“If it were me,” he went on, his voice gaining that steady, brick-by-brick weight, “I’d think very carefully about where you are, and where you see yourself in ten years.You’ve worked too hard to let it all slip through your fingers for a moment of… intensity.Slow things down.Take a breath.Think about what you want for yourself.Truly want.”
His words were heavy, settled into the room like fog.They carried the gravity of a man who only spoke when the world was tilting.
I pressed my palm to my eyes again.I wanted to argue—to tell him that love wasn’t a cold calculation, and that Arthur wasn’t just "that prince" but the person who had finally made the world look like it was in color after forty years of gray.But I stayed silent.Silence was the only thing keeping me from breaking apart entirely.
A muffled voice rose in the background on his end—my mother, calling him from the hall.
“I’ll be there in a minute, Sarah!”my father called back, his accent sharpening as he raised his voice.Then, back to me, quieter: “I should go.”
I gripped the phone tighter, desperate for just one more minute of his voice, even if it was hurting me.“Dad… I love you.”
“I love you too, Bryce.Get some sleep.”
The line went dead with a soft click.
I stared at the dark screen, seeing the ghosted reflection of my own exhausted face.The house was deathly quiet now, save for the rhythmic tap of rain against the tall windows.Mrs.Ashcroft was no doubt upstairs, the bath waiting.My glass of water sat untouched.
Was Dad right?Was I being a fool to risk my reputation for a man I'd known for a handful of weeks?
I lifted the phone one last time, staring at Arthur’s message until the letters blurred into a single streak of white.
I love you.
And the question lodged itself in my throat, merciless and sharp: What was I truly willing to lose for him?
ChapterTwenty-Two
Arthur
Two weeks.
That was how long it had been since the photographs had erupted across the front pages—me and Bryce caught in a sliver of light and sound, dancing as though the world weren’t watching.Two weeks since I’d last seen his face in person, two weeks of phone calls stiff with everything we couldn’t say.
I sat at my desk at Clarence Atelier, paperwork spread before me.Invoices, supplier receipts, the endless clutter of a business that wanted me practical and focused when all I wanted was to throw my head back and scream.My pen tapped a restless staccato against the margin of the ledger.
“Focus on the present,” I muttered.
But the present was intolerable.
I thought of selling it all—my half of Clarence, the sketches and fittings and the showroom Chris and I had built brick by brick.Take the money, take Bryce, and disappear.Somewhere remote, somewhere green and quiet, where our names meant nothing.We could keep chickens.Grow tomatoes.Live like mortals.
Hell, I wasn’t even fooling myself with this fantasy.I couldn’t make plans with Bryce until I saw him again.Until I knew if his eyes still lit up when they met mine.Until we stopped letting the silence between us do all the talking.
My laptop chimed, interrupting my despair.A string of notifications blinked across the screen: orders, multiple orders, piling up on top of each other.Normally, my sales reps sent me one tidy report at the end of the month.This felt like a deluge.
Before I could process it, the door to my office swung wide open and Chris burst in, grinning like a man who’d won the lottery.
“Sales are through the roof!”he announced, tossing a stack of folders onto my desk.“Selfridges and Harrods have tripled their orders.Tripled!And darling, brace yourself—Thorne & Whitmore in the States have already sold out of their initial run.They want more.Now.”
He collapsed into the chair opposite me, flushed with triumph.
I tried to match his smile, but my lips trembled at the edges.I should have been overjoyed.This was the sort of news we used to dream of when we were sketching clothes on the backs of napkins.Success, recognition, expansion.
But I knew why it was happening.
My name was currency, splashed across every headline.The scandal.The photographs.Prince Arthur Phillip and the American ambassador.The illicit romance dressed up as a glossy fairy tale.People wanted a piece of me, and that meant they wanted Clarence Atelier clothes.
Chris, bless him, only saw the numbers.
