The Royal We (45 page)

She steers me to the foot of the terrace stairs, where Freddie and Nick are waiting in silence. I recognize the look on Nick’s face. Aggressively Pleasant. Bad sign.

“Prince Frederick has asked to give a toast in lieu of your father, and then you and His Royal Highness can sneak out and get some sleep,” she says. “Freddie, if you make any inappropriate jokes about genitals I will neuter you with a toast point, do you hear me?”

“Yes, Your Marjesty.” He salutes her.

“Is this honestly necessary?” Nick hisses, but his brother is already off up the stairs, and we are forced to follow and stand together and wait for Freddie, of all people, to raise a glass to our future. I glue on my smile and search for friendly faces—Cilla, making a delicate gesture to remind me to stand up straight, and Mom, standing next to her wedding date, my aunt Kitty, who arrived in London two hours ago and looks simultaneously jet-legged and wowed. And a few feet away, there’s Pansy Larchmont-Kent-Smythe grilling Gemma Sands about something Gemma clearly finds tiresome, and Bea with Clive and Paddington.

I gasp so loudly that Nick actually turns to me.

“Clive is here,” I tell him through clenched teeth. “Don’t look.
Nick.
You looked.”

Nick draws himself up to his full height. “That’s a lot of cheek, him coming here.”

“He must not think I’ve told you,” I say slowly. “He probably banked on me not knowing how to get him disinvited, and he’s trying to scare me.”

Clive gives us both a carefree wave as Freddie gets the masses to quiet their chatter. Freddie objectively looks handsome, but his face is drawn. I wonder what he and Nick did all afternoon while I had people meticulously combing my brows and zapping my tearstains.

“Welcome, all, to what promises to be a ripping weekend,” Freddie says. “I shall keep this brisk and save the saucy bits for tomorrow. Gran won’t want to miss the visual aids.”

A titter travels through the crowd.

“As the elder brother, Nick got to do everything before I did,” Freddie says. “Or so he thought. He officially learnt to drive first, but I banged around Balmoral in Father’s car two weeks before Nick’s first lesson. He was allowed to drink at family dinners before I was, but I’d already spent ages stealing the glasses people would set down and then quaffing them under the table. And he thinks he was the first to—wait, hang about, can’t say that one out loud.”

The group chuckles en masse.

“But tomorrow, he really will reach one milestone ahead of me,” Freddie continued. “Not that I’m in any kind of hurry to catch him. I’m having rather too much fun with the, er, bridal interview process.” Freddie is playing the playboy prince to the hilt. Even his bow tie is slightly askew. “But as far as that goes, I’ve been bravely doing the work of two. Because Nick was hit with a bolt of lightning eight years ago and he’s been lost to the ladies of the realm ever since.”

Nick twitches, imperceptible to anyone but me.

“I’ve had a front-row seat for this entire courtship. In fact, remind me to tell you all why Bex punched me the first day we met, although I assure you, I deserved it,” Freddie says. “’Course, you lot hide the
Daily Mail
behind those copies of the
Financial Times
, so you know quite a bit’s happened between now and then. But I started writing this speech in my head after that very first bashing—and there have been others, don’t you worry—because I saw then exactly what I’ve seen every single day since, in good times and rough. Together or apart, Bex and Nick have quite simply always belonged to each other.”

The crowd gives an appreciative sigh; there is a smattering of applause. I am in torment.

Freddie clears his throat. “And that’s what everyone’s really looking for, isn’t it? The kind of love that makes clichés ring true. It’s a jackpot that is nearly impossible to hit.” His voice is getting shaky. “So what’s truly special about tomorrow’s milestone is that it’s once-in-a-lifetime stuff. Nick may be useless at the
Times
cryptic, but that’s just letters on a piece of paper. He already solved the only riddle that counts. He found something I didn’t fully believe existed until I saw it with my own eyes, and I will be forever in his debt for giving me yet another reason to strive for more. To be the man that he is.”

Freddie is now struggling. Beside me, I see a tear snake out of Nick’s eye. I take his hand and we cling to each other so tightly that our knuckles turn white.

“By this time tomorrow, my dear friend Rebecca will be a full-fledged member of The Firm. We will teach her the handshake, and she will be stuck with us,” Freddie says, composing himself. “And thank God, because there is no better person to entrust with the care and keeping of my very best friend, my brother, and our future king. Please raise your glass and drink with me to Nicholas and Rebecca.”

“To Nicholas and Rebecca!” the crowd echoes, and then there is warm-hearted applause. Freddie and I make eye contact as we each hug him in what I hope is not too stiff a manner.
I did my best, Killer
, his face seems to say.

“Nick.” I reach for him.

Nick places his hand on the curve of my waist and leans into me. “Not now, Bex,” he whispers. “Just…not now.”

And then Advanced Pleasantness is back, and he’s off to accept a firm handshake from his father—it is damning that, between the two of us, Richard is the more soothing option—and I know that Nick is right. However much time he needs is what I have to give him.

“Wonderfully touching,” beams the Crown Prince of Sweden as I reach the lawn again. “The three of you seem so close.”

Over his shoulder, Clive gives the most epically false look of affection and wiggles his mobile phone at me. I feel the world spin a little.

“Thank you, Your Highness,” I tell him. “In fact, I need to take a private moment. To collect myself.”

I make my way inside the palace and into a cool hallway that is deserted except for footmen with trays of cocktails and platters of appetizers and giant piles of homemade Cracker Jack. I had intended to locate a quiet bathroom, just to be alone, but suddenly I find myself walking down the Marble Hall and past PPOs Stout and Furrow, who are guarding the Ministers’ Staircase, and up through the silent, dimly lit palace, past the public rooms, back toward the private living quarters. I don’t even register exactly where I’m going until I get there.

Emma, clad in a floral silk bathrobe, is in her chambers—cozier than the Queen’s, and neat as a pin—playing solitaire on a folding TV tray. Doctors deemed her too fragile for tonight’s party, but she’s been getting a fair amount of visitors since she arrived from Cornwall on Tuesday. Nick has come every day; so has Pansy Larchmont-Kent-Smythe. Lesley is sitting in a wing chair, working on some knitting, and stands when I open the door.

“I didn’t expect to see you until tomorrow, Your Grace!” she says.

“Trust me, I am so not anyone’s Grace.”

“Soon enough, soon enough,” Lesley says. “Is the party over? Can I get you a cuppa?”

“No, thank you, Lesley. I just wanted to say hello.”

“Well, I’ll leave the two of you in peace for a bit, then,” Lesley says, bustling into the next room. “I’ve got ever so much to do if I want to finish this blanket before Prince Edwin’s new baby gets here. And you’ll be next!” She waggles a motherly finger at me as she pulls the adjacent bedroom door closed behind her.

I take a seat on the sofa next to Emma, who doesn’t acknowledge me, but neatly places a red jack on top of a black queen. I’m not even sure why I’m here, except that somehow this seemed like the only place I could tolerate.

“We all miss you downstairs,” I babble. “Especially Nick. And even though we don’t actually know each other, I think
I
miss you, too, because you’re the only other person who could possibly understand how I got myself in this position.” I put my face in my hands. “Although you would be so mad at me right now, and you would be right. I’ve ruined everything. I didn’t mean to. I was trying to protect him from worrying about me the way he worried about you, and instead I made everything worse. I should have just been honest with him. That’s how we ended up together in the first place.”

I let out a sob. Emma looks up abruptly and peers at me, in what feels like a moment of actual, present eye contact.

“Do you think
forgive and forget
is a real thing?” I ask. “Because I did, until today. I’ve made the biggest mess, Emma, and the worst of it is that I could always see so clearly
why
this happened but I just now realized it doesn’t matter. Everyone has reasons.
Murderers
have reasons. But the people they killed still stay dead. You can’t just erase an action. Once it’s done, it’s written into your history. It’s always there. And I think what I did is carved into Nick and I can’t ever replace the piece of him I cut out. I let this break me, and then I broke him, too.”

Emma studies me again, longer this time, then flips over a card that proves to be useless. I wish that she would turn to me and say something apt or comforting, but she doesn’t. She is not miraculously cured at exactly the moment that I need her to be. She does not win her solitaire game. Emma is lost, and chances are she always will be.

But seeing what that looks like reminds me that I am not lost. Not yet.

“I may never see you again after tonight,” I tell her. “But I want you to know, wherever you are in there, that Nick is the best thing that ever happened to me. I regret a lot of things, but I will never regret him.”

Something moves in my periphery, and I look up to see Nick standing in the doorway. I still sometimes forget how gorgeous he is, and then it will hit me hard, like a wave breaking against you when your back is turned. I don’t know what, if anything, he heard. I lean over to kiss Emma’s cheek, then cross the room to face whatever it is that Nick is going to say. Which, for a bit, is nothing. Ten seconds are an eternity when they’re full of dread.

“You look beautiful,” he says, his voice catching. “The whole time we were downstairs, that’s all that was in my head. That’s the worst part, I think. Even now, you are perfect to me.”

“I was never perfect, Nick,” I say. “And not for nothing, I’m wearing like ten pounds of fake hair.”

His face is so sad that it wrenches me. “Would you have told me?” he asks softly.

“Yes,” I say, emphatically. “
Yes.
”

“I don’t mean today,” he says. “I mean ever.”

I am not sure what to say. Mostly because I’m not sure, period.

“I like to think I would have,” I begin slowly. “If I’d come out of that night with any lingering doubt, then of course, but…” I shrug. “I would have struggled with it, and I might have hated myself for it, but I genuinely might not have told you. Because I would have been scared of losing you over something that ultimately meant nothing, and I probably would have been right.” I stretch my hands wide. “That’s the truth. It’s unflattering, but I owe you nothing less.”

Nick studies me for a second. “Thank you,” he says. He picks at a spot of peeling paint on the doorframe. “It’s hard not having anyone to talk to about this. You and Freddie…” his voice trails off. “Do you think Freddie and I will ever be the same?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “But it’s what he wants, more than anything.”

He closes his eyes. “We’ve spent so much time together, the three of us, the same as always. At home. In Spain, at Father’s birthday party,” he says. “All I can think of is whether he was looking at you in your bikini the same way I was.”

“But
I
was looking at
you
.” I want to reach out and touch him, but I cannot until he is ready. “Look, I fucked up, Nick. There’s no way around it. If I gave you the impression today that I was trying to wriggle out of anything, I’m sorry. I just wanted to explain what I was feeling when the whole thing happened, so you could understand how it’s possible that I could love you so much and still get caught in a moment like that. But maybe I should have just thrown myself on your mercy. Maybe trying to explain it made it worse.”

“I don’t want you to beg, Bex,” he says. “I just feel like I don’t have enough time. Like I’m being forced to make a choice about something I haven’t even begun to process.”

“Then don’t choose. Not now,” I say. “Take until the last minute if you want.”

“I need about a year,” he says dryly.

“I wish we could
rewind
a year.”

“I wish we could rewind
eight
years and never leave Oxford,” he says. “Just you and me and
Devour
.”

I look at him for a second. “I think that’s our problem,” I say. “When things got tough, we never figured out how to fix it without retreating into our Oxford bubble. We need to figure out a better strategy. We’re not the same people we were then. This isn’t the same world.”

“I know that’s probably true,” he says. “But I liked us then. I hope we’ll always have bits of who we used to be.”

“We will, Nick,” I promise. “I mean,
some
of this is still my own hair.”

With a wry smile Nick reaches out and touches it, then lets it slip through his fingers. “Well, I sincerely hope the people we are now can do this next bit together.” My heart soars for a second until he adds, “We have to talk to Clive. Present a united front, and all that.”

Thud.

“Do you think that’ll help?” I ask, trying to cover my disappointment.

“It might not, in the grander scheme,” he says. “But on a personal level, for how I feel right this second, it might do me a world of good.”

“I do have a few choice words for that asswad,” I say thoughtfully.

Nick grins before he can stop himself. “Now there is the Bex I remember from Oxford.” He cocks his head toward the hallway. “Let’s go grill that bastard.”

It is a stay of execution. I’ll take it.

W
e don’t have to wait long for our confrontation. When we reach the hallway between the private living quarters and the staterooms, Clive is arguing with an unmoved PPO Twiggy, as Stout rounds the corner. Twiggy is, in fact, trying to direct Clive back to the party with rather more force than is strictly necessary, and that’s how I know that while Nick probably couldn’t to take Clive off the guest list, he’d wasted no time putting him on the Shit List.

“Oi, there he is—Nick!” Clive says, smoothing the hair that had been shaken out of place. “I’ve got to dash, but I wanted to, er, wish you two well.”

“Capital idea,” Nick says, with warmth so convincing that it surprises me for a second. “Sorry, with so many high-profile guests staying here, we’ve really tightened security. Let him through, lads. He’s family.”

A wordless current passes between Nick and his PPOs, before they nod curtly and turn their backs to us, blocking the hallway from other comers. Knowing what I know, this feels so much like a scene from a TV show—where the uniformed officers walk away to let the rogue detective deliver renegade justice—that I wonder if we are heading for a beat-down.

“Hope nobody sleepwalks out of their guest rooms tonight. Might end up with a black eye,” Clive natters nervously, nodding his jaw at Twiggy. “Actually, Nick, mind if I have a word with Bex? Sentimental reasons. Eve of the wedding, old friends. You understand.”

“We’ve come a long way together, eh?” Nick says, dripping kindness. “Let’s find a quiet spot.” He leads us back down the private hall. “Why don’t we step in here?”

Then, in a flash, Nick grabs him by the lapels of his tuxedo jacket and all but hurls him into a small, wooden-paneled study. He shoves Clive so hard that Clive crashes into a sweating ice bucket that’s clearly been there a while, knocking its contents—including an open wine bottle—onto a round wooden coffee table, soaking a copy of the
International Herald Tribune
. There’s a huge portrait of Prince Richard hung over the fireplace, and beneath it on the mantel is a framed shot of him with Christiane of Greece, which is what clues me in that this is his private study. I avert my gaze; I feel like I’m riffling through his underwear drawer.

Clive mops at his leg, trying to regain his composure. His eyes flick from a heavily breathing Nick to me, and back again. He looks shaken, as if he’d only expected capitulation. He’d thought he had me.

“So Bex came running to you for help,” he says, tugging at his collar, failing to cover his unease. “I’ll grant you, I was fooled out there. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“Of course I did,” I say. “You’re an idiot if you thought I’d do anything else.”

“You’ve got some brass, calling me an idiot,” Clive says. “You lot never believed I was any good at my job, and look at us now. I own you.” His cheeks are flushed a desperate red.

“Clive, this is madness,” Nick says. “I don’t understand. What’s this about? Are you punishing us for Oxford? That was years ago, and Bex never meant to—”

“Of course. You would assume this is about Bex.” Clive almost chokes. “As if any woman you deign to touch must be so irresistible to the rest of us. Honestly, do you really think I’d waste my time pining over someone who was such a pathetic mess when you left that she actually let your lecherous brother have a taste? You Lyons men may have a taste for the fragile ones, but I do not.”

Nick does not take the bait. “Then what is it, if it’s not Bex?”

“Certainly couldn’t be to do with
you
, could it?” Clive is vibrating with something I can only classify as the beginnings of a tantrum. “God, you’re arrogant. You can’t even fathom that you might’ve put a foot wrong. I’m sick of being the only person who isn’t in your thrall. Sick of people wetting themselves just to stand six feet from you. What did you do to deserve that? What makes you any better than the rest of us?”

“Nothing,” Nick says. “And I’m the first to admit that.”

“Obviously the huge emotional strain of being Nick’s friend didn’t keep you from enjoying the perks. Vacations, parties, free drinks.” I ticked them off on my fingers. “If you hated him so much, why didn’t you just leave us all alone?”

“I’m not thick enough to give up my access,” Clive says snidely. “Besides, Nick’s not the only person whose father has expectations for his behavior, not that either of you gives a damn about what it’s like in my family.”

“I do give a damn. We were mates, Clive,” Nick says. His face looks very sad. “We were in it together.”

“No,
you
were in it. And the rest of us had to march along, and got nothing in return,” he says. “Nick wants to go out? Everyone stand around him. Nick needs to leave a bar drunk? Cut your night short and get him out. Nick wants a girl? Everyone stand aside, even if you’re already dating her. And I did. I kept quiet. I waited, and gave you chances to help me, but evidently my loyalty wasn’t worth a favor.”

“I didn’t realize you saw friendship as a transaction,” Nick says coldly.

“I’m a journalist,” Clive says. “And you knew that. You knew how I could have benefited from your help. But I didn’t matter to you, did I? You thought I was just another brainwashed Lyons foot soldier who didn’t have the bollocks to stand up for himself. But I do.”

“Not enough bollocks to do it out in the open, without a pen name,” I point out.

“What you’re doing isn’t journalism, Clive,” Nick says. “And you know that.”

“What I know is that you never took me seriously, and once you made that clear, I looked after myself. I bided my time. And eventually I landed on the gossip scoop of the century.” Clive looks proud of himself. “Britain’s Golden Boy, cuckolded by his own brother. I did the digging, I manipulated the sources, I got the story, all by myself. The Royal Flush is going to be bigger than Xandra Deane. And you’re at
my
mercy now.”

You are here at the mercy of Her Majesty and me.
It is a coincidence that Clive echoed Richard, and only I know he’s done it, but the parallel it draws between the chilly, damaged Prince of Wales and the conniving, broken Clive Fitzwilliam is scary and enlightening to me.

And then it’s Lacey’s face I see. Everything Clive has said—about feeling overshadowed, overlooked, underestimated—are the things my sister has felt, to some degree, for the last couple of years. And I didn’t hear her, either, or else didn’t want to, until she was pushed to the brink.

At the anger on Nick’s face, Clive adds, “Oh, and don’t get any juvenile ideas about having your hired thugs lock me in a closet, or something. Joss has very specific instructions to follow if I don’t check in tonight.”

“I can’t believe you’ve dragged her into this, too,” I say.

“I didn’t have to drag her into anything. She hates you,” Clive says. “You shoved her right into my lap. Lacey, too, really. It’s the sad little rejects that make it the easiest.”

Clive has twisted into something unrecognizable. I can’t believe I ever thought he was handsome; he is so ugly to me now.

“You think you have all this power,” I tell him. “But you don’t. Because we won’t give it to you. I don’t care what you say about me. I am not informing on my own family.”

“But that’s the rub. If you don’t, they won’t
be
your family,” Clive points out. “You’re actually doing more harm than if you just worked with me. I could write such lovely things about you. Then maybe everyone would finally forget that you and that sister of yours are such social-climbing slappers.”

“You know, if I weren’t getting married tomorrow, I would punch you,” Nick says, flexing his left hand. “But Bex needs to be able to fit my ring on my finger.”

I step up. “Luckily, I’m right-handed,” I say. “You want a slapper? You got it.”

I smack his cheek so hard that my whole hand turns bright red and throbs. I hit him again anyway.

Clive struggles to keep his balance, panting slightly. “You bitch,” he curses, grabbing his face.

“Shut your disgusting mouth,” Nick snaps, finally loosening his grip on himself a bit. “The pathetic thing is, if you’d hung in there until we were all a bit older, a bit further along, who knows what might’ve happened. But you couldn’t wait. And so you blew your own cover.”

Then Nick raises my hand to his mouth and kisses it. “Fifty years from now, Bex and I will still be married, and you will be nothing more than a sad footnote in history,” he says. “So run whatever tawdry story you like. I really don’t give a damn.”

Clive looks gobsmacked.

“Now, would you like to walk out, or shall I call Stout and Twiggy for an escort?” Nick asks, with such tremendous Advanced Pleasantness that I will never look at that expression the same way again. “
They
are not getting married tomorrow, to my knowledge, and I think they’re in the mood for a bit of a scuffle.”

Clive blots at his mouth with his sleeve; his teeth cut his lip when I cracked him.

“Right, then,” he says. “I guess all that’s left to decide is when to publish. Perhaps just before the bride leaves for the Abbey. All those cheers turning to boos. It’ll be poetic.”

“Oh, piss off, you miserable…” Nick turns to me. “What was the word?”

“Asswad,” I supply.

Clive is openly astonished that we’re standing our ground, and his bottom teeth are smeared with red. “Fine, dig your own graves,” he says. “I look forward to throwing you in them.”

And he storms out and slams the door.

“Is it inappropriate if I say that you were really—”

Suddenly Nick’s hands are in my hair, and he is kissing me firmly, like an exorcism.

“—hot just now,” I say, when he pulls away. “I guess not.”

“That bastard,” Nick fumes. “It’s a good job you slapped him or I’d have thrown him out the window.”

He sits down on the arm of the sofa, rubbing his tensed hand, as if he can feel the effects of the punch he didn’t let himself throw.

“Nick,” I say, taking his hands. “Thank you for defending me, but I won’t hold you to it. We don’t have to get married just to stick it to him.”

Nick looks down at our entwined fingers. My ring sparkles up at us.

“I heard you,” he says. “With Mum, and at the Abbey. I heard Freddie in his speech.” He lets out a laugh. “In an odd way, Clive argued your case, too. He was trying to insult you. But if the guy who hates us most in the world points out how at sea you were, it must have been true.”

I do not speak. I don’t want to interrupt what seems to be him coming back to me.

“I was so hurt, Bex. I still am hurt. I’m still sad. I don’t know what to do about it. But I do know the answer isn’t losing you,” he says. “Freddie is right. Whatever this is…it doesn’t happen twice in a lifetime. I’d rather work at this with you than settle for less with anyone else.”

He stands up and draws me close. “You know what you said to me at the Abbey today?” he murmurs. “That you’re mine for life?”

I nod, mutely.

“Thank you for that,” he says. “Because I’m yours, too.”

He pulls me in and kisses me, less of a passionate outburst and more of a rebirth, and it feels as if something heavy that had been sitting on my heart finally falls away.

“I’m sorry,” I begin when we part, and he holds up his hand.

“No more apologies,” he says. “I don’t want you to think I’m holding something over you. I’m not. This isn’t a favor. This is just love.”

“I love you, too,” I say, fervently, my eyes filling with tears. “Which is why I hate to bring this up, but…”

“The wedding,” Nick says, leaning back against the couch.

“The PR disaster.”

“Reality sets in.” He sighs. “I’m too wrung out from all this to think clearly right now.”

“Listen,” I say, “if I’ve learned one thing from this entire nightmare, it’s that we need to tell our friends when we need their help.” I link my hands behind his neck, then kiss him one more time, mostly to revel in being able to do it again. “Time to call in the reinforcements.”

Twenty minutes later, the study looks like an Oxford night of yore, with one glaring absence.

“CLIVE,” Bea thunders. “I could murder him.”

“Has anyone tried Joss?” Nick asks.

“Voice mail,” Cilla says.

“Well, she can’t hide forever,” Bea spits. “Certainly not from her father. When Eleanor finds out what Joss is up to she’ll probably make him hang up his speculum.”

Our other friends had still been in the garden, and responded to my mayday text within ten minutes—except for Lacey, who hasn’t answered her phone, and Gaz, who stopped by the kitchen on the way up, making the argument that crisis management of any sort required snacks. He is now pacing in front of the fireplace, gnawing on a mushroom tart.

“I’ve been thinking about this all day,” he muses. “I can’t seem to crack it. I wonder if I could get an injunction against him. It’s the middle of the night. But it is for the Royal Family. But I don’t know what the injunction would be for.”

“Stalking?” Cilla suggests.

“Treason? Kind of?” Gemma Sands offers, sprawled out in an armchair.

“Invasion of privacy?” Nick asks.

“Unlawful scum-sucking and general psychosexual asshattery?” I offer from my perch next to him, as close as I can be without sitting in his lap. I think we’re subconsciously so relieved to be on the same side again that we’re loath to give each other any space.

“I don’t think we have to reach that hard,” says Gaz. “Blackmail itself is illegal. But we’ve not got any proof of any of it.”

A fly buzzes past and Bea swipes at it, irritated, then puts her hand on her hip and stops pacing and points at me. “You,” she says. “For God’s sake, Bex, I told you years ago that if you couldn’t hack it you bloody well ought to—”

Nick clears his throat pointedly. Bea closes her mouth and tugs on her long sleeve, trying to look composed.

“—have spoken to someone about your feelings,” she finishes, head high.

“I know,” I say. “Trust me. But I was afraid of what you’d say.”

“Me?” Bea places her hand on her chest. “I am supportive. Look how well I trained you to get in and out of a car.”

“Pet, you’d have horsewhipped her, and you know it,” Gemma says pleasantly.