The threat dropped like lead.My stomach knotted.
He leaned forward, close enough that the camera warped his face into something grotesque.“Tell me, Ambassador Lewis—do you really want your job?”
ChapterTwenty
Arthur
Iwas delivered to my front door at Kensington Palace like a parcel.
“Your Royal Highness,” the protection officer said softly, opening the SUV door against a press of lenses just beyond the railings.“We’ll go straight in.”
Flashbulbs popped behind the iron.Even from inside the walls, you could feel it—being hunted.I kept my eyes down, and let the man escort me past the porter, through the side entrance, up the narrow stair that smelled faintly of old stone and polish.A housemaid stood aside, startled, and bobbed a half-curtsy she hadn’t done in years.The sight almost undid me.
The door to my apartment had been unlocked already.A courtesy, or a reminder this place wasn’t truly mine.I stepped inside to the echo of my footsteps.Someone had drawn the curtains while I was away—this time not by me, because I’d been at Eddie’s.The rooms felt dim and over-starched, like an old suit pulled from storage and buttoned onto a body that had outgrown it.I pulled off my raincoat and sighed.
My phone buzzed again: three missed calls from unknown numbers, a dozen or so from friends whose names made my throat ache—Laurence, Chris, Eddie; and one from “Mum” with no voicemail attached, because she would say nothing important on a recording.Then I received a text from Mummy’s private secretary.
Her Royal Highness is five minutes away.
I left my coat on the back of a chair and wandered toward the sitting room.Someone—probably a footman—had lit a single lamp and arranged a tray on the low table: a teapot, two cups, and a carafe of water.I poured water from the carafe, then put the glass down because my hand wouldn’t stop shaking.I’d been angry all morning.Now, with the Palace smell in my lungs—polish, beeswax, something ancient—the anger was dissolving into fear.Not of punishment, exactly.Of loss.
I loved my family.I loved Sunday lunches when everyone was half talking over everyone else and my mother, of all people, laughed so hard she cried at something ridiculous one of my uncles said.The rituals that most people mocked: the balcony, the hats, the way you always knew where you had to be and at what time, and a man would appear with a car to take you there.I loved it more than I meant to.
But I loved Bryce more than I’d thought I could love anyone.
I heard the outer door open.Voices, then the sound of a coat sleeve dragged across something damp.I straightened and wiped my palms on my trousers, absurdly formal in my own home.The door to the sitting room opened as if it belonged to her.
My mother came in like a weather system: Barbour still beaded with rain along the hem, hair pinned back in a practical sweep, eyes that could peel paint.There were no flowers in her voice when she spoke.
“Sit,” she commanded.
I sat.
Mummy crossed to the window, tugged the velvet back with two fingers, and peered through the gap at the gates beyond the square.Little camera flashes winked back, hungry for a glimpse of us.She let the drape fall and turned to face me, hands in her pockets, stance square like a rider measuring a jump.
“Do you have any idea,” she said calmly, “what you’ve done?”
It was identical to the line I’d rehearsed she would say, and it still hurt.But I’d had an hour of being told by official men that I was to “await guidance.”
I was not in the mood to be obedient.
“I went dancing,” I said.“With someone I love.It wasn’t a state secret, or a coup.It was—”
“—a Windsor entwined with the American ambassador in a nightclub.Number Ten now must avoid a diplomatic firestorm, and the press are baying for blood.”Mummy didn’t raise her voice.She never had to.“It was reckless.”
The word hung between us, and the shame flushed hot under my collarbones.
“I didn’t see a camera,” I said, aware of how small it sounded.
“You never do,” she said.“You were born to them, Arthur.You learned to walk toward them.This is not naivety.This is choosing not to remember what you know.”
“Or choosing, for once, to live like I’m not an exhibit in a museum,” I snapped, and the snap surprised us both.I exhaled, and the anger rearranged itself.“You’re angry because it’s public.Not because it’s wrong.”
“Don’t be stupid,” she said, and it wasn’t cruel.It was a mother’s slap with a glove on.“If you think I’d blink twice at your being with a man, you don’t know me at all.We’ve had that conversation.I thought we were past it.”
“We are,” I said.“You are.But the world isn’t.Washington isn’t.The Palace certainly isn’t.”
“The Palace cares only about the Crown,” she shook her head slowly.“It’s allergic to surprises.And you, darling, have given them the kind that makes them break out in hives.”
