The Royal We (14 page)

“To Shoreditch, if you lovers can stop manhandling each other,” Freddie said. “This bird I’m sort of seeing wants to have a look at Tony’s new club.”

“Ask her name.” Nick nudged me.

“I don’t know what you find so amusing, Knickers,” Freddie said airily. “Fallopia is a beautiful name.”

I nearly choked. “Fallopia? Where did you meet
her
?”

Freddie’s lip twitched. “The Tube, of course.”

I burst into laughter. Freddie looked delighted. Even Nick giggled.

“What’s so funny?” Lacey asked, sauntering out from the bedroom doors.

I’d recognized her whole wardrobe-indecision gambit from high school—last one out of the bedroom makes the grandest entrance—and it worked just as she’d clearly imagined. She’d decided on a sleek black halter dress, which managed to seem classy while simultaneously leaving very little to the imagination; if Freddie had been a cartoon, his eyes would have dropped out of his skull and rolled along the floor until they landed at Lacey’s feet, looking up her skirt.

“Nothing is funny,” Freddie said, offering Lacey his arm. “There is absolutely nothing funny about the fact that Bex has selfishly kept a blond goddess to herself all this time.”

“Well, now we’ve fixed
that
,” Lacey said, never once betraying that she was flirting with a guy whose picture used to be tacked up on her wall, “let’s not waste any more time.”

Nick and I traded amused glances as Freddie escorted her to the elevator.

“I don’t like Fallopia’s chances too much, do you?” I said.

“Hurricane Freddie,” was all he said.

Plush, a pop-up offshoot of the original Club Theme, was not Tony’s best effort. Its fur-covered tables and chairs, damp from perspiration and sticky from spilled drinks, couldn’t be cleaned and were unpleasant to sit on, which may be why so many people opted to dance in the cages suspended from the ceiling. Clive and a very drunk Gaz immediately goaded me and Lacey into the two above the VIP section while they catcalled appreciatively—and, in Gaz’s case, clambered up to join us.

“This is brilliant!” Gaz shouted, jerking into a triumphant pose that had the cage swinging perilously (and Tony flinching).

“Yes, our Garamond is a font of bad ideas,” Cilla cracked from the floor beneath us, loudly enough for Gaz to hear and salute her comically.

“What’s the matter, Clivey, can’t lift yourself in there?” shouted Martin Fitzwilliam, whom Clive referred to as his stupidest brother. “Worried you’ll pull a
journalism
muscle?”

I saw Clive shake his head. Then he drained his drink and climbed in with me.

“If I can’t beat them, I’ll join you,” he quipped. “And if there’s one thing they’ve proven over the years, it’s that I can’t beat them. I broke a finger once punching Thick Trevor in the chest.”

“I thought Martin was the stupid one,” I said.

“He is,” Clive said. “And Trevor is thick. You’ll understand the difference if you see them together.”

I grinned. “All I know is, Martin
must
be stupid, or else he’d be the one up in a cage with a girl.”

Lacey always says club dancing looks like a seizure—as with Halloween, she’d rather look cute if she plans to be the center of attention—so she and Gaz started some deliberately exaggerated dirty dancing that eventually morphed into a facetious dance-off against me and Clive. He made a good partner in our pseudo-lambada—even his stupid brother Martin ended up cheering for us—although I did feel a twinge seeing Nick out of the corner of my eye and knowing he and I could never do this, even in jest. Freddie, however, seemed to be considering it. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Lacey’s cage.

“Isn’t
she
a dynamo,” Bea said to me during a break in our revelry. “What’s next for you two? A trapeze?”

I smiled sweetly. “Can’t,” I said. “I believe it’s currently jammed up your ass.”

“While I fetch it,” Bea said through a matching smile, “you might enjoy the view of Nick with his old flame. Don’t they look cozy?”

I peered around her at Nick, talking to a lithe, fair-skinned blonde who was positively overloaded with jewelry.

“He was devastated when Ceres cheated on him,” Bea continued.

At that moment Nick laughed loudly and put an arm around Ceres’s shoulder. A jealous pit blossomed in my stomach, but I ignored it. Insecurity had never been my style.

“I’m sure he’s just thrilled to hear about the cutting-edge world of party planning,” I said.

“Yes, well, it’s not so avant-garde as greeting-card design, but what is?” smirked Bea, drifting back to them.

“What was that all about?” Lacey asked, coming up behind me. “Do you need me to crack some skulls?”

“You sound like me,” I said, hugging her around the waist.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she said. “Now, forget Lady Bellatrix Hyphenate Whatever, and let’s give the Wales brothers a night they’ll never forget.”

We did our best, and I’ll wager Freddie returned the favor: I caught him the next morning tiptoeing out of Lacey’s bedroom. She immediately extended her trip—blowing off the beginning of her med-school semester in a giddy lather—and he rebooked the penthouse, and the two of them embarked on a full-fledged fling. Lacey particularly enjoyed the covert shenanigans of sneaking in and out of bars to avoid the paparazzi, although once she mistimed her exit and got caught in a shot with Freddie. Fortunately, he was blocking most of her body and all of her face, except for her ear, and a couple of curls. She bought four copies of the story, even though it included shots of him with two other girls under the headline
FRISKY FREDDIE BLAZES THROUGH BLONDES
.

“Isn’t it funny?” she’d said brightly. “It’s the perfect souvenir for when I’m back at school dissecting kidneys, or whatever, and I want to remember what it was like to be in Prince Frederick’s little black book.”

“That little black book is more like an encyclopedia at this point,” I said.

She grinned. “At least I’ll go down in history.”

Nick wasn’t as amused.

“You don’t think you’re being bit careless?” he asked Freddie one night shortly after Lacey returned to the States. The brothers were teaching me cribbage at Kensington. “You’ve spent the last fortnight leading around half of London, including my girlfriend’s sister.”

“Beats hiding girls under a blanket in the car,” Freddie said. “How long can you keep pretending you and Bex aren’t actually together? I’m even bringing Fallopia to Klosters and we barely know each other.”

“Then why bring her?” I asked.

“Her name is Fallopia. Father will hate her,” Freddie said patiently, as if this were too stupid to be discussed.

“It’s none of my concern if you burn hot and fast with these people we’ll probably never see again,” Nick said. “But Lacey is someone we care about. I’ve no interest in denying you the great love of your life, but if she’s
not
, then—”

“It was two glorious weeks, and everyone went home with a smile,” Freddie said.

“Then what about the next time she visits? And the one after that?” Nick asked. “What happens if Bex and I get found out? Leading Lacey on is one thing, but
carrying
on with her would make both Bex
and
Lacey look bad. The last thing we need is that stodgy old
Mail
columnist squawking that they have a royals fetish.”

“I know you’re the heir and I’m the spare, Knickers, but that doesn’t mean you’re also meant to be my nanny,” Freddie said. “Let me have my fun.”

“Not everyone would call baiting the press
fun
,” Nick said curtly.

“Screw Prince Dick.”

“I don’t mean him.”

“Why are you always bringing her up?” Freddie asked hotly.

“Why are
you
always forgetting?” Nick slapped his cards down on the floor.

Freddie slammed down his cards, stood, and angrily swiped his coat from the back of a flowered armchair. He disappeared out the door of the apartment with a bang.

Nick rubbed his eyes. I crawled over and hugged one of his knees to my chest.

“Lacey knows it was casual,” I promised. “And nobody recognizes her, and nobody even knows about us. They won’t put two and two together that she was out with Freddie. “

“It’s just…” He let out a frustrated breath. “We have to talk about something, and this isn’t the way I’d wanted to do it.”

My mind flashed to his arm around Ceres at Plush. My stomach sank. I really hate
We have to talk
. It never goes anywhere good, and for me, it brings back memories of the day Mom sat me and Lacey down on the couch and said
We have to talk
because Dad had a heart attack. I will never forget the sensation that if I opened my mouth, my own heart would come up out of it and land on the coffee table.

I steeled myself. “Talk about what?”

Nick tucked a stray strand of my hair behind my ear and tugged on it gently. “Well, you may not want to after that display, but I rather thought I’d like to bring you on the family Klosters trip at New Year’s.”

The longer I sat there in shocked silence, the more Nick’s amusement turned to nerves.

“Obviously, you don’t have to,” he said, fidgeting. “I just enjoyed your parents, and—”

“Yes, of course, yes. I want to,” I said happily. “You just caught me off guard.”

His face was a picture of relief. “I wanted it to be a surprise,” he said, folding me into his arms as we leaned back against the faded green love seat. “I did
not
want it to seem like Freddie goaded me into it, because he didn’t.”

“I believe you,” I said. “I’m just…I’m totally excited, but I also want to throw up a little. Is that lame?”

“I’d be worried if you weren’t slightly jittery,” Nick said. “It’s not like Father recently hit his head and woke up all cuddly.”

I snorted.

“Definitely do as much of that as possible,” he teased.

I elbowed him, he tickled me, and we spent a few minutes poking at each other and laughing until he finally caught both my wrists and gave me a long kiss.

“London stresses me out,” he said when we broke apart. “It’s full of people who want something from me, or expect something.” He smiled. “But Klosters is like Oxford. Ten minutes with the cameras and everyone leaves us alone.”

“Is there ever a time when you’re
not
looking for everyone to leave you alone?”

Nick rolled onto his back, carrying me with him until I was straddling his chest. “Right now?” he said, and tugged at my jeans with a wicked gleam.

I grinned and uncurled myself. “Race you to the Howard Bedroom. Last one there gets the lumpy side.”

“Oh no, that’s not on,” he said, leaping to his feet. “I know another secret passage you’ve not seen,” he shouted, tearing off in the other direction.

And indeed, I slept on the lumpy side. It was worth it.

That December, a huge snowstorm they were calling the Arctic Sinkhole socked in the entire Midwest. I turned down kind invitations to spend the holiday with Cilla’s and Gaz’s respective families because I kept hoping for a last-minute break in the weather, but it became clear that even if I somehow got to Iowa for Christmas, I was fifty-fifty at best to return in time for Klosters. Nick called from the annual Lyons gathering up at Sandringham to tell me everyone would understand, but Lacey and Mom were adamant that I shouldn’t risk it, Mom even threatening to disown me if I tried. So I spent the holiday alone in my flat with a radiator that worked only half the time but clanged monotonously all of the time, and a toilet that wouldn’t stop flushing unless I hit the tank with the broad side of a dictionary.

But I embraced the unplanned quietude, which I had jokingly christened my Solitary Refinement. I bought a pint-size fake tree and decorated it with tinsel and ornaments from a local drugstore. I hung the holiday cards I’d gotten above my imitation fireplace, and I stocked up on port wine and fancier beer. And every day I spruced up my blue Oxford sweatshirt with Nick’s present to me. Eleanor decreed long ago that the Royal Family must give only gag gifts at Christmas—which makes perfect sense; Sephora gift cards don’t quite cut it for a woman who has her own Gutenberg Bible—but I think Nick missed the satisfaction of giving actual
thoughtful
presents to his loved ones, because he blew past our amiably low price cap and bought me a delicate diamond solitaire pendant on a long gold chain (so I could wear it under my clothes, next to my heart, without anyone being the wiser). I gave him a sweater and a cheat guide for cryptic crosswords. In my defense, he is almost as hard to shop for as his grandmother, and he needed both.

On Christmas Day, I luxuriated in changing out of my sleeping pajamas and into a new flannel set specifically for loafing around, and spent the day watching movies. Just as I got antsy for human contact—right at the part of
The Sound of Music
when the Von Trapp kids are parading around Salzburg dressed in nothing but some old drapes—I heard a sloppy knock at my door.

“Who is it?” I shouted. My peephole was permanently fogged.

“Gaz. I bring delicacies.”

I fumbled at the chain and tugged open the door. Gaz charged through, a burst of frosty air around him as he made a beeline for my compact kitchen, carrying several grocery bags from Harrods. He dumped his quarry on whatever counter space he could find and surveyed my place.

“Cilla said your flat was small, but I didn’t realize she meant you could see into the lav from the kitchen,” he said. “I could probably
use
it from here.”

“Go ahead, you just metaphorically peed all over the place anyway,” I said. “What are you doing here? I mean, I’m glad to see you, but I’m not exactly company-ready.”

“My family is all done in by about two o’clock. Big fat Christmas dinner and then straight into a food coma.” He patted his stomach. “But I’m a growing boy and I need my third meal, see, and Cilla said you wouldn’t go with her to Yorkshire to have her eighteen nieces and nephews blow their noses all over you, so voila, your savior is here.”

Gaz started pulling things willy-nilly from the bags. “I brought all kinds of goodies. Come have a butcher’s. We’ve got cheese and onion pasties, a pork pie; have you ever had one? Bloody brilliant. Oh, and a spot of cheese and caviar, and some chocolates.”