“I am absolutely enforcing this,” Vic said. “If you two start snogging under every archway, we’ll never get anything done and someone will definitely get trampled by something.”
“We’ll behave,” Alex said, raising her hands in mock surrender. “For now.”
She gave Erin a look that made Vic’s ears go a bit hot. “We’ll reschedule,” she murmured.
Erin’s answering smile was small and a little pained. “Looking forward to it,” she said.
They brushed shoulders as they turned toward the entrance. Just that. No kiss. No lingering touch. Not with Vic’s eyes on them, clipboard clutched like a weapon.
Vic watched them go, a little triumph sparking in her chest. One tiny bit of control recaptured. One more variable managed.
She told herself the little twist she felt when she saw Alex’s expression—something like disappointment, quickly smoothed away—was just indigestion from too many biscuits.
Later, much later, she would admit that maybe—just maybe—her ban on unscheduled affection had done more than just keep people alert.
But for now, as the snow fell and the reindeer snorted and the cold seeped into her bones, Vic held her clipboard tighter and thought:
Fine. If the world is going to keep throwing disasters at us, then I will answer with laminated policies.
Somewhere behind her, in the shelter of the arch, she heard Erin’s low voice.
“We’re never going to get five minutes alone, are we?” she murmured.
Alex’s reply was too soft for Vic to catch. But whatever it was, it sounded like a promise.
Vic turned her collar up against the snow and marched back inside, already drafting the next amendment in her head.
8
JULIA
Julia had learned to read the temperature of a room without looking at the thermostat.
In the great hall of Balmoral that afternoon, it hovered somewhere between “festive” and “on the verge of a coup.”
Children shrieked in the general vicinity of the tree. Staff glided in and out with trays and armfuls of greenery, trying to look serene while quietly panicking about the power flickers. Candles gleamed in sconces as part of Vic’s “backup ambience plan,” which had required three separate fire-safety briefings. A faint smell of pine, wax, and wet wool hung in the air.
And at the centre of it all, like the calm eye of a very gay, very chaotic storm, stood Queen Alexandra.
She was perched on the arm of a sofa, cloak discarded, sleeves rolled up. Matilda was on one knee, clutching a bauble. Frank and Florence were engaged in delicate negotiations over tinsel rights. Hyzenthlay sat cross-legged on the rug, supervising with the gravity of a UN observer.
Two footmen hovered nearby with boxes of decorations.A flustered equerry tried to show Alex something on a tablet. A housekeeper stood respectfully to one side, clearly waiting to ask about seating plans. Vic was… somewhere, probably terrorising a spreadsheet.
Julia watched from under the gallery, hands wrapped around a mug of tea, and thought: No wonder she’s exhausted.
Alex’s smile was genuine. It always was with the children. Her laugh, when Frank triumphantly wrapped the corgi ornament around his own neck, was the same one Julia saw in her unguarded moments, unbothered by cameras and the eyes of the world.
But even from here, Julia could see the shadows under her eyes. The way her gaze kept flicking over heads to the doorway, to the corridor, searching.
For Erin.
Right on cue, Erin appeared.
She slipped in through the side entrance, shoulders dusted with snow, expression set in that tight, alert way that meant she’d just come from a briefing. She looked around automatically—doors, windows, exits, potential threats—and then her posture softened a fraction when she saw Alex.
Alex saw her at the same moment. Something in the air between them changed. Julia felt it as clearly as if someone had turned down the background noise.
Oh, she thought. Here we go.
