The Royal We (6 page)

Nick gave a hearty belly laugh, as did the crowd, and Richard preened. I knew he and his staff had swept Nick out of Pembroke for Official Princely Duties at bang on ten o’clock that morning—I woke up at the sound, then passed out again—but he seemed as rested as if he’d gotten ten hours. Lean and handsome in his navy suit, Nick had worked the crowd like a pro, shaking hands, chatting up old ladies, posing for photographs with museum dignitaries, and making merry with his father. It was like he’d been born to do it, and of course that’s exactly what he was;
this
Nick was utterly in command, with none of the jagged edges and endearing goofiness that I was used to, and it made him a bit alien to me.

Richard finally yielded him the microphone.

“I’ll have you know my mother never dragged me through the Louvre,” Nick said, practically twinkling. “Because I wouldn’t let her get me past the entryway. She had to sit there and play cards with me while Freddie and the others got a private look at the Mona Lisa.” The crowd roared. “It was worth it. I won,” he added, cheekily, as Richard reached out to squeeze his son on the shoulder. It was a warm moment in complete opposition to the frosty one in the paper a few weeks back—the news would later call it
an affectionate father-son volley, presenting a united front in the face of rumors of friction
—and the elderly, wealthy benefactors loved it.

For different reasons, so did our friends.

“Better laugh than his father got. Take that, Prince Dick,” grumbled Bea from behind me. I turned to look at her, surprised. “May I help you?” she asked haughtily.

“I hope you’ll take the time to enjoy the exhibit tonight before it opens tomorrow,” Nick was saying. “I know I must, because during term—”

“Blah, blah, blah.” Clive whispered into my ear, giving it a nip.

“Shh.”

“No one’s paying attention to us,” Clive said. “They’ll never notice if we sneak off and find a dark corner. Everyone’s too busy gossiping about him and India.”

“Look at her down there,” Bea grumbled. “The cat that got the cream. The cat that got several
pints
of cream.”

Even from up high, I could see the glowing face of India Bolingbroke, who had not arrived on Nick’s arm but whom the rumor mill—so, Clive—insisted had been placed specially in the front row on the ground floor, along with a clutch of Richard-approved luminaries. The appearance caused reporters to use words like
adoring
and
ladylike
and
exceedingly well matched
in the papers the next day. I couldn’t imagine she and Nick were actually that tight. Nick had shortened or rescheduled several outings with her in favor of hanging out with me, and I never saw her on our floor at all. I assumed she’d been inside his room, but I couldn’t have guessed when, and although I’d seen them holding hands surreptitiously in a dark bar, he’d never so much as given her a peck on the cheek in public. But that night I had witnessed him guiding her gently through the throng, leaning in attentively, drawing her into conversations. If she was besotted, he was at the very least protective.

“Richard loves her,” Clive said, in reporter mode, as we watched India applaud exuberantly. “Fancy parents, rich enough not to be grasping, not a whiff of scandal.”

“Nor a whiff of personality,” Bea said. “I’ve known Nick since we were tots”—Gaz mouthed along at this behind her back—“and she’ll bore him to tears in a week.”

But unquestionably, India looked like the sort of person who ought to be dating a prince: model-gorgeous with a megawatt smile, wearing a dress that easily cost two thousand pounds. Given that nearly everything I owned at this time was from Old Navy, I’d greeted Nick’s group invitation to the gala with a panicked phone call to Lacey, who pointed out that I had a clothing designer living next door. This turned out to be a mistake: Joss had insisted I wear her favorite new design, a stretchy crushed-velvet-and-leather dress that twisted strangely across my torso, in which I resembled nothing so much as a lampshade at a biker bar. Cilla had taken one look at it and lent me a very large coat.

We drank flute upon flute of free Champagne while Nick made the rounds, introducing India to a series of elaborately bearded lords. She certainly seemed to charm Nick’s father. To the outsider and even to many insiders, Richard seems like a relic, a man meant to rule five hundred years ago when a mere flash of his sword could vanquish his enemies and oppress the peasants. But with India that night, Richard laughed and was as solicitous as Nick, which the news claimed was tantamount to him anointing her as his future daughter-in-law.

It was two hours before we got anywhere near them.

“Thank God,” Nick said, excusing himself from whomever Richard was speaking to; Richard never abandoned the conversation, yet kept a firm eye on Nick’s back. “I have answered the same two questions forty-five times.” He eyed my massive coat. “Are you cold?”

“Joss,” Cilla said.

“Say no more.” He grinned.

“Dick bringing up the polo thing was a bit much, given the papers,” murmured Clive.

“But your speech was great,” I said. “That Louvre story is super charming.”

“And apocryphal,” he said. “Father told me we needed Warm Family Stories, and obviously most of mine are fictional.”

I started to laugh, until I saw nobody else was, and that he wasn’t joking.

“Where’s India?” I asked, changing tacks. “I’ve never officially met her.”

Nick pointed across the way. “I left her with a woman who kept asking me how I plan to defend myself in case of kidnapping.”

“How attentive of you,” said Bea.

“She’ll be all right. They’re talking about Pilates,” Nick said. “It’s awkward bringing someone to these things, but Father insisted, and I was too tired to fight it.” His gaze flickered toward me.

PPO Furrow stepped in, his signature wrinkle in full effect. “The Prince of Wales prefers you to stay with the VIP guests,” he said in a low voice.

Nick closed his eyes for a brief moment and then shifted back into work mode. “Yes, I must get back to my duties,” he said. “Thank you all for coming. I really appreciate it.”

“What a piece of bloody work Richard is,” Cilla said as we peered through the crowd to see him greet Nick with a slap on the back of ostensible gaiety—but with a slightly harder thump than was strictly necessary.

The five of us spent another half hour people-watching. We weren’t so much in a crowd as in the middle of an impromptu receiving line—as if the hive mind told everyone to arrange themselves in a way that might hide their essential purpose of waiting for a touch of the royal hand—and as soon as the princes were whisked away, the alleged art aficionados disappeared along with them. They may have said they were there to support the Ashmolean, but they bolted as soon as the bar had closed.

By that point, as occurs in nearly every story from my Oxford year, we had gotten a wee bit drunk—or at least, moderately tipsy, enough so that when I insisted we be cultured and look at the manuscripts, Gaz actually booed. I didn’t care. I wanted to linger at the glass cases containing so much sloping, dated cursive on yellowing pages—the intimate and sometimes illuminatingly banal correspondence from back when people cared to do it longhand. Eleanor had very precise penmanship; her father, King Richard IV, was prone to decorating state documents with doodles of the Crown Jewels. But the best were the letters between King Albert and his queen, Georgina Lyons-Bowes, whose untimely death during World War I broke his heart and—my old syphilis joke aside—eventually his mind as well. It was that first torrent of grief that prompted him to adopt Lyons as the dynastic name, and it’s endlessly romantic to me that his progeny have reigned under that name now for over a hundred years, all because Albert really, really,
really
loved his wife.

“Oh, Bertie, my pet, do be a love and stay true forever and ever. You
are
a dear,” Clive mimicked as I studied one of Georgina’s letters.

“Don’t be like that,” I said, elbowing him. “These are amazing.”

“You
look
amazing.” Clive’s voice reverberated in my ear, as he reached under my coat and ran his fingers over my dress.

“I look like a lunatic.”

“A gorgeous lunatic.”

“Don’t bother me with your hormones. I’m reading,” I said playfully.

“These are so bloody formal,” Clive complained, leaning over the case, so close to me that I could feel his breath on my cheek. “Look, this one uses the royal we. ‘We do love you ever so much.’ That’s about as romantic as an appendectomy.”

“They stood on ceremony back then,” I said. “Imagine taking the time every day to write pages and pages to someone about how wonderful they are. Now people just send texts with half the right letters missing.”

Clive turned me toward him. “I solemnly swear never to use abbreviations when I text you sweet nothings,” he said, “if you will do me the honor of going to get a cocktail with me.”

He looked so eager, so sincere. Inexplicably, a memory of India Bolingbroke and Nick together at the party popped into my head. I pulled Clive toward me by the tie and kissed him.

“Let’s go. These shoes are killing me,” I said. “But just one drink. I was up late.”

As usual, one drink became three. But when fatigue set in at around eleven, I extracted myself from The Bird so I could go home and get a little work done before crashing. Clive walked me to a cab, clearly hoping I would tell him to get in after me. I sincerely needed to do some reading, but I was feeling extra warmly toward him—he’d entertained us with the latest rugby news of the brother he called Thick Trevor; rubbed my feet, swollen from being shoved under duress into borrowed stilettos; and told a great story about the time Freddie shot Nick in the butt with a BB gun—so I told him to knock on my door when he got home. With Nick, I had Night Bex, and with Clive it was Beer Bex. Everything seemed grand after a few pints.

When I got back to Pembroke, I found a new DVD of
Devour
from Lacey in my mail slot. This time, the enclosed note read only,
!!!!!!
The very sight of it sent Night Bex into a lusty tizzy. Beer Bex tapped out and she tapped in; I ripped off my heels and tore up the stairs. Nick’s door was ever so slightly ajar.

I burst through it waving the DVD in the air. “Ten pounds says the Minotaur tramples one of those judgmental panthers.”

“—completely unacceptable. I have made my decision. Respect it!” Richard was bellowing, his face an unsightly shade of purple. Spittle shot like darts onto the floor.

This was the first time I’d ever even seen inside Nick’s room. It didn’t look bulletproof, but now I know that appearances are deceiving—those old windows were actually full of special glass (and obviously soundproofed, given that I hadn’t heard Richard yelling until I’d stumbled inside). In fact, it looked mostly like mine, except Nick’s comforter was tartan, and there was a bobblehead of Queen Eleanor on the desk that I later found out was a gift. From her. That was all I could take in, though, because both Nick and Richard whipped around to face me, and I briefly went blind from nerves.

“What are you doing in here?” Richard snapped.

“Father,” Nick said in a low voice. “She’s a friend.”

“My apologies,” Richard said, not sounding apologetic at all. “I was having a private conversation with my son and you caught us by surprise. I don’t believe we’ve met.”

I immediately felt completely sober. We could eliminate drunk driving altogether if Prince Richard would just be willing to stand outside of pubs at closing time and indiscriminately yell at people.

“I’m Bex, er, Rebecca, Your…sir…Highness,” I stammered, resisting an urge to curtsy.

“Ah, yes, the American,” Richard said, studying me. “And is disrespect for protocol so ingrained that you’re in the habit of barging in on an heir to the throne?”

“I’m so sorry. No disrespect intended,” I said, trying to sound very composed. “I was just returning some, er, study aids.”

“Father, this is un—”

Richard held up a hand mere inches from Nick’s face, without even glancing at his way.

“I’m sure you can return your
study aid
at a more convenient occasion,” Richard said to me, his tone dipping several degrees below zero. “Nicholas and I are enjoying some father-son bonding time. I’m sure you understand.”

I peeked at Nick’s face. He was red-eyed, and not just in a tired way, although he looked that, too. Right there, as in most future interactions with Richard, I decided it was probably wisest to toe the line and escape as quickly as possible.

“Oh, and my dear,” Richard added. “I know that nobody will ever hear anything about any trifling family disagreements you may have thought you overheard.”

His voice was now bordering on pleasant, but his eyes most definitely were not.

I gulped. “Sure,” I said, feeling and sounding incredibly American in that one short word. “See you later, Nick.”

That was my first brush with just how barren Nick’s family life was. I felt a flash of gratitude for my own parents, who are frustrating sometimes, but who at least don’t issue veiled threats to my friends specifically so they will shit themselves with fear, and have never starved Lacey and me of their love or attention. It’s not entirely Richard’s fault; he didn’t become a tyrant in a vacuum. He was raised by a painfully proper mother and her army of uptight nannies, and barely knew his own long-deceased father—and thus was totally unprepared to be one. He was never comfortable with Nick and Freddie until they were walking and talking and could see reason, and when that day came, it was too late.

Holed up in my room, I felt nauseated thinking about leaving Nick alone to wilt under Richard’s wrath. I had several elaborate fantasies about storming back in and giving him hell on Nick’s behalf, but in the end, I just turned out my lights so I could feign being asleep when Clive’s knock came (which it did, inevitably, with a tapping that became slightly insistent before giving way to his footsteps creaking away). I wasn’t in the mood; Nick’s misery consumed me. I rested only fitfully before finally sneaking into the hallway to go the bathroom—just as Richard was walking out of Nick’s quarters. I dipped back and hid behind my door, but couldn’t resist watching him through the crack. He shot Nick one last look of fury, which for a split second dissolved into something else—regret?—before he put on his public mask of indifference and slipped away down the stairs.