A Royal Pain Read Online Free Page A

darling.” Belinda yanked me sideways into Curzon Street. “My salon is only just around the corner. We’ll just pop in there and I’ll lend you something to wear.”
    “I couldn’t possibly wear one of your dresses. What if I damaged it in some way? You know what I’m like. I’d be liable to spill something on it.”
    “Don’t be silly. You’ll be doing me a favor actually. You can be a walking advertisement for my designs when you mingle with your royal relatives. That would be a coup, wouldn’t it? Couturiere by appointment to the royal family?”
    “Not the culottes,” I said hastily, my one modeling disaster dancing before my eyes. “Some normal kind of garment that I can wear without tripping over it or looking like an idiot.”
    Belinda gave her delightful bell-like laugh. “You are so sweet, Georgie.”
    “Sweet but clumsy,” I said gloomily.
    “I’m sure you’ll grow out of your clumsiness someday.”
    “I hope so,” I said. “It’s not that I’m perpetually clumsy. It’s just that I’m always clumsy at the wrong place and the wrong time, in front of the wrong people. It must have something to do with nerves, I suppose.”
    “Now why should you be nervous?” Belinda demanded.
    “You’re just about the most eligible young woman in Britain, and you’re quite attractive and you have that delightfully fresh and virginal quality to you—speaking of which, anything to report on that front?”
    “My virginity, you mean?”
    Two nannies, pushing prams, turned back to glare at us with looks of utter horror.
    Belinda and I exchanged a grin. “This conversation should probably wait for somewhere a little less public,” I said and bundled her into the doorway of the building that housed her salon. Once upstairs in her little room she had me try on several outfits before settling on a light brown georgette dress with a filmy gold short cape over it.
    “Capes are so in fashion at the moment and it goes so well with your hair,” she said, and it did. I felt like a different person as I stared at myself in her full-length mirror. No longer gawky but tall and elegant—until I came to my feet, that is. I was wearing sensible black lace-up maid’s shoes.
    “The shoes will have to go,” she said. “We can pop into Russell and Bromley on the way.”
    “Belinda—I have no money. Don’t you understand that?”
    “The shoes have to complement the outfit,” she said airily. “Besides, you can pay me back when you’re queen of somewhere. You never know, you might end up with a maharaja who will weigh you in diamonds.”
    “And then lock me away in a harem. No, thank you. I think I’ll settle for a less wealthy Englishman.”
    “So boring, darling. And so completely sexless.” Belinda stepped out onto the street and hailed a taxicab, which screeched to a halt beside her. “Russell and Bromley first,” she said, as if this were normal behavior. For her it was. For me it still made me feel like Cinderella.
    It took Belinda half an hour to select a pair of gold pumps for me, then it was off to the Savoy. Belinda chattered merrily and I found my spirits lifting. The cab swung under the wonderfully modern streamlined portico of the Savoy and a doorman leaped forward to open the door for us. I swept inside, feeling sophisticated and glamorous, a woman of the world at last. At least until my cape, flowing out behind me as I entered, got caught in the revolving door. I was yanked backward, choking, and had to stand there, mortified, while the doormen extricated me and Belinda chuckled.
    “Did you know that you design dangerous clothing?” I demanded as we went through to the grill. “That’s twice now that one of your garments has tried to kill me.”
    Belinda was still laughing. “Normal people seem to have no trouble with them. “Maybe they are secretly communist garments, sworn to destroy the house of Windsor.”
    “Then I definitely won’t let you sell one to my cousins.” I