To Marry a Prince (7 page)

But he interrupted. ‘Do you jog?’

‘What?’

‘Jog. Run. Exercise.’

‘Oh,
jog
. No.’

‘Ah.’ He seemed to be thinking. ‘Look, do you know Battersea Park?’

‘I suppose so,’ she said, puzzled.

‘I’ll be running there tomorrow morning. Meet me on the bridge over the lake at … let’s say, ten to eight.’

‘Bridge over the lake. Right.’ Bella couldn’t remember a bridge and had only the haziest recollection of a lake. But there had to be a map somewhere that showed it.

‘I’ve got a really full schedule tomorrow. I may not be able to wait, if you’re not there.’

Bella stiffened. ‘Wouldn’t it be simpler just to put the phone in the post?’ she said frostily.

‘But then I wouldn’t get to see you again,’ he said, redeeming himself a bit. ‘No, let’s try to meet up tomorrow. If we don’t manage to meet, then I’ll have it sent round. Give me the address.’

She did and he rang off. Bella took the phone back to Lottie.

‘Thanks.’

‘Asked your address this time, did he?’

‘I thought you weren’t listening.’

Lottie gave a naughty grin. ‘Didn’t need to. Dream Girl.’

‘
What?
’

‘That’s what he called me when he thought I was you.’

Bella could feel herself blush, and glared at her friend. But Lottie was unrepentant. She looked knowing. ‘So where’s he taking you?’

‘He isn’t,’ snapped Bella, and banged off to call her mother, without telling Lottie one single thing more.

Lottie wasn’t a morning person. She still hadn’t surfaced by the time Bella let herself out of the flat the next day. So she didn’t have to lie about where she was going. She wasn’t sure that she
would
have lied, if Lottie had been up and feeling nosy. But she was really glad that she didn’t have to decide.

It was a crisp morning, with a heavy dew making the grass sparkle in the garden squares. But when the sun came up, it was dazzling, hitting her straight between the eyes again. After yesterday, though, she had come prepared. She fished sunglasses out of the pocket of her borrowed coat and marched stoutly over Chelsea Bridge.

It took her longer to get to the park than she had expected and the bridge wasn’t easy to find once she got there. It turned out to be reached via a smallish path, overhung by evergreens. By the time she finally found it, her watch said it was after eight. So maybe he wouldn’t still be there, she thought, remembering his warning. Her first instinct was to break into a run.

Then she thought of another of Georgia’s maxims: a lady may be late but she is
never
rushed. Bella laughed out loud and slowed down, thinking: what the hell? He’s probably gone. And if he hasn’t – well, given the disasters when we met, I’m not rushing up all pink and
panting the second time he sees me. Granny Georgia, she felt, would be proud.

But still she strode out briskly. And when she arrived, he was there.

Or, at least, she thought it was him. Bella couldn’t be absolutely sure. Tall man, running on the spot, navy blue jogging pants and hooded sweatshirt, wearing wrap-around shades. She frowned, trying to impose a silk shirt and wicked laughter on that lithe figure in the early morning sun. Was it? Wasn’t it?

And then he saw her and she had her answer. He broke into a great grin and jogged down the path to meet her.

‘You made it!’

‘Hi,’ said Bella. Now they were face to face she found she felt awkward. Did they shake hands? Kiss on the cheek? High five?

He had no such hesitation. He gave her a big hug.

‘Nrrgh,’ said Bella, winded. Though it wasn’t just the bear hug that was making her breathless.

He steadied her – for which she was grateful; her head was definitely swimming a bit – and let her go.

It didn’t make any difference. Even through Lottie’s coat and woolly gloves, his touch made her tingle. Bella shivered involuntarily.

‘You’re cold. Come on, let’s walk.’

She fell into step beside him. Actually, that was a bit of an overstatement. He strode out and she kept up by means of a sort of skip step every few paces. She was not a short woman but he was so much taller that he naturally outpaced her. It wasn’t comfortable.

‘When did you find your phone had gone?’

She told him about Lottie and retracing her steps through the flat. She didn’t tell him Lottie was not going to forget him calling her ‘Dream Girl’. After all, this could be the last time they met, he might never call her that again, so it wouldn’t matter, would it?

‘And how are you? No ill effects?’

‘From the champagne or the low-flying pot plants?’ And Bella told him about her morning-after scorpion scare.

He laughed so hard he actually stopped walking for a moment.

Grateful, so did she. He’d set a punishing pace and she had been racing along even before that. She was aware of the beginnings of a stitch in her side.

‘You’re a joy,’ he said when he could speak. ‘A total joy. I’ve never met anyone like you.’

‘Just accident-prone.’

‘
Creatively
accident-prone. You must have a very rich inner life. Scorpions!’ And he was off again, laughing helplessly.

‘Well, until about five days ago, scorpions were a clear and present danger for me,’ Bella pointed out.

‘I’d forgotten that. Has it been difficult for you, readjusting?’

They had started to walk again.

‘Not difficult exactly. But – well, I keep feeling I’m out of step, you know? I looked at a magazine in the hairdresser’s and didn’t know half the celebrities in it. I mean, I just didn’t recognise them.’

‘You’re a celebrity watcher?’ He sounded incredulous.

‘Not particularly. But they’re everywhere, aren’t
they? If you watch TV or read a newspaper, anyway. And, for nearly a year, I haven’t.’

‘Oh, right. Culture shock.’

‘And how! I’ve got out of the habit of living with lots of people. I nearly freaked when I went shopping on Saturday. And as for the party … that’s why I retreated into the courtyard. All those people were doing my head in.’

‘Sounds reasonable to me.’

‘Yes, well—’ Bella felt suddenly shy. She’d told him all about making a prat of herself over
Francis
, for heaven’s sake. As if he were an agony aunt, instead of a sexy guy at a party. ‘You were very kind.’

He stopped. ‘Kind? No. Call it fellow feeling.’

She searched his face. He seemed to mean it but …

‘Why?’ she said doubtfully. ‘Have you done the year away thing?’

‘No. Or rather, yes, I do it all the time. I travel a lot, you see. Abroad, mostly. When I come back, everyone expects me to get off the plane and start right on trucking, like nothing’s happened. Because, of course, nothing has – to them.’

He travelled a lot? Banker? International lawyer?

Before she could ask, he said, ‘It’s disorienting. Well, it disorients me. And it can make you feel really lonely.’

‘Lonely,’ she echoed. ‘Yes. Yes, that’s it.’

‘You’re not the person they knew, that’s the trouble.’

‘Ain’t that the truth? A year ago, I’d have shopped till I dropped. And danced all night.’

He grinned and started to walk. ’It will come back. People don’t change fundamentally.’

‘Do you think?’ She was doubtful. ‘Never?’

‘Not in my experience.’

It didn’t sound like that experience had been good. Bella looked at him sharply, but those massive shades hid his expression and he didn’t say anything more.

‘Well, I hope I at least get my phone habit back,’ she said brightly. ‘Lottie never moves without hers.’

‘Oh. Yes.’ He rummaged in the pocket of his hooded jacket. ‘Here you are.’

In the morning sun, the phone looked very sparkly and
very
pink.

‘Thank you,’ said Bella, faintly embarrassed. ‘I hunted everywhere for that yesterday.’

‘I was starting to think that you’d written it off.’

‘No way.’ She was horrified. ‘My life is in that phone. Or, at least, my life up to ten months ago.’

‘So why did it take you so long to call?’ he asked curiously.

She almost said: because I had to call my mother and I didn’t want to think about it. But you don’t have conversations like that at 8.30 in the morning while striding round a public park. So she said vaguely, ‘Oh, life started happening.’

Through the autumn trees she could see a brisk breeze ruffling the waters of the lake. They were walking through an overgrown part of the park and a man in a tweed cap and Barbour was peering through the bushes at the ducks on the lake, stamping his feet and slapping his gloved hands together. His breath was like a puff of smoke in the cold air. So was Bella’s, when she looked.

She pointed out, ‘Isn’t there a café by the lake? We could get a coffee.’

‘Won’t be open yet,’ he said firmly, though she had the impression that he would have said no anyway. ‘We just need to step out briskly. That’ll warm you up.’

And she was back to a straight choice between trotting to match his pace or breaking into a hop, skip and a jump to catch up with him every few yards. It was not conducive to conversation. And that stitch in her side was threatening again. She stopped dead.

‘Look,’ she said to his back, ‘I told you, I don’t jog. What’s the point of tearing round the place like this? Can’t we go somewhere and just, well, talk a bit?’

He turned those mask-like shades on her for a thoughtful moment. Then he said, ‘Talk? OK. Let’s go this way.’

Coffee
, thought Bella. Maybe even hot buttered toast. She worked hard not to dribble at the prospect.

He turned out of the overgrown path, past a grove of what looked like giant banana plants, towards a big, open ride with a Dickensian lamp-post on one corner. There were more people here: mothers taking children to school and walking dogs at the same time; purposeful joggers; and even more purposeful people walking as part of their journey to work. You could tell them by the briefcases, headphones and grim jawlines. A couple of rollerbladers swooshed past, too fast for Bella to make out whether they had briefcases or, worse, school uniforms.

‘Here,’ he said.

And, grabbing her hand, he ran her through the
pushchairs and dog walkers, up the long path, into the middle of the big central circle and then up the steps of the large, deserted bandstand.

The bandstand?

He dropped her hand and strode over to the wrought-iron railing, beaming. Bella took her sunglasses off and stared at him in disbelief.

He turned. ‘What?’ he said, plainly surprised. ‘You wanted to talk. You said you did.’

‘Not,’ said Bella with restraint, ‘to an assembled multitude. You look as if you’re about to make a speech.’

‘What do you mean?’

She gestured helplessly. A group of women with pushchairs stood talking at the end of one of the paths. The man with the flat cap was reading a park notice. Half a dozen rollerbladers were doing circuits of the bandstand, whooping and cheering each other on. A spaniel lolloped after them, barking, its curly ears flying wide. Bella swung round, watching it all until it made her dizzy, and then she fell back against the ironwork balustrade beside him. If he’d rung a handbell, she thought, they’d all have gathered round and listened.

‘I was sort of hoping for a table in a corner somewhere and something hot to drink.’

He didn’t seem to hear. He was drumming his fingers on the ironwork, scanning the park as if trying to commit it to memory.

‘I like this place. It’s so full of life. People going about their own business, in the same way as they have for a couple of hundred years. Reminds me of pictures in our old children’s books in the nursery.’

Nursery? thought Bella. Sounded a bit grand. Or possibly grand-in-the-past, fallen-on-hard-times way, like Granny Georgia. Though Silk Shirt didn’t look as if he had a problem paying his clothes bill. On the other hand, she herself had gone to that party looking like a million dollars and it was all borrowed or second-hand from Oxfam.

She said abruptly, ‘Who
are
you?’

He looked down at her then. He seemed startled.

At once, she was flustered. ‘I mean, where do I write my thank you note for returning my phone?’

‘Oh, that. Don’t worry about it. I’m just glad to have got it back to you.’ He added wickedly, ‘In fact, very glad. My friends were starting to comment on my having a pink phone that I kept checking.’

Did that mean he had
wanted
her to call?
Wanted
to meet her again? Bella looked at him doubtfully. She had to narrow her eyes against the low sun. He did not take off his shades. It was hopeless. She could not read him.

And he still had not told her his name. Lottie was probably right. The man probably fancied a mild flirtation; an assignation that couldn’t get too heavy. Oh, well. No harm done, and at least she’d got her phone.