Not Your Cinderella: a Royal Wedding Romance (Royal Weddings Book 1) Read online

  “I don’t blame her.” Annemarie had made public appearances right up until the last weeks of her first pregnancy, but retired much earlier when she was expecting Georgina and now it looked as if she’d be spending the next few months doing precious little.

  “Then again, I think three children is enough,” Jamie added cheerfully, and Edward looked as if he was going to say something, then thought better of it.

  “Well, three was good enough for Granny,” he said.

  Annemarie had elected to travel with the children and Nanny Christensen in the carefully adapted seven-seater Range Rover Sport Ed’s family usually used. Jamie watched his brother sprawl out in the back seat of their own Range Rover and sigh in happiness.

  “I’d forgotten what having room to yourself in a car felt like.”

  Jamie laughed. “Ed, you arrived by yourself last week in a Bentley for the football. I saw you.”

  Edward shrugged unrepentantly. “If a man can’t go by himself to the footie, what can he do?”

  “Especially when he’s the president of the FA,” Jamie added idly. Not that either of them were ever alone, not really. There was always a PPO and usually a secretary or assistant of some kind. Which was why Cambridge was so refreshing… “Did you win?”

  “No! Two goals ruled offside but he let Kane’s through, and then the jammy sod scored another in the 93rd. 93rd! I’m going to lobby for extra time goals to be disqualified.”

  Jamie nodded seriously, then said, “I have no idea what you just said.”

  His brother rolled his eyes. “Yes, well, memorise and repeat, because when someone asks you, you’ll need to sound like you know.”

  “Bloody 93rd,” Jamie repeated obediently. “Kane offside! Grr.” He shook his fist for good measure, and Edward laughed. “All right, but you count to ten in binary,” Jamie dared him.

  “I am quite happy to say I can’t,” Edward said cheerfully.

  The film was the premiere of an adaptation of a popular children’s TV show. Jamie had ended up escorting Annemarie and the children to watch some of it being filmed whilst Edward was off in Syria or somewhere getting shot at. “Not sure which of us got off the lighter,” he’d confided after his return.

  Jamie, who’d been shot at quite a bit in Afghanistan, considered the screaming excitement of the children and the banality of the filming process, and said, “Comme-ci, comme-ça.”

  The car slowed as it reached Leicester Square. Jamie rolled his shoulders, watched Ed checking his hair in the mirror, and peered at himself. Tie wonky, hair already a mess. Vincent would despair.

  Still, at least it wasn’t raining. Jamie recalled the first time he’d gone to a premiere, excited to meet filmstars, and the shampoo used to clean the carpet had frothed everywhere in the rain. Vincent had been livid.

  “Ready?” he said as they pulled up.

  “I was born ready,” Edward quipped.

  I bloody wasn’t, Jamie thought, but kept that to himself as the door opened and his smile switched itself on automatically.

  He and Edward stood side by side, smiling and waving at a sea of flashing cameras. Jamie’s grandmother had related to him once how when she was his age, walking down a red carpet meant crushing spent flashbulbs under her shoes. It was still, she said, an improvement on today’s culture of snapping pictures of everything on your smartphone.

  Edward turned back to help Annemarie out of the second car, then lifted out Georgina as Nanny Christensen brought Alexander round. Professionals even at the ages of four and two, the children stood beaming for the cameras. Audible cries of, “Aww!” floated across the hubbub.

  Then they started forward, and the Your Highnessing began.

  “Your Highness, is it a boy or a girl?” “Your Highness, did you save any refugees in Syria?” “Your Highness, how’s your new school, buddy?”

  They smiled and waved some more and ignored the paparazzi as much as possible. But then it was the turn of the general public, these days mostly just a sea of smartphone camera flashes and hands reaching out across the metal barriers.

  “Prince Jamie, ohmigod I love you!”

  “Your Highness, can I get a selfie?”

  “Oh my gawd, should she be wearing heels like that when she’s pregnant?”

  Jamie shook a few hands, posed for a few photos, caught Georgina as she ran towards him and swung her into his arms.

  The camera flashes nearly blinded him. Little Georgina rubbed her eyes, making a face.

  “She looks tired, it’s too late for her to be out!” said one woman near Jamie.

  “Are you looking forward to a new brother or sister, sweetie?”

  “You should be raising the child gender-neutral and let them decide for themselves,” someone else shouted, and Jamie stepped smartly back as someone shouted abuse at them.

  “Let’s go and see what Mummy’s doing,” he said loudly to Georgina, taking her back to Annemarie.

  She was holding Alexander’s hand and talking to the public, smiling in a way that didn’t in any way betray the pain she’d been in as they left the palace. Her heels weren’t even that high, Jamie thought as he carried Georgina over, to awws from the crowd.

  Someone asked her a question in Dutch, which Jamie only half understood. He’d made an effort to learn his sister-in-law’s language when it became clear she was going to become part of the family, but she’d given herself whole-heartedly to Englishness and rarely spoke her mother tongue. Even on visits home she spoke English to the public, keeping Dutch for formal state occasions.

  Jamie wondered idly what his family would think if he married a foreign princess and devoted his life to her country instead of his own. Annemarie was admittedly a minor member of the Dutch royal family—only a countess, as she’d told him many times—but her allegiance had apparently upset some of her senior relatives.

  “You look so cute with her!” cooed a woman holding up a small boy over the metal barrier, and Jamie smiled automatically down at Georgina. Her attention was, however, taken by the star of the movie, who’d just appeared to a great roar of excitement.

  “Put me down!” she cried, and he did, letting Edward take over.

  “When are you going to settle down and have some of your own, Your Highness?” the woman with the little boy asked.

  “Oh, not for a while,” Jamie replied easily.

  “Yes, but you’re getting older now. Past thirty. Tick tock!”

  Fuck off, thought Jamie, but he said, “Well, it’s Victoria’s turn first, surely?” which was a rotten thing to do because it set the woman off into speculations about how long Victoria had been married and why there weren’t any children yet.

  Jamie moved off, smiling and waving and shaking hands and posing for selfies until at least he was at the entrance to the cinema, away from the screaming hordes. Various celebrities were having their pictures taken in front of the film’s logo, and he was swept ahead of them all as a priority.

  Even celebrities gushed over him. Christ, I’m tired of all this, he thought, smiling and agreeing with one veteran actor that not every movie one made needed to be Oscar fodder.

  “So long as it pays the bills. Not that you need to worry about that, eh, Your Highness?”

  Jamie, who’d once been the subject of a week’s furious opinion pieces because he’d been photographed drinking expensive champagne on a yacht, just smiled a bit more. The fact that the champagne had been provided by the yacht’s owner and not paid for by the Privy Purse didn’t seem to make any difference. He’d had to wear conspicuous high street labels for months after that, just to ram the point home.

  Not that Clodagh would agree that any of his choices had been cheap.

  Annemarie made her way over with an over-excited Georgina, and he had to pose for photos with them. Then with Alexander when he came racing up. Then again with Edward.

  When Annemarie muttered from the side of her mouth, in Dutch, “I’m going home after this, my back is fucking killing me,” J
amie nearly sighed with relief.

  “I’ll escort you,” he said, glancing at his watch. He was supposed to be staying at the palace tonight, but he could probably be back in Cambridge before the film was even over. Back for a pint and a smile from Clodagh—

  No. Bugger.

  Feeling slightly flat at the thought of not seeing her, he followed Annemarie’s entourage through the cinema and straight out to the back where the car was waiting for them.

  “Isn’t that the guy from the film?” he said, as a tired looking man ahead of them stripped off his tie and collapsed into a car of his own.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been to a premiere where the stars don’t leave before the start,” Annemarie replied.

  She was quiet in the car, eyes closed, head back. Jamie drummed his fingers on his thigh, then got out his phone, switched it to silent, and opened Clodagh’s last text message.

  “Please help me. I need to talk to someone sane. I’ve just taken my neiflings to a film premiere.”

  Her reply came back quickly. “Please tell me it was a Quentin Tarantino.” Followed by, “Neifling is a nice word.”

  He laughed silently. “Yeah. Ed’s furious. Said they shouldn’t learn about blood-spatter until they’re at least seven.”

  “Right now I’d kill for some fictional violence. It’s been kid’s TV here all day long. Why is it SO bright? And SO high-pitched?”

  “Right? Imagine eighty minutes of that, trapped in your seat, surrounded by the press.” He wondered if there had been any decent swag at this screening. Usually it was a bottle of water and a paltry amount of popcorn, but once he’d got an action figure and Victoria still used the little handmirror she’d got from some premiere years ago because she fancied the actor on the back of it.

  Clodagh sent a gif of a cat leaping away from a cucumber in horror. “The cat is me. The cucumber is the film. Tell me what it was so I can be ill the day my lot want to go see it.”

  He was mid-text when they arrived back at the palace, smiling over Clodagh’s assertion that too much Peppa Pig made her want to eat bacon. Trying to think of a way to offer her a bacon sandwich that didn’t sound rude or suggestive, he looked up to find Annemarie watching him with interest.

  “Quite the conversation you’re having there,” she said.

  Jamie’s cheeks heated. “Just a friend,” he said, putting his phone away. “I didn’t want to disturb you. How are you feeling?”

  Annemarie’s expression said she wasn’t fooled by the change in subject. “Tired, and wondering why I thought a third child was a good idea,” she said, as he helped her out of the car. “Are you staying here tonight?”

  “Yes. No.” He wanted to go home, and home wasn’t here any more. “What am I doing tomorrow?”

  She shrugged eloquently. “I don’t know. Major Peaseman will tell you. I have child refugees and Edward has soldiers.”

  Jamie ran a hand through his hair. “I have homeless. I think. In… I want to say Coventry?” Was that closer to Cambridge, or here? Dammit, he’d end up staying here anyway. Cambridge wasn’t on the way to anywhere.

  “Has Edward talked to you about the Royal Variety?” she asked.

  “No, why? You’re doing it this…” he trailed off, realising. Annemarie was retiring from public life very soon, and the Royal Variety Performance was due to be filmed in three or four weeks.

  “I don’t think I can manage sitting still for that long,” she said. “And then the meet and greet afterwards… no. Tonight was more than I could take.”

  “Maybe Vicky and Nick could go?” Jamie asked hopefully. His grandmother rarely bothered these days and as his mother positively loathed the whole thing his father wouldn’t go alone. He and his siblings had taken it on over the last decade or so, occasionally relieved by an aunt or uncle. Jamie usually got off lightly, being the only single one of the bunch.

  “Victoria was very clear that she had another commitment,” Annemarie said drily, and began ticking off relatives on her fingers. “Thomas is in Afghanistan, Anthony is in New Zealand, Isabella is still on maternity leave, The Duke of Kent flatly refuses and the Penelope has her medical treatments starting then.”

  Ah yes, Aunt Penelope and her never-ending litany of medical complaints. He hoped this one wasn’t serious. They usually weren’t, but sooner or later her hypochondria was going to catch them all out.

  “He wants you to go with him. Just like you did the first time, he said. The two boys together.”

  Yeah, when he was eighteen and thought it was all fun and exciting and that he’d get to properly meet Girls Aloud…

  “I’ll think about it. See what Peaseman says.”

  He walked Annemarie to her apartments, refused her offer of a nightcap and kissed her cheek.

  “Is there a girl?” she asked, before she shut the door.

  “A girl?” Jamie said stupidly. Her name is Clodagh and she likes bacon and musicals about cats and hates children’s TV.

  “You were smiling at your phone. Or is it a boy?”

  Her expression was innocent.

  “You’re being very Dutch,” Jamie said, shaking his head and stepping back. “Slaap lekker.”

  “Slaap lekker,” Annemarie said, closing the door with a thoughtful look on her face.

  Chapter Ten

  Historygal blog: Anne’s Seventeen Little Hopes

  My mum has six children. When I tell people that, their eyes go wide and their heads tilt to one side, as if they’re wondering whether to send a package of condoms or birth control pills to her house.

  Six kids wasn’t always considered unusual. At a time when infant mortality was terribly high, you might pop them out in the hopes that some might survive infancy. In the 17th century over 12% of children would die in their first year, and a whopping 60% before they reached adulthood; and that’s if you were lucky enough to have a live birth.

  Just think about that for a minute. All that pushing and screaming and hoping and praying, and there’s a 60% chance the child will never live to see children of their own.

  Queen Anne was the last of the Stuarts. And not for want of trying: history has recorded at least seventeen pregnancies, and yet she died, as it’s dustily noted, ‘without issue’. Here’s the story of those seventeen little hopes…

  Googling Clodagh would be wrong. It felt wrong, anyway. Of course, there was nothing to stop him reading the meticulously compiled dossier his security team had already compiled on her, which was probably so comprehensive it’d tell him her favourite brand of shampoo and what her first word had been, but Jamie never read those things out of principle. It felt like spying.

  Looking her up would be the same, despite a general consensus in the lab last week that everyone did it. “We don’t all have James Bond to do it for us,” Hunter had said to him.

  “Bond is MI6. It’s 5 who compile information on subjects within the UK,” Jamie replied absently, then felt their eyes on him. “I mean… I don’t read them. Look, why don’t you just talk to the person you fancy? Find things out that way?”

  “Talk to girls?” Zheng said, horrified.

  “Boys don’t talk to geek girls, unless to insult them,” Ruchi said sadly.

  “She might come across as normal, and then turn out to have dumped her last three boyfriends for leaving socks on the floor,” Hunter said.

  “Then don’t leave socks on the floor,” Ruchi said.

  He’d left them to it and concentrated on his work. Or at least, tried to. Now, in the back of the car on his way to Corby—not Coventry, as it happened—the temptation to look her up was almost overwhelming.

  He put his iPad down, folded the cover over determinedly, and picked up the report on the charity he was going to visit.

  Clodagh was woken by two small children giggling and whispering, but before she could see what time it was, they’d thrown themselves onto the sofa. The sofa Clodagh was trying to sleep on, under a duvet that concealed the ankle she’d freed from its boot
last night.

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” she yelped, throwing both kids off as agony exploded through her. One of them crashed into the coffee table and started wailing. The other one shouted, “Granneeee! Auntie Sharday said a bad word!”

  You chuck a small human onto a broken ankle and tell me what words you’d fucking say, Clodagh wanted to shout, but her breath was robbed by the pain.

  “My leg hurts!” wailed whichever one had landed on the coffee table.

  Not as badly as mine, Clodagh thought, trying to sit up and failing because moving her leg at all was agony.

  “What is going on out here? What’s all this shouting?” yelled Clodagh’s mother from the corridor. She stormed in, a vision in cheap pink satin and leopard print. “Who started it?”

  “Auntie Sharday!” said Nevaeh, the little snitch, as Kayleigh wailed and sobbed on the floor.

  Sharon Walsh gave her daughter a frankly disbelieving look, which was encouraging at least, and knelt down by Kayleigh. “All right, where does it hurt?”

  By the time she’d ascertained that Kayleigh wasn’t about to die and didn’t have any bones sticking out and didn’t even need a sticking plaster (apparently, they had Olaf the snowman on them and were, therefore, to be greatly desired), Clodagh’s ankle had downgraded from Nuclear to Agonising, and she managed to pull the duvet back to look at it.

  “Eurgh!” shouted Nevaeh, pointing, and Clodagh was inclined to agree.

  Her ankle joint had been swollen and bruised before, but now it had a massive goose-egg above the ankle bone and was as ripe and purple as a plum. Very carefully, she tried to wiggle her toes, and a sob of pain escaped her.

  “Jesus, Shar! Is it supposed to look like that?”

  Clodagh shook her head and managed, “I don’t think so.”

  “You was limping a bit yesterday. Was you supposed to walk that far on it?”

  Bit late to ask that now! Clodagh bit down on her own lip to keep the retort inside. Instead she said, “People kept hitting it with their trolleys in Aldi.”