“Yes. Because you love them,” I reminded her. “Even though you don’t like them very much.”
“Ha! Diplomatically said. When, in fact, I’d quite like to shove both their heads up their respective arseholes, but I can’tbecause their heads are already currently shoved thoroughly up their rectums.”
My lips twitched. “It’s always a delight talking to you, Junebug.”
Her tone softened at the use of her childhood nickname. “You sound … off. What’s going on? Why didn’t you sleep last night?”
Sitting up with a groan, I considered telling Juno about the situation. My sister was a straight talker and sometimes even gave good advice. “I … I hurt a friend. And she won’t let me near her to apologize.”
“She?”
At her puerile tone, I growled, “Hanging up now.”
“No, no. I’m sorry. Okay. Details. I need details.”
So I told her. How I’d “infiltrated” Lily’s life. Misled her. How it was all a stupid mistake that got out of control.
“Hmm,” Juno mused after I finished speaking. “There is much I’d like to dissect about why you’re so invested in this girl, but in fear of you hanging up on me, I will just say, find a way to apologize.”
“Excellent advice. Don’t know why I didn’t think of it.”
I could practically feel her rolling her eyes at my sarcasm. “I mean, bump into her somewhere she can’t tell you to fuck off or run away from you. And lead with the apology this time, little brother. Your face can’t get you out of this one, apparently. For that, I already like her a lot.”
“I don’t use my face to get out of anything,” I grumbled. I used my charm. My face just helped people to be open to my charm.
“Right. Apologize first.”
“Got it.”
“Did you check your messages from Mumsy and Pa yet?”
With a sigh, I tapped the screen on Mum’s text first.
Spoke to Lady Sarah Shrewsbury. Her daughter Lady Amelia has started at Edinburgh. I promised you’d befriend her. Very pretty girl. Here’s her number …
Irritation thrummed through me. “Mine isn’t about Christmas. She’s trying to set me up with Amelia Shrewsbury.”
“I thought she was five.”
“Almost. She’s eighteen.”
“Oh, listen to you, you old fart at twenty-two.”
“This is the third text like this in a matter of weeks. What the bloody hell is happening?”
Juno sighed. “Mother has decided she’s all about Granny and being a ‘seen’ member of the royal family. Prudent matches are now important to her. She tried to set me up with Foster Fairly last week. I told her if she gives him my number, I’m going to answer it as a fake escort service. A really dirty one.”
I chuckled despite my indignation. My whole life, my parents had skirted the edges of the royal family. We’d attended important royal functions and I’d gotten on rather well with my late great-grandfather, King Henry. My grandmother was his youngest daughter, Princess Mary. Grandmother, being a bit of a black sheep party girl in her heyday, had never bothered that Mum and Pa weren’t much for the pomp and circumstance of the crown. But she seemed happy to welcome Mum back into the fold. And apparently that meant foisting aristocratic men and women at me and Juno.
Why was beyond me. We were twenty-ninth and thirtieth in line to the throne. We provoked the bare minimum of interest from the public. Most people didn’t know who Juno and I were. Society pages talked about us only sometimes. Now and then some magazine or newspaper would do a piece on the lesser-known members of the royal family, but that was as far as our fame or importance stretched.
Otherwise, we were merely the Thornes. Children of Paul Thorne and Lady Clarissa Hanover. Our father was from Leeds, a self-made millionaire out to prove himself. By the time I was born, my father was a billionaire hedge fund manager. By the time I was ten, he’d retired our family to a country estate in Norfolk where he and my mother lived happily like landed gentry of old, checking in on their vegetable patches each day and involving themselves heavily in village society. It was an idyllic life, one mostly free of the trappings of royalty, and one filled with so much love, I’d known from the abysmal state of my friends’ family lives how lucky we were.
I still couldn’t comprehend how our family had fallen apart.
“Where did you go?” Juno asked suddenly.
“Just wondering how we got here. Do you think one of them is having a midlife crisis?”
