To Marry a Prince (20 page)

He walked her along beside the dark river, their hands entwined. Eventually they came to a collection of houseboats, bobbing gently on the tide.

‘This way.’

Stunned, Bella followed him down on to the dock and then a walkway over the water. It all seemed very domestic. There were even garden planters on some of the decks. There were lights on in a couple of the boats but mostly they seemed dark. It didn’t seem the place for a restaurant, even a super-discreet one. She said so.

‘You’re right. Not another restaurant. Tonight I’m cooking.’

‘You have a houseboat?’ She couldn’t believe it.

‘A share in one. Here we are.’

It was one of the smaller boats. At first Bella thought it was in darkness too, but as he led the way on deck, she saw that there was a sort of porch light above a door. He opened it and held out his hand to her again.

‘Welcome aboard – and mind the step. We go down the companionway and then we’re home.’

It was like stepping into another universe. The companionway was not much more than a spruced-up wooden stepladder at a sixty-degree angle, painted white. She stopped halfway down, looking round, trying to get her bearings.

It was more like a large friendly wooden tunnel than a boat. There were soft lights at waist-height set into the walls and skylights set in the ceiling. To her right, at the end of the narrow space, she saw a small kitchen, clearly already in use, with vegetables waiting on a chopping block. Between cupboards and the companionway, there was a table, old and well polished, with a motley set of bentwood and bar-room chairs set round it. Bella counted nine. To her left there was built-in seating, a beaten-up armchair that had clearly seen better days and a small desk. There seemed to be bookcases in every corner that could be found, but everything was wonderfully neat.

‘This is yours?’

He beamed with pride.

‘Like I said, I share it. My godfather left it to me and all his other godchildren when he died. We decided to keep it on. We run it between us. It’s a bolt hole very few people know about. None of my family has ever been
here but I love it. Come and talk to me while I cook. You can even have a seat.’

He pulled out a tall folding stool and set it for her with some ceremony. He gave her a glass of wine and returned to his interrupted cooking. Bella watched, fascinated.

‘I didn’t have you down as a cook.’

He flashed her a smile. ‘You had me down as a useless Royal who couldn’t even dress himself.’

She blushed but said with spirit, ‘Can you blame me?’

‘Not after my last performance, no. I’m sorry about that.’

‘Yes, you said. It’s forgotten.’

He put down his knife briefly, leaned forward and kissed the tip of her nose. But he did it, she noticed, rather carefully, as if he wasn’t
quite
sure how she would take it. Well, good.

‘You’re a forgiving woman.’ It wasn’t quite a question, but he wasn’t absolutely sure of himself, she saw.

But Bella was more shaken by that casual caress than she wanted to admit, or even to think about. So she just said, ‘Aren’t I just?’ and dived into her red wine.

Richard went back to slicing courgettes. He was very fast.

She said curiously, ‘Have you trained or something?’

He smiled. ‘Imagine you’re a child, in a draughty castle you don’t really know, which is full of adults being terribly serious. It’s too wet to play outside and people keep telling you not to run around or disturb your parents because they’re sad. Your nanny is
looking after the little ones and says a big boy like you ought to be able to keep himself amused. What would you do?’

‘Run away to sea,’ said Bella flippantly.

‘Right. I ran to the kitchen. And a wonderful ex-army chef, who had no stupid ideas about keeping small boys away from knives, taught me how to chop vegetables and pluck and draw a pheasant.’

He diced carrots, with equal expertise. Then onions, with no sign of eye-watering.

‘The skills have stayed with you, then.’

‘When I start something, I like to finish it. And do it properly, too.’

‘I can see that.’ She sipped her wine. ‘When was this grim time?’

‘When my grandfather died. My grandfather the King.’

‘Oh.’

He took chicken thighs out of the fridge and dusted them lightly with seasoned cornflour.

As he worked, he said, ‘When girls ask what it’s like being a prince, of course, I don’t know, because I don’t know what it’s like
not
to be one. But I do know what it’s like suddenly to realise you’re King. I watched it happen that week. I was nine. I saw it all. My mother went on doing what she always does: looking on the bright side, being constructive, doing the next thing. My father – froze.’

It was a desolate little world he was describing. Bella had a sudden vision of the isolated nine-year-old and his grieving, overwhelmed parents.

‘Was it unexpected? And were they close, your father and your grandfather?’

He didn’t answer, turning on the small oven and putting a casserole dish in it to warm. Then he poured oil into a pan and heated it up. When the oil was smoking, he picked up the chicken joints and placed them carefully in the pan. Minimum splatter, Bella noticed. He was right: what he did, he did properly. More than that, he did it with attention to detail and precision. Bella did not cook much, but whenever she did something like this she regularly coated every flat surface with a fine spray of oil or fat. She looked at him with increasing respect.

But had she overstepped some Royal boundary by asking about his father?

She said hastily, ‘Don’t answer that if I shouldn’t have asked. Sorry, I was just interested.’

He turned away from the food and took both her hands in his.

‘You can ask anything you like,’ he said with surprising intensity. ‘Anything. Whenever you want.’

‘OK,’ she said slowly. ‘But I don’t want you to think you have to answer. I mean, not if it’s private or some deep family secret or something.’

Richard turned back to the pan, adjusting the heat, cooking tongs at the ready, concentrating on the food.

He said levelly, ‘It’s no secret. My grandfather was a bully and a bigot. He had all the vices and a low boredom threshold. Which meant he made everyone’s life hell, just because he could. Everyone who was able to avoid him, did. That included my father. My mother
was particularly good at arranging our lives so that there was minimum opportunity to see the old bastard. My mother has honed dutiful busyness to an art form.’

There was something in his voice that made Bella sit up and pay very close attention suddenly.

He sent her an odd, almost shamefaced look.

‘You know the first time we met? When you fell into the foliage and I pulled you out?’

She nodded.

‘You must have forgotten but you said something that night that I really recognised.’

‘Me?’ She couldn’t think what it was.

‘You said, “My mother’s much too busy running a Charity Ball to have me home.” My mother has never organised a charity do in her life. But, well, my brother and sister and I, we always knew where we were in the priority list: after King, country, Parliament, Prime Minister. And probably a few favourite charities. In that order.’

Bella was stunned. The Queen was always supposed to be the perfect mother. The King was said to be eccentric and distant but not the Queen, never. She did not know what to say.

Fortunately, Richard did not wait for an answer. ‘Of course, even my mother couldn’t get round a direct command from the King. So we had to go sometimes. And when he died, she lost all her options. We all did.’

‘Oh, love.’ Bella was appalled. She slid off the stool and rubbed his back in futile but heartfelt solidarity.

He leaned back into her touch while he carried on cooking.

‘Worse for my father. I think now that he was probably terrified that he was going to turn out like the old man, once he was King. I’ve noticed that the nastiest thing you can say to him is, “You’re just like your father.” Sometimes one of the elderly relatives does it and he goes into a brown study for days.’

She said, ‘I thought you were the perfect family. No divorces. No mistresses. No scandals.’

‘No scandals? My brother George? Riding a motorbike through the centre of Bristol, dressed as a banana?’

Bella spluttered. ‘Must have missed that one.’

‘Oh yes, it probably happened while you were off on your island. The paparazzi shadowed him for weeks after that, hoping for an encore.’

She gurgled. ‘Well, OK then. No
major
scandals.’

‘You can be dysfunctional and keep it quiet, you know.’

The chicken was done to his satisfaction. He removed the joints, turned down the gas and fed the vegetables into the warm pan. At one point he splashed some wine over them. At another he added a dribble of this, a pinch of that, and a lot of fresh tarragon. The room began to smell heavenly. He tasted.

‘Not quite. What do you think?’ He offered her a teaspoon. She swirled the sauce round her tastebuds. ‘Tastes wonderful to me.’

‘Not enough bite. Hand me that lemon.’

She did. He chopped it in half and squeezed it over the vegetable goo, filtering the pips through the fingers of his other hand.

‘Taste now.’

She did, closing her eyes. ‘Yummy.’

‘It will be.’ He slapped the chicken back into the pan and spooned the vegetables on top. Then he got the casserole dish out of the oven, tipped the entire contents of the pan into it, and shot it back. He adjusted the temperature and the timer.

And then he washed up!

Bella stared, astounded.

‘You must be the perfect man. If that was me, I’d be sitting down with a large glass of something, patting myself on the back, and leaving the dishes for later.’

Richard laughed. ‘In a galley you wash up as you go. No room to do anything else. But sitting down with a large glass is good too.’

When he’d returned the work surface to pristine condition, he took her hand, another glass and the bottle of wine, and took them all to the other end of the room. It was chillier away from the cooker and Bella shivered involuntarily. He switched on a serviceable electric fire which she hadn’t noticed before, and then contrived a nest of cushions for her in the built-in couch.

He topped up her glass and flung himself back in the battered old armchair, looking at her with such affectionate pleasure that Bella hardly recognised him. Nobody had ever looked at her like that, as if they had been given a prize. She felt warm and flattered and flustered and strangely humble at the same time. But she hadn’t a clue what to do next. So she cuddled down into her cushions and did nothing.

Eventually he gave a long sigh of satisfaction. ‘This is nice.’

‘Mmmm. You said it was your godfather’s boat?’

He smiled lazily. ‘Strictly you should say her about a boat. He lived here for years. This is still pretty much all his stuff – the campaign desk, the books, the furniture. We put in a new galley because the old stuff was dangerous, and we replaced the skylights with modern, double-glazed ones that are easy to open. But otherwise, it’s the same.’

‘Isn’t that a bit creepy?’

He gave a shout of laughter. ‘That’s my Bella. Tell the truth and shame the devil. Yes, it could be creepy in theory. In practice it isn’t because he wasn’t that sort of man. He taught me to sail and how to do stuff. Actually, he was the one who gave me your father’s books.’ He looked round. ‘They’re all here somewhere.’

‘It doesn’t feel like a mausoleum,’ she admitted. ‘But even so, why keep it?’

He was rueful. ‘We’d all had fun here with him. And also, there was Ship’s Cat.’

‘What?’

‘He had this massive tabby mouser called Ship’s Cat. Great character but very territorial. So we agreed, all five of the godchildren, that we would share the boat until Ship’s Cat pegged out.’

‘
You kept a houseboat for a cat?
’

‘Yes. Why?’ He cocked an eyebrow.

‘But houseboats have to be lived in, don’t they? I mean, kept warm and dry and the pipes working and stuff.’

‘Good practical thinking,’ he said approvingly. ‘Absolutely right. Sometimes one of us lives here.
Sometimes we have a tenant. At least three books have been written here.’

‘And the cat?’

‘Lived a full and happy life and died a couple of years ago, aged twenty. Actually Chloe was living here then and she took it backwards and forwards to the vet’s for several months. I was surprised, but she stuck to it.’

Chloe. Ah.

‘I saw the photograph in the papers of you with her. Lottie said she didn’t think Chloe looked very sisterly.’ She let the remark hang.

But he didn’t get indignant. Instead, he frowned, looking troubled. ‘I know what she means. Chloe is a bit of a mess, frankly. Starts things and doesn’t finish them. She can get a bit, let’s say, fixated. She ran with a bad crowd for a while when she was younger. I’m certain there were drugs involved. But we don’t say so because she is the niece of my mother’s oldest lady-in-waiting and it would be Bad Form.’