I cleared my throat, tugged my jacket straighter, and gestured toward the stables with as much regal poise as I could summon.“Come along then, Ambassador.Let us see if we can find you a horse.”
He fell into step beside me, and as we crossed the gravel I felt absurdly, thrillingly nervous.And as we neared the stable yard, one question pounded in my mind: when we were finally alone, would I still be able to keep my composure?
ChapterNine
Bryce
The first thing that struck me was the smell—clean grass and loam and the faint, peppery sweetness of crushed clover.It lifted something in me I hadn’t realised was heavy.The embassy smelled like toner and coffee grounds, while London smelled like rain-slick pavement and someone else’s cigarette.But Strathmore smelled like childhood Saturdays, like the ring at Fairview Stables back in Richmond, like a part of me I’d filed away underbefore life got complicated.
The second thing was the sound: hooves in soft rhythm, two horses breathing like bellows, birds tick-ticking in the hedgerow.No sirens.No phones.No clatter of staff with agendas.Just the countryside and the slow pulse of two fine animals who didn’t give a damn that I was an ambassador.
Arthur took the lead at first, his mare—an elegant dark bay with a glossy neck—moving like a metronome under him.He sat tall, shoulders back, hips loose, hands steady—textbook, frankly, but not stiff.The kind of form you couldn’t fake if you tried, and it made me overly aware of his body inside those cream breeches and navy hacking jacket.
I let my gelding fall in a few lengths behind.He was a golden chestnut with sensible eyes, and a personality that saidI have seen absolute nonsense and survived it, sir.Each step loosened the knot at the back of my skull until I could almost pretend I had nothing waiting for me on Monday—not the briefing book with a spine like rebar, the inevitable memo from the Foreign Office about “expectations,” nor the delicate dance with a government that loved tea, tradition, and plausible deniability.
My eyes kept drifting to the line of Arthur’s back, to the clean angle where jacket met waist, to the way his calves gripped the mare’s sides.I was fifteen again, sitting astride an ill-tempered pony while my heart jump-started over Ben Morrow’s two-point position.My first crush, who had hair the colour of dark honey and a laugh that made me think of summer thunder.Nothing ever came of it, and after he started dating Caroline Fischer from the swim team he stopped noticing me completely.
The day Ben showed up at the stables with Caroline’s class ring on a chain around his neck, I learned two things at once: one, that my father would rather I focus on the family’s legacy—the Lewis name, the diplomatic tradition, the path that had been laid for me since birth—than dwell on whatever was happening in my chest; and two, that boys tilted my world in a way girls never would.After that, the barn was never just a barn.It was a place where adrenaline muddled with desire, where the sound of a boy’s laugh could set off fireworks in my heart.I hadn’t ridden much since I threw myself into the diplomatic corps.But the wiring I’d laid down as a teenager still hummed.
It was humming now.
Arthur slowed and glanced back, his smile easy.He half-turned, bringing the mare to a lazy trot until we drew shoulder to shoulder.The fields rolled away around us—green after green, stitched with hedges and drystone walls, the sky an old china plate.We moved as a pair without thinking, matching strides.My gelding blew softly, approving of this new arrangement.
“It must be lovely,” I said after a minute.“Having a mother who loves the same things you do.Mine never did.She wanted me to be a certain kind of man, you know?The kind who marries the right girl from the right family and produces two children she could spoil at Christmas.”
Arthur gave a little huff of laughter, very unprincely and therefore charming.“Mummy and I share horses and the family, certainly,” he said.His voice had that peculiar royal clarity—like a bell rung softly—but his tone was warm.“Beyond that, we diverge violently.She will tolerate a good, practical coat; she does not understand a bias cut.Fashion leaves her completely unmoved.”He tilted his head, lips quirking.“And as for women—”
He stopped.Not dramatically.Not with any flourish.But something caught in his voice, a tiny snag, and I felt my attention sharpen as if the whole field leaned toward him.
He resumed, carefully, almost wry.“Mummy knows they will never be a part of my life.”
I nearly fell off my horse.
My gelding flicked an ear back in my direction as if to say,Sir, perhaps not an ideal moment for theatrics.I re-centred my weight and found the reins again, heat flooding my face under the helmet.
Arthur’s eyes darted to me, concern flickering.“Are you quite all right?”
“Mm?”I tried for casual and landed in mortified.“Yes.Yes.The horse and I just had a small philosophical disagreement about gravity.”
“Good,” he said, amused, then—softer—“Mummy knew before I did, you know.About… what I wanted.Girls, beyond friendship, never looked like the answer.”He cut me a quick look.“I was dreadfully slow to admit it even to myself.”
“I wasn’t slow,” I said, and heard the old bitterness and tried to sand it down.“I was just… supervised.My mother—she wasn’t cruel.Just single-minded.Cotillions, Hunt Club dances, the right girl on my arm.When it dawned on her that I had no real interest in girls, she did what she always does when reality conflicts with her plan: she tried to manage me like a project.”I smiled.“And then I entered the diplomatic corps and she threw up her hands.Now she pours all that energy into my brothers’ wives.Poor women.They get smothered with monogrammed home accessories.”
Arthur laughed, music to my ears.
We rode in silence for a stretch, the horses content to follow the curve of a hedgerow.The sunlight came slanting in at that hour where everything looked briefly like a painting.I felt unravelled and stitched back together all at once.
“How did your family take it?”I asked carefully, because we were stepping onto something tender.“Your… preferences.Considering your family is the most famous one on Earth.”
He drew his mare to a halt so smoothly the animal seemed to pause mid-breath.I reined in too, and we faced one another.Arthur’s expression shifted; the humour slid away.“It hasn’t always been easy,” he sighed.“There were seasons that felt like weather one could not ride out—wind in one’s face, rain from all angles.But Mummy has been a rock.She kept me out of sight when she could, shielded me where she could not.I am not like my cousins.The Prince of Wales and the Duke of Sussex were born to be looked at.I was born to be useful.I’m not a working royal; the spotlight is not my occupation.It’s only by a string of accidents that you and I ever met.”He tipped his chin up.“Had Mummy not been ill on the night of your reception, I might have stayed home, and you would still be a photograph in the paper to me.”
Something went warm and ridiculous inside my chest.“Well,” I said, and heard the rush in my voice, “I am—ridiculously—grateful for Princess Anne’s ill health.”
Colour rose along Arthur’s cheekbones, quick as a match-strike.We sat there looking at each other, and I felt the moment gather itself the way the air gathers before a summer storm—pressure combining with searing heat.
It occurred to me—absurdly—that if I leaned forward and bridged the few inches between our horses, I could kiss a prince.The thought made my pulse leap.Then the more absurd thought followed, brighter and funnier: my father would die.Not of outrage—no, he’d be split perfectly down the middle, bursting with pride that his son was consorting with actual royalty and horrified at what the neighbours back in Richmond would say.
A laugh slipped out, undignified and juvenile, and I pressed my fist against my mouth.My gelding flicked his ear again.
