The Royal We (12 page)

“We’ve all got one,” I said. “My great-uncle died falling off a barstool. In his own bar.”

“My great-great-great-uncle Charles was supposedly obsessed with holistic medicine, so when he got whooping cough he wrapped himself in brandy-soaked bandages as a cure,” Nick said. “Naturally, a servant dropped a candle on him and he went up in flames.
Brilliant
bloke, that one.”

I laughed. Nick’s dead relatives already seemed more entertaining than his living father.

“The Lyons women have been impressively hardy,” I said. “You’ve got a bunch of incautious men, and then two long-ruling queens.”

Nick tapped absently on the top of Richard’s marble head. “Hardier, or at least cleverer,” he said. “I’m probably destined to trip over an ottoman and die two years in. Just as long as whatever gets me is embarrassing. I have to do my part.”

We strolled past a short exhibit of watercolors and sketches done by the artsy members of the dynasty (I was surprised to learn Prince Richard was a capable landscape painter) and then into the main castle. Because it’s been open to the public for so long, Windsor’s halls have the patina of use about them—frayed carpets, creaky floorboards, stray scuffs and scratches—and it is as easy to imagine that a tourist from Scandinavia nicked the floor with an umbrella as it is to picture George IV taking a chunk out of it during a tantrum. Nick peppered the tour with stories that definitely aren’t on the official audio guide, like how he and Freddie used to stretch out on the floor by the Grand Staircase, snacking on cheese and onion crisps while trying to count every piece of weaponry that was fanned out on the walls and behind display cases; or the time he caught Agatha’s awful husband Julian throwing up in a sixteenth-century enamel box after a long day at Royal Ascot. Before he even got to a reenactment of playing hide-and-seek with Freddie using the old servants’ doors and hidden corridors, the castle had started to look like a home to me, too.

Eventually, we came into a very long rectangular room, with knight statuettes in niches on the walls and an elegant wood-beamed, slanted ceiling. Nick fell quiet and seemed to need a minute to absorb the view before explaining that this was the room dedicated to the highly selective and very ancient Order of the Garter, one of the highest honors in England.

“Those belong to everyone who’s ever been invested,” Nick said, gesturing to the thousand or so colorful shields adorning the ceiling. “The number underneath corresponds to the spot on the wall where the honoree’s name is engraved. I used to spend hours in here, trying to pick out the crest I liked best, imagining what mine would be.” He grinned. “Freddie preferred mooning the guardsmen through that window. Once he even left a mark behind. Imagine, this room dedicated to chivalry, and my brother’s disgusting bum print fogging up the glass.”

I snorted, and Nick looked pleased.

“His name will be carved in here, too, someday, like most of the rest of our ancestors, and no one else knows about that but me and the guard, and now you,” Nick said.

His gaze flickered to a nearby section of wall, where the names had stopped after the most recent new members were inducted two years ago, including his uncle Edwin (a grudging but obligatory addition on Eleanor’s part).

“And that’s where yours will go,” I inferred.

He reached out and ran his finger across his father’s name. “He wants me in now,” Nick said. “I think it’s disrespectful. I haven’t done enough—no military service yet, not nearly enough charity work. But he is so anxious to get good stories into the press.”

Nick dropped his hand. “That’s why I’m out here, actually,” he said. “To talk to Gran about it. I think Freddie and I should have our own team, and get to manage our own affairs. I’m so tired of Father putting out bollocks stories without running them past us. I once woke up and read that I’d agreed to be patron of a charity I’d never even heard of.”

He clearly needed to vent.

“There are worse things, I know,” Nick continued. “But the press is hard enough on its own, without him stirring the pot. And he should know better because…” Nick’s voice seized for a second; he fought to control it. “Well, he should just know better. But instead he plays puppet master, leaking farcical stories like my getting a ring for India. As if I’ll see it and decide it’s what I want. As if I can’t be trusted to find someone suitable on my own. That’s the main reason I’ve always said I won’t look for a real relationship until I’m older. Can you imagine being dragged into that?”

I couldn’t resist the opening. “Clive implied India was a done deal.”

“Clive knows better,” Nick said.

“Clive said—”

“Clive,” Nick interrupted, sharply, “is perfectly aware that I broke up with India because I found out Father had nudged her toward me for positive press. Everyone loves a royal romance.” He rolled his eyes. “I did like her, and it was real for a bit, but never real enough, and I knew it. So now she’s stuck looking heartbroken and Father’s hoping I’ll cave and take her back because I look like a wanker, but I won’t.” He looked sideways at me. “It reminds me of you in the meadow that day talking about Lacey. I’m done rolling over for Father just because it’s easier than fighting him.”

I was about to reach for him when he nodded briskly, as if to shake off the blues. “All right, enough of
that
. I’ve got one more thing to show you.”

We doubled back to the Waterloo Chamber, an enormous banquet hall dedicated to the defeat of Napoleon. But unlike the first time we’d tromped though, there was a feast for two set up at one end of the twenty-foot-long dining table. Slowly, I walked toward it, stunned and delighted, because before me—on a dinner service older than Queen Eleanor herself—was roast turkey, mashed potatoes, and my mother’s biscuit stuffing and Dad’s homemade Chex Mix. It smelled wonderful; it smelled like home. My eyes filled as I whirled back to face Nick.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” he said softly.

“I’m so in love with you,” I blurted.

Nick’s eyes widened, and I clapped a hand over my lips.

“Oh my God,” I said. “That wasn’t how I wanted to say it. Shit. It’s just that this is the nicest thing anyone could have ever done for me and I’m sorry, Nick, but I’m totally crazy about you, and it’s so
dumb
to go another minute and not tell you that.”

He remained stunned. So I let the words pour out of me until there weren’t any left.

“I should have figured it out sooner, I guess, but there was India, and Clive, and he’s your friend, and you just said that you don’t want to date anyone seriously so this is probably really uncomfortable for you right now, so I’m sorry,” I rambled. “But I’m actually
not
sorry, because I can’t apologize for falling in love with my best friend. And you
are
my best friend. There is every reason in the world for you to be terrible, Nick, but you’re not. You’re amazing and thoughtful and funny, and I am in love with you, and yeah, to be honest, I also really want to jump you. But if you don’t feel the same way, please just tell me now. I swear someday we can pretend this never happened. I will get over you and we’ll both go back to normal.”

Nick tipped his head to the left. “And why on earth,” he said, “would I want to pretend this never happened?”

He came over, reaching out to wipe away the tear that had snuck over my lashes. His fingers stayed on my cheek, as they had once before, but this time he reached up with his other hand and slowly, softly, ran it down my hair, then traced my jaw, the line of my neck, my arm, the whole time looking at me with a blazing, intimate intensity. As his hand came to rest on my own, he twined his fingers with mine, and my knees wobbled like the heroine out of one of Lacey’s bodice rippers, several of which were probably set right here.

“I’ve wanted to do this ever since you showed up and started talking about syphilis,” Nick said, a smile playing around the corners of his mouth. “I told myself I couldn’t, because—”

“Nick, if it’s too awkward—”

“It doesn’t matter. It can’t matter,” he said. “Because I am completely, utterly, irrevocably in love with you. And if you really feel the same, then please don’t ever get over me and go back to normal.” His left hand snaked around my waist. “Besides, Bex, you’ve never been normal.”

“Nick.” My voice found me, throatier than usual, thanks to my acute awareness of his right hand letting go of mine to glide up my back, under my shirt, against my bare skin. His blue eyes were brighter that I’d ever seen them, searing my face as if committing it to memory.

“If we start this, I don’t think I can stop,” I managed. “I can’t just have a fling with you.”

“Good.” His breath was hot on my neck as he pulled our bodies together.

“Except for all your excellent reasons for not dating anyone right now.”

“Suddenly,” he said, his lips landing on the tender spot below my left ear, “none of those seem terribly important.”

I felt drunk, off-balance, elated. This couldn’t finally be happening, and yet everything from my heart to my hormones swore it was. I dizzily leaned backward so I was perched on the large banquet table.

“You are the best thing that’s happened to me this year,” Nick said huskily, pulling back to look at me. “And I want nothing more than to let your mother’s biscuit stuffing get stone cold, because if I spend another second not kissing you, I am going to go mad.”

I let out a shaky breath. “That stuffing tastes great cold.”

We both laughed, and in that same second, we were kissing. The moment of anticipation peaked, and passed, and as Keats had predicted, it was poetry. I don’t recall when exactly Nick laid me back onto the table, or when my legs wrapped around him. We were totally lost in each other.

“I don’t want to be forward,” Nick said, breaking away after a gloriously indeterminate period of time. “And I have never longed to defile a table so badly in my life. But there are guest rooms very nearby for state occasions and dear
God
, what
is
that shirt?”

“Joss,” I said simply.

“Say no more,” he replied. “Except…?”

He searched my face. I pushed him up and got to my feet, then took his hands.

“Yes,” I said.

Every week, thousands of tourists tromp down Windsor’s exit staircase, past an unremarkable door, never aware they’re at the place where Nicholas Wales carried his future fiancée—and then had to put her down, leave her briefly to go fetch the keys because he hadn’t realized the door was locked, fumble through a ring of old skeleton keys to see which one worked, swear creatively, try the ones on the second ring, then whoop and pick her up again for a night of little talking and less sleep. The turbulent love and lust we gave in to that day felt like completion, like kismet, like the beginning of a story that was always meant to be written. Nick and I had discovered a gravitational pull of our own, and it changed everything.

M
y favorite urban legend about Freddie claims he got caught in flagrante delicto with the daughter of a Russian political leader, a week before she was to be married off as part of a covert alliance. But the very best part is that it isn’t an urban legend at all. Every word of it is true. Two hours after being threatened with a rapier hanging on a nearby wall, Freddie was doing shots with Petr and Petra while discussing the pros and cons of yachting as a sport.

This is Freddie’s superpower. Even when he’s infuriating, or obnoxious, or just plain wrong, he is also charming and cheery and naughtily funny, and that side always wins the day. He’s twenty months younger than Nick, but bolder and brasher and ballsier, from his sense of humor to his build: Nick is leanly muscular, strong but streamlined, while Freddie’s sturdier pecs have their own twelve-month calendar. Where the public is protective of Nick, it lusts for Freddie; it is Nick’s communal parent, but Freddie’s collective mistress, and I have never met a more gleeful rogue. His deepest commitment is to being a scamp, dropping his pants as often for pranks as he does for sex—the latter being an arena in which Freddie zealously made up for being the kid brother, starting earlier than anyone wants to acknowledge, romancing as many beautiful women as the world could offer. But for all that, he’s also got Nick’s big heart, even if he’s occasionally lacking in his brother’s better sense in how to use it—or better sense, period.

I had anxiety dreams about meeting Freddie, which was uncharacteristic. But with their mother all but invisible and Richard so cold and removed, Freddie and Nick had been the one person each couldn’t live without—a sibling bond I keenly understood, and so I knew I needed both to mind that, and meld with it. But beyond that, Freddie represented the first of the Lyons dominos to fall, pushing us closer to the day we’d expose our relationship to the family and to the harsh light of day.

In short, a lot was riding on the introduction. I’d rather not have done it in my underwear.

“Hang on. Isn’t that Prince Nicky? With those three blondes?”

The bass beat so loudly through Club Theme’s speakers that my drink wobbled on the bar. I was deep into my third Raspberry Beret, and simply blinking—much less pretending I didn’t already know exactly where Nick was, and who he was with—demanded as much focus as forming a sentence. The London nightclub was run by an old Eton chum of Freddie’s called Tony, and, true to its name, it opened only for very specific and thorough gimmick nights, then closed like a West End theater while it mounted the next. This month, Club Theme was devoted to Prince: a playlist of the pop legend’s music, an endless loop of his videos projected onto a giant screen lining the dance floor, and specialty cocktails based on his song titles. Cilla, for example, was sipping a Purple Rain while looking very chummy with Tony himself, and the last time I was anywhere near Nick, he’d been doing shots out of an array of test tubes called the Let’s Go Crazy. I’d only looked long enough to notice he was wearing my favorite of his shirts—cornflower blue, like his eyes, soft and inviting.

“He’s taller than I thought he’d be,” the guy mused.

“Right,” I said, leaning in and getting a nose full of his aftershave. It smelled like artificial bananas. “But what were you saying before? You
don’t
believe in evolution?”

“You don’t even notice the wooden leg,” he added. “Blimey, the tail he must get.”

I couldn’t feign interest any longer, so I knocked back my half-empty cocktail before picking up the new one and walking back to the VIP area. In my periphery I noticed Nick glancing in my direction, and resisted the mischievous urge to toast him as I settled into a swanky chrome-and-leather chair (although I might have flipped my hair a little, for his benefit). It had been almost a year and a half since we lit the fuse at Windsor, and although we were still every bit as explosive behind closed doors, pretending we weren’t had become my new normal. Outing oneself as a royal girlfriend was a lot more complicated than firing off a social-media alert, and so we’d chosen to stay undercover, including shacking up for the idyllic remainder of my Oxford stay unbeknownst to anyone but his PPOs—who, with the exception of a covert thumbs-up from Popeye, didn’t bat an eye—and our closest friends. Although they would have figured it out even if we hadn’t told them. I, in fact,
didn’t
tell Cilla. She guessed it the second I got home from Windsor, still flushed. But for mind reading, she had nothing on Lacey, who knew just from the way I said hello on the phone.

“You slept with Prince Nicholas Alexander Arthur Edward!” she squealed. “Was it awesome? Please tell me princes do it better.”

“Is that really his full name?”

She gasped sarcastically. “Rebecca Porter, do you mean to tell me you had sex with a man whose name you don’t even know?”

Lacey wanted to scream the news from the rooftops—“We’re going to be royalty! Should we do
Elle
, or hold out for
Vogue
?” she crowed, only half teasing—and I knew it was killing her to keep this secret, but I was barely ready for
my
people to know, much less
People
. But after Nick and I exorcised all that lust at Windsor, we confirmed an infinite reserve of yearning underneath. This was no one-and-done. So when I went home for Christmas that year, I sat down my mother and father and explained to them that I’d stumbled into a relationship with someone whose rather famous grandmother might never allow him to own a Coucherator. Dad was unfazed, saying he was just pleased I’d met a guy who didn’t cheer for the Yankees. But Mom was atwitter, immediately reorganizing, cleansing, and replenishing her closet in case she was called upon for a royal audience.

“I should call my friend Mabel’s genealogist,” she had said. “For all we know, there’s a lord or two in our bloodline. I’ve always felt such a kinship to the mother country, you know? In an ancestral way.”

“Your family is from Kentucky!” I protested.

It had been a huge relief to have that short holiday in Iowa, talking where I knew no walls had ears. Lacey and I took turns sleeping in each other’s rooms just like when we were kids, whispering and gossiping—me asking about Cornell; her daring me to confess how much Nick already meant to me, and peppering me with unanswerable questions about when I might meet the Queen. Most of all, though, she wanted to know all about Freddie. Dreamy, dashing, ginger-haired Freddie. But I didn’t have any firsthand dirt on Freddie. Not yet.

An empty glass jangled under my nose, snapping me out of my reverie.

“Oi, I said, do you want another?” Joss asked, apparently repeating herself. “I can’t think where our waitress has got to.”

“I’d better not,” I said, standing up and teetering in my heels. I was not getting any better in them, no matter how hard I tried, and the Raspberry Berets weren’t helping. “I’m chugging mine too fast as it is. I’m going to sneak into Tony’s office and use his bathroom.”

I spotted Nick looking at me again, and stretched a little so that my shirt rode up for his benefit. He completed his Oxford degree at the end of my time there, but I’d still had a year to go at Cornell, so I’d returned to the States as planned and spent a confined, hormonally challenging semester doubling up on credits in order to earn my diploma early—in aid of hustling back across the pond, finding a job that would keep me there, and resuming having real sex with my boyfriend instead of the phone variety. Our reunion had come right on schedule in January, about a month after I graduated, at the hands of a Hallmark equivalent called Greetings & Salutations that wanted new artists to revamp its line of sympathy cards. I never asked Nick to pull strings to convince someone I was worth the work visa, but I also never asked if he’d done it anyway, and he probably had. We were incapable of making decisions that weren’t guided by our libidos, and the months I spent back in the States were torture. So I grabbed the first smudge of a flat I could afford, in a shady end of London’s artsy Shepherd’s Bush, and just like that we were a
we
again.

Well, in private, anyway. Richard was very peeved when Nick and I got together—I heard his father through the phone loudly calling me “the crass American mess”—so he kept trying to foist the more suitable India Bolingbroke on his son at official functions, especially while I was conveniently stashed away at Cornell. Around Thanksgiving, when we’d survived our first year together (and about five months long-distance) with no sign of stopping, Nick finally refused to attend anything unless Richard backed off—and then a day later, the paparazzi nabbed a shot of India crying her way out of Clarence House.
SICK OVER NICK?
the
Evening Standard
had wondered.
INDIA BOLINGBROKEN:
She Gave Back the Ring!
the
Mirror
screamed. After that, we agreed we shouldn’t provoke the press anew, and drag her back into the crossfire, by sharing our relationship with the world. Not yet. But keeping such a huge secret took an army—specifically, our coterie of Oxford friends. Even Clive. He’d bounced back from the breakup by turning himself into our unofficial press strategist, and when he wasn’t busy expounding on how the truth about Nick and me would scandalize England’s approximately eighty-two million daily newspapers, he reveled in showing off his connections to London’s bouncers by brokering our covert entrances and exits from their nightclubs. And inside the clubs, in front of the crowd’s curious eyes, Nick and I kept up our pretense, flirting with other people and never touching each other. The charade was sexier than I’d expected, and made it that much hotter when he snuck into my flat at the end of the night.

I found Tony’s office door and punched in the code—1999; he was nothing if not committed. Ten minutes later, I heard a light tapping on the bathroom door.

“Just a sec, I’m washing up,” I called out.

“I can’t wait that long.”

Nick squeezed in and slammed the door, a bottle of vodka dangling from his hand. In seconds, his mouth was on mine, the liquor dropped and forgotten as we tore at each other. I bumped against the sink, and he lifted me on top of it.

“I can’t believe this old tank top was so effective,” I joked when we came up for air.

Nick retrieved the vodka and took a nip. “Anything you wear is effective,” he said, tugging my shirt over my head. “When I saw that idiot talking to you, I couldn’t…”

His voice got muffled as he went for one of my ears. I laughed and wrapped a leg around his waist, pulling him to me.

“Couldn’t what?”

“Aha,” he said, his right hand closing around the flag pin he’d given me, which—as part of an ongoing game—I’d hidden right in the center of my bra. “Someplace nice and direct this time. I like it.”

I tipped his face up so our eyes met. “Couldn’t
what
?” I repeated with a slow smile.

Nick flashed a wicked grin as he unclasped my bra. “I told you. I couldn’t wait.”

“What if someone catches us?” I asked, even as I reached for his belt. “Won’t they notice we’re gone?”

“Let them,” Nick said. “I haven’t seen you all day and I’m going mad.”

Thirty-five minutes and one mildly bruised tailbone later, we were sweaty and spent, and the ill-advised vodka made it urgent that I go home. Unfortunately, a large contingent of paparazzi was outside, waiting for a glimpse either of Nick, or a certain redheaded actress from
Neighbours
(who’d most likely called them herself). So Tony threw dark glasses and a purloined hat onto Cilla and had Clive smuggle her out while shouting loudly about recent
Neighbours
plot points, distracting the photogs long enough for me to pour myself into the back of Nick’s waiting car and camouflage myself on the floor under a chunky dark blanket—where I promptly conked out, my cheek pressed ingloriously against the mats. I awoke just as Nick was tucking me into the most glorious of beds, explaining with a grin that he’d brought me to Kensington Palace because hauling me up into my flat would’ve made him and Stout look like they were hiding a dead body. It was my first time bunking in Kensington, thanks to Eleanor’s strict policies about unmarried couples sharing royal bedchambers, but I was too groggy to register it; I barely got out a thank-you before I collapsed back into sleep.

The next morning, I awoke facing a robin’s-egg blue wall, the weight of a body next to me on the bed.

“I thought your grandmother didn’t approve of sleepovers,” I said, closing my eyes and rolling over to spoon him.

“Yes, but I was in the mood for a proper pillow fight,” came an unfamiliar voice.

My eyes flew open and I screamed, whacking at the man lying next to me with my fists before leaping out of bed.

“Who the hell are
you
?” I spat, before taking in the familiar-looking person lounging on the bed in front of me, all mussed ginger hair and ratty track pants, rubbing his arm where I’d cracked him. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen another human being laugh so hard.

Nick burst in, panicked. “Bex! Are you all right?”

He stopped when he saw his guffawing brother, the infamous Prince Frederick of Wales, rolling on the bed and clutching his chest with mirth.

“I should’ve known,” Nick said, affecting what looked like a full-body eye roll. “What are you even doing here? I thought you were in Somerset.”

“I’m on leave for a bit,” Freddie said. “As far as you know. I shouldn’t discuss classified details with a half-naked civilian standing right there.”

If Freddie thought this would make me blush, he miscalculated.

“Don’t worry, I’m not interested in your secrets,” I told him. “I am interested in punching you again, though, for scaring the hell out of me.”

“Go on, a nice young lady like you?” he said, sitting up against the baroque carved headboard with a grin that could charitably be described as shit-eating.

I leaned over the bed and socked him hard in the other arm.

“Easy, Killer!” Freddie yelped. “Where are my PPOs when I need them?”

“Where are
mine
? No one even stuck his head in to make sure there wasn’t a murderer in here,” Nick said, tossing me some sweatpants from an ornate dresser. “You’re lucky she didn’t punch you someplace less polite.”