“You think you have all this power,” I tell him. “But you don’t. Because we won’t give it to you. I don’t care what you say about me. I am not informing on my own family.”
“But that’s the rub. If you don’t, they won’t be your family,” Clive points out. “You’re actually doing more harm than if you just worked with me. I could write such lovely things about you. Then maybe everyone would finally forget that you and that sister of yours are such social-climbing slappers.”
“You know, if I weren’t getting married tomorrow, I would punch you,” Nick says, flexing his left hand. “But Bex needs to be able to fit my ring on my finger.”
I step up. “Luckily, I’m right-handed,” I say. “You want a slapper? You got it.”
I smack his cheek so hard that my whole hand turns bright red and throbs. I hit him again anyway.
Clive struggles to keep his balance, panting slightly. “You bitch,” he curses, grabbing his face.
“Shut your disgusting mouth,” Nick snaps, finally loosening his grip on himself a bit. “The pathetic thing is, if you’d hung in there until we were all a bit older, a bit further along, who knows what might’ve happened. But you couldn’t wait. And so you blew your own cover.”
Then Nick raises my hand to his mouth and kisses it. “Fifty years from now, Bex and I will still be married, and you will be nothing more than a sad footnote in history,” he says. “So run whatever tawdry story you like. I really don’t give a damn.”
Clive looks gobsmacked.
“Now, would you like to walk out, or shall I call Stout and Twiggy for an escort?” Nick asks, with such tremendous Advanced Pleasantness that I will never look at that expression the same way again. “They are not getting married tomorrow, to my knowledge, and I think they’re in the mood for a bit of a scuffle.”
Clive blots at his mouth with his sleeve; his teeth cut his lip when I cracked him.
“Right, then,” he says. “I guess all that’s left to decide is when to publish. Perhaps just before the bride leaves for the Abbey. All those cheers turning to boos. It’ll be poetic.”
“Oh, piss off, you miserable…” Nick turns to me. “What was the word?”
“Asswad,” I supply.
Clive is openly astonished that we’re standing our ground, and his bottom teeth are smeared with red. “Fine, dig your own graves,” he says. “I look forward to throwing you in them.”
And he storms out and slams the door.
“Is it inappropriate if I say that you were really—”
Suddenly Nick’s hands are in my hair, and he is kissing me firmly, like an exorcism.
“—hot just now,” I say, when he pulls away. “I guess not.”
“That bastard,” Nick fumes. “It’s a good job you slapped him or I’d have thrown him out the window.”
He sits down on the arm of the sofa, rubbing his tensed hand, as if he can feel the effects of the punch he didn’t let himself throw.
“Nick,” I say, taking his hands. “Thank you for defending me, but I won’t hold you to it. We don’t have to get married just to stick it to him.”
Nick looks down at our entwined fingers. My ring sparkles up at us.
“I heard you,” he says. “With Mum, and at the Abbey. I heard Freddie in his speech.” He lets out a laugh. “In an odd way, Clive argued your case, too. He was trying to insult you. But if the guy who hates us most in the world points out how at sea you were, it must have been true.”
I do not speak. I don’t want to interrupt what seems to be him coming back to me.
“I was so hurt, Bex. I still am hurt. I’m still sad. I don’t know what to do about it. But I do know the answer isn’t losing you,” he says. “Freddie is right. Whatever this is…it doesn’t happen twice in a lifetime. I’d rather work at this with you than settle for less with anyone else.”
He stands up and draws me close. “You know what you said to me at the Abbey today?” he murmurs. “That you’re mine for life?”
I nod, mutely.
“Thank you for that,” he says. “Because I’m yours, too.”
He pulls me in and kisses me, less of a passionate outburst and more of a rebirth, and it feels as if something heavy that had been sitting on my heart finally falls away.
“I’m sorry,” I begin when we part, and he holds up his hand.
“No more apologies,” he says. “I don’t want you to think I’m holding something over you. I’m not. This isn’t a favor. This is just love.”
“I love you, too,” I say, fervently, my eyes filling with tears. “Which is why I hate to bring this up, but…”
“The wedding,” Nick says, leaning back against the couch.
“The PR disaster.”
“Reality sets in.” He sighs. “I’m too wrung out from all this to think clearly right now.”
“Listen,” I say, “if I’ve learned one thing from this entire nightmare, it’s that we need to tell our friends when we need their help.” I link my hands behind his neck, then kiss him one more time, mostly to revel in being able to do it again. “Time to call in the reinforcements.”
*
Twenty minutes later, the study looks like an Oxford night of yore, with one glaring absence.
“CLIVE,” Bea thunders. “I could murder him.”
“Has anyone tried Joss?” Nick asks.
“Voice mail,” Cilla says.
“Well, she can’t hide forever,” Bea spits. “Certainly not from her father. When Eleanor finds out what Joss is up to she’ll probably make him hang up his speculum.”
Our other friends had still been in the garden, and responded to my mayday text within ten minutes—except for Lacey, who hasn’t answered her phone, and Gaz, who stopped by the kitchen on the way up, making the argument that crisis management of any sort required snacks. He is now pacing in front of the fireplace, gnawing on a mushroom tart.
“I’ve been thinking about this all day,” he muses. “I can’t seem to crack it. I wonder if I could get an injunction against him. It’s the middle of the night. But it is for the Royal Family. But I don’t know what the injunction would be for.”
“Stalking?” Cilla suggests.
“Treason? Kind of?” Gemma Sands offers, sprawled out in an armchair.
“Invasion of privacy?” Nick asks.
“Unlawful scum-sucking and general psychosexual asshattery?” I offer from my perch next to him, as close as I can be without sitting in his lap. I think we’re subconsciously so relieved to be on the same side again that we’re loath to give each other any space.
“I don’t think we have to reach that hard,” says Gaz. “Blackmail itself is illegal. But we’ve not got any proof of any of it.”
A fly buzzes past and Bea swipes at it, irritated, then puts her hand on her hip and stops pacing and points at me. “You,” she says. “For God’s sake, Bex, I told you years ago that if you couldn’t hack it you bloody well ought to—”
Nick clears his throat pointedly. Bea closes her mouth and tugs on her long sleeve, trying to look composed.
“—have spoken to someone about your feelings,” she finishes, head high.