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

  “Hey, are you okay?”

  She sniffed loudly and looked up. Three men stood looking down at her, all of them somewhat large and wearing black head to toe, like burglars, one of them even wearing sunglasses for Christ’s sake. Oh my God, is there really a Cambridge mafia?

  Then he took off his sunglasses and black beanie and a load of thick, soft, wavy dark hair sprang out, and once again Clodagh found herself looking into Prince Jamie’s face.

  “Wait, I know you,” he said. “From the pub, right? Rosa Parks and nucleation? Are you hurt?”

  She blinked at him. Yes, she hurt, in her cold toes and her sore shoulders and her aching soul, but she had no idea what he was talking about until he gently reached out for her arm.

  “Did you cut yourself?”

  Clodagh looked down. The sleeve of her cheap parka had a rusty red bloodstain on it. Great, that’s not going to sponge out.

  “No. I mean, it’s not mine. I mean… I was helping someone. She’s fine, it was just a couple of stitches and tetanus shot, but…”

  Jamie squatted down in front of her. His black clothing was running gear, she realised, the darkness of it relieved by changes in texture and weird seaming. Reflective strips ran in patterns along his torso and legs. He hadn’t shaved, and his jaw was dark with stubble. She’d never seen him unshaven before. Apart from that first time in the pub he’d always dressed smartly, was always well-groomed.

  He’s in disguise, she realised. This was him being incognito.

  “You don’t look okay,” he said, peering close. “You look frozen.”

  “It’s cold out,” she said, as if he might not have noticed. Actually, with all the technical cleverness going on in his clothes he might not have.

  “That’s because it’s barely daylight.” His eyes peered carefully at her. Hazel, she thought. Changeable in the light.

  They took in more details than she wanted him to see.

  “Are you an early riser,” he asked, “or haven’t you been to bed yet?”

  Clodagh thought about lying, but she was too cold and too tired. “The latter,” she mumbled. “I was working,” she added defensively.

  “What, at the pub? Must’ve been a hell of a lock-in,” he said. He got to his feet and held out his hand. “All right, come with me.”

  Clodagh stared at his hand. He wore technical-looking gloves, which probably kept his fingers much warmer than the old cheap fleece pair she’d forgotten to bring anyway.

  “What?”

  “You look colder than Queen Elsa,” he said, and glanced at his watch. “Must be nearly lighting down time by now. Come on. I know where we can get a cup of tea and a bacon sarnie.”

  Clodagh wanted to say no, she was only ten minutes from home, and she didn’t go off for bacon sandwiches with strangers, even if they were of the blood royal, and she had no idea what lighting down might be. The sun was pretty much up by now.

  But then her stomach rumbled audibly and Jamie smiled, lines bracketing his mouth, and she heard herself say, “Okay then.”

  She took his hand, stood, and followed him and his blank-faced bodyguards across Midsummer Common. The grass was wet with dew, remnants of mist hanging low over the land, and the only other people around were other joggers, dog walkers, and the occasional cow.

  “Still can’t believe there are cows in the middle of the city like this,” Jamie commented, as Clodagh tried not to notice how fit he was in his close-fitting running clothes.

  “Bloody traffic hazard,” muttered one of the bodyguards. Unlike Jamie, they wore bulky jackets, which probably concealed firearms.

  “They can’t get onto the road,” Jamie said. “There are those, what d’you call them. The gaps in the fences.”

  “Squeeze gaps,” Clodagh said, and he glanced at her in surprise. “They’re open lower down so people in wheelchairs and buggies can get through, but they’re narrower higher up so bikes and livestock can’t.” Dammit, there she went again with the random facts. No one liked Random Fact Girl.

  Jamie’s eyebrows quirked. “Squeeze gap. I’m impressed.” He smiled at her.

  Clodagh glanced at him, then away again. He had a very nice smile.

  From the river sounds began to drift through the mist. People shouting, but not in an angry way. Rhythmic, as if instructions were being given. Someone shrieked and laughter rose up.

  “Told you not to tangle the oars!” came a bellow, but it didn’t sound like much of an admonishment.

  It was the rowing teams. Clodagh had walked past the river more times than she could remember, but she’d never really had the time to stop and watch them. Some smaller boats were on the river, young men and women in sports gear and bobble hats attempting to control them.

  “Each and every one of them hoping to be a Cambridge Blue,” Jamie said.

  “You’re not tempted to join them?” Clodagh had some hazy idea that one of his cousins had rowed for Oxford. His brother, Prince Edward, was always being photographed on a horse or a bike or running with a rugby ball.

  “Are you kidding? I’ve got no desire to throw myself into a freezing river every morning before breakfast. If I wasn’t cruelly forced into it,” he quirked an eyebrow at his bodyguards, “I wouldn’t even go out for a run in the morning.”

  “I think if you end up in the river you’re doing it wrong,” said Clodagh vaguely, and he laughed.

  “This is very true. I’ll settle for watching the Boat Race from the warmth and comfort of my own living room, thank you.”

  “But you’ll be cheering the pale blues?”

  He looked offended. “Of course! So much as a word of encouragement for the Other Place and I’d be sent down.”

  Jamie led her towards Midsummer House, and for a moment her heart leapt because that place had Michelin stars, didn’t it? Did they open at sparrow’s fart for tea and bacon sandwiches? Maybe they did, if you were a prince. But then he took her past it, across Peterhouse Bridge, and down a lane towards a building facing the river. Not Michelin-starred bacon, then.

  From the road side it looked like an ordinary house, but as they went down the side of it, the view changed. It had large pale blue garage doors on the ground floor, a concrete slope down to the water and a balcony above, with large windows looking over the common. One of the boathouses, which she was more used to seeing from across the water.

  An older man with a thick parka and faded Lady Mathilda College scarf nodded at them.

  “Your Royal Highness. Changed your mind about joining us?”

  The prince’s eyes sparkled. “Maybe I have. I think I should probably have a bacon roll and a cup of tea while I think it over, though.”

  The coach rolled his eyes and laughed. “You’ve been thinking it over for weeks. You owe the Lard cupboard a fortune,” he said.

  “I promise I will go direct to…” Jamie hesitated, “the shop and get some of everything.”

  “Oh yeah, I can just see you in the local Morrisons,” said the coach, but he waved them cheerfully inside.

  The garage doors didn’t conceal cars, but racks of carefully stacked rowing boats and oars. Like the college scarf, the oars were green with blue stripes along them. A blackboard on one wall was headed “Lighting down/up times October” and lists of times that roughly corresponded to sunrise and sunset scrawled below it.

  Lighting down, Clodagh thought. Can’t just call it ‘sunrise’, can they? Cambridge has to have special names for everything.

  One bodyguard preceded them through the door at the back of the boat room or whatever they called it. One waited for her to follow Jamie before bringing up the rear. They did it so smoothly probably no one would notice the formation if they didn’t know who these men were.

  They went up a flight of stairs and into a room with those huge windows overlooking the common. Jamie went over to a kitchenette, but Clodagh stood staring at the view. The Common was spectacular in the early morning, mist wreathing the trees and cows looming like minotaurs. From
below, she could just about make out the sounds of the rowers in training.

  You didn’t get mornings like this any other time of year. “Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?” she murmured.

  “Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,” said Jamie, and she jumped a little. “You like Keats?”

  She was fairly ambivalent about the romantic poets in general and Keats in the specific, but since she’d always like autumn, that poem had stuck in her head. “He’s okay. I did a module on him for… for school,” she fumbled, not quite willing to admit to someone doing a PhD that she was doing an Access course because she didn’t even have any GCSEs.

  The prince stood in the kitchenette, frying pan in one hand and a pack of bacon in the other. He’d taken off his snug jacket and underneath he wore a Star Trek t-shirt. “Yeah, he goes on a bit. But then I was never one for poetry. Not bright enough.”

  “Says the man doing a PhD at Cambridge.”

  He shrugged. “There are different types of brightness. You, for instance, just quoted one of the lesser-known lines of a poem most people only know the first line of, and you also know about nucleation. Are you a chemist?”

  Clodagh shook her head. She wanted to say she was a historian, but she wasn’t, not yet. You probably had to at least have A levels to say things like that. “No, I just looked it up. Plus I’ve worked in bars and pubs a long time, so…”

  Jamie nodded. “Do you…” He frowned. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’ve just realised I don’t know your name.”

  He glanced up at her from under his hair, eyes bright and curious, and suddenly Clodagh didn’t know what her name was either.

  “Should I… guess it?” said the prince politely, putting down the frying pan he appeared to be about to cook her breakfast in.

  Oh God, he thinks I’m an idiot again. “Call me Clodagh,” she managed. “Clodagh Walsh.”

  “Clodagh? That’s unusual.” He turned away to light the hob. “Irish?”

  “Yeah. My grandmother. It was her name.” She didn’t elucidate further.

  “That’s nice. We recycle names like mad in my family. We’ve all got the same middle names, after Dad and Granny. How clever my grandcestors were to choose names that could be feminised or… masculinised? Anyway, it saved me from being an Alexandra in Granny’s honour.”

  “Jamie’s a nice name though. I mean, I forget, you’re actually Prince James, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, but Jamie, please, and drop the ‘prince’,” said the prince, slicing some butter into the pan. It sizzled hotly, the smell making Clodagh go a bit weak. “I didn’t actually check, Clodagh. Bacon sandwich for you? Ordinary bacon, ordinary bread? Might be able to scare up some eggs…” he added, peering into the fridge.

  “Bacon sandwich would be amazing.” She should help. “Look, let me do it.”

  He glanced back over his shoulder at her, eyes dancing. “I can cook, you know.”

  Crap, she’d insulted him. Clodagh opened her mouth to apologise, but Jamie was grinning at her.

  “The bacon goes in the toaster, yes?”

  “I had a roommate who actually did that,” said one of the bodyguards, a Scostman by the sound of it, who had taken the only chair where he could see the window and the door at the same time.

  “Fire hazard much?” said Jamie. “You can sit down, you know.”

  Clodagh looked between the three of them and realised this comment was aimed at her. “Oh. Sure. Um, isn’t there anything I could do?”

  An almost invisible look passed between the prince and his bodyguards. “Sure,” said Jamie, “you could make the tea if you like.”

  Grateful for something to do in this weird interlude, she filled the kettle and set about finding mugs. The kitchenette was small and she nearly bumped into Jamie more than once. Oh God, imagine jostling him with the frying pan and then he’d get burnt and it’d be my fault. Isn’t that treason? Would I go to jail? Do we still have capital punishment?

  It was weird, making drinks for people without getting paid for it. She almost said that out loud, but then realised it’d make her look as if she wanted to be paid, which she didn’t. Because that would be weird. He’d invited her, after all.

  “Who’s Queen Elsa?” she asked as the kettle boiled. She knew there were other kingdoms in Europe but couldn’t have named a ruling monarch if her life depended on it.

  He didn’t look up from buttering bread. “Not a Disney fan?”

  Clodagh blinked. “Elsa from Frozen?” Of course, you idiot. Who else is literally frozen?

  “Yep.” He hummed something she thought might have been Let It Go. “You know it?”

  “Dude I have like five nieces, of course I know it.”

  Jamie glanced up at her from under his mop of hair and smiled. “Mine’s a little young for it, but you wouldn’t believe the number of little girls I see in Elsa dresses when their parents drag them along to meet me.”

  “Well, she is a queen. I suppose it makes sense.”

  He grinned at that. “I shall have to tell them they outrank me.” He started singing, and the Scottish bodyguard groaned.

  “Just wait til he starts doing the gestures too.”

  Jamie made a grandiose flourish, and Clodagh found herself laughing at him. He laughed back, eyes bright, and flipped the bacon in time to his singing.

  “I thought it might’ve been, like, the Queen of Denmark or somewhere. Sweden.”

  “The Queen of Denmark is Margarethe II,” said Jamie, apparently without having to think about it. “And Sweden currently has a king. His name is Carl XVI Gustaf, and yes the order is important. His consort is Queen Silvia. No Elsas I can think of. They do have a granddaughter called Estelle, if that helps.”

  “Any Annas?”

  He cocked his head. “Not that I can bring to mind. Loads of Annes, obviously, in my ancestry, and Annemarie my sister-in-law, of course, but Annas… a Russian or two, I think.”

  By then she’d warmed up enough to take off her coat, and that did seem to startle Jamie into nearly burning himself.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said sharply, and the two bodyguards immediately snapped to attention, hands delving inside their jackets. Clodagh froze, but then Jamie let out a huff of what might have been laughter. “I thought that was blood.”

  Clodagh looked down at the wine stain. “Oh. No. Red wine. I was working at a party, you see, and someone threw it at me. Well, not at me, but she missed and I got it. So yay, now I smell like a wino.”

  Jamie flipped the bacon. “Must’ve been some party if you’re still up at this hour.”

  “Well, it was, but that’s not… one of the other girls hurt herself, so I went with her to A&E. I should’ve been home hours ago.” She couldn’t smother a yawn at the thought.

  Jamie looked appalled. “Oh God, am I keeping you up? Should I let you go home?”

  She was so tired it took her three tries to pick up a teaspoon, but Clodagh said, “No, it’s fine. I don’t really want to go home.”

  That was a stupid thing to say. The attention of all three men snapped to her.

  “You’d rather enjoy our company?” Jamie said after a tiny pause. He said it lightly, but there was a clear undertone there.

  “Yes, of course. I don’t have bacon at home,” she added, trying to match his tone for lightness.

  “Well, for this we shall be thankful to the Lady Mathilda Lard Cupboard,” he said, checking the bacon and turning off the heat.

  “The what?”

  “The Lard Cupboard.” He waved at the general kitchen area with the frying pan. “It’s what they call it. I forget why. Probably because if you fall in the river, a generous coating of lard will keep you warm.”

  He slid the bacon onto the buttered bread, added an egg, squidged a second slice of bread on top and sliced the whole messy thing in half. Holding out the plate to her, he bowed his head. “Your breakfast, madam. Or is it dinner?”

  “I don’t honestly care what
you call it,” Clodagh said, and he grinned as he piled up the rest into a mountain of delicious unhealthiness.

  The Scottish bodyguard tucked in with gusto. The other one, who Jamie had called Khan, ignored the food. “Aren’t you hungry?” Clodagh asked, and he looked at her as if she were a statue who’d just spoken.

  “Allah forbids,” he said, and Clodagh felt like an idiot.

  “Right. Sorry. I just thought…”

  He winked at her. “Nah, I’m messing with you. I’m just keeping my hands free. Never know if you’re going to make a sudden move on His Highness.”

  Jamie, his mouth full, just rolled his eyes.

  She ate one round, and then at Jamie’s urging another. Khan made them all more tea. The room was warm, the sounds coming up from the river rhythmic, and she was full of food. And safe. Hell, if she wasn’t safe with royal bodyguards who would she be safe with?

  Clodagh could barely remember the last time she’d felt this content…

  She was woken by someone yelping, “I’ll be stuffed, you’re Prince Jamie!”

  Sofa. Sunshine. Smell of bacon. Somewhere, someone was shouting, “Stroke, stroke,” for reasons hopefully known to them.

  Oh crap, she’d fallen asleep at the rowing club. The boathouse. The… whatever it was called!

  Hurriedly, she sat up and fought her way out from under the coat someone had draped over her. The Scottish bodyguard, who she thought might be called Morris, glanced at her, and evidently considered her less of a threat than the Australian woman in rowing gear exclaiming how much she adored the Royal Family.

  Clodagh checked her watch. She had just over an hour to get home, shower, change and be back at the pub on time for her shift. She got up, shoving her arms into her coat.

  “You’re leaving?” Jamie said, looking her over. “Stay a while. There’s no rush.”

  “There is. I have to be at work by twelve.”

  His thick dark brows drew down. “But you worked all night.”

  “Yes. Different job. Um, thanks for the bacon and tea and things.” She tripped over her own feet and Khan steadied her before she could fall into the prince. “Thank you. I’ll see you, um, around, I guess.”