Screw that, I thought.
So I straightened my back and resolved to have an epically delightful time. I threw myself into every conversation, smiling, laughing at Cilla’s story about how one painting in the Portrait Gallery had belonged to her great-great-great-aunt until the Prince of Wales won it in a high-stakes game of whist. I sipped daintily at the tremendous wine from the palace cellar of more than twenty-five thousand bottles, dredged up some stories from the greeting-card trenches that were passably entertaining, and overall ensured I visibly held my own as a lively—but not overtly loud nor showy—dining companion. If anyone in the House of Lyons wanted to beat my spirit into submission, he or she would have to strike harder.
Which eventually, Nick himself did. The evening closed with a giant cake, lit with sparklers, and a round of “Happy Birthday,” which Gemma punctuated with a highly affectionate kiss on Nick’s cheek—a moment I instantly knew would be the lynchpin for all the gossipy reports in the papers. Lacey reached under the table and took my hand, Cilla and Gaz swapped a look, and my parents, bless them, betrayed not even a flicker of surprise nor irritation. Then Nick took his seat and leaned over Gemma to speak to the prime minister, and I looked at Lacey, who had just dropped her butter knife onto the floor and was trying to fish it out from under the table with her toe. I felt extraordinarily out of my depth.
*
“You’re spending this entire party just watching Nick,” Lady Bollocks accused me.
We had moved into the throne room for digestifs and traditional ballroom dancing (designed to appeal to the Olds, as Freddie called them, until they retired and a DJ took over). My parents were taking a surprisingly graceful turn around the dance floor, and I felt a surge of pride at how fleet of foot Dad looked, and how beautifully that simple act thumbed its nose at anyone who’d painted him as a beer-swilling baseball hooligan. But, although I’m loath to admit it even now, I was paying more attention to how many people Nick greeted and spoke to before he made it to me (currently, he was stuck with a posse of Danish relatives who were hugging him copiously). I knew I was being watched, so I couldn’t even spy as flagrantly as I wanted to, and if Bea had noticed, then possibly so had other people. So I turned my back on him and pasted on the most contented smile I could muster. Nobody bought it.
“Has he even spoken to you yet?” Cilla asked.
“Does this morning count?” I said.
“This is a lot to deal with, Bex,” Lacey ventured sympathetically.
“Stop encouraging her tiresome moping. It’s not as if he can stroll up and ask her to dance,” Bea said. “The reporters here would be all over that bit of foreplay.”
Cilla looked at the whirling couples wistfully. “Pity. The dancing looks quite lovely.”
Gaz drew himself tall and held out a hand to Cilla. “And you look stunning, and Tony is a deep-fried wanker for missing the chance to twirl you around this room,” he said, as gallantly as anything involving the word wanker can be said.
Cilla blushed. “Go on, you,” she said, but she was beaming, and took his hand, and Gaz whisked her away like a man who’d been practicing for weeks.
“He’s been practicing for weeks,” Clive said.
“You read my mind,” I said.
Clive offered me his hand. “I hope I’m reading it again.”
I involuntarily glanced again at Nick, and saw him give Gemma a quick hug in passing.
“You are,” I said, accepting.
And so Clive and I performed a passable waltz, giggling as we tried not to step all over each other. Freddie and Bea even joined us, the latter holding her dangerously pointed chin high in the air as Freddie tried whatever goofy move he could to upset her iron posture. When the music ended, I noticed Eleanor’s eyes pausing again on me.
“Stop checking the approval meter,” Bea hissed.
Gaz bowed low to Cilla. “Can I interest the lady in a drink?”
“Bloody hell, yes,” Cilla said, her cheeks sweetly red.
“Me too,” Clive said somewhat obliviously. “And I saw Joss’s father going blue in the face yelling at Tom Huntington-Jones about something, so I’d best buck up and go fish for the scoop from Philippa. Coming, Bex?”
I scanned the room again. I couldn’t see Nick, but I did see my parents at the edge of the dance floor, entangled in a conversation with Nick’s agitated-looking Aunt Agatha.
“You go ahead. Let me check on my parents first.”
“…show jumping in Great Britain simply hasn’t been the same since he threw his hat in with the Dutch,” Agatha was saying when I reached them. She sounded accusatory.
“I am sure you’re right,” my mother said, in a tone I recognized as the one she used when she wanted to be conciliatory and also had no idea what the other person was talking about.
Agatha seemed pleased by this response, before turning to me with a stare that was evaluative at best. “Can I help you, Rebecca?” she asked after a beat.
I gestured at Mom and Dad. “These are my parents, Your Highness,” I explained.
Agatha looked at them, then back at me again, an expression of consternation on her face. “Really?” she said.
“I’m afraid it’s true,” Dad told her.
“I was quite sure you were related to Maxima,” Agatha said, in a tone that implied that she was still fairly certain that she was correct. She turned to me, grudgingly. “Rebecca, how are you enjoying the palace?” No one has ever sounded more pained by a pleasantry.
“It’s stunning,” I said. “One of my favorite Vermeers is hanging in the Portrait Gallery.”
“Oh yes,” Agatha said. “The Milkmaid.”
It was a test. I was about to pass.
“No, ma’am, I believe that one is in the Rijksmuseum,” I said. “I’m talking about The Music Lesson. Up close you can really see the way Vermeer injected himself into the work by adding that reflection of his easel. It’s breathtaking in person.”
“Of course,” Agatha said, looking almost disappointed that I’d been right.
In your face, was my elegant thought.
Then Agatha’s face fell even further. “Excuse me. Julian is…well, excuse me,” she said, hustling toward the bar, where I saw Awful Julian dumping two shots of whiskey into his soda.
“Do I even want to know what that was about?” Mom asked.
“I think Princess Agatha was making sure that I’m not both a greeting-card artist and a bullshit artist,” I said.
“I can only assume you showed her up magnificently,” Nick said, suddenly at my side. “I apologize if she was rude.”
My mother burst into girlish laughter. The two old women next to us glanced over and, in sync, raised penciled-in brows.
“Not at all,” Mom chortled. “I found her quite fascinating, actually.”