Little Lady Agency and the Prince

one My name is Melissa Romney-Jones, but pretty soon, you'll be able to call me Melissa Romney-Jones-Riley! My fiance, Jonathan, thinks it has quite a ring to it, although we've had one or two discussions about whether it should be Riley-Romney-Jones or Romney-Jones-Riley. Whichever, it certainly isn't any more ridiculous than my professional name, Honey Blennerhesket, which...Actually, let's start at the beginning.As Melissa, I am many things to many people: long-suffering daughter of notorious Member of Parliament Martin Romney-Jones; undereducated but perfectly mannered Old Girl of several fine boarding schools; and the delighted fiancee of the debonair, successful, and charming Jonathan Riley, a paragon who gives estate agents and American men a good name. I'm what parents like to call a "nice girl," i.e., cheerful, practical, sturdy in the leg and ample of bosom, and entirely without embarrassing tattoos. Not what you'd call a sex kitten, in other words.But then there's my other life. Add a satin corset, and some serious red lipstick, and I'm Honey Blennerhesket, bootylicious troubleshooter for London's hapless bachelors and chaps generally in need of a woman's multitasking mind. As far as they're concerned, there's no domestic problem Honey can't sort out, no etiquette dilemma she can't advise on, and no sticky social situation she can't winkle them out of faster than you can say "Gina Lollobrigida." It's weird, but I can't be bossy when I'm everyday Melissa, yet somehow when I'm walking in Honey's stilettos I turn into a whirlwind of retro-glamour and female dynamism. A supernanny for grown men, if you like.I've tried to keep my two identities apart, but my two lives have a habit of running into each other. Even the name of the business -- The Little Lady Agency -- comes from the annoying manner in which my father, an unreconstructed male chauvinist pig, would refer to my mother, and indeed any woman, as The Little Lady. If men want to engage this little lady to run their lives the way my mother runs my father's, they pay very handsome hourly rates. But in return, I sort out their problems, advise them gently on the real reasons they're going wrong socially, and ideally, leave them not only spruced up but also in a better state to tackle things themselves.I really do love my job. As my flatmate, Nelson, says, it's a form of social work. And he should know, being the third most well-meaning person in Britain, after Bono and Jamie Oliver. In fact, it was by shamelessly playing on Nelson's mile-wide humanitarian streak that I'd managed to enlist his reluctant help in The Little Lady Agency's first job of the day."You understand that I'm doing this on the sole condition that I don't tell a single lie?" he stressed for the ninth time, as he flipped through the stack of glossy mags on my office coffee table.Nelson was my oldest friend. He looked how you'd imagine an English cricket hero should -- tall and strapping with a shock of blond hair. At thirty-three, he was a couple of years older than me, but really he should have been born around 1815, when he could have spent his time striding across some vast estate, tending kindly to his peasants, railing at the iniquities of the slave trade, and eating enormous gourmet meals.Instead, he worked in fund-raising and administration for a charity and spent a lot of time sailing with his school friend Roger Trumpet, who, coincidentally, had the personal hygiene habits of a nineteenth-century serf."Absolutely," I reassured him. "I'll be doing all the talking. You just have to look patient. You're good at that.""But what I don't understand is why Jethro Lorton-Hunter needs you in the first place," he said, furrowing his brow like a baffled Labrador. "If his girlfriend's so flaky that she can't bear to see him talking to another woman, why doesn't he just tell her to pack it in? Before he packs heBrowne, Hester is the author of 'Little Lady Agency and the Prince', published 2008 under ISBN 9781416539063 and ISBN 1416539069.