Marrying Up (15 page)

‘Oh, it’s quite all right, I’m one too,’ Barney said lightly, fiddling with his watch chain as he kept up his unremitting
smile. ‘I know what you’re after. And I can help you get him.’

There was a deafening clatter of good silverware as Alexa dropped some spoons.

The company in the dining room roared approvingly.

‘Let me give you some advice.’ Barney folded his arms in their buttermilk linen sleeves. ‘You’re going about it all the wrong
way.
Much
too obvious.’

‘Obvious?’ Alexa looked indignantly down at herself. She was a vision of discreet taste in the soberest little black dress
she could find in Florrie’s wardrobe.

‘That frock, for instance.’ Barney looked her up and down. ‘
So
tasteful. It positively screams that you don’t want to put a foot wrong, and people wonder why you don’t. Much better to
double-bluff in a tarty dress. People don’t take you seriously, and then –
whoosh
,’ he raised his arm swiftly, ‘you move in for the kill and get what you want.’

Alexa was piling cheese on the board and trying to ignore him. She didn’t need his advice. His or anyone else’s. Why was he
offering it anyway?

A slight sly smile was playing about Barney’s lips. ‘Wondering why I’m offering to help you?’

‘Because you want to marry Florrie and you want me to help
you
?’ Alexa hazarded. It seemed unlikely, but it was all she could think of.

‘Hardly, my dear,’ he said roguishly. ‘I’m as gay as New Year’s Eve, as I thought you might have gathered. Mink-lined, gilt-edged,
copper-bottomed one hundred per cent proof homosexual.’ He gave her a dazzling smile.

A terrible suspicion now gripped Alexa. He was not just camp, but actually gay. Surely . . . surely . . . he wasn’t after
. . .

‘
Ed?
’ she gasped.

Barney’s eyes bulged slightly. ‘Hardly, dear. I have got standards, however low. No, what I’m after is a comfortable berth.
I help you marry Ed, and I’m your house guest for life in a range of enticing properties.’

Alexa said nothing as she arranged the grapes. Barney’s candour had temporarily disarmed her. As she struggled to think, the
aroma of ripe Brie floated up into her nostrils.

‘We can help each other,’ Barney pressed.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Alexa muttered pushing past him with the cheese board and out into the dining room, whose carpet
was littered with bread rolls.

‘God, what a honk!’ yelled Florrie as she made room for the cheese between the candlesticks on the table. ‘Have you dropped
a beast, Ed?’

Alexa studiously ignored Barney as she took a knife to the cheese. She did not want his help. She would do what she had to
alone.

She remained aware of his amused stare, however, and was flustered. She could not shake off the uncomfortable and, for her,
unprecedented feeling of someone being several stages in front of her.

‘Lexie!’ shouted Florrie in disgust. ‘You’ve cut the nose off the Brie, you bloody oik.’

Max, lying on the rug with Polly amid the bird calls and heather scents, felt he was in heaven. Then, piercing the mellow
sounds of the evening came the shrilling of his mobile from the front of the Land Rover.

‘Leave it,’ Polly murmured, almost asleep under the influence of wine and love.

‘I’d better get it,’ Max sighed, rising and loping over to the vehicle. ‘Might be an animal.’

The caller code was not local; it was none of the estate farmers. The number was Sedona. The caller was the King.

‘Father?’ he said in surprise. King Engelbert
never
called his son on his mobile. He rarely called him on anything.

Engelbert, who had been preparing himself for hours with measured arguments and reasoned remarks, prefaced by a stream of
pleasantries and chatter, now found everything he had so carefully rehearsed flying from his mind. He was not used to persuading
people; he was used to ordering them about. What was the point in beating about the bush? He had told Astrid as much after
she had confessed her miserable failure at telling Max where his duty lay. ‘OK then, your turn,’ she had flung at him.

That it was much easier in theory than in practice, the King was now realising. He had not factored in his enormous fondness
– love, even – for his elder son, and the associated difficulty of making someone you love do something they hate.
Overcompensating for this weakness, as Engelbert saw it, made his voice gruffer and snappier even than usual.

‘You have to get married!’ he announced.

Max blinked.

His glance flicked to Polly lying on the rug, the sunset burnishing her hair to a blaze of tangled copper. It was quite soon,
admittedly; on the other hand, he was fairly certain she was The One. Why not, he thought to himself.

‘Fine,’ he told his father. He smiled; a feeling of elation was growing within him. ‘Great,’ he added euphorically. ‘Fantastic!’
he shouted. Polly looked up from the rug and gave him a puzzled smile.

Engelbert, at his end, felt a mixture of surprise and triumph. What had Astrid been complaining about? Convincing Max was
ridiculously simple; he had accepted his instructions without question.

‘So you’ll come home immediately?’ the King growled in relief.

‘Come home?’ Max frowned. ‘But I could marry Polly here.’

‘Polly?’ snapped his father. ‘I’m not talking about Polly. That is an unsuitable relationship,’ he abruptly informed Max.
‘It has to end.’

Max thought he was hearing things. ‘What?’ he stuttered.

The King repeated it. ‘She is not a suitable wife,’ he added.

Max shook his head slowly. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Who am I supposed to marry then?’

‘Someone else!’ the King thundered, annoyed at his son’s slowness to comprehend the obvious. ‘Someone suitable, that we’ll
find for you.’

‘Let me get this straight.’ Max was frowning, his eyes darting, nervous and unseeing, about the dashboard. ‘You want me to
drop everything here, come home and . . . get
married
? To someone I haven’t even met?’ He almost wanted to laugh, it sounded so incredible.

The King caught the giddiness in his son’s tone. He would not be mocked, not under any circumstances. ‘You’re heir to the
throne of the ancient kingdom of Sedona. You have to get married to someone appropriate.’

Someone, Max thought, would wake him up in a moment; this would all be a bad dream. Or a joke, or something else with a sane
explanation. ‘Where did this idea come from all of a sudden?’

The King sensed that confessing it came from a public relations consultant would be ill advised. He chose to ignore the question.

‘You must come back,’ he repeated, as if the mere act of saying it again and again would get the desired result. ‘That girl
Polly is
not
suitable.’

‘But how do you know?’ Max asked, still more confused than angry. ‘You’ve never even met her.’

‘I don’t need to. She’s not appropriate, that much is clear. She’s obviously a gold-digger,’ the King invented wildly. Astrid,
listening keenly from the corridor outside his office, shut her eyes hard. Engelbert had handled it badly from the start.
But this was disastrous. Of all the stupid things to say . . .

Now, finally, Max was furious. ‘There’s no way –
no way
,’ he exploded, ‘that Polly is a gold-digger. She’s the least avaricious or snobbish person I’ve ever met.’

‘Only interested in you because you’re a prince, a future king,’ the King continued. ‘Sees herself on the throne . . .’

‘I haven’t even told her I’m a prince,’ Max cried, trying to smile as Polly, sitting up on one elbow, waved to him from the
rug. He raised his hand with two digits sticking up.
Two minutes
, he mouthed.

‘Haven’t
told
her?’ the King gasped. ‘Why ever not?’

‘Because I didn’t want her to know. Because, as you so rightly point out, she might see me differently then.’

The King had by now recovered both his equilibrium and his seat on his high horse. ‘Well, it’s irrelevant how she sees you,
because she’s not a princess. Not an aristocrat. Nothing else will do for a prince of the blood.’

Max fought the urge to smash his fist into the metal side of his vehicle. ‘God, it’s so . . . so . . .
medieval
.’

‘Medieval’s exactly what it is,’ the King agreed. ‘We go back to Maxim the Ugly, who—’

‘Took over the kingdom in 1459,’ Max parroted resentfully. ‘There’s been an unbroken line of de Sedonas on the throne ever
since then.’

‘Precisely. And you’re not going to be the one to break it.’

‘But what if I
am
?’ Max demanded passionately. ‘What if I
refuse
to marry this
appropriate
person you’re going to find for me? What if, I marry who I like? For
love
?’

There was a brief, horrified silence on the other end of the line. ‘Then you’ll have to abdicate. Renounce your right to the
throne.’

It was music to Max’s ears. Such a simple solution. Why had he never thought of it before? ‘Great, well why don’t I? It’s
the answer to everything. I could do the degree I want to, marry who I want to . . .’

‘If you do,’ the King broke in hysterically, ‘you will bring shame on the family. Sedona will be a laughing stock. Could you
really be so selfish? Destroy me? Destroy your mother?’

Max stared at the heather stretching away before him. He was stung. This was a low blow, if ever there was one. ‘Mum?’ he
flared. ‘I don’t believe for a minute she has anything to do with this.’

‘Well that’s where you’re wrong!’ Engelbert raged. ‘Your mother is completely behind me on this.’

Behind him, Max thought bitterly. Where Astrid had always been, in other words; a meek step to the rear of her despotic spouse.

‘And,’ the King added, ‘she will be as devastated as me if you refuse to cooperate.’

‘Cooperate!’ Max began. What was he, a prisoner? Then he
pictured her sweet, mild face swollen with tears, her big blue eyes red-rimmed. He felt guilt and resignation, then bitterness
and outrage. How dare his father demand he come back? And for such crazy reasons. Had he gone mad?

But of course he had, Max realised with a rush of relief. That was his parents, ground down by worry and exhaustion. Obsessed
as they always had been by royal duty, they could not see the wood for the trees. Shut up in their palace, in their time-warp
kingdom, they did not realise that what they were proposing was impossible and unreasonable in the real world.

He took a deep breath of relief. Even so, on the evidence of this exchange, there was no point in trying to persuade them
over the telephone.

Max thought hard. If, on the other hand, he returned to Sedona as requested, he could see his parents face to face. He could
reason with them and calm them down. His mother and father were fundamentally sensible; they would see his point. It shouldn’t
take more than a few days. Then, once everything was sorted out and smoothed over, he could come back to Polly.

‘OK,’ he said to his father reluctantly. ‘I’ll come back.’

From the rug where she was lying, Polly heard the Land Rover door slam. As Max came towards her, she saw that, for all his
efforts to smile, he looked tense.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

‘Oh, nothing. Just that I . . . er . . . have got to go away for a bit.’ His voice, she thought, sounded strained, as if he
was struggling to keep it light. He was not quite meeting her eyes.

‘Go
away
?’ A thousand sword blades of terror jabbed Polly. ‘Go away where?’

‘Oh, just home.’ He looked at her. For a wild moment, he wondered if he could tell her the truth. For a second, the wonderful
prospect of unburdening himself hung tantalisingly in the warm, heather-scented air.

But then, slowly, the prospect receded. It was too much of a
risk. She might think he was mad, that he was making it all up. And what she had said about princes earlier had not been encouraging
either. Would she still be interested in him if she knew?

Max racked his brains. Polly saw him swallow and knit his brow, and felt more worried than ever. Was something terribly wrong?

‘Parent trouble,’ he said eventually, ruefully. ‘They need me. I have to go and talk to them.’ Well, it was true, if not the
whole truth.

Polly was all concern. ‘Oh, poor you.’ She felt, however, secretly relieved. His face had hinted at something much worse than
mild disagreement between his mother and father.

He shrugged. ‘I won’t be long. It should be repairable. I’ll be back in a week, with any luck.’

. . .
request the pleasure of your company

at the wedding of their daughter

Lady Beatrice Clementine Annunziata Augusta

Trevorigus-Whyske-Cleethorpe

to the Marquess of Dymchurch

on Saturday 31 July at 11.30

at Westchester Minster

and afterwards at Willoughby Hall, Gloucestershire

On Saturday 31 July Alexa had been awake since dawn. Today was the day! The day when, as one of a clutch of glamorous, privileged
and titled guests, she would finally knock Ed for six with her beauty and vivacity. The day she would force him to demonstrate
before a gathering of high society including his mother that she was the girl for him.

Yet in the midst of her feverish plotting, Alexa now picked up a strange sound. A wailing. It sounded as if it were coming
from Florrie’s room.

She hurried along the passage. Her flatmate, out all last night with Igor and his bottomless pockets, lay in bed, red-eyed
and wailing.

‘I really do need a Nurofen, darling. Go and get them, would you? They’re in my bog.’

‘Your bag?’

‘
Bog
. Khazi. Thunderbox. Shitter. Whatever,’ Florrie shouted. ‘Just get them, will you?’

Going obediently to the larger of the flat’s two vast marble bathrooms, Alexa tried not to panic. What if Florrie was too
ill to go? Lady Annabel would never allow Alexa to attend the wedding alone. As it was, she had only been admitted on the
grounds that she would serve as Florrie’s dresser before the ceremony.