“We’re going to miss our flight,” Brooke says, and Mom gives me one last wave as Brooke forces her into the back of the car.
An uneasy silence settles over Clarence House when they’re gone, punctuated by the ticking of a large grandfather clock in the corner. “What now?” I say out loud, because I’m procrastinating the inevitable. I do another lap of the ground floor, skipping the fruit baskets (I’ll never eat another passion fruit again) and stopping by a box filled with cheese and crackers. I tuck the whole thing under my arm and am climbing the stairs when the doorbell rings, and my heart stops.
I open the door, and my hopes crash.
“Victoria.” She’s the last person I ever expected to visit.
The princess is wearing boyfriend jeans and a beige crewneck sweater that looks like fall. “Careful. Your excitement is overwhelming,” she says with a straight face.
“Why are you here?”
“I was bored,” she says with a shrug.
“If you feel guilty, you can tell me.”
Her eyes slowly narrow. “Why would I feel guilty?”
“For being bitchy when I was dying of sepsis.”
“You threw out my insulin, so let’s call it even. Besides, I’m bitchy to everyone; you’re not special.”
Now that I know her better (and I’m not about to collapse from hunger), Victoria’s insults sting less than they did on the island. “Can I help you with something?”
She whistles, and Comet darts out from behind a low hedge. She holds up a leash. “Want to go for a walk with us?”
I’m tempted to make a snarky remark about returning my dog, but I’m too distracted by her offer of fresh air and a chance to get some answers about Theo. “Am I allowed to leave?”
She arches an eyebrow and looks around the empty courtyard. “Who’s going to stop us?”
CHAPTER34
Victoria’s bodyguard probably could have stopped us from leaving Clarence House, but instead he walks ten feet behind as the princess and I stroll through the private gardens at Buckingham Palace. I feel just like a character from a Jane Austen novel, minus my sweatpants, my (eventual) economic independence, and my access to indoor plumbing. Other than that, I may as well be an Austen heroine, right down to the chaperone and the way I’m pining for the guy who lives in the massive palace towering over us.
My nineteenth-century daydreams are shattered by the stressed and sweaty vendors who keep getting lost on their way to set up for a pre-coronation garden party. Victoria wordlessly points them in the right direction as we take turns throwing a tennis ball for Comet to chase while we walk down a tree-lined path.
“I keep expecting to run into Mr. Darcy out here,” I say as a man wheeling a hand truck piled high with table linens nearly veers into the lake.
“As if you need to,” Victoria says with an eye roll. “Sorry to disappoint, but I’ve yet to meet a single eligible bachelor in thesegardens, unless you count the garden party where Mum made me dance with the prince of Denmark and he spent the whole time sniffing my hair.”
“Ew! Why?”
“It remains a mystery.”
Comet’s ball bounces into the lake, and he hesitates at the shore before abandoning it in favor of chasing birds across the sprawling lawn. He’s obviously been spoiled living here, and he’s going to be in for a culture shock when I bring him back to the city.
I glance sideways at Victoria, and I can’t help but wonder again why she’s bothering to spend time with me. I don’t think she actively hates me anymore, but she’s not tripping over herself to make conversation, either.
“Shouldn’t you be busy with coronation prep right now?”
“What do you think I’m going to do, clean the church?”
“It takes place in a church?”
She pulls down her sunglasses to gawk at me. “It’s a religious ceremony.”
“You learn something new every day,” I say.
“It concerns me that I can’t tell if you’re taking the piss,” she mutters. “But no. No one wants my opinion or trusts me with anything important. I told the planners that we should return the Koh-i-Noor diamond to India and the rest of the stolen Crown Jewels to their rightful owners before the coronation in an act of goodwill, but they laughed me out of the room.”
