Sophie Weston - The Prince's Proposal

He looked at his watch again. He could just about see it in the gloom.

‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked the publicity assistant.

She waved a hand at the seething, chattering crowd. ‘Circulate. Circulate.’

Conrad’s mouth twitched. For a moment there, she sounded just like his grandfather, ex-King Felix of Montassurro. He did not say so. Instead he gave one of his expressive shrugs.

‘The sooner we’ve spread the word, the sooner I can get my train back to normality, I suppose,’ he said with resignation. ‘You go that way, I’ll go this.’

They turned their backs on each other and he plunged back into the cavernous lighting to do his duty.

The disco lighting shook Francesca out of her shell-shock. Well, a little.

‘I should have changed,’ she said, watching a woman in a strappy silver top flit past, waving.

Jazz grinned after the woman. ‘Party organiser,’ she diagnosed. ‘Don’t worry about it. Half the people here will have come straight from work like us. The only people in combat gear will be authors and the younger editors.’ She surveyed Francesca and made an unwelcome discovery. ‘Oh, no. Not the first-aid-box glasses.’

Francesca was defiant. ‘They’re all I could find.’

Jazz held out her hand. ‘Give them here.’

‘But I’m as blind as a bat without them. You don’t know what it’s like to be as short-sighted as I am.’

‘I’ll read the instructions to you,’ said Jazz without sympathy. ‘Try to get a drink and not bump into the furniture. That’s all you need tonight. Get a business card off anyone who sounds worth following up.’

‘But—’

‘No serious businesswoman is going to work a room like this with bandaged glasses.’ And, as Francesca muttered rebelliously, ‘You’re going all out for the career, remember?’

‘I’d still like to be able to see.’

‘No,’ said Jazz with finality. ‘You’re representing The Buzz tonight. We’re hip. We’re cool. Bandaged glasses aren’t.’

Francesca gave in and surrendered her glasses. Jazz picked up a glossy bag and handed it to her.

‘Publicity handouts and party favours. Take what you want. Lose the rest.’

Francesca was rueful. ‘I’ve got a lot to learn.’

Jazz was already flicking through the bag’s contents. ‘Chocolates,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘Keep them. Party programme. Need that. Now, what books have we? Spot the Whale. Nah. Five Thousand Years of Refuse. The definitive story of trash by Professor Somebody. That will pull the punters in. Not. Ash on the Wind. Two authors. I don’t like that. Still, they both look quite tasty. Let’s see.’

Francesca knew it was hopeless to try and read anything without her glasses. In that dark party room she was going to do quite well if she managed not to walk into something.

‘I’m going to be a hazard to shipping tonight,’ she said drily. ‘Curse all serious businesswomen and their image problems.’

But Jazz was not paying attention.

‘Hey. Look at this,’ she said excitedly. She stuffed a shiny sheet into Francesca’s hand, scanning the entrance hall avidly.

Francesca squinted at a moody black and white photograph. There seemed to be a face in there somewhere. She gave it back. ‘Sorry.’

‘He’s yummy,’ said Jazz, seizing the handout impatiently. ‘But he’s a lot more than that. Listen.’

She read the publicity blurb aloud.

“‘Conrad Domitio is one of the best seismologists of the age. But he is not a vulcanologist. When he went along on Professor Roy Blackland’s expedition to Salaman Kao it was his first venture into a volcano’s crater.”’

‘Oh, not another volcano book!’

‘Listen,’ said Jazz, rapidly skimming the handout. ‘This is the good bit.

“‘For Conrad Domitio is also known as Crown Prince Conrad of Montassurro. He is heir to his grandfather, the seventy-five-year-old ex-King Felix. Felix himself fled to London via Italy, having spent his teenage years fighting assorted invaders from the Domitios’ impregnable fortress in the mountains. Ex-King Felix has no doubts. ‘My grandson is a born leader,’ he says.

“‘To Conrad Domitio himself the answer is simple. ‘I was doing everything by the book because I was new,’ he said. ‘The others were just too used to the conditions. But I’d only just finished reading up everything about volcano eruptions. So I still remembered the Idiots’ Survival Guide.’

“‘Six men are alive today because he did. This is their story.”’

She looked up.

‘Montassurro?’ said Francesca. She pulled a face.

Jazz ignored that. ‘Body of Apollo, and he saves lives too,’ she said with relish. ‘Cool, huh?’

Francesca shrugged. ‘I should think he took charge because he expects people to jump when he says jump. They were a hard lot, the Montassurran royals.’ She did a double take. ‘How do you know what sort of body he has?’

‘I looked,’ said Jazz calmly. ‘He’s over there. Tall guy, navy shirt, buns to die for. You’re probably the only woman here who didn’t clock him the moment she got here.’

Francesca flung up her hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘All right. All right. I’m sorry about the glasses. What else can I say?’

‘It’s not just the way he looks,’ said Jazz throatily. She cast a languorous look across the room. ‘I want him. Get him for me.’

Francesca shook her short brown hair vigorously. ‘Get him yourself,’ she retorted. ‘What am I? A retriever?’

‘You’re the one in charge of book signings and evening talks,’ pointed out Jazz smugly. ‘And this is your subject. Go and make him an offer he can’t refuse. The man’s a dish.’

Francesca gave her a wicked grin. ‘Dishes are your department. I just do figures and boring science books. And I can’t even see the man.’

‘At least that means you’ll keep your hands off him. By the look of it, that will have rarity appeal tonight,’ said Jazz drily.

Francesca tried not to wince. ‘You want him, you do the luring,’ she said firmly.

Jazz laughed aloud and stopped smouldering in the man’s direction. ‘I wish. That man is going to be hot, hot, hot. The publishers wouldn’t be interested in a new independent like us. They’ll concentrate on the big book chains.’

‘Well, he doesn’t have to do everything exactly as his publisher says, does he?’ demanded Francesca, revolted. ‘Is he a man or a mouse?’

‘He’s a writer who wants to sell his book,’ said Jazz practically. ‘If the publisher’s PR people tell him to paint himself green and juggle babies, he’ll do it. He wouldn’t look at us. It’s hopeless.’

Francesca was not a pushy person. But she was sufficiently her father’s daughter to dislike being told anything was hopeless. And Barry had dented her ego as well as her heart.

Well, there was not much she could do about a broken heart, she thought. It would just have to heal in its own time. But all the ego needed was to go all out for something—and get it, of course. Tonight was not her night for being a good loser.

‘Oh, won’t he?’ she said militantly.

Jazz watched with well-disguised satisfaction as she plunged into the crowd in the general direction of the Crown Prince of Montassurro. Even without her glasses, there was a reasonable chance that she would connect with him, thought Jazz. Three months of working together had taught her that Francesca on a mission was nearly unstoppable. She smiled, well-pleased with her strategy.

Francesca set off on a spurt of pure adrenalin. It took barely three steps for it to wear off.

She was too small for this sort of crowd, she thought wryly. She tried to suppress the urge to keep jumping for air. It felt as if everyone was twice as tall as she was. Taller and more confident and a whole lot more knowledgeable. And all talking over the top of her head.