The Royal We (39 page)

“Oxford might be ticked off if I’m endorsing anything named
Cambridge
,” I said, intending it as joke.

Eleanor frowned. “Quite right,” she said. “And with you wearing her ring, I suspect that might be too much Emma, don’t you agree?”

I certainly did (although I suspect it wouldn’t have mattered either way). No bride wants to glide toward her beloved dressed as his mother.

The second option was called the Surrey Fringe, a narrow piece of scrollwork more commonly turned upside down and worn as a necklace—and rightly, because we quickly assessed that it made my head looked like one end of a Christmas cracker. The third was an art deco jeweled floral wreath, best worn across the forehead, but which made me look like an unhinged
Great Gatsby
mega-fan, and the fourth barely stayed on my head for five seconds. It was the Girls of the Isles tiara—first given to Georgina Lyons-Bowes by a national women’s group—and it was Eleanor’s personal favorite.

“I would never actually let you wear this one,” Eleanor said, replacing it on the bed with 60 percent more care than she showed the others. “I just thought you’d find it amusing to look like our money for a moment.”

Number five was a princessy circlet of tall diamond curlicues. “This belonged to my sister,” Eleanor said. “It fell off and got stuck in the loo at my coronation. They had to use forceps to retrieve it.” I must have looked startled, because she added, “I believe we’ve had it cleaned.”

The Loo Tiara was too large on me (and, I privately feared, tempting fate). The Queen removed it gently and replaced it with the simplest of the six.

“I suspect I’ve saved the best for last,” she said.

This one was still chock full of diamonds, but more subtly—very streamlined, no dangling bits, nothing imposing about its height. If a tiara may be deemed sporty, this was the sportiest, and like the dress I’d chosen, it suited me to a tee.

The Queen smiled, but slowly, which was her way—like she wanted you on tenterhooks for as long as humanly possible.

“I shall inform Marj,” she said.

Instead, she picked up her brush, hairball included, and began fussing with my extensions. Sometimes I wish that I could reassure my hair’s original owner that it’s being well looked after, and, in fact, getting the royal treatment in every way.

“It must be so challenging for you to have one foot here and one foot in America,” the Queen said. “The United Kingdom and the United States have been brilliant allies, of course. I have visited five times, and met five different presidents. You’re such an ebullient people.”

“Thank you,” I carefully replied, despite feeling she didn’t wholly mean it as a compliment. “Both countries have been wonderful homes to me.”

“One rarely ends up with one’s first love, does one?” she mused. “We grow up, we change, we mature. We find new love.” She fluffed my hair. “And sometimes one must make sacrifices for such love. Nicholas loves his country, and he will give himself up to it someday entirely, as I have. And you, of course, are giving yourself to him. Imagine how meaningful it might be to give yourself to his kingdom as well.”

“You mean, by becoming a British citizen?” Every conversation with Eleanor was like an oral examination.

“I was simply ruminating on the complexities of the situation,” Eleanor said, with a tug of the brush that verged on scary. “If you were marrying Freddie, a dual citizenship would be the cleanest approach. But Freddie does not share Nicholas’s destiny. It is a conundrum.”

It dawned on me right then what she meant.

“I have to give up my American citizenship,” I said slowly.

“What an interesting suggestion,” Eleanor said. She set down her brush and put her hands on my shoulders. “It
would
make a lovely wedding gift to Nicholas and Great Britain. I will be long gone when the time comes for you to be his queen consort, but indubitably I would rest easy in my grave if there were no confusion about where your loyalties lie.”

I was flummoxed. Nick had never said a word to me about whether my Americanness was a stumbling block, but maybe the reason it wasn’t a stumbling block that was he knew his grandmother would bulldoze it out of the way.

Eleanor snatched the tiara from my head and reached for a folder I hadn’t noticed.

“I happen to have the paperwork here,” she said. “I’m very touched you should want to consider such a momentous decision, but you must think it through. We wouldn’t want you to rush into anything, would we?”

“No, we would not,” I said, sounding hollow even to my own ears.

“Your clothes will be in the chamber across the hall. Murray will escort you back to your mother when you are dressed,” she said, gesturing for me to leave.

Dazed, I bobbed into a curtsy, gathered my skirts, and exited the room, at which point Murray—eyes tactfully averted from my strange state of semi-undress—ushered me into another one that was identical except for its paint job and personal effects. When he closed the door, I sat hard into a stuffed peach armchair and gazed at the folder in my hands with blurring eyes. There, alone, the memory of Eleanor’s hands pressing on my shoulders as she told me she could only die happy if I kicked the United States to the curb, I felt like a pawn lured into checkmate.

I
did not sign anything. Nor did I discuss it with anyone. Instead, the paperwork burned a hole on my table until I buried it under magazines and abandoned cryptic crosswords. I hadn’t lived in the States for years, but renouncing my claim to it—and its claim to me—seemed tantamount to ripping myself in half. This was a test I could not pass: If I gave in, I displayed obedience, but zero mettle. My nationality was the only piece of me the Palace hadn’t reshaped into something else, and I didn’t want to let it go; though I knew Eleanor would not be ignored, I hoped that if I could just stall until Nick came home, he could help me protect myself.

The rest of the year became a confining, isolating waiting game. Marj gave no indication of when I’d get to come off the bench again, for Paint Britain or anything else. Clive was working long hours, still unable to get much career traction beyond his fluffy role at a paper no one read (I was beginning to suspect he wasn’t very good at his job, but admired that he doggedly pursued it anyway). My mother was mostly in Iowa running Coucherator, Inc., at which she’d turned out to be an extremely dab hand. Joss wanted nothing to do with me. Cilla was trying to get her wedding off the docket before the final run-up to mine, which made me feel so guilty that I refused to lean on her, and in fact made her draw a few lines to protect her private life from her professional one. Gaz, usually religious with the diet-busting baked goods, was taking on extra work to pay for a May honeymoon to Bora Bora, and even Freddie was too busy for a box of wine and
Big Brother
.

“Sorry, Killer,” he’d say. “I convinced Prince Dick that Great Ormond Street Hospital would accept me as a weak alternative to Knickers. I have to go snuggle some babies.”

Or, “Bad luck, Bex, I’m out tonight—the Imperial War Museum asked me to open its RAF exhibit. Father’s jaw dropped so far you could’ve stuffed in a pheasant.” I could hear the grin. “I was tempted.”

I heard the pride underneath his jokes; I knew how much he wanted to find a place in the Lyons den, as something other than the professional scalawag he’d fashioned himself. But I missed him. I missed the whole gang. Most people would handle that by joining a book club, or playing in a recreational sports league, but that is forbidden to me. So I stayed home and shopped online with the pseudonymous credit card I’d been issued—no one will bat an eyelash if a Ms. Prudence Cattermole orders too much saucy lingerie for her sailor fiancé’s homecoming—and crumbled in private. By day, I had Marj feeding me carrots and water like a prize Thoroughbred; by night, where I once consumed booze to get over missing Nick, I now devoured the Internet. The American’t analyzed my level of clavicle protrusion and the caloric value of my shopping cart, whenever Marj granted me passage to the supermarket. That nasty old crumpet Xandra Deane suggested that the ten pounds I’d shaved off was setting an outrageously poor example for girls all over the world (which was mostly frustrating because I privately agreed, and cheated on my diet at every opportunity), and The Royal Flush alleged I am a lifelong anorexic.

In fact, The Flush was giving Xandra stiff competition as my most persistently negative coverage. At first it mostly published bits and pieces with a whiff of truth, but as its traffic and reputation grew, so did its vitriol. That distaste swelled slowly, like a balloon, and then burst all over my birthday.

Lacey’s and my Parting Shot that year consisted not of a midnight toast, but an exchange of obligatory, terse texts. That was bad enough. But the frosty November morning I officially turned twenty-seven, I woke up—still both lonely for my sister and upset with her—to find that The Royal Flush had gift-wrapped me something truly insidious: an investigative piece quoting several of Nick’s alleged conquests from the Dark Period casting what can only politely be called aspersions on the solidity of our love.

I’d have bet money the next was Ceres Whitehall de Villency:

Only India Bolingbroke went on the record, possibly because she was still cranky about losing out on both Nick and whatever she had with Richard.

This was The Flush’s splashiest piece yet, and its cruelest. It got a lot of attention, and worse, traction; almost overnight, the website that hated me the most became uncomfortably high-profile. Alone in my flat, I went from dismissing the story as rubbish, to being unnerved that it echoed a sentiment Bea had expressed at Klosters, to complete paranoia. By the time Gaz and Cilla’s wedding arrived, my despair had plumbed new depths, and I was drowning.

Cilla had always wanted an outdoor wedding, so she made it happen even in December in England—partly through sheer force of will, but also aided by Lady Bollocks, who lent them her family’s sprawling seven-million-pound Richmond estate and helped procure a surfeit of heat lamps and outdoor fireplaces. I think I smiled my first genuine grin in weeks when I saw them blazing merrily in the back garden.

“I watched you get out of that car,” Lady Bollocks said, coming from behind me and handing me a ginger-infused cocktail. “Full marks.”

My Lady Training was also paying off in other ways. Donna had been coaching me on styling myself occasionally, and it finally clicked for me when I started to think about it like costuming a character. Here, I wasn’t Bex; I was Rebecca, Artfully Uncontroversial Royal Fiancée Attending the Wedding of Old Friends. Donna had signed off proudly when I’d selected a delicately patterned silver day dress, with a neatly belted dove-gray wool coat, and—in an effort to be a real grown-up—four-inch heels.

“Thank you, but we have
got
to talk about the British and their sloped gravel driveways,” I said. “It’s like a trap. It was all I could do not to wipe out in these suckers.”

“We like a challenge,” Bea said airily. “Besides, it’s marvelous for your calves.”

I half snorted—I’m working on it—and then spotted Gemma, already seated on the bride’s side of the aisle.

“I assume we’re sitting over there?” I asked.

“Yes, and I have no further comment on that subject,” Bea said.

“Bea, we’re in modern times now,” I said. “People will be happy for you two.”

She just harrumphed, which is not something I’d ever heard before, and which sounds exactly like it is spelled.

“Bex! At last, you’ve come out of hiding,” Clive said, strolling up with Paddington on his arm. “How is the wedding planning, or is it all terribly top secret?”

“What wedding?” I joked, rather than come up with a smoothly varnished lie.

“Isn’t this the most glorious occasion?” Paddington said, spreading her arms wide and flashing an inordinate amount of side-boob in her slouchy tank dress. “The sacred union of two perfectly matched souls is just so fucking moving.”

“
Pudge
,” Bea hissed. “Language. This is a
wedding
. There is a
minister
here.”

“Words only have the power we give them, Beatrix,” Pudge said. “Open your spirit.”

I could tell Bea wanted to inform Pudge exactly where she could stick her spirit, but the ushers began nudging us to our seats. Paddington glided with Clive over toward Joss, who clearly had not taken my advice to give herself a mental break. She was clad in a blue chiffon monstrosity with
I do
scribbled over and over, like a pattern, and her long, black, sleek hair evoked Pudge’s.

“We’re well shot of Joss, I think,” Bea murmured, narrowing her eyes. “They make such a peculiar threesome.”

The din settled into an excited thrum as Gaz took his place at the altar under a thatched canopy bedecked in holly and ivy and poinsettias. Freddie stood in for Nick as best man, both of them dapper in suits and ties (Gaz nixed morning dress because he believes top hats don’t flatter his neck). Penelope Eight-Names, clutching Maxwell Something-Something’s hand, caught my eye and pointed to her massively pregnant belly as if to say,
ta-da
. I smiled politely back at her, then turned back in time to see Freddie pretending to look stern and mouthing,
Pay attention, Killer
.

Cilla wore her grandmother’s gown and a family-heirloom veil pinned to her glorious auburn hair, and looked so transcendent she might as well have been six feet tall. Gaz started weeping the moment she came out, and did not stop—not when the officiant asked if anyone objected and Freddie raised his hand, not even when they got to the bit Gaz himself put in the vows as a joke (“in sickness and in health, in serif and in sans”). They could not stop looking at each other, love and joy written on their faces like words on the pages of a book. When Cilla’s
I will
and Gaz’s
Too bloody right I will
rang out clear and pure, Gaz pulled her into an elated if rather salty kiss, and we all teared up, even Lady Bollocks. I knew I’d been lucky to witness their contentiously adoring courtship, not to mention their proposal, and now the beginning of their future. As much as I thought I could not live without Nick, Cilla and Gaz were irreplaceable family to me, too. I poured as much of this nostalgia as possible into the hug I gave Cilla after the ceremony.

“I’d have had you up there, if it wouldn’t have been such a to-do for you,” she whispered.

I shook my head and hugged harder. “Better to keep the focus on you,” I said. “I am just thrilled to be here. I love you, and it was flawless.”

She pulled back, her eyes shining. “And so will yours be.”

“On that note,” I said, turning to Gaz. “I have a favor to ask.”

“Want to sue the knickers off The Royal Flush?” he asked. “I can look into it.”

I grinned. “Tempting, but no.” I drew a breath. “My mother isn’t sure she can walk me down the aisle without totally losing it,” I said. “My aunt Kitty’s been divorced three times, so I’m not close with my uncles, and my grandfathers are both dead. You are the best extended family I could want anyway, so I wondered if you would mind giving me away.”

Gaz blinked once, hard, then burst into the most spectacular wail.

“Don’t play it so coy, darling,” Cilla teased.

Gaz wiped his eyes on the kerchief that had been in his jacket pocket—it had gotten a lot of play already—and then looked at me, red and puffy and wonderful.

“That is the most magnificent favor that a person has ever been asked,” he said. “I’m so honored I could cry.”

“Bloody hell, if that wasn’t crying, what
is
?” Freddie asked, thumping Gaz on the back. “Jolly good work here, Garamond. Bex, we’re in the way of their fans. Let’s go drink.”

As he dragged me away, an elderly woman who’d made a beeline for Cilla stopped and grasped my arm. “You look lovely. We’re so excited for you, dear. And aren’t
you
a dish,” she said to Freddie, whacking him lightly on the shoulder with her program. “You two make such a charming couple.”

“He’s the other one, Estelle,” her equally elderly spouse hissed as they trundled past us. “She’s marrying the main one.”

“Fred, that isn’t—” I began.

“Don’t worry, I’m used to it. Hear it all the time,” Freddie told me, but his gaiety was forced. “At least she thinks I’m dishy. But now I really need that drink.”

The reception, like the wedding itself, was intimate, funny, unexpected. There were six toasts from Cilla’s side of the family and one riotous speech from Gaz’s father, the infamous disgraced finance minister, about how not to handle your joint bank accounts. Cilla danced a comedic tango with her new husband before a lively foxtrot with her dad, which made my heart ache for mine. I caught myself envying my friends. This wedding was deeply personal, with no artifice; Gaz and Cilla could just be Gaz and Cilla, the same in public and in private, a luxury that Nick and I never would have. This ceremony was for them. Ours was for the country, and for the Crown, and I felt a pang for what could have been if Nick had been born anything but what he was—a pang that was as much for him as for me. Instead of cheering me up, the cocktails pushed me deeper into the melancholy I had tried and failed to leave at home.

Freddie noticed. And he tried to help. He told gleefully atrocious rumors, including one about Dim Tim Fitzwilliam and a yak that I wasn’t even sure I fully understood. He roped Gemma and Bea—the latter, in diametric opposition to me, rather more buoyant than usual—into a rousing game of Spot the Sutcliffes (we were tripped up when the man with the parrot turned out only to be the owner of Cilla’s village pharmacy). And he coaxed me onto the dance floor, where I gave gaiety my best shot. But I was a husk out there. As the music slowed into a ballad, I glanced over and saw Bea and Gemma grind to a halt, awkwardly, before Bea drew her girlfriend in for a loving slow dance. It was a public spontaneity of emotion that had become absent from my own life, and it ground me to a wobbly, empty halt.

Freddie abruptly pulled me close, as if to dance. “Are you all right?” he whispered.

I could not speak. My emotional dam was poorly built, destined to burst, but I’d never thought it would happen here.
BITCHY BEX’S BRIDAL BREAKDOWN
would be the best day of Xandra Deane’s life.