The Runaway Princess (14 page)

I looked around and sent a silent thank-you to Jo for refusing to let me wear my nun dress. Everyone was
seriously
dressed up. There was more fur in here than at Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, and every other face was familiar in that “Are you from Zumba? Oh no, you’re the foreign secretary” way.

“Champagne?” A waiter materialized silently in front of me. He didn’t look too chuffed about the cat’s ears.

I probably shouldn’t have, but the prospect of some Dutch courage was too tempting. I took the glass from the tray with a nervous smile, accepted a tiny canapé on a napkin from the waiter behind, and got out my phone to pretend to be checking some urgent e-mails. Everyone around me was doing the same. The only difference was that other people were talking to their phones at the same time. And I didn’t have e-mail on my ancient phone, so I had to content myself with checking my own contacts list, frowning at it every so often.

No missed calls from Leo. I typed
Where are you? How long will you be?
then deleted it and texted
I’m here!
in what I hoped was a cheery manner.

I gazed around at the milling crowds as if I were looking for a friend—one of Jo’s top party tips—but when several other guests looked at me and started muttering to each other, I put the phone to my ear and pretended to be taking a call instead.

That’s when I heard the voices behind the lilies.

“… with Rolf?”

“I don’t think so. Isn’t he seeing Tatiana Solzenhoff?”

“Yuh, she told me. But he arrived with some other girl, did you see how she …”

I gripped my glass. They were talking about
me
. Me!

Frustratingly, the voice dipped—with, argh, a low chuckle—and I missed whatever I’d done that had been so amusing.

I wanted to part the lilies and lean through to say, “No, I’m not with Rolf, not in a bazillion years. I’m with his much more attractive brother,” but I was temporarily stunned at the thought that two people I’d never met were discussing me, just because I’d arrived with Rolf. They’d noticed me, because I’d arrived with him. How did that make me feel?

The two women started talking again, but as I leaned forward to peer through the lilies, I brushed against a pollen-loaded stamen, and my attention swerved.

What sort of florist hadn’t taken the stamens off the lilies? Lily pollen stained everything in sight, and there were a lot of white dresses around, mine included. Jo had already warned me that this dress was so vintage it required specialist dry cleaning, and that I wasn’t to let Rolf anywhere near it with a red drink. Any drink, for that matter.

Without thinking, I started to nip off the heavy orange stamens, dropping them into the cocktail napkin that I hadn’t been able to off-load onto a waiter. I was focusing on doing that as cleanly as I could when a warm hand touched the bare skin on the small of my back, and I squeaked with shock.

I spun round, ready to apologize for defacing the arrangement (or slap Rolf’s face), and saw a much more welcome sight: Leo, effortlessly stylish in black tie, his blond hair brushed back, and two glasses of champagne in his hands.

The relief. I can’t even tell you. Also, the
burn
of excitement at seeing him in a dinner jacket. Hot. Hot hot hot.

“Hello!” He smiled his familiar eye-crinkling smile, and already the situation seemed less alien. “Don’t tell me—you’ve got some notes for the florists?”

“Oh, they stain, and this dress …” I waved the napkin pollen-bomb stupidly.

“Here, let me,” he said, juggling the glasses to take the napkin off me. He handed it to a waiter who’d materialized out of nowhere, as had three women in plunging dresses that seemed to be held up by sheer willpower. Leo smiled at them, then led me away to a quieter corner.

“Can I get my apologies in first?” he asked, before I could speak. “I’m so sorry about leaving you with Rolf. I was on a conference call with New York that overran, and I couldn’t get away without jeopardizing the deal. And second, sorry we couldn’t schedule dinner beforehand, but I thought at least this way you only have to talk to Dad and Rolf before and after the performance. Start you off gently.”

“It’s fine,” I said. I could feel curious eyes drilling into the back of my head. People were staring at us. Well, at Leo. “Thank you for sending the car.”

“You’re welcome. I just wish I could have been in it. You
look incredible,” he added. “I spotted you straightaway from the foyer.”

“Why?” Panic flickered in me as people glanced over, then pointedly looked away. “Am I not wearing the right thing?”

“No! Because your hair is about a foot higher than normal.” Leo touched one of the curls Jo had pinned up in a high bun, then touched my ear as if he couldn’t stop himself. “It really suits you. Shows off your lovely neck.”

I stashed the compliment away for later and blushed. “Jo did it for me.”

“And the dress is adorable, very on-trend with the vintage detailing.” He pretended to grimace. “I am allowed to say that. My mother’s in fashion.”

I smiled, mainly at the conspiratorial wink he was giving me, the one no one else could see. “It’s all held up with sellotape, you know. I’m a bit worried it might peel off if it gets too hot.”

“In that case, there’s no way I’m letting you sit near Rolf.” Leo’s face was straight, but his eyes were roguish above his champagne glass.

I leaned forward anxiously, and he leaned forward too.

“What?” he stage-whispered. “Was there an Incident in the limo?”

“No! Leo, are you sure I’m wearing the right thing?” I whispered. “Everyone’s wearing diamonds and—and tiaras! People keep staring at me. I mean, I don’t have a tiara, but—should I have got one? I didn’t know the dress code was
heirlooms
.”

Leo straightened up and spoke in a normal voice. “They’re staring at you because you look adorable, you
nut
. It’s a charity gala, you’re wearing exactly the right thing. I always think there’s something in bad taste about coming to a fund-raiser in a million dollars’ worth of jewelry and only donating ten quid to the actual cause.”

He touched my arm lightly as he spoke, and a calm sensation spread through me. I had donation money in my handbag. Mum would have killed me if I’d forgotten that.

“Now,” Leo went on, “if I can tear him away from his adoring public, let me introduce you to my father.”

He nodded toward a gaggle of guests standing in what I assumed was the VIP area. As Leo approached, they parted, and in the middle of them was a tall man wearing the most impeccable black tie I’d ever seen, but with a bright pink bow tie. And pink Converse All Star sneakers.

“Ignore the shoes,” muttered Leo, seeing me freeze like a rabbit in the headlights. “It’s his thing. He thinks they make him look like a film star.”

Leo’s dad
did
look like a film star. Or rather, Boris looked like one of those eighties film stars who’d moved from leading-man roles into characterful father parts, with a sideline in high-profile humanitarian charity work. He had the same striking blue eyes as Leo, and his hair was sandy blond, swept back off his forehead in a thick swoop. His tan glowed against the sparkling white collar of his evening shirt, and when he reached forward to greet me, his cuffs gave off a sudden flash of bright light so sharp my head spun round to see where the photographer was.

I later found out this was because he had diamond cuff links the size of pebbles.

“Leo! And who is this beautiful woman?” he said, taking my hands and fixing me with his warm gaze.

I had no idea what he was going to do with them, but I had to fight back the stupid grin forming on my face. It was like being bathed in the most flattering sunlight in the world. Keeping his unsettlingly blue eyes fixed on mine, Prince Boris raised my right hand to his lips and kissed the backs of my fingers while still holding the left.

Obviously, I melted like an ice cream. I tried not to simper too hard, but I heard a weird kitteny noise seep out nonetheless.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Rolf, who clearly didn’t like anyone muscling in on his charming slimeball act, least of all his dad. “Amy, that’s his standard greeting. If you were a guy, he’d ask who your tailor was so he could get himself a set of shoulders like that too.”

“So I could send my son to him for a proper suit, you mean,” said Boris without taking his eyes off mine.

“My suits are far more fashionable than—” Rolf started, but Leo coughed and took charge of the situation.

“Papa, this is Amy Wilde,” he said. “Amy, my father, Prince Boris of Nirona and Svetland.”

Boris inclined his head, and my smile stuck as my brain finally caught up.

Should I curtsy?
Could
I curtsy in this tight dress? Was it better to curtsy and rip it? I did a jerky sort of bob, which made me look like I’d got a cramp; as I did, the two glasses of champagne I’d knocked back finally reached my head and collided with my jittering nerves, and I slipped forward.

Leo put his arm out and stopped me lunging into his dad’s chest. He managed to make it seem as if he was just putting a protective arm around me, but I turned red all the same.

Oh, great start.

“Save that for later, maybe,” said Rolf from somewhere behind me.

“Let’s not stand on ceremony,” said Boris with a gracious smile and a trace of an accent. “You can call me Your 
Serenity
, or Prince Boris, or just Boris, it’s up to you.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Are you a fan of opera, Amy?” he inquired.

“Or feral cats?” inquired Rolf in the same cordial tones.

“Mmm! Both!” I smiled and nodded. From that point onward, I decided, polite smiling was going to be my default response to everything. Hopefully Leo would guide me through some more specific conversation later.

An official appeared and murmured to the man in dark glasses standing two feet to the left of Prince Boris; the man then put his finger to his left ear, murmured something into his cuff link, and said, “If you’d like to take your seat, sir, everyone’s ready for you.”

Boris nodded. “When we’re ready,” he said. “I haven’t seen what the interval refreshments are going to be. You did make sure about the ice cream?”

The man nodded. “Neapolitan. Soya.”

“With wafers? Organic? The fan ones, not the tube ones? My grandmother was an opera singer,” he added to me, as if this explained everything.

Leo was glancing at his watch. “We should go through, everyone’s waiting.” He nodded at the security guard. “Amy? Are you set?”

The room had emptied in the space of a minute, apart from the ushers glaring at us, and I felt the familiar missing-the-train panic I got every time I went home. We were holding everyone up. They’d all be tutting and checking their watches. Like the ushers were.

“Leo, you’re so … nine-to-five,” drawled Rolf, but Leo ignored him and directed me toward the corridor that led to the private boxes, offering me a program as we went.

Rolf and Boris followed a majestic three full minutes later, and then the house lights went down and the royal gala performance began.

I
have to be honest with you. I spent more time boggling at the glittering surroundings of the Royal Opera House than I did listening to what was going on below. People came on, they sang beautifully (selections from
Cats
, I think, and
The Lion King
), everyone clapped. But there was just too much going on around me to look at the stage.

For a start, we were in what I assume was a, if not
the
, royal box. Deep raspberry velvet seats, gold leaf and crystal in every direction, champagne in ice-beaded silver buckets by our sides. Rolf was getting through a bottle all on his own, although it didn’t affect his ability to text. His fingers never stopped. After the first performance, a willowy Chinese girl in a leather dress slipped into the box and took the seat next to him; although Leo acknowledged her arrival with a polite smile, no one said a word, which I thought was a bit odd, but frankly unless he got drunk and fell off
this
balcony I intended to keep quiet.

The man in dark glasses stood behind us, but after five minutes, he slipped out and returned with a crystal dish of Neapolitan ice cream, which Boris ate with a miniature silver spoon. Every so often Boris would guffaw and clap uproariously, and Rolf would accuse him of showing off for the cameras, and Boris would deny there were any, although I did spot the occasional flash that seemed to coincide with the guffawing/clapping.

I was trying to take it all in to tell Jo later, but I couldn’t quite get beyond how delicious it was to be sitting next to Leo in the dark like this. He was the only one in the box paying proper attention to the performances on the stage, but he still kept sneaking the odd sideways glance in my direction to see if I was enjoying it. Once or twice he caught me staring at his handsome profile, and I wondered if the same shiver ran through him that did me.

I think, once or twice, he looked at me when I wasn’t looking too, and that was even nicer. I just hoped my face wasn’t giving me away, so I kept it set to “entranced.” That was not hard.

*

T
he curtain fell after forty minutes, and Rolf got up before the applause finished. “I’m just nipping out to—” he started, then his phone rang. He looked at it, and said, “Oh, jeez.”

The beautiful Chinese girl had risen too, and was smiling uncertainly at me, as if not sure whether to introduce herself. Rolf saw me opening my mouth to save him the trouble and said, “Oh, this is Ida. Ida, this is Amy.”

“His personal trainer,” said Ida with a smile, and Rolf looked slightly put out as he glanced at his phone again and flinched.

“Hello,” I said, and shook her hand.

At least he’d got my name right this time, I thought, then noticed Rolf was shifting from foot to foot.

“What’s the problem?” asked Boris through a mouthful of ice cream.

“It’s that nut-job Tatiana.” Rolf thrust the phone at me. “Answer this and say you’re my therapist and I can’t take calls in
session
.”

“What?” His phone had a big
R
on it in crystals. Or diamonds. It matched the iPod he’d sent Jo, and the ring tone was some kind of hunting horn. I gave him a dark look, emboldened by another glass of champagne. “Are you sure
I’m
the person you want to deal with your excess of girlfriends?”

“For God’s sake, turn it off!” said Leo. He grabbed the phone, turned it off, and dropped it in the slushy ice bucket. “That’s been driving me insane all night.”

“Like father, like son,” said Boris indulgently. “Too many women, too little time.”

My jaw dropped. I could
not
imagine my dad saying that. I couldn’t imagine casually dropping a phone worth hundreds of pounds into an ice bucket either.

“Too little
brain
, you mean.” Leo ignored Rolf’s attempts to dry off his phone and turned to me. “Amy, can we get you anything?”

“No, no! It’s all perfect. I’m just going to … freshen up,” I said, levering myself out of the velvet seat with a wobble.

Actually, what I needed was air. And a large glass of cold water. The canapés weren’t soaking up as much alcohol as my own sausage rolls usually did. The usher assigned to the box steered me discreetly toward the ladies’ room, and when I pushed open the door, the marble-tiled loos were thankfully empty.

I swung over to the mirrors with a swagger in my step now no one was watching, and was surprised to see, in my reflection, a sparkle around my eyes that had nothing to do with Jo’s smoky Mac eye palette.

I looked glamorous. That was quite a surprise for me, and now that I was a little bit, um, relaxed, I didn’t feel like such a traitor to my normal “take me as I am” state to admit that I liked it.

Apart from a stray curl here and there, my makeup and hair were holding up pretty well. In fact, I thought, adding another layer of rose lip gloss with a shaky hand—the only part of the makeup process Jo had entrusted me to top up unsupervised—it was
all
holding up well. Hair, dress, conversation. Boris and Rolf were rather intimidating, and I was going to tell Jo
all
the gory details of Rolf’s girlfriend shuffling later, but Leo seemed happy with the way things were going. Maybe we’d go on somewhere else afterward, just us.

Maybe tonight, with me in my beautiful dress and him in his black tie, might be the night he decided that we’d done enough taking things slowly and get on with the princely ravishing.

I shivered and saw myself in the mirror, grinning like a loon.

But first, I had another hour of light opera and chitchat to get through. As I was thinking of some intelligent questions to ask about feral cats, the door swished open and a magnificent blonde stalked in, her eyes flashing almost as much as the huge gold necklace around her throat.

I smiled at her since she was staring at me through the mirror, but instead of turning left into the cubicles, she made straight for where I was standing.

“Are you the girl who came here vith Rolf?” She had a faint accent and very, very toned biceps. They were pulsing, along with her jaw. She looked much more like a personal trainer than Ida did.

“Well, technically, I suppose I am. Are you looking for him?” I said. “He’s still in the box, I think.”

“Really?” she said, her eyes narrowing.

Or was this the sister? Sofia? Not very friendly if she was.

I opened my mouth to ask her, but before I could speak, she grabbed the vase of oversize Dutch tulips by the basket of towels.

“You can tell him from me,” she roared, “that he is dumped, and you are a cheating slut.”

“Now, hang on, I’m not
here
with Rolf—” I started, holding up my arms to defend myself, but she didn’t throw the vase at me—she yanked the waxy flowers out of it and deliberately poured the water over my head, soaking my dress and flattening my hair.

I gasped as the cold—and stinky—water coursed down my back and into my shoes. Everything was sticking to me, and my eyes stung where my so-called waterproof mascara was running.

I was too stunned to speak. All I could think of was poor Jo’s beautiful vintage dress. And my own brand-new shoes. And the fact that no one had changed that water for
days
.

“Don’t
lie
to me!” The woman jabbed her finger at me, her nostrils flaring. “And you don’t vant to know vhat I’m about to do to that scumbag! Tell him Verbier is
of
f
! And so vill his balls be if I catch you vith him again!”

And then she turned and stormed out, just as two older ladies in crushed-velvet floor-length gowns were opening the door to come in. They took one look at me and backed out, their eyebrows nearly in their wigs.

I wanted to cry, but I was in shock. Every time I moved, something squelched, and the air conditioning was freezing. I squinched my eyes half-shut and risked a peep in the mirror: my hair was plastered to my head in the most unflattering way imaginable, making my ears seem enormous, and as if that weren’t bad enough, the water had turned the dress completely see-through. I wasn’t wearing Liza Bachmann Muffin Top Wranglers either.

Somewhere in the main hall, a bell rang and an announcer requested that the audience retake their seats for the beginning of the second half.

I gripped the edge of the basins with one hand and slapped my face with the other, hoping it would make my brain start working again. Quickly. What was I going to do? Even if I
wanted
to go and punch Rolf for this—which I was already doing in my
imagination—
there was absolutely no way I could go back into the
royal box
looking like I’d wet myself,
then
fallen in a lake.

I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the hideous outline of my thong in the mirror. You could see
everything
. Much as I longed to punish Rolf, I really really really
really
didn’t want Leo to see me looking like this. It would ruin everything. And as for his dad … His
royal
dad.

My coat was downstairs in the cloakroom. Could I grab it, then sit in that until my dress dried? The wild-eyed stranger in the mirror cringed.

No. No, I couldn’t. This wasn’t a student party. This was a black-tie gala, with actual celebrities, and photographers—

Oh, my God, the photographers outside!

I would have died inside all over again, but I didn’t have the luxury of time.

I knew what Jo would do. She would storm back in there and show Rolf up, teaching him a lesson and turning the whole thing into a brilliant anecdote. But she was confident and didn’t mind people staring at her, whereas people staring was, as everyone now knew, my absolute worst nightmare.

I didn’t want to do it—it was the one thing my dad had impressed on me, that decent people didn’t run away—but in my panicked state I couldn’t see what choice I had left. I was going to have to make a swift exit. Quickly, before Leo saw me. Thank God I had my bag—I could text him once I was safely out of the building, and pretend there’d been some emergency at home.

Which there would be, once I got back. I would officially be having a meltdown.

*

T
he cloakroom lady wouldn’t give me my coat at first; she practically accused me of stealing someone else’s ticket, and it was only when I told her exactly what was in the pockets (Oyster card, lip balm, dog treats—embarrassing, but they were in every coat I owned) that she handed it over. Her beady eyes, and the eyes of all the security guards, followed me through the front door until I was safely out of the Royal Opera House. My one stroke of luck was that the first wave of celebs going on somewhere else had left during the interval and now the photographers were busy wiring their pictures. They didn’t notice Prince Rolf’s “date” slinking out in the shadows.

At least when I was freshly soaked, there was an obvious reason for my disheveled state; but as I dried off, my hair just looked greasy and I smelled worse than Badger after a roll in the bushes. Even when I’d buttoned my coat up to my neck, I felt as if every single tourist in London was staring at me as I stumbled toward Trafalgar Square, my new heels scuffing and squelching on the pavement. Grace Wright would have said it was karma that I’d decided to give the feral cats a generous donation—which was still in my bag—so I was able to afford a cab home, although the first two refused to take me, on the grounds that I looked like I’d been dragged out of the fountains by Nelson’s Column.

Jo’s dinner with Marigold must have finished early, because I could hear her bellowing the opening number from
Chicago
as soon as I opened the front door; she tried to keep her rehearsals for her one-woman show to times when I was out, since I now couldn’t hear “All That Jazz” without twitching. As I reached the first landing, Jo let out a showstopping shriek, and Mrs. Mainwaring’s door popped open and Dickon’s head appeared over the top banister.

When they saw me, though, they both stared, said nothing, and vanished while I carried on trudging up the stairs.

Jo stopped singing the instant I staggered in, her jazz hands frozen in place.

“What happened to you?” She had one foot up on a kitchen chair and was wearing a silver trilby. “Don’t tell me Rolf pushed you in a fountain?”

“Half right.”

“Which half?”

I collapsed in a stinky heap on the sofa and told her. Even
Badger’s
usual affectionate greeting had been cut short after some tentative sniffing—warm flower water was a stench too far for him.

“That is the final straw! I’m going to phone that
pig
right now and tell him what I think of him and his harem of insane fembots,” said Jo, reaching for her phone with a black look. “If he thinks—”

“No! No,” I said. “Run me a bath instead. I can’t think while I smell like this.”

Jo hauled me up by the armpits and steered me into the bathroom, where she started to run a hot bath. Without a word, she poured a generous amount of her best bath oil into it. That bath oil only came out for contract terminations and dumpings. She was grinding her teeth in fury, and she hadn’t even mentioned the state of her dress.

“Get into that,” she said. “What did Leo say when you told him what happened?”

I paused, one shoe off, and pulled a face. “He doesn’t know. I texted him and said Badger had had an accident and I’d had to leave.”

“Why didn’t you tell him?” Jo demanded. “It’s not like it was your fault!”

“What, and let him see me like this? I didn’t want a big scene, I just wanted to get out of there.” With Jo looking at me like that, it did seem a bit … wet to have slid away like that. But at the time …

“There’s a difference between making a scene and—and—
bringing someone to their senses
.” Jo narrowed her eyes. “You don’t look as bad as you think. If that’d been me, no one would have noticed my appearance for the sight of Rolf weeping on the floor. Royal, schmoyal.”

I should point out that at that exact moment, Jo was wearing a silver trilby, gold hot pants, and Ugg boots. That was the trouble with really confident people. Their embarrassment scale was calibrated entirely differently.