Little Lady Agency and The Prince (44 page)

‘I am, thanks,’ I replied.

‘Alex is worried about you, and absolutely
furious
with Nicky. But I think he’s going to make Nelson honorary head of the Hollenberg navy or something – wouldn’t that be fun? Nelson would look
marvellous
in one of those three-cornered hats!’

‘Yes,’ I said. Nelson in uniform. Of course.

‘Now,’ Granny went on, ‘do you have any suncream? I’ve run out.’

‘I do, but I gave it to Nicky, because he didn’t bring any. I think it’s in his cabin.’ I got up, wobbled slightly, and went to the door. ‘I’ll get it for you.’

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ she asked, putting out a hand to steady me. ‘I’ll come with you.’

She followed me through to Nicky’s stateroom, which was yet another splendid art deco hotel room in miniature. Or rather, I could see splendid aspects of it – the curving brass reading lamps, the crystal glasses – beneath the jumble of clothes, magazines and discarded towels strewn about the place.

Granny and I frowned. ‘As if the crew don’t have enough to do but tidy up after him. He needs a good talking-to.’

‘It’s here somewhere,’ I said, going over to the mahogany writing desk, and shifting papers and iPod paraphernalia. ‘I gave it to him this morning. It’s . . .’ My voice trailed away. Under the sports section of
The Times
was a red morocco-leather ring box.

‘What’s that?’ asked Granny at once. ‘Is that a ring box?’

‘Yes, I think it is,’ I said, picking it up. It was an old one, with gold lettering. ‘Shouldn’t this be in a safe or something?’ I flicked the little gold hook and opened it. On a bed of very old velvet, the colour of crushed raspberries, was the most enormous diamond I’d ever seen, surrounded by round petals of brilliant-cut sapphires. It was an antique setting, on a delicate band of platinum, and it flashed and sparkled in the sunlight coming through the porthole above the desk. It was so exquisitely perfect that it almost didn’t look real.

‘Crikey,’ I said. ‘Is that real?’

‘Let me see.’ Granny deftly removed the ring and scratched it against a glass. ‘Yes, that’s a real one, all right. Oh, a girl learns to check,’ she added, in response to my shocked expression.

‘Why on earth has Nicky got that?’ I wondered. ‘Do you think Imogen gave it back to him when he dumped her?’

‘I very much doubt it,’ snorted Granny. ‘Anyway, I think that’s a family piece. Alexander’s mother used to wear it.’ She turned to me with a curious look on her face.

‘What?’

‘Oh, I was just wondering . . .’

‘What?’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘there are only three women on this yacht. I doubt Nicky’s planning to give it to me, and it would be awfully precipitous for him to give it to Leonie after one day, even for Nicky, so . . .’ She raised her eyebrow. ‘Maybe it’s a thank-you gift for doing such a good job on his prospects?’

‘But this is an engagement ring!’ I blurted out.

Granny and I stared at each other.

‘Is it?’ I demanded. ‘Do you know anything about this?’

She shook her head. ‘Darling, I know he admires you more than he lets on, and I know Alexander thinks you’re the bee’s knees, but no one’s said anything to me. At least . . .’ She looked thoughtful.

Various flashes of conversation at home now came back to me. Had Granny been planning this all along? To throw me and Nicky together, so
I’d
be the suitable girl to marry him and bring decency and balanced accounting to the New Hollenberg? And instead of me training Nicky up to be an old-fashioned prince, had this been their way of introducing
me
to
his
lifestyle? The clothes, the dinners, the credit card – had it all been some kind of test?

That might explain why she looked both ecstatic and very shifty at the same time.

‘But we haven’t even . . .’ I faltered, embarrassed. It was utterly incomprehensible to me that Nicky the Playboy would even consider proposing to someone he hadn’t managed to get into bed, but maybe Nicky the Heir to the Throne had different criteria. I wasn’t all that up on royal marriageability. In fact, I was way out of my depth.

‘Kissed?’ asked Granny, lifting her elegant eyebrow in a conspiratorial manner.

‘Well, no, not exactly,’ I confessed. That moment in the car after dinner crackled in my mind. I could have kissed him on any number of occasions now, I realised, and he would definitely have kissed me back. In fact, some of the soul-baring moments we’d shared had been more romantic than a grope in a taxi would have been. ‘Sort of, but not like that, and we definitely haven’t . . . you know.’ I opened my eyes wide.

‘I see,’ said Granny solemnly. ‘Whatever you told him about respecting a woman must have sunk in, in that case. I’m most impressed, darling!’

I squirmed, despite the thudding of my heart. You try discussing your sex life with your grandmother, and coming to the grim conclusion that it’ll never match up to hers.

‘Well, what are you going to say?’ she asked, clasping my arms.

I hung my head, unable to think straight. What
was
I going to say? I couldn’t possibly marry Nicky, but I felt we’d become friends, if nothing else. What with our dysfunctional families and odd backgrounds, we understood each other and I’d been more honest with him than I had with anyone, Jonathan included. Maybe he
was
in love with me. Weirder things had happened and God knew I’d been cringe-makingly wrong about these things before.

‘I absolutely adore Nicky . . .’ I began, then ran out of words.

Granny peered at me, mistaking my inner turmoil for massive emotion-overload. ‘Melissa, darling! I know it’s very soon after Jonathan, and I’m sure Nicky would be happy to wait, if you needed more time to think, but I must tell you, this is the most sensible thing he’s ever done. Just tell me . . .’ She tipped my chin up, so she could see into my face with her cool blue eyes. ‘But you must tell me honestly, darling, because this is terribly important. Do you
love
Nicky?’

Oh, dear. I blinked hard, searching for the best words. It obviously meant a lot to Granny, me and Nicky. Maybe she saw it as the chance she and Alexander never had. But at the same time I was somewhat annoyed that Granny of all people should have been planning my future behind my back – just like Daddy and Jonathan!

‘Granny, of course I have feelings for Nicky, but if you must know I’m rather cross that you could be planning something like this without telling me!’

‘What?’ said Granny. ‘I don’t follow, darling. I really had no idea . . .’

We stared at each other, then we stared at the ring. Then back at each other.

‘Oh,
dear,
’ I said. ‘I know he’s a prince and everything . . .’

Granny tipped her head to one side, resting one feline cheekbone on her knuckles, and looked up at me, her mouth curving ruefully. ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘it’s not done me the slightest good, but let me at least give you the benefit of my hard-won experience. Let me tell you about me and Alexander . . .’

22

‘There are no such things as princes, not really,’ she began wryly. ‘And I have been courted by at least three in my time. They’re just men, and men with better excuses than usual.
Real
princes are normal chaps who treat you like a queen.’

‘But Alexander!’ I protested. ‘He’s a prince
and
he’s totally charming!’

Granny sighed. ‘I met Alexander when I was nineteen, when I was singing at the Cavalier Club off Regent Street after the war. I just got up on stage one night as a dare, when I was there on a date. I sang ‘Hard-Hearted Hannah’. The manager asked me to come back – and I said, why not? You would have loved the Cavalier Club, darling – it was all velvet drapes and huge crystal chandeliers, and you never knew who would be sitting on the next table. There’d be dukes, gangsters, actresses, all throwing back the cocktails and carrying on until breakfast the next morning. Quite scandalous, but terribly chic.’

‘Didn’t your parents
mind
?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I’m afraid to say I ran rather wild in those days. Daddy and Mummy were in the middle of their divorce by then, and it was all getting pretty unpleasant – put me off marriage for years. I bought a little flat in Kensington and let them get on with it. Besides, I had stacks of admirers. Champagne every night, and hot-house blooms from country estates sent to the back door, and men proposing . . .’ She smiled. ‘I was only nineteen, but I pretended to be twenty-two.’

I’d seen photographs of Granny singing in her figure-skimming lamé evening gowns and long gloves, lit up in a smoky spotlight, surrounded by dinner jackets and ladies in tricky little veiled cocktail hats. She might have been nineteen but she had the heavy-lidded expression of a thirty-two-year-old thrice-divorcée.

‘Alex came in one night with a group of friends, and they had the special front-row table. As soon as I saw him looking up at me, I felt I’d known his face for years. It was divine, just like electric shocks. We couldn’t tear our eyes away from one another, and I was almost too nervous to sing, but he waited until the club closed at five, and took me out for breakfast. We went to a cafe he knew that opened for the flower traders at Covent Garden – he bought me coffee and every single orchid on sale that morning.’

‘How romantic,’ I breathed.

Granny nodded. ‘It was terribly romantic. Anyway, I moved into the flat he kept in Mayfair and I became what you’d call his mistress. But,’ she added quickly, ‘it was a lot
more
than that, Melissa. We spent all the time he had in London together, going to the theatre, and to parties, and concerts. Alex talked about marriage, and where we’d live, and what our children would look like, and I absolutely longed to be swept away by him. We were desperately in love. But business came first. Hollenberg. His father was negotiating with practically everyone to get the family reinstated in some form and had some far more suitable specimens lined up than me.’

‘But, Granny, you were perfectly suitable!’ I protested. ‘Your father was a High Court judge!’

She pulled a face. ‘Well, lots of people were in those days, darling. And they were divorced, and Mummy was quite notorious, and I’d had . . . a few admirers, shall we say? But what you must understand is that despite all this, Alex and I were
very serious
about each other.’ She gripped my hand tightly, and I got the impression that we were now approaching the tricky part.

‘Alex started to spend a lot of time abroad, dealing with his family. They were all over the place – Paris, New York, the south of France – and I started to get a bit, well, cheesed off. Just like you were cross about Jonathan. I was about your age by now, darling, and in those days a girl was on the shelf by the time she was twenty-two. I wanted to know where I stood. I didn’t care for the idea of being his mistress for ever, twiddling my thumbs until he flew in. And I didn’t like the idea that being his
mistress
meant there was a full-time
official
post for someone else. I was quite the society girl by then – I’d given up singing, you see . . .’

‘After the hit record,’ I added.

‘Yeeees,’ said Granny. ‘And quite frankly, it wasn’t as though I was short of potential husbands.
Everyone
used to come to my bashes in Mayfair – I had chinless wonders hanging off the fire escape. Percy, your grandfather, was sending me some special peony he’d crossbred in my honour, three times a week, constantly taking me for tea at the Ritz,
begging
me to marry him. Not to mention a certain rather charming actor who shall remain nameless. Oh, yes, and
him.
I’d almost forgotten
him
,’ she added, more to herself, then stopped.

I held my breath.

‘Alex flew me to Paris on Valentine’s Day, in 1958. He said he had something to tell me. I thought he was going to propose, more fool me. He didn’t. He told me he was going to marry some Hungarian countess called Celestine – a second cousin, or something – because it would more or less guarantee them getting their castle back.’ Granny’s lips tightened, but I couldn’t tell who she was angry with: herself, I suspected. ‘He was upset, and I was
devastated
, but I think he expected we could carry on as normal, once I’d calmed down. Of course we couldn’t. That is
not
what I call princely behaviour.’ She twisted her mouth ruefully. ‘It didn’t get him his castle back in the end, either.’

‘So what did you do?’ I asked, though I think I already knew.

‘I flew home and married your grandfather. He knew all about Alexander, but he waited for me, and when he asked me again, I said yes.’

‘Did you
love
Grandad?’ I asked. I couldn’t bear to imagine Granny heartlessly marrying herself off to someone she didn’t love, just to get her own back. It just didn’t fit with the Granny I’d adored all my life.

She met my eyes, and, for the first time, we were seeing each other as women, with the same vulnerable hearts, and romantic but pragmatic blood in our veins. I knew whatever she said would be honest, and I braced myself for my opinion of her to be changed for ever.

‘Yes, I did,’ she said, after a pause. ‘Not the same way that I loved Alex, but I did love your grandfather. He was a sweet man, much older than me, you know, with grown-up children from his first marriage. But he was kind-hearted, and quite dry once you got to know him. He had his peonies, and his table tennis and someone to run his houses and his cellar, and I had the security and the company, and someone to beat at the crossword. And the title, of course.’ She tutted ruefully. ‘Quite nice to be an official Lady. It might not have been a whirlwind romance, but we had the sort of love that lasted thirty years, whether life was stormy or dull, and that counts for a lot, you know, Melissa. Respect.’

‘And what about Alexander? Did you stay in touch?’

Granny sighed, and didn’t answer at once. ‘It’s very hard, isn’t it, when people you love turn out to be not the way you hoped?’ She touched my hand, and I nodded sadly, knowing she meant Jonathan.