I suppose I got it.
Oxford’s student body trickles in as many as two weeks before the beginning of the new term—the crew team needs to adjust its sleep cycle just as much as a jet-lagged American does—so I arrived late on a mid-September afternoon with about ten days to unpack, recalibrate, and explore. The academic colleges there function like mini-universities under the Oxford umbrella—as if my old Cornell dorm also had its own professors and classrooms—and I had been accepted to live and study in one called Pembroke. It was smaller than some of the other thirty-seven dotted around town, and its lack of notoriety may directly correlate to being right across the street from the imposing, absurdly famous Christ Church college. We lived in its shadows—literally, come late afternoon—and during my year there, when the omnipresent red tour bus stopped to point out the historic building that was in the Harry Potter movies and observes its own time zone, the guide wouldn’t even so much as glance across the street. Now, Pembroke is the main stop on the Royal Romance tour, which leaves from the train station every forty-five minutes. According to Gaz, who took it six months ago on a lark, it’s almost as fictional as The Bexicon. He cried anyway.
A light drizzle was falling that first day as I hauled two giant suitcases, a laptop bag, and my purse up the cobblestone road toward Pembroke’s main entrance. My suitcase kept catching a wheel and flipping over, twisting my wrist and causing my shoulder bags to whack me in the leg; by the time I reached the door, I was panting and had slim rivulets of rain dribbling down my nose. I rang twice for the porter and cursed loudly when no one answered. It had been a plane, train, and automobile odyssey to get me from Des Moines to that front stoop. I was cold, wet, and exhausted, and, from what I could tell, my deodorant had not stood up to the journey.
I buzzed again. The door opened and a tall, sandy-haired guy poked out his head.
“Need a hand?”
“Oh, please. Yes. Thank you.”
He held up a stern palm. “Wait, how do I know you’re supposed to be here? I heard you swearing. Foul language doesn’t befit an Oxford student.”
I stammered an apology until I noticed he was grinning.
“I’m joking,” he said. “You’re Rebecca. I was told you’d be coming.” He widened the door and came through to get my bags. “The porter is very protective of his tea break, so I said I’d sit in and look out for you.”
“And you let me hang out here in the rain just for fun? Is that behavior befitting an Oxford student?” I said, stepping inside, cozy and warm after the rain.
“I may have been engaged in an in-depth study of REM sleep.” He shrugged winningly. “I’ve had two pints already and they make me so tired. Besides, I couldn’t have guessed you’d show up without an umbrella. That’s like going to the Bahamas without a bathing suit.” He hoisted up my bags. “Follow me.”
We trudged up the winding dark wood stairs, past stately oil paintings that looked so rustic they had to be originals, and blank-eyed portraits of alumni and monarchs.
“Which one is he?” I pointed to a man with a square jaw and a beard as thin as he was fat.
“That’s King Albert. Victoria the First’s grandson. Early nineteen-hundreds.”
“I feel like he’s staring right through me,” I said, shivering involuntarily as we wound our way up to the third floor. “He has kind of a homicidal face. Or is that just syphilis making him insane? British monarchs do love their syphilis.”
“A prerequisite of the job,” he agreed.
I snorted, at which he shot me a startled but amused glance before I followed him into a slender hallway, domed with carved beams and lit beguilingly with candle-shaped sconces. We passed six doors—three on each side—and stopped outside the last one on the left.
“Here you go,” he said, digging in the pocket of his jeans and then handing me a key. “Stop by the porter later and he’ll give you a full set. And come join us in the JCR, if you’re so inclined.” He gave me a crisp nod. “Welcome to Oxford.”
He was gone before my numbed mind got off a thank-you, much less decoded that acronym. I fought a head-splitting yawn and fumbled with the key—right as the door opposite mine flew open and an auburn-haired girl shot out of it and grabbed my hand.
“I see you’ve met him, then,” she said, in an accent I later learned was Yorkshire. “What d’you think? Rather nice for a guy whose face will be all over our money in fifty years.” She smacked her forehead. “Oi, I’m a dolt. Sorry. I’m Cilla.”
“Rebecca,” I said, blinking hard. “And are you telling me that was…?”
“Nick, yes,” she said. “Or rather, ‘Prince Nicholas of Wales.’” She made the air quotes with four fingers whose nail polish was in various stages of peeling. “He’s not insufferable about the title, thank God.” She peered at my glazed eyes. “Didn’t you recognize him?”
That I hadn’t was laughable (he still teases me that it’s treasonous not to tip your royal baggage handler). Lacey subscribed to every celebrity weekly in existence—she delighted in reading bits of them to me once she’d finished her homework, usually while I was still trying to do mine—and Nick had appeared in them all. But in person he lacked the macho sheen the media always tried to give him, and I don’t care who you are or how many times your twin has told you to practice constant vigilance: You still don’t expect the so-called Heartthrob Heir to be your glorified bellhop.
“So the future sovereign just heard me accuse his relative of having syphilis?” I asked faintly.
“Oh, that’s a good one,” Cilla said. “But don’t worry. Gaz once threw up all over him and Nick didn’t even bat an eyelash, and that’s saying something because Gaz eats a lot and there were loads of chunks.” She grabbed a bag and barged past me into my room.
I finagled my other suitcase through the doorway and took in my new home. There was an irony in coming all the way to Oxford to find that my room resembled the ones in every dorm in America: a twin bed with a metal bedframe, a radiator under the window, and a desk with a hutch that looked like it came from an office supply warehouse.
Cilla nodded at a heap in the corner. “I filched some of Ceres’s things that she didn’t take when she left,” she said. “A rug, some throw pillows. Whatever might make it less awful in here. We can decorate later, though. First let’s get you to the bar for a welcome drink.”
“Shouldn’t I change?” I asked, wondering if I smelled bad to people whose noses weren’t as close to me as my own was.