Your Royal Hostage (23 page)

Jemima knew that she should follow the example of
Ione
Quentin whose excited speeches in Jemima's flat had been succeeded by a marble self-control. Even her use of the loud-hailer as directed by the police — 'Lydia, no harm will come to you ...' -might have been the work of a professional politician used to addressing crowds. Was such discipline the product of a highly disciplined upbringing? For Jemima remembered that Ione's father, that father whom Lydia had much disliked for his severity, had been a well-known soldier. Colonel Q. Yes, that was it. The discipline might not have done Lydia much good, but it had certainly produced impressive results in her sister.

Jemima only saw Colonel Q's elder daughter break down once as Lydia was led away by the police, her small figure muffled in some kind of blanket, jean-clad legs just visible beneath it.

'Leelee,' said
Ione
in a low voice. Then she straightened her shoulders.

None of this did Jemima choose to confide
to Rick Vancy; for
one thing she was still sorting
out much of it in her own mind,
as an orderly person goes through drawers tidying them one by one. That went for the dramatic
end of the siege. And then her
initial frustration at her own passivity was not
something she
wanted to share with Rick; let him believe she had herself played a prominent part in the end of the siege.

'I just do not credit it,' repeated Rick Vancy, and he shook his distinguished head, now subtly enhanced by an English hair-cut, even as Susanna Blanding wordlessly handed over her own packet of Marlboros. (Curt silently helped himself to one on the way, which must have been loyalty, since he had never hitherto been perceived to be a smoker.)

The reaction of the rest of the world was equally incredulous even if the manner of implementing that disbelief was not necessarily that of Rick Vancy. Now that the Press was released from its self-imposed silence and Major Pat was left to pay with those 'exclusive' releases, the debts of honour he had incurred throughout that long summer night of negotiation, the floodgates were well and truly unloosed. Yet it was remarkable that for once even the most lurid headline could scarcely be accused of exaggeration. That was the trouble. On the principle of crying 'Wolf!', the Press had presented the public with so many previous headlines all the way from
princess: wedding scare
(something vague to do with high buildings along the route), to
princess: wedding fears
(a lack of American tourists to buy souvenirs), that even the blazing 30-point letters with which the
Daily Exclusive
led next morning:
princess amy safe
- were somehow not quite as dramatic as the story itself, related in much smaller print beneath.

The staider papers, with more space at their command, a far calmer track record, had the advantage; it was generally felt, not only within the confines of the Times building, that
The Times
in its sonorous lengthy leader under the headline
a bride for all seasons
had, for once, spoken for the nation more effectively than the
Daily Clueless.

But that was all in public. Private reactions varied. Mirabella Prey, for example, put in a call to Prince Ferdinand (which he refused to take). So then she sent round a note to Cumberland Palace which contained some unwelcome phrases to linger in his mind, although the Prince only remembered them roughly afterwards. This was because he read the note through quickly, or rather read it half-through, then crumpled it and threw it away in that negligent way of his; except that now there would be no Taplow to unscrew the paper, only the impeccable and truly discreet servants of Cumberland Palace.

He did not therefore read as far as Mirabella's announcement of her future plans: life on a Greek or at least Greekish island with her Greekish admirer. The admirer was founding a wild animal sanctuary in her honour. This coincidental realization of the Innoright plans for Windsor Great Park, Regent's Park and other royal parks (if not generally perceived as such) was in fact broken to the world in general by Miss Mary of the
Daily Clueless
the next day.

'Love among the leopards! How
too, too sweet,' exclaimed Princess Amy on this occasion when she read Miss Mary's column. 'I hope they
eat
her,' she added generously.

Mirabella's phrases, roughly remembered, which haunted Ferdel in spite of himself went as follows: 'So now she is a heroine, your little Princess. You will admire her and who knows, perhaps at last you will love her. I congratulate the little white mouse.

How was she in the hands of the sexy photographer
.

Often these so prim English girls….
'
It was at that point that Ferdel had 
crumpled the paper. He should have known better than to read anything penned by Mirabella:
that ever maddening ability of
hers to get under hi
s skin.
However, he was no longer thinking 
of Mirabella now, there being plenty to think about nearer home, to put it mildly. And Prince Ferdinand was still wondering quite how he
could
put it, put it mildly that is. There was a question which was torturing him, to be frank, beneath the smooth and tender caring surface which he had exhibited ever since Amy's return.

It was not a question which affected his admiration. Admire her! Ye Gods, he admired her. The pluck, the spirit, the
endurance,
even including the last dreadful incident and the removal of her own lady-in-waiting's sister, to say
nothing of his own chauffeur's
so
n lying there in pools of blood.

Somewhere at the very
bottom of Prince Ferdinand's horrified reflections was surprise that
servants,
royal servants should somehow feature so strongly in all this. (For he did not in the very last analysis distinguish between
Ione
Quentin, the lady-in-waiting, and Taplow the chauffeur: both were to him and perhaps finally to Amy — servants.) And how bravely Amy had handled all the rest of it, including even, with courage beyond any reasonable expectation, allowing a very short Press Conference
to be held at Cumberland Palace.

'Otherwise, Ma'am,' admitted Major Pat ruefully, 'they'll never believe you're all in one piece.*

'I jolly well am all in one piece, aren't I?' replied Princess Amy with a touch of new asperity in her voice, or perhaps it was sheer exhaustion. 'Which is more than you can say for my sapphires. Did no one ever find that earring?
Ione
, now did you ask —'

But there was of course no
Ione
to ask. Amanda, the young secretary at the Palace who had been helping with the wedding arrangements, seconded to a more senior position, was, in Amy's opinion, simply not a patch on
Ione
in competence, knowledge or tact. So grievously in fact did Amy, in her first flustered moments of return, miss Ione's calming presence and all it meant in terms of security and comfort that for a long time she simply could not understand why it was no longer possible for
Ione
to attend her.

'But why
can't
one be here, Mummy?' she cried angrily, used to having her own ways in all things with the Duchess, an arrangement which generally suited them both splendidly. The willowy Duchess, wafer thin to the point of emaciation (Amy had inherited her father's tendency to embonpoint), could do no more than sigh; tears - hers - were clearly not far away. Of the Princesses Sophie and Harriet, the one knew herself to be too plain-spoken (in the circumstances) and the other too nerve-wracked like her mother, to do anything; they rolled their eyes at each other, those huge slightly exophthalmic blue eyes which all three sisters had in common.

It was Prince Ferdinand who softly explained: 'My darling, you must understand: it is just not possible. Poor
Ione
. We are all of us so sorry for her. But the sister, you know, she is -' How to put it? Yes: 'In the hands of the police.
Ione
must rest at home. It is very difficult for her. She is, she
was,
devoted to her sister, and that this should happen to you! She is naturally quite shattered. Besides, it would not be - quite
suitable,
would it, darling?'

'In the hands of the police, is she? Well, I hope they keep her in their hands. I shall never forget her expression. Did I tell you, Amanda -' The thought of Lydia Quentin a.k.a. Lamb did at least distract Princess Amy from her lost sapphires - and her lost lady-in-waiting.

As for Princess Amy's decision - for it was finally her decision to go ahead with the wedding on the same date and with exactly the same arrangements (at least outwardly: what the police now did was their own business), that too was, as far as Prince Ferdinand was concerned, beyond praise.

It was not only the feeling of relief which such a decision gave to the nation as a whole: things could not be
that
bad, could not have been that bad, the poor little Princess couldn't be in that bad a state. Nor yet the commercially based relief of all those whose arrangements (and profits) depended on a given Royal Wedding on a given royal day: not least among these
tus
and Rick Vancy of
tus
, booked to leave for the Middle East immediately afterwards. But Ferdel himself had a deep-seated almost superstitious feeling that if the wedding did take place exactly as arranged, then his own relationship with Amy, that too would be restored to its original state. This relationship, which Ferdel believed would be the basis of a long and happy married life, was certainly not lacking in physical passion; all the same he knew it to be
au fond
more affectionate than passionate. If not precisely an arranged marriage, theirs was a marriage of convenience, great convenience. In such a relationship, affection was more important than passion.

But Ferdel could not forget one particular conversation with Amy following her release. In the immediate aftermath she had been almost totally distraught and in the course of her distraction had made, or at least begun to make, certain statements, highly frightening statements about her captivity, the import of which Ferdel had simply not dared think through at the time. The conversation came later. He would really like to obliterate the memory of it, as he wished to forget Mirabella's lethal phrase 'the sexy photographer'; alas, he was unable to do so.

How odd to feel what must be jealousy for virtually the first time in his life! (In principle Ferdel considered jealousy a terrible waste of energy.) To feel it in this situation and to feel it on behalf of
Amy,
Of all women in the world. When he thought of all the other delightful creatures he had known and their composite behaviour, exotic, sensual, provoking, none of whom had managed to arouse his jealousy although many had tried. Ah well.

Did jealousy perhaps come with age? Another horrible suggestion.

Amy had been encircled by Ferdel's arms when the disturbing conversation in question took
place. It was when he allowed himse
lf to say (and in retrospect that had been his mistake): 'Amy, my darling, exactly what happened? You said such odd things when you first came back. He didn't - My God, my darling —' In his agitation, Ferdel found he was gripping both Amy's arms till she winced; he was also gazing at her most intensely.

A curious expression crossed Princess Amy's face. It was not that pop-eyed capacity for right royal indignation she had inherited from the late Duke, still less the air of sweet resignation characteristic of her mother, but seldom seen on her own very different features. No, Prince Ferdinand found it quite impossible to analyse the exact nature of Princess Amy's curious expression: in another older, more sophisticated, woman he might even have detected a very faint air of triumph there, but that was to be ruled out where Amy was concerned. Nor could Ferdel analyse quite why he found her look so disquieting, nor why some inclination of future trouble reached him, and from the direction he had least expected it. For an instant he was looking once more into the eyes of Eve, into whose beautiful and challenging eyes in one fo
rm or another he had been gazin
g all his adult years.

Of the two of them, Prince Ferdinand was the first to look away. After all, he had always known how to handle women, hadn't he? He gathered Amy more closely into his arms so that she nestled there.

'My little one,' he
said over the top of her head, ‘I
'm going to protect you so carefully in the future. No .harm will ever come to you,' he added very firmly. 'Thank God, no real harm
has
come to you.'

Still Princess Amy, her face buried in his shoulder, said nothing. But then, come to think of it, what was there to say?

Elsewhere there were other questions in the air, some - but not all — of which received more satisfactory answers than that posed
malgre
lui
by the anxious Prince Ferdinand. For his part, he never returned to this particular interrogation just as Princess Amy herself never enquired again after her lost sapphire earring. Since she had decided that never never in a thousand years would she wear those hateful
evil
sapphires again, the whole subject might be allowed to lapse; thus the Rasputin sapphires were locked away once more (minus one earring) waiting like Camus' plague for their next malevolent appearance on the European scene. The comparison was that of Susanna Blanding .who alone among observers had appreciated the historic and superstitious significance of the jewellery adorning Princess Amy at the moment of her abduction.