To Marry a Prince (28 page)

As they met and followed, Richard took Bella’s hand and laid it gently on his velvet-jacketed arm,

‘Fifteen love to us,’ he murmured.

A terrible desire to giggle took hold of her, as they marched solemnly down the freezing cold, overfurnished room, and round the edge again to join up in fours. The servants just about managed to clear a wide enough path through the furniture for the column of four to pass. But Bella had begun to see what was going to happen next. And there was no way they were going to be able to march down that room eight abreast.

‘Someone’s going to get impaled on a suit of armour,’ she said, half fascinated, half appalled.

Richard kept a straight face. ‘It has been known. It is rumoured that someone forgot to clear away the piano one year and my Uncle Leopold marched straight over it, dragging his partner after him.’

Bella folded her lips tightly together. Her shoulders were starting to shake. Oh, God, I’m not going to be able to get through this lunacy without disgracing myself, she thought.

And then they did all join up in an eight, and the lady at one end of the line and the man at the other did indeed have to vault over occasional tables and slalom round chairs. Above the clatter of falling objets d’art and cries of anguish from those who had stubbed their toes, the King’s voice could be heard saying testily, ‘Keep time. Keep
time
, damn you.’

Richard bent his head sideways. ‘Don’t worry. He’s almost certainly talking to the piper rather than my mother,’ he confided in a whisper.

Bella’s ribs ached. She moaned. Suppressing laughter was becoming agony for her.

‘You’re a swine,’ she said conversationally, keeping her bright smile in place.

‘Yeah. But I know how to do this stuff. So,’ he went into a mobster voice, ‘you need me, baby.’

That was when the double doors at the far end were flung wide and they progessed, eight by eight, into what Bella could only describe as a baronial hall: high ceiling, banners, serfs gathered round the walls watching, the lot. She gasped and would have stopped dead, but for the momentum of the group which kept surging forward. She stumbled but Richard and George between them half lifted her off her feet, keeping her upright and moving until she had regained her balance.

‘Keep up. Keep up,’ muttered Prince George in a very good imitation of the King.

Bella gave a strangled gulp and her ribs started to hurt again.

The piper got to the far end of the hall and turned to face them. The eights all peeled off and formed squares, and the serfs – who, now she came to look, were just as well dressed as the Royal party – bundled on to the floor too.

The piper started to tap his foot. You could feel the whole room counting.
One
, two, three, four.
One
, two, three, four. And they were off, circling round to the right, and then back, hell for leather, like a cavalry charge.

Richard said over his shoulder, ‘Next, stick out your right hand, left round my waist. You’re going round in a star with the other ladies.’

Bella was still trying to assimilate this when he put his arm round her waist, flung her into the circle and was
galloping off, round again. And when they completed the circuit, he switched places with her and they went back and around the other way. Her head started to spin …

It seemed as if every time she learned how to do a move, and started to enjoy herself, the damn’ dance did something different. And did it fast. There was a good bit in the middle where you were allowed to stand still while other people did their thing. But sometimes you had to do your thing and that was torture. Richard was really good at sending Bella off into the fray, with a gentle push in the small of the back. But the other people in the set all seemed to know what they were doing, and helped too, reaching out a hand to steer her when it was feasible, giving her good clear hand signals when it wasn’t.

The music finally came to an end on a long chord and she and Richard were bowing to each other.

‘Curtsey,’ he mouthed.

‘What?’ But she looked sideways and saw what the women across the set were doing. Bella copied them and didn’t wobble too much at all.

‘I told you it would come naturally,’ said Richard smugly, taking her hand as she rose out of the curtsey. He tucked it under the crook of his arm. ‘I’m going to have to do lots of duty dances, but I’ve lined up friends and experts to take you through when I can’t dance with you. Have you got your dance card?’

‘A dance card? I’m supposed to have a dance card?’ Bella shook her head, caught between laughter and dismay. ‘What is this,
Gone with the Wind?
Georgia won’t believe it when I tell her.’

‘Pansy was supposed to have sent it to you. It has the list of dances in it and a small pencil.’

‘Well she sent me a paper mountain, but I don’t remember a dance card.’

‘Not a problem. There will be spares.’ He turned to his brother. ‘George, would you—?’

‘I’m on it.’ George disappeared into the throng like an eel and returned with the prize.

Richard squiggled his distinctive black R beside several dances and made sure that her other partners were both kind and expert. ‘You can dance with George,’ he instructed, ‘but not in the Duke of Perth, when he goes crazy, or the Irish Rover because he always gets lost.’

George agreed cheerfully. He didn’t seem worried. ‘Everyone has one dance that brings them to their knees. Actually, that’s half the fun of reels – the catastrophes.’

Richard sighed. ‘See what I mean? Dance with him if you must, but watch yourself.’

But it wasn’t George who brought about the disaster. That was all Bella’s own fault.

Her partners, briefed by Richard, got her through the figures by a combination of timely crisp instruction and sheer muscle power. She danced a thing called Postie’s Jig with a gentle-faced, middle-aged man, who was clearly an expert.

‘It’s an interesting dance,’ he told her in a soft Highland accent. ‘Like a piece of paper that keeps being folded in on itself. Two couples dance at the same time, while the other four dancers stand still at the corners
and help them round. Very pleasing when it’s well performed. It has balance.’

‘Um, good,’ said Bella doubtfully. She just wanted to scramble through it without falling flat on her face or poking someone’s eye out, but she didn’t tell her kindly partner that.

And they would have been fine, she was sure, if they had joined one of the friendly sets she had been dancing in up until then, where the other dancers were happy to give her an informal push in the right direction. But unfortunately she and her gentle partner were summoned to join the Queen’s set, in which Lady Pansy was also dancing. And Lady Pansy tried to help by shouting instructions at Bella across the set. Sometimes these conflicted with her partner’s. It was a nightmare, with Bella turning right when she should have gone left, blundering too far down the set, grabbing the hand of the wrong man when they came to turn in the middle … And then real disaster struck. They were dancing in the middle of the set, towards the Queen and her partner, in full regimentals. One couple had to make an arch; one had to go under it.

‘If you’re going
up
the set, you put your arms
up
,’ her kind partner whispered.

But Bella had no idea which direction was up. She thought she felt a tug and started to raise her arm, but Lady Pansy, standing at the top left-hand corner of the set, frowned and shook her head. So Bella snatched her hand back again – just as the Queen and her soldier lowered their heads to come through the arch they were expecting.

Well, Bella recovered but not fast enough. The Queen’s priceless tiara slid over one ear and started to fall.

It lasted only a moment, less than a bar of music. Bella tried to look over her shoulder but her partner forced her to dance on. So did everyone else, including the Queen, who for the rest of the dance held her tiara in place with the hand that she should have been giving to other dancers. Lady Pansy looked as if she would cry.

Afterwards everyone apologised. The Highlander was mortified, he could not understand it, nothing like that had ever happened to him on the dance floor before. He begged the Queen’s pardon again and again. Bella felt like a murderer.

Queen Jane, of course, could not have been nicer. ‘These things happen, Henry. It’s not the end of the world.’ And to Bella, ‘My dear, it couldn’t matter less. Postie is always fast and furious. At least no one was hurt.’

Which didn’t make Bella feel any better.

Prince George, when he heard, went into mourning. ‘You knocked Mother’s crown off and I missed it? Not even a photograph, since Father went and banned phones! Bugger, life’s unfair.’

The Queen re-attached her tiara and they danced for an hour and a half. Then dinner was served, the serfs at long trestles which were put up in the baronial hall, the Royal party in the dining room. Formal dinner with the King and Queen was not fun. There were rules about when you could eat and when you had to stop. Twice Bella had her plate whisked away from under her nose
before she had finished. Practised courtiers like Lady Pansy, she realised, hoovered their food in as soon as possible, to avoid exactly that.

‘You could have warned me,’ she said to Richard, on her left.

He grinned, unrepentant. ‘My father hates long meals. He wants to get this over with and go back to his engines. You watch. He’ll be out of the hall at midnight plus a nanosecond.’

‘Really?’

‘Maybe not quite a nanosecond. We all have to sing Auld Lang Syne and give three cheers for the King. But after that he legs it as fast as he can.’

‘So the party ends at midnight?’

He looked startled. ‘In practice, the King goes, the party gets going. Two parties, usually. The reeling will carry on till dawn but there’s an alternative gig in one of the barns for anyone under thirty. George is usually involved. Dodgy lighting, crazy music, that sort of thing. Do you want to go?’

Bella smiled straight into his eyes.

‘Do you want to?

‘Maybe for half an hour or so,’ he said, his voice suddenly thickened.

He took her hand under the table and held it so hard she could feel the pulse in his fingers.

She said softly, ‘Any chance of seeing you tonight?’

He looked so astonished that she caught herself saying, ‘No, of course not, I’m sorry. Silly thing to say. Not under your parents’ roof. Not with all those rules about when and where you can walk in the corridors …’

‘What do you think all those rules are about, for God’s sake?’

‘Um – tradition?’

‘Yup. A tradition that grew up so that everyone could get back to the right bedroom in the morning without being seen by anyone who could tell on them.’

‘
What?
’

‘Think about it. You spend the night with the lady of your heart. She may, or may not, be married. But anyway, you shouldn’t be there. So what happens if someone sees you creeping back to your own room? Well, they shouldn’t be there either, so it’s mutual blackmail. Works like a dream.’

‘You’re not serious?’

‘Trust me. No servant will set foot above the ground floor until eight o’clock, on express orders. Apparently, in my grandfather’s heyday, it could get like the rush hour. Mind you, he had a particularly libidinous set of friends.’

Bella shook her head. ‘So all these rules are just so you can behave disgracefully?’

‘Behave disgracefully and not get found out, yes.’

She looked severe. ‘It’s not very honest. Not sure I approve.’

His eyes glinted. ‘Tell me that and I’ll go back to my own room, I promise.’

He silenced her by carrying their clasped hands to his lips and feathering a quick kiss along the knuckles of hers, before tucking them back under the table again.

Bella gasped.

But the servants were removing the plates and she felt
someone’s eyes on her. When she looked up, she saw Chloe Lenane staring down the table at her with an expression almost of hatred. It was so unexpected that Bella blinked. Yet when she looked again, the previous ditzy vague expression was back. It was unsettling.

At a signal from the Queen, the ladies retired. Bella would have missed it if Richard hadn’t hissed, ‘Off you go, follow my leader.’

In the boudoir set aside for the female guests, Lady Pansy came up to Bella.

‘I see you found a different dress.’

She murmured something about the difficulties of packing when you were coming by train.

Lady Pansy gave her a sweet smile that made her eyes glisten like flaming arrows. ‘I do hope you’re enjoying yourself, dear. Just a word to the wise.’

‘Yes?’

‘Do be careful not to put yourself forward too much. This is the big event of the year for these people. They look forward to it for twelve months. The young girls, and not just the young ones –’ she tittered in a way that Bella suddenly found rather unpleasant ‘– all hope to dance with the Prince of Wales. Like a fairytale. Something to tell the children. It would be very selfish of you to monopolise him and spoil their evening.’

Bella was not going to tell her that it was Richard who had decided how many times they would dance together.