Your Royal Hostage Read Free Page A

formality, and would enable him to defeat the powers of hard-faced darkness threatening him, without delay.
    And now where were Cy Fredericks and Jemima Shore respectively? Cy Fredericks was somewhere in America with an enormous golden handshake to arm him in a future life which turned out to be remarkably well organized in advance, considering the apparent suddenness of his fall at Megalith. Jemima Shore was trudging back from the Tube to her flat in Holland Park Mansions (dashing white Mercedes sports car, like Megalith, a thing of the past, because, in some mysterious way, like everything else it turned out to belong to Megalith). Redundancy payment if any was certain to be the subject of long, long argument between Megalith's lawyers and her own, just supposing she could afford such a thing. In short, Jemima Shore, like a good many of the rest of England, was out of a job.
    She turned to the inside page of the Standard. Yes, it had to be the day when she read about something else she had been dreading, dreading proudly in silence for several weeks. She found herself gazing at a wedding photograph. But this was no royal wedding, no bride in white tulle and diamonds on the arm of a chocolate soldier in Ruritanian uniform. Where the groom was concerned, Jemima Shore was gazing into the face of a man she knew, no newspaper creation, in fact until recently had known very well indeed.
    'I wonder what happened to his spectacles? He must be wearing contact lenses,' she thought irrelevantly.
    The bridegroom was one Cass Brinsley, a barrister who had been Jemima's steady lover for a period not long enough in her opinion, too long in his. The bride, who was called Flora Hereford, was also a barrister and had once been a pupil in Cass Brinsley's chambers. Jemima angrily reflected that Flora Hereford, wearing a dark high-necked dress with a small white collar, looked extremely pleased with herself. As well she might. After all, she'd been after Cass for years. And now she'd got him.
    lawful matrimony ran the witty caption under the happy couple. Really, the Press these days and their hea dlines; what with princess: wedding scare almost daily, and now this.  Furthermore: 'What a dull dress to wear at your wedding! I wouldn't dream of wearing anything quite so lacking in style as that,' was Jemima's next uncharitable thought. And then something most unpalatable occurred to her: 'How on earth would I know? I've never been married.'
    Immediately after thinking this, in spite of herself, Jemima found a wave of horrible emotion sweeping over her as she walked down the broad silent street, still clutching the paper folded back at the fatal photograph.
    Unhappiness? Yes, perhaps. Jealousy? Yes, definitely.
    Oh Cass, thought Jemima, Cass, you should have waited. At which point the honest unpalatable voice spoke again in her ear: but he did wait, didn't he? He waited for months, almost a whole year after his declaration in the direction of marriage, and what did you do? You wouldn't say yes, you wouldn't say no. Cass's very own words.
    It was only after that that Flor a Hereford got him. That one-off programme about child-brides in Sri Lanka, the trip he begged you not to make - 'not another eight-week stint without a telephone call' - she could hear Cass's voice now, and her own defensive reply: 'Is it my fault if you're always out when I'm in?' 'But I'm always in while you're away,' retorted Cass grimly. Added to which the programme had never even been shown, concluded Jemima ruefully, and now it never will be. Ah well, no one to blame but myself.
    Jemima Shore decided that these were definitely the most depressing words in the English language. As they resounded in her ears, she took another peck at the photograph, as a result of which honesty once more made her admit that Flora Hereford was really a very pretty girl wearing rather an elegant dress; she was also several years younger than Jemima.
    No one to blame but herself. She had a