Royal Matchmaker

Chapter Four

While Ianto had been trying hard to hide his nervousness in front of the king, and then doing verbal battle with his son, Toshiko had been busy creating a map of every available woman of noble or royal blood that she could find who were seeking their happily-ever-after and who might make the prince a suitable bride. It was colour-coded, with a rainbow of Post-It notes and a spider's web of string connecting it all. There were recent photographs of each woman, biographical notes, social histories, timelines… she had done her homework and then some. Now that she was done, she was sure that Ianto would know everything about every woman who might be acceptable.

Standing back to survey her work with a feeling of great satisfaction, Tosh was startled when Ianto suddenly burst through the door of their suite. She could tell by the look on his face that things had not gone according to the norm when meeting clients for the first time.

"What's wrong?" she asked warily.

"He thinks my job is a joke and he had no idea we were coming!" Ianto was more rattled than Tosh had ever seen.

"Are you serious?"

"Yup." There was a very distinct pop to the 'P'.

"What are we going to do?" Tosh's eyes were wide.

"We're going to…" Ianto trailed off as he finally saw the kaleidoscope of colour behind Toshiko. "Wow! You did a lot more than unpack!"

She shrugged, "yeah…"

"Okay, well… we're going to…" Ianto couldn't take his eyes off the map and it inspired him. "We are going to keep going!" he declared. "What do you have?"

Toshiko turned to her work of art. "Well, based on the basic background compatibility parameters I found eighty-two potential matches of the proper pedigree for Prince Jack."

"Okay, good work, but from what I just experienced, we're going to need one hundred and eight-two," Ianto scowled. "At least!"

"Oh, so our prince is not so charming."

"I'm going to have to find a way to get on this guy's good side, so I've asked his valet to organise a working dinner." Ianto crossed to one of the suitcases and started looking through his clothes.

"That's good!" Tosh exclaimed as she walked over to him. "Food always helps a man think." She sat down and smiled cheerfully. "Look on the bright side, you get to have dinner with a prince."

"Trust me," he frowned deeply. "All that glitters isn't necessarily gold."

Ianto held a tie up against a shirt and considered the combination. Normally, he'd have had everything matched and packed according to occasion, location, weather, company… he never left anything to chance. As the son of a highly successful tailor with clients that included several generations of the Windsor Royal Family in the Commonwealth of Illustrious Britannia, Ianto had been taught from an early age that first impressions were everything and that clothes often made the man on such introductions. Unfortunately, this trip to the Boeshane Peninsula had come up so unexpectedly, leaving no time for organisation, that he was as out-of-sorts as his wardrobe.

Finally, he sighed deeply as he laid out a suit, shirt and tie. "Okay, this should do nicely."

Tosh took one look at his choices and rolled her eyes. "Yes, if you're going to a funeral."

"Tosh…"

"Look, trust me on this…" She darted out of the main room and into her bedroom, emerging a moment later with a small flat box, which she opened and presented with a flourish. "This is what you need tonight."

Ianto looked at the gift with wide eyes. It was a tie of beautiful deep nearly blood red silk shot through with silver and blue threads. "Tosh…" he was speechless.

"It's nothing," she giggled nervously. "I saw it in New Londinium when I was up there for my ojiisan's one hundredth birthday." Toshiko was very close to her great-grandfather; he'd helped raise her when her father had passed away when she was but seven.

"I don't know what to say," Ianto took the tie from the box and held it up so the light could play across the surface; it really was a thing of beauty, the way the light played off the coloured threads. "Thank you, thank you so much! You really shouldn't have, you know."

"Sometimes we all need a little ego boost," she smiled at him fondly, "and I thought the blue matched your eyes."

Ianto exchanged his stark white shirt for one the colour of a dove's pale grey breast and laid the tie against it. Then he set the black suit back in the case and pulled out a three-piece with a barely noticeable grey pinstripe running through it and he knew he was going to look… and feel… like a million pounds. 'Toshiko is right; sometimes we do need an ego boost.'

"Now," Tosh took the small leather box from his case and looked through its contents, pushing aside cufflinks and a watch until she found what she wanted: a sterling silver tie clasp with a blue sapphire in the centre and a pair of matching cufflinks. The antique pieces had been passed down through the Jones men for centuries and were not only priceless but absolutely irreplaceable.

A servant slid a dish of pasta onto the gold charger in front of Prince Jack and then silently moved away while another copied the movements for Ianto. Watching for the prince's lead, Ianto waited until Jack had picked up his fork before he did the same.

"So, I am genuinely curious," Jack poked his fork around in his food. "How do you see your matchmaking methodology working?" He finally speared a slice of mushroom and slipped it into his mouth.

Ianto set his fork down on the edge of his plate, his bite of chicken and pasta left uneaten, and looked down the long table – there were six pairs of chairs between him and the prince – he answered, "Well, I'll give you the broad strokes. Toshiko will cull through all the potential candidates worthy of the position and the more I get to know you the easier it will be for me to narrow down that field even fur…" He watched the prince shove an enormous forkful of pasta into his mouth. "Then I will conduct interviews with the women and introduce you to the top candidates."

"You won't introduce them to me…" Jack spoke with his mouth full, something Ianto found extremely unattractive and quite surprising, thinking that a prince should have much better table manners than that and then wondering if the act was all for his benefit. Watching minute bits of food spew from Jack's mouth gave Ianto a momentary loss of appetite and made him rethink eating the rest of his dinner. 'I suppose I can always get something sent to my room,' he concluded logically.

"You will introduce them to the future king of Boeshane."

Ianto's eyebrow rose. "Aren't they one and the same?"

Jack swallowed the remains of his food and then set his knife and fork down on the dish with a deliberately distinct clink that spoke of his displeasure. "Tell you what, why don't we make this easy for both of us…"

"Great," Ianto muttered under his breath.

"You send me several candidates and I'll play along. I'll choose one as a date to the Jubilee Ball, you'll fly away home and everybody walks away a winner." He waved his hand as if it were a done deal.

"Well, everybody except for girl you choose who gets her heart broken, umm… me, with my hard-earned reputation on the line, and you, walking away from potentially the greatest thing that ever came into your life." Ianto could feel his blood pressure rising but he remembered Tosh's words at the train station about never speaking harshly to a royal so he struggled to maintain a civil tone.

"So, I should take that as a no." Jack drank deeply from his wine glass, watching Ianto over the rim.

"Why don't you just give me a chance?" Ianto asked. "This whole keeping everybody at arm's length is only hurting you. I mean come on, let's be honest, Your Maj… hi… Your Highness."

"Keeping people at an arm's length is an occupational hazard," Jack explained with a shrug of his shoulders.

Ianto picked up his fork again and used it to gesture gingerly around him as he asked, "Is that why you chose the stuffiest room in the house for me to get to know you?" His eyebrow rose as a smile lifted the corners of his mouth. "It's kind of hard to get to know you when we're sitting in different time zones." He finally ate his first bite of food and his eyes widened slightly; it was undoubtedly the best alfredo sauce he'd ever eaten, and as his favourite pasta sauce, he'd eaten and cooked a lot of it in his day.

Jack didn't say a word, but Ianto could tell from the way he took his napkin from his lap, balled it up and tossed it onto the table that Prince Jack of Boeshane was definitely not amused.

Fifteen minutes later, bundled in warm coats, Jack led Ianto out through the front door of the palace and across the drive towards the gardens.

"So, what exactly do you want to know about me?" Jack tried to keep his tone light and conversational.

"Well, everything that's not for public consumption," Ianto answered truthfully. "Your father has hired me to find you an eligible bachelorette and I can tell I've got my work cut out for me."

They reached the marble wall that stood between the palace and the gardens and paused to look at the view, which was truly beautiful even when bathed in the light of a full moon.

"That's because you seem intent on doing this the hard way," Jack remarked frankly.

"No," Ianto held back his irritation, "it's just the right way." He drew in a deep breath and started again. "I've worked with a great many famous people and they're usually very different in their real lives from how they're portrayed in the press."

"Ah, so I'm in the public eye so I need to be what people expect me to be."

"No!" Ianto exclaimed. "That's just the role you play! I need to know who you really are!"

Jack was struck at that moment by the way Ianto's eyes flashed as he spoke so earnestly.

Ianto sighed deeply as he looked at Jack. "I realise that I'm a stranger and that this is all really sudden…" He was a bit taken aback when the prince broke eye contact to gaze out over the gardens. "But…" he paused, waiting until Jack was looking at him again, "wouldn't you like to fall in love?"

"If there really is such a thing," the prince responded in a sullen voice as he looked out over the shadowy gardens again.

"Why so cynical?"

Prince Jack deflected the question by asking one of his own, "I don't see a ring on your finger."

That might have been the last thing Ianto thought he'd hear and he was ill-prepared to respond. "Uh… well…" he stammered, "we're not talking about me."

"Now who's hiding?"

Ianto chuckled nervously. "I'm not hiding anything!" he protested, "I'm just not here to talk about me."

Jack watched as the moonlight revealed a blush reddening Ianto's cheeks and his fingers suddenly itched to see if his cheeks were as warm as they looked.

"You really should put a window in that wall you have up," Ianto snarked, forgetting about the harsh tones rule as he turned away.

"Well I'm impressed. Usually it takes a woman a good three or four dates before she's that candid." Jack frowned as he looked at Ianto in profile, noticing the pert nose and Cupid's bow lips, which were now pursed in irritation.

Ianto nodded his head. "Thank goodness we're not on a date!"

"Yeah…" Jack grimaced at him. "No point in reminding me."

"Nope." Ianto brought the conversation back around to its original purpose. "Well, I think we've done quite enough work for tonight." He clasped his hands together. "Thank you." He didn't even try to keep the sarcasm from his voice as he turned to walk away.

"Mr Jones…"

Ianto paused and turned back.

"When you compile a list of candidates please steer clear of the ones who use candour as an excuse to be rude."

"I certainly will," and a wave of anger rose in Ianto making his eyes flashed dangerously as he swept a mockingly low bow before the prince. "Your Highness," and he stalked away with sharp steps across the cobblestones, his head held high and his fists clenched by his sides.

He failed to see Prince Jack watching him with an odd smile that was both confused and amused.

Ianto and Toshiko had fled the palace… well, actually Ianto had done the fleeing, Tosh had done the following, and now they were walking through Boeshane's village centre. Despite being a very high-tech society, the entire place had been designed with an old-world charm to it; there were a few two-storey buildings with white-washed walls and dark beams, leaded-glass windows and low stone walls that protected front gardens, but all-in-all, the effect was more of an 18th century country village. Tall, leafy trees offered shade from the sun while flowerboxes overflowed with riotous colour. The air was fresh and clean, scented with the various flowers.

As they'd strolled into town, they had passed lovely cottages that would have been right at home in the old-English Cotswolds and there were vast pastoral landscapes dotted with flocks of woolly sheep and docile cows. Despite the precision and lack of warmth of the palace itself, outside its imposing towers and crenulations, Boeshane itself was a picturesque and tranquil country, one that welcomed visitors and residents alike to slow down, stay a while and smell the roses.

Tosh was doing her best to steer Ianto towards a nice café with tables, chairs and benches surrounding a marble fountain with a graceful sea kelpie at its centre – an homage to the vast ocean surrounding the peninsula on three sides. When Ianto had said they were going for a walk, she'd thought he meant around the palace gardens; she hadn't worn shoes meant for a march into town. Her feet hurt, and she wanted to sit down and enjoy a coffee and hopefully a yummy pastry.

"I cannot believe I took on a job without meeting the client first!" Ianto was still fuming even as they sat down in the tea shop; he'd spent their entire trip into town either muttering mutinously to himself about "…that high-handed, uncooperative prince who doesn't know what's good for him…" and "…should have listened to my little voice when it said this was a bad idea…" or telling Tosh that "…need to have my head examined…" and "…going home on the next Hover out of here…"

Toshiko's favourite bit of her boss's rant was "…that man needs a good swift kick right in the arse…" and she had to work hard to hide the fit of giggles that ensued as she pictured cartoon versions of Jack and Ianto in an arse-kicking contest, chasing one another around the palace gardens.

Knowing that her boss and best friend just needed to vent, Tosh had trudged along beside him, although keeping up with his indignant pace was a bit of a trial. She'd listened with one ear while enjoying the sound of birds singing in the trees and water flowing gently down a brook that followed the road for a while. She knew that Ianto would eventually run out of steam and then they would talk.

Tosh opened her computer and prepared to get some work done while they waited for their order. She looked up and smiled as Ianto leaned forward and continued in a quieter tone of voice.

"And a royal one at that!" The look on Ianto's face made her want to giggle again but she wisely held back.

"Oh, come on, he can't be that bad!"

Ianto glared at her. "Yeah, he can! He is!" He shook his head in frustration. "It's my job to find him the love of his life in under a month and I can't because he refuses to take this seriously…" He held up a finger to stop her from interrupting. "Get this, he doesn't believe in love," Ianto made air quotes around the last four words and then snorted derisively.

The waitress arrived with their coffee and croissants and Ianto smiled warmly as he thanked her but as soon as she was gone, the smile vanished as well, replaced by a look of intense worry. "I have everything riding on this, Tosh! There must be some way to crack him; please, tell me you have an idea?!"

Tosh sipped her coffee and looked thoughtful then inspiration struck. "He's really close with his valet, Owen; I could talk with him, see if I can get some information."

"Good!" Ianto nodded eagerly. "Yeah, I know everybody around the prince is pretty tight-lipped but you're cute…"

"Thank you."

"So, yeah, go for it." Ianto nodded his approval as he drank his coffee.