The Ordinary Princess

Again Laura sensed the unspoken suggestion that this might be the time to call it a day and give ‘sensible’ a try.

‘Of course I do!’ She just didn’t like some of the stuff journalists did. But Jay was right. She wasn’t in a position to be choosy, not if she wanted her job back. ‘An exposé?’ She pulled a face. ‘It would have to be someone totally unsympathetic. Someone I won’t go all gooey and protective over.’

‘That would help,’ Jay agreed, with a wry smile. Then, seriously, ‘Someone powerful. Someone who never gives interviews.’ And she picked up the gossip magazine she’d been reading when Laura arrived and offered it to her. ‘Someone like this.’

Laura glanced at the cover photograph of a man in evening dress—a dark blue ribbon bearing an impressive decoration bisecting his imposing figure—arriving at some glittering state occasion, and then looked again.

‘Who is he?’

‘His Serene Highness Prince Alexander Michael George Orsino. Crown Prince of Montorino.’

In his early to mid-thirties, the Prince had thick dark hair that no amount of cutting could quite keep from a natural inclination to curl and eyebrows that gave him a look of the devil. He was tall—he stood inches above his companions anyway—and dark. But forget handsome. A smile might have helped, but nothing would ever compensate for a nose that centuries of breeding had perfected for looking down, or the haughty arrogance of his bearing which instantly curdled her natural milk of human kindness.

‘Montorino? Isn’t that one of those fabulously rich autocratic European principalities?’ There had been a recent travel feature in one of the weekend supplements. ‘Mountains, lakes, stunning scenery, picturesque medieval buildings?’

‘That’s the place. And he’s the autocrat who’ll one day rule it. Nothing to bring out your sympathies there.’

‘No,’ she said. What she was feeling certainly wasn’t sympathy.

He was walking a red carpet laid in his honour with an assurance born of the knowledge that he would rule, as his grandfather now ruled, as his forebears had ruled for a thousand years before him. Absolutely.

As she stared at the photograph his dark eyes seemed to look right at her, challenge her, defy her to do her worst, and a prickle of disquiet, apprehension almost, flickered down her spine. She tossed the magazine away.

‘This is all pie-in-the-sky, Jay. I’d never get an interview with a man like him.’

Thank goodness.

‘No?’ she replied, all innocence. ‘Well, maybe Trevor’s right. Journalism is an overcrowded profession, after all. And a good nanny can earn a fortune.’

‘Excellency.’

‘What is it, Karl?’

‘I do not wish to alarm you, sir, but Her Royal Highness does not appear to be in the residence.’

‘Then your wish is granted, Karl. I am not alarmed. Her Royal Highness is sulking because I refused permission for her to go to a club this evening with some girls from school. She is no doubt hiding in an attempt to frighten us all. The sooner everyone stops panicking and gets about their business, the sooner she’ll reappear,’ he said dismissively, returning to the papers demanding his attention.

But his concentration had been disturbed. While it was true to say that he was not alarmed, he was concerned. At seventeen, Katerina was too young to marry, or go to clubs. But she was too grown up to send to bed with a scolding. In short she was just the right age to be nothing but trouble.

He sympathised. He’d been seventeen once, long ago. But he had accepted his responsibilities, no matter how unsought, how unwelcome, and applied himself to his duties. If she didn’t learn to accept hers, he would have no choice but to send her away from the temptations of London, return her to Montorino until she learned how a royal princess was expected to conduct herself. Something her mother had signally failed to do, but he lived in hope. As he’d hoped to give her this brief time of relative freedom. But if she wouldn’t behave…

Karl coughed discreetly, long enough in service to risk ignoring his Prince’s impatient dismissal.

‘We’ve searched from basement to attic, sir. Princess Katerina is nowhere to be found.’

‘That’s because she doesn’t want to be found, Karl,’ he said. The house was a warren, especially up in the attics. A clever teenager with a serious attack of the sulks could hide up there for a week if she felt so inclined. He had far more important matters to deal with than a girl set on irritating her elders. ‘She wouldn’t have been foolish enough to leave the building without her security officer.’ He caught Karl’s doubtful expression. ‘And even if she was, she couldn’t have got out without someone seeing her. Could she?’

There was only the merest suggestion of hesitation before the man replied, ‘No, sir.’

Laura had woken early from a disturbed sleep with Prince Alexander’s face imprinted on her brain. His dark eyes arrogantly challenging her to take him on if she dared.

She’d ignored it.

She had much better things to do than waste her time on someone who looked down his nose at the world from his lofty serenity. Since going to work wasn’t one of them, she pulled on her sweats and went for a run.

After that she took a shower, made coffee, ate the croissant she’d picked up at the bakery on the corner and scanned the newspapers in search of a job. There weren’t any.

At least nothing that she wanted to do. But then she’d set her heart on journalism and anything else would be failure.

She propped herself up on her elbows. Jay was right. She needed a story—something big enough to persuade Trevor that she wasn’t a waste of space. A follow-up on that building site story, perhaps. She booted up her laptop and logged on to the internet to do some in-depth research on the company involved.

But His Serene Highness’s image would keep intruding, as fresh as the photograph on the cover of that magazine. As challenging. Refusing to go away.

It was her aunt’s fault, of course. Insisting that she take the magazine away with her. She retrieved it from beneath her bed and carried it through to the kitchen. She’d gone to sleep drooling over the frocks at the latest show-biz wedding, studiously avoiding the colour spread of the glittering gala in aid of some charity of which he was the patron. In the light of day, she told herself, he would look a lot less dangerous.

She poured a fresh cup of coffee and stared at the photograph on the cover. He stared right back, as dangerous as ever. And the longer she looked at his implacable features, the more she wanted to disturb that aristocratic bearing. Ruffle that calm poise. Unsettle him as much as he was unsettling her.

So what was stopping her?

Her date with a cowboy builder, that was what. A real story. The internet had provided very little background; she’d have to use the newspaper library. It might be a waste of time, but it was an excuse to put job-hunting on hold.

Except that once she was in the library her mind would keep wandering back to Prince Alexander. She finally abandoned the builder and keyed Montorino into the search engine.

It didn’t help much.

While his family had provided hot gossip for the newspapers for most of the previous century, and for a while Prince Alexander had looked set to follow their example, these days he was the very model of what a modern prince should be. Diligent. Hardworking.

Boring.

Well, that was good, wasn’t it? For the people of Montorino and for her. Now she could concentrate on something important, right?

Wrong.

Boring?

She wasn’t buying that. That face didn’t belong to a bore.

She continued her searches and by the end of the day she had an impressive dossier containing the official version of the history of Montorino, the entire Orsino family tree going back to the Middle Ages and enough photographs to fill the family album.

One, of Alexander as a small boy holding his grandfather’s hand, looking desolate at his parents’ funeral, leapt off the page to touch her heart. She swallowed. Made a quick note that his mother and father had died in a boating accident when he was six, at which point Alexander had become heir to the throne, bypassing his aunts and his older sister since women were barred from the top job in Montorino.

They could have appealed to the Court of Human Rights—in Laura’s opinion it was their duty—but they were clearly having too much fun filling the gossip columns of Europe.

Not Alexander. The only photographs of him in the last eight years were formal, controlled images that gave nothing away. Or else they’d been taken at grand occasions where everyone was on their best behaviour, which was much the same thing.

The articles about him were no better. They read like handouts from his public relations department. This bachelor prince, who had effectively become head of state since his grandfather’s heart bypass, apparently did nothing but open hospitals, support charities and promote his country. Of course, when he said ‘his’ country, that was exactly what he meant.

It wasn’t just the architecture that was medieval. Which, along with the lack of equal opportunities for princesses, was a situation absolutely guaranteed to raise Laura’s democratic hackles.