The Runaway Princess, Page 9

  “That’s a very poetic way of looking at it.” We were at the pedestrian crossing now, and Leo put out a hand to stop the taxi that was trying to cut across us. It stopped at once, and I felt more special than usual as he waved me across first.

  “It’s a known fact that trees cut down on crime too,” I went on, in case I was sounding too flaky. “And they’re natural air filters too. Beautiful and useful!”

  “Like the city’s lungs,” said Leo. He glanced across at me. “I sometimes think that when I look out of my office window—how green London is between the buildings. How green it must once have been when it was all villages.”

  I stopped. I often thought that. “Do you? Honestly?”

  “ ’Fraid so. I like to imagine the villages around the church spires. Before the streets joined them all up into one big sprawl.” Leo nodded, then pretended to wince at the geekiness of it, and I laughed, and felt something tingle between us.

  “Did you know,” I said, eager to get my fact in while we were still in the square, “that that plane tree there is worth seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds?” I pointed to a thick tree in the corner, gnarled and leafless but still dignified, like an old soldier watching the houses. I mean, I was second to no woman in my love of trees, but that was an incredible amount of money.

  “How do they work that out?”

  “It’s down to age, and size, and how many people benefit from it being there. That plane’s been there since the storming of the Bastille. Since George Washington became president.” I could never quite get my head round that. “It’s a living thing, isn’t it? Imagine what it’s seen!”

  “Well, quite. I mean, all sorts goes on round here. …”

  Leo had stopped walking to look back at the tree, then turned to me. His mouth was curled into a half smile at one corner, and he seemed genuinely intrigued. “That is the most interesting fact I’ve heard today, by quite a long stretch.”

  I started to say, “Oh dear, was it a bad day?” but I stopped myself in time. That was a compliment. Take the compliment, Amy.

  We smiled, goofily, at each other for a second; then he waved his hand toward a door with a canopy over it. “Shall we go in?” he asked. “Unless you’ve got any more good tree facts for me?”

  I was confused for a moment—it looked like someone’s house, not somewhere we’d go to eat.

  Leo couldn’t live in Berkeley Square, surely? No one lived here, it was all embassies and offices! My panic crept back. Was this some royal residence of Rolf’s? Was I wearing the right outfit?

  “Are you all right to eat here?” he asked.

  I blushed. I had absolutely no idea where we were. “Um, I don’t really know the restaurants in this part of town.”

  “It’s actually a members’ club,” said Leo. “I thought it would be quieter, and to be honest …” He looked momentarily ruffled. “My secretary booked somewhere a bit … loud. I share her with a much more, uh, flamboyant fund manager, and I don’t think she’s worked out that I’m not really into restaurants where they set fire to your drinks and your dinner.”

  “Me neither,” I said, as if I went to those sorts of places all the time and hated them. I hadn’t been to a members’ club either. Wasn’t that something to do with lap dancing? Surely not. …

  I made an effort to channel Jo, and smiled broadly. “This sounds great!”

  “Good,” said Leo, and waved me down the stairs.

  *

  The staircase led into a narrow lobby, lined with framed paintings like a country-house hotel. It was discreetly lit and thickly carpeted, and the door was swung open by an invisible hand. As we stepped in—Leo letting me go first, butterflies now ricocheting round my chest in lead boots—a coat-check girl shimmered forward to greet Leo with a smile.

  “Hello!” she said, as if they were old friends.

  “Hello, Frida,” replied Leo with a courteous nod. He helped me off with my coat and handed it to her, pocketing the ticket himself.

  “Good evening, sir!” The maître d’ seemed to know him well, as did the waiter who showed us to a corner table, and I sat down, holding in my stomach and clenching my thigh muscles at the same time, but bathing a little in the warmth of Leo’s welcome.

  Dad would make a lot of that, I thought. He was always going on about how you could tell a man by how he treated waiters. Sadly, none of my meager selection of boyfriends back home had taken me to dining establishments where there were waiters.

  I frowned. Actually, maybe that was the point Dad was trying to make.

  “You look wonderful, by the way,” said Leo, as he slid into the chair opposite. “What a great dress.”

  “This? Thanks!” I could feel my face heating up. Don’t say you got it in a sale. “I got it in a sale.”

  Shut up, Amy. Shut up, Amy.

  “But thank you,” I added, encouraged by the admiring look he was giving it. “It’s my favorite.”

  “I can see why. Very chic.”

  I glanced around, trying not to look too obviously at the other diners. Some of them seemed quite familiar, but again I steeled myself not to say anything. The trouble about living in London, I’d found quite early on, was that it was all too easy to accost—say—a regular cast member of a national soap opera in Tesco and insist on saying hi, thinking it was a familiar face from your Zumba class.

  My buttocks clenched of their own accord at that particular memory. I did not want to make that mistake in front of Leo.

  “So …” I said, desperately trying to think of something witty and charming to say, but Leo helped me out.

  “Tell me more about your gardening business,” he said. “Have you got a favorite part of London you work in?”

  I found it easy to talk about gardening, and Leo asked questions as if he was really interested in the answers. I told him about how I loved bringing pockets of the countryside into concrete balconies, and how bees kept the whole natural world turning with their pollen removal business, even in town. He told me how his late grandmother had been a keen gardener, and how he didn’t have much time, since he worked long hours, but always tried to take his grandfather to the Chelsea Flower Show. After a few minutes, I forgot to be nervous, and even eased off my pinching heels under the table.

  We talked and talked, and while we were talking Leo ordered a bottle of wine without bothering to check the wine list, and I barely noticed the waiter pouring it. We were still talking when the waiter appeared at Leo’s shoulder and coughed, right in the middle of my story about Ted’s attempt to clip a box hedge into an acorn, which had ended up as something very different and us being fired.

  “Excuse me, sir.” The waiter’s face was tight with awkwardness.

  Leo reached quickly across the table and touched my arm. “One second,” he said, and I didn’t say anything because a bright flicker of electricity had just sparkled across my skin where his fingers had touched it.

  The waiter bent down to mutter in Leo’s ear, but I could hear every word. “There’s a gentleman at the door who is claiming to be you. I realize, of course, that he’s attempting to gain entry by deception, but what would you like me to do?”

  Leo frowned quickly, then understanding seemed to dawn.

  “A dark-haired man?”

  The waiter nodded. “And he has a small party with him.” He coughed discreetly. “Of two young ladies. We do have limits about guests, as you know. …”

  Leo glanced at me and his blue eyes were heavy with apology. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’ll be Rolf.”

  “What?” My skin crawled. Not just because I couldn’t cope with Rolf’s personality crashing into our lovely easy conversation, but because if he saw me, he’d tell Jo. And Jo would demand to know what I was doing out with someone I hadn’t told her about. And Rolf might demand to know what Jo had done with his fancy underwear, and I’d probably blurt out what we’d done with it, and how Mrs. Mainwaring and Dickon had had an almighty row about—

  It d
idn’t bear thinking about.

  “Rolf isn’t a member here, but he knows I am,” Leo murmured, leaning forward so only I could hear. I tried not to look at the couple at the table opposite, who had stopped trying to talk to each other and were openly staring to see why the waiter had come over. I ended up nearly bumping noses with Leo. He pretended not to notice, but my breath suddenly became shallow as I breathed in his cologne.

  “I don’t come very often,” Leo went on, “so sometimes Rolf says he’s me and tries to blag his way in. Which is stupid, because the guys on the door here know everyone in London.”

  “But wouldn’t they just let him in, I mean, what with him being a prince and—” I realized too late how gauche that sounded, and clapped a hand over my mouth. Which was a habit I thought I’d broken up till then.

  Leo didn’t react. “Listen, if you could bear it, I think it’d be easier to have a quick drink with him and then make some alternative plans,” he murmured, as the sound of someone making a fuss at the door drifted through the room. A few people tutted and turned their heads to see what on earth was kicking off by the coat check.

  As they did, it dawned on me why the couple at the next table looked familiar. He was our local MP, the very posh one who’d turned up to a protest Jo and I had been on to save some local theater from closure. And the woman he was with had been in a film we’d just had out on DVD. A straight-to-DVD one, but a film nonetheless.

  When I looked back, Leo was talking to the waiter in that discreet under-the-breath tone. Since his attention was fixed elsewhere, I snuck a good long look at the firm line of his jaw, and the soft slope of skin just under his ear. Jo and I often mused how rare it was to find a man with a perfect mouth, but Leo’s mouth was just right—a pillowy lower lip and a top lip that had just the right amount of fullness.

  A mouth that would be very good at kissing. I went red.

  “The man at the door is a guest of mine—we’re expecting him to join us, he’s obviously running late,” he was murmuring to the waiter. “And can I ask a favor of the kitchen, please?” He muttered something else I couldn’t catch, and the waiter nodded and scurried off.

  Leo turned back to me and reached out to touch my hand, and again the stream of sparks tingled up my arm as his fingers lingered a little longer than they needed to. “I’m really sorry. I’ve got a backup plan, don’t worry.”

  “It’s not a problem,” I said, trying to look cool but probably failing. He wanted to spend the evening with me, rather than with his best mate? “I’m having a great time already. I’ve never been somewhere like this.” I waved my free hand at the plush walls of the club, covered in gilt-framed pictures and swagging.

  Leo smiled. His hand was still on mine, but he removed it, just to take a large, preparatory gulp of wine. I followed suit.

  There was a swish of coats and cold air, and the maître d’ appeared, apologetically herding in Rolf and his “small party” of two skinny, shivering model types with bare legs, blue underneath the fake tan. They weren’t the same girls from our party, as far as I could tell.

  “Leo! And who’s your lovely young friend?”

  Rolf started bellowing three tables away, causing a ticker-tape tutting reception as he drew nearer. He was wearing a green velvet dinner jacket over a purple striped shirt. Despite the chilly weather, three buttons were undone to reveal a lot of tanned chest and a flash of well-tended chest hair, and he didn’t seem to be wearing any socks with his deck shoes.

  “Rolf. Are you too hot?” Leo inquired, rising from his seat politely.

  “Me? Too hot? Ask Paloma here!” Rolf hooted and slapped the bottom of the nearest girl, and she giggled.

  “It’s just that you might want to do up a button or two,” said Leo. “Before someone asks you to.”

  Rolf started to argue, but something in Leo’s eyes stopped him, and he did up one button as if he were being asked to don a burka.

  Since Rolf’s manners didn’t extend to introductions, Leo introduced himself, shook each girl’s hand, and indicated our table. “Would you girls like to sit down?”

  A chair appeared for Rolf, and I scooched round the velvet couch to make room for Paloma and her friend, painfully aware of the comparison that would now be going on. From where Leo was sitting, it probably looked as if Badger had gate-crashed the Afghan hound final of Crufts. I reminded myself that at least all my features were my own, and I wasn’t here with Rolf.

  “Do I know you from somewhere?” Rolf squinted at me. “I don’t forget a pair of—”

  “Rolf,” said Leo in a warning tone.

  “—green eyes like that.” Rolf grinned, and I heard the girl next to me (Sienna, I think) giggle, although her face didn’t move.

  “We met at my party,” I said, rather crushed. I didn’t look that different out of pajamas. How drunk had he been? “I’m Amy.”

  “Your party?” Rolf’s shaggy brown eyebrows met in the middle. He was clearly having to think hard. “I go to lots of parties. Need more than that. Location? Theme?”

  I stared at him. Was he trying to be funny? Was he trying to make me look stupid? Did he have any idea how much of this conversation I’d be relaying to the object of his orchid bombardment?

  “In Victoria! The theme was heaven or hell! You weren’t wearing a costume.”

  Unless you’d come as a complete cliché of a playboy prince, I managed to stop myself saying.

  “You kicked a lot of plants off my balcony,” I went on, annoyed by the amused grin on Rolf’s face. And the way he was cutting into my date with Leo with every minute I had to spend telling him who I was. “You punched my friend Ted? You nearly fell thirty feet off my balcony and broke your neck? You were at the helm of the Rolf Express? You won’t accept my friend’s very reasonable request to leave her alone?”

  “Jo’s party! That was you?” He looked amazed. “You look so different in clothes.”

  “You what?” The other girl spoke this time, and she would have looked furious if her brow had been up to it.

  Leo coughed. “I think our car is here.”

  “Really? You have to go?” Rolf was looking at me very differently now he knew I was Jo’s flatmate. The arse. I glared back at him, and when Rolf looked over my head to Leo, I could see by his reaction that Leo was glaring too.

  Leo stood up and gestured for the waiter to bring them another bottle of wine. “You’ll excuse us, won’t you, ladies? We have a reservation.”

  “Have you indeed? Hotel or restaurant?” Rolf winked, and the two-hundred-quid undies floated before my eyes. I felt a bit hot.

  “Dinner,” said Leo firmly, and put his hand on the small of my back to steer me away from Rolf’s leering face. Possibly to stop me from smacking it.

  A couple of beads of sweat had formed on Rolf’s upper lip as his brain caught up with itself.

  “Lovely to meet you all,” said Leo. “The wine’s on me. Please leave quietly and without upsetting anyone. Rolf.”

  And with a smile, a nod to the maître d’, and a discreet tip to the coat-check girl, we were swanning back up the stairs to the outside world.

  My heart, though, didn’t know whether to burst or sink—was that the end of our date, or just the beginning?

  Eight

  The moon was unusually full over Berkeley Square, like a waxy pearl in the navy sky. The air felt chill after the warmth of the bar, and I shivered. Something else had changed too: I’d been quite relaxed until now, but I was off-balance again. I wasn’t quite sure what happened next. Usually, it was a shouted conversation in a late-opening bar, then the last Tube home, but with Leo, none of the usual usuals applied.

  “Cold?” said Leo at once. “Want my coat? My car’s just here.”

  He pointed to the other side of the square, where a Range Rover with blacked-out windows was parked next to a yellow streetlight.

  His car? Not a taxi? He couldn’t drive, surely. We’d knocked back a bottle of wine between us and had just started the
one that Rolf was now guzzling inside.

  And did “my car’s just here” mean … he was going home? Was it over?

  Was that an invitation? Could I say yes—or no?

  My heart plunged in my chest.

  “I’m fine,” I said, hugging my jacket nearer me. My feet were aching, but I wanted to hang on to the glamour of my heels a bit longer. “But should you be driving? We can share a cab if you want.”

  “Oh, I’m not going to drive, don’t worry. I’ve got a driver. It’s cheaper than keeping a car in London,” he added, seeing my surprise. “I always forget where the congestion charge zone is. Costs me a fortune in late fines. But … a cab? Are you heading home already?”

  “No, I …” I stammered. “I wasn’t sure if …”

  “Not hungry?” Leo tilted his head hopefully. “Can’t I tempt you to dinner? ’Cause I’m quite peckish. And we haven’t even talked about my garden yet.”

  “Well, if you put it like that …”

  He grinned, and the mood slid back nearer to where it had been before. Somewhere between easy and charged.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Ah. Surprise.”

  As we approached the car, a driver in a long gray coat jumped out and opened the nearside door, and Leo paused to wave me into the backseat.

  I was about to get in, then saw the driver’s black gloves and had a bit of a Crimewatch flashback. The Dad voice in my head would have plenty to say about this. Getting into a car with a man I’d just met? That was on the list of things Dad had warned me never to do, along with lend a boyfriend money, believe everything he told me, and get on a motorbike. (There were more. A lot more. But those were the main ones.)

  I struggled with my inner voices, the one telling me that Dad had a point, and the one telling me that Dad had gone semi-bananas after Kelly’s antics and that the world was not filled with men like Christopher Dalton. Leo clearly wasn’t like Christopher—he had no facial hair, for a start, and I’d seen him pay for something.