Buch lesen: «The Ordinary Princess»
It was extraordinary, she thought, watching him scrape dishes, load the dishwasher.
Yesterday he had seemed as distant as the stars. This evening she was totally at ease with him. Far from being the cold, arrogant prince that his photos suggested, he was intelligent, stimulating, amusing.
“You’re not making a bad job of that,” she said.
“For a man?”
“For a prince. I don’t imagine you’ve done it before.”
“No, but it is simply a question of applying logic and order to the task.”
She exploded into a fit of giggles as he closed the dishwasher door, looked at the settings, chose one that seemed appropriate and then switched it on.
“I’m afraid the champagne has gone to your head,” he said.
“No, honestly.” It was the fact that he hadn’t put any detergent in the machine that was so funny.
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The Ordinary Princess
Liz Fielding
MILLS & BOON
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ONE
‘FIRED? What do you mean, you’ve been fired?’
‘Sacked, dismissed, given the heave-ho. Released to explore alternative employment opportunities.’
Again.
‘I know what the word means, Laura. I was querying the reason.’
‘The usual reason, Jay. I have this total inability to concentrate on the task assigned. I’m too easily distracted. In short, my former employer decided that I was more of a liability than an asset.’ And with that Laura Varndell picked up her glass of wine and raised it in an ironical toast. ‘Here’s to the end of my career which today ran into reality and sank without a trace.’ And she emptied the glass.
It seemed an appropriate moment to fling it dramatically into the fireplace to underline the end of all her dreams, but since her great-aunt’s flat lacked this useful amenity, and flinging it at a radiator didn’t quite have the same appeal, she held it out for a refill instead.
Her great-aunt Jenny—known universally as Jay—obliged and, understanding the need for food at such moments, pushed a comfortingly large dish of pistachio nuts in her direction.
It said much for Laura’s state of mind that she wasn’t tempted.
‘All right, let’s have it. What did you do this time?’
Jay said this with the unspoken suggestion that, having gone out on a limb, used her contacts—more than once—to get her young niece’s stumbling feet on the path to her chosen career, she was not particularly amused that she’d messed up.
‘Nothing,’ Laura said. That, of course, was why she’d been directed to the exit by her boss. ‘Well, when I say nothing that’s not strictly true. I did do something.’
‘Just not what you were told to do, hmm?’
‘Just what anyone with an ounce of humanity would have done in my place,’ she replied, stung by the unspoken criticism.
‘I see.’ This said with a convince-me sigh. ‘Why don’t you start at the beginning.’ Jay refilled her own glass as if anticipating the need for fortification.
‘I was despatched to cover a demonstration by a senior citizens’ action group. The news editor—’
‘Trevor McCarthy? I knew him when he couldn’t spell the word “editor”,’ Jay said.
Laura had a momentary and deeply pleasing mental image of her fierce news editor as a junior reporter being chewed out by her great-aunt the way he’d chewed her out today. Before directing her to the exit. Then, ‘Yes, well, Trevor said that even I couldn’t get into trouble with a bunch of OAPs.’
‘In other words he’s still stupid. You attract trouble like a magnet. One day it’ll get you the kind of story that will go around the world.’
‘Not if I haven’t got a job.’ Then, ‘To be fair to the man—’ although why she should since he’d sacked her, she didn’t know ‘—it should have been simple enough.’
‘It’s simple enough,’ he’d said. ‘Even a child could do it.’ Implying that was about her level of competence.
‘My brief was to get some quotable quotes, take a few pictures of the oldies in revolt—his words, not mine,’ she said quickly, as her own favourite ‘oldie’ gave her a sharp glance.
‘But?’
‘I wasn’t looking for trouble,’ she said, anxious to make that point at the outset. ‘I was talking to this really sweet couple, asking them why they were out on a demo when they could have been at home with their feet up in front of the telly, a cup of tea and a toasted bun within easy reach—’
‘Being patronising must be catching. Did they hit you with their placard?’ Jay enquired dryly.
‘No! We were getting along really well, talking about the stupid preconceptions people have about the old. You’re the one who’s always banging on about the fact that you don’t hand over your ability to reason in return for your pension book.’ She grinned. ‘When you’re not back-packing through a snake-infested jungle or canoeing down some gorge or other.’
‘But?’ her aunt persisted, refusing to be side-tracked.
‘But then the old chap sort of keeled over. Collapsed at my feet. I couldn’t just ignore that, could I?’
Her aunt’s expression suggested that she was withholding judgement pending explanations. ‘What caused the collapse?’
‘Well, his wife was convinced—I was convinced—that it was a heart-attack.’
‘But it wasn’t.’
‘The doctor—and it was hours before he saw a doctor—suggested that it might have been over-excitement. But we didn’t know that and I couldn’t leave them in the middle of the street, could I?’
Her aunt’s face clouded. As a photojournalist she’d covered many war zones and undoubtedly been faced with such dilemmas on a regular basis. But she’d been a professional. Had never forgotten why she was there. She’d always got her story.
‘I imagine,’ she said, after the slightest of pauses, ‘that at this point in the narrative McCarthy asked why you didn’t just call an ambulance, summon assistance from a marshal and find someone else to interview?’
‘When you put it like that it sounds so simple.’
‘It is simple. But I guess you had to be there, hmm?’
‘It was all a bit of a muddle, to be honest, and the queue in A&E was horrendous. There’d been an accident on a building site. A wall had collapsed—’
The newsdesk had been trying to contact her about that. They’d wanted her to leave the protest march and cover the building site story, but of course she’d had to switch off her mobile phone in the hospital. She should have phoned in, told them what was happening, but she’d been too intent on staying with the story she had.
‘The old lady was so frightened. I couldn’t just leave her there. You do understand, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I understand.’ Her tone suggested that she understood that her great-niece was an idiot. But a sweet idiot.
‘By the time he’d been seen by a doctor and I’d got back to the demo I’d missed a mini-riot and thirty-two senior citizens being arrested for committing a breach of the peace.’
‘But you did have a human interest story about an old man who’d collapsed from over-excitement,’ Jay pointed out.
‘Well…’ She shrugged, helplessly. ‘No, actually.’
‘No? You didn’t get some heart-wrenching tale of hardship from this pair? In return for all your help?’
Laura shrugged awkwardly. ‘Apparently their son is something big in the City. He would have been absolutely furious with them if they’d got their names in the paper.’
‘You mean he’s a pompous ass who’s embarrassed by the fact that his parents have minds of their own?’
‘Well, maybe, but you can see his point.’ She faltered beneath her aunt’s uncompromising gaze. ‘Maybe not.’
‘You are too kind for your own good, Laura.’ Then, because there was no answer to that, she asked, ‘What will you do now?’
Laura sighed. ‘I don’t know. According to Trevor, I ought to forget journalism as a career. Maybe he’s right. I haven’t exactly covered myself with glory. Apparently a bleeding heart liberal like myself should stick to something more suited to my temperament.’ She winced as she remembered his withering scorn. ‘In fact he suggested I look for full-time employment as a nanny.’
‘In other words he hasn’t forgotten the incident with that woman who left you holding her baby.’
Laura closed her eyes and banged her forehead on her knees. ‘I’m utterly useless. I’ll never make a journalist.’
Jay looked as if she might be about to say something—but thought better of it. ‘You’re just young, that’s all. And a bit soft.’
‘They weren’t amongst the adjectives Trevor used when he told me to get out and never darken his door again unless I had something he could put on his front page without turning his newspaper into a laughing stock.’
‘He said that, did he?’ Jay leaned forward and topped up her glass. ‘That doesn’t sound like the sack to me.’
‘No, I got the subtext. My great-aunt is a personal friend of the newspaper’s owner so he’s covering his back. But, let’s face it, he’s safe enough.’
‘All you need is the right story.’
‘I refer to the answer I gave earlier.’
‘Hey—’ Jay leaned forward, touched her chin, forced her to look up ‘—whatever happened to your ambition to become a great crusading journalist?’
It had been her ambition for as long as she could remember to emulate her great-aunt, see her byline on stories that moved the world. ‘Like you? It’s time for a reality check, Jay. I’m not going to make much of a difference if I get side-tracked by sweet old things who need their hands held. I should have been there today, reporting the anger of people who are sick of not being listened to. I should have been at that building site, asking questions about safety. Making sure people know what’s going on around them. I should—’
‘If you realise that, your day hasn’t been entirely wasted. Unless, of course, you plan to just give up and sit there feeling sorry for yourself?’
Laura shrugged, found a smile from somewhere. ‘Just give me a minute, okay? I’ll get over it.’
‘What you need, my girl, is a good old-fashioned scoop. The inside story on someone famous should do it.’
‘Oh, that’ll be easy.’
‘I didn’t say it would be easy. I was the one who tried to persuade you that you should forget journalism and look for a sensible job.’
Laura pulled a face. ‘My father was a mountaineer, my mother a travel writer, and you spent a fair amount of your time in the world’s trouble spots. The family genes would appear to have a sensible deficit.’
Her aunt reached out, touched her arm briefly. Laura blinked, pasted on a smile.
‘Even so, I’ll pass on an exposé of someone rich and famous, if you don’t mind. It isn’t my thing.’
‘You aren’t in a position to be choosy, Laura. The important thing right now is to get you back in favour with the boss. If you really do want to be a journalist?’
Again Laura sensed the unspoken suggestion that this might be the time to call it a day and give ‘sensible’ a try.
‘Of course I do!’ She just didn’t like some of the stuff journalists did. But Jay was right. She wasn’t in a position to be choosy, not if she wanted her job back. ‘An exposé?’ She pulled a face. ‘It would have to be someone totally unsympathetic. Someone I won’t go all gooey and protective over.’
‘That would help,’ Jay agreed, with a wry smile. Then, seriously, ‘Someone powerful. Someone who never gives interviews.’ And she picked up the gossip magazine she’d been reading when Laura arrived and offered it to her. ‘Someone like this.’
Laura glanced at the cover photograph of a man in evening dress—a dark blue ribbon bearing an impressive decoration bisecting his imposing figure—arriving at some glittering state occasion, and then looked again.
‘Who is he?’
‘His Serene Highness Prince Alexander Michael George Orsino. Crown Prince of Montorino.’
In his early to mid-thirties, the Prince had thick dark hair that no amount of cutting could quite keep from a natural inclination to curl and eyebrows that gave him a look of the devil. He was tall—he stood inches above his companions anyway—and dark. But forget handsome. A smile might have helped, but nothing would ever compensate for a nose that centuries of breeding had perfected for looking down, or the haughty arrogance of his bearing which instantly curdled her natural milk of human kindness.
‘Montorino? Isn’t that one of those fabulously rich autocratic European principalities?’ There had been a recent travel feature in one of the weekend supplements. ‘Mountains, lakes, stunning scenery, picturesque medieval buildings?’
‘That’s the place. And he’s the autocrat who’ll one day rule it. Nothing to bring out your sympathies there.’
‘No,’ she said. What she was feeling certainly wasn’t sympathy.
He was walking a red carpet laid in his honour with an assurance born of the knowledge that he would rule, as his grandfather now ruled, as his forebears had ruled for a thousand years before him. Absolutely.
As she stared at the photograph his dark eyes seemed to look right at her, challenge her, defy her to do her worst, and a prickle of disquiet, apprehension almost, flickered down her spine. She tossed the magazine away.
‘This is all pie-in-the-sky, Jay. I’d never get an interview with a man like him.’
Thank goodness.
‘No?’ she replied, all innocence. ‘Well, maybe Trevor’s right. Journalism is an overcrowded profession, after all. And a good nanny can earn a fortune.’
‘Excellency.’
‘What is it, Karl?’
‘I do not wish to alarm you, sir, but Her Royal Highness does not appear to be in the residence.’
‘Then your wish is granted, Karl. I am not alarmed. Her Royal Highness is sulking because I refused permission for her to go to a club this evening with some girls from school. She is no doubt hiding in an attempt to frighten us all. The sooner everyone stops panicking and gets about their business, the sooner she’ll reappear,’ he said dismissively, returning to the papers demanding his attention.
But his concentration had been disturbed. While it was true to say that he was not alarmed, he was concerned. At seventeen, Katerina was too young to marry, or go to clubs. But she was too grown up to send to bed with a scolding. In short she was just the right age to be nothing but trouble.
He sympathised. He’d been seventeen once, long ago. But he had accepted his responsibilities, no matter how unsought, how unwelcome, and applied himself to his duties. If she didn’t learn to accept hers, he would have no choice but to send her away from the temptations of London, return her to Montorino until she learned how a royal princess was expected to conduct herself. Something her mother had signally failed to do, but he lived in hope. As he’d hoped to give her this brief time of relative freedom. But if she wouldn’t behave…
Karl coughed discreetly, long enough in service to risk ignoring his Prince’s impatient dismissal.
‘We’ve searched from basement to attic, sir. Princess Katerina is nowhere to be found.’
‘That’s because she doesn’t want to be found, Karl,’ he said. The house was a warren, especially up in the attics. A clever teenager with a serious attack of the sulks could hide up there for a week if she felt so inclined. He had far more important matters to deal with than a girl set on irritating her elders. ‘She wouldn’t have been foolish enough to leave the building without her security officer.’ He caught Karl’s doubtful expression. ‘And even if she was, she couldn’t have got out without someone seeing her. Could she?’
There was only the merest suggestion of hesitation before the man replied, ‘No, sir.’
Laura had woken early from a disturbed sleep with Prince Alexander’s face imprinted on her brain. His dark eyes arrogantly challenging her to take him on if she dared.
She’d ignored it.
She had much better things to do than waste her time on someone who looked down his nose at the world from his lofty serenity. Since going to work wasn’t one of them, she pulled on her sweats and went for a run.
After that she took a shower, made coffee, ate the croissant she’d picked up at the bakery on the corner and scanned the newspapers in search of a job. There weren’t any.
At least nothing that she wanted to do. But then she’d set her heart on journalism and anything else would be failure.
She propped herself up on her elbows. Jay was right. She needed a story—something big enough to persuade Trevor that she wasn’t a waste of space. A follow-up on that building site story, perhaps. She booted up her laptop and logged on to the internet to do some in-depth research on the company involved.
But His Serene Highness’s image would keep intruding, as fresh as the photograph on the cover of that magazine. As challenging. Refusing to go away.
It was her aunt’s fault, of course. Insisting that she take the magazine away with her. She retrieved it from beneath her bed and carried it through to the kitchen. She’d gone to sleep drooling over the frocks at the latest show-biz wedding, studiously avoiding the colour spread of the glittering gala in aid of some charity of which he was the patron. In the light of day, she told herself, he would look a lot less dangerous.
She poured a fresh cup of coffee and stared at the photograph on the cover. He stared right back, as dangerous as ever. And the longer she looked at his implacable features, the more she wanted to disturb that aristocratic bearing. Ruffle that calm poise. Unsettle him as much as he was unsettling her.
So what was stopping her?
Her date with a cowboy builder, that was what. A real story. The internet had provided very little background; she’d have to use the newspaper library. It might be a waste of time, but it was an excuse to put job-hunting on hold.
Except that once she was in the library her mind would keep wandering back to Prince Alexander. She finally abandoned the builder and keyed Montorino into the search engine.
It didn’t help much.
While his family had provided hot gossip for the newspapers for most of the previous century, and for a while Prince Alexander had looked set to follow their example, these days he was the very model of what a modern prince should be. Diligent. Hardworking.
Boring.
Well, that was good, wasn’t it? For the people of Montorino and for her. Now she could concentrate on something important, right?
Wrong.
Boring?
She wasn’t buying that. That face didn’t belong to a bore.
She continued her searches and by the end of the day she had an impressive dossier containing the official version of the history of Montorino, the entire Orsino family tree going back to the Middle Ages and enough photographs to fill the family album.
One, of Alexander as a small boy holding his grandfather’s hand, looking desolate at his parents’ funeral, leapt off the page to touch her heart. She swallowed. Made a quick note that his mother and father had died in a boating accident when he was six, at which point Alexander had become heir to the throne, bypassing his aunts and his older sister since women were barred from the top job in Montorino.
They could have appealed to the Court of Human Rights—in Laura’s opinion it was their duty—but they were clearly having too much fun filling the gossip columns of Europe.
Not Alexander. The only photographs of him in the last eight years were formal, controlled images that gave nothing away. Or else they’d been taken at grand occasions where everyone was on their best behaviour, which was much the same thing.
The articles about him were no better. They read like handouts from his public relations department. This bachelor prince, who had effectively become head of state since his grandfather’s heart bypass, apparently did nothing but open hospitals, support charities and promote his country. Of course, when he said ‘his’ country, that was exactly what he meant.
It wasn’t just the architecture that was medieval. Which, along with the lack of equal opportunities for princesses, was a situation absolutely guaranteed to raise Laura’s democratic hackles.
Jay had been right about one thing. His disturbing eyes notwithstanding, this was a man who would never win her sympathy.
Which was great. As far as it went. She’d have no problem in exposing his Achilles’ heel—always assuming he had one—and she’d positively enjoy giving him a wakeup call for the twenty-first century.
It was practically her duty, for heaven’s sake.
Unfortunately, she had no idea how she was going to go about it. When she’d said that she’d never get an interview with a man like that, she hadn’t even been close. It would have made no difference if she’d been one of those rarefied journalists who regularly interviewed the crowned heads of Europe.
His Highness didn’t give interviews.
And there was no gossip. Not recent gossip. He might be a bachelor but he wasn’t a playboy. It had been years since he’d frequented casinos, squired supermodels to nightclubs, got into brawls with the paparazzi.
All that had ended the day his grandfather had had a heart attack and he’d become head of state in all but name.
On the surface, it seemed that there was no story.
Except, of course, there was always a story if you knew where to look for it. He was flesh and blood, after all. He put on his trousers one leg at a time, the same as any other man. He would have hopes, desires, dreams, just like the lowliest of his subjects. And she didn’t imagine he lived like a monk.
Those eyes didn’t belong to any monk.
The thought made her shiver a little before she pulled herself together and reminded herself that he might as well have been for all the gossip that made print.
As she’d read everything she could find, hitting a blank wall whenever she’d tried to dig beyond the surface, she’d felt a stir of indignation that anyone with such a public presence could keep his personal life so private.
Her research, far from satisfying her curiosity, had piqued it. Far from answering her questions, it had simply raised more.
It was a challenge.
What topped the ‘want’ list of the man who already had everything? What place did love have in his life? For a man so apparently driven by duty it seemed strange that he hadn’t done what was expected of him, married some suitably aristocratic woman and secured the succession.
Or hadn’t he found anyone to match his own apparent perfection?
It was, in the end, the very lack of any story that irritated her into action. Coupled with the knowledge that whoever broke through the icy façade to expose the real man would be an editorial favourite. All past mistakes forgiven.
It had to be a façade, surely? No one could be that perfect.
She’d messed up a promising career with a series of stupid blunders that had her spiralling down the ladder rather than climbing it, despite the hefty leg-up from her aunt. She had one last chance to redeem herself—she owed it to Jay to redeem herself—and that prickle of disquiet at the way his eyes had looked out of the magazine at her, seeming to taunt her with his invulnerability, suggested that this was the man to provide the story.
Nonsense, of course. He wasn’t taunting her. He was invulnerable and he knew it.
Nonsense it might be, but come evening she was standing outside his grand official London residence, staring up at tall, lighted, first-floor windows and wondering what he was doing up there.
Living up to his public relations image and working late into the night on matters of state?
Watching sport on the television, feet up, his supper on a tray after a hard day doing whatever it was that autocratic rulers did?
Best of all—career-wise—would be if he were entertaining, very discreetly, some lovely young woman.
A royal romance was always news. If she broke that story she’d be a media heroine overnight.
Not that a discreet young woman would go through the front door for everyone to see. She’d probably be driven into the mews at the rear, well away from prying eyes.
She crossed the road to check it out, her well-rehearsed ‘stray kitten’ story ready, just in case she was challenged by a security guard. As she hesitated at the entrance to the cobbled lane, wondering what on earth she thought she was doing, she heard something drop to the ground ahead of her.
A small bag.
She glanced up. Something darker was moving against the lighter stone of the building.
Not something. Someone.
Hardly the prince’s light of love, not climbing down a drainpipe. It had to be a burglar making off with state papers, or jewels. Imagination in overdrive, she took off down the lane without a thought for her own safety and launched herself at the shadowy figure as it jumped lightly to the ground, bringing the miscreant down with a flying rugby tackle.
They hit the cobbles, and Laura’s initial intention to yell for help was thwarted by the fact that she was momentarily winded. Besides, the burglar was making enough noise for both of them. Except it immediately became apparent that this wasn’t any ordinary burglar. Not if the high-pitched yell of fright was anything to go by.
This burglar was a girl, slight of figure and terribly young. And then, as her face was lit up by passing car headlights, she realised that she wasn’t any ordinary girl, either. It was a face she’d seen during her research on Prince Alexander. His niece. His sister’s youngest daughter, Princess Katerina Victoria Elizabeth.
‘Oh, sugar,’ she said.
The young princess, less restrained, was venting her feelings with scatological exactitude. ‘I suppose you’re Xander’s idea of a watchdog?’ she demanded, once she’d thoroughly relieved her feelings.
Xander? ‘Oh, you mean His Serene Highness. Er, well—’
‘He’ll give you the Order of Merit for this, I shouldn’t wonder. Second class.’
She stowed her curiosity as to the number of classes the Order of Merit boasted and, playing for time, went for stupid. ‘Sorry?’
‘In gratitude for breaking my ankle.’ And she moaned. ‘It’s the one guarantee that I won’t be doing this again any time soon.’
‘You’ve broken your ankle?’
‘No,’ she said, and moaned again. Louder. ‘You did that. When you flattened me.’
Stupid was right. ‘Oh, good grief. I’m so sorry, but I thought you were a burglar,’ Laura said, belatedly scrambling to her knees and taking a closer look. Princess Katerina was wearing a pair of serious boots—eighteen-hole jobs. Good support for her injured ankle, but they made an examination of the injury impossible. ‘Are you sure it’s broken?’ she asked, desperately hoping it might just be a bad sprain. ‘Which one is it?’
‘Does it matter?’ the princess demanded. Then, ‘It was the right ankle, okay? And of course I’m sure it’s broken. I felt it crack.’ She tried to sit up and cried out as she fell back.
Laura felt sick. ‘Can you get up? You need to get inside as quickly—’
‘Of course I can’t get up!’
‘If I help you up? You could lean on me—’
‘Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage? Look, just get some help, will you?’
The story of her life, she thought, pulling out her cellphone. ‘I’d better call an ambulance—’
‘No!’ She lifted her head. ‘Go to the house and ask for Karl. Tell him Katie sent you. And don’t tell anyone else what’s happened.’
Laura stripped off her jacket, folded it and tucked it beneath the girl’s head and shoulders. ‘I don’t like leaving you here on your own.’
‘I’ll be fine. Trust me. I’m not going anywhere.’
‘No. Look, I’m really sorry—’ The girl’s wince of pain as she lay back on the jacket brought her apologies to a premature end. ‘I’m going.’
The princess caught her hand. ‘Just bring Karl,’ she gasped, her face screwed up with pain. ‘No one else. He’s known me since I was a baby and I can persuade him to tell my uncle that I fell downstairs.’ There was a mute appeal in her eyes. ‘I’m not supposed to be out, you see.’
Somehow that didn’t come as a surprise. If her outing had been authorised she’d have left by a more orthodox route accompanied by appropriate security. However, since she had no intention of telling His Serene Highness that she’d broken his niece’s ankle, she was happy enough to reassure the girl.
‘I’ll bring him,’ she said. Then she grinned. ‘But only if you promise me you won’t tell anyone what really happened. I don’t relish the idea of being sued for assault and battery.’
‘It’s a deal.’ Princess Katerina started to laugh, then caught her breath as the pain cut in. ‘Please go.’
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