“I work for the chap who’s just moved into the top floor flat.”
Connor paused in his watering and looked up for the first time. His eyes were a piercing pale blue.
“Work for him how?”
“Security.”
“Right.” He took that in without blinking. “Let me guess. He’s a Russian oligarch, or the son of one.”
“No.” The one-word answer was a Household Division speciality. Connor watched him for another half-second, didn’t push, and went back to a ficus that was probably beyond saving. “Fair enough.”
“The geraniums will come back if you deadhead them,” Beauchamp said. “Pinch them off just above the first healthy leaf node.”
“That right?”
“My mother keeps a garden.” He stood up from the bench, taking one last look at the way Connor’s shoulders stretched the bounds of the suit. “I should get back to my principal. Good luck with the ficus.”
“Ta.”
Beauchamp strode back to the service door. Vidal’s mobile bumped against his ribs inside his jacket with every step, a reminder that his morning wasn’t finished yet. Three floors up, a window was open, and he could hear Vidal singing to Mercè in Catalan.
Chapter Three
TheWaitrose on Mount Street had failed him on the chocolate front, and Beauchamp was already playing out the conversation he was undoubtedly about to have with Vidal as he came back up the stairs with a bag in each hand.
Major, this is not chocolate.
It’s chocolate, sir.
It is confectionery, Major. There is a difference. This is seventy-two per cent cacao. I asked for eighty. EIGHTY, Beauchamp. Below seventy-five it is a sweet for children, and I am not a child, I am a man in EXILE. If I am to be denied my country I will at the very least be permitted the correct cacao percentage in my afternoon indulgence!
He was so deep into the imagined exchange that he almost missed the voice coming through the slightly open drawing-room door. He registered, in order: Vidal ranting at full volume in English, and then a second voice responding at a lower, more measured register.
He pushed the door the rest of the way open with his hip, the bags swinging, and stepped into the drawing room on the tail end of whatever Vidal had been saying about Strasbourg.
His Majesty the King of the United Kingdom was sitting on the sofa in plain jeans and a jumper with Mercè asleep across his thighs, absently stroking her small pink and grey mottled ribs. He caught Beauchamp’s eye across the room and gave him a private half-smile.
Vidal was pacing the rug in front of the window, talking with both hands, whilst entirely naked.
A white towel was slung around his neck, and he was dragging one end of it through his wet hair as he moved. Otherwise, there was nothing on him but the gold crucifix in the hollow of his throat and a tan line that stopped, uncompromisingly, at his hip. His cock bobbed with every wild flourish of his hand, like a conductor’s baton.
“—and the thing that the Europeans will not admit, James, that they willneveradmit, is that the entire apparatus at Strasbourg is designed to — BEAUCHAMP!”
Vidal pivoted without breaking stride, his cock flopping heavily with the movement, and beamed at him. Beauchamp’s eyes went to it before his brain caught up, and then snapped away to a point on the far wall with parade-ground discipline. Vidal, entirely unaware of Beauchamp’s reaction, gave his hair a fresh and enthusiastic rub with the towel.
“James, look who has returned to us, bearing GIFTS. This man has been to the shops for my chocolate, do you understand what this means, he is alifesaver, he is a darling. He is the reason I have not yet thrown myself off the balcony in protest at the English weather!”
Beauchamp’s hands opened, and both grocery bags hit the parquet at once. There was the clink of a jar of olives meeting wood. A glass bottle of Vidal’s Fonte di Foiano broke with a crisppop and began to seep across the parquet in a slow gold tide, pooling around a tin of anchovies, a bar of chocolate, and one lemon.
“Your Majesty,” Beauchamp said to the rug at his feet, “I beg your pardon for the interruption.”
The King waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Nothing to apologise about, Beauchamp. We weren’t talking about anything important.”
“Theoil, Beauchamp, the OIL!”
Vidal crossed the room and dropped into a crouch beside the wreckage with the towel still round his neck. He began gathering the larger shards of glass with his bare fingers, tutting at each one.
“This is Fonte di Foiano, Beauchamp, do youunderstand? You have sent it to meet its maker on a parquet floor in Mayfair, and that is tragic. It is the saddest thing to happen in this flat since I arrived in it, and I arrived in itweeping!”
