The Ordinary Princess

by Liz Fielding

  ‘We have to change?’

  ‘No. You’ve done the Underground. Let’s try a bus next.’

  ‘And this would take us to…?’

  ‘Nowhere,’ she said, spotting an open-topped bus. ‘Let’s catch that and act like a couple of tourists out for the day. We can get on and off wherever we like. We could take out a rowing boat on the Serpentine. Check out the guards at Buckingham Palace before feeding the ducks in St James’s.’ It would make it easier for Jay to follow them with her battered old Nikon. Who would notice one more tourist taking pictures of the sights? ‘Maybe finish the day taking a trip on the London Eye. Look at the city from four hundred and fifty feet up in the air. How does that sound?’

  ‘Ambitious,’ he suggested. ‘For a girl who’s afraid of heights.’

  ‘I’d forgotten,’ she said, shocked. The bus moved off without them. ‘That’s so weird. I just got carried away.’

  ‘I know exactly how that feels, Laura.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘I had the same thing happen to me just yesterday.’ He grasped her hand. ‘Come on, let’s walk.’

  ‘Well, that was different,’ Xander said dryly, as they reached the corner of her street. His eyes crinkled up into a warm smile. ‘But fun.’

  ‘Really? Even the Underground?’

  ‘Even the Underground. Although I have to say that had more to do with the company than the surroundings.’

  ‘I’m sorry about the London Eye. I really thought I could do it.’

  ‘I understand. Truly.’

  ‘Even after queuing all that time?’

  Laura felt terrible. How could he not see through her? She’d been acting her aching heart out as she’d teased him through a day designed to give him a workout in ordinary life that he’d never forget. Never letting the smile slip for a moment.

  At least, she’d been acting until that moment at the London Eye when, on the point of boarding, she’d made the fatal mistake of looking up at the four hundred and fifty-foot ride and had turned into a gibbering wreck.

  After that everything had been had been totally real. Just the thought was enough to bring it all flooding back. The blood draining from her face, her legs buckling as she had clutched for the rail… The murmur of impatience building behind them as she had stalled the boarding process.

  Her anguished cry for help…

  ‘Xander!’

  Even as she began to slip away into the blackness of total panic, he was there, rock-like beside her, his arm about her waist, keeping her on her feet, standing protectively between her and the great wheel towering above her. ‘I’m here, sweetheart. You’re safe.’

  ‘Don’t let me go. Don’t ever let me go…’

  ‘Never,’ he swore. Then again, ‘Never.’ And for a moment the terror receded. ‘But we’re holding everyone up. Come on, let’s get away from here.’

  ‘I c-c-can’t…’ Her mouth continued working, but the words were stuck somewhere inside her head. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t move. And, frozen to the spot, she could neither advance nor retreat.

  Then, as she began to shake, crumple, he bent and caught her beneath the knees, picked her up and carried her away from the crowd.

  She curled against him, burrowing against the solid comfort of his chest, keeping her eyes tight shut. Only opening them when he gently lowered her on to a long wooden settle bench in the quiet corner of a nearby pub. Even then he didn’t leave her, but kept his arm tightly around her, holding her close as, with no more than a glance at the barman, he summoned brandy.

  He held the glass to her lips. She didn’t need spirits to fortify her. She was drawing all the strength she needed from Xander. But she sipped obediently.

  ‘This is getting to be a habit,’ she said, feeling foolish beyond imagining as the panic gradually receded.

  Had she really begged him not to let go of her?

  Had he really said ‘never’?

  ‘Me going wobbly, you plying me with brandy.’

  Attempting to make a joke of it.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said. Not laughing. And, before she could pretend not to understand, ‘About being afraid of heights.’

  ‘It’s nothing. Really.’ She made an effort to gather herself. Straighten up. Act like a grown-up. ‘I can’t think what came over me—’

  Too late to pull away. He wasn’t letting her go.

  ‘Tell me, Laura.’ And suddenly she did need the brandy. Took a gulp. ‘Your father was a mountaineer. Did he fall to his death? Is that it?’

  She shook her head. It was worse, much worse than that. ‘He wasn’t climbing. That would have been bearable, somehow. If it had been his own mistake…’ She swallowed, fighting back tears. It had been a long time since she’d cried. ‘If he’d been doing what he loved most…’

  Xander waited.

  ‘I’m not afraid of mountains. Only of tall buildings. Tall things…’ And she shivered again.

  ‘I’m glad.’ She looked at him. ‘If you were afraid of mountains then a visit to Montorino would be a painful experience. I hope you will visit?’

  For a moment he had succeeded in distracting her totally. When she remained silent, but with surprise rather than fear, he said, ‘Tell me, Laura. It helps to get things out in the open. Fear grows in the dark.’ He took her hand, held it. ‘Trust me, Laura.’

  Guilt arrowed through her. She could never go to Montorino, not after today. But she could tell him this truth about herself. Share something that she normally kept locked away, deep inside.

  ‘My parents took a cable car ride. He wasn’t climbing. She wasn’t writing a travel feature. They were just acting like a couple of tourists for once. Having fun. A helicopter clipped the cable.’

  ‘Cara…’ He held her, murmuring soft words of comfort, his lips against her hair. ‘I’m so sorry.’ He thumbed away tears, kissing her damp cheeks. ‘If I’d known—’

  ‘It’s not your fault, Xander. It’s mine. I don’t know how I ever thought I could do that.’ Except, somehow, when she was with Xander anything seemed possible. ‘I was fine until I looked up and then suddenly everything rushed towards me as if I was falling. Like the nightmares…’

  ‘You still have them?’ he asked.

  She shivered. ‘Not often.’

  ‘Can I help?’

  She looked into his eyes—warm, tender. ‘You could kiss me better,’ she said.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Now.’

  And he lifted her face, kissed her mouth, regardless of the fact that they were in a very public place…

  It had been the sweetest kiss. So tender, so giving. But she pushed it from her mind now as he turned to face her, removing the dark glasses she’d clung to in an effort to hide her innermost feelings rather than as a disguise.

  ‘That’s better. I’ve missed your eyes. They show me everything that you feel.’ He looked at her for a long time, then gently grazed her temple with his knuckles. ‘You’re tired, yes?’

  ‘No, I’m fine. Really.’

  ‘I think not. You have been hiding it behind these, determined to keep going for me.’

  ‘Actually, Xander—’ she said, unable to bear his kindness any more ‘—it’s the red rims from bawling my eyes out that I’ve been covering up. I’m sorry I made such a fool of myself.’

  ‘Sweet Laura.’ The way he said her name, with a subtly different inflection from the way anyone else had said it ever before, just broke her heart.

  ‘You wanted to talk to me, Xander,’ she pressed, in an effort to shatter the intimacy of the moment. She knew what he would say to her, but she needed to hear it now. His warning that, no matter how tender, how sweet, this was just an interlude in his life. Could never be anything more.

  While she still owned enough of her heart to salvage something from the inevitable wreckage.

  ‘Maybe over dinner?’ he suggested, refusing to be pushed.

  ‘Dinner?’

  ‘Somewhere with a tablecloth and pl
ates and knives and forks,’ he prompted.

  ‘Is this a hint that you didn’t enjoy our urban picnic at a burger bar?’

  ‘Oh, is that what it was? I did wonder.’

  Damn Alexander Orsino. He’d got his role all wrong. He wasn’t supposed to do this teasing stuff, respond with charm and good humour to everything she’d put him through as if he’d been riding the Underground and buses all his life. Feeding the ducks as if it was the most fun he’d ever had.

  He was supposed to hate it and be bored and arrogant and—

  ‘Well?’ he prompted.

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said, forcing herself to tease back. ‘Will I need a tiara?’

  Her face felt as though it would crack from smiling so much when all she wanted to do was bury her head beneath a pillow and weep. Right after she’d got beneath the shower and scrubbed herself clean.

  This morning, angry, she had thought it would be easy to do this. But, some time between looking up and seeing him across a pile of cast-iron cookware at Claibournes and lying on the grass in Hyde Park licking at ice cream cones, it had stopped being easy and had become the hardest thing in the world.

  She was pretty sure that His Serene Highness Prince Alexander had never, in all his life, been turned down for a date. He would never know how close he came just then. Not because she didn’t want to go. In spite of everything, the thought of having dinner with him in some quiet little restaurant where no one knew either of them set her foolish heart playing leap-frog.

  Because she wanted it too much.

  Fortunately for his ego, if not her peace of mind, she couldn’t walk away, job done. With Jay’s help she would have the photographs she’d promised Trevor. And she had a story, too. Not the original hatchet job she’d planned, but a story about a prince taking time out in the real world, doing everyday things that would, she knew, fascinate readers worldwide.

  But the job wasn’t done.

  She’d promised Katie three months of anonymity, and for that she had to put herself in the public eye.

  And suddenly it all made sense. He was keeping up the pretence, going through with this, for Katie. Then he’d walk away, leaving her to spend the next few months hounded by the press, her every move subjected to long lens scrutiny.

  The biter bit. Her just deserts.

  She would deliver and gladly. Then maybe she would be able to live with herself.

  She took a deep breath. ‘Dinner will be lovely, Xander.’

  ‘I will pick you up at eight.’ He touched his fingers to her lips as she began to object. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No more cloak and dagger. Today I allowed you to dictate our itinerary. In this age of equality I know you will allow me to do the same this evening.’

  He took her phone from his pocket. The screen showed messages waiting.

  ‘I’ve been keeping you from your life, Laura. The man who wanted to talk to you about a job is getting impatient.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s not a job I want. I realise now that I’ve been looking in entirely the wrong direction.’ She managed half a smile, hoping that he would remember that and maybe understand. ‘I’ll see you later.’

  He watched her down the steps to her front door, for all the world like a lover finding it impossible to tear himself away.

  As for her, only the thought that she would see him again in a couple of hours made the separation bearable.

  The biter bit, indeed. And the wound was apparently fatal.

  CHAPTER NINE

  JAY handed Laura a tall glass. ‘You look as if you could do with this.’

  ‘How did you guess?’ She sipped the gin and tonic. Put it down. Looked at the photographs spread across the dining room table. Touching each of the images. Remembering each moment, captured for ever on film by her brilliant aunt.

  Xander’s fingers entwined in hers as they’d walked along the street.

  The frown creasing his forehead as he’d been confronted with the unfamiliar.

  His face, one moment wreathed in laughter, the next all concern as she’d thrown her wobbly as they were about to board the London Eye.

  Remembering other moments that had been private. The way he’d held her hands around the brandy glass as he soothed her, reassured her, listened to her pouring out her fears. He’d been so gentle, so tender.

  How she would miss that.

  Then she saw what must have been the first photograph Jay took. It caught him in the moment before she’d looked up and seen him. There was something so vulnerable in his expression, so heartbreakingly exposed. Almost as if he was hurting as much as she was.

  She pushed it away, unable to bear even to look at it.

  Then she looked up and saw that Jay was watching her, waiting for her reaction. ‘These are brilliant,’ she said, the words fighting their way through a throat stuffed with boulders.

  ‘I am pleased with them,’ she said. ‘It’s very gratifying to discover that I haven’t lost my touch,’ she went on, picking up a photograph of the two of them sitting at an open air café in the park, where they’d stopped for coffee. ‘The dark glasses were a nice touch. They give an air of mystery. Who is this anonymous woman in Prince Alexander’s life?’ She looked up. ‘It’s impossible to make out what you’re thinking. Feeling.’

  ‘That’s what makes them so good.’

  ‘When will you give them to Trevor?’

  ‘Trevor?’

  ‘When is he expecting you to deliver them?’ Jay pressed.

  She gathered up the precious images, the day they represented, and held them against her breast as if to protect them. ‘I can’t do that,’ she whispered, almost to herself. Then she repeated it, louder. ‘I can’t do it, Jay. Trevor was right all along. You were right—’ She looked down at the picture of Xander standing alone, before she’d seen him. A tear splashed on to the glossy image and she wiped it carefully away. ‘I can’t go through with it.’

  ‘The dark glasses weren’t for the photographs, then. They were to hide your feelings from Alexander.’

  ‘I know you’ll never understand. You’ve done so much for me, called in favours every time I messed up, and now, when it’s all happened for me, I’m throwing it away…’ She’d been going to say, for love.

  But that was one foolishness she intended to keep to herself.

  Then, still clutching them close to her, ‘I don’t have any right to ask you, Jay. These are your photographs. Your copyright.’

  ‘Oh, please do ask me!’ she begged. ‘You cannot know how happy I am that you’ve finally seen the light.’

  ‘What?’ She stared at Jay.

  ‘Accepted the truth. If it means you’re going to stop beating yourself up trying to be me and your mother, all rolled into one—that you’ve realised being yourself is enough—then burning these will be worth every penny.’

  Laura didn’t understand. ‘You’re not angry with me?’

  ‘Angry? I was beginning to despair. I tossed you the hardest story I could think of, hoping that you would finally realise that you aren’t cut out for this, and what happened? You land the story of the year. I was always afraid you would, and then you’d be stuck for ever in a job that would only have made you unhappy.’

  Laura sat down rather suddenly. ‘But you encouraged me, helped me…’

  ‘It was what you wanted. I would have done anything to make you happy. Maybe, if I’d been your real mother, I wouldn’t have been so afraid to say no when you first came to me. Not that you’d have listened…’

  She opened her mouth to defend herself. Then closed it again. Then grinned, quite unbelievably dizzy with relief. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Poor Trevor. If you’d just had that touch of ruthlessness you’d have been so brilliant. He knew it too, that’s why he got so angry with you.’

  Laura groaned. ‘He’ll kill me. I told him to hold the front page photo spot, give me the blurb banner, page three—’

  ‘When are you supposed to deliver?’

&
nbsp; ‘The evening of Ladies’ Day. I’ll have to let him know.’ And she’d have to tell Xander, too. The whole truth. She picked up the photographs. Then kissed Jay, hugged her. ‘You’ve been a wonderful mother, Jay. Thank you. For everything.’

  ‘My pleasure. I enjoyed my day trailing after the pair of you, although I bailed out when you walked away from the London Eye. I’d queued too long to miss the ride. Are you seeing Alexander tonight?’

  ‘He’s taking me to dinner. In fact, I have to go and get ready. I’ll give him these, Jay. Tell him everything.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Absolutely sure.’

  ‘What about Ascot?’

  ‘I promised. That’s for Katie, so I know he’ll do it.’

  ‘Then I’ll treat you to something special to wear. And leave Trevor to me. I’ll break it to him gently that his scoop got away. I don’t suppose he’ll be completely surprised.’

  She wore black. Simple, elegant and somehow appropriate. Put up her hair. Long jet drops in her ears. Fastened a black velvet band around her throat to which she’d pinned the gold Montorino coat of arms that he’d given her.

  She wanted to wear it, just once.

  Then, when she was ready, she sat and wrote a letter to Xander, telling him everything, the whole story, before putting it with the photographs and wrapping them all in gold paper. They were, after all, worth a fortune.

  The clock was striking eight as she tied the slender package with ribbon, and as the last chime died away there was an echoing ring at the doorbell. Arranging her features into the nearest approximation of a smile she could manage, she went to open it. And the smile froze on her face.

  It wasn’t Xander. It was the footman.

  ‘Miss Varndell,’ he said, with the slightest bow. ‘His Highness asked me to give you this.’

  It was a square envelope made from the kind of paper that would last a thousand years. She took it, said, ‘Thank you.’

  What else could she say?

  Apparently the man assumed he was being dismissed because he said, ‘I am to wait.’

  She shrugged, prised back the flap and took out the single sheet of paper and opened it up.

  My apologies, Laura. I cannot get away but Phillip will bring you to me. I’ll explain when I see you. Xander.