“How is being a princess?”
I’ve been asked it more times than I could ever count and I still don’t know the answer. “My life.” My words barely audible over the call to head to the dinner. “I don’t know anything different.”
He offers his arm for me to take, a gentlemanly act, fulfilling yet another role he has to take. It’s strange, in this time of technology and alleged equality that we fall back on the same manners that we had a thousand years before.
I accept his arm and we stroll back down the corridor, discussing the mountains and vacations and Cuba. My sentences are strung with the experiences I was meant to have over there, the meetings with dignitaries, the sites, the visits, but my head reels with the memories of the night time, dancing in the shadows with a stranger who had no idea I wore a tarnished crown on my head.
Behind us walks a dark-haired man I haven’t seen before. He’s tall, suited, his waistcoat the same dark grey as his suit and he isn’t wearing a tie. Instead his collar has a button undone.
He’s quietly breaking convention.
It’s been ingrained in me. Just as children learn their times tables or the days of the week, I’ve been taught to notice people. A lot can be said when there is silence. A lot can be heard in the intonation of someone’s voice. A lot can be seen in the way someone dresses, or sits, or breaks eye contact.
My spirit animal had to be a chameleon, capable of blending in anywhere but always noticed. The man behind us was doing just that, but that open button told me all I needed to know right now. He had an agenda.
“Did you grow up here?” The Prime Minister has been talking while I’ve been noticing the people around us. His focus has been solely on me, as if I’m the target here, which I might be.
“Here and at Loch Lomond.” In the Trossachs. Surrounded by mountains and protected by the storms. “How about you? Are you a Londoner?”
I knew he wasn’t.
“Cambridge.”
“The university too?” He is a graduate from there. As is his father, a previous Prime Minister, and his grandfather. All Cambridge graduates. Upper class, probably an old title somewhere stuffed in.
“Just about.” His smile is almost nervous and I hear the dark-haired man behind us cough. William turns round, his expression fracturing. I’ve met several Prime Ministers, played with their children, dined with them in restaurants, sat next to my father while he’s discussed negotiations between our two countries. William is young to be one, in more than just age. “Are you okay?”
The dark haired man nods, pausing as we reach the doorway to the banqueting hall. A string quartet plays. Staff stand discreetly around the walls of the room.
“I’m fine.” His voice is low and deep and shivers saunter up my spine. “Enjoy your meal.” There’s no tinge to his voice, no alternate meaning. It’s a simple statement and I wonder who he is to make such, speaking words that aren’t loaded with the lust for power.
I don’t ask William for his identity, because that would show a chink in my knowledge. Instead I smile and show him to his place, perpendicular to me, our secretary of state next to me, my brother to William’s right.
Every place is planned meticulously by one of my father’s advisors and my mother, the women spread around carefully. There is the sound of a bell and someone stands, makes introductions, says the Selkirk Grace in Gaelic.
Tha biadh aig cuid, 's gun aca càil;,
acras aig cuid,'s gun aca biadh,
ach againne tha biadh is slàint',
moladh mar sin a bhith don Triath.
The Scots in the room stand and toast with their whiskies, a few more words of Gaelic thrown in. The English smile, some forced and I see the dark-haired man sitting back, his drink in his hand, probably untouched.
He sees me looking and I don’t move my eyes. His stubble is thick, hair well styled and his eyes hold a gleam of interest. He raises his glass slightly towards me as a toast and nods before looking to the person to his left, Harris, the brain behind our education system.
The meal begins, like clockwork. Entrees, soups, appetisers, wine. Our removed English cousins are courted with Scottish fayre. Oysters from the west, beef, salmon that has been smoked at the palace, everything locally sourced. All another sign that we don’t need England, yet Lennox talks about Cornish cream teas and Leicester cheese, our family’s outstretched hand.
Throughout the dinner I feel eyes regarding me as I politely nod and smile and respond appropriately to what is said. William glances my way, offers me nervous smiles while he talks sport with my brother. And the dark haired stranger observes, an unreadable journal, padlocked. His eyes telling me nothing.
* * *
“There was a security breach last night.” My father sits down with a coffee. We’re in our lounge in a wing of the palace that is the most home-like of the building. This is where we are normal, or whatever normal masquerades as. There are no staff, we cook and clean up for ourselves. As children, Lennox and I would be here without nannies or tutors and we would be our parents’ problems.
But we are safe. Or at least we try to believe we are.
“What was it?” My mother is reading a book, probably a romance. She barely looks up. Security breaches are nothing new.
