Read Online Little Lady Agency and The Prince by Hester Browne - Free Book Online

companion of a mysterious aristocrat, before marrying my grandfather, Lord Wasdalemere. Mummy had been their only child, and Grandad had died when I was about four, after a particularly fabulous party thrown by Granny to celebrate one of his peonies winning Best in Class at the Chelsea Flower Show. He’d died, she assured me, a very happy man.
    Call me an old romantic, but it really warmed my heart to know that Granny was there at his side, right at the end.
    Luckily for Granny, she was left pretty well off, and with her own income too (I assume from her hit record, ‘Cool Kitty Cat’). While she didn’t marry again, I don’t think she was lonely, put it like that. It didn’t surprise me in the least that she had various princes in her past.
    ‘Oh, you do remember Alexander!’ exclaimed Granny. ‘He gave me that car – you know, the one I gave to you to learn to drive in.’
    ‘No, I don’t think I . . . Oh, God,’ I said, as the jigsaw pieces fell into place and various events began to rise with white-hot clarity in my mind. I must have been the only girl in England to learn to drive in a Porsche 911, but my lessons with Granny had come to an abrupt halt when I’d driven it into a parked Range Rover while she was telling me how to three-point turn in the car park of the Hurlingham Club. ‘He was that man we went out to the Savoy with, so you could tell him . . .’
    Granny nodded. ‘Wasn’t he lovely about it? He’s a darling.’
    ‘So you want me to do some job for him?’ I asked. ‘But I’m sure you’re more than capable of—’
    She shook her head. ‘No, no. Not him. His grandson, Nicolas.’
    ‘His grandson?’ I made some mental calculations. ‘Should I know him too?’
    ‘Hmm,’ said Granny, suddenly looking less frisky. ‘That’s the point. You might do. He’s not exactly discreet when it comes to maintaining an appropriate public profile. Poor Alexander has told him, and told him, but Nicky won’t listen.’
    My heart began to sink. I could see what was coming as clearly as if it had floodlights, warning sirens and one of those moose-scooping things you see on the front of American trains.
    ‘In fact,’ Granny went on, reaching for the copy of OK! , ‘he’s in here.’ She flicked through it, until she reached the back pages. ‘Look, he was at a ghastly nouveau party and attacked a poor stout girl with a chocolate fountain.’
    ‘That was my friend Tiggy,’ I said faintly.
    Granny looked up. ‘Was it? Oh, dear. Well, that’s the sort of shenanigans Nicky gets up to. Trashing hotels, exposing himself at charity balls, that type of overgrown-schoolboy nonsense. The boy’s nearly thirty! He runs with a dreadful crowd of Euro-trash Hoorays, he’s bringing shame and scandal on his entire family, and he hasn’t had a suitable girlfriend in his life.’
    ‘Isn’t that the point of being rich?’
    ‘Of course not. Besides, there’s a bit more to it than that.’
    I was surprised to realise that Granny was genuinely uptight. The magazine was trembling in her tense grip, and her usually creaseless brow wrinkled with distress.
    Alexander must be a very good old friend indeed, I thought. Granny was terribly loyal – one thing I was pleased to say I had inherited.
    ‘Which is?’ I asked.
    Granny sighed. ‘Well, I should really let Alexander explain it properly, but, in a nutshell, the family have been offered a marvellous chance to fulfil Alexander’s great dream, but only if they play ball with the tourism people, who want some kind of Disney-fied royal family.
    I started to say that I wasn’t exactly well-placed to advise on ideal family PR, but Granny hadn’t finished.
    ‘ However ,’ she went on, ‘they obviously can’t do that while the idiot grandson and heir is turning up at parties dressed as a Palestinian suicide bomber.’
    Her voice had risen to a high quiver, and she took a sip of tea to calm down. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But Alex is such a