I let out the loudest snort of my life. “I am so not going to be the queen.”
Lacey gave me a strange look. “Of course you are,” she said quietly. “Otherwise, where is this going? What is all this for?”
*
I thought about what Lacey had said all the way home from Harrods. Obviously I was keenly aware of Nick’s station in life, but somehow I hadn’t properly considered the notion that following my relationship through to a happy conclusion meant me becoming…if not a queen, then certainly the wife of a king. And, as I looked back on all those years of secrecy that had no end in sight, doubt crept in about how much that simple fact might be coloring our current status—which suddenly felt more like a stalemate. By the time I got home, my head and my heart and my feet were throbbing, and I just wanted to lose myself in some deliriously lousy TV.
Three hours later, after a Celebrity Big Brother marathon crowned with a riveting confessional in which a contestant fell asleep for five uncut minutes—Big Brother is considerably less produced in the UK than it is in the United States—I channel surfed until I heard a familiar name on the nightly news.
“Prince Nicholas is at the National Portrait Gallery tonight,” an entertainment reporter gushed as Nick’s picture came up, “and you won’t believe what he said about his future!”
It was the Queen Mum’s birthday, and Nick was at the gallery to unveil a painting of her in her youth, crisp as usual in one of his navy suits. This channel’s cameraperson was in the phalanx of media stuffed behind a metal barricade; Nick had obviously agreed to answer a preapproved question or two, but as he’d finished, someone went rogue. The news subtitled it even though I heard it plain as day.
“Oi, Nick! When’s the wedding? None of us are getting any younger!”
I knew the voice. It was Mustache. I sucked in a breath, but on the TV, Nick played it off with a comedic head shake.
Until.
“I don’t know why you lot are in such a hurry to chain me down,” he said. “Getting married is the last thing on my mind. Talk to me again in a decade.”
The station cut back to the studio, where the newscaster was chuckling.
“Someone better tell Rebecca Porter,” she said. “Although maybe Prince Nicholas just did. Up next, part three in our report on the common household pets most likely to kill you.”
I told myself it was nothing. I told myself Nick loved me, and that everything else was just smoke and mirrors. I told myself we’d laugh about it when he came over later, the way he always did. But his glib reaction was all I saw, on a loop, every time I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. Because I ended up being wrong about one very important thing: Nick never did come home to me that night.
But he was waiting on my bed the next morning when I got out of the shower, annoyingly huggable in gray heathered cashmere (he’d had breakfast with Marta, who’d wanted to celebrate turning ninety-nine with a full English fry-up that would make her arteries “really work for it”). By this point, I was in a state: poorly rested, emotionally wounded, fresh from my twentieth dramatic imagining of how this conversation would go, and ready to take off his head with whatever blunt instrument I could find. Including my tongue.
Nick reached for the pile of newspapers next to him and wordlessly tossed me The Sun. Near the photographs of Lacey from Harrods were shots of her with some guys I vaguely recognized from the society pages. The only solace I could take was that she wasn’t with Freddie—Lacey had, at least, followed the letter of that law—but the headline read POSH AND BEX AND THE PARTY GIRL, and that was bad enough. But it was also clearly a sidebar to something larger. I unfolded the paper, and found a photo of Nick in front of the gallery, under the words MATRIMON-OH-NO!
“Good morning to you, too, Nick,” I said, brandishing it and then throwing the paper back at his head.
“Sorry. Good morning,” he said guiltily.
“Too late. I’m mad,” I said, dropping my towel and giving my wet hair a vicious rub. “You spend all that time lecturing me and Lacey, but now it’s okay for you to feed the beast?”
“If we’re going to fight about this, would you mind putting on some clothes?” Nick said. “You’re very distracting right now, and I want to be at my best.”
“Stop trying to flirt your way out of this,” I said, stiffly tugging on my bathrobe.
His face fell. “I didn’t actually mean it.”
“Which part?”
“Any of it,” he insisted.
“If I had done anything like that, Barnes would deep-fry my head for lunch,” I said.
“How do you know he didn’t deep-fry mine?”
“Because I’m sure he’s extremely relieved to have it confirmed that I’m just keeping your bed warm,” I said, choking up. Nick looked as surprised as if I’d just handed him my acceptance letter to Hogwarts. “Did you even think about how this would make me look? Like some tragic American girl you’re just toying with, until someone better comes along.”
Or in case no one better does, I didn’t say.
“I promise, that bloody photographer just caught me off guard,” he said. “This marriage nonsense and their obsession with our relationship drives me up a tree, and it slipped out. I should have ignored him. I don’t know why I didn’t. I suppose I’m not immune, either.”
“You snapped,” I said meaningfully.
“I’m so, so sorry, Bex,” he said. “Hurting you was the last thing I wanted to do. If we were two normal people…”
“But we’re not,” I said. “We’re one normal person, and then you.”
Nick attempted a wan smile. “How many times do I have to tell you, Bex? You’ve never been normal.”
This reference to Windsor made something inside me unfold. I crossed the room and kissed him.
“You know I don’t care about getting married, but I do think I care about the hiding,” I said, sitting next to him. “It’s been almost four years. Four, Nick. I don’t know how much longer it’s fair for us to live in a cave.”
“Well, this cave has satellite TV and a very enticing bed,” he said, nudging me.
“Be serious.” I smacked his leg.
“Sorry. The bathrobe is too flimsy to keep me focused,” he said, picking up the satiny tie and rubbing it between his fingers. He sighed. “It’s not like I’ve ever done this before. Not really. And it’s not like I can ask my parents for advice. They were miserable even when Mum was well.”
“So neither of us knows what we’re doing,” I said.
Nick looked at me and although his lips smiled, his eyes didn’t. “Haven’t a clue,” he said.
I took his hand, almost as if to bridge the silence that fell between us. My eyes landed on my flag pin, our private little talisman, sitting on the dresser staring back at me, daring me to put it on and feel the same as I ever had.