Arthur got out of bed and began pacing, hair wild, and the veneer stripped from his voice.“Mummy’s private secretary will recommend I remain unseen, which is jargon for house arrest.They’ll ‘advise’ me to cancel any appearances.And they’ll say it in that chilly way they’ve perfected since the Tudor court.”
A bitter, unsteady laugh roared up my throat and died there.“They’ll advise me to resign,” I said before I could temper it.
He spun on me.“They won’t.”
“Arthur—”
“They bloody well won’t.”Arthur’s spine drew up.“You haven’t done anything illegal.You went dancing.With me.”His voice softened at the end, and that nearly undid me.
The BBC page refreshed again with clinical cruelty:
Palace: ‘No Comment’ on Duke of Clarence Nightclub Photos; State Department Says ‘We’re Gathering Facts’
Gathering facts.The gentlest possible prelude to a public execution.
I scraped a hand across my face.“Damn it,” I said, the word collapsing into the space between us.“We got careless.”
Arthur flinched as if I’d thrown the word at him.“We were careful,” he said, then corrected himself.“We tried.Do you want me to apologise for dancing with the man I—” He stopped, every muscle in his face fighting the sentence.“For dancing with you?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Isn’t it?”he asked, and for a moment the Prince was gone and the boy was there, the one who’d learned too early that joy is a public hazard.“Because I can hear it—under the words.If only we’d behaved.If only you weren’t royal, and if only you weren’t fucking the ambassador.”
Heat flooded my cheeks.Shame—then anger at the shame.“That’s not fair.”
“Nothing about this is fair,” he said, and the line cracked onthis.“They will strip me threadbare for this, Bryce.They’ll say I’ve endangered the Crown’s neutrality, that I’ve made myself a partisan object—do you understand what that means for a Windsor?The papers will splash my name beside words like scandal and impropriety.This could kill Clarence Atelier.And my mother—” He exhaled, eyes bright.“She’ll be deeply hurt.She believes in service to the nation like it’s oxygen.”
Guilt stabbed under my ribs, irrational and total.“I’m sorry,” I said, because sorry was the only language left when the house was already on fire.
He shook his head once, hard, as if to fling off pity.“And your people will haul you over the coals.The fucking president will decide if you’re an asset or a liability before lunch.Your boss, the secretary of, shit, whatever it’s called, will say it’s a ‘conversation.’You’ll sit in silence while they dismantle your bloody life.”
“We’ve got to think more rationally, because…”
“Where were the bloody cameras?”Arthur asked almost to himself.“I don’t understand.We were careful at the door, careful inside—”
“Phones,” I said.“Everyone’s a camera.And we were…” I looked at the photo again and wanted to weep for the happiness on my face.“We were happy.”
He let out a small, broken sound that wasn’t a laugh.“They’ll call it reckless.They already have.”
Another article surfaced—The Times, sober font, sharper scalpel:
Optics and Obligation: When Private Affections Meet Public Duty
While the Duke of Clarence is not a direct heir, he remains a royal with obligations to maintain neutrality; the ambassador, meanwhile, is America’s public voice in a volatile moment.The question is not whether they’re entitled to private lives, but whether last night’s public intimacy suggests poor judgement in an age of instantaneous scrutiny.
Poor judgement.The phrase lodged like a fishbone in my throat.
“Look at me,” I said.
Arthur did.For all the royal blood in his veins, right now he looked very young.Not fragile—he’d never been fragile—but flayed.
“We can’t turn this off,” I said.“We can’t rewind it.Only we can decide what we do next.”
“What we do is hide,” he said flatly.
“And what if we don’t?”I asked, surprising myself.“What if we manage it?”
We stared at each other, and somewhere in the building, a boiler clanked.My phone vibrated again—Paula.“I have to go to the embassy.”
