The Princess by Wendy Holden

Author:Wendy Holden [Holden, Wendy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

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Diana appeared, beaming excitedly and carrying a small weekend bag. “Hello, Mr. Barry!” She seemed slightly out of breath, as if she had just put down tools and hurried to meet him. Along with a shirt, cardigan and flowered skirt, she was sporting rubber gloves. “Going to take those off?” he asked wryly.

She ripped them from her hands, giggling, as they walked down the path. “Imagine if I’d turned up in them.”

“Well, it’s not unknown. Her Majesty wears them sometimes, to wash up at Balmoral.”

She laughed disbelievingly. “It’s true,” he said. Noise from behind now distracted them both. A group of tots in painting overalls were crowded in the doorway. “Miss Diana!” they were wailing. “Come back, Miss Diana! Where are you going, Miss Diana?”

“Just off to the seaside,” she called back, waving cheerily.

This produced fresh wails. “The seaside! The seaside! Can we come too, Miss Diana? Take us with you, Miss Diana!”

Kay King appeared. “Miss Diana will be back soon,” she said as she steered them firmly back inside.

“When?” was the chorused demand. “Miss Diana! Miss Diana!”

She swung back from blowing them kisses and gave him an apologetic grin. “They’re quite attached to me.”

“So I see. And you obviously enjoy it. Even cleaning the kitchen.”

She shook back her thick blond hair. “Well, I’m the youngest of the team, so I tend to do the jobs no one else wants. Take them to the loo, wipe their noses, the whole lot. I don’t mind though.”

He tried and failed to imagine any member of the royal family sharing this view. Never in his life had he seen any of them wipe a nose, and as for taking toddlers to the loo, forget it. The queen had had difficulty embracing her own children. “Not you, dear,” she had once advised her eldest son after an absence of six months.

The prince had been five at the time, and Her Majesty had brushed aside his little-boy hugs to shake hands with waiting dignitaries. Stephen had heard about it many times, from the horse’s somewhat bitter mouth. Now that he came to think of it, that had happened on Britannia.

“Nursery work’s really interesting,” Diana was enthusing. “I love it, it teaches you how to entertain children constructively. It’s amazing how very different they can be. You can’t just lump them together, any more than you can lump adults together. Every human being is different, and you can see from an amazingly young age how their personality traits show through.”

Stephen was impressed. All this would come in very handy. She would be raising the nation’s future rulers, if things went well. With the full sun of royal favor finally falling on her, it was hard to remember the doubts he had once had. Her love of soppy romantic novels, for instance. What did that matter, compared to her talents? Her memory, as he knew from the ex-girlfriends conversation, was phenomenal. Her instincts, meanwhile, were spot on. Her actions on that hay bale in West Sussex had been nothing less than genius.

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