Free Fancy Pants by Susan Elizabeth Phillips Page B

with them. They didn't have to suffer her attacks
of thoughtlessness, her perpetual tardiness, or her piques when she
didn't get her way. Men made her bloom. At least for a while . .. until
she grew bored. Then she became impossible.

As she applied a slick of coral gloss to her lips, she couldn't help
but smile at the memory of her most spectacular conquest, although she
was absolutely distraught that he hadn't taken their parting better.
Still, what could she have done? Several months of playing second
fiddle to all his official responsibilities had brought the chill light
of reality to those deliciously warm visions of royal immortality she'd
been
entertaining—glass-enclosed carriages, cathedral doors flinging open,
trumpets playing—visions not entirely unthinkable for a girl who'd been
raised in the bedroom of a princess.

When she'd finally come to her senses about their relationship and
realized she didn't want to live her life at the beck and call of the
British Empire, she'd tried to make her break with him as clean as
possible. But he'd still taken it rather badly. She could see him now
as he'd looked that night—immaculately tailored, exquisitely barbered,
expensively shod. How on earth could she have known that a man who bore
no wrinkles on the outside might bear a few insecurities on the inside?
She remembered the evening two months earlier when she had ended her
relationship with the most eligible bachelor in Great Britain.

They had just finished dinner in the privacy of his apartments, and his
face had seemed young and curiously vulnerable as the candlelight
softened its aristocratic planes. She gazed at him across the damask
tablecloth set with sterling two hundred years old and china rimmed in
twenty-four-karat gold, trying to let him understand by the earnestness
of her expression that this was all much more difficult for her than it
could possibly be for him.

"I see," he said, after she'd given her reasons, as kindly as possible,
for not continuing their friendship. And then, once more, "I see."

"You do understand?" She tilted her head to one side so that her hair
fell away from her face, letting the light catch the twin rhinestone
slivers that dangled from her earlobes, flickering like a chain of
stars
 against a chestnut sky.

His blunt response shocked her. "Actually, no." Pushing himself back
from the table, he stood abruptly.
"I don't understand at all." He
looked down at the floor and then up again at her. "I must confess I've
rather fallen for you, Francesca, and you gave me every reason to
believe that you cared for me."

"I do ," she replied
earnestly. "Of course I do."

"But not enough to put up with all that goes along with me."

The combination of stubborn pride and hurt she heard in his voice made
her feel horribly guilty. Weren't the royals supposed to hide their
emotions, no matter how trying the circumstances? "It is rather a lot,"
she reminded him.

"Yes, it is, isn't it?" There was a trace of bitterness in his laugh.
"Foolish of me to have believed you cared enough to put up with it."

Now, in the privacy of her bedroom, Francesca frowned briefly at her
reflection in the mirror. Since her own heart had never been affected
by anyone, it always came as something of a surprise to her when
one of
the men with whom she was involved reacted so strongly when they parted.

Still, there was nothing to be done about it now. She recapped her pot
of lip gloss and tried to restore
her spirits by humming a British
dance hall tune from the 1930s about a man who danced with a girl
who
had danced with the Prince of Wales.

"I'm leaving now, darling," Chloe said, appearing in the doorway as she
adjusted the brim of a cream
felt bowler over her dark hair, cut short
and curly. "If Helmut calls, tell him I'll be back by one."

"If Helmut calls, I'll tell him you bloody well died." Francesca
splayed her hand on her hip, her cinnamon brown fingernails looking
like small sculptured almonds as she tapped