“I can’t help what Nick’s family is,” I said, frustrated. “And you would have been in deep shit for this no matter who I was marrying. Probably deeper, because you’d still be there.”
“But the paparazzi wouldn’t have been there,” Lacey countered. “I get all of the crap from Hurricane Posh and Bex, and none of the benefits. We used to be the Porter twins, and now we’re just Rebecca Porter and the other one.” She was crying now, which only added to her anger. “I don’t know who I am now or why I’m even still here, and all anyone wants to ask about is you. Nick and Bex, Nick and Bex, Bex, Bex, Bex. Who. Cares. I’m over it. I’m over you.”
“Well, then, you made this really easy for me,” I said. “Consider yourself officially relieved of your wedding duties.”
Lacey’s jaw actually dropped. “What?”
“You just said you’re over me. I figured you’d be relieved,” I said, but my lips were quivering. Her words had hit me like a physical blow.
“Great. You’re right. I don’t want to be in your ridiculous wedding,” Lacey said, pivoting and marching into the hallway.
“Then you did finally get something you wanted,” I called after her, hearing myself on the verge of tears. “Maybe you should get arrested more often.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t even come,” she shouted, punctuating this with a slam of the door.
“Dammit,” I whispered.
I should have gone after her. I should have told her we needed to help each other. But instead, I collapsed in tears on the corner of the bed, and felt the invisible tie between us snap.
Chapter Six
The details of my wedding gown have been protected like the state secret they are. With eight months to go, Donna, Marj, and I had whittled the list of design candidates to three, each of whom signed confidentiality agreements longer than a novel, and took a circuitous route to our fittings that added forty-five minutes to the trip and required three car changes. One of the interns buzzing around Clarence House politely asked me in passing how it was going, and I’d cracked, “I’m leaning toward something in British racing green.” When it made the papers the next day, the poor trembling girl was dispatched to purgatory (Edwin’s offices) and I was instructed to respond to all queries, even from insiders, with the antiseptic, “It’ll be lovely.”
Eventually, my opinion was sought—Eleanor was human enough to realize that a bride should get a vote on her own gown—but she strongly expressed a preference for covered shoulders, and luckily, I agreed. Sleeves seemed more regal, despite the ensuing need for armpit Botox. Beyond that, I had no interest in trying to make a fashion statement, and the mere concept of a poufy affair with bows and ruffles and fringe made me itch. I think my missing Disney gene disappointed Fancy Nancy, because she worried several times that all my stipulations would lead to something that wasn’t fairy-tale-princess enough.
Eventually, I had to remind her, “Neither am I.” Marj guffawed before she could help herself.
The first designer had barely wrapped one piece of white fabric around me, looking more like a towel than anything, before my mother burst into tears. By the third, she had plowed through an entire tissue box, while I stood there and tried not to feel anything that might cause me to move and make one of the seamstress’s long pins miss its mark. It reminded me of some of the letters between King Albert and his wife, Georgina Lyons-Bowes, from before they were married—specifically, a chunk Nick calls Too Hot for History that did not end up in the Ashmolean, but which he had bound for me as a gift: My dearest, Mother thinks I am entirely too plump, but you must have something to grip onto! These tiresome gown fittings will only be worth it the moment you remove it from me on our wedding night. You cannot imagine how I long for the naughty tickle of your mustache. (The answer: a great deal, judging by the number of creative ways she expressed it.) Comparatively, though I shared with Georgina a waistline being monitored with obsessive fervor, Nick’s sporadic correspondence was harried and rambling, thanks to his habit of typing everything he thought the exact second he thought it. Like, I don’t have much time to write but I can’t believe Lacey would ooooh hurrah, it’s fish fingers for supper, must dash. And this morning’s read, I don’t have much time to write but please tell Marj my top choice is the Navy uniform but if Gran insists then I’ll wear the Irish Guards one IF it includes the sword, because oh bollocks now what? I just cleaned that bloody thing. Hardly museum-worthy.
By October, the Bex Brigade had its dress. Somewhere in our discussions with the Alexander McQueen team about lacework—handmade, intricate, full of custom symbolism—I’d realized that this was inspiring the kind of artistic satisfaction I’d been missing in my daily life. And the design itself just felt right: a simple ivory gown, the long-sleeved bodice rising slightly up the back of my neck and splitting down into a narrow V that would flatter my smaller chest. It would nip at the waist and fall in graceful, clean lines to the floor, the skirt embroidered with microscopic, meaningful surprises—all very romantic and royal and unusually modest, with shades of both Grace Kelly’s and Georgina’s iconic gowns, both of them unexpected princesses themselves (as was Maria from The Sound of Music, in a sense, whose dress this also resembled—Nick gets choked up at that scene every time, so I suspect it will go over well). When I’d thanked the designer for sketching me a masterpiece, Mom had burst into a fresh waterfall of tears.
We did the fittings at Buckingham Palace, because the halls could best approximate the square footage of Westminster Abbey when considering how my train flowed, and whether Nick could escort me without trampling it. On this particular day, the peanut gallery took notes and whispered while I did laps of the long Marble Hall, kneeling at the statue of Mars and Venus as if it were the altar, with Cilla playing the role of Nick. Marj and Donna had been so impressed with her Bex-wrangling skills after Ascot that they’d fought for, and finally gotten, a salary and benefits to keep her around full-time. It helped my mental state to have an ally on the Bex Brigade who’d known me since the beginning.
“Remember the night we met, and you didn’t even recognize him?” Cilla asked, reading my mind as we practiced. “Now look where you are.” She grinned. “Nick hardly ever sat in for the porter, actually, because visitors would go all squidgy on him. I’ll wager he saw your photo in the dossier and was after you from the start.”
I burst out laughing as we straightened. “Let’s tell that to everyone who thinks I came to Oxford to seduce him,” I said.
“I just might,” Cilla said. “It’s possible!”