“Oi, there he is—Nick!” Clive says, smoothing the hair that had been shaken out of place. “I’ve got to dash, but I wanted to, er, wish you two well.”
“Capital idea,” Nick says, with warmth so convincing that it surprises me for a second. “Sorry, with so many high-profile guests staying here, we’ve really tightened security. Let him through, lads. He’s family.”
A wordless current passes between Nick and his PPOs, before they nod curtly and turn their backs to us, blocking the hallway from other comers. Knowing what I know, this feels so much like a scene from a TV show—where the uniformed officers walk away to let the rogue detective deliver renegade justice—that I wonder if we are heading for a beat-down.
“Hope nobody sleepwalks out of their guest rooms tonight. Might end up with a black eye,” Clive natters nervously, nodding his jaw at Twiggy. “Actually, Nick, mind if I have a word with Bex? Sentimental reasons. Eve of the wedding, old friends. You understand.”
“We’ve come a long way together, eh?” Nick says, dripping kindness. “Let’s find a quiet spot.” He leads us back down the private hall. “Why don’t we step in here?”
Then, in a flash, Nick grabs him by the lapels of his tuxedo jacket and all but hurls him into a small, wooden-paneled study. He shoves Clive so hard that Clive crashes into a sweating ice bucket that’s clearly been there a while, knocking its contents—including an open wine bottle—onto a round wooden coffee table, soaking a copy of the International Herald Tribune. There’s a huge portrait of Prince Richard hung over the fireplace, and beneath it on the mantel is a framed shot of him with Christiane of Greece, which is what clues me in that this is his private study. I avert my gaze; I feel like I’m riffling through his underwear drawer.
Clive mops at his leg, trying to regain his composure. His eyes flick from a heavily breathing Nick to me, and back again. He looks shaken, as if he’d only expected capitulation. He’d thought he had me.
“So Bex came running to you for help,” he says, tugging at his collar, failing to cover his unease. “I’ll grant you, I was fooled out there. I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“Of course I did,” I say. “You’re an idiot if you thought I’d do anything else.”
“You’ve got some brass, calling me an idiot,” Clive says. “You lot never believed I was any good at my job, and look at us now. I own you.” His cheeks are flushed a desperate red.
“Clive, this is madness,” Nick says. “I don’t understand. What’s this about? Are you punishing us for Oxford? That was years ago, and Bex never meant to—”
“Of course. You would assume this is about Bex.” Clive almost chokes. “As if any woman you deign to touch must be so irresistible to the rest of us. Honestly, do you really think I’d waste my time pining over someone who was such a pathetic mess when you left that she actually let your lecherous brother have a taste? You Lyons men may have a taste for the fragile ones, but I do not.”
Nick does not take the bait. “Then what is it, if it’s not Bex?”
“Certainly couldn’t be to do with you, could it?” Clive is vibrating with something I can only classify as the beginnings of a tantrum. “God, you’re arrogant. You can’t even fathom that you might’ve put a foot wrong. I’m sick of being the only person who isn’t in your thrall. Sick of people wetting themselves just to stand six feet from you. What did you do to deserve that? What makes you any better than the rest of us?”
“Nothing,” Nick says. “And I’m the first to admit that.”
“Obviously the huge emotional strain of being Nick’s friend didn’t keep you from enjoying the perks. Vacations, parties, free drinks.” I ticked them off on my fingers. “If you hated him so much, why didn’t you just leave us all alone?”
“I’m not thick enough to give up my access,” Clive says snidely. “Besides, Nick’s not the only person whose father has expectations for his behavior, not that either of you gives a damn about what it’s like in my family.”
“I do give a damn. We were mates, Clive,” Nick says. His face looks very sad. “We were in it together.”
“No, you were in it. And the rest of us had to march along, and got nothing in return,” he says. “Nick wants to go out? Everyone stand around him. Nick needs to leave a bar drunk? Cut your night short and get him out. Nick wants a girl? Everyone stand aside, even if you’re already dating her. And I did. I kept quiet. I waited, and gave you chances to help me, but evidently my loyalty wasn’t worth a favor.”
“I didn’t realize you saw friendship as a transaction,” Nick says coldly.
“I’m a journalist,” Clive says. “And you knew that. You knew how I could have benefited from your help. But I didn’t matter to you, did I? You thought I was just another brainwashed Lyons foot soldier who didn’t have the bollocks to stand up for himself. But I do.”
“Not enough bollocks to do it out in the open, without a pen name,” I point out.
“What you’re doing isn’t journalism, Clive,” Nick says. “And you know that.”
“What I know is that you never took me seriously, and once you made that clear, I looked after myself. I bided my time. And eventually I landed on the gossip scoop of the century.” Clive looks proud of himself. “Britain’s Golden Boy, cuckolded by his own brother. I did the digging, I manipulated the sources, I got the story, all by myself. The Royal Flush is going to be bigger than Xandra Deane. And you’re at my mercy now.”
You are here at the mercy of Her Majesty and me. It is a coincidence that Clive echoed Richard, and only I know he’s done it, but the parallel it draws between the chilly, damaged Prince of Wales and the conniving, broken Clive Fitzwilliam is scary and enlightening to me.
And then it’s Lacey’s face I see. Everything Clive has said—about feeling overshadowed, overlooked, underestimated—are the things my sister has felt, to some degree, for the last couple of years. And I didn’t hear her, either, or else didn’t want to, until she was pushed to the brink.
At the anger on Nick’s face, Clive adds, “Oh, and don’t get any juvenile ideas about having your hired thugs lock me in a closet, or something. Joss has very specific instructions to follow if I don’t check in tonight.”
“I can’t believe you’ve dragged her into this, too,” I say.
“I didn’t have to drag her into anything. She hates you,” Clive says. “You shoved her right into my lap. Lacey, too, really. It’s the sad little rejects that make it the easiest.”
Clive has twisted into something unrecognizable. I can’t believe I ever thought he was handsome; he is so ugly to me now.