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The Ordinary Princess
It had to be a façade, surely? No one could be that perfect.
She’d messed up a promising career with a series of stupid blunders that had her spiralling down the ladder rather than climbing it, despite the hefty leg-up from her aunt. She had one last chance to redeem herself—she owed it to Jay to redeem herself—and that prickle of disquiet at the way his eyes had looked out of the magazine at her, seeming to taunt her with his invulnerability, suggested that this was the man to provide the story.
Nonsense, of course. He wasn’t taunting her. He was invulnerable and he knew it.
Nonsense it might be, but come evening she was standing outside his grand official London residence, staring up at tall, lighted, first-floor windows and wondering what he was doing up there.
Living up to his public relations image and working late into the night on matters of state?
Watching sport on the television, feet up, his supper on a tray after a hard day doing whatever it was that autocratic rulers did?
Best of all—career-wise—would be if he were entertaining, very discreetly, some lovely young woman.
A royal romance was always news. If she broke that story she’d be a media heroine overnight.
Not that a discreet young woman would go through the front door for everyone to see. She’d probably be driven into the mews at the rear, well away from prying eyes.
She crossed the road to check it out, her well-rehearsed ‘stray kitten’ story ready, just in case she was challenged by a security guard. As she hesitated at the entrance to the cobbled lane, wondering what on earth she thought she was doing, she heard something drop to the ground ahead of her.
A small bag.
She glanced up. Something darker was moving against the lighter stone of the building.
Not something. Someone.
Hardly the prince’s light of love, not climbing down a drainpipe. It had to be a burglar making off with state papers, or jewels. Imagination in overdrive, she took off down the lane without a thought for her own safety and launched herself at the shadowy figure as it jumped lightly to the ground, bringing the miscreant down with a flying rugby tackle.
They hit the cobbles, and Laura’s initial intention to yell for help was thwarted by the fact that she was momentarily winded. Besides, the burglar was making enough noise for both of them. Except it immediately became apparent that this wasn’t any ordinary burglar. Not if the high-pitched yell of fright was anything to go by.
This burglar was a girl, slight of figure and terribly young. And then, as her face was lit up by passing car headlights, she realised that she wasn’t any ordinary girl, either. It was a face she’d seen during her research on Prince Alexander. His niece. His sister’s youngest daughter, Princess Katerina Victoria Elizabeth.
‘Oh, sugar,’ she said.
The young princess, less restrained, was venting her feelings with scatological exactitude. ‘I suppose you’re Xander’s idea of a watchdog?’ she demanded, once she’d thoroughly relieved her feelings.
Xander? ‘Oh, you mean His Serene Highness. Er, well—’
‘He’ll give you the Order of Merit for this, I shouldn’t wonder. Second class.’
She stowed her curiosity as to the number of classes the Order of Merit boasted and, playing for time, went for stupid. ‘Sorry?’
‘In gratitude for breaking my ankle.’ And she moaned. ‘It’s the one guarantee that I won’t be doing this again any time soon.’
‘You’ve broken your ankle?’
‘No,’ she said, and moaned again. Louder. ‘You did that. When you flattened me.’
Stupid was right. ‘Oh, good grief. I’m so sorry, but I thought you were a burglar,’ Laura said, belatedly scrambling to her knees and taking a closer look. Princess Katerina was wearing a pair of serious boots—eighteen-hole jobs. Good support for her injured ankle, but they made an examination of the injury impossible. ‘Are you sure it’s broken?’ she asked, desperately hoping it might just be a bad sprain. ‘Which one is it?’
‘Does it matter?’ the princess demanded. Then, ‘It was the right ankle, okay? And of course I’m sure it’s broken. I felt it crack.’ She tried to sit up and cried out as she fell back.
Laura felt sick. ‘Can you get up? You need to get inside as quickly—’
‘Of course I can’t get up!’
‘If I help you up? You could lean on me—’
‘Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage? Look, just get some help, will you?’
The story of her life, she thought, pulling out her cellphone. ‘I’d better call an ambulance—’
‘No!’ She lifted her head. ‘Go to the house and ask for Karl. Tell him Katie sent you. And don’t tell anyone else what’s happened.’
Laura stripped off her jacket, folded it and tucked it beneath the girl’s head and shoulders. ‘I don’t like leaving you here on your own.’
‘I’ll be fine. Trust me. I’m not going anywhere.’
‘No. Look, I’m really sorry—’ The girl’s wince of pain as she lay back on the jacket brought her apologies to a premature end. ‘I’m going.’
The princess caught her hand. ‘Just bring Karl,’ she gasped, her face screwed up with pain. ‘No one else. He’s known me since I was a baby and I can persuade him to tell my uncle that I fell downstairs.’ There was a mute appeal in her eyes. ‘I’m not supposed to be out, you see.’
Somehow that didn’t come as a surprise. If her outing had been authorised she’d have left by a more orthodox route accompanied by appropriate security. However, since she had no intention of telling His Serene Highness that she’d broken his niece’s ankle, she was happy enough to reassure the girl.
‘I’ll bring him,’ she said. Then she grinned. ‘But only if you promise me you won’t tell anyone what really happened. I don’t relish the idea of being sued for assault and battery.’
‘It’s a deal.’ Princess Katerina started to laugh, then caught her breath as the pain cut in. ‘Please go.’
She didn’t want to leave the Princess, but the mews was quiet. She should be safe enough for a minute or two.
‘I’ll just be a minute, okay?’ The only answer was another groan and Laura turned and ran back down the street to the huge front door. She put her finger on the bell and kept it there until it was opened by a footman.
A footman!
‘Yes, miss?’ he enquired, looking down his nose in a manner he must have learned from the Prince.
‘May I speak to Karl?’ she asked politely. And prayed that he wouldn’t ask, Karl who? She should have asked the Princess that. It would help if she knew who, exactly, Karl was. Trevor was right. She would never make a journalist.
‘Who shall I say is calling?’ he replied.
‘It doesn’t matter who I am. Just get him, will you? It’s really urgent,’ she pressed, when the man’s appraising look—the kind that took in her general appearance and suggested she was kidding herself if she thought she was ever going to step foot over any threshold for which he was responsible—had gone on for a great deal longer than was polite. Then, crossing her fingers, she added, ‘Tell him Katie sent me.’ That did the trick. His expression did not change, but he instantly opened the door and stood back to let her inside.
‘Come in,’ he said, not so much an invitation as an order. Since she wanted nothing more than to step inside the Prince’s palatial London residence, she did as she was told. It was just as well she hadn’t been congratulating herself on her good fortune. She got no further than the porter’s room beside the front door. ‘Wait here.’
Not that she could concentrate on her surroundings. She was too worried about the Princess to absorb the finely carved mouldings, the squared black and white marble flooring, the elegant staircase that she glimpsed through the doors to the vast inner reception hall.
Okay, so she’d got that much.
But she was definitely too worried to congratulate herself that it had taken her less than twelve hours to breach the defences of this most private of royals. With a potential ally on the inside.
She’d been waiting less than thirty seconds when the door behind her opened, and she spun round prepared to spill out the disaster to some venerable old family retainer.
Instead she found herself confronted by the devil himself. The owner of the face that had been haunting her for the last twenty-four hours. The reason for her presence on the footpath opposite.
Even without the white tie and tails, the blue silk of an Order ribbon, there could be no doubt that she was in the presence of a man who knew he was born to rule. Even in what, for him, were undoubtedly casual clothes—linen chinos, an open-necked shirt, cashmere sweater—he still had an air of authority that made her wish she hadn’t listened to his niece but had gone with her first thought and called an ambulance.
‘Where is Princess Katerina?’
Well, she thought, that was royalty for you. Anyone else would have said, ‘Where is my niece?’ or ‘Where is Katie?’ But they never forgot that they were different. Never let the mask slip.
Prince Alexander hadn’t raised his voice. He didn’t need to. He spoke with the natural authority of his rank, leaving her in no doubt that he expected her to answer him swiftly and truthfully or suffer the consequences, and at this point Laura’s sympathies were all with the Princess. She could certainly see why she’d hoped to keep her escapade from her uncle. But there was no hope of secrecy now. The footman had done what he’d seen as his duty. And the Princess needed warmth and medical attention.
‘She’s outside. I’m afraid she’s broken her ankle.’
‘I see.’ That was it. The man was ice. She’d just told him that his niece was lying hurt on the pavement and he responded with a calm that sent a chill whiffling down her spine. ‘Show me.’
The footman held the door for them and he indicated, wordlessly, that she should lead the way. It was all she could do to stop herself from backing out as, equally wordlessly, she did as she was bid with a silent apology to Katie. So much for her friend on the inside.
‘She’s down there, on the left, in the mews,’ she said as he followed her into the street.
Except, of course, she wasn’t. The cobbled lane was empty. The Princess—and her favourite jacket—had disappeared.
CHAPTER TWO
LAURA came to an abrupt halt. ‘She was here,’ she said, looking around her in confusion.
The Princess might have realised that she could move after all—tried to make herself more comfortable while she waited—but she wasn’t anywhere within a hundred yards. If she could have moved that far, surely she’d have gone home? Even if home meant trouble.
‘I left her just here,’ she insisted, pointing to the spot where they’d both crashed to the cobbles.
‘With a broken ankle?’ Prince Alexander did not sound convinced. He glanced up at the nearby drainpipe. ‘How far did she fall?’ he asked, without waiting for explanations. He evidently knew his niece very well indeed.
‘She didn’t fall,’ she began, then stopped.
She had no wish to dwell on what—or who—had caused the injury. Besides, there were more important things to worry about. Like, what had happened to the Princess? Two minutes ago she’d been lying where they were standing. Injured, unable even to attempt to hobble to the front door. Now she’d vanished into thin air.
‘I left her just here,’ she said. ‘I put my jacket under her head and—’
‘It’s not here now,’ he said, cutting short her explanation.
‘I was just going to say that!’ Then, ‘Oh!’ She turned and stared up at the Prince in total horror as the reality of what must have happened sank in. ‘She’s been kidnapped, hasn’t she? And it’s all my fault!’
‘I doubt that.’ Prince Alexander appeared totally unmoved by her dramatic declaration. Or the fate of his niece. Clearly he didn’t understand what she was telling him.
‘Yes, really!’ she insisted. It was no good. She’d have to own up. ‘Look, I saw her climbing down the drainpipe and I thought she was a burglar, so I tackled her to the ground.’ His dark brows rose imperceptibly. Actually, putting it baldly like that it did seem pretty unlikely, she realised, but after the briefest pause she pressed on with her confession. ‘That’s when she broke her ankle. As I said, my fault. I didn’t want to leave her—’
‘But she insisted?’ Then, without giving her an opportunity to reply, ‘I wasn’t actually referring to your culpability, merely to your reasoning.’
What?
‘Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Princess Katerina told me that she wasn’t supposed to be out. I get the picture, okay? You’re mad at her and she’s in trouble. But that scarcely matters under the circumstances. She’s disappeared and you have to do something. Now!’
‘I’m sorry, Miss—’ He paused, offering her an opportunity to introduce herself.
‘Varndell,’ she completed quickly. She was beginning to suspect that this was a man who wouldn’t do anything until the social niceties had been satisfied. No matter what the emergency. ‘Laura Varndell. But I really don’t think—’
‘Alexander Orsino,’ he replied, offering his hand. ‘How d’you do?’
That was it. Enough.
‘This isn’t a cocktail party!’ she declared furiously, ignoring his hand. ‘And I know who you are. All I want to know is what you’re going to do about finding your niece!’
‘Nothing while I’m standing in this alleyway,’ he informed her, his voice cool enough to freeze a whole pitcher of cocktails. ‘If you’ll come back into the house—?’
Ice? Had she thought the man was made of something as warm as ice?
‘I don’t want to go back into the house!’
What was she saying!
Hadn’t she been standing on the pavement trying to come up with some plan to get herself invited inside? Her whole career depended upon it. Possibly. But right now Princess Katerina’s disappearance took precedence.
‘I want you to call the police—or Special Branch—or the Diplomatic Protection Squad. Right now!’ she demanded, when he didn’t leap to her command.
‘And how do you suggest I do that?’ he enquired, apparently unperturbed by the crisis.
The ‘serene’ bit of his title wasn’t just for show, apparently. But this wasn’t a time for serenity. It was a time for panic.
‘Shout?’ he offered, when she didn’t help him out.
The air left her lungs with a little whoosh, deflating along with the rest of her. ‘No, sorry—of course not,’ she muttered. Then she laughed. Well, it was more of a giggle, really, but even so quite unforgivable under the circumstances. ‘I don’t appear to be thinking very clearly.’ Which had to be the understatement of the year. ‘I’m not used to this kind of thing.’
‘You’ve had a shock, Miss Varndell, one for which my niece will, in due course, apologise. In the meantime I really do think you should come inside. Take a moment to recover.’
It was hysterics, of course. The desperate urge to giggle. In some small rational part of her brain she recognised that. This man’s niece had been kidnapped and all he was concerned about was that a total stranger might have suffered a little shock.
Noblesse oblige was safe in the hands of His Serene Highness Prince Alexander Michael George Orsino.
And why would she be complaining, exactly?
She’d got her wish. The Prince was inviting her into his home and handing her a scoop on a plate. The inside story on a royal kidnapping was just what she needed to get back into Trevor McCarthy’s good books. The very least she could do was to say ‘thank you’ very nicely and let His Serene Highness take her inside so that she could do her research in comfort.
While she was recovering.
Slowly.
So that she could watch the story unfold around her.
‘Thank you,’ she said, as nicely—if somewhat breathlessly—as she knew how. ‘I do seem to be feeling a little bit shaky.’
One moment it was an act, the next it was nothing but the truth as the Prince took her elbow in his palm and directed her firmly towards his front door. His manner suggested that, thoughtful though his invitation had appeared, he’d had no intention of letting her go anywhere until he’d grilled her about her involvement in his niece’s disappearance.
She swallowed.
It would make great copy, she reminded herself.
Once she’d got bail.
He paused as they reached the lights of the elegant porticoed entrance, glancing down at her, his devilish eyebrows drawn down in the slightest frown and, for just a moment, she thought those dark eyes could see right through her. Read her mind.
‘You’ve grazed your cheek, Miss Varndell,’ he said. She instinctively lifted her hand to check, but he caught her wrist, stopping her. ‘And your knuckles.’
‘It’s nothing,’ she said automatically, her expensive boarding-school having instilled the stern lesson that ladies did not make a fuss.
Fortunately, Alexander Orsino ignored her stoicism.
‘I’ll get someone to see to them,’ he said, every inch the autocrat.
He paused to speak briefly to the footman in a language that wasn’t quite Italian, or French, but a Montorinan dialect that her brain wasn’t quite up to unscrambling at such speed. It was already fully occupied.
The man bowed in acknowledgement and backed away while Prince Alexander, his hand still welded firmly to her elbow, led her towards a wide curving staircase without another word.
She should be looking around, she thought, as she attempted to keep a grip on reality. She should be taking mental notes. But she was having trouble enough just catching her breath.
The man was right. She had to be in shock. That would explain why she had the oddest feeling that she’d stepped into the set of an operetta, with its sweeping staircase, crystal chandeliers and very superior footman wearing black tails.
Add to the mix a cold-hearted prince, a peasant girl and a missing princess—there were all the ingredients for a fairy tale frivolity.
The clothes were all wrong, of course. Peasant girls wore dirndl skirts and embroidered blouses—at least in operetta—while she was wearing a pair of extremely functional cargo pants and a sweatshirt of such antiquity that whatever words had originally been splashed across her bosom had long since faded to illegibility.
Not that the Prince, with his open-necked shirt and cashmere sweater, was getting more than three out of ten for effort. Didn’t he dress for dinner, for heaven’s sake?
Where were his standards?
She dragged herself back from the beckoning arms of hysteria as he opened a door and ushered her into a book-lined room that clearly doubled as sitting room and study.
Here, the baroque evaporated and they were back in the twenty-first century. Computers, a couple of large sofas, a functional desk and enough paperwork to keep an average-sized business going for a month. But running a small country presumably entailed a vast amount of paperwork, and for just a moment she felt a twinge of sympathy for the man. No time to put his feet up with the television, or a pretty girl for this prince.
‘Brandy?’ he offered.
‘What?’ Distracted, she turned back to the Prince. ‘I think the princess’s welfare is more important right now. What are you going to do about finding her?’ she asked. But politely. She suspected that she’d already stretched her luck to breaking point.
‘Nothing. I know where she is. Please make yourself comfortable, Miss Varndell,’ he continued, indicating one of the sofas.
‘You know?’
‘More accurately, I know where she’s going. My niece wished to go to a club with some friends. I refused to give permission. She is, after all, under age.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve despatched her security officer to bring her home.’
She stared at him. ‘Are you crazy? Weren’t you listening? She had a broken ankle!’
‘Are you absolutely sure about that?’ he replied as he took her hand and placed an exquisite crystal glass in it, closing his long fingers around hers until he was certain she had it safely. Long, slender fingers, one of them bearing a heavy gold signet ring embossed with his personal coat of arms. ‘Did you see it for yourself?’
She blinked, looked up. ‘See what?’
‘Princess Katerina’s ankle?’ he prompted.
‘Oh. Well, no, she was wearing boots, but she said—’
She’d said it was broken—had groaned convincingly. Laura subsided on to the sofa as she realised that, once again, she’d been played for a fool.
‘Oh, I see. You’re suggesting that she was just pretending. Playing hurt to get rid of me while she made good her escape.’
‘I would say it’s more likely than a chance kidnapping, wouldn’t you?’
It would certainly explain why she’d insisted on being left where she was rather than attempting, with help, to make it inside, which would have been her own choice under the circumstances, no matter how painful. She took a sip of the brandy, felt the steadying warmth as it slipped down.
She’d been very convincing.
‘How can you be so sure?’ she asked.
Prince Alexander lifted one eyebrow the merest fraction of a millimetre as he poured another measure for himself.
‘Oh, I see. She’s done this before.’
‘Not Katerina. She wouldn’t have managed it twice,’ he assured her in a tone that left her in no doubt he was telling the truth.
‘So how do you—?’ And then, in a flash of intuition, she realised that the Princess was not the first member of the Royal House of Orsino to have made a break for freedom. Prince Alexander might have had something of a reputation as a young man, but he’d only been following a trail blazed by his older sister.
‘She not only looks like her mother, but has apparently inherited her laissez-faire attitude to personal behaviour,’ he admitted stiffly. ‘You have my sincerest apologies for the fright you’ve been given, Miss Varndell. My niece will make her own apologies in due course.’
Under normal circumstances two Miss Varndells were about as much as she could take before she begged to be called Laura. Outside, on the pavement, she might have begged. Inside, his formality made such a request unthinkable.
‘That’s not important. I’m just relieved that she’s not in danger.’ Then, ‘This security character—he’s not going to haul her out of the club, is he?’ She imagined how humiliated she’d feel under such circumstances. ‘It’ll only make her more resentful,’ she began. Then stopped. ‘I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.’
‘No, it isn’t.’ Then, with the faintest crease softening the corners of his eyes, ‘But if you’ll forgive me for saying so, it’s somewhat sexist of you to assume that her security officer is male.’
A crack in the ice? He was a lot more attractive when he smiled. Almost human.
‘Did you really think I’d send some uniformed heavy to barge in and drag her home?’ The smile deepened in response to her embarrassed flush. ‘There’s no need to answer that. I may be a monster—my niece certainly believes so—Miss Varndell, but I was once a young monster with my own problem with rules.’
‘But you’re still going to have her brought home.’
‘Certainly.’ Then, ‘You have some objection?’
‘It’s not my place to object. I just think that making a public spectacle of the girl isn’t likely to improve matters.’
‘You’re suggesting that with a proper chaperon she should be allowed to stay for a while?’
‘A chaperon? Heaven forbid! I’m sure she’d rather come home than submit to that,’ she said. Just to see how deep the crack went. ‘Poor girl.’
‘Scarcely that,’ he replied, abruptly losing the smile. Not very far, then.
‘There’s more than one way to experience poverty,’ she muttered, but not quietly enough, and his eyebrows rose with sufficient alacrity to indicate that he was unused to having his actions questioned. Especially since he clearly thought he was being incredibly relaxed about the whole matter.
‘You’re suggesting emotional impoverishment?’ he demanded.
‘I wouldn’t be that impertinent.’
‘Oh, I think you would.’