on how Mom and Dad are running. One of the chamberlains will come and find you, don’t worry.”

  “Oh, good,” I said. I still didn’t feel relieved. If anything, the butterflies were doubling. “Do I have to carry one of those bleepers like you get in Itsu, for when your table’s ready?”

  She just stared at me, and I squirmed. It wasn’t even lunch and I already felt like opening the nearest bottle of wine.

  “No,” said Sofia. “You don’t.”

  *

  I found Jo in her room, and we went for a walk around the gardens. I showed her the rose gardens, and pointed out some of the more unusual plants; then, with no sign of Rolf or Leo, and Jo’s interest in plants more or less exhausted, we went back to our rooms for a refreshing power nap before all the dressing-up began.

  Just looking at the enormous emperor-size bed with an antique carved headboard made me feel sleepy. Six soft pillows were stacked at the head, and a satin bedspread had been thrown over the foot, in case the autumn chill nipped at us in the night. (Unlikely, given the sort of state-of-the-art central heating that seemed to read body temperature and adjust accordingly.)

  I checked my watch. It was five past three. No one had come to find me for the dinner rehearsal yet, but they knew where Leo’s room was. If I could get a half-hour nap before the hairdresser arrived, I’d be so much more alert. …

  I was asleep before the goose down settled in the feathery quilt.

  *

  Some time later, I was woken by the sound of Leo’s voice as he entered the suite.

  “Amy? Are you in here?”

  I opened my bleary eyes. What time was it? I grabbed my phone off the bedside table.