Vidal’s lower lip trembled.
“But.” Her thumb stroked once along his cheekbone, then came away. “You’ll be largely fine. That upstart President Ferrer doesn’t see you, Vidal. He doesn’t see any of us. We’re an inconvenience, a line item in his weekly briefing. We’re not a threat. If we were a threat, you wouldn’t have been able to leave Cardona alive, and your father wouldn’t be in Geneva. Do you understand the distinction I’m drawing?”
“Forty million views is something, Mama. Forty million. I’ve put Cardona on the front of theGuardian, and you are telling me that none of it —”
“Vidal.” She gave his cheek a pat that tended more towards firm than tender. “You’ve made yourself into a spectacle, my love. That’s what your viewers cared about. Not Cardona. Cardona is nothing to most people, exactly as it is everything to us. They watched your video because a beautiful man was shouting about a caterpillar moustache in a foreign language, and now they’ll watch something else. Don’t confuse their fleeting attention with their interest.”
Vidal said nothing. His eyes had gone very bright, and he wasn’t blinking. Beauchamp, who’d been standing by the console table with his hands folded behind his back through the whole of it, dropped his gaze to the carpet.
Princess Anne turned.
“Major Beauchamp.”
“Ma’am.”
“I don’t blame you for any of this. I want that clear before we go any further. I know my son, and I can tell you that there’s no briefing pack in the world that would’ve prepared you for the experience of being left alone in a room with him and a camera. You did what you were asked to do.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“You’re welcome. Now. Here’s what I’d like from you.” She folded her hands over the clasp of her handbag. “I’d like you to stay in this flat with my son. I’d like you to sleep in the second bedroom, within speaking distance of him at all hours, and I’d like you to maintain that arrangement until I’m personally satisfied that the fuss has died down.”
Beauchamp drew a breath to answer. She held up one finger without looking at him.
“Before you tell me it’s a security posture you can manage perfectly well from your own flat. I’m sure you can. That isn’t what I’m asking for.”
She turned her gaze back to her son, who’d stiffened against the arm of the sofa.
“What I’m asking for, Major, is an adult in the building, not a bodyguard. I’d like my son to have to walk past another grown man and have to explain himself to someone in person before he picks up his mobile and gives the European press another day’s entertainment.” She paused. “My son does many things impulsively, Major. He does rather fewer of them in front of an audience he’s fond of.”
Vidal’s mouth opened. “Mama, this ishumiliating!”
“Yes, darling. I know.”
“You are installing achaperone!”
“I’m installing a witness to your actions, Vidal. An accountability partner. You can’t help yourself around a camera, my darling. You never could. And now you have forty million strangers clapping for you. That’s a drug I am not prepared to let you take unsupervised.” She turned her head without heat. “Major. Are you willing?”
Nobody in this entire operation seemed to understand that he had a job description, informal as it was, and that the job description didn’t include moving into his principal’s flat at the request of a woman he’d met ninety seconds ago.
“Ma’am. With respect. There are perfectly adequate security arrangements that don’t require me to be resident in the flat. I can have a man on the door around the clock. I can have Young upstairs.”
“No.”
The word landed flat on the parquet between them. Princess Anne had not raised her voice. Her tone, which had been warm and maternal three sentences ago, had simply gone steely.
“Major, I was just being polite. I was offering you the dignity of a conversation, because you’ve had a very trying morning and because I am fond of good manners. I wasn’t truly offering you a choice.” She inclined her head a careful fraction. “There isn’t one.”
Beauchamp’s hands, which had been folded behind his back in the posture he defaulted to when a principal was behaving unreasonably, did not move. He had been trained, at considerable expense to the taxpayer, to keep still while his life was rearranged around him.
“Ma’am.”
“The King’s Private Secretary spoke to your commanding officer at half past two this afternoon. I’m told the conversation was brief. I’m told your CO was relieved it had occurred to someone.”
Beauchamp’s eyes, very much against his professional training, went to Vidal across the drawing room.
Vidal’s eyes had already gone to him. Both their mouths opened at the same instant.
“No—”
