Read Little Lady Agency and The Prince Online

Authors: Hester Browne

Little Lady Agency and The Prince (51 page)

I didn’t think I could even pin it down to one specific problem. It was one of those end-of-term depressions, a knowledge that everything had shifted, and I couldn’t go back. I had to go on, but I wasn’t sure where that was going to be.

‘Where’ve you been hiding?’ asked a familiar voice. A familiar arm slung itself round my shoulders as a familiar body sat down on the chair next to me.

My stomach lifted at the comfort Nelson always brought.

‘What’s up?’ he asked, seeing my downcast face.

‘I don’t know. Nothing.’

‘Come on,’ said Nelson kindly. ‘Don’t give me that. You’ve been acting weird for months now. I don’t like it when we don’t talk to each other. Come on, it can’t be dafter than anything I’ve heard before.’

I twisted round. He gave me an encouraging smile, and raised his blond eyebrows. ‘There’s nothing you can’t tell me, Melissa.’

I twisted back.

‘I’m not that keen on myself any more,’ I admitted. ‘I just seem to hop from what one person wants me to be to another. And the person who makes me feel most like myself . . .’ I screwed up my courage. ‘I miss you. I’ve stopped rebounding and I still think I love you. But you think of me as a sister.’

‘No, I don’t,’ said Nelson.

I looked at him. ‘You do.’

‘Only because you’ve always treated me as a brother. Telling Roger you wished you’d had a brother like me when you were growing up, to explain how men think. Telling Gabi living with me was like having a girlfriend who knew about rugby. If I’d told you I had un-brotherly feelings towards you, you’d have freaked out – it would have been an epic disaster.’

‘No, it wouldn’t,’ I objected. ‘Well, it might have been before. But now . . .’

‘The important thing,’ said Nelson, taking my hands, ‘is that
you
feel happy about who you are. I
like
who you are, but it’s not up to me, is it?’

‘But how can I know who I am when my whole livelihood is based on pretending to be someone else?’ I wailed.

Nelson rolled his eyes. ‘When you finally accept that you’re not pretending. That you’re a bossy, sexy, confident, imperious woman in real life. You just have to learn to be as amazed by yourself as the rest of us are.’ He squeezed my hands. ‘And I am at the top of that list. I’ve always been your biggest fan.’

‘Really?’ My heart lifted dangerously.

‘Really. Now, can I say anything that might persuade you to move back into my flat?’

‘Like?’

Nelson’s expression changed, and the teasing went out of his voice. ‘Like, Melissa, I . . . ?’

Nelson leaned forward, his eyes beginning to close in a pre-kiss movement, and in my excitement I forgot to breathe as I felt myself lean closer too.

I swear we were about to have the most amazing moment, when my parents burst into the chapel, Daddy first, with Bertie in his front-loading sling, but with Mummy in hot pursuit. Both of them were carrying champagne flutes, and Mummy had a note in her hand that she was waving about.

‘Martin!’ she shrieked. ‘Walk away from me and I’ll make sure you’re not walking anywhere for a year!’

‘I’m just trying to get somewhere quiet, woman!’ he snarled. ‘Place is crawling with journalists and bloody
family
. Right. Now. Tell me what it is that’s got your knickers in a twist. Oh, hello, Melissa, Nelson,’ he said, as if noticing us for the first time. ‘Not interrupting, are we?’

‘No, no,’ said Nelson, lifting his hand politely. ‘Do go ahead.’

I could quite happily have stabbed them both with the Anne Boleyn sword.

‘This could ruin us, Martin. She wants thousands,’ Mummy began, just as the door opened again and William and Emery came rushing in.

‘Daddy, William was about to tell you something!’ she wailed. ‘You can’t just walk away from him like that!’

‘Emery, we are in the middle of a terrible family crisis,’ said Daddy. ‘Aren’t we, Belinda?’

‘We are,’ Mummy nodded.

‘Again?’ said Emery. ‘What is it now?’

‘Yes,’ I said testily. ‘What is it?’

We all turned to Mummy.

‘Well?’ demanded Daddy.

‘It’s that bloody awful nanny you insisted on hiring – she’s going to sue for unfair dismissal! All of us!’ howled Mummy. ‘And if we don’t do what she wants, she says she’s got photographs of me while I was recovering from my nose job!’

‘Which one? Anyway, she wouldn’t do anything about it,’ scoffed Daddy. ‘Let’s call her bluff. Silly old woman.’

‘My
first nose job
, Martin!’ Mummy glared at him. ‘Don’t you remember – we went into that clinic at the same time? And if she’s got photos of my nose job, she’s bound to have photos of you after—’

‘The wicked old harpy!’ snarled Daddy, turning puce and thrusting Bertie into the nearest pair of arms.

To his surprise, they were Nelson’s. Manfully, though, he held on tight, and Bertie didn’t seem to mind.

‘Photographs of what?’ I enquired.

‘Oh, your father had some . . . minor cosmetic surgery on his . . . Um, I’ll tell you about it later,’ murmured Mummy and she hastened out of the chapel after him. I sincerely hoped she
wouldn’t
tell me about it later.

‘Don’t worry – William’s a lawyer!’ Emery called after them, just as he kicked her to shut up.

‘I wouldn’t worry,’ I said. ‘Leonie’s still here. She has a very persuasive phone manner with blackmailers.’

‘I. So. Don’t. Want. To. Get. Involved,’ said William, holding his hands up like a crash barrier.

The four of us stared after my parents as they hurried across the lawn, waving their arms around, sometimes at each other.

‘I sometimes wonder if it’s the constant threat of legal action that keeps them together,’ said Emery. ‘You live and learn. Still . . .’ she finished, gazing into space.

‘Emery?’ Nelson looked at her and nodded towards the baby. ‘You want this little chap back?’

‘Not specially. Why don’t you let his godmother get to know him?’ Emery put her arm through William’s. ‘So, darling,’ she said to her husband, ‘now we’ve got the christening out of the way and Bertie and I are all right to fly – when are we heading back?’ She squeezed his bicep. ‘It’ll be nice to get back to Chicago, do some proper shopping, see our friends . . .’

‘Ah,’ said William. ‘Now, that’s what I wanted to tell your parents about. Might as well tell you now. Good news!’

Emery beamed absently. I could practically see her returning to her old vague self, supplemented by more amenable nannies and American plumbing.

‘I’ve been transferred to the London offices again,’ he went on cheerfully. ‘So you and Bertie can stay here, while the company sorts out a London place for us. Isn’t that great? I’ll be over just as soon as they’ve found a house. You know how bad I felt about dragging you away from your family in the first place, and now . . .’

The colour drained from Emery’s face. ‘Darling, is this a joke?’ she demanded.

‘Not in the least,’ beamed William. ‘Did I tell you my membership of the Hurlingham has finally come through?’

‘We need to have a little chat. In private,’ she hissed, and grabbed him by the sleeve to haul him out into the gardens.

That left me and Nelson once again, this time plus Bertie.

To say my family had ruined the moment would be a predictable understatement.

‘So,’ said Nelson.

‘So,’ I said, tongue-tied.

I wanted to tell Nelson how utterly adorable he looked with tiny Bertie in his arms. As Nelson smiled and growled, Bertie gazed up at him with round, trusting eyes, as if Nelson was a horse whisperer. A baby whisperer.

I really, really wanted to tell him how much I loved him.

Nelson tickled Bertie’s tummy and smiled as Bertie giggled and kicked his feet up in the air.

‘You know, Mel, when we have kids they’re not going to have these ludicrous baby trainers,’ he said, without thinking. ‘Proper baby clothes only, and nothing with writing on.’

‘Absolutely not,’ I agreed, then stopped, like in a cartoon when someone is clouted with a frying-pan.

Nelson seemed to realise what he’d said, because he looked up at me, shocked.

I was shocked too, but somehow managed to recover first. ‘Do you mean . . . when I have kids . . . and when you have kids?’ I stammered. ‘Or when . . .
we
have kids?’

Nelson hesitated for the most agonising few seconds of my life. They felt like hours. I could hear music from the reception, and the distant sound of champagne corks. Even Bertie seemed to know it was a moment of great tension and kept his trap shut. Then a shy, crooked smile started on Nelson’s lovely kind mouth, and he said tentatively, ‘When . . .
we
have kids?’

‘You want to have children with me?’ I asked, just to clarify.

‘Eventually,’ he said. ‘Not right now. But I can’t think of any other woman I’d want to spend the rest of my life with, apart from you.’

‘Are you sure?’

Nelson put out his spare arm and tried to embrace me, but Bertie was in the way.

Gently, but firmly, I plucked him out of Nelson’s arms, put a cushion and a shawl in the font and laid him on top, with a warning finger not to live up to his genes and ruin my moment.

Nelson put his arms round me, and pulled me close to him. I marvelled at how neatly our bodies fitted together, my curves against his strong chest, my cold nose level with the crook of his neck, as if we’d been made as a pair. But I could also smell his familiar clean smell, now excitingly unfamiliar, and masculine, and it made me so hot and bothered I was sure he’d be able to feel my heart racing through his sweater.

‘Melissa,’ he said, holding me away so I could see the sincerity in his blue eyes, ‘I’ve sat through your many attempts to change who you are, and I feel I know you better than anyone else. So when I say you are the kindest, funniest, most beautiful girl I’ve ever met, wig or no wig, you
have
to believe me. I don’t lie. I love you, Melissa.’

He paused, smiled a little, then said it again, in case I hadn’t believed it the first time. ‘I love you, Melissa.’

‘I love you, Nelson,’ I said, and the words were barely out of my mouth before he was kissing me, and suddenly he was a man I’d never met before. His lips were firm but warm, and the sureness of his kiss turned my legs to jelly, while his hand stroked the small of my back and I melted into his broad chest. And then the kiss hardened and deepened into something so sexy the sensible Nelson vanished for ever from my mind.

Too soon, he broke it off and said, as if he didn’t want me to be thinking the wrong thing, ‘Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want children straight away. It’s not like I’m lining you up for imminent breeding.’

‘I should hope not,’ I said, tracing my finger along the freckles on his jaw.

‘We’d need to get the nursery planned out and everything, and that’s not a ten-minute job.’

‘Quite,’ I said, letting my finger trace up to his mouth, and around his lips.

‘Good,’ he whispered back, pulling my face closer to his. ‘You know, I am the luckiest man in the world.’ And he kissed me again, this time letting his hands wander in a way I’d never even imagined he knew about, given his boys’ school background.

We were rudely interrupted, however, by Bertie deciding the spotlight had been off him for quite long enough, and letting rip with his unholy screeching. This time, even Nelson couldn’t shut him up.

‘Give him to me,’ I said, and I held him at arm’s length and fixed him with my disappointed glare.

He hiccuped, and stopped in shock.

‘Still got it,’ I said happily.

‘You never lost it,’ he said, and led me off to the champagne.

Hester Browne’s Polite Thank-you Notes

There’s no thank-you card smart enough for Lizzy Kremer, the agent who truly puts the ‘present’ in representation. Or indeed for Laura West at David Higham, David Forrer and Kim Witherspoon at Inkwell Management, Sara Kinsella and Isobel Akenhead at Hodder, and Maggie Crawford and Mara Sorkin at Pocket, who are patient, full of excellent anecdotes, and the sort of people with whom you’d want to throw back a Martini or two at the Blue Bar.

I’m also indebted to mes amis, les Allens, for the Parisian bits, and finally to my father, for the advice about yachts and potential seafaring accidents pertaining to gin palaces. Unlike Melissa’s father, he didn’t even
think
about invoicing me for this information.

About the author

Hester Browne bakes a perfect sponge, collects bright red lipsticks and etiquette books, and divides her time between the King’s Road and Great Malvern.