The Prince's Proposal

CHAPTER TWO

‘I WANT,’ said Conrad, pleasant but very firm, ‘to know about a bookshop. It’s near the gasworks in Fulham. I’m not moving until I know the name of the woman who owns it.’ He looked as if he meant it.

The publicist had been looking for him with increasing desperation. The Press interviews were not going well. The editorial director had called one journalist a freeloader. Then he told a researcher for a daytime television programme that he didn’t expect her viewers to be able to read words of more than one syllable. It was definitely time to break out their secret weapon. Only it looked as if the secret weapon had ideas of his own.

‘I’ll find out for you,’ she promised. ‘Just please come and talk to the Press now.’

‘How will you find out?’

‘Ask. Someone in this crowd is bound to know.’

‘But I don’t know the name of the bookshop.’

‘Doesn’t matter. It’s a small world, books.’ She urged him towards the room where the Press interviews were taking place. ‘What does she look like? How old? What’s she interested in?’

‘Small. Dark. Huge brown eyes. Sometimes they go all big and misty as if you’re the most wonderful thing she’s ever looked at. Sometimes they snap. She’s twenty-three, and she’s fierce.’

‘Oh,’ said the publicity assistant, rather taken aback. ‘Well, that ought to find her. Fulham, you said?’

By the time he had played his part in the discussion of Ash on the Wind, she was back.

‘Sounds like Jazz Allen’s place. It’s called The Buzz. But Jazz is nearly six feet, black and beautiful.’

‘Not her. Look again.’ He thought. ‘She also knows a lot about Montassurro. Or thinks she does. Her father was some sort of refugee.’

One of the journalists who had slipped out in the hopes of a private exchange with the ex-prince overheard. He inserted himself between them.

‘Do you mean Peter Heller’s daughter?’

Conrad’s brows twitched together. ‘Heller?’ he said in tones of acute distaste. ‘That crook?’

The journalist gri

Conrad did not smile. He was looking really disturbed.

‘Are you telling me that Peter Heller’s daughter would waste her time with a small bookshop? In the shadow of the gasworks? I don’t believe it.’

‘Not that small,’ said the journalist drily. ‘Everyone’s talking about The Buzz. They’ve got quite an internet presence already, too. It was the Heller girl who set that up, by what I hear.’

‘You mean Jazz Allen’s new partner?’ said someone else, joining them. ‘I hear she’s a phenomenon.’

‘Yes,’ agreed the journalist. ‘Everyone thought it was going to be a three-day wonder for her. Well, she’s rich enough to invest in a little business like that without caring too much if she gets her money back. But it hasn’t turned out like that.’

‘You are so right,’ agreed someone else, with feeling. ‘Francesca Heller is no sleeping partner. My reps say she challenges them all the time. Fearsome woman. But she’s certainly improved their ecology list. And Jazz thinks she’s wonderful.’

‘So does Prince Conrad, from the sound of it,’ said the journalist with a sly glance sideways.

But he did not get the response he was hoping for. The tall man looked at him in silence for a moment. The heavy-lidded eyes were quite unreadable. Then he turned away, shrugging.

‘Well, would you get the email address for me?’ he asked the publicity assistant indifferently. ‘I said I would do a talk for them some evening.’

He did not say another word on the subject of Francesca Heller all evening. Instead, to his hosts’ surprised delight, he circulated conscientiously. He even stayed until the very end of the party.

But, though he got a very good proposition from a giggling copy editor in low-cut spandex, and the editorial director offered to take him to di

‘No, thanks. Unless—there’s no one else left inside, is there?’

‘No. Just us,’ said the copy editor, weaving slightly. ‘You’d better come. You’ll have missed every last train. Come to the club with us and then take the milk train at dawn.’

‘I’m all partied out, thanks. I’ll get a train after breakfast.’

There was consensus that this was a waste.

Conrad’s steep eyelids drooped in the familiar bored expression.

‘Goodnight, everyone. Have a good one.’

He strolled away. He didn’t appear to move fast. But those long legs had taken him out of sight before anyone could think of an argument to call him back.

Francesca, Conrad thought.

Odd name for a girl who was half-English, half-Montassurran. Sounded Italian. Come to think of it, she looked like one of the Italian beauties you found in Renaissance paintings, all abundant hair and wide pure brow, with their enigmatic half-smiles. He had always thought they were probably too intelligent for their own good, those serene, secretive women. There was always something mysterious about them, something that said, ‘You don’t really know me at all.’

Of course, Francesca Heller had not been particularly serene this evening. But she had not come across as a second-generation Montassurran confidence trickster either. His jaw tightened.

Not that she thought of herself as Montassurran, obviously. All that nonsense she had talked about brigands! He should have challenged her on it at once. He could not think why he had not.

Hell, yes, he could. He knew exactly why. She had been looking at him with those wide, wide eyes, as if she was somehow caught up in a dream, and all he wanted to do was keep her looking at him like that forever. OK, maybe she was not serene. But the mystery was there all right. By the bucketful.

Fool, he castigated himself. Stupid fool! All she was interested in was catching a prince for one of her bookshop events. She had even admitted it. From all he could find out, she was as good at business as her father. And Peter Heller’s daughter was the last person in the world he wanted to tangle with.

Yes, that was better. He would walk a while and think of everything he knew about her father.

Conrad reminded himself that he knew a great deal about Peter Heller and his business dealings. The whole Montassurran community in London did. And they knew Heller was ruthless, acquisitive, and not at all scrupulous. Without actually doing anything criminal, Peter had exploited more than one of the Montassurran exiles who had been so ready to welcome him when he first got to London.

Remember that! Conrad thought. Thinking of Peter, the multimillionaire exploiter, would put mysterious, misty-eyed Francesca Heller in perspective.

Except that it did not. Not quite. She was under his skin, like a rose thorn.

Conrad walked hard, hardly noticing the cold night or the desultory rain. Feet pounding on the pavement, he could convince himself that she was a momentary aberration; that he did not want a woman in his life whom he would be ashamed to introduce to his grandfather and the people his grandfather thought of as his subjects; that he did not want a misty-eyed i

Look, he said to himself. Either Francesca Heller was what she ought to be as her father’s daughter, a real wily operator. In that case she was not the woman for him. Or she was what she had looked tonight. It was a faint outside chance. No woman of twenty-three was so open, so unguarded, so—he said it to himself deliberately—vulnerable. But if she was—

Ah, if she was, then Conrad Domitio was not the man for her.