To Marry a Prince (29 page)

‘Thank you. I’ll remember,’ she said tonelessly.

‘I was sure you would.’ And Lady Pansy’s violet crinoline bobbed away.

Bella uncurled her fingers. Lady Pansy was seriously starting to get on her tits. Oh, Lord, she’s the Queen’s best friend and I want to slap the woman, Bella thought ruefully.

The rest of the evening passed as Richard had predicted. At two minutes to midnight the band finished a lively reel and someone switched on the radio. People began to look round for the person they wanted to be with at the turn of the year. The Queen, Bella saw, went to the King’s side. George had acquired a stunning redhead, and Eleanor … but then Bella saw Richard powering his way towards her through the crowd and forgot Princess Eleanor and everyone else but her own lover.

He was standing in front of her. They smiled into each other’s eyes. There might have been no one else there.

The room fell silent. The countdown started. One, two, three …

Everyone joined in, even the King. The Queen, Bella saw, was watching her and Richard. She looked unhappy.

Seven, eight, nine …

George had produced squeakers and was passing them round his immediate neighbours with an evil grin.

Ten!

There was the first boom from Big Ben.

Bella flung her arms round Richard’s neck and kissed him fiercely. She didn’t stop kissing him until the final boom was dying away. She fell back, startled by her own
intensity. The light in his eyes made him almost unrecognisable.

‘Oh, God, I love you,’ she said under her breath, more to herself than to him.

His hands tightened on her waist. ‘Never mind about that damned bop in the barn. I need to see you alone. OK?’

‘Yes,’ she said, shivering for the first time that evening. And not from cold.

George’s squeakers went off in an appalling chorus. Even people inured to the drone of the bagpipes clapped their hands over their ears.

‘Happy New Year,’ everyone was saying to everyone else. ‘Happy New Year.’

There was a lot of kissing. As Lady Pansy had warned, Richard came in for a good deal of it from female tenants of all ages. And, Bella saw, Chloe Lenane into the bargain.

‘Auld Lang Syne,’ cried the King, seizing a couple of hands and backing against the wall with his newly acquired partners. The Queen was not one of them.

There was even a protocol to ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ Bella found. She was used to a cheerful, drunken shambles with people hanging on to the person next to them and then diving into the middle, cheering. In Drummon House you sang the first verse (there are
verses?
she thought) standing upright with your hands by your sides. It was only the second verse –
And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere, and gie’s a hand o’ thine
– that you were actually licensed to take hands. She began to long for a good old-fashioned bop where you could do anything
you wanted, with your own hands or anyone else’s.

The singing done, everyone kissed some more, though more sedately. They cheered the King. The King waved a gracious hand and bolted for home. The Queen did not go with him.

‘Uh–oh,’ said Richard. ‘Not good. Will you be OK? I need to dance with my mother.
Then
we’re going to be on our own and nobody is going to stop us.’

He was gone for one dance only. When it was over, Bella saw him take his mother’s hand. He seemed to be reassuring her. Then she saw a courtier hovering and turned away, dismissing her son.

Richard came back to Bella. ‘Ready to return to the twenty-first century now?’

She looked at him. ‘Is your mother OK?’

‘You’ve got sharp eyes.’ He was rueful. ‘We had a slight difference of opinion, that’s all.’

‘And it’s settled?’

‘She’s cool. Now, tell me, do you really want to go and dance in George’s barn?’

She shook her head.

‘Then come on, let’s go sort out the rest of our lives.’

‘Best and Worst Proposals’ –
Girl About Town

Richard made Bella bundle up in warm clothes and took her out of a side door. Nobody noticed them go. The big off-roader was standing there, its lights on and the engine humming.

‘Thanks, Bill,’ Richard said, as a tall man in Highland dress got out of the driving seat.

‘You’re welcome, Sir. Miss. Have a nice look at the stars.’ And the man went off chuckling to himself.

‘The stars?’ echoed Bella, clutching the collar of her coat to her throat. ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Don’t argue. Bill has been warming this car up for you for a good ten minutes. There’s a car rug, too, if you’re chilly.’

Richard helped her into the vehicle and it was indeed as warm as toast. Bella relaxed a little.

‘Where are we going?’

‘There’s a painting hut on the hill. It’s really good for looking at the stars.’

She looked at him suspiciously. ‘Are you winding me up again?’

‘I want to be alone with you without some member of
staff, or courtier, or bloody nosy member of my family getting in the way,’ he said with sudden violence. ‘It seems like for ever since we had some privacy.’

‘I know.’

The painting hut was a small single-storey stone building. It might have started life as a shepherd’s cottage but now it had expanses of glass set into the walls and the roof. More important, there was smoke coming out of its chimney.

There were vehicle tracks leading up to it and Richard stayed in them, so that the off-roader swayed and bumped but did not slide on the midnight ice that was forming over the impacted snow.

‘In, quickly,’ he said when they got there.

The place was not locked. It too was as cosy as could be, with a wood-burning stove glowing in the hearth.

But Bella did not look at the stove. She gazed at the stars. Walls and roof had been carefully replaced by glass, so no matter which way you looked, you saw only the night sky. It was like being suspended in space. The stars were so close you felt you could touch them, and the moon had a frosty halo.

‘It’s amazing,’ said Bella, awed.

‘Yes. I come here to think. I always have. I was up here this afternoon before I came to meet you. And that’s when I realised I had to bring you here.’

‘So I’m here. And?’

He drew a deep breath and turned to face her. In the moonlight, he looked handsome and passionate and deeply serious. But his voice was level.

‘Bella, it’s been three months. I know I’ve already told
you that I knew the moment I saw you … you must have thought that was crazy … but I did. I can’t explain it. I saw you, with your feet in the air, covered in bits of ivy, and it was like everything in me clicked into the right place at that moment. I know I thought: so she’s the one. That’ll be all right then.’ He stopped talking and she saw him swallow.

‘Only, of course, it isn’t. Anyone who marries me, marries the job, the family, the protocol.’ He almost spat the last word.

‘I think that’s always true though, isn’t it? I mean, if you marry a doctor, you end up answering the phone to an emergency in the middle of the night.’

What am I babbling about? thought Bella. I’m being proposed to, for God’s sake.
Shut up, Bella Greenwood
. She closed her lips firmly, and waited.

Richard said, ‘And then there’s the public.’

She nodded.

‘Bella, I know you don’t want to be in the spotlight. We tried to keep out of it, both of us, didn’t we? But you see – it can’t be done, or not for long. You’ve been brilliant, all the time, funny and tolerant and kind and … oh, all the things I knew you’d be, the moment I fell in love with you. But—’

But? BUT? Hey, am I getting my marching orders, not a proposal at all?

He said very quietly, ‘Bella, I love you. I want to marry you. But what you see is what you get. The job is me. I can’t not be what I am. If you can’t take that … and I won’t blame you. Honestly, I won’t. But if you
can’t …
then please, will you tell me now? And
we can say goodbye tomorrow, with no hard feelings.’

She almost bounced with indignation. ‘No hard feelings? Are you out of your mind? Don’t I get a chance to say yes before you write my refusal speech for me?’

He stared at her in the starlit dark. ‘What?’

She calmed down somewhat. ‘Ask me to marry you. Go on. Just ask.’

For a moment he looked almost frantic. ‘Bella, I—’ Then, typically, he drew a long breath and was calm again. It came out with the precision of a shopping list, and about as much emotion. ‘I love you. I want to be with you. I want to make you happy. Please, will you be my wife?’

She had known what she was going to say; had known for days, been certain. Yet suddenly, all her doubts rose up and locked her tongue. she found she couldn’t say a word.

Richard searched her face.

‘Why?’ she managed at last. It was not much more than a croak. I’ve got cold feet, she thought, appalled at herself.

Scrupulously, he didn’t touch her. ‘I go to a lot of weddings.’ His voice was reflective. ‘They’re big promises. Heroic. In sickness and health. For richer, for poorer. They stop you dead in your tracks. You think: am I up to this? Can I really promise everything I have to give? And mean it, really
mean
it?’

‘Everything I have to give,’ Bella repeated slowly.

‘Yes.’

‘And that’s what you want?’

‘Only if it’s mutual.’

Still she hesitated, suspended between everything she’d known up to now and the unpredictable future.

‘Oh, God, Bella it’s the one thing I’m certain of. I can do it with you.’

Still she waited, not quite trusting herself.

His voice suddenly ragged, he said, ‘How can I explain? I
want
to make you those promises. It just seems right. Not easy exactly, but natural.’

‘Yes,’ she said, her doubts falling away as she recognised the feeling and the strength of it. ‘The next big thing in my life. Our lives.’

He held his breath as if he couldn’t quite believe what she was saying.

Bella leaned into him and kissed him, gravely and deliberately. It was acceptance and a promise, and they both knew it.

‘Yes please, Richard. I would very much like to marry you.’

Afterwards he was in tearing spirits. They bounced down the hillside, with him singing ‘Scotland the Brave’ at the top of his voice. He was all for bursting in on George’s barn and announcing their news at once. But Bella, remembering the Queen’s unhappy glances in her direction, said, ‘No, you have to tell your parents first.’

So he settled for a wild boogie instead.

‘But I’m rubbish at it,’ wailed Bella. ‘I bump into things, you know I do. And I’ve got two left feet.’

But nothing could curb Richard’s enthusiasm. ‘I got you through the Eightsome Reel, didn’t I? Stick with me, baby. You ain’t seen nothing yet.’

The party was in full swing when they ran in, hand in hand. Grace Kelly style, Bella found, worked just as well for dancing in a barn as for reels. George and his team had hung tartan rugs over the walls of what must once have been a cow byre, and there were several glitterballs and a lot of blue lighting. Also a table full of drinks where you could have a simple beer or invent your own cocktail. Mothers had been baking for weeks and there were sausage rolls, sandwiches and a competitive selection of cakes. The dance floor was a patchwork of stone slabs and old floorboards but nobody seemed to care much.

There was no DJ but a local band could, and did, do everything from heavy rock to punk hop. The lead singer did a passable imitation of Springsteen, too.

‘Dance, with you,’ said Richard, not taking no for an answer.

And he was right, she didn’t fall over or kick anything. In fact, it was while an astonished Bella was delivering some eloquent pelvic thrusts to ‘I’m on Fire’ that Richard stopped her dead and said breathlessly, ‘Enough already. I’ve got a
bad
desire.’

Her smile was blazing. ‘Let’s go.’

The night, as she afterwards told Lottie, should have been torrid. They were both wracked with lust and had been behaving well all evening. And they hadn’t seen each before that for what seemed like a lifetime.

Only it was very difficult to do torrid passion in a house with a frugal central heating system and draughts to make the North Wind slink away, outclassed. After
they twice lost the mountainous covers and Bella screamed for the wrong reasons – acute and agonising cramp in her right calf – they collapsed into laughter and put lust on hold.

‘I’ll take you to Barbados,’ promised Richard. He got out of bed and brought her the sapphire kimono that she had left over the back of a chair. He tied a big bow at her waist and then got back into bed, cuddling her up to his chest and tucking the heavyweight blankets round her ears. ‘Or the Sahara.’

‘I’ll hold you to that.’

They were asleep almost at once.

They were awoken by a discreet scratching on the door. Bella came awake to find Richard out of bed, shivering and swearing. She didn’t blame him. She had no idea what time it was, but from the scrap of window she could see where the curtains didn’t meet, the sky was still as black as a coal cellar outside. She put on the light.