The Prince's Bride

by Sophie Weston

  “Oh. That.”

  “I know the press gave you a bad time over your father’s case.”

  Hope shrugged. “That was a long time ago.”

  He studied her expression, looking arrested. “But I thought ... People spat at you. It sounded appalling.”

  He looked so worried that Hope took his hand in both of hers. “Not as appalling as having my father locked away in prison. It was nasty at the time. But I’m over it. Nobody’s going to spit at me because I’m dating you, are they?”

  Jonas looked down at their clasped hands. “I thought that was half the problem. The risk of press intrusion.”

  Hope shook her head. “No.”

  “I’ve dreaded the gossip columnists and the paparazzi. It’s sort of inevitable and I knew – thought – they’d hurt you badly. I couldn’t bear to bring all that up for you again.”

  “I did tell you, I’m not a paparazzi victim. Maybe once, but I was very young and the situation was horrible. I’ve grown up since.”

  He swallowed.

  She swung their clasped hands gently. “Look at me, Jonas.”

  He did, scanning her expression.

  “There are worse things in the world than gossip columns,” Hope said steadily. “I can cope.”

  He let out his breath in a great whoosh of astonished relief. “So you can face the whole world knowing that you’re dating a prince?”

  She held his gaze. “More than that.”

  He grew very intent. “Explain!”

  The moment of choice, then. It was here. Hope disengaged her hand. She didn’t know what to say.

  Jonas had proposed to her in this very room. But it had been a spur of the moment thing. How could she be certain that his feelings weren’t the result of a guilty conscience because he knew he’d hurt her? Half lust, half good manners and wholly temporary!

  Then she remembered their night in the forest hut. The way he’d got up to feed the fire and warmed her clothes for her in the morning.

  And her last fear winked out. Good manners, certainly. Lust, no question. But much, much more than that. And she’d recognized it too, back then. He might not have told her in words that he was falling in love with her. But he had shown her, again and again. She just hadn’t understood.

  Well, she did now. Hope felt as if she had come out of a suffocating fog.

  She said carefully, “Do you remember telling me that you didn’t have a concept of home?”

  His eyes narrowed. “I remember.”

  “It wasn’t true.”

  That startled him. “What do you mean?”

  “Your concept of home is dodgy supper and a bed for the night in the Antons’ villa. With me.”

  The silence stretched between them as if time had stopped.

  At last Jonas cleared his throat. “Yes. It is.”

  She went back to him and put her hands on his shoulders, looking deeply into his eyes. “I do trust you. I always have. I just – lost sight of it. Until now.”

  He looked stunned. Then he said, as if he didn’t quite believe it, “Does that mean you’ll marry me?”

  “Yes.”

  His arms went round her then. They were like a vice. He kissed her until she could hardly breathe.

  When he raised his head, his face, his whole body, seemed alight.

  “I had a very careful speech prepared. In fact several alternatives. All wasted.” He sounded gleeful as he felt in his pocket and brought out a small laminated envelope. He dropped its content into his palm and looked up at her. “I found this and thought of you. Was I right?”

  He held it out to her. Hope stared, utterly silenced. It was a very simple ring, a single stone, faceted and glowing with lights of spring leaf and young shoots, alternating with cosmic darkness. It was like looking into a forest lake, full of mystery. It would be like wearing their forest closeness on her hand.

  “You were right,” she said, hardly above a whisper.

  She held out her hand and he slid it onto her finger. He kissed the back of her hand, then her palm and then gathered her into his embrace.

  “This,” he said with satisfaction, “is going to be one spectacular sunrise.”

  She jumped. He was right. The sky had already lightened considerably. There were streaks of lemon and apricot behind the cityscape.

  “Are we going onto the terrace to watch it?”

  “Do you want to?”

  “Yes.”

  But he brought her his thick coat and dropped it round her shoulders before he would let them go out into the autumnal dawn. They stood by the parapet as the horizon turned gold, he with his arm protectively around her shoulders, she with her right hand in his jacket pocket to keep warm, and her left enclosed in his own. They had never felt so close.

  “I love my ring,” she murmured. “What is it? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  He kissed her hair. “Nor me. It’s called a chrome tourmaline apparently. I started looking for a ring that day you didn’t come into Liburno with me. I knew it had to be special. I found this ring in an exhibition. It said Hope to me the moment I saw it.” He added ruefully, “So I had to have it, even though I knew it might never be more than a souvenir of what might have been.”

  Her heart turned over. “Oh, love.”

  He looked down at her. “But I had no idea how much I had to learn.” He held her hand against his lips as if he would inhale her. “I still can’t quite believe you said yes.”

  Hope thought her heart would burst. She wrapped her arms round him and said fiercely, “Take me to bed. Now, please.”

  He did.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jonas insisted that the first thing they needed to do was tell their friends and family that they were engaged.

  “Not that my father will be surprised. I told him last week that I was going to try to persuade you. Formally I need his permission.”

  “He might say no.” Hope was teasing but his reaction startled her.

  Jonas grinned evilly. “Got it covered. He either says yes and I stay a prince, or he says no, I duck out of the succession and you don’t have to worry about being a Serene Highness.”

  “You’re joking.”

  But she saw that he wasn’t. “I think I may be out of my depth in the royalty department,” she murmured.

  “Stick with me, babe. I’ve got your back.”

  But the Hereditary Prince sent her a handwritten note welcoming her to the family and inviting her to make an extended stay in the Palace before the formal announcement of the engagement. He suggested they did that at Jonas’s Birthday Ball on February 14th.

  “That’s because it’s already in the diary,” said Jonas. “Fine by me. What about you?”

  “Do I have to hide my lovely ring until then?”

  He hugged her. “Never unless you want to.”

  The Crown Princess also wrote, suggesting dates when Liburno Cathedral was available for a royal wedding and promising to brief Hope on protocol, court etiquette, royal obligations, important charities and local customs, including national dances.

  “It sounds like a degree course,” said Hope faintly. She didn’t say that she’d always thought she would marry in the village church, as her ancestors did.

  But Jonas looked at her shrewdly. “Bride gets to choose where she marries,” he said crisply. “The interfering woman’s not going to make your life a misery. You want to marry from Hasebury Hall and walk to that church, don’t you?”

  Her eyes widened. He touched her face gently. “I’ll see her off. Should have done it long ago. We marry wherever you’re happiest.”

  Her eyes misted. “Love you so much.”

  And Jonas made love to her with dedicated skill, affection and just enough humour to save her from drowning.

  Jonas had to travel nearly all the time now. They talked every day, though, and in London they spent all their free time together.

  Hope began to find his cufflinks on her nightstand after black
tie outings. And when he left early to fly to Copenhagen or Rome or Beijing, she would find little notes he’d left for her on the kitchen counter. They all ended the same. “Still learning. Love you. J”

  Still, Hope had to go to Combe St Philip alone to deliver her news. She was touched by how pleased Max was at the decision and overwhelmed by the exuberant rejoicing of Flora and Ally, especially as Ally was back living with her parents in Combe St Philip, having lost her job on Celebrity magazine.

  They had a girls’ celebration picnic in front of the log fire in the shabby old library one evening and toasted the engagement.

  “Our friend the Princess.”

  Hope pulled a face and shared the Crown Princess’s suggested training programme. By the time she got to folk dancing, Flora was hugging her middle and moaning, “No more, no more, my ribs hurt,” and Ally had got the hiccups from laughing.

  It cheered Hope but she admitted, “Jonas says ignore her but I think she may have a point. She’s been doing the royal stuff for a long time. I’m going for a visit after Christmas.”

  Ally and Flora looked at each other.

  “Get everything important sorted before you go?” suggested Ally.

  “There’s Jonas, and Max and us too. Yay for Team Hope,” said Flora, raising a glass to solidarity.

  “You and Jonas fix the date with St Philip’s. I’ll help with the press stuff. Heaven knows, I’ve been doing it long enough. Flora will do the food.”

  Flora nodded dreamily.

  “You can organize your own wedding. You know how. Between us we can see off twenty Crown Princesses. Go us!”

  Hope gave thanks for Team Hope regularly when she arrived in San Michele.

  The Palace turned out to be a mediaeval fortress, with a Hapsburg ballroom extension that was twice as large as the original castle. Every staircase was grander than the last. Hope clocked two of marble and one of intricately carved oak within ten minutes of her arrival. And every room she entered seemed more gilded and glittering than the last.

  Footmen in olive green tail coats with gold brocade waistcoats led her through bewildering corridors every time she emerged from her room.

  “I see what you mean about it not being very homely,” she told Jonas, on their daily conversation. She tried to keep her side of the conversation light-hearted. The Difficult Client kept digging himself deeper and deeper into a hole, she could tell.

  He laughed. “Told you. We’re soul mates.”

  She didn’t tell him that the Crown Princess had uncovered Hope’s fraudster father and, under the banner of helping a newbie, was becoming as difficult as the Client. But eventually Jonas sensed something. He arrived, unannounced, in the middle of an informal (only three footmen) family lunch in the tapestry-hung Breakfast Room.

  “Just dropping in,” he said casually, throwing his briefcase onto a brocaded sofa and slipping into the seat next to Hope. “On my way to Sydney this time.”

  He kissed Hope’s hand and held on to it, as a footman placed a plate of food in front of him. But when coffee was served and the footmen had retired, he stood up.

  “Just wanted to get a few things clear.” Hope recognized steel behind his amiable smile and was taken aback. “No press announcement or interview about our engagement goes out without referring to Hope. I’m in court too much at the moment to be reliable.”

  The Crown Princess stiffened and folded her lips together in disapproval.

  “This is not up for discussion,” said Jonas gently.

  His father said, “Quite right.”

  “Thank you, Papa. And Hope and her team will deal with any enquiries about her family, particularly her father.” His eyes gleamed. “As Papa has often pointed out, Revals haven’t been a hundred per cent respectable over the years. San Michele was founded as a pirate stronghold. A fraudster who paid his debt to society is small potatoes by comparison.”

  There was a choke of laughter from his rakehell brother Nico and kind Carlo said, “Hear, hear,” patting his wife’s hand comfortingly.

  “Am I clear?”

  “Clear and very sensible,” said his father, sounding as if he meant it. “Well done, Jonas.”

  Hope texted the details to Ally and Flora after he’d gone for his flight. They were gleeful. The trouble was that it left the Crown Princess with responsibility for protocol, folk dancing and Hope’s wardrobe.

  For the next three weeks, Princess Anna threw herself into all of them with the enthusiasm of a frustrated mentor. She also found out about Hope’s job with the Antons and her involvement with the forest rescue of the Boy Scout and determined that both could be usefully spun to the press.

  Hope said no. Anna had to accept it, but she didn’t do so easily or without planting several well-aimed barbs on Hope’s lack of diplomacy or sense of responsibility.

  Afterwards Hope retired to bed before dinner with a favourite book. She felt as if she’d gone ten rounds with a prize fighter. She tried to call Jonas, but he was in a meeting.

  She lay on top of the overstuffed duvet and brocaded coverlet, not reading, thoughts going round and round in her head.

  I can’t do this.

  It will be fine when Jonas and I are together.

  But will it? I can’t do this for the rest of my life, being careful and diplomatic and never telling the truth about anything. I CAN’T.

  It will be fine when Jonas is here.

  But her confidence was shaken.

  Jonas knew something was wrong and was desperate to get to Liburno to be with her. Contrarily, since that was all she really wanted, Hope told him to stay as long as he was needed. In the end, he got back just before Max and the girls were due to fly in.

  “To meet the family before the ball,” said Anna with one of the glittering smiles that didn’t reach her eyes. “And we’ve found you a beautiful dress.” She’d produced a folder of possible designs, each one more matronly than the one before.

  Hope fled to her room.

  This isn’t like me. I’ve got to pull myself together.

  She escaped for a couple of hours with kind Mrs Anton, who took her to a tiny boutique in Liburno where a young designer didn’t expect formal clothes to look as if they had armoured corsets underneath. If only, thought Hope. But she reckoned she had pissed off the Crown Princess enough for one visit.

  Jonas came back just in time for them both to go to the airport to meet the guests from England.

  “Thank God for Team Hope,” she muttered, as they were driven across the tarmac to the plane. It felt as if it were the last time they would all be together.

  She hid her feelings, though, and even enjoyed introducing the English party to the ballroom with twenty-foot-high mirrors on every wall, four chandeliers, and a suite of sofas and chairs upholstered in gold brocade. The Crown Princess’s programme was suffocatingly formal but Ally and Flora organized a break-out to Liburno’s club scene. Hope laughed and danced but was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of impending loss. She slipped away before she started weeping.

  Jonas found her on her own in the moonlight.

  “I heard you took off. Regrets?”

  She couldn’t answer. She shook her head.

  He seemed to take a decision. “Then let’s go.”

  She looked round. “I don’t know where the others are ...”

  “No others,” said Jonas calmly. “This is a kidnapping.”

  “What?”

  “As long as it’s OK with you, of course.”

  Hope stared, thinking of tomorrow’s crowded programme. Three changes of clothes. Or was it four? “Let’s go,” she said.

  “Right answer.” He took her hand and towed her round an eighteenth-century outcrop of palace.

  She was shaken by a spurt of laughter.

  He looked down at her. “What?”

  “It feels like bunking off behind the bike sheds,” said Hope, surprised into very un-royal spontaneous nonsense.

  Jonas gave her a look that made her sudden
ly remember him saying full-body kiss. Her pulse started to race.

  His fingers tightened painfully over hers. But all he said was, “Glad you mentioned that. How do you feel about bikes?”

  She wouldn’t have cared if he’d said they were hiking to infinity. She was dancing inside. “We’re cycling?”

  “A motorbike.”

  And there it was, parked incongruously in front of a Corinthian column. There were two helmets propped on top.

  Hope stopped dead. “We’re running away to join the Hell’s Angels!”

  “Do you mind?”

  “Mind? It’s wonderful.”

  “You’ll be cold. Get some warm clothes on, gloves. Bring your passport.”

  She did. They took off into the dawn.

  He took her everywhere they’d been, she thought. They didn’t mention family, or friends, or the wedding or anything that wasn’t history or the natural world. Every time they got off the motorbike, they held hands and didn’t let go. She felt the Crown Princess’s corset giving up its grip, tie by suffocating tie.

  Eventually Jonas took her hand and said, “You’ve had a worse time than I realized. I’m sorry. Haven’t learned enough about sharing essential information yet.” He squared his shoulders. “So here’s the thing. You have your passport. If you want to go home, I’ll whip you over the border and you can fly home. I’ll text Fredrik and he can tell everyone. No engagement announcement. No more wedding battles. You can be yourself again, my poor love.” He dropped her hand and stepped back.

  Hope looked down at her engagement ring for a long moment. Freedom. Yesterday morning she had been so packed around with plans and diary events and moral obligations, it had seemed an unimaginable dream. And now he was offering it to her. As simply as a ride on a merry-go-round, as if it were nothing.

  She looked up and caught his eyes on her, unaware. His face was naked with longing. And sadness.

  That was what caught her by the throat and stopped all her racing thoughts dead. Sadness. He wanted her. And he was saying goodbye. Because he thought she needed him to.

  All the doubt of the last weeks flickered and went out. She knew what she wanted. She knew it was right. She knew it was the best thing for them both.